Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson has taken to social media to try to “clarify” an excerpt from his upcoming book detailing how Musk allegedly thwarted a planned Ukrainian drone attack.
The excerpt, which describes how Musk asked his engineers to disrupt Starlink satellite communications near Russian-occupied Crimea last year to thwart an attack on Russian warships, has faced backlash since it was published on Thursday.
“The Ukrainians thought there was coverage all the way to Crimea, but it wasn’t,” Isaacson said. He said In a message on Saturday. Instead, military officials asked the billionaire businessman to enable coverage of the drone attack, he said. “Musk did not activate it because he believed, perhaps correctly, that it would lead to a major war,” the author added.
But the original Excerpts The Washington Post reported that Musk “secretly asked his engineers to stop coverage 100 kilometers off the coast of Crimea,” causing Ukrainian drone submarines to lose contact and drift ashore harmlessly.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that Musk’s decision allowed the Russian fleet to attack Ukrainian cities. “This is the price of a combination of ignorance and big ego,” he said in a social media post. mail Thursday. Meanwhile, Russian officials applauded the move.
The supposed sabotage occurred as relations began to cool between Ukrainian forces and Musk, who has been helping keep Ukraine online since the beginning of the Russian invasion through his Starlink satellites. Fearing that the conflict could turn into another world war, Musk began restricting the Ukrainian military’s use of Starlink in Russian-controlled areas and to control drones.
Isaacson’s biography is set to be Elon Musk. Released September 12th.
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