The Lift Line
“But wherever it did, the fact remains: Mr. Musk was able to take para-state action in a war between two sovereign countries.” (Vasudevan Mukunth, The Hindu Profiles, 25 October 2026)
Why This Explainer Matters for Your Exam
The Hindu explains, in a Profile by Vasudevan Mukunth on 25 October 2026, how Starshield, the government-grade satellite network of the US company SpaceX, came to matter in the Russia-Ukraine war, and what follows when a private firm can change the terms of a service an army fights with. The trigger is more than a week of disruption: Ukrainian drone units lost connectivity in mid-October, and on 24 October Ukraine’s defence ministry said speeds were recovering.
The questions it raises are the ones an examiner can ask: what low-earth-orbit constellations are, how a service differs from a weapon, which State answers in law for a company’s activities in space, and what India’s own satellite communication rules ask of operators.
GS Paper 3: awareness in the field of space technology; security challenges and the role of non-state actors. GS Paper 2: the effect of the policies and politics of other countries on India’s interests. GS Paper 4 and Essay: power without accountability, and private control over capabilities a State depends on. For background on the government’s position on satellite Internet earlier this month, see the 10 October roundup; for how low-earth-orbit and direct-to-device services work, see this explainer on satellite communication.
The Crux in 60 Words
Ukraine’s forces rely on Starshield, a SpaceX network built on the Starlink constellation. In mid-October their drones lost connectivity, and whether Elon Musk or the White House ordered the limits is disputed. Mukunth’s point is that, unlike an arms seller, the provider keeps control after the sale, which gave one company para-state power in a war between two sovereign countries.
Vasudevan Mukunth argues in The Hindu’s Profile that the Starshield episode showed a private firm able to take para-state action in a war between two sovereign countries, because the provider, unlike an arms seller, keeps control of the service after the buyer starts using it.
- Ukraine depends on the service: its forces use Starshield, which runs on SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, to track enemy positions and supply routes and to intercept drones, because Russia’s invasion damaged its telecom infrastructure.
- Who ordered the October limits is disputed: a Wall Street Journal report carried by Reuters said Musk did, Reuters reported that the order came from within the White House, and Musk says the US military and the President decide.
- It is not the first time: in 2022 Ukraine asked for Starlink connectivity near Sevastopol and did not get it, though Musk denies deactivating anything; later Pentagon contracts sought to formalise the relationship.
- The lack of speed and scale was once, perhaps passively, a safeguard: armies now depend on satellite communications, cloud computing and artificial intelligence that private firms build and deploy fast, so armies must work out what replaces that safeguard.
Musk says Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government and that limits are decided by the US military and the President, and he alleges that Ukraine’s military broke Starlink’s terms of service; on that view the decision belonged to a state, or to a contract, not to a private sovereign.
Treat a foreign-owned network as a dependency to be managed: security conditions and domestic control written into licences, guarantees of service, more than one supplier, and sovereign capability for military use, the path Ukraine itself began to explore with a letter of intent on sovereign satellite communications.
Background and Context
Starlink and Starshield
SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, the Profile says, “currently consists of more than 11,000 satellites in low-earth orbit that provide Internet connectivity to users on the ground”. Starshield “uses the same constellation to provide secure communications important to national security, with stronger data encryption; its other services, including remote-sensing, use specialised satellites.”
When SpaceX introduced Starshield in 2022, its own page drew the line this way: “While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use”, with an initial focus on Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads. SpaceX says Starshield is used mainly by US defence agencies and other “government partners”.
Why Ukraine depends on it
Ukraine uses Starshield, the Profile explains, because Russia’s invasion in early 2022 damaged its telecom infrastructure. By December 2024, according to the Profile, the Pentagon had also arranged for Ukraine to access the service through roughly 3,000 terminals. Its forces use it to track enemy positions and supply routes and to intercept drones, with Starlink satellites relaying the information.
What happened in October
- The prelude. US President Donald Trump has been pressing Ukraine to stop attacking Russia’s oil refineries, worried about surging international oil prices, the Profile notes. When he objected again, around 10-11 October, Musk said that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had gone too far.
- The disruption. From about 13-14 October, Ukrainian soldiers using drones against Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia and elsewhere found many of their machines losing satellite connectivity, and operators had to abandon missions. Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelenskyy, posted on Telegram that SpaceX had “implemented a speed limit” on Starlink terminals, capping speeds at 160 km/h, so that drones flying faster lost their guidance connection (as Al Jazeera reported).
- Who ordered it. Musk wrote on X that “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government” and that “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS”. Trump said on 16 October that he did not think either he or Musk was responsible. On 20 October, Reuters carried a Wall Street Journal report, citing US officials and people familiar with the matter, that Musk had ordered the slowdown the week before; Reuters said it “could not immediately verify the report”. Reuters, as The Indian Express reported, said the order came from within the White House. The Profile sums it up: the origin of the order is disputed, Musk’s office or the White House.
- Restoration. On 22 October, Trump said Musk had restored access. Asked whether he had called Musk, he said he did not “want to comment one way or the other”, adding: “The bottom line, he put it back.” The Wall Street Journal reported that day that Trump had spoken to Musk by phone about lifting the restrictions, and CNN, citing a person familiar with the matter, later reported a phone call in which Trump asked Musk to restore full access. On 23 October, asked if he had contacted Musk to restore access, Trump said: “I have not spoken to him. I might have to, but I have not.” The same day Zelenskyy wrote that the restrictions “are still there”. The next day, Defence Minister Khmara said: “Monitoring systems are recording a recovery in the speed of Starlink/Starshield.” Zelenskyy said the systems were now operating at the speeds Ukraine needed.
- Musk’s allegation. Over the weekend of 24-25 October, hours after Kyiv’s statements, Musk wrote on X: “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people.” He said the loophole had been closed the week before, and that Starlink’s terms have remained consistent as “a civilian system, not a means of killing”. He also wrote: “Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately.” The violation is Musk’s allegation.
The 2022 precedent
In 2022, the Profile recalls, Musk refused Ukraine’s request to activate Starlink connectivity near Sevastopol, in Crimea, which Ukrainian forces wanted in order to target Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Musk disputes how the episode has been told: responding in September 2023 to claims in Walter Isaacson’s then-forthcoming biography of him, he wrote on X that “The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything”. Later Pentagon contracts, the Profile adds, sought at least in part to formalise the relationship between Starlink and the US military.
The Analysis
1. A service is not a weapon. For decades, Mukunth writes, private contractors have supplied armies with arms, intelligence and logistical support, but the armies physically owned and controlled many of the weapons they bought. With Starshield, the provider kept the ability to change the operating conditions of its help even after the customer had begun using it. His image is a grenade launcher that fires grenades 150 metres on most days and only five metres on one, because the user was not fighting the war the way the manufacturer preferred. That is the difference an aspirant should carry: a weapon is bought once; a service is granted every day.
2. Para-state power. Ordinarily, Mukunth notes, a decision to stop or withhold a country’s military operations “would involve political leaders and defence officials”. Starshield, he argues, “has well and truly complicated the relationship between public authority and private ownership”. Power here comes from control over a capability, not from legal status.
3. Accountability blurs. With every account pointing elsewhere, Ukraine faced a disruption it could not prevent and could not clearly pin on anyone. International law does name a responsible State. Under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, the United States bears international responsibility for the national activities of a US company in outer space, which require “authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty”. Article VII makes the launching State liable for damage. But Article VI speaks of activities in outer space, not of the terms on which a company sells a service to an army on the ground.
4. Terms of service as a lever. Musk’s case is that Starlink’s terms treat it as a civilian system, not a means of killing, and that Ukraine’s military broke them. Even if that were accepted, it makes Mukunth’s point for him: whoever can enforce such terms in the middle of a war holds a lever over that war.
5. Speed and scale, the lost safeguard. Today’s armies, Mukunth writes, “increasingly depend on satellite communications, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence”, which private contractors can “develop and package at speed and deploy at scale”. Military action, he argues, had until recently depended, perhaps passively, on the lack of such speed and scale as one kind of safeguard; now armies must decide what replaces it. Ukraine has begun to answer. That week its defence ministry signed a letter of intent with Nokia and ICEYE, a Finnish space intelligence firm, aimed in part at “building sovereign satellite communications”, and Zelenskyy said: “We must all rely on capabilities that we can control.”
6. What it means for India.
- Licences. As background, the Minister of State for Communications, Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, told the Lok Sabha on 5 August 2026 that Unified Licences with a GMPCS service authorisation had been issued to three companies: OneWeb India Communications Private Limited, JIO Satellite Communications Limited and Starlink Satellite Communications Private Limited. His answer added: “Security clearance to these licensees is subject to successful demonstration of compliance with the stipulated security and technical conditions of license.”
- Clearance. For context, on 9 October, as ANI reported, he dismissed Musk’s charges and said final security clearances from the Ministry of Home Affairs remained pending for all three, with data localisation, gateway access and terminal security under evaluation; Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said the DoT and TRAI were finalising spectrum pricing and revenue-sharing. The Hindu’s Explained of 22 October said none had received clearance as of 16 October.
- Spectrum. Section 4(4) of the Telecommunications Act, 2023 says the Centre “shall assign spectrum for telecommunication through auction except for entries listed in the First Schedule for which assignment shall be done by administrative process”.
The conditions still pending (data localisation, gateway access, terminal security) are the levers that keep a foreign operator answerable to Indian law.
Data and Institutions Vault
Prelims-grade facts:
The networks:
- Starlink: SpaceX’s constellation of more than 11,000 satellites in low-earth orbit (as The Hindu puts it, October 2026)
- Starshield: SpaceX’s service for government use, launched in 2022; it uses the Starlink constellation with stronger data encryption
- Starshield’s remote-sensing and other services use specialised satellites
- SpaceX’s initial focus areas for Starshield: Earth observation, communications, hosted payloads
International space law:
- Outer Space Treaty, 1967, Article VI: States bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including by non-governmental entities
- Article VI: non-governmental activities need “authorization and continuing supervision” by the appropriate State Party
- Article VII: a State that launches or procures a launch, or from whose territory one occurs, is internationally liable for damage
India’s satellite communication rules:
- GMPCS = Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite, a service authorisation under the Unified Licence
- Background, Lok Sabha answer of 5 August 2026: GMPCS holders are OneWeb India Communications, JIO Satellite Communications and Starlink Satellite Communications
- Security clearance depends on demonstrating compliance with the licence’s security and technical conditions
- Telecommunications Act, 2023 (No. 44 of 2023), Section 4(4): spectrum by auction, except First Schedule entries, assigned by administrative process
- First Schedule, entry 16: satellite-based services, including teleports, DTH, VSAT and GMPCS
The traps:
- Starshield is not a separate constellation: it runs on the Starlink satellites, with specialised satellites for services such as remote sensing
- India has issued satcom licences; final security clearance from the MHA is what was pending in October 2026
- “Administrative process” in the Telecommunications Act, 2023 means assignment of spectrum without holding an auction
The Debate
The case for Mukunth’s reading. Ukraine’s soldiers lost connectivity in the middle of operations, on a network they had no way to override. Whoever gave the order, the capability sat with a private provider, and the provider’s chief executive had, days earlier, publicly taken a side in the dispute over Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries. The 2022 Sevastopol episode, whatever its exact details, shows the same pattern: a company’s judgement shaping what a country at war could do.
The other side. On Musk’s account, the US government owns and controls Starshield systems, so the episode is a State using its own instrument, not a company acting as a sovereign. A supplier is entitled to set the terms on which it sells, and Musk alleges those terms were broken. Starlink also filled a gap that Russia’s invasion tore in Ukraine’s telecom network, and Musk calls it “critical to the defense of Ukraine”.
The balanced verdict. Who ordered the limits is not settled, and an answer should say so; the conclusion does not depend on it. Whether the decision came from a company or from a government acting through one, Ukraine could not prevent it. The Profile’s sharper claim, that one person took para-state action, is the author’s reading; the safer exam line is that private ownership of critical networks lets their owners, or the State behind them, change the course of a war.
How to Think About This
Use the “own, run, override, oversee” lens for any dependence on a privately run critical system (satellite networks, cloud computing, AI models, payment rails):
- Own: who owns the asset? (SpaceX built it; Musk says the US government owns and controls Starshield systems.)
- Run: who operates it day to day? (The provider, not the user.)
- Override: who can change its terms during use, and on whose order? (In October, disputed.)
- Oversee: which State answers for it, and under what law? (The US, under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty; in India, the licence conditions for operators.)
Then separate the record (official statements, treaty text, answers in Parliament) from press reports citing unnamed sources, and both from the author’s argument.
Diagram-in-Words
Starshield in Ukraine: a service the buyer does not control
Covers Ukraine’s dependence, the October disruption and the dispute over who ordered it, the restoration, and Mukunth’s argument.
Read the figure from top to bottom: the dependence, the disruption and the dispute over who ordered it, the restoration, then Mukunth’s argument and the question it leaves. The second band sets out competing accounts, not a settled finding.
Privately owned satellite networks are now part of how wars are fought. With reference to the disruption of Starshield services used by Ukraine in October 2026, discuss the challenges such non-state power poses to state sovereignty and suggest safeguards for India's satellite communication policy. (250 words)
Low-earth-orbit constellations have put privately owned networks at the centre of modern warfare. In October 2026, Ukrainian forces using Starshield, the government-grade service built on SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, lost connectivity during operations, and accounts of who ordered the limits conflicted.
The episode raises a basic question: who controls the means of war when a company owns them?
Challenges. First, control without ownership: an army that buys a weapon holds it, but a network bought as a service can be throttled or switched off by its provider.
Ukrainian officials said speeds were capped at 160 km/h, so faster drones lost their link. Second, blurred accountability: the operator said limits are decided by the US military and the President, while other accounts said the operator ordered them, so the user cannot tell whom to hold to account.
Third, precedent: in 2022 Ukraine sought connectivity near Sevastopol and did not receive it. Fourth, law lags practice: Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, 1967 makes a State internationally responsible for national activities in outer space, including those of non-governmental entities, which need its authorisation and continuing supervision; it speaks of activities in outer space, not of the terms on which a company sells a service on the ground.
India. Three firms hold GMPCS authorisations under the Unified Licence (OneWeb India Communications, Jio Satellite Communications and Starlink Satellite Communications), and their security clearance depends on demonstrating compliance with the licence’s security and technical conditions; in October 2026 final clearances from the Ministry of Home Affairs were pending for all three, with data localisation, gateway access and terminal security under evaluation.
The Telecommunications Act, 2023 lets satellite services listed in its First Schedule, GMPCS among them, be assigned spectrum by administrative process rather than auction. Safeguards.
Licence conditions on gateways and data held in India; contracts that guarantee service in an emergency; more than one supplier; and sovereign satellite communications for defence, which Ukraine began to explore with industry partners.
Private constellations bring speed, scale and coverage that States struggle to match, but they also carry a provider’s leverage into war. India’s licensing should keep the benefits of commercial satellite communication while making sure that no single foreign operator can decide when its armed forces or citizens lose connectivity.
Interview Angle
"Indian forces may one day depend on a satellite network owned by a foreign company. What safeguards would you write into such an arrangement, and when would you insist on a sovereign system instead?"
Takeaway Box
- Core idea: a service, unlike a weapon, stays under its provider’s control, and that gives a private firm leverage over a war.
- Prelims hooks: Starshield runs on the Starlink constellation; LEO lies below about 2,000 km; Outer Space Treaty Articles VI and VII; GMPCS under the Unified Licence; Telecommunications Act, 2023, Section 4(4) and the First Schedule.
- Ethics and Interview angle: power without accountability; can a company’s terms of service override a State’s decisions in war?
- Probable question: “Examine how private ownership of satellite networks affects national security. What safeguards should India adopt?” (GS3, 150 words)
Sources:
- Vasudevan Mukunth, “Starshield | The non-state sovereigns”, The Hindu Profiles, 25 October 2026
- The Hindu (Reuters), 23 and 25 October 2026; The Hindu, Explained, 22 October 2026
- The Indian Express (Reuters), 25 October 2026; CNBC, 23 October 2026; CNN, 23 and 24 October 2026; Al Jazeera, 15 October 2026; Reuters via the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 20 October 2026
- NBC News, 8 September 2023; Space.com, 6 December 2022
- Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question No. 2902, answered on 5 August 2026; ANI, 9 October 2026
- The Telecommunications Act, 2023 (Section 4(4) and First Schedule); Outer Space Treaty, 1967 (Articles VI and VII), UNOOSA; European Space Agency, “Types of orbits”
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