Is Starlink Authoritarian-Proof?

New America Senior Policy Analyst Gordon LaForge spoke with Fast Company about if Starlink can hold up as a tool for free expression in the face of authoritarian regimes and Elon Musk's individual priorities.

“The fundamental issue is that the interests of Elon Musk are not the interests of the United States,” Gordon LaForge, a researcher at the think tank New America, tells Fast Company. “Sometimes they might be in alignment, but sometimes they won’t be.”

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“Take Ukraine, where Starlink is indispensable to the Ukrainian military,” Gordon LaForge, a senior policy analyst at the liberal think tank New America, tells Fast Company. “When Musk threatened to withdraw Starlink, the Pentagon stepped in to pay for the service. And of course Musk personally attains a level of direct geopolitical influence that few other individual businesspersons or private citizens of any sort can achieve.” 

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And while Musk has fashioned himself a free speech advocate, he has, in the past, taken steps to silence critics on his social media platform, X.  Like many other leaders, he also has business ties in some authoritarian countries, places operating open platforms won’t always necessarily suit his business interests. “When an essential technological instrument of U.S. policy is in the hands of a private individual—and a mercurial one at that,” explains LaForge, “it increases the risk of policy capture and outcomes that are not in the public interest.”