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Before venturing into Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian army knocked out the Viasat satellite communications link to that country — a crucial lifeline for all communications, both military and civil — by deploying wiper malware in the ground control systems. Without the Viasat link, Ukrainian army commanders couldn’t contact field units, share information and coordinate the counter-attack. When the Russians landed in dozens of helicopters in Kyiv in the very first week of the war, they anticipated a simple surrender by the Ukrainians.
At that critical juncture, the Ukrainian leadership didn’t rush to the Americans or Europeans for help. Instead, Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov turned to his X account to send an SOS to Elon Musk. Musk’s company SpaceX owns a constellation of over 11,000 satellites called Starlink that provides communication links to countries and companies. “@elonmusk”, tweeted poster Fedorov from his X account, “while you try to colonise Mars — Russians try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civilians! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.” “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” he posted by the same evening. In the next couple of days, Starlink provided 500 terminals, and the Ukrainian army was back in full action to throw the Russians out of Kyiv.
“Starlink is indeed the blood of our entire communication infrastructure now,” boasted Fedorov. But the story doesn’t end there. Soon, Musk demonstrated to Fedorov that it was his whims that carry the day for Ukraine, not the commands of Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Fedorov. When Fedorov placed an emergency request for Starlink systems over Crimea for the Ukrainian army to conduct a strike on the Russian naval fleet using submarine drones, Musk sternly reprimanded him, saying that “if the Ukrainian attacks had succeeded in sinking the Russian fleet, it would have been like a mini Pearl Harbour. We did not want to be a part of that.” In effect, Musk became the self-appointed NSA of Ukraine at that moment.
Last year, when the Ukrainian army launched a pivotal push to retake territory occupied by the Russians, Musk suddenly ordered his company to cut coverage of its services in those regions, severely disrupting and denting the Ukrainians’ ability to move ahead, resulting in their failure to recapture Russian positions. Currently, Ukrainian forces are reporting sudden blackouts and severe speed restrictions at their communication terminal that are causing panic for the soldiers on the field operating drones and other advanced systems. Musk shrugged this off, saying it was a political decision the US administration and his company were simply implementing.
The Ukrainian experience is illustrative of two important lessons: One, that a tech giant like Elon Musk probably had more power to support the Ukrainians in war than Western governments, and two, he not only helps but ultimately controls the war and its outcome. That is the heteropolar order in action.
On a visit to Budapest at the end of 2023, I heard from many analysts of the then-ruling dispensation that the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, faced a major threat not from the liberal European leadership or the Democratic dispensation in Washington, DC, but from a fellow Hungarian, George Soros. Soros is a 95-year-old Hungarian-American hedge fund manager with a net worth of over $7 billion. He founded the Open Society Foundation, a philanthropic arm with a stated aim of working for justice, democratic governance and human rights. He is an open supporter of liberal parties and left-liberal NGOs and often grants huge donations to all and sundry causes, from campaigns on campuses to clashes on the streets. He is seen as an open enemy of right-wing leaders, from Donald Trump in America to Orbán.
In fact, Orbán’s government spent millions of dollars on a poster campaign against Soros, accusing him of leading an international cabal to destabilise right-wing governments in Europe and elsewhere. Soros and his foundation acquired notoriety as dubious conspirators of “regime changes” and agents of chaos. Finally, Soros succeeded in ousting Orbán from power after 15 years last year. Interestingly, Musk himself compared Soros to X-Men villain Magneto in a tweet in May 2023. When an X user defended Soros as having good intentions, Musk responded, saying, “You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilisation. Soros hates humanity.”
Welcome to the heteropolar world, where big-tech dadas and big-money daddies can try to outmanoeuvre sovereign nations. That world is active in India too.
The writer is national vice-president, BJP and president, India Foundation
