Odd Lind

India said NO to Starlink. Musk thought he could throw a public tantrum and bully India into handing him a telecom monopoly, but he completely miscalculated. Thanks to Trump’s reckless betrayal of global allies and cozying up to dictators, the world is waking up to a terrifying truth: you simply cannot trust America—or its arrogant billionaires—with your national security anymore. Fareed Zakaria: “Elon Musk picked the wrong moment to lecture Indians. Frustrated that Starlink had not been cleared to launch in that country, he accused the government of protecting Mukesh Ambani whose telecom network Jio will launch its own satellite service. Musk cast himself as the champion of ordinary Indians against one of the country's richest men. It backfired. India's government dismissed his accusation as baseless. An influential nationalist group close to the ruling party went further demanding that Starlink be kept out of India altogether citing national security. Media and online reactions were similarly hostile to Starlink. Musk did not understand that in India as in much of the world, trust in America is collapsing. Indians have watched as Donald Trump has discarded 25 years of bipartisan outreach to New Delhi in favor of cozying up to Pakistan and its de facto dictator Field Marshal Asim Munir. They have watched Trump essentially abandon Ukraine, where the military version of Starlink has been suspiciously restricted, thus crippling Ukraine's military response to Russian aggression. Would India define itself in another crisis with Pakistan? Would it want its armed forces to be utterly dependent on a US satellite system controlled by Trump?”