The black market dealers delivering Elon Musk's Starlink to US adversaries - ... trends now
A shadow network of black market dealers, some in the United Arab Emirates, has been selling SpaceX Starlink kits to Sudanese rebels and Russian forces in Ukraine.
The underground trade of these Elon Musk-manufactured satellite dishes, which provide access to low earth orbit (LEO) broadband internet, has empowered American enemies abroad — according to members of US Congress, Ukrainian intelligence, and a spate of new investigative reports.
Contraband Starlink internet has helped militants operate spy drones and coordinate attacks everywhere from the civil wars in Yemen and Sudan, to the Russian-occupied regions of eastern Ukraine, like Donetsk and Crimea.
In north Africa, paramilitaries allied with the Russian-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan have ordered hundreds of Starlink terminals, according to third party sellers and Sudanese military officials.
The new reports corroborate claims made by Ukraine's intelligence chief Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov last February, who said Russian troops have secretly pirated Starlink systems 'for quite a long time.'
Some industry experts believe Musk should be able to shut down the smuggled Starlink kits, but his SpaceX has been unresponsive to their pleas, officials said.
Ukraine's military intelligence chief alleged this February that Russian troops in Ukraine are using thousands of Starlink satellite communications terminals. Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov said Russian troops have been communicating over Starlink 'for quite a long time'
Low-level 'e-commerce' websites, with names like strlnk.ru and shopozz.ru, have been linked to the sales, acquiring Starlink kits as third party resellers to evade sanctions, according to one new report out today from the Wall Street Journal.
Many of these Russian dealers don't hide their sale of the hardware, posting the notices instead as embedded eBay listings, sometimes linking directly to US citizens selling their old Starlink terminals.
Technically, Starlink customers are forbidden from reselling access without authorization from the company, according to a user agreement available on Starlink's website.
The SpaceX subsidiary, which owns and operates a worldwide constellation of about 5,400 LEO satellites, has said it reserves the right to terminate service to the illicitly acquired terminals in question, which are effectively satellite dishes.
The Musk-owned company is itself barred from selling Starlink terminals by both Russia and China, due to SpaceX's role in the US defense sector, including a rumored new spy satellite project, first made public by Reuters last month.
And US-imposed sanctions also forbid Starlink sales in a number of countries, including Venezuela, although a robust illicit trade in the company's mobile internet terminals exists there also, according to Bloomberg.
Russia already has several space-based military assets. These include co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, direct-ascent ASAT missiles, and Starlink communication satellites it has obtained for its war on Ukraine. But early in the Ukraine conflict its coverage there was limited
'What's driving Starlink use is this need to have secure communications,' said national security expert Thomas Withington of London's Royal United Services Institute, 'from the tactical edge of operations to the headquarters.'
In the early phases of Russia's invasion of Ukraine — according to Withington — Putin's forces first attempted, but failed, to scale up their own local satellite network.
'In principle, Russia is already practically blind in orbit,' Bart Hendrix, a Brussels-based expert Russia's space activities, told Radio Free Europe.
With limited satellite coverage of their own over Ukraine, including a likely defunct system called Condor launched
