Get ready for another wild ride as Musk does what he does best

Elon Musk is in the news (again), for the wrong reasons (again). Instead of the long-running Twitter acquisition – which seems unlikely to be resolved any time soon – his unseemly tweets about a Ukraine peace plan have led to President Volodymyr Zelensky chastising him, and the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, told him to “fuck off”.

A day after this tweet, Musk announced he could not fund his Starlink internet service over Ukraine “indefinitely”. Musk replied to ambassador @MelnykAndrij in typical (and controversial) fashion with “we’re just following his recommendation”.

Before this became public, Musk’s SpaceX wrote to the Pentagon asking them to fund the Starlink costs for Ukraine, having cost SpaceX $80-million so far. “SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely and send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households,” Musk wrote.

The money spent each month – or “burn” in startup parlance – was $20-million, he added. “In addition to terminals, we have to create, launch, maintain & replenish satellites & ground stations. We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder,” Musk tweeted.

It’s a far cry from Musk’s first magnanimous intervention into the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February when Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted Musk to help with Starlink terminals after the Russians destroyed telecommunications infrastructure. In a highly publicised move, Musk sent new terminals to Ukraine two days later and Zelensky et al thanked him profusely.

These Starlink terminals – which are the size of a small satellite dish and can easily be set up on tripod-like legs – have become a strategic advantage for the Ukrainians. After the Russians targeted cellular base stations and other telecoms infrastructure, it would have been almost impossible for the Ukrainians to communicate, let alone organise their military resistance.

Starlink neatly solved that, and the terminals are also used for guiding the Turkish-made drones that are being used against Russian forces so successfully.

Starlink is both an essential service for communications and a strategic godsend for the military fightback. It’s safe to say that this form of satellite-based internet access has been a key deciding factor in this David vs Goliath military context, which David is clearly winning.

And now it’s been weaponised itself

SpaceX wrote to the Pentagon in September that it would cost $120-million to fund the Ukrainian Starlink operation for the rest of this year and nearly $400-million for another year. “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” it wrote. And then, Musk apparently about-faced on this and will now continue to fund the Ukrainian Starlink setup. Maybe. As one US government official told The Washington Post: “Elon’s gonna Elon.” Elon is now a verb. Like Xerox.

What does that say about the world? Or about the wild, weird rides of the world’s richest person – and most famous son of Pretoria, which just makes it all the weirder? There are worrying signs about this undignified spat. Musk might soon own Twitter, which remains the front page of news and a key forum for exposing malfeasance – even if TikTok’s videos have created a new immediacy (and intimacy) in covering the war.

If “Elon’s gonna Elon”, as that official quite rightly warned, it’s going to be (another) wild Elon Musk ride (again).