October 24, 2026
Informed sources revealed that successive administrations in the United States, during the era of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, sent repeated requests to billionaire Elon Musk to modify the Starlink satellite network services in several countries, in order to implement goals related to foreign policy and national security.
Six former senior American officials explained that these requests included turning on or stopping the service in different conflict areas; During the Biden administration, White House and Pentagon officials coordinated with SpaceX to stop service and prevent Iranian-backed groups, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, from using Starlink stations that they obtained through intermediaries.
The same sources confirmed that Washington shared intelligence information with SpaceX in this context. In October 2023, concerns were raised about the use of “Starlink” devices near the Israeli-Lebanese border, and the same thing was repeated in 2024 during the US air campaign against the Houthis, as the US administration asked the company to identify these devices and disable them, which is what actually happened with a number of them.
In return, the American administration relied on the company to support its allies. The Biden administration demanded that the service be operated to provide internet to the Ukrainian army and enhance its military capabilities. On the same level, the Trump administration asked Musk to make the service available inside Iran following the American and Israeli strikes in 2025 and 2026, with the aim of enabling anti-government protesters to access the Internet, in a move similar to what happened during the September 2022 protests that erupted following the death of the young woman Mahsa Amini, where “Starlink” devices were brought into Iran with the help of the American administration.
These developments highlight the unprecedented reliance of US governments on a private company to implement their strategic directives, at a time when the recent crisis over reducing the Ukrainian army’s access to service has raised broad questions about the nature of the sensitive relationship between Washington and Musk, whose company owns vital systems on which the US armed forces and its allies depend.
