Elon Musk, Main Govt Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, looks on as he attends the Viva Technology meeting dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Creator Walter Isaacson took to social media Friday evening to consider to “clarify” an excerpt from his upcoming book, “Elon Musk.” The excerpt obtained swift backlash following it described how Musk thwarted a Ukrainian assault on Russian warships.
Isaacson’s excerpt claims that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, requested engineers to shut off Starlink’s satellite community in excess of Crimea last year in get to disrupt a Ukrainian military initiative. Musk’s Starlink terminals arrived in the early days of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as Western governments labored to offer Kyiv with artillery and air protection programs.
Musk at some point soured on the arrangement and reported “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” according to the reserve. The tech billionaire advised Isaacson he was nervous the Ukrainian assault on Russian vessels would provoke the Kremlin into launching a nuclear war.
But in a write-up on X, previously acknowledged as Twitter, late Friday, Isaacson shared new details.
“To make clear on the Starlink concern: the Ukrainians Thought protection was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not,” Isaacson wrote. “They asked Musk to allow it for their drone sub assault on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, due to the fact he assumed, almost certainly properly, that would lead to a big war.”
Crimea is a peninsula on the Black Sea that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and it is home to Russia’s Black Sea warships. In the days next Russia’s whole-scale invasion in February 2022, the Black Sea fleet fired missiles on at the time-industrious Ukrainian coastal cities even though imposing a devastating naval blockade.
Isaacson’s X publish arrived soon after a top rated aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at Musk over the excerpt.
“By not permitting Ukrainian drones to destroy element of the Russian army fleet through Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to hearth Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian metropolitan areas,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote Thursday on social media after CNN reported on some of the facts from Isaacson’s guide.
“As a consequence, civilians, kids are staying killed. This is the value of a cocktail of ignorance and large ego,” he extra.
Isaacson’s finish reserve will be produced Tuesday.
— CNBC’s Amanda Macias contributed to this report.
