Writing a biography about a global conspirator like Elon Musk, and more counting on his collaboration, is tantamount to betting on the winning horse.
The impact of the publishing breakthrough (the book comes out next Tuesday and it’s already a bomb) has been dampened this time by the businessman’s surprising interference in the war conflict fueled by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the unrest of the Government of Kyiv after it gave its support to the invader.
According to Musk, a character with a well-known ability to make fun of himself, thanks to him a great disaster was aborted, “a possible nuclear war”, once imbued with the superhero costume he fantasized about since he was a child.
As a child, says Isaacson, he was bullied at school, in his country of origin (South Africa). He found refuge in reading comics. There he transformed into one of his admired idols running to the rescue of the planet.
Giving the impression that he believes the world is in his hands, as if he were still on one of those epic adventures, the biographer explains that Musk turned off his Starlink satellites, which he had left in Ukraine on the cheap, to prevent an attack against the Russian military fleet about 100 kilometers off the coast of Crimea, a territory annexed by Moscow in 2014. Based on this account, Kyiv sent six underwater drones loaded with explosives, guided on their route by light of Starlink to reach their goal. With this connectivity disabled, the devices were dragged ashore without causing damage.
This situation put the protagonist in a moral dilemma, above Putin and his counterparts in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and in the United States, Joe Biden, the most visible head of the NATO bloc. “If the Ukrainian attack had succeeded in sinking the Russian fleet, it would have been a small Pearl Harbor and would have led to a larger escalation,” Musk said. “We don’t want to be part of this”, he insisted in his confession. “At that point, the risk of a third world war was high”, he reiterated. When the Ukrainians prayed and insisted that he restore communication, he expressed his admiration for the technology and capability of those drones, but, in the role of a military expert, he retorted that Kyiv “goes too far and invites defeat strategic”.
Always based on this version, he discussed the matter with Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, and with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. He expressed to them that he did not want Starlink to be used for offensive purposes. His talks extended to the Russian ambassador in Washington to assure him that his satellites would only be used in defensive missions.
But he offered to end the war with a peace plan that included new referendums in the Donbass and other regions controlled by Moscow (the Russians already held a mock consultation), accepting that Crimea remained Russia and that Ukraine would not join NATO, according to Putin’s wishes.
The White House, with President Biden traveling to India for the G-20 meeting, was silent this Friday. Not so Ukraine, where they spoke ill of the businessman. “Sometimes a mistake is much more than a mistake,” said Mikhailo Podoliak, Zelenski’s adviser. “By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet by interfering with Starlink, Elon Musk allowed that fleet to launch Kalibr missiles into Ukrainian cities. As a result, there are civilians, including children, who are being killed because of this,” he emphasized on the X platform (formerly Twitter), owned by the billionaire.
“This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. Still, the question remains: Why are some so desperate to defend war criminals and their desire to kill? By doing this, do they understand that they are doing evil and encouraging evil?” he asked.
Musk later responded in a thread on his network in which he denied that he had ordered the disconnection and stressed that he does not want to get involved in the conflict. “Space X did not deactivate anything, the Starlinks in that region were not activated”, he assured. “There was an emergency request from the Government (of Ukraine) to activate Starlink to Sevastopol, the capital of Crimea and a key port as the base of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. The obvious intention was to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If he had accepted his request, SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and an escalation of the conflict,” he stressed.
Walter Isaacson, master of celebrity biographies, knew the power of this kind of contemporary Leonardo Da Vinci (another of his biographers), who is so taken by electric cars (Tesla), social networks (X) or rockets ( Space X), business to which its Starlink satellite deployment is linked.
This author also knows very well how to feed the advertising machine. On this occasion, the leak of a chapter on the war in Ukraine – first on CNN and then in its entirety in The Washington Post – has put his book on top.
Musk, critical of sending weapons and economic aid to Ukraine, who has shown sympathy for Putin, asks himself “How am I in this war?” (chapter title). There is an answer. He entered at the request of Ukraine, on February 24 itself, when Russia launched the “special military operation”. A Russian computer attack disabled the satellites of the US company Viasat, which covered Ukraine.
Military defense was almost impossible. Ukrainian authorities took to Twitter to ask for help from Musk, who accepted the invitation. This is how Starlink entered the war, apparently as a fifth columnist.
