Last year, South African billionaire Elon Musk prevented a Ukrainian attack on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol by secretly disabling the Starlink Internet system on the coast of Crimea, CNN reports.

The information is contained in Musk’s biographical book, written by American journalist and writer Walter Isaacson in collaboration with the billionaire. The book, simply titled Elon Musk, is due to hit bookstores later in September, and CNN reporters will receive a copy.

In the book, Isaacson notes that in 2022, Musk secretly ordered his engineers to shut down the Starlink satellite communications network off the coast of Crimea to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet in Sevastopol using naval drones.

According to the journalist, Ukrainian drones loaded with explosives “came close to the Russian fleet”, but then “landed harmlessly on the shore”. By the way, last September on the coast of Sevastopol, Russian passers-by discovered a marine drone of unknown origin.

This caused confusion, as Ukraine was not known at the time to have developed indigenous naval drones, and no such attack against Russian naval forces had been recorded until then.

While it’s unclear whether the drone was part of the attack described by Isaacson in the book, photos of it released by Russians on social media showed it washed ashore unharmed, according to an account by an American journalist.

Elon Musk feared that the attack on Sevastopol would be like Pearl Harbor for Russia

Isaacson writes that Musk’s decision was motivated by fear of Russian retaliation, with the billionaire believing that Moscow might view the attack as a “mini Pearl Harbor.”

It is reported that the head of SpaceX spoke with Russian officials and after these conversations was sure that Russia could use nuclear weapons in such a situation. The biography quotes the billionaire as saying that the satellite network is not designed for conflict.

“Starlink was created so people could watch Netflix, relax, go online at school and do peaceful things, not drone attacks,” the book says.

By the way, in February of this year, SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace company, announced that it had banned Kyiv from using the Starlink system for military operations, a move strongly criticized by Ukraine, as the satellite internet system was vital to the military, especially in the early months of the war.

But SpaceX dropped its objections a few months after the Pentagon agreed to pay for Ukraine to use the service, as Musk requested back in October 2022.

CNN notes that Musk declined to comment on the situation.

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