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Is There Any Way To Rein In The Power Of Big Tech?

A new biography of the Tesla, X (formerly Twitter) and Space X boss reveals that Elon Musk prevented the Ukrainian army from attacking the Russian fleet in Crimea last year, by limiting the beam of his Starlink satellites. Unchecked power is a problem.

Black-and-white portrait of Elon Musk, with lines of code in the background

AI-generated portrait of Elon Musk

Worldcrunch
Pierre Haski

This article was updated Sept. 14, 2023 at 12:20 p.m

-OpEd-

PARIS — Nothing Elon Musk does leaves us indifferent. The billionaire is often admired for his audacity, and regularly criticized for his attitude and some of his decisions.

A biography of the founder and CEO of Tesla and Space X, came out today in the United States — 688 pages published by Simon & Schuster and written by William Isaacson (the renowned biographer of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein).

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One revelation from this book is making headlines, and it's a big one. Elon Musk — brace yourselves — prevented the Ukrainian army from destroying the Russian Black Sea fleet last year.

A bit of context: Starlink, the communications and internet satellite constellation owned by Musk, initially enabled Ukraine to escape Russian blackout attempts.

But when the Ukrainian army decided to send naval drones to destroy Russian ships anchored in Crimea, it found that the signal was blocked. And Starlink refused to extend it to Crimea, because, according to Issacson, Musk feared it would trigger World War III.

It's dizzying, and raises serious questions.


A geopolitical actor

First, the question of responsibility — where does Elon Musk get the legitimacy to decide what the Ukrainian army can and cannot do? He has the technology, which makes him a participant, but does he have the right to decide how a war should be fought? Isaacson doesn't say whether this decision was coordinated with the U.S. administration, which should be noted.

He has neither the rights or responsibilities of state actors.

This is the first time that a private contractor has had so much influence. As cyber-power specialist Asma Mhalla points out, Musk has become, whether we like it or not, a "geopolitical actor."

But he has neither the rights or responsibilities of state actors in conflicts, nor the freedom of non-governmental organizations. Starlink, or any other brand in the Musk universe, has its own interests.

Taiwan, for example, is scrutinizing the war in Ukraine to prepare for a possible Chinese invasion. Taiwan has also realized that Starlink is not to be counted on because Tesla, Musk's other brand, has a strong presence in China. The entrepreneur will do nothing that could displease Beijing.

Photo of \u200bSpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 53 Starlink internet satellites

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 53 Starlink internet satellites

Gene Blevins/ZUMA

A brilliant mind

So how do we deal with such a figure? It's uncharted territory.

On Wednesday, Musk and other tech heavyweights, like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai, met with U.S. lawmakers behind closed doors to discuss artificial intelligence — another subject of keen interest for the business magnate. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Musk said there was "overwhelming consensus" over the need for a regulator to ensure the safe use of AI.

Elon Musk does as he pleases, as we can see from the irresponsible way in which he manages the social network X, previously known as Twitter, even though it continues to be a crucial way for information in the world to circulate.

After following Musk for two years, Isaacson asks two hard-hitting questions about the 58-year-old's whimsical personality. To be truly innovative, must one be half-mad , or even a genius? And how do you stop such a brilliant mind from spiraling out of control?

The considerable power accumulated by Musk, but also by other tech giants, perhaps less flamboyant, is such that it must be taken into account by governments around the world: And so until further notice, they remain the only legitimate source of governance. The question is whether it may already be too late.

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Green

Longyearbyen Postcard: World's Northernmost Town Facing Climate Change — And Russia

The melting of the sea ice in the Far North has accelerated in recent years. The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard has become the focal point of the environmental drama gripping the Arctic as well as the geopolitical tensions it is causing there, with Russia in particular.

A statue of a coal miner stands in the center of the photos with houses surronding it, draped around their shoudler is a Ukrainian flag. The environment is snowy and the sky is white from clouds.

A Ukraine flag placed on a statue of a coal miner in the center of Longyearbyen

Steffen Trumpf/dpa/ZUMA
Laura Berny

LONGYEARBYEN — The Longyearbreen glacier, which once unfurled to the sea, is now a shadow of its former self. Only the name of Longyearbyen’s Isfjorden now conveys the idea of something frozen.

“Last January, during the polar winter, the temperature was between 0 and 5 °C. When I went for a walk by the fjord, I could hear the waves. This was not the case before at this time of year,” says Heidi Sevestre. The French glaciologist fell in love with Svalbard as a student, so much so that she now lives here for part of the year.

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Compared to Siberia, Canada’s and Greenland’s High North – the Arctic archipelago, located just over a thousand kilometers from the North Pole – has historically benefited from a slightly more benign climate despite its extreme latitude. Temperatures here range between 5 °C and 15 °C in summer and usually not below -30 °C in the coldest of winter. This relatively “mild" weather has its origin in the Gulf Stream — the marine current which rises up from the Caribbean and runs along the west coast of Svalbard.

But the situation has now changed.

“There has been a lot of talk about the rise in atmospheric temperature for at least 20 years. But in the past three years, ocean temperatures have also risen significantly. This is what is causing the increasingly rapid retreat of the ice pack,” explains Jean-Charles Gallet, a glaciologist who has worked at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) since 2010.

“The sea ice acts like an air conditioner for the ocean, so the more it decreases, the more the ocean warms up. This causes a chain reaction which ends up accelerating the warming process,” adds Eero Rinne, a Finnish specialist on the topic and a researcher at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). Rinne is working on the CRISTAL sea ice satellite mission, slated to go live in 2028 as part of the European Space Agency’s Copernicus program.

Beyond the alarming disappearance of glaciers and ice packs and the threat to polar bears (of which there are still around 300 in the archipelago), global warming is also causing cracks in the infrastructure of the territory, which is covered by permafrost. Landslides are increasingly frequent, and all recently constructed buildings in the region are on stilts.

“It used to rain very little in Svalbard, but now it is getting wetter and wetter, which is weakening the soil,” explains Hanne Hvidtfeldt Christiansen, a Danish-Norwegian scientist and specialist on permafrost at UNIS.

Norwegians kept a low profile about Svalbard's growing crisis, until 2017. That was the year when the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was flooded, less than 10 years after its foundation. The facility, dug near a mine in Longyearbyen, the capital of the archipelago, was built to preserve more than a million seeds from a possible cataclysm. The disaster didn’t affect the seeds but left a scar in people’s minds. Even this close to the pole, permafrost is thawing.

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