08/05/2025
Elon Musk’s fleet of 7,000 satellites, which works to provide space-based internet service to the ground, “dwarfs those of all other private companies and nation-states put together,” Ross Andersen writes. “And almost every week, Musk adds to it, flinging dozens more satellites into the sky.” https://theatln.tc/yDrmniJX
Musk first announced his intention to build a space-based internet, which he would eventually call Starlink, in January 2015. He had plans to settle Mars and maybe other interplanetary destinations, all of which would have to be connected via satellite-based communication. But space internet is already a big business on Earth: Fiber networks can’t reach every point on land, let alone airborne or seaborne vessels. More than 5 million people have already signed up for Starlink, and it is growing rapidly.
An expanded version of this system or one like it could one day overtake broadband as the internet’s backbone. Developing countries will likely want to bet that they can skip an expensive broadband build-out and go straight to satellite. “And not just for the internet: Musk recently secured permission from the FCC to offer cellphone service via Starlink too. And he’s doing all this with his current technology,” Andersen continues.
At times when the people of Myanmar and Sudan learned that the internet had been shut off by their autocratic governments, they turned to Starlink; Ukraine’s soldiers use it to communicate on the front lines. The ability to coordinate action in conflict zones has given Musk “unprecedented geopolitical leverage for a private citizen,” Andersen writes.
Global political leaders have come to understand that Starlink’s dominance will be hard to dislodge, because SpaceX is so good at making satellites and getting them to space; other companies and governments have struggled to achieve a fraction of Musk’s satellite production and launch pace.
“The space internet of the future may become the central way that we communicate with one another, as human beings. Information of every kind, including the most sensitive kinds, will flow through it,” Andersen writes. “Whoever controls it will have a great deal of power over us all.”
