Ukraine's Starshield Slowdown Puts Spotlight on SpaceX's Near-Monopoly in Orbit

Starshield, the military version of SpaceX's Starlink used by Ukraine's armed forces, was throttled last week so that terminals moving above certain speeds could no longer reach the service. Ukrainian interceptors that counter Russian bomb-carrying drones stopped working at high speed, making it easier for Russia to strike the country's energy infrastructure. Two deaths and at least 17 injuries were reportedly the result.

The Ukrainian military said it received no advance notice. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the move as a direct message from the United States, as tensions grow between him and President Donald Trump. The sudden cutoff drew broad public criticism, aimed at Trump for abandoning Ukraine and at SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for enabling him.

The explanations have since shifted. Musk first said SpaceX has no control over Starshield and that the US military makes such decisions, while the White House denied taking action. Later reports said Musk proposed the slowdown to Trump, who accepted it, and then that Musk ordered the restrictions himself. Access has since been restored in Ukraine.

Ukraine depends heavily on US technology such as Starlink and Starshield for its defense, and access has been limited before, including in 2022, when coverage was not extended to support a counterattack in Crimea. Experts say the episode shows how much geopolitical leverage has accumulated in the hands of a single unelected executive, a result of so much of the space industry being concentrated in one company.

Wendy Whitman Cobb of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base said SpaceX effectively has a monopoly on launch. Rivals such as United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab exist, she said, but none comes close in frequency, mass, scale or cost. Space economist Oğuz Karasu of the Oxford Space Initiative said the monopoly is practical rather than legal. Launch is about 8 percent of the space industry, he said, but the rest cannot function without it.

SpaceX has built a network of more than 10,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit by launching them cheaply on Falcon 9 rockets. Andrew Reddie of the University of California, Berkeley called the situation almost an antitrust issue, since SpaceX launches support constellations SpaceX owns, leaving little incentive to launch competing ones. SpaceX has launched some Amazon Kuiper (now Leo) satellites. Whitman Cobb and Karasu said they have heard complaints that Falcon 9 prices, particularly for low Earth orbit, are rising, and Starlink prices have climbed since its 2020 beta.

The experts stressed that the stakes reach daily life through GPS and satellite communications. Whitman Cobb noted that a GPS outage could affect fuel pumps, ATMs, financial transactions and ambulance dispatch. Karasu said giving one person so much control is not good for society's future.

Even NASA and the Space Force face exposure. SpaceX is reportedly retiring the Falcon 9 and taking no new missions from 2028, leaving the Space Force struggling to find launch options for military satellites and raising questions about NASA's future access to the Crew Dragon capsule. A Falcon 9 issue in February briefly grounded the rocket and raised concerns about the Crew-12 launch. NASA continues to back Boeing's troubled Starliner and contract with companies like Rocket Lab and Blue Origin. Michele Scataglini of the Oxford Space Initiative said the market needs more competition, "otherwise it's not a market."

Reddie said the central security problem is that a non-state actor is making decisions as if it were a government, noting that this episode affected Ukraine's defensive capability. Scataglini called it a global wake-up call and warned that one firm could decide which countries get access to space, particularly in the Global South. Whitman Cobb said she is cautiously optimistic that the events will raise awareness of the risks of reliance on a single company, though it took people dying for the problem to be recognized.