Indian think tank says Starlink is a wolf in sheep’s clothing

An Indian think tank has described Starlink, a satellite internet service provider which recently entered the Zimbabwean market, as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” because its biggest customer is the American government intelligence and military.

The Kutniti Foundation,  a think tank based in New Delhi, says Starlink is an American military and intelligence tool whose dual use technology  enables it to push its own narrative and purpose to be an altruistic one, as a provider of internet for the underserved populations and regions. “However, its biggest customer and promoter is the American government intelligence and military,” Kutniti says.

“In addition, it is well known that the owner of Starlink, Elon Musk, is close to various private intelligence companies, and is a highly political exposed person in the US, including but not limited to Palantir Technologies USA, and the Trump Election 2024,” the think tank says.

Trump won the US elections two weeks ago and will be sworn in in January. He has appointed Musk to his cabinet together with Vivek Ramaswamy to run the Department of Government Efficiency.

Starlink and its parent company SpaceX got a lot of business contracts from the United States government during Trump’s first term from 2017-2021 and continued to get support from the Biden adminstration.

Starlink is planning to introduce its services to India, the world’s most populous country with an estimated 1.45 billion people. India is also the world’s fifth largest economy after the United States, China, Japan and Germany. 

In their paper entitled: The US Starlink Project and Its Implications from the Perspective of International and National Security published in the Journal of International Security Studies in September this year, Yan Jiajie and Yu Nanping say Starlink will pose new threats to the national defence and security of other countries. 

“As a low-orbit satellite internet communication system, Starlink can provide global, dead zone-free, informatized military reconnaissance and communication services to support the

operational plans of the army, navy, and air force,” they say. 

“With the space battlefield becoming an increasingly important arena of competition between major powers, core satellite internet technology can be used to threaten the strategic security of other countries and gain the upper hand in future wars.”

Citing examples, they say: “On January 3, 2020, the United States used a UAV to take out Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. 

“On November 27 of the same year, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of Iran’s nuclear program

and its chief nuclear scientist, was assassinated near Tehran. 

“These actions were made possible by the global high-speed communication and space-air coordination capabilities achieved via satellite networks. If the Starlink project is applied on a large scale in the military field in the future, it will further enhance the US military’s satellite communication and unmanned combat capabilities.”

 UAV stands for unmanned aerial vehicle.

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