Although Tesla and SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk donated Starlink platforms to Ukraine following its invasion by Russia, Musk has drawn condemnation after a misguided proposal for a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. He was also accused of blocking Starlink in areas of occupied Ukraine.
On Oct. 14, CNN reported that “SpaceX has warned the Pentagon that it may stop funding the service in Ukraine unless the US military kicks in tens of millions of dollars per month.”
This caused some panic among Ukrainian officials. On Monday last week, following a public backlash, Musk said Starlink would not be turned off regardless of US military funding.
This back-and-forth farce regarding the operation of Starlink for Ukraine raises serious concerns.
Musk — neither trained nor elected — is in an immensely powerful and influential position where he could do serious damage to the Ukrainian war effort if his subversive rhetoric goes unchecked.
For instance, Musk wrote on Twitter that “Crimea [is] formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).”
Moscow lauded Musk for the tweet. It not only advanced pro-Russia propaganda, but also ignored and oversimplified the intricate history between Crimea, Ukraine and Russia.
It is a historical fact that Crimea was never part of the Russian Federation prior to its illegal annexation in 2014.
The 1994 Budapest Memorandum — signed by then-US president Bill Clinton, then-British prime minister John Major, then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin and then-Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma — promised to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which includes Crimea.
Starlink is undoubtedly crucial for the Ukrainians in this conflict. Starlink is a satellite Internet constellation with thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit.
Satellite Internet service with low latency and high bandwidth is essential in a modern conflict where existing communication infrastructure can be targeted. The destruction of satellites is much more costly and difficult. Only a small number of weapons systems are designed to target satellites.
The defense of Taiwan would also require satellite Internet service as a contingency, but with an unpredictable narcissist with a clear conflict of interest — judging from Musk’s business investments in China — in charge of Starlink, Taiwan must look to other services or develop its own.
Minister of Digital Development Audrey Tang (唐鳳) announced efforts to secure satellite Internet backup over the next few years. The selection process should account for the qualifications of the satellite Internet companies and also the people running them.
Taiwan should maintain a level of control over these satellites to prevent the disabling of Internet services from the company’s end. This necessitates technological transfers to Taiwan in the operation of these satellites.
Taiwan should also consider diversifying its satellite Internet services to lessen the effectiveness of cyberattacks. Viasat, Ukraine’s primary satellite Internet service prior to the war, was targeted by Russia in an attack just one hour prior to its invasion on Feb. 24.
Taiwan’s decision to invest in satellite Internet provides a great opportunity to expand the nation’s space industry, to improve military command and control capabilities, and provide services for underserved communities.
The selection process must prevent Chinese infiltration or espionage, while mitigating unpredictable changes in affiliations from foreign service providers.
Linus Chiou studies physics and history at the University of Virginia.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused