I just listened to Elon Musk on Spaces talk about the use of his Starlink satellites by Ukraine. He also talked about how they might be used by people in Gaza. When I listen to his answer I remember two things.
1) He is not ‘under oath” he can be lying and mischaracterizing what he did and what happened.
There is no one on the call who will check him or ask for clarification.
2) His control over Starlink makes him a major player in global politics. Who has leverage over him?
The US? He is located here and Starlink is a US corporation. He is a US citizen. BUT we have seen that the control the US government has over him is not total. Other people and countries have leverage over him.
He listened to Putin and made a decision based on what Putin told him.
Musk has dominance over satellite communications. When a company has harmful dominance over an industry they need to be disciplined. That can happen by competition, regulation or labor. Last week Cory Doctorow talked about why the US implemented antitrust laws. To stop harmful domination by a company.This should apply to person too.
#CoryDoctorow, “we used to have the standard for antitrust that was grounded in the idea of harmful dominance…
When a company gets too big, it becomes impossible to discipline by competition or regulation or through labor organizing.”
In this clip @pluralistic evokes
John Sherman on his #antitrust act.
“If we would not allow a king to rule America, we shouldn’t allow an autocrat of trade to determine how we attain the necessities of our lives or work for our wages.”
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation
