How Ukraine's digital lifeline came to be controlled by one man.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lili Jamalite.

Here on Earth, the satellites that make up star length look like a string of stars traveling

across the night sky.

More than 4,000 of them are circling the Earth in low orbit right now.

They're part of the private venture that's the brainchild of billionaire and SpaceX founder

Elon Musk.

Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk sent starling terminals there so Ukraine

could stay connected to the internet.

But it turns out Musk controls both the on and the off switch on that technology, giving

him an outsized role in the conflict.

That's according to Stephen Feltstein, a pecanology endowment for international peace.

He's out with the story in the Atlantic on how that happened and what can be done about

it.

One thing Elon Musk was able to do was he was able to get a lot of these lower orbiting

satellites up into space very quickly because of the twinning with SpaceX rockets.

What we also know is that the more satellites you have in place, the better your connectivity

is when it comes to having greater bandwidth and lower latency for access.

The more that Elon Musk is able to do that, the more he is able to shoot up hundreds of

starling satellites every month, the greater the advantage that starling has over any potential

competitor.

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