“Who will have the power to switch connectivity on or off when national security demands it? Will it be Starlink or its Indian partners?”
Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communications company, fought behind the scenes for months to break into India’s internet business. The market is dominated by two local giants, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which seemed united in trying to keep Starlink out.
Then, suddenly, this week each of them announced a partnership to bring Starlink into India, pending the government’s approval….
India’s business and political leaders have held a flurry of closed-door meetings with Mr. Trump’s inner circle. Mr. Ambani attended one of Mr. Trump’s inauguration parties in January, and Mr. Modi was photographed having a chummy meeting with Mr. Musk in Washington last month. India’s commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, spent last week in Washington, and Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, is due in New Delhi next week.
As Mr. Musk stands side by side with President Trump, trying to aggressively shrink the government of the United States, his business dealings around the world have become even more prominent. In India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to placate Mr. Trump to avoid tariffs, Mr. Musk’s long struggle to crack the market for his car company, Tesla, has attracted a lot of attention. But Starlink could be a bigger prize….
Others worry about different kinds of vulnerability, such as Mr. Musk’s ability to use Starlink as an instrument of geopolitics. Starlink’s services have been restricted multiple times in Ukraine during the war there….
Last week, Mr. Musk had an ill-tempered exchange on social media with Poland’s foreign minister, who said that if Starlink proved an “unreliable provider” in Ukraine, the country’s allies would look for other suppliers. Mr. Musk responded sharply — “Be quiet, small man” — and added that he would never switch off its services in Ukraine, because “without Starlink, the Ukrainian lines would collapse.”
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