The revelation follows allegations Russian forces are deploying Starlink in their invasion of Ukraine, now in its third year. DJI says it forbids distributors from selling its products in instances of suspected combat end-use. In April 2022, the tech firm announced it was temporarily suspending business in both Russia and Ukraine pending “compliance assessments.”
“We can confirm that this is not an official DJI website,” a company representative said when asked about the Starlink sales.
DJI said its legal team was looking into possible copyright infringement.
Representatives of the purported distributor, djirussia.ru, did not respond to a request for comment.
Starlink’s Elon Musk has categorically denied Starlink sales are happening in Russia.
[Edit typo.]
These are Isaacson’s words, not Musk’s. What he said is: “If I had agreed to the request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation”
In my view that is a perfectly valid reason to deny such request even if it was not against the law to do so. On the other hand if you think it should not have been disabled there in the first place then that would mean Russia could use it for their own drone strikes aswell. Considering how invaluable the Ukrainians claim Starlink to be for them I’m sure Russia would be more than happy to take advantage if it as well, which is what they’re now doing with the limited amount of terminals they have managed to obtain.
During an All-In Summit appearance on Sept. 11, 2023, Musk returned to the topic and stated that Starlink could not operate in Russia-occupied Ukraine because U.S. sanctions forbade it without special permission.
That is what Musk said. Which is arguably pretty biased source. It was also said after the book was published, which makes me think Musk either didn’t even read his own book and no one in his team did see a problem with what was in the book. Or he didn’t even see it as a problem himself which wouldn’t be his first catastrophic failure to read the room.
Drone strikes on all the battleships Ukraine has? Or how exactly would they use it in waters where Ukraine only visits with drones and missiles?
Also I don’t think it shouldn’t have been disabled. I think it does not matter if it was disabled. The only difference it made was that Musk was in position to turn it on rather than to not turn it off. And he chose to help russian terrorists fucking up Ukraine big time as russia got its hands onto the undamaged drones.
Sounds like what russian asset would say. Perhaps not because he’s forced or bribed by russia, perhaps it just makes business sense.
That’s your opinion. I don’t think it’s valid reason to help terrorists. Those ships were later used in attempt to block food export risking famine in certain parts of the world and to lob missiles at Ukrainian cities. They were also used for that before. Perfectly valid reason to call Musk an russian asset IMO.