Pentagon silent on Elon Musk and Starlink risks as military use expands

The military branches – especially the Navy – have quietly integrated and become more dependent on satellite internet from SpaceX and Starlink, while at the same time media reports have revealed that the man who runs both companies, Elon Musk, shares a cozy relationship. with one of the USA’s greatest opponents.

In the past year, american news businesses have reported that Muskwhich oversees the satellite Internet provider, has not only developed a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, but has also accepted his requests to shut down the service to Ukrainians at key moments of the war and is giving Starlink access to Russians.

Amid the reports, officials in the Pentagon and the services have refused to engage meaningfully with questions about Musk’s relationship with the Defense Department or just how widespread Starlink technology has become among the force. But two top senators are calling for an investigation into Musk, his Pentagon ties and his communications with Moscow.

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On Friday, Senator Jack Reed, DR.I., chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, DN.H., a senior member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, called on both the Pentagon and the Justice Department to investigate Musk.

“We urge the US government to open an investigation … to determine whether this conduct should force a review of Mr. Musk’s continued involvement in SpaceX’s various contracts with the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community,” the pair wrote in a letter to the US Attorney General and Inspector General of the Department of Defense.

In one separate letter to the head of the Air Force, the pair added that “Mr. Musk’s reported conduct could pose serious risks to national security and, as CEO of a company with billions of dollars in sensitive defense and intelligence contracts, warrants reconsideration of SpaceX’s major role in DoD’s commercial space integration.”

Helps troops connect

The Navy has been the most public about its use of Starlink. The commander of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters the service was an important way to keep morale up on the ship, which recently returned from a nine-month deployment to the Middle East.

Capt. Chris “Chowdah” Hill told attendees at a Military Reporters and Editors conference that the service “really helped people connect with their external support network in ways that we’ve never seen before.”

Other experts such as Brad Martin, a former Navy captain turned senior researcher at the Rand Corp. think tank, told Military.com that the service is also useful because “there are administrative uses.”

The extra bandwidth allows ships to more easily order parts, file paperwork and perform a number of other administrative tasks that are considered a lower priority for the main communication channels on a warship, Martin explained.

But given that Starlink is not owned or operated by the US government, both Martin and Hill say there are security risks involved. It is difficult to assess how significant these risks are, as the services are not interested in sharing how widespread Starlink has become.

Military.com contacted the Navy and asked for the total number of ships running either Starlink or Starshield — the military’s version of the satellite service — but the Navy did not answer the question, despite some of its officers talking about it to the media.

In his remarks to reporters, Hill said “a few” ships have tried some version of the service, while a Navy spokesman said “the Navy has installed Starlink systems on various ships across the fleet.”

In addition to Eisenhower, a 2023 news release said The Navy’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, also had a system.

The USS Manchester, a littoral combat ship, also apparently installed a similar system this summer, according to a Navy investigation into a Starlink system that sailors aboard the ship had set up without authorization from superiors.

Four months after the illegal Starlink system was set up, the ship was supposed to have the Starshield system installed, prompting one sailor to tell the ship’s operations officer that “the Starshield installers can find something that shouldn’t be there.”

In September, the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, or NAVWAR, said its “goal is to eventually have (satellite-powered Internet) available on all Navy ships.”

And the fleet is not alone.

The Marine Corps confirmed to Military.com that it has been using “a ruggedized version of the Starshield terminal … for over a year” to try to provide Marines with communications capabilities in “adversarial environments.”

As does the Navy, while anecdotal evidence of the terminals’ use by the Corps has appeared on social mediathe Marines declined to say how widespread the system is within the service.

In the fall of 2023, Space Force too awarded Starshield a $70 million contractthough details on how the service plans to use the Internet are sparse.

Musk’s Track Record with Russia, Starlink

According to Clayton Swopea researcher and aviation security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there are plenty of things the Navy and other branches can do to protect their data from unauthorized access.

Encryption and the use of virtual private network, or VPN, technologies should prevent hackers from accessing the data the military chooses to send over Starlink, and as of this summer, the Navy was do not endorse any classified information must be sent over the network.

However, Starlink’s deployment in the Ukraine war raises major concerns about the system’s vulnerabilities and, more importantly, the man running the show.

In August 2023, Debrief, citing Ukrainian officials, reported that Russia had carried out “large-scale cyberattacks to gain unauthorized access to Android devices possessed by Ukrainian military personnel planning and executing combat missions” and installed malicious software whose “functional purpose is to collect data from the Starlink satellite system.”

But bigger questions loom over Elon Musk – the man who owns and runs the entire system. Musk’s influence is likely to grow dramatically after he helped re-elect President Donald Trump and is set to co-chair a commission aimed at cutting the federal government, which includes the Pentagon. In the days after the election, Musk has become one of Trump’s closest advisers and reportedly met with Iranian officials to discuss ways to defuse tensions in the Middle East.

In September 2023, a biography of Musk, later confirmed by the man himself, revealed that he thwarted an attack by Ukraine on Russian-held territory in Crimea by shutting down Starlink service to the country. The move was presented as something Musk decided on his own, and it earned him praise from top Russian official and former president Dmitry Medvedev.

“Looks like Musk is the last sane mind in North America,” Medvedev wrote on Musk’s social media platform X.

But a year later, The Wall Street Journal writes that Musk had been in contact with Putin since late 2022, and he also spoke with top Putin aide Sergei Kiriyenko as recently as this year.

The report also noted that Musk had not simply been willing to block Starlink access to Ukraine. At one point, at Putin’s request, he avoided activating his Starlink service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Musk has been urged by Ukrainian officials for what they saw as interference in their plans and operations. But Musk argued on social media that if he “had agreed to (the Ukrainians’) request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

While at the time Musk made that argument it was not known that he had been in contact with Putin, he had already been criticized over several comments seen as pro-Russian. He the rumor of the cost of providing the service to Ukraine and cheered on comments from Medvedev.

According to Swope, the comparison between Ukraine and the US military is not “a one-to-one scenario where the US government might be in a similar situation.”

“The relationship with the U.S. government is really important to both of them,” Swope argued, adding that he believes it would be highly unlikely that Musk and Starlink would similarly close the service to the U.S. military.

“I think from a business point of view, I don’t see SpaceX doing it. But also from a vision point of view, no … that vision is dependent on this, you could say beneficial flywheel effect, the relationship it has with the U.S. government,” he said.

This is an argument that the Pentagon itself has formulated.

Last August, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, Major General Pat Ryder, faced questions about Musk’s behavior after a high-profile article in The New Yorker once again reported on his ketamine use, told reporters The Department of Defense has “well-developed processes and procedures for looking at things like contracts and services that are person-independent — personality-independent.”

However, the Defense Department has declined to answer whether Musk, with his growing closeness to Putin and other top Russian officials, has been given a security clearance and access to closely guarded military secrets.

Both the Navy and Marine Corps, when asked by Military.com, declined to answer questions about Musk or the security risks he poses.

When Military.com asked in late October whether the Pentagon was investigating the reports of contact with Putin, spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said she could not confirm the report and would not say whether the department was investigating.

Bound by contracts

Swope argued that the examples of cutoff service in Ukraine are a “reflection of the lack of a contractual relationship that specified how the service would be used” and not a problem that would exist for the US military.

“You can show that all the boxes are ticked from a security point of view, cyber security, whatever contractual requirements are put on the company to make sure the government knows what it’s getting and what it’s accepting,” he said .

“That’s what the companies are signing up for, effectively.”

What is clear: Separating Musk from SpaceX and the two from government work is far from easy.

Currently, SpaceX holds more than $700 million in contracts for the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program and a $1.8 billion classified contract with the National Reconnaissance Agency, the agency tasked with operating the nation’s network of spy satellites.

Swope notes that this dependence also goes the other way around — “the government is still a really important customer for SpaceX,” he said.

But this confidence has, according to The New Yorkerresulted in respect for Musk by even the highest officials in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon’s political chief, then-undersecretary of defense Colin Kahl, was reduced to pleading with Musk not to cut off Starlink access to Ukraine, according to an article published in October 2023.

Experts like Swope also note that the relationship is only likely to grow in the future.

“For me, it’s not so much that I’m worried about the government spending more SpaceX — I’m personally worried about whether … it’s the other way around if they spend less,” Swope said. “There’s no way around it. … SpaceX plays such a big role in where we are in space today that the obvious answer is just that we have to lean heavily on SpaceX or we won’t be able to keep up with. competition with China.”

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