Nobody Will Say Who Holds Starlink's Off Switch — And That's the Real Crisis
The US is threatening 'devastating' retaliation if the EU limits spectrum access for non-EU companies like Starlink — but the deeper story is a governance vacuum. Ukraine's battlefield internet was recently throttled, and when asked who ordered it, Elon Musk, President Trump, and Secretary Rubio reportedly gave three different answers. A piece of infrastructure that an entire country at war depends on apparently has no one accountable for its controls.
Bottom Line
This isn't primarily a trade dispute — it's the first major test of whether governments can impose accountability on privately-owned infrastructure that wars and economies now run on. The US threat of 'devastating' retaliation, the EU's spectrum gambit, and the unresolved question of who throttled Ukraine's connection all point to the same gap: Starlink has become too important to be ungoverned, and nobody has agreed on who governs it.