Starlink in Ukraine: Wartime Communications, Costs and Risks

Uh, Starlink is the fundamental communication

backbone of the

Ukrainian, uh, government and, and essential services like first

responders and

that kind of thing. Um, and it, you know, is, is used, we, we

hope peacefully, relatively peacefully on the war front.

It is the only thing that works on the war front.

Everything else is being jammed by the Russians.

So it's the only thing that works. Not, not one of the things.

Um, um-

Yeah.

You know, but, but I think

you, you have to sort of think of say the, you know, the,

um, you know, taking the actual example of Pe-Pearl

Harbor

and say like, "Well, how did that work out for Japan?"

It didn't work out well at all.

Right.

Um, because it was a, a tactical victory, a strategic

defeat.

It enraged the American public,

um, who, who, who sort of naturally wanted vengeance

for, for this

act, you know, this act. And I think that, that, you know, while I don't

think it's on the same scale, that there was certainly

that potential o-of sort of

a mini Pearl Harbor with, resulting in a mass

es-escalation of, uh, hostilities.

Um,

but not... Th-this would, this would not, this would not defeat Russia or en-enrage

Russia.

Do you donate-

Obviously. Um-

Do you donate the network or do they pay you for it?

Sorry?

Do-

Oh, it just-

Yeah.

So, um, I, I'm actually not sure what, what the final accounting is at, at this

point, but, uh, I, I, I think at o- at one point, at one point, uh,

you calculated our sort of, uh, cost of supporting things at roughly a

hundred

million dollars. Now, the hundred million dollars does,

does not count, um,

the massive risk to the entire Starlink constellation, uh,

because, uh, Russia would like to have the entire thing

deleted.

Um, so, uh, you know, no-nobody's compensating us for that.

Um,

and, uh, so if we were to get, say, uh, our control center

were, uh, taken down in a cyberattack, they c- you know,

they could command all the satellites to de-orbit,

um, and destroy the entire system.

Uh, or use anti-satellite weapons.

Um,

so, you know, these, these are... This is a pretty significant

risk.

Um, for which we have not received any

compensation, and obviously would

be catastrophic to the entire

Starlink system, which is, you know, on, you know, approaching ten billion

dollars.