Elon Musk has directly aided Russia and the uh the basically targets that the Ukrainians were aiming to hit with these drones that have directly caused the deaths of Ukrainian citizens and Children.

Uh Elon Musk facing criticism after he ordered engineers to turn off starlink his satellite communication network to prevent an attack by Ukrainian forces on the Russian Navy.

Well, Chris Stoke Walker is a text journalist often joins me at a for her regular Musk watch uh and joins me now.

Hi, Chris.

Hi.

Um So explain um what's what's going on there, a situation where sort of action inaction is also action.

He says he doesn't want to be involved in the war but, but anything he does is sort of playing into that.

Yeah, and and critics of Elon Musk and indeed the Ukrainian government and adviser to President Sonsy has come out and said that by taking this action, Elon Musk has directly aided Russia and the uh the basically targets that the Ukrainians were aiming to hit with these drones um who have directly caused the deaths of Ukrainian citizens and Children.

So this is um a a bit of uh an excerpt from a book coming out about Elon Musk, uh by a tech journalist called Walter Isaacson, which alleges that, um Musk essentially pulled the plug on Starlink, which is a, a satellite internet connection that has been used by the Ukrainians after the Russians tried to sabotage existing connections, traditional ways of connecting to the internet, um, pulled the plug on Starlink because he was worried that they were about to launch an attack against the Russians that could have a relatively significant impact in terms of um you know, Vladimir Putin trying to, I guess, launch potentially nuclear weapons against it.

He said, um confirming a little bit of the report on on Twitter overnight that if he had agreed to the request of the Ukrainians, then um his company would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.

But for those that don't like mosque, it is yet another thing of him backing the Russians rather than Ukrainians.

And I suppose this is just another reminder that perhaps he hasn't always totally thought through the full extent the consequences of his actions that if you build a, you know, if you take on a, a social media network that comes with plus minus, if you build a satellite network that is going to be used by military, then you're gonna find that network at the center of conflict.

Yeah.

And this is the thing that he does traditionally, we, we may remember the situation that he had with Vernon Unsworth at the time of um the Thai Children football team being caught in a cave um several years ago where he decides to go gung ho into that situation to build a submarine and then cause a whole load of ripple effects that he had never thought through that in that instance, ended up with him um being taken to court for a defamation case that he eventually won.

But, um, it, it causes all these issues.

And I think when we're talking about something like that case, the, the one several years ago of it's less of an issue as the one now where, you know, his actions are essentially directly swaying the impact of what is the major war in Europe and the biggest war that we've had for more than 10 years.

Chris, thanks so much for that Chris Stoker Walker tech journalist joining us to, to reflect on Elon Musk, ordering his engineers to turn off starlink his satellite communication network to stop Ukrainian forces, attacking the Russian Navy.