No evidence Musk turned off Starlink in Ukraine
There's no evidence of anything other than normal, expected behavior of Starlink
[[See Update at the bottom]]
A recent story from the New Yorker has stoked outrage against Musk, claiming he “severed” Starlink satellite internet service to Ukrainian troops at the most critical moments in their counter-offensive. It’s a sensationalist and unsupported way of describing what happened.
It’s an issue of technology. Starlink works radically different from prior satellite internet services like Hughes and Viasat. Instead of one huge satellite in high orbit out in space, Starlink has thousands of small satellites in low orbit, skimming just above the top of the atmosphere. They move much too fast for a satellite “dish” to lock onto. Instead, a Starlink terminal uses what’s called a “phased array” of thousands of little radios that steers a beam toward the satellite, instantly pointing to a different satellite every 5 to 10 minutes as they whiz by overhead. The satellite likewise uses its own phased array to point to the ground terminal.
The upshot is this: Starlink needs to know the exact GPS location of every ground terminal. Terminals have GPS receivers that figure out their position and notify the satellite, so the satellite knows where to aim its beam. Unlike prior satellite technologies, it doesn’t work without geolocation.
This location information is used in other ways. There can only be so many customers in a cell. If you drive your RV into such a cell that’s already full (using their “Mobile” plan that puts a Starlink receiver on the roof of a van or RV), you’ll see your service suddenly degraded. It’s hard to order service in the eastern half of the United States because most of the cells have filled up. More service won’t be available until Musk launches more satellites (he launches about 20 each week).
Not only will service degrade as you cross boundaries, sometimes it’ll shut off altogether. That’s the case in the of the National Radio Quiet Zone between West Virginia and Virginia. If you drive your Starlink-enabled RV across the boundary into the zone, it suddenly shuts off (the service, that is; the vehicle keeps going). Starlink is not allowed in other zones and countries. When you drive across those boundaries, the service shuts off.
This is called “geofencing”. Service is automatically disabled when you cross an invisible boundary.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. government applied sanctions, not just on Russia, but also the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of Ukraine that Russia occupied. Technically, Starlink is forbidden by law to offer services to those areas of Ukraine. This is plainly shown in their coverage map, showing that Starlink takes great pains to avoid service in sanctioned areas. It’s been that way since at least since May 2022 (3 months after sanctions were imposed, it’s oldest link I could find).
It’s interesting that Musk chose the areas controlled by the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” rather than area claimed by them. I don’t know exactly how that fits with Biden’s executive order.
This doesn’t exactly match the lines on the battlefield. This article contains a recent map of territory held by military forces:
It’s an a good fit. Assuming the Starlink coverage map is correct, then it means the service will work in some areas controlled by Russian forces, and won’t work in some areas controlled by Ukrainian forces. It means in some places, when Ukrainian forces advance, the service will be shut off as they cross a line, but in other places, it won’t.
We thus have an explanation why Ukraine military might be unhappy when the service shuts off as they advance. It’s the expected behavior of the system, a behavior which we could’ve predicted when Musk started shipping Starlink terminals to Ukraine in early 2022.
The New Yorkers accusations are thus baseless. Maybe Musk was involved, maybe he stepped in to disable Starlink in areas other than described on the public coverage maps. The story gives plausible reasons why Musk might do this. There’s just no proof.
But ultimately, it’s just a conspiracy-theory. Trump has many nonsensical claims of election fraud that are better supported by evidence than this New Yorker story claims of Musk disabling Starlink.
Update
Somebody I respect a lot and who would have some insider knowledge tells me that Musk was indeed personally interfering in drawing the geofence boundaries last fall (of 2022). This is both anonymous and hearsay, so you shouldn’t trust it. On the other hand, you should consider the possibility even if there’s no direct evidence.
It doesn’t change my article: the claims by the New Yorker are unsubstantiated, and the public data shows that such geofencing is to be expected. However, unsubstantiated doesn’t mean disproven. Elon Musk erratic and capricious, so insisting on drawing the boundaries himself is certainly in-line with the sorts of things we can expect from him. He may well have drawn the boundaries to make Starlink useless for a counter-offensive.