Without Starlink Kyiv might have fallen already, and yet Elon is the bad guy for asking the US military to chip in considering the war might still be going this time next year, or even further.
There's a lot of dimensions to this.
- Elon 'donated' Starlink services, he did not include the fine print about the service ending before the war would or others having to pick up the tab for the subscriptions
- SpaceX sets the price of the Starlink service but the average subscription fee that Ukraine pays per connection is much higher than a consumer would ($110 monthly), it is hard to tell if the delivered service is technically any different
- Because Elon quickly provided Starlink no efforts were made to look for alternative communication methods, the use of Starlink was simply scaled with additional government funding (i.e. Elon has a monopoly)
- Elon decides how far the Ukrainian army can advance because he's in control of their communications
- Starlink is not profitable, it's running heavily into the red
So basically Elon has set Ukraine up with Starlink as a free trial and now there's a ~$500 million subscription fee.
He can dictate the terms of the delivery of the service and the price.
And all this comes after Starlink lost a few bids for subsidies earlier this year. Including $900 million to provide broadband services in rural areas in the US.
It was a smart business move and he provided the Ukrainian Army with great communications (perhaps the best in the world) but the ethics and transparency are questionable.
