Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post is giving a major thumbs-down to private control of a vital communications networks. Yesterday, Robinson made it clear that it was unacceptable that the world’s richest man can, at a whim, turn on and off a vital communications network, such as the one being used by Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression.
Robinson wrote, "I don’t know what Musk thinks about the possibility that Chinese President Xi Jinping will launch an invasion of Taiwan — though I do know that China is the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles and that Musk is trying awfully hard to sell Tesla automobiles there. I don’t know what he thinks about China’s border dispute with Pakistan or what he thinks about the Middle East. I really shouldn’t have to care"
The WaPo columnist proposes that the U.S. government deploy its own low-Earth-orbit satellite array, whose use would be determined by the president and the military chain of command. The U.S. spends far more on defense than any other nation, on the premise that we’re buying the latest, most advanced, most effective gadgets on the planet. If our aid to Ukraine is so beholden to one man — three of whose 10 children are named Techno Mechanicus, Exa and X — then we must be doing something seriously wrong.
How to deal with the gravest threat to peace and security in Europe since the end of World War II should be a matter for our elected officials. No one elected Elon Musk.
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