Despite CEO Elon Musk's assurances SpaceX's satellite terminals are not beign sold in Russia, Chinese drone maker DJI is doing so openly online.
SpaceX's Starlink user terminals are being openly sold in Russia, though CEO Elon Musk has denied knowledge of any such sales in the country.
The terminals, which link users with the Starlink satellite constellation are available on the Chinese company DJI's website in Russia.
The Shenzhen-based firm is better known as one of the world's leading drone producers. Soon after Russia began its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, DJI announced it would temporarily suspend business in both countries pending "compliance assessments."
Also; I find it impossibly unlikely SpaceX has been entirely unaware of these terminals being active in Russia. They can identify the location of any active terminal via the satellite constellation and either gps or simply triangulation of the signals.
They would have used them in Russia at some point prior to actions in Ukraine. Plus, if they were sold to a Chinese company, they would be tracked and expected to be in China.
But… but musk said that starlink isn’t meant to be used for WAR! He surely wouldn’t lie in order to attempt to spin his intent to prolong the war and sell to the other side through an intermediary!!!
ITAR is pretty direct about these situations: if you sell to a 3rd party and that 3rd party sells to an ITAR-restricted country, you're gonna get investigated HARD.
Terminals are uplinks to remote resources. They would be at minimum be able to see the terminals being used to connect to Russian VPNs and note that they are being used in areas controlled by Russia that are not contested. Our lawmakers must compel them to turn over the entire internal communications to a special master to determine what they knew about this and when and decision makers including Musk must be summoned to congress. When not if it is discovered that they were aware or willfully blind prosecutions for treason should begin. In between A and B the entire operation should be seized and operated by the US army.