Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for satellite services in Ukraine(cnn.com)
cnn.com
Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for satellite services in Ukraine
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html
12 comments
A common narcissistic tactic to manipulate a victim is to provide what is needed, allow that support to become relied upon if not essential, and then all support is discontinued without warning. Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath, though sociopaths have no conscience and are prone to yelling a lot, they are also irresponsible and unreliable, mostly due to incompetence. Could Musk be incompetent? Though difficult to believe, it would explain some things.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with Ukraine embarrassing Elon by calling him out for a stupid ideas this week.
For anyone who missed it, he posted some stupid tweet about ending the war by capitulating to russia’s demands and they told him to fuck off.
Curious timing if you ask me.
Good point. Narcissists are terrified of criticism and will react aggressively, taking great pains to devalue or invalidate its source, and that may explain what happened here.
It's only Narcissistic when the victim gives up something up in the process of becoming your dependent-- like a spouse forgoing a career to raise your children, and then you threaten them with a divorce that will leave them destitute and unable to provide for themselves. So they stay trapped in an exploitative arrangement.
What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.
If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.
If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
> It's only Narcissistic when the victim gives up something up in the process of becoming your dependent
Narcissism has many facets and takes many forms. It is not only narcissistic under those circumstances because it is also narcissistic when the victim is berated and scrutinized in order to make them more pliant to manipulation. This is counter-example strictly proving your rigid definition incorrect.
> a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.
This is ad hominem fallacy. What I described is not charity, it is intentionally creating reliance in order to cause instability when support is removed, and it is common enough to have its own idiom: pulling the rug out from under them, meaning to suddenly take away important support.
> If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
This is the fallacy of weak analogy. Yet similarly if one gives someone $200/month for years, then a common law arrangement develops, and one then becomes responsible for continuing to provide that monthly support. If without justification that support is intentionally and permanently ended, one is guilty of willful desertion and/or criminal abandonment. The victim is not entitled to the rest of one's capital, only continued support upon which they have become reliant due to one's free actions.
Narcissism has many facets and takes many forms. It is not only narcissistic under those circumstances because it is also narcissistic when the victim is berated and scrutinized in order to make them more pliant to manipulation. This is counter-example strictly proving your rigid definition incorrect.
> a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.
This is ad hominem fallacy. What I described is not charity, it is intentionally creating reliance in order to cause instability when support is removed, and it is common enough to have its own idiom: pulling the rug out from under them, meaning to suddenly take away important support.
> If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
This is the fallacy of weak analogy. Yet similarly if one gives someone $200/month for years, then a common law arrangement develops, and one then becomes responsible for continuing to provide that monthly support. If without justification that support is intentionally and permanently ended, one is guilty of willful desertion and/or criminal abandonment. The victim is not entitled to the rest of one's capital, only continued support upon which they have become reliant due to one's free actions.
> It is not only narcissistic under those circumstances because it is also narcissistic when the victim is berated and scrutinized in order to make them more pliant to manipulation.
Shaming Musk for not doing something he never agreed to do, to the detriment of his company, is itself manipulative and parasitic logic.
All the same, fuck Amazon for offering a limited-use free tier. After a few months of free EC2, we apparently have a common-law obligation under which they have to keep giving me free service forever?
That is not how charity works. You're redefining the terms of an informal arrangement in a way that most benefits you at someone else's expense-- literally Narcissistic behavior.
Shaming Musk for not doing something he never agreed to do, to the detriment of his company, is itself manipulative and parasitic logic.
All the same, fuck Amazon for offering a limited-use free tier. After a few months of free EC2, we apparently have a common-law obligation under which they have to keep giving me free service forever?
That is not how charity works. You're redefining the terms of an informal arrangement in a way that most benefits you at someone else's expense-- literally Narcissistic behavior.
> Shaming Musk for not doing something he never agreed to do, to the detriment of his company, is itself manipulative and parasitic logic.
This is a straw man argument, as that was not my argument, and I was not shaming Musk. I was merely speculating:
>> Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath...
"Maybe" is salient here, meaning "there is the mere possibility that..."
> All the same, fuck Amazon for offering a limited-use free tier. After a few months of free EC2, we apparently have a common-law obligation under which they have to keep giving me free service forever?
Yet more straw man argument. How does Amazon enter into this?
> That is not how charity works.
Now your straw man has taken over. You introduced and claim this is charity, but I was describing something else entirely.
> You're redefining the terms of an informal arrangement in a way that most benefits you at someone else's expense-- literally Narcissistic behavior.
Still more straw man fallacy punctuated by ad hominem attack. If you can't comprehend and speak to my words, but only attack me, then your argument is fallacious and not worthy of being entertained other than to call it what it is, straw man arguments and personal insults.
This is a straw man argument, as that was not my argument, and I was not shaming Musk. I was merely speculating:
>> Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath...
"Maybe" is salient here, meaning "there is the mere possibility that..."
> All the same, fuck Amazon for offering a limited-use free tier. After a few months of free EC2, we apparently have a common-law obligation under which they have to keep giving me free service forever?
Yet more straw man argument. How does Amazon enter into this?
> That is not how charity works.
Now your straw man has taken over. You introduced and claim this is charity, but I was describing something else entirely.
> You're redefining the terms of an informal arrangement in a way that most benefits you at someone else's expense-- literally Narcissistic behavior.
Still more straw man fallacy punctuated by ad hominem attack. If you can't comprehend and speak to my words, but only attack me, then your argument is fallacious and not worthy of being entertained other than to call it what it is, straw man arguments and personal insults.
Believe it or not life is complicated and some people realize that life is about probabilities and not about black and white the vast majority of time. I'm sure he's shoring up his bets both ways as it is a fairly low cost of entry for him and SpaceX on all fronts.
Is this actually hard to understand? Because this sort of visible opining just seems like an extension of the "It's unethical to support people fighting for their freedom" propaganda that's popular with the anti-war crowd. It's not particularly hard to understand wanting to give an underdog better odds even if you can't gurantee a win for them.
I'm assuming he's playing both sides here. Why alienate a massive potential consumer market?
I desperately want to know what exactly is the difference between the $60 per month for retail customers, $500 per month "Premium" (that Ukraine apparently requested) for businesses, the $4,500 Starlink is giving them, and the $5,000 maritime version.
SLA? My understanding is that this is typical for connectivity options. Whether you're on a 1:50 aggregation or 1:10 aggregation or 1:1 aggregation may massively affect costs of an X Mb/s connection for any offered value of X.
This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.
This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.
Markup, nothing else.
Security options?
Your average consumer doesn't have to worry about nation state hacking attacks, electronic warfare, and artillery strikes.
Your average consumer doesn't have to worry about nation state hacking attacks, electronic warfare, and artillery strikes.
$4,500/month is a bit less than Starlink maritime at $5,000/month. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide the support needed for a warzone. There aren't any similar services with public numbers to compare this cost to that are in an active warzone.
what sort of support is there that is specific for "active warzone"?
> The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service.
Dang, SpaceX is taking them to the cleaners.
Dang, SpaceX is taking them to the cleaners.
For comparison, consumer Starlink service costs 230 PLN ($47) per month in Poland. AFAIK the consumer plan is not throttled, so what are they getting for $4,500?
They’re not the same devices. The premium terminals support higher data rates up to double those of the basic consumer units. There may be other improvements and advantages as well, there was talk of wider field of view of the sky, multiple simultaneous satellite tracking and redundant connections but I don’t know if those features made it into these devices. Starlink prioritised Ukraine for the latest gear.
But majority of terminals were bought by third parties. State Department (USAID) paid for ~2K, Poland bought >11K units.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex...
> The largest single contributor of terminals, according to the newly obtained documents, is Poland with payment for almost 9,000 individual terminals.
https://twitter.com/j_jakobowski/status/1579889819010097154
>~11.7k out of 18k Starlink sets in were bought by Poland.
>6,7k by Polish government and 5k by Polish oil company Orlen
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex...
> The largest single contributor of terminals, according to the newly obtained documents, is Poland with payment for almost 9,000 individual terminals.
https://twitter.com/j_jakobowski/status/1579889819010097154
>~11.7k out of 18k Starlink sets in were bought by Poland.
>6,7k by Polish government and 5k by Polish oil company Orlen
The terminals aren't the issue here hut rather the operational service provided to the terminals: the satellites providing connectivity.
That's correct, Starlink provided 3,670 of the premium terminals at their own cost, plus (so far) free premium service to all of the terminals provided as aid, including those bought by USAID and various governments. There are further consumer grade terminals individuals and crowd funders have provided entirely at their own cost including service.
Another good thread about how the terminals and subscriptions have been done from someone else whose been buying them:
https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456
If they knew it was just going to be a free trial, maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals. I wonder if the premium terminals are even faster when there are so many of them clogging the network.
I bet one of the issues is that there's actually too few of them. While Ukraine is fairly small compared to the US, it's still no slouch. The front was as long at one point as the distance between the northern and southern border of the US. A few thousand ground terminal in such a large area make what seems to be a sub-optimal number of ground terminals per base station. Normally the "non-premium" terminals would be oversubscribed in an area and the ISP would rely on usage statistics to determine the economic optimum, but here you might have a situation where the "non-premium" pricing may not reflect the service available (there may be more connectivity available per terminal, because there's so few of them) nor the costs incurred (the same amount of effort is spent on servicing a small number of terminals). The upside is that the ground terminals can each be shared by many people so it's not all that expensive per connected individual -- you're just splitting the costs at the level of connected individuals, not at the level of privately owned terminals.
>maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals
Sure, maybe they should have. Maybe that would have been much better for them. They're grown ups, I'm sure they would make the right decision.
Sure, maybe they should have. Maybe that would have been much better for them. They're grown ups, I'm sure they would make the right decision.
You're pumping a lot less data through than military guys constantly using cell phones on the internet while sitting in trenches 24/7 and/or streaming steady real time video from drones and video chat.
Elon posted a graph of the data usage in Ukraine here: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088
Elon posted a graph of the data usage in Ukraine here: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088
useless without number of terminals stat
That Musk wants the US military to foot the upcoming cost of the Ukraine Russia war is entirely reasonable.
What’s unacceptable is that it’s discussed by him on Twitter and with his 108 million followers.
How can he be trusted with any more govt contracts if he is a blabbermouth?
What’s unacceptable is that it’s discussed by him on Twitter and with his 108 million followers.
How can he be trusted with any more govt contracts if he is a blabbermouth?
Seems like this is a drop in the buckert for the military $$ we're sending and they are definitely getting a lot of bang for the buck, I wonder if the DOD is dumb enough to let this program die out?
Call me conspiratorial, but I do find it weird that first there were these 'peace plans' from Musk, than reports of Starlink problems in Ukraine, then claims about the conversations with Putin (that Musk denied), followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk, otherwise he'll have to stop operating Starlink over Ukraine.
Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.
Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.
Musk likes to look good. He weighs in on notable events to boost his brand. He is also an extremely savvy investor who is very greedy, and has routinely manipulated markets for profit. Considering he is willing to roll over for the chinese (with a direct link between tweet and outcome), I don't trust him. It's not cute anymore.
Yes I agree. I don't care if Musk trolls about twitter or about crypto or gamestop stocks, but here we're are talking about people's lives.
The "problem" is that Ukrainian troops are advancing into cells that were not activated because they were Russian-held. You can see this on the map (assuming it's up-to-date): https://www.starlink.com/map No conspiracy theory is needed to explain this.
That sounded plausible to me initially, but then other news came in (as well as continued reports of issues with starlink).
But it is possible that there is nothing sinister here.
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> followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk
As far as I'm aware, this didn't "follow" but was actually the first event, predating the other by weeks.
As far as I'm aware, this didn't "follow" but was actually the first event, predating the other by weeks.
For us old-timers, this reminds me a great deal of the plot of "Operation Canadian Bacon".
So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine (and funded by USG) at 5x retail? And now they’re attempting to extort the USG (who, by the way, is also their primary customer)?
I’m not a socialist, but SpaceX should be nationalized now. The capabilities that it provides cannot remain in the hands of its current majority owner. I’m happy to see it re-privatized, in the very near future, with ownership sold to more responsible, and less flighty, stewardship.
I’m not a socialist, but SpaceX should be nationalized now. The capabilities that it provides cannot remain in the hands of its current majority owner. I’m happy to see it re-privatized, in the very near future, with ownership sold to more responsible, and less flighty, stewardship.
> So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine
It makes absolutely no sense to say that this has "zero marginal costs". Internet connectivity for the ground stations has costs. Operation of the ground stations has costs. Supervision of the whole system has costs. Ongoing fighting of Russian countermeasures has costs. Ground stations and ground terminals even have opportunity costs -- possibly very large opportunity costs, considering the money the same hardware could be generating in rural US instead.
> I’m not a socialist
Good for you.
> but SpaceX should be nationalized now.
Now you are a socialist by definition. Congratulations. It started in my country in 1948 with large industrial concerns, then this trickled down all the way to self-employed people. You're at step 1 now.
It makes absolutely no sense to say that this has "zero marginal costs". Internet connectivity for the ground stations has costs. Operation of the ground stations has costs. Supervision of the whole system has costs. Ongoing fighting of Russian countermeasures has costs. Ground stations and ground terminals even have opportunity costs -- possibly very large opportunity costs, considering the money the same hardware could be generating in rural US instead.
> I’m not a socialist
Good for you.
> but SpaceX should be nationalized now.
Now you are a socialist by definition. Congratulations. It started in my country in 1948 with large industrial concerns, then this trickled down all the way to self-employed people. You're at step 1 now.
You were so eager to write your rejoinders that you literally could not finish reading the final two sentences of my post? I think I fairly clearly anticipated and addressed most of your points in my post.
If you want to debate the wisdom of the U.S. Defense Production Act (apologies, I do not know what country you live in, based on what you said about nationalization of your industries - but if you’re unfamiliar with that law, feel free to look up it, or I’m happy to give you a capsule description if you like - I assume you have something analogous where you live, or maybe even a stronger version of it based on what you said in your post) or “too big to fail” and how I think that implies the necessity of temporary nationalization under exigent circumstances, then those are topics we could probably have an interesting discussion about. I bet we’d have some interesting disagreements!
But I do think it was fairly clear that I wasn’t calling for perpetual public ownership of formerly private enterprise.
If you want to debate the wisdom of the U.S. Defense Production Act (apologies, I do not know what country you live in, based on what you said about nationalization of your industries - but if you’re unfamiliar with that law, feel free to look up it, or I’m happy to give you a capsule description if you like - I assume you have something analogous where you live, or maybe even a stronger version of it based on what you said in your post) or “too big to fail” and how I think that implies the necessity of temporary nationalization under exigent circumstances, then those are topics we could probably have an interesting discussion about. I bet we’d have some interesting disagreements!
But I do think it was fairly clear that I wasn’t calling for perpetual public ownership of formerly private enterprise.
...how do the final two sentences of your post change anything? And no, that had nothing to do with the Defense Production Act. US Defense Production Act has nothing to do with nationalization. And our situation had nothing to do with it; it was simply a consequence of Moscow-backed Communist Party taking charge of the country and ending democracy as we knew it.
I guess I’ve forgotten how to argue online, because obviously I’m not making my meaning clear. Agree to disagree and/or just to drop it?
Sorry about what happened in your country. I think democracy is pretty great and regret that the threats to it are unceasing.
Sorry about what happened in your country. I think democracy is pretty great and regret that the threats to it are unceasing.
Nationalization of large industrial corporations (like SpaceX is) on the basis of being considered vital for industrial interests of the state was the hallmark of all nascent socialist countries in the middle of the 20th century, so saying that nationalizing a large manufacturing corporation considered vital for the state is "not socialism" made absolutely no sense to me.
How do you know the service is zero marginal?
Russia has kompromat.
All the best conservatives have it
All the best conservatives have it
Sounds more of a case of not realizing that spacex was supposed to negotiate with internet providers instead of taking the first value they offered.
Reminds me of ISPs harassing netflix to pay extra in addition to the prices they charged their consumers
https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with...
Assumably something similar is happening to SpaceX's offering
Reminds me of ISPs harassing netflix to pay extra in addition to the prices they charged their consumers
https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with...
Assumably something similar is happening to SpaceX's offering
Putting aside the costs, I'm curious how Musk reconciles giving critical support to the Ukrainian military with his apparent conviction that Russian victory is inevitable. If he truly believes that the threat of nuclear war increases the longer that Ukraine successfully defends itself, then it seems Musk would be keen a way to withdraw Starlink services from Ukraine.