The off switch: how one man's satellite network became a lever in other countries' crises

Starlink is often described as a piece of infrastructure, like a cable or a power line. The record in our Musk tracker suggests a different description: it is infrastructure with an owner who speaks, negotiates and decides in public. In at least a dozen documented episodes since 2022, whether people in another country could get online through Starlink, and on what terms, turned on choices made by Elon Musk or by SpaceX.

Some of those choices helped people under attack or under censorship. That is part of the point. A switch that can be turned on as a favour can be turned off, or held back, by the same hand.

Ukraine: from lifeline to bargaining chip

Two days after Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine's digital minister asked Musk publicly for help, and Musk switched Starlink on the same day. Starlink went on to become a core communications system for Ukraine's army and civilians. Few private decisions have mattered more to a country's defence.

Within months the terms were in public dispute. In October 2022 Musk wrote that SpaceX could not fund the system "indefinitely", then reversed himself a day later; the Pentagon eventually contracted for the service. In February 2023 SpaceX's president said the company had taken steps to limit Ukraine's military use, including for drones. In September 2023 Musk confirmed that he had declined Ukraine's request to enable Starlink near Sevastopol for an attack, saying it would have made SpaceX "explicitly complicit" in a major act of war. The biographer whose book first described the episode, and the Washington Post, later corrected their accounts: coverage near Crimea had already been disabled, and Musk refused to enable it.

Then, in March 2025, Musk wrote that Ukraine's "entire front line would collapse if I turned it off", and told Poland's foreign minister, whose government pays for many of the terminals, to "be quiet, small man". Musk added that Starlink would never turn off its terminals or use them as a bargaining chip. The US Secretary of State said no one had threatened to cut Ukraine off. Ukrainian officials said they were working on alternatives.

Read generously, the Crimea decision was a company refusing to be drawn into a war, and the 2025 posts were rhetoric. Read less generously, a private individual set a limit on where a sovereign country could defend itself, and later reminded its allies in public how much they depended on him. Both readings share one fact: the decisions were his.

Brazil: the network inside a legal fight

In 2024 Brazil's Supreme Court suspended X nationwide after the platform defied court orders, and froze Starlink's local bank accounts to cover X's fines. Brazil's telecoms regulator said Starlink told it the company would not block X until the freeze was lifted. Within days Starlink reversed course and complied, while calling the freeze illegal.

The episode lasted less than a week, but it showed what governments had not had to think about before: an internet provider with a large customer base in the country briefly treating a court order as a matter for negotiation, because its owner also owned the platform the order targeted.

Gaza, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela: service as a statement

In other crises Starlink has been offered rather than withheld, and the politics have run the other way.

• During the October 2023 blackout in Gaza, Musk offered Starlink to aid groups. Israel's communications minister vowed to "fight this". A month later, after Musk visited Israel, Israel announced that Starlink in Gaza would need its approval, unit by unit.
• In Iran, Musk activated Starlink during the 2022 protests, wrote "the beams are on" during the June 2025 blackout, and SpaceX waived fees during the January 2026 crackdown. Iran's parliament responded by criminalising unlicensed satellite internet, with severe penalties.
• In Sudan, SpaceX told users in April 2024 that service would end because the country was not authorised. Nearly 100 aid and rights groups appealed to Musk. The service kept working, and SpaceX did not explain why.
• In Venezuela, Starlink offered free service after the US operation that captured Nicolás Maduro, with Musk posting "In support of the people of Venezuela".

People inside Iran or Gaza may well judge these choices as right. But each was a foreign-policy act by a private company, made without the consent of the government concerned, and often in step with the positions of the US government or of Musk himself.

What governments are doing about it

The record shows three responses.

1. Control at the border. Israel's case-by-case approval for Gaza, Iran's criminal law and the licence demands in Sudan and much of Africa (see why some countries block Starlink) all try to put the switch back in state hands.
2. Control of the terminals. In February 2026 Ukraine moved to a system in which only registered terminals work on its territory, after Russian units had been reported using Starlink. Musk said SpaceX's steps had worked.
3. Alternatives. Ukraine's officials and Poland's foreign minister have both spoken publicly of other suppliers. European governments are funding their own satellite network, IRIS², although it is years from service.

The question the record raises

It is possible to think that Musk made the right call in most of these cases and still be uneasy. Each decision was announced in a post, sometimes reversed in another post, and shaped by the views of one person who is also an active participant in the politics of many of these countries (see Musk and other countries' elections). No government, court or international body has a settled way to hold such decisions to account.

The tracker will keep recording them. Readers who know of an episode we have missed can send a tip.