[rapind]

Elon has total control of Starlink and he’s currently enjoying his bond villain phase.

I am very happy my tax dollars are not going into his pockets.

It’s not a crusade. You send him your money if you want. It’s none of my business.

Pretty sure they are doing a bunch of AI training with your data now too. Opt-in by default. So yeah, no thanks.

[dmix]

Tax payers are already responsible for the fees paid to cancel the contract early, but won't tell the public how much it cost. They also already paid for a test run with a first nations community in 2020 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/spacex-deal-ontario-s...

I personally see more value in connecting poor and isolated rural communities. Plus I highly doubt a provincial government contract in Canada will be a major influence on a Elon's dumb twitter politics.

[overfeed]

> Plus I highly doubt a provincial government contract in Canada will be a major influence on a Elon's dumb twitter politics.

I don't think the decision was meant to influence, rather, it's self-defense against said "Elon's dumb Twitter politics."

Americans having challenges conceptualizing how problematic Starlink is to non-Americans: imagine the same satellite service was provided by Huawei - but helmed by Chinese Elon.

[rayiner]

Imagine Europe importing natural gas from Putin through 2027.

[overfeed]

Imagine the US buying rare earths critical for national security from China with no planned end date.

The empirical evidence that your rejoinder is a false equivalence is that the US also expunged Huawei hardware from its telecoms infrastructure.

It's much harder to subvert extractive resources, compared to frequently updated software platforms like 5G switches or internet terminals.

[baranul]

You might be right, SpaceX and xAI are merged. Starlink users better read the policy documents very carefully.

[questiona]

The primary purpose of Starlink and SpaceX was from the start to support military goals, civilian goals were never the primary purpose. SpaceX and Elon Musk claimed that reaching Mars was a primary goal, but these are blatant and repeated lies, also by shills in this comment section, as is evident by Michael D. Griffin, under secretary of defense for research and engineering from 2018 to 2020, being involved from the beginning. Strangely enough, no comment in this Hacker News section seem to discuss the role Starlink plays in Ukraine currently.

> In early 2002 he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia, where they attempted to purchase ICBMs.[8] The decision to found the company SpaceX was made on the flight home, and Griffin briefly considered serving as chief engineer,[9] but eventually he instead became president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests.[10]

[skybrian]

Would you prefer that it weren’t used in Ukraine? I believe they find it rather useful.