Four Questions About Musk, Meridian and Ukraine’s Starshield Cap

On Oct. 14, Ukraine’s Starshield terminals began losing their connection on anything moving faster than about 161 km/h (100 mph).^{[1, 2]} Starshield is the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink network, and Ukraine relies on it for drone operations, including the interceptors it sends after Russia’s jet-powered attack drones.

Two weeks earlier, on Sept. 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had named SpaceX’s chief executive, Elon Musk, a co-director of Project Meridian, the Pentagon’s 120-day study of future warfare.^{[3, 4]}

Three days after the cap, nobody in Washington has said who ordered it. One report, from the Telegraph, says the idea came from Musk himself. That claim hasn’t been confirmed, but it puts a question in front of the Pentagon that it has so far declined to answer: what rules govern Musk while he advises it?^[5]

What’s confirmed so far

Reuters reported on Oct. 15 that the order came from inside the White House, according to two U.S. officials and a Western official.^{[1, 6]} Pentagon leaders received a message that Ukraine’s Starshield service needed to be slowed, the officials said, but they didn’t say who sent it or who carried it out.

A senior U.S. official told Reuters that “no such request was ever made by the president.”^[1] Separately, a senior White House official told Axios the White House had nothing to do with the restrictions, according to Meduza and Ukrainska Pravda, which reported on the Axios story.^{[7, 8]}

Musk wrote on X on Oct. 14 that Starshield systems are “owned and controlled by the US government,” and that limits are decided by the military “and ultimately POTUS.”^{[9, 10]} Asked by reporters on Oct. 16 who was responsible, President Donald Trump said, “it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon,” CNBC reported. Trump added that, from what he understood, it was “the same as it’s always been.”^[11] Ukraine says it isn’t.

On Oct. 17, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the cap remains in place in Ukraine, and that Ukrainian vehicles carrying the same terminals exceeded it during tests in EU countries, the Kyiv Independent reported. He called the restrictions a “planned operation.” Ukraine has been given either no answer or an explanation of “technical issues,” he said.^[2]

What the Telegraph reported

On Oct. 16, the Telegraph reported, citing four sources familiar with the matter, that Musk approached Trump with the idea of slowing Ukraine’s service and that Trump “agreed,” according to one of them. Two Ukrainian sources and a senior European official confirmed the account, the paper said.^{[5, 12]}

Published accounts of the report don’t give a reason for the proposal. One source said that after the restrictions took effect, Musk worried about a consumer backlash in Europe and blamed the administration. “The reality is that they were both in it,” that source said, according to the Kyiv Independent’s account of the report.^[5]

No other outlet has independently confirmed the Telegraph’s account. Musk and SpaceX didn’t respond to CNBC’s requests for comment on Oct. 16.^[11]

Musk’s other job

Project Meridian’s co-directors are Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.^{[4, 3]} Hegseth’s Sept. 30 memo directs Pentagon chief technology officer Emil Michael to commission the study “through a partner organization,” which it doesn’t name.^[13] A Pentagon spokesperson told NPR that the partner is the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit, and that MITRE is responsible for the analysis and would apply “conflict-of-interest and information safeguards.”^[3] The findings are due by Jan. 28, 2027, as a public report with a classified annex.^{[13, 4]} CNBC described Musk on Oct. 16 as “an advisor to the Pentagon on technology” through the project.^[11]

SpaceX holds more than $8 billion in U.S. defense contracts announced this year alone, NPR reported, and Starshield is one of its main products.^[3] The Pentagon is Starshield’s biggest customer, according to Reuters.^[1]

The question of who controls Starshield isn’t new. In September 2023, after Walter Isaacson’s biography reported that Musk had blocked a Ukrainian drone attack near Crimea in 2022, Musk wrote on X that SpaceX was building Starshield for the U.S. government and that it would be “owned and controlled by the U.S. government.”^[14]

Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth wrote to the Pentagon at the time asking whether Musk had “personally intervened” against Ukraine, NBC News reported.^{[14, 15]} Isaacson later corrected his account to say Musk had refused a request to turn coverage on, not switched it off.^[15]

Four questions that haven’t been answered publicly

1. What is Musk’s status on Project Meridian?

The Pentagon hasn’t said whether Musk serves as a special government employee, as he did when he ran the Department of Government Efficiency, or as a contractor, NPR reported on Oct. 6.^[3] Hegseth’s memo doesn’t settle it, because it doesn’t name any of the three co-directors.^[13] Their names appeared in the department’s release and Hegseth’s speech.^[4]

The difference matters. Executive branch employees fall under a federal criminal law that bars them from taking part in government decisions affecting their own financial interests. Contractors don’t.^[3] A senior Government Accountability Office official told NPR there are safeguards participants are “supposed to sign” to keep them away from procurement.^[3] The Pentagon hasn’t said whether Musk has signed any, or whether they cover SpaceX’s Starshield work.

2. Did Musk discuss the cap with Trump, and in what capacity?

The Telegraph says he proposed it.^{[5, 12]} Musk’s public statements place the decision with the military and the president, and don’t address whether he raised it himself. If he did, nobody has said whether he was speaking as SpaceX’s chief executive, as a Meridian co-director or as a private adviser to the president. Nothing reported so far ties the cap to Meridian’s work.

3. Who gave the order, and who carried it out?

Reuters’ sources put the order inside the White House without naming anyone.^[1] A senior official told Axios the White House had nothing to do with it, and White House officials told Ukrainian officials they don’t have control over SpaceX, Axios reported, according to Ukrainska Pravda.^[8] Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov wrote that SpaceX “implemented a speed limit.”^{[10, 9]} Musk says the government controls Starshield.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, wrote on X on Oct. 14 that the latest reporting suggested the problem “may have occurred more locally within DOD Starshield systems, not with Starlink or SpaceX.”^[16] Senators in both parties want to know whether Hegseth or Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, played a role, a Senate source told The Hill.^[16] Those accounts leave open who decided and whose engineers changed the setting.

4. Will the inspector general look at contractors?

On Oct. 15, a bipartisan group of senators asked the Pentagon’s inspector general, Platte Moring, to investigate.^{[17, 18]} Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led the letter. Democrats Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons and Jack Reed signed it, along with Republicans Tillis, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John Cornyn.^{[17, 16]} It asks whether “the Department of Defense or its contractors” contributed to the disruptions, and whether any official “directed, authorized, approved or had advance knowledge” of the changes to Starlink and Starshield service.^[17] It doesn’t mention Musk or Project Meridian by name.

What’s next: the senators asked the inspector general for written confirmation of the investigation’s status by Nov. 1.^[17] Project Meridian’s report is due Jan. 28, 2027.^[13]

Sources