Why wouldn't I downplay the Starlink Ukraine thing, when everything about it from the media has been at best misleading?
The usage of Starlink to control drones wasn't allowed because that is not a civilian-style use case and thus would require the US government to provide authorization (remember that Starlink was initially provided directly by SpaceX without going through typical US government aid processes). The reports about outages buried the lede that the terminals with the outage were ones provided and paid for by third parties that had decided to stop paying for them, and the reports themselves mentioned that Ukraine had swapped them out. The usage of Starlink in Crimea had always been disallowed to prevent Russian usage, and to be in compliance with US policy at the time. Ukraine had made the unreasonable request of having it enabled with a day's notice, which was obviously too fast for a decision to be made, it was enabled a few months later when things had been properly worked out with both governments (this was still well before the story ever became public). As for Russia using captured Starlink terminals, the DoD has also come out in support of SpaceX's efforts to mitigate it, making it clear that it isn't an easy problem to solve, as they need to somehow distinguish between third party terminals in use by Ukraine, from terminals captured or black-market imported by Russia being operated in Ukraine.
There's nothing you can say to convince me because you likely have nothing to say that is backed up by facts. I'm not saying you have to like him, I'm saying that there's nothing he or his companies have done that makes them any less trustworthy or any more untrustworthy, compared to any other company the government works with. You'd have to be able to point to something worse than even what Boeing has done, considering that the US govt continues to consider Boeing to be an important defense partner.
Yeah I guess acknowledging well documented reality and keeping things in perspective makes me a Musk-apologist and cultist. Which echo chambers and lies would you recommend I consume to correct this?
I don't know what well documented reality you're talking about, you've made a bunch of unsourced claims wrt the Starlink thing which may or may not be correct, and you've chosen to close your eyes and ignore everything else you know people tend to bring up (even stuff I specifically brought up). There's nothing more for us to discuss. You even admitted yourself that there's nothing anyone could say to make you change your mind, so why are we still here?
We're still here because you seem to continue to misunderstand (assuming you're posting in good faith). "There's nothing you can say to convince me because you likely have nothing to say that is backed up by facts" is asking for something concrete that is a reason governments would view certain companies as too untrustworthy to work with. I specifically said that it doesn't matter if you like him, that's different from being so untrustworthy that their services shouldn't be used despite being the best option.
The only thing you've pointed to is an incident that obviously does not rise to the level of being a reason for a government to not work with a Musk-owned company. He responded to a guy who told him to shove his submarine up his ass by calling him a pedo, it was admittedly an incredibly dumb way to handle it, but obviously not a reason for a government to not work with him. The rest of what you've said is the usual thing where people make comments vaguely about an issue without ever saying anything specific so you can't be countered. Every thing I mentioned is backed up by articles:
The Starlink TOS mentions that it cannot be used in weaponry (ie drone control) because that brings it under ITAR export restrictions, which requires approval by the US government (and afaik the government has not authorized this): https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1041-35650-61
The report of the outages mentions itself that "The batch of terminals were also rotated out as concerns grew that service could be turned off, in order to minimize the impact, the source said." :https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/politics/spacex-ukraine-elon-...
That said, I'll stop here, I think I've said enough that other open minded people will be able to form a less biased opinion even if you refuse to engage in good faith.
The usage of Starlink to control drones wasn't allowed because that is not a civilian-style use case and thus would require the US government to provide authorization (remember that Starlink was initially provided directly by SpaceX without going through typical US government aid processes). The reports about outages buried the lede that the terminals with the outage were ones provided and paid for by third parties that had decided to stop paying for them, and the reports themselves mentioned that Ukraine had swapped them out. The usage of Starlink in Crimea had always been disallowed to prevent Russian usage, and to be in compliance with US policy at the time. Ukraine had made the unreasonable request of having it enabled with a day's notice, which was obviously too fast for a decision to be made, it was enabled a few months later when things had been properly worked out with both governments (this was still well before the story ever became public). As for Russia using captured Starlink terminals, the DoD has also come out in support of SpaceX's efforts to mitigate it, making it clear that it isn't an easy problem to solve, as they need to somehow distinguish between third party terminals in use by Ukraine, from terminals captured or black-market imported by Russia being operated in Ukraine.
There's nothing you can say to convince me because you likely have nothing to say that is backed up by facts. I'm not saying you have to like him, I'm saying that there's nothing he or his companies have done that makes them any less trustworthy or any more untrustworthy, compared to any other company the government works with. You'd have to be able to point to something worse than even what Boeing has done, considering that the US govt continues to consider Boeing to be an important defense partner.