U.S. billionaire Elon Musk has agreed to sell a portion of Starlink assets to the U.S. Department of Defense, removing himself from decision-making regarding geofencing Ukraine’s access to the satellite internet service
Fuck him, seize the company and nationalize it
In my opinion, all companies essential to national security should be nationalised. I mean the likes of Lockheed Martin as well. There should be no profit from war and we can’t afford companies to chase profits against the interests of national security if we end up needing it.
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they should seize twitter while they’re at it too
It’s so hard to get media to take off, I don’t see how someone takes a brand, a brand so well known its own language has become common (tweet, retweet) and decides the best thing to do is destroy all that effort.
Especially with social media, where the people generate yr content for you, disadvantaging your volunteer labor force isn’t a sound strategy (looking at your dumb ass Spez).
At least it’s right out in the open for everyone to see, that the idea we’re in any kind of a meritocracy is a colossal myth.
LOL
Musk sure has a big fucking mouth. There most have been some sobering back door conversations for this to happen so quickly.
i’d love to hear what they threatened him with as this doesnt read like he had any choice
“Here is every illegal thing you’ve done since you were conceived, including the ones in countries that the US has an extradition agreement with. Also, here is how much we will pay you to be our removed. Would you like to continue this discussion?”
Would you like to continue this discussion?
Press X to continue.
Actually, let’s not
Probably all of his SpaceX and Tesla contracts.
“Wanna take a ride in a self driving Tesla off a cliff?”
Same
Hahahaha forced is more like it. We just nationalized a portion of Starlink. Nice going Elon, you fucking troglodyte.
Don’t laugh too hard. We are the ones paying the bill for it.
ie, Our taxes are now indirectly ended up directly in Elon’s pocket. And, I can promise he didn’t cut us a deal.
It’s a small price to pay if it results in saving Ukrainian lives by having it in more capable, less idiotic hands.
by having it in more capable, less idiotic hands.
Whoa hey let’s not get too carried away. We are talking about the US government after all.
You never know. The threat of an extraordinary rendition to Ukraine might have kept the price down.
After hearing of the story I wondered if Elon could be charged under Ukrainian law as some sort of accomplice / aid to enemy operations and potentially detained and extradited by a country more actively supportive of anti-Russian operations should Elon go on vacation to such a country. (do I have to say Poland? Because I’m thinking Poland.)
Did Starlink and SpaceX not already receive a lot of government funding for their rockets etc? You could argue that the taxpayers should own x% because they paid the bill for it…
Now tax him and get the money back.
Noel Reports:
A British Journalist asked Elon Musk:
“Has your ignorance and ego cost Ukrainian lives? Putin calls you outstanding, how would you call Putin?”
Musk refused to comment.
On a secure, private line twice a week?
Somebody had some REAL uncomfortable conversations over the past 7 days, richest man in the world got threatened so hard knocked his dick in the dirt, ahahahahahahaha
On the one hand, yay for nationalising utilities!
On the other, not under the already most bloated military in the world who can’t even account for billions of their yearly funding ffs!!
I don’t think they lost billions as much as they pumped it into black projects.
I didn’t say they lost them, I said they couldn’t account for them: they were audited a bunch of times and failed by billions every time, probably for the reason you mentioned AND because they get so much money that they don’t feel a need to make an effort to track it all
I tend to agree with you, but I’m left wondering if the bureaucratic system would allow this hand-waving approach to budget tracking.
Not usually, but due to decades of successful gaslighting and other propaganda, the military is a holy cow that gets ridiculous amounts of leeway compared to everyone else, especially the people who need government assistance the most.
There’s no way muskrat can keep his mouth shut about this, surely?
Probably going to spin this as a win and something he initiated. He is unable to be weak or at fault for something.
This is the way. Musk should never have had such responsibility. Then again, perhaps due to not being a government official, he got those things into Ukraine pretty fast (just 8 days after Russia started the invasion!), and they were successfully used in many places.
Agreed = forced. I bet the price was cheap to avoid court martial level problems 😅
He can’t be court martialed, and he can’t be convicted of treason either. He isn’t a member of the military and Russia is not officially an enemy of America. To put it into perspective, even in the Cold War, when the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage for giving the Soviet Union information on radar, sonar, jet propulsion, and nuclear secrets, they still weren’t convicted of treason, because technically the USSR was not an enemy of America, which historically has been interpreted as “Congress has actually declared war on them” something we haven’t done since WW2. If you were to look up a list of people convicted of treason in America you will note it largely stops after 1945.
And that is a very good thing, especially from the perspective that many nations still consider mild criticism of the head of state treason.
He can, however, suddenly be subjected to much, much more scrutiny than even an actually innocent person would be comfortable with for interfering with American… “Interests.”
A civilian can’t be court-martialed.
We made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I bet he tried though.
Why doesn’t he trade them X for some of Starlink? The value of
TwitterX is in the negatives now, right?Then maybe as a government run social media it can be stable and boring again.
government run social media
ree eee
Honestly probably wouldn’t be all that bad. It likely be like the cspan of social media
Never thought of it remotely even being possible like that. With some good support & security in place, it might even be a pleasant place!
There are a few countries experimenting with their own Mastodon instances right now
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All of the bad faith arguments about free speech and the first amendment become real arguments about free speech and the first amendment if the government is operating the social media site. You couldn’t ban someone for offensive speech or delete their post.
They could probably get around that by outsourcing the moderation to some public group overseen by some other public ethics group, etc, and otherwise the gov’t just provides the funding to keep it all employed, running and maintained.
Not that I’m recommending it. It would have to be better than X though.
True, the thought has crossed my mind cause I thought of it before. Honestly I’m not sure how it would be handled. On the one hand, calls to violence would definitely be stamped out more thoroughly. On the other hand, I could see certain problematic speech run rampant because of the first amendment. But I think you can still have a certain idea of decorum, like they do in congress, where certain behavior is frowned upon if not completely banned. I think you can also get away with pseudobanning people kind of how it’s done with fact checking where certain posts are hidden behind a warning banner. Maybe also leave it up to the community like in lemmy where certain things are downvoted. It would still get spicy tho. My guess is that ultimately government run social media would be super stale and attract only the most boring conversations, like cspan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress_members_killed_or_wounded_in_office
Look at the first few stories under Wounded, you’ll see quite a bit of congressmen nearly beating each other to death
Yeeessss, bring on the thunderdome
Go running up and down the street outside of wherever you are waving a gun and reading all of your social media posts as loud as possible so all your neighbors can here. I bet you won’t last an hour until the government shows up, shoots you, hauls you off, or tells you where to shove all of your rights and amendments.
Eh the EU and some (or one) Euro country has started their own Mastodon/Fediverse instances—The idea isn’t terrible if your country isn’t shit.
Their instances just publish to the fediverse, they don’t allow civilian accounts on their server. This is usefull, any accounts from there are guaranteed to be official.
Yup, and people on other instances can still comment
The value of Twitter X is in the negatives now, right?
It’s a private company and you can’t buy their stocks.
It will be the opposite. The government will not be able to sensor or moderate anything but illegal stuff because of the first amendment.
Because they want Starlink satellites for Ukraine probably (and other uses but now this at minimum). X doesn’t provide them with shit.
Spill some more dirt on Twitter and let them take Twitter while they’re at it. Make it a 2 for 1 go away special.
I wonder how this is portioned out? To be completely hands free, Musk would need to sell a portion of his fleet and the control systems that operate it. This would also include relaunching replacement satellites. Since this is an orbiting system (not geostationary) he’d have to sell enough in a band around the earth to keep Ukraine covered.
Geostationary satellites are orbiting. They are orbiting at a speed and direction to match the earth’s rotation.
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