The black market dealers delivering Elon Musk's Starlink to US adversaries

Release time：2024-05-21 07:18:38 Source：World Watch news portal

A shadow network of black market dealers, some in the United Arab Emirates, has been selling SpaceX Starlink kits to Sudanese rebels and Russian forces in Ukraine.

The underground trade of these Elon Musk-manufactured satellite dishes, which provide access to low earth orbit (LEO) broadband internet, has empowered American enemies abroad — according to members of US Congress, Ukrainian intelligence, and a spate of new investigative reports.

Contraband Starlink internet has helped militants operate spy drones and coordinate attacks everywhere from the civil wars in Yemen and Sudan, to the Russian-occupied regions of eastern Ukraine, like Donetsk and Crimea.

In north Africa, paramilitaries allied with the Russian-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan have ordered hundreds of Starlink terminals, according to third party sellers and Sudanese military officials.

The new reports corroborate claims made by Ukraine's intelligence chief Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov last February, who said Russian troops have secretly pirated Starlink systems 'for quite a long time.'

Some industry experts believe Musk should be able to shut down the smuggled Starlink kits, but his SpaceX has been unresponsive to their pleas, officials said.

Ukraine's military intelligence chief alleged this February that Russian troops in Ukraine are using thousands of Starlink satellite communications terminals. Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov said Russian troops have been communicating over Starlink 'for quite a long time'

Low-level 'e-commerce' websites, with names like strlnk.ru and shopozz.ru, have been linked to the sales, acquiring Starlink kits as third party resellers to evade sanctions, according to one new report out today from the Wall Street Journal.

Many of these Russian dealers don't hide their sale of the hardware, posting the notices instead as embedded eBay listings, sometimes linking directly to US citizens selling their old Starlink terminals.

Technically, Starlink customers are forbidden from reselling access without authorization from the company, according to a user agreement available on Starlink's website. 

The SpaceX subsidiary, which owns and operates a worldwide constellation of about 5,400 LEO satellites, has said it reserves the right to terminate service to any illicitly acquired and misused terminals, but has failed to do so in practice. 

The Musk-owned company is itself barred from selling Starlink terminals by both Russia and China, due to SpaceX's role in the US defense sector, including a rumored new spy satellite project, first made public by Reuters last month.

And US-imposed sanctions also forbid Starlink sales in a number of countries, including Venezuela, although a robust illicit trade in the company's mobile internet terminals exists there also, according to Bloomberg.

Russia already has several space-based military assets. These include co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, direct-ascent ASAT missiles, and Starlink communication satellites it has obtained for its war on Ukraine. But early in the Ukraine conflict its coverage there was limited 

'What's driving Starlink use is this need to have secure communications,' said national security expert Thomas Withington of London's Royal United Services Institute, 'from the tactical edge of operations to the headquarters.' 

In the early phases of Russia's invasion of Ukraine — according to Withington — Putin's forces first attempted, but failed, to scale up their own local satellite network.

'In principle, Russia is already practically blind in orbit,' Bart Hendrix, a Brussels-based expert on Russia's space activities, told Radio Free Europe.

With limited satellite coverage of their own over Ukraine, including a likely defunct system called Condor launched in 2014, Russian troops spent the early days of the conflict resorting to radio channels vulnerable to jamming and eavesdropping.

'As a result, they just started talking to each other less,' Withington explained.

Last month, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Robert Garcia of California sent a letter to SpaceX demanding that the company improve its monitoring of the illegal trade in Starlink terminals, particularly in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

'We are concerned that you may not have appropriate guardrails and policies in place,' Raskin and Garcia wrote in their letter, obtained by the Washington Post. 

Above, a Russian military blogger supporting the Russian invasion showing off Starlink terminal unboxing

Recent investigations have uncovered fresh details that Sudanese rebels backed by the Russian mercenary Wagner Group have also benefitted from the black market Starlink terminals.

Sudan's government has been fighting with the rebel group, which US has accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, since April of last year.

Early in the conflict, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known to have strong ties to Russia's Wagner Group, was alleged to have cut a military support deal with the Moscow-linked mercenary firm in exchange for access to Sudanese gold mines.

Ukrainian forces are now operating in Sudan too, making the nation a proxy front in the West's conflict with Russia. 

Sudanese officials said Starlink's portable internet access has not only helped rebels coordinate their attacks, but also serves as a recruitment tool amid a conflict that has seen both sides knock out their opponent's internet and telecommunications.

SpaceX, according to Sudan's government, has ignored their pleas for help regulating the contraband Starlink connections, although the company has vowed to reduce its misuse in global warzones.

SpaceX, according to Sudan's government, has ignored their pleas for help regulating the contraband Starlink connections, although the company has vowed to reduce its misuse in global warzones (above) 

Although SpaceX's contract to provide LEO broadband internet over Ukraine came via Pentagon-derived aid to the country, neither SpaceX or the US military has disclosed whether they are coordinating tp indentify bad actors on Starlink. Above, a Starlink terminal in Ukraine 

'If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,' the company posted to X in February, as Ukrainian intelligence officials began publicly discussing the issue.

'SpaceX does not do business of any kind with the Russian Government or its military,' its Starlink subsidiary said.

But the following month, the Ukrainian defense ministry's Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) released intercepted audio of what it said was one Russian soldier offering to buy Starlink equipment from an Arab provider for 200,000 roubles ($2,200 USD) apiece.

'The Arabs bring everything to us: wires, wi-fi, routers,' the soldier can be heard explaining to another Russian serviceman. 'So, I'll order it, yes?'

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As with the Sudanese contraband Starlink, Musk and SpaceX have not moved to quickly police who is using their network.

'There needs to be more accountability,' Candace Johnson, director at Montreal-based NorthStar Earth & Space Inc., said of after these reports, 'to your country, to your company, to your shareholders, to your stakeholders.'

Johnson, whose company operates satellites designed to identify and track objects in space, said SpaceX should be able to deactivate any enemy-operated Starlink's given that 'basically every single transmitter can be identified.'

But, other cyber security experts believe that it would be challenging for the company to identify contraband Starlink terminals in conflict zones like eastern Ukraine or war-torn Sudan.

Clayton Swope, a fellow at the Washington DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has suggested that a preemptive approach by Starlink, with an 'allow list,' would be easier for the company to police than retroactively hunting down bad actors who have snuck onto their network. 

Although SpaceX's contract to provide LEO broadband internet over Ukraine came via Pentagon-derived aid to the country, neither SpaceX or the US military has disclosed whether they are coordinating tp indentify bad actors on Starlink.

Moscow, for its part, has pled ignorance on the issue, denying any formal involvement with any of the Starlink terminals. 

'This [Starlink] is not a certified system with us,' Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. 

'Accordingly, it cannot be officially supplied here and is not officially supplied.' 

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