10月11日，一份机密备忘录发给了乌克兰各地的军事军官，敦促他们为一场灾难做好准备。唐纳德·特朗普在本周早些时候决定放松对俄罗斯的美国制裁，并开始购买其柴油。根据白宫政策的这一转变，该备忘录预见了美国又一次背叛行为：失去对乌克兰用于操作其无人机机队的“星链”卫星网络的访问权限。
On October 11, a confidential memo went out to military officers across Ukraine, urging them to brace for a catastrophe. Donald Trump had decided earlier that week to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia and to begin buying its diesel fuel. Based on that shift in White House policy, the memo foresaw another act of American betrayal: the loss of access to the Starlink satellite network, which Ukraine uses to operate its drone fleet.
该文件警告称，“星链”的创造者埃隆·马斯克可能很快会限制在乌克兰的服务，并敦促该技术的用户“将所有‘星链’的通信替代方案保持待命状态——准备好立即使用——并制定应急计划”。两天后，这些警告开始变成现实。战区各地的“星链”出现故障，导致无人机停飞，军事行动中止。据两名熟悉该任务的人士透露，在一个案例中，这导致了乌克兰海军无人机在黑海的损失。
The document warned that Elon Musk, the creator of Starlink, might soon restrict service in Ukraine, and it urged users of the technology to “keep all communication alternatives to Starlink on standby—ready for immediate use—and develop contingency plans.”Two days later, the warnings began to come true. Starlink faltered across the war zone, grounding drones and halting military operations. In one case, it led to the loss of Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea, according to two people familiar with that mission.
这份备忘录预测事态将进一步恶化。它来自一个名为“Narodnyi Starlink”（意为“人民星链”）的非政府组织，该组织协助乌克兰武装部队获取并运用这项技术。备忘录中，该组织创始人弗拉基米尔·斯捷帕涅茨设想了马斯克可能限制服务的几种方式。最坏的情况——彻底切断服务——将引发一连串灾难，并可能导致俄罗斯在战争中获胜。一位美国高级军官告诉我们：“没有星链，战争将陷入停滞。”
The memo predicted worse to come. It came from a nongovernmental organization called Narodnyi Starlink, or “People’s Starlink,” which helps the armed forces of Ukraine acquire and operate this technology. In the memo, the group’s founder, Volodymyr Stepanets, envisioned several ways Musk could restrict service. The worst-case scenario—a total shutoff—would result in a cascade of disasters, potentially leading to Russia’s victory in the war. One senior U.S. military officer told us that “without Starlink, the war would grind to a halt.”
马斯克本人暗示这可能正是他的目标。在周末于X平台发布的一系列帖子中，他承认导致了上周的服务中断，并猛烈抨击那些呼吁增加对乌军事援助的人。“我对那些推动无休止屠杀、却拿不出任何切实解决冲突方案、只会摆姿态作秀的邪恶好战分子，只有彻底的鄙视，”马斯克写道。“愿你们下地狱。”自服务中断以来，乌克兰及其盟友一直在争分夺秒寻找星链的替代方案，星链依托全球最大的卫星星座，可在世界任何地方提供高速互联网接入。
Musk himself has suggested that might be his goal. In a series of posts on X over the weekend, he admitted to causing last week’s outages, and he lashed out at those who call for greater military aid to Ukraine. “I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict,” Musk wrote. “May you burn in hell.”Since the disruption, Ukraine and its allies have scrambled to find a replacement for Starlink, which relies on the world’s largest constellation of satellites to deliver high-speed-internet access anywhere in the world.
但目前不存在任何可比拟的替代品。乌克兰国内最有希望建立此类系统的项目，在今夏遭遇重大挫折，其架构师德米特罗·斯捷先科因疑似心衰去世，年仅46岁。欧洲复制星链的尝试距离达到其规模尚需数年，且这些努力大多依赖马斯克的航天公司SpaceX将卫星发射入轨。
But nothing comparable exists. The most promising effort in Ukraine to build such a system faced a major setback this summer, when its architect, Dmytro Stetsenko, died of apparent heart failure at the age of 46. European attempts to replicate Starlink are years away from matching its scale, and most of these efforts depend on Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, to launch their satellites into orbit.
相比之下，俄罗斯拥有自己的太空火箭船队，并正竞相部署一个能够与“星链”（Starlink）相媲美的卫星网络。乌克兰国防基金（Ukraine Defense Fund）联合创始人安德烈·利斯科维奇（Andrey Liscovich）表示，这个被称为“拉瑟韦特”（Rassvet，意为“日出”）的系统将使俄罗斯在战争中获得“非对称优势”。该基金此前已协助乌克兰军方获得了数千个“星链”终端。
Russia, by contrast, has its own fleet of space rockets, and it is racing to field a network of satellites that can rival Starlink. The system, known as Rassvet, or “Sunrise,” would give Russia an “asymmetric advantage” in the war, says Andrey Liscovich, a co-founder of the Ukraine Defense Fund, which has helped secure thousands of Starlink terminals for the Ukrainian military.
利斯科维奇对我们说：“它们的精度将足以让这些低成本的喷气动力无人机飞入乌克兰任何地方的窗户。”如果没有“星链”，乌克兰将无法做出回应。
“They will be precise enough to fly these low-cost, jet-powered drones through a window anywhere in Ukraine,” Liscovich told us. Without Starlink, Ukraine would not be able to respond.
弗拉基米尔·普京今天表示，俄罗斯就“星链”一事与马斯克保持着联系。这位俄罗斯领导人在莫斯科的一次电视转播峰会上说：“埃隆·马斯克是个天才，真的是个天才。”他称赞太空探索技术公司（SpaceX）在这项技术的开发竞赛中处于领先地位。普京在谈到俄罗斯对“星链”的回应时说：“我们才刚刚迈出第一步。我们与包括马斯克先生在内的美国同行保持着密切联系，因为在轨道上，互不干扰非常重要。”
Vladimir Putin said today that Russia has stayed in touch with Musk about Starlink. “Elon Musk is a genius, really a genius,” the Russian leader said at a televised summit in Moscow. He praised SpaceX for taking the lead in the race to develop this technology. “We are only taking the first steps,” Putin said of Russia’s answer to Starlink. “We are in close touch with our American colleagues, including Mr. Musk, because in orbit it is very important not to get in each other’s way.”
对马斯克转向反对乌克兰这一情况的记述，是基于对十多名美国和乌克兰官员、军官、“星链”无人机制造商以及专家的采访。他们中的大多数人要求匿名，以便谈论敏感的军事行动和私人谈判。自2022年战争爆发以来，其中几人曾直接与马斯克及其公司打过交道，他们目睹了马斯克对乌克兰的看法从慷慨支持转变为彻底的敌意。
This account of Musk’s turn against Ukraine is based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. and Ukrainian officials, military officers, drone manufacturers, and experts on Starlink. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive military operations and private negotiations. Several of them have dealt with Musk and his company directly since the start of the war, in 2022, and they have seen his views on Ukraine shift from generous support to outright hostility.
如果说还有什么能够阻止马斯克抛弃乌克兰，那可能就是他自己的财务利益了。他的公司从在战区运行的“星链”终端上赚取了数亿美元。利斯科维奇估计，这类终端的数量远超25万台。据报道，运营“星链”的太空探索技术公司（SpaceX）过去曾向乌克兰政府按每个终端每月2500美元的标准收费，并且在账单未付时切断了服务。
If anything can yet restrain Musk from abandoning Ukraine, it may be his own financial interests. His company has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from the Starlink terminals operating in the war zone. Liscovich estimates there are well over 250,000 of them. In the past, SpaceX, which runs Starlink, has reportedly charged the Ukrainian government $2,500 per terminal each month, and it has cut off service when bills go unpaid.
美国官员告诉我们，本月早些时候，当美国军方官员就乌克兰的网络中断问题询问太空探索技术公司时，该公司建议切换到升级版合同以恢复乌克兰的接入。（马斯克和太空探索技术公司未回应本文的置评请求。）6月，太空探索技术公司进行了历史上规模最大的首次公开募股，估值约为1.8万亿美元。“星链”的收入让太空探索技术公司的投资者感到满意，并为马斯克其他项目提供资金，包括他对殖民火星的执念。
Earlier this month, when U.S. military officials asked SpaceX about the outages in Ukraine, the company advised switching to an upgraded contract to restore Ukraine’s access, U.S. officials told us. (Musk and SpaceX did not respond to questions for this article.) In June, SpaceX held the biggest initial public offering in history, earning a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion. Revenue from Starlink keeps SpaceX investors happy and bankrolls Musk’s other projects, including his obsession with colonizing Mars.
如果他在乌克兰切断“星链”，其他国家可能会认为该服务不可靠，并加速建立替代系统的竞赛。但这些项目最早也要到明年才能准备好。在此之前，这位世界首富将在很大程度上可以自由决定乌克兰的命运。
If he pulls the plug on Starlink in Ukraine, other countries could deem the service unreliable and accelerate the race to build an alternative. But those projects will not be ready until next year at the earliest. Until then, the world’s richest man will be largely free to decide Ukraine’s fate.
战争刚爆发时，马斯克似乎急于帮助乌克兰进行自卫。俄罗斯在入侵的头几天利用导弹袭击和网络武器摧毁了乌克兰的数字基础设施。为了让这个国家保持联网，马斯克向其医院、发电厂、政府部门以及各种人道主义项目捐赠了数千个“星链”天线。
When the war began, Musk seemed eager to help Ukraine defend itself. Russia used missile strikes and cyber weapons to take down Ukraine’s digital infrastructure in the opening days of the invasion. To keep the country online, Musk donated thousands of Starlink antennas to its hospitals, power plants, government ministries, and various humanitarian causes.
不久，乌克兰军方开始使用该服务来驾驶无人机并在战区保持通信。这项服务提供了一个关键优势：俄罗斯人无法使用“星链”，也没有办法干扰其信号，这使得乌克兰的无人机能够纵横驰骋于战场，向俄军投掷炸弹。
Soon, the Ukrainian military began using the service to pilot its drones and stay connected in the war zone. The service provided a critical advantage: The Russians had no access to Starlink and no way to jam its signal, which allowed Ukraine’s drones to crisscross the battlefield, dropping bombs on Russian troops.
这些袭击的画面于2022年在网上流传，并在得克萨斯州的太空探索技术公司（SpaceX）总部引发了恐慌。“越来越多的人感到不安，”一名参与该系统开发的前太空探索技术公司工程师告诉我们。他的一些同事以辞职来抗议。他们的团队设计“星链”是为了让人们在宽带无法覆盖的地方（如徒步小径和海上的船只）获得互联网接入，而不是用来发动战争。
Images of these attacks spread online in 2022, and they caused alarm at SpaceX headquarters in Texas. “More and more people became uncomfortable,” a former SpaceX engineer who worked on the system’s development told us. Some of his colleagues left the company in protest. Their team had designed Starlink to give people internet access in places where broadband cannot reach, like hiking trails and ships at sea, not to wage a war.
马斯克也有顾虑。2022年9月，乌克兰官员要求他在黑海开启星链。他们想用它对接壤被占领的克里米亚地区附近的俄罗斯军舰发动偷袭。马斯克拒绝了。他当时对传记作者沃尔特·艾萨克森说：“星链不该卷入战争。它是为了让人们看Netflix放松、上网学习、做有益和平的事情，而不是用于无人机袭击。”
Musk also had apprehensions. In September 2022, Ukrainian officials asked him to switch on Starlink in the Black Sea. They wanted to use it in a sneak attack against Russian warships near the occupied region of Crimea. Musk refused. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” he said around that time to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
2022年底，马斯克宣布推出一项名为“星盾”的服务。该服务专供军事客户使用，费用远高于星链。就乌克兰而言，美国政府为其中大量服务付了钱，让马斯克的公司获得了一笔可观的意外之财。作为交换，五角大楼对乌克兰使用这些卫星拥有了更大的控制权。时任美国国防部副部长科林·卡尔与SpaceX谈判达成了这一安排，他后来对《纽约客》表示，这将“防止马斯克关掉开关”。
At the end of 2022, Musk announced the launch of a service called Starshield. Reserved for military clients, it costs far more to use than Starlink. In Ukraine’s case, the U.S. government has paid for a lot of that service, handing Musk’s company a sizable windfall. In exchange, the Pentagon gets more control over Ukraine’s access to the satellites. Colin Kahl, then the U.S. undersecretary of defense, negotiated this arrangement with SpaceX, and he later told The New Yorker that it would “prevent Musk from turning off the switch.”
但在大多数情况下，乌克兰军方并未转用星盾。它继续使用普通的星链天线，也就是沃尔玛和世界各地其他零售商出售的那种。其服务费用最低每月仅30美元，而星盾最高可达2.5万美元。星链用户协议中的细则禁止将其用于军事目的。但马斯克的公司并未在乌克兰执行这一规定。它维持着一种假象：星链将保留用于和平目的，而军方将依赖主要由美国纳税人买单的星盾天线。
But, for the most part, the Ukrainian military did not transition to using Starshield. It continued to use regular Starlink antennas, the kind available at Walmart and other retailers around the world. Their service costs as little as $30 a month, compared to as much as $25,000 for Starshield. The fine print in the Starlink user agreement bans its use for military purposes. But Musk’s company did not enforce that rule in Ukraine. It maintained the pretense that Starlink would be reserved for peaceful purposes, while the military would rely on Starshield antennas, largely paid for by American taxpayers.
现实却大不相同。谈到乌克兰对星链的依赖时，一位美国高级军官对我们说：“他们什么都用它。无人机、指挥控制、战场上的战术通信。”美国政府尚未披露向乌克兰提供了多少台星盾终端。
The reality was quite different. “They’re using it for everything,” the senior U.S. military officer told us of Ukrainian reliance on Starlink. “Drones, command and control, tactical communication on the battlefield.”
但乌克兰官员和专家告诉我们，它们占战区所有终端不到百分之一。其余的都是在零售市场上购买的常规星链（Starlink），其中包括波兰和德国政府为乌克兰批量购买的数千台。“官方规定，这些本应仅用于人道主义用途，”一位曾代表乌克兰与太空探索技术公司（SpaceX）谈判的人士告诉我们。“但所有人都知道它们正流向军方。”这种默许的安排将乌克兰置于危险境地。为了操作无人机机队并在战区保持在线，乌克兰武装部队别无选择，只能违反星链服务的规则。
The U.S. government has not disclosed how many Starshield terminals it has provided to Ukraine. But Ukrainian officials and experts told us that they account for less than one percent of all the terminals in the war zone. The rest are regular Starlinks purchased on the retail market, including thousands bought in bulk for Ukraine by the governments of Poland and Germany. “Officially, these were supposed to be for humanitarian use,” a person who has negotiated with SpaceX on Ukraine’s behalf told us. “But everybody knew that they are going to the military.”This wink-wink arrangement put Ukraine in a dangerous spot. To operate its drone fleet and stay online in the war zone, its armed forces had no choice but to break the rules of Starlink service. “It’s much cheaper that way, and easier to scale,” a Ukrainian official told us. The military could get as many Starlink terminals as it needed through foreign donors and the commercial market. It could attach them to drones and launch them at the Russians without thinking twice about the cost. Starshield, by contrast, is far more expensive and only available in small batches through official government channels.
“那样做便宜得多，也更容易扩大规模，”一位乌克兰官员告诉我们。军方可以通过外国捐赠者和商业市场获得所需数量的星链终端。他们可以将其安装在无人机上并向俄军发射，而无需多考虑成本。相比之下，“星盾”（Starshield）的价格要昂贵得多，而且只能通过官方政府渠道小批量获取。
This spring, the U.S. military faced a similar dilemma in the Middle East. According to a Reuters report that cited Pentagon documents, U.S. forces used Starshield to pilot their drones for strikes against Iran. When SpaceX found out, it raised the price for Starshield service in that region from roughly $5,000 per terminal per month to $25,000. The Pentagon agreed to pay.
今年春天，美军在中东也面临类似的困境。根据路透社援引五角大楼文件的报道，美军曾使用“星盾”来操纵无人机对伊朗实施打击。当太空探索技术公司发现这一点时，它将该地区“星盾”服务的价格从大约每个终端每月5,000美元提高到了25,000美元。五角大楼同意支付这笔费用。
In Ukraine, Musk could be attempting a similar upsell. By enforcing the ban on military use of Starlink, he could oblige the Ukrainian military and its foreign allies to pay much more for Starshield. Musk’s explanation for the outages this month suggest he would be fine with that approach, even though it could allow the war to continue. “Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” he wrote on X on Saturday. “That loophole was closed last week.”The statement confused a lot of Starlink clients in Ukraine. For military users, the loophole still appears to be open and the service operational. Ukraine’s defense minister announced at the end of last week that Starlink service had returned to normal in the war zone. Two military officers told us that drones equipped with Starlink terminals have resumed their flights, including strikes on Russian forces. They realize, of course, that Musk could ground them again whenever he wants, and the next outage could last much longer—as the memo from People’s Starlink forewarned.
在乌克兰，马斯克可能正在尝试类似的附加销售。通过对星链（Starlink）军事用途的禁令实施强制措施，他可能会迫使乌克兰军队及其外国盟友为“星盾”（Starshield）支付高昂得多的费用。马斯克对本月服务中断的解释表明，他完全赞同这种做法，尽管这可能会让战争继续下去。“使用星链这一民用商业服务进行进攻性无人机打击以杀害人员从未被允许，今后也不应该被允许，”他周六在X上写道。
“We have one very serious weak spot, and that’s our dependence on Starlink,” Denys Shtilerman, one of Ukraine’s most prolific drone developers, told us. “Next year we’ll address it,” he said. “Before that, America will have enormous leverage, the ability to blackmail us.”Developing a Starlink alternative could take much longer than a year, and it would be unlikely to succeed without Musk’s help.
“这个漏洞上周已被堵上。”这番言论让乌克兰的许多星链客户感到困惑。对于军事用户来说，这个漏洞似乎依然存在，服务也在正常运转。乌克兰国防部长在上周末宣布，战区内的星链服务已恢复正常。两名军官告诉我们，配备星链终端的无人机已经恢复了飞行，其中包括对俄军的打击。当然，他们意识到马斯克随时可能再次让它们停飞，下一次中断的时间可能会长得多——正如“人民星链”（People's Starlink）的备忘录所预先警告的那样。
Roughly 90 percent of all the mass delivered into orbit travels on SpaceX rockets. Even Europe’s main competitor to Starlink, a French-British project known as the OneWeb network, relies on SpaceX to launch its satellites. Last month, the parent company of OneWeb announced plans to spend a billion euros to procure 229 additional satellites by 2034. That would bring its total to around 1,000—a fraction the size of the Starlink network, which includes more than 11,000 satellites, the largest constellation by far.
“我们有一个非常严重的薄弱环节，那就是我们对星链的依赖，”乌克兰最多产的无人机开发者之一丹尼斯·什蒂勒曼告诉我们。“明年我们会解决这个问题，”他说。“在那之前，美国将拥有巨大的杠杆，拥有勒索我们的能力。”开发星链的替代方案可能需要远不止一年时间，而且如果没有马斯克的帮助，不太可能成功。送入轨道的所有质量中，大约90%都由SpaceX的火箭运送。
With the recent disruptions in Ukraine, Musk showed that he can cut off the service any time he wants. The memo from People’s Starlink described the several ways he has to do that.
即便是欧洲对标星链的主要竞争对手——一个名为OneWeb网络的英法项目——也依赖SpaceX来发射其卫星。上个月，OneWeb的母公司宣布计划斥资10亿欧元，到2034年再采购229颗卫星。这将使其总数达到约1000颗——仅为星链网络规模的一小部分，后者包括超过1.1万颗卫星，是迄今为止最大的星座。
Stepanets, its author, noted that Musk could start charging more for the use of Starshield antennas, forcing the U.S. government to pay up or cancel the service.
从乌克兰近期的中断事件中，马斯克表明他可以随时切断服务。“人民星链”的备忘录描述了他有几种方式可以做到这一点。其作者斯捷潘涅茨指出，马斯克可以提高星盾天线的使用收费，迫使美国政府付钱或取消服务。
In the most extreme case, the company could block Ukraine’s access entirely. Musk’s statements appear to countenance that. (He didn’t respond to requests for comment.) But Stepanets noted that such a move could blow up in Musk’s face. “Radical blackouts and humanitarian catastrophes make for a very bad public image,” he wrote in the memo. They would also not do much to help SpaceX’s profit margins or its stock price. Such considerations could restrain Musk’s urge to abandon Ukraine. But, either way, it will be his choice to make.
在最极端的情况下，该公司可以完全切断乌克兰的接入。马斯克的言论似乎对此表示支持。（他未回应置评请求。）但斯捷潘涅茨指出，这样的举动可能会反噬马斯克。“彻底断网和人道主义灾难会造就非常糟糕的公众形象，”他在备忘录中写道。这也不会对SpaceX的利润率或其股价有多大帮助。这些考量可能会抑制马斯克放弃乌克兰的冲动。但无论如何，这都将由他来选择。阿什利·帕克和迈克尔·谢勒对报道有贡献。
Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer contributed reporting.