Meredith Carson

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED: Elon Musk is the latest scapegoat for Ukraine’s failing counteroffensive. Appearing at the @allinsummit yesterday, @elonmusk addressed the controversy that erupted over the past week when an excerpt from @WalterIsaacson's new biography of him was released. The excerpt alleged that Elon turned off Starlink access to Crimea in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian fleet based at Sevastopol last year. Elon has clarified (and Isaacson has acknowledged) that he didn’t turn off anything. Starlink had never been activated over Crimea because of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Ukrainian officials asked Elon in a late-night call to activate it for purposes of launching a highly provocative attack on the Russian fleet. Concerned such an attack would prompt an escalatory response — perhaps even a nuclear one — from the Russians, Elon refused the request. He told us at the All-In Summit that had the request come from the White House, he would have honored it. For this, Elon has been called “evil” by a high-level Ukrainian official, and treasonous by the usual warmongers here at home. The military blog 1945 questioned whether he was “fit to run SpaceX” and whether the company needed to be nationalized. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow claimed Elon was “intervening to try to stop Ukraine from winning the war.” CNN’s Jake Tapper called Elon a “capricious billionaire” who “effectively sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally.” He demanded to know of his interview subject, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, if there should be “repercussions” for Elon’s actions. Tapper’s tirade echoed almost verbatim a cranky tweetstorm by neocon attack dog David Frum, who demanded Elon be investigated and stripped of his government contracts. According to Frum, Elon “confessed” to an “abuse of power” that “thwarted what might have been a decisive military operation to shorten the Russian war against Ukraine, (and) save who knows how many lives.” In Frum’s fantasy narrative, Russia would have responded to the drone attack by turning tail and leaving Ukraine, rather than massively escalating the war. A Baseless Frenzy of Attacks The frenzy of attacks on Elon illustrates how no good deed goes unpunished. He originally provided Starlink to the Ukrainians as an act of charity. There was never a contract and they weren’t formally a customer, just a recipient of free aid that Elon volunteered. Had he not done that, there would be no controversy today. At earlier points in the war, Ukrainian officials acknowledged that Starlink was not just an important communications channel – it was their only communications channel. It’s perhaps not an exaggeration to say that Starlink kept Ukraine in the war. Not only was this expensive for SpaceX, Elon explained at the Summit, it posed great risk to the entire Starlink network since the Russians would have a strong incentive to disrupt it, either by destroying satellites in space or by conducting a cyber-attack on SpaceX. As the creator and owner of this technology, Elon had the right to ensure that it be used for the purpose he intended — to help humanity rather than expand a war. Conversely the Ukrainian government had no right to conscript the resources of a private American company. Had he received a directive from President Biden, Elon would have complied as a patriotic American. Instead, he was asked by the Ukrainian government to enable a major act of war in the middle of the night and had reservations. Notably, Elon’s concerns were exactly the same ones that the Biden administration cited in refusing to provide ATACMS missiles last year — the risk that they would be used against Russian territory, precipitating World War III. Elon’s reservations were no more unreasonable than those expressed at the time by White House officials. The Purpose of Pushing This Narrative By volunteering Starlink at Ukraine’s moment of greatest need, it’s safe to say that Elon did more for the Ukrainian war effort than all the pro-war pundits, media personalities, and academics denouncing him now. To understand the ferocity of their response, therefore, we have to look at the larger context of what’s happening on the ground in this war. After months of grueling fighting, the reports from the battle fields have been “sobering”, the losses have been “staggering”, and the gains have to be “measured in meters rather than miles” (according to CNN). Suddenly there is recognition of massive Russian superiority in artillery and air assets (both of which should have been known before the counteroffensive). Despite the best efforts of Western media to spin the taking of some minor villages in the grey zone as a “piercing” of Russian lines, it’s become obvious that the counteroffensive has failed to achieve its originally touted objectives, like reaching the Sea of Azov and severing the land bridge to Crimea. In the wake of such disappointing, even disastrous results, the finger pointing and blame game have begun. American officials have criticized the Ukrainian military for abandoning the combined arms tactics they supposedly learned during their hurried NATO training and even for being too “casualty averse” in their willingness to accept losses. Ukrainian officials have chided American officials for unrealistic expectations and for failing to provide all the needed weapons. The Need for a Scapegoat While there has been no shortage of recriminations to go around, at the end of the day Washington and Kiev need each other. The Kiev regime would collapse without American support, and Biden’s re-election is imperiled if such a collapse happens before next November. A War Party divided against itself cannot stand. So a new culprit must be found to shift the blame for the foolish plan to run tanks into minefields and to throw human waves at prepared defenses with no air support or element of surprise. Most importantly, the scapegoat must be someone that neocons and the MSM can agree to hate and vilify. Elon Musk fits the bill nicely. Already flagged by president Biden as someone whose business dealings needed to be “looked at,” sued by Biden’s DOJ for hiring too many Americans at SpaceX, investigated by another government agency for allegedly building a glass house at Tesla, boycotted and accused of anti-semitism by the ADL for unbanning former president Trump on X.com, he is persona non grata to the MSM (who compete with X for attention and influence) and to DNC operatives who see his support for free speech as a threat. Finding convenient scapegoats when one of their foreign crusades goes spectacularly off the rails is nothing new for neocons. Their modus operandi is to push a dolchstoss (“stabbed in the back”) narrative that insists their grand plans for regime change would have succeeded but for some fifth column that undermined them, or a failure of nerve or competence on the part of leaders they exhorted into their quagmires. Elon Musk is not the reason Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield are flagging. He showed unusual generosity in donating Starlink and unusual judgment in floating a peace proposal last year that looks better by the day. If searching for culprits to blame for this war turning into a bloody quagmire, decision makers in Washington and Kiev and their enablers in the media – who confidently dismissed Elon’s pleas for negotiation in favor of launching this counteroffensive – should look in the mirror.