SpaceX investor: Starlink is ‘not reliable for national security for anybody but Trump’
Ross Gerber is an investor in SpaceX, so when he says he's disgusted as a shareholder, he's speaking from a financial stake, not just as an observer. The slowdown of Starlink services in Ukraine hit the country's military operations, and he called the decisions strategically horrendous. That's a strong word from someone with money in the company.
The bigger issue is what this says about relying on a private company for critical infrastructure. Starlink has been essential for Ukraine's communications, and if service can be throttled based on political pressure, that raises real questions about dependability. Gerber's point about national security cuts to the heart of it: if a service can be switched off or slowed for anyone but the president, that's a fragile foundation for defense.
I'd want to know more about what actually happened and who made the call. Was it a deliberate policy shift or a technical dispute? The details matter. But the broader lesson seems clear: when national security depends on a single commercial provider, the incentives get messy fast. I land on the side of wanting more transparency and more redundancy, whatever the political motivations turn out to be.