SciencePolicyTechElon Musk’s dangerous grip on outer spaceAs SpaceX throttles Ukraine’s Starshield, experts warn that Elon Musk’s de facto monopoly over launch and satellite tech poses a major threat to global security.by Georgina TorbetOct 23, 2026, 5:35 PM UTCShareGift Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesSciencePolicyTechElon Musk’s dangerous grip on outer spaceAs SpaceX throttles Ukraine’s Starshield, experts warn that Elon Musk’s de facto monopoly over launch and satellite tech poses a major threat to global security.by Georgina TorbetOct 23, 2026, 5:35 PM UTCShareGiftLast week, Starshield — the version of SpaceX’s Starlink used by the Ukrainian military — was throttled to block terminals traveling above certain speeds from accessing the service. The Ukrainian army’s interceptors, which counter Russian drones carrying bombs, suddenly stopped working at high speeds, making it easier for Russia to attack the country’s energy infrastructure and leading to a reported two deaths and at least 17 injuries.The Ukrainian military reported receiving no advance warning about the Starshield speed restriction. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a direct message from the US amid rising tensions between himself and President Donald Trump. The abrupt nature of the cutoff and its potentially dangerous military and humanitarian ramifications led to widespread public outcry focused both on Trump for pulling the rug out from under Ukraine and on SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for enabling him.Since then Musk and Trump have traded denials back and forth.
Musk first said that SpaceX has no control over Starshield and decisions are made by the US military, while the White House denied taking action. Then reports emerged that Musk was the one who suggested the slowdown tactic to Trump, who then accepted it, followed by a further report that Musk himself unilaterally ordered the restrictions.The finger-pointing is of little interest to Ukrainians, who are focused on trying to defend their country from a brutal ongoing Russian invasion. Zelenskyy is well aware that he is being used as a scapegoat as Trump flails around attempting to blame Ukraine for the rising oil prices caused by his unpopular war with Iran.But Ukraine needs to play nice to some extent, given how dependent it is on US technologies like Starlink/Starshield that enable it to mount a defense against Russian attacks. Starlink access has been deliberately restricted there before, including in 2022, when coverage was not extended to cover a counterattack operation in Crimea.
If Musk decided to pull the plug completely, the effect on Ukraine could be devastating.This amount of geopolitical power being wielded by an unelected tech oligarch is the direct result of consolidating so much of the space industry into just one company, and one man’s hands. And the scope of Musk’s control goes well beyond Ukraine. From the defense of nations to the ability of NASA to launch its astronauts into space, SpaceX has been irreplaceable — and that means Musk has the space industry in his grip.SpaceX’s recent IPO positions it as one of the most valuable companies in the world. And while the company has generated most of its recent revenue from its Starlink service, it made its name as a company that launches rockets into space.SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is the most successful rocket in history, and its “rideshare” program, which lets small satellite operators share space on a rocket, has dropped the price of launches to historic lows.
This has helped organizations from small startups to university research departments launch their own satellites and has been hailed as a democratizing force in the space industry.However, that success has come at a cost, which is that SpaceX now holds all the cards when it comes to access to space.“For all intents and purposes, SpaceX has a monopoly on launch right now,” said Wendy Whitman Cobb of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. “There are competitors out there,” she said, such as United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab, “but nobody comes even close to SpaceX in terms of frequency, mass, scale, cost. I mean, they’ve got everything in the bag.”Space economist Oğuz Karasu of the Oxford Space Initiative concurred. SpaceX doesn’t have a monopoly on launch in the legal sense, he said, but in practical terms it does. And that gives the company tremendous pull over the industry as a whole.“The rocket launch industry is around 8 percent of the entire [space] industry,” Karasu said, “but without that 8 percent, you can’t have the rest of it.”SpaceX, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, has a tremendous advantage in providing space-based services like satellite internet.
The company has been able to build out its network of over 10,000 Starlink satellites currently in low Earth orbit by launching them cheaply and efficiently using its Falcon 9 rockets.“This is almost like an antitrust issue,” said defense expert Andrew Reddie of the University of California, Berkeley. “The issue is that SpaceX launches support Starlink constellations that are owned by SpaceX. There is no incentive for a SpaceX launch to be used to provide constellations for other countries that would compete.”Interestingly, SpaceX has previously launched Amazon Kuiper (now Leo) satellites on a handful of missions — arguably as a preemptive defense against antitrust complaints. Or perhaps SpaceX is simply so confident in its position that it can afford to be magnanimous (or to flex a little on its rival) by launching a few competitor satellites.The downside of a monopoly, at least for the customer, is that eventually prices rise.SpaceX doesn’t share prices for its launches publicly, but both Whitman Cobb and Karasu say they’ve heard complaints that Falcon 9 launches are getting more expensive, particularly for low Earth orbit deployments. And the Starlink service has seen considerable increases in price since its beta launch in 2020.Of course, there are plenty of reasons for a company to increase its prices, from inflation to rising costs, but when a company has enormous market dominance (and now shareholders to please) there isn’t much incentive against raising prices to increase profits.If this business model sounds familiar, it’s because it’s one of Silicon Valley’s favorite and most destructive tactics.
Uber perfected the art of predatory pricing, whereby investor cash is used to artificially lower prices so that a company can corner a market and push out competition. Then, with the monopoly safely in place, the company can jack up its prices and lower the quality of its product or service, secure in the knowledge that customers no longer have any other viable alternatives.This might sound like an obscure problem, something that might make life more difficult for a few high-tech operations but has little relevance to the day-to-day lives of most people. But space infrastructure is now embedded in the mechanisms of our most essential technologies, in the form of satellite communications and GPS data.“If GPS goes down, you’re not going to be able to get gas at the gas pump, you’re not going to be able to get money out of the ATM,” said Whitman Cobb, “let alone not be able to do financial transactions or get an ambulance to the right place on time.”It’s not that space experts are realistically worried that Elon Musk is going to lose his mind and cut off Starlink access worldwide, or cause a collision that could take down GPS. It’s that the space industry is woven, unseen, into so many parts of our everyday lives that allowing one company or one person to control access to space hands them enormous power.“All of our current economic activities are based on space technologies right now,” said Karasu. “Giving this much control, or this much power, to
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