Oh absolutely on the sometimes frustrating vacillations from western governments, but my point here was that vacillation is in the context of national defense and policy rather than … whatever SpaceX is doing here. Again not saying I have thought some decisions made by governments were good or well reasoned but it is their place to make such decisions. The reason I posted here instead of the Russia-Ukraine thread was because of how silly the stated SpaceX rationales were in the context. It would be akin to General Atomics selling Ukraine Reapers for $1 but then geofencing them after the fact to not fly into Crimea because they, a defense contractor, don’t want to make it look like they are militarizing the sky in a country at war. Don’t get me wrong I get Starlink is dual-use, but it is dual-use as even they acknowledge.
As for the actual underlying reason why SpaceX did this? No idea. Could be anything you wrote or could be anything from a range of Elon woke up one morning and peevishly dictated “it shall be thus!” (more likely) to a decision made in concert with the USG based on actual strategic considerations of escalation management or some other national defense policy (almost zero chance).
Whatever the cause, to me, it’s just another example of a Musk-led company thrashing around while previously expressing such confidence that they had any idea of what they were doing.
of just dumping twitter all together, and seeing what else I can do to occupy my time.
