US threatens Europe over Starlink restrictions

The Starshield portion of Starlink is already controlled by the government. It was Starshield that restricted access to Ukraine, and the decision reportedly came from the White House.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...

OP's article of course is about spectrum allocation in the US and potential trade retaliation, which isn't all that related to Musk's control of Starlink.

The idea of a drug addicted undocumented immigrant being in charge of our space program and sat comms does seem incredibly unwise.

Unfortunately Trump is worse than Musk. And it's Trump who's to blame for the Ukraine speed restrictions.

You think Trump wouldn't immediately promote Musk to General?

Europe is putting economic restrictions on Starlink; the technical restrictions the US placed on Starshield are unrelated.

That doesn't make their treatment of other countries go away.

The United States has been in a war with Iran since 1979. Since then they have been promising "Death to America" all the while funding and supporting our enemies.

Since then the United States has dismantled their Navy systematically several times.

At the moment they are

- Blockaded.

- Entire leadership dead.

- Major infrastructure bombed to rubble

- Inability to project power beyond a few random pot shots at neighbors that aren't even the US.

- Proxies neutered or entirely destroyed in Syria and Iraq.

- De facto leader still in hiding and afraid for his life even as I type this.

- Unable to field a single ship in their own home port.

Man if this is winning I wanna know what losing is.

Even if we don't spur the development of home grown operators (and IMO launch on the scale of Starlink is somewhat unrealistic any time soon), it will at least prevent us getting get another incidental dependency on US systems which we can be threatened with loss of access to at any point.

It is, there are lots of European launch companies that will have their first launches in 2027 and all target cheap launch services which is the key to Starlink. Isar Aerospace has already put a payload in orbit, but they are only one of many.

Of course, why wouldn't it? There's nothing unique about SpaceX's sattelites, or about putting them in orbit.

https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/these-are-the-six-european-altern...

That's Starshield, which is not under Musk's control. Reportedly the WH did make the decision.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...

It's the same tech but after Musk took flack for making a decision on Ukraine's military use, they split off a portion for the US government to control.

Mein Deutsch waere viel besser gewesen...

The UK would most likely be speaking German now. Possibly even the US.

> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”, given the size of the American market.

Would this even be "devastating"? Would any of them been able to sell in the US anyway, given the position Starlink is in? I see occasional headlines that Starlink is forcing out other US providers, from the US, but even without that kind of thing going on, this doesn't even feel like much of a threat.