Musk’s Starlink Shutdown Raises Eyebrows

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Jack here, with Robbie once again on the move out West. We’re trying to be as excited that it’s Thursday as this woman at an IHOP in a viral TikTok video, but in reality, we’re more like the person at the other table.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Elon Musk is under fire for shutting off Starlink in Ukraine, China’s top officials keep going missing, and the Biden team wants to give some of Egypt’s military aid money to Taiwan.

Linked Up

“A Ukrainian official says that you have enabled [Russian President] Vladimir Putin as an aggressor. What do you say to that?” No answer.

“Vladimir Putin calls you ‘outstanding,’ Mr. Musk. Do you appreciate that? What would you call Vladimir Putin?” No answer.

“Has your ego and ignorance, sir, cost Ukrainian lives?” No answer.

As Sky News reporter James Matthews badgered Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with questions on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., the world’s richest man, flanked by bodyguards, fell uncharacteristically silent.

But the questions are only growing louder after excerpts from Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire released in the Washington Post last week revealed that Musk refused to allow Ukrainian troops to use Starlink internet devices to help launch attacks on Crimea fearing that striking the Russian-occupied peninsula could provoke Russia to retaliate with a nuclear attack.

“We figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor-like attack,” Musk said on a podcast. “So they really asked us to proactively take part in a major act of war.”

Hate him or love him. For Ukrainian officials, who have become used to the love-hate relationship with Musk—who on one hand was providing free Starlink service to Kyiv for the first stages of the war, and on the other was making pleasant conversation with Putin—it was another proverbial eye-roll moment.

And it’s not the first time that Musk has been seen as Kremlin-friendly by his detractors. He’s floated a peace plan calling for Ukraine to be a “neutral” country and drop its NATO ambitions, and has called for the United Nations to hold referendums in Russian-occupied (and some not-Russian-occupied) territories in Ukraine—where the Kremlin has held sham elections. Musk has also claimed to be a “free speech absolutist” who will not block Russian state-backed propaganda through Starlink or on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he now owns. Musk has also reportedly downgraded the visibility of Ukrainian government information on his platform, as well as third-party content related to the conflict.

It’s not just Ukrainians who are pissed about Musk’s lack of foreign-policy chops; it’s also the Taiwanese, who weren’t too happy when the billionaire equated Taipei to China’s version of Hawaii at a conference this week. The response from Taipei was blunt. “We can’t tell whether or not Musk’s free will is for sale,” Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jeff Liu said in a press briefing today. “But Taiwan is not for sale, that’s for sure.”

Here comes the boom. On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee that oversees the Pentagon budget, told Bloomberg that she planned to launch a probe of Musk, ahead of a closed-door session between the billionaire and several U.S. senators on Capitol Hill this week.

Musk is now under contract from the Pentagon to provide Starlink services to Ukraine for an undisclosed amount.

But the status quo might not hold up. Isaacson, whose book was released on Tuesday, said that the billionaire has had discussions with the U.S. government about creating a more military-aligned version of the system. “Let us have a certain number of Starlink services and then later a more military version where we get to control it,” Isaacson said on CNBC’s Squawk Box this week. “Elon Musk said, ‘Yes,’ and that’s the right outcome.”

Let’s Get Personnel

The Senate has confirmed Tanya Bradsher as deputy secretary of veterans affairs, making the Iraq War veteran the first woman of color to hold the VA leadership role. Also confirmed: Michael Casey to be the next director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Casey is the Democratic staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The United Nations’ special representative for Sudan, Volker Perthes, told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that he plans to step down from his role. Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already flagged Perthes as “persona non grata” in June.

Missing in action: Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu hasn’t been seen in public for two weeks, after the disappearances of Foreign Minister Qin Gang and the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force commanders. And U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a little ribbing on social media.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Nothing really matters. As the world gathers in New York for the United Nations General Assembly next week, diplomats are increasingly questioning the relevance of the world body nearly 80 years on, Robbie and FP’s Amy Mackinnon and Avian Muñoz report. The frustration has particularly boiled over among NATO countries pushing back on Russia over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which they feel has challenged the U.N.’s most fundamental purpose: to avert major wars.

“The U.N. is still at the core of multilateralism and rule-based order, and yet the impression one gets from the Security Council in particular is that it is not fully fit for purpose any more,” said Rein Tammsaar, Estonia’s ambassador to the United Nations. “This stark reality undermines directly the credibility of the council, as well as of the U.N. and its authority.”

Second-guessing. The United Nations said that many of the 8,000 deaths and thousands missing caused by flash flooding in Libya could have been avoided if a “normally operating meteorological service” had been in place. If Libya had such a system, “they would have issued the warnings and also the emergency management of this would have been able to carry out evacuations of the people and we would have avoided most of the human casualties,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters. Taalas said the effort to improve meteorological systems has been underway but is complicated by the fighting between eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.

Rerouting funds. The Biden administration plans to reroute millions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Egypt to Taiwan, as U.S. officials are frustrated with Cairo’s lack of progress on human rights and releasing political prisoners. The plan is to split the withheld money between Taipei and Lebanon, giving $55 million to Taiwan and $30 million to Lebanon. The aid would help Taiwan field better aid and coastal defense systems, drones, and ballistic-missile defenses, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Egypt has received $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid each year since the Camp David Accords, $235 million of which is contingent on a State Department waiver.

Snapshot

A man carries a cat through the rubble of a partially collapsed mosque in Marrakech, Morocco, on Sept. 9, 2023, following a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the country last week. Carl Court/Getty Images

Put On Your Radar

Today: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro concludes his visit to China.

Friday, Sept. 15: European Union sanctions against three top Russian businessmen are set to expire. NATO defense chiefs hold a regularly scheduled meeting in Norway.

Tuesday, Sept. 19: Debate opens at the U.N. General Assembly. U.S. President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and others are expected to speak. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hosts a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Quote of the Week

Heckler: “Leave and get the fuck out of our country and get the fuck out of Iowa!”

Former Vice President Mike Pence: “Thank you. I’m going to put him down as a maybe.”

—2024 GOP presidential candidate Mike Pence encounters colorful language on the campaign trail at an Iowa diner from a heckler whom he still hopes to win over.

This Week’s Most Read

• A New Multilateralism by Gordon Brown
• Deterrence in Taiwan Is Failing by Hal Brands
• Do Policy Schools Still Have a Point? by Stephen M. Walt

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Bad day? It’s not as bad as that of Sen. Bob Casey’s comms director, who last week replied all to a Senate-wide email. “If you need to me, I’ll be walking into the sea,” Mairéad Lynn wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Others gave her plaudits. “Tbf, the first rule of being a comms pro is ‘get your message in front of as many people as possible,’” said Dan Diamond, a Washington Post reporter.