The Black Market That Delivers Elon Musk's Starlinks to U.S. Foes
A salesman at Moscow-based online retailer shopozz.ru has supplemented his usual business of peddling vacuum cleaners and dashboard phone mounts by selling dozens of Starlink internet terminals that wound up with Russians on the front lines in Ukraine.
Although Russia has banned the use of Starlink, the satellite-internet service developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, middlemen have proliferated in recent months to buy the user terminals and ship them to Russian forces. That has eroded a battlefield advantage once enjoyed by Ukrainian forces, which also rely on the cutting-edge devices.
The Moscow salesman, who in an interview identified himself only as Oleg, said that most of his orders came from “the new territories”—a reference to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine—or were “for use by the military.” He said volunteers delivered the equipment to Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
On battlefields from Ukraine to Sudan, Starlink provides immediate and largely secure access to the internet. Besides solving the age-old problem of effective communications between troops and their commanders, Starlink provides a way to control drones and other advanced technologies that have become a critical part of modern warfare.
https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/starlink-musk-ukraine-russia-sudan-satellite-communications-technology-f4fc79d9?st=2jq7m7rk1pvaiwz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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It's the alternatives that are fairly rare.
Granted, it's often a patriarchal form of capitalism. You, a male (or absent a male, the remaining dominant authority, albeit it female) takes whatever advantage is available and minimally compatible with your sense of morality to take care of yourself, your family, your clan, or your tribe ... sensu stricto.
You find a way of feeding your kith and kin doing something that gets others killed, oh, well.
Note how different this is from critiques of capitalism, that merely oppresses and impoverishes ... Or simply fails to adequately share wealth.
One is the poor man's (okay, "person's"
capitalism; the other is WEIRD capitalism.
