Starlink: Elon Musk's Most Powerful — and Controversial — Asset

Starlink has quietly become the most strategically important piece of Elon Musk's sprawling business empire. The satellite internet service now serves 13 million users across more than 167 countries, generated over 60% of SpaceX's $18.6 billion in revenue last year, and was the only division of SpaceX to actually turn a profit. Musk has framed the service's future in sweeping terms — predicting it could carry the majority of the world's internet traffic within a decade and serve as the connectivity backbone for fleets of robotaxis and humanoid robots. Tesla has already begun installing Starlink dishes in its Cybercab robotaxis.

The service's dominance is partly a function of SpaceX's near-monopoly on rocket launches. The company launched its Falcon 9 rocket 165 times last year — more than the rest of the world combined — giving it a structural cost advantage over rivals like Jeff Bezos' Amazon Project Kuiper (now Leo), whose first 24 satellites ironically launched on a SpaceX rocket. SpaceX has now submitted proposals to launch 100,000 next-generation V3 Starlink satellites, which are large enough to require the company's massive Starship rocket. SpaceX's share of global orbital launches stands near 80% in 2025, a market dominance that one Cambridge academic compares — unfavorably — to the East India Company at its imperial peak.

Nowhere is Starlink's geopolitical weight more viscerally felt than in Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has integrated Starlink as a core communications system — unjammable by Russian radio warfare, capable of guiding drone strikes with high-definition video nearly to the moment of impact. But that battlefield advantage comes with a disturbing dependency. Musk has previously refused to activate Starlink over Crimea to avoid what he called direct complicity in a major act of war, and Reuters reported he cut frontline access during a 2022 counteroffensive. More recently, he helped Ukraine by cutting off Russian forces' illicit Starlink use after a direct appeal from Ukraine's defense minister — a move that reportedly allowed Ukrainian forces to retake territory. A Ukrainian drone sergeant put the dilemma plainly: military systems cannot rely on something unpredictable, but there is currently no alternative.

Beyond Ukraine, the same tension is playing out globally. Taiwan recently changed foreign ownership rules that had blocked Starlink negotiations, eyeing the service as a critical backup if China severs undersea cables in a conflict scenario — but researchers there worry about Musk's extensive business ties to China (Tesla's Shanghai factory accounts for roughly a fifth of the automaker's revenue) and his past comments describing Taiwan as an integral part of China. Analysts warn any Starlink deal would need to carefully limit Musk's unilateral control over activation and coverage decisions. SpaceX has also used Starlink tactically at home — offering 50% discounts to residents near its Memphis data centers and Louisiana spaceport to soften opposition to those projects.

The path to Musk's grander ambitions faces real technical and economic friction. Analysts note that low-earth orbit satellites excel at reaching remote areas but struggle with dense urban markets, where they spend only a fraction of their orbit time overhead. Space economist Pierre Lionnet estimates that a 100,000-satellite network would be unprofitable at current launch costs. The economics only work if Starship dramatically reduces those costs — SpaceX executives project a tenfold reduction compared to Falcon 9. In the meantime, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has signaled an aggressive push into mobile carrier territory, targeting AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile directly. Starlink in-flight WiFi, now offered by more than 40 airlines, has already become a competitive differentiator — United Airlines is using it to poach Delta flyers, while some passengers are reportedly booking longer connecting flights just to get Starlink access in the air.