Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and proprietor of Twitter, seems on as he attends the Viva Technology convention devoted to innovation and startups on the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Author Walter Isaacson took to social media Friday evening to attempt to “clarify” an excerpt from his upcoming ebook, “Elon Musk.” The excerpt obtained swift backlash after it described how Musk thwarted a Ukrainian assault on Russian warships.
Isaacson’s excerpt claims that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, ordered engineers to close off Starlink’s satellite tv for pc community over Crimea final 12 months to be able to disrupt a Ukrainian navy initiative. Musk’s Starlink terminals arrived within the early days of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as Western governments labored to produce Kyiv with artillery and air protection methods.
Musk finally soured on the association and stated “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” based on the ebook. The tech billionaire instructed Isaacson he was nervous the Ukrainian assault on Russian vessels would provoke the Kremlin into launching a nuclear conflict.
But in a publish on X, previously referred to as Twitter, late Friday, Isaacson shared new particulars.
“To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not,” Isaacson wrote. “They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”
Crimea is a peninsula on the Black Sea that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and it’s house to Russia’s Black Sea warships. In the times following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Black Sea fleet fired missiles on once-industrious Ukrainian coastal cities whereas imposing a devastating naval blockade.
Isaacson’s X publish got here after a prime aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at Musk over the excerpt.
“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote Thursday on social media after CNN reported on a number of the particulars from Isaacson’s ebook.
“As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” he added.
Isaacson’s full ebook can be launched Tuesday.
— CNBC’s Amanda Macias contributed to this report.
Source: www.cnbc.com