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U.S. lawmakers have been unusually quiet since news broke that Elon Musk secretly ordered SpaceX engineers to turn off the Starlink satellite in order to thwart a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s naval fleet in Crimea.
The Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf told The New Abnormal that politicians on both sides need to hold Musk accountable for essentially assisting Russia.
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“There were a lot of warning signs that this would happen. Elon boasted of how close he was to Putin and as the Starlink story unfolded, we saw multiple examples of him deciding unilaterally to provide the service or not to provide the service. That should have been an alarm bell,” he said. “The U.S. government and other governments were subsidizing the service and that gets me to sort of the core point... that this guy, who is a Putin lover, who absolutely does not appreciate the hideousness of the war crimes inflicted by Russia upon Ukraine, is in the position to say, ‘No, I’m gonna scuttle this effort by Ukraine to reclaim the land of Crimea.’”
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“Since American politicians knew this all along, where were they? Why wasn’t somebody saying, ‘Stop, put the brakes on giving these guys money.’ Why wasn’t somebody saying, ‘If this guy is supporting Putin in this war, maybe we shouldn’t support him with our supportive SpaceX. Maybe we shouldn’t be dependent on a guy like this.’ There were no Democrats, there were no Republicans. Nobody was saying it,” Rothkopf said. “I think the only thing that’s gonna get them to change is if they think the cost of maintaining their silence or support for Elon is high politically.”
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
