For years, US administrations under both parties have repeatedly asked Elon Musk's SpaceX to switch its Starlink satellite internet service on or off in some of the world's most sensitive conflict zones, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing six former officials familiar with the requests.
Photo: Clemente Rivetti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
According to the Reuters report, the requests came from both the Biden administration and the Trump administration, and they ran in both directions — sometimes Washington wanted the service shut down, and sometimes it wanted the service opened up. The former officials spoke to Reuters about internal deliberations that have not previously been reported in this detail.
Under President Joe Biden, officials at times asked SpaceX to cut Starlink service that was being used by Iranian proxy militias in Yemen and Lebanon, the report said. The same administration also pressed the company in the opposite direction elsewhere, asking it to activate Starlink service inside Iran and inside Ukraine, where the satellite network became a critical communications tool after Russia's invasion disrupted conventional infrastructure.
President Donald Trump's team made its own requests, according to Reuters. After the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in 2025 and again after the strikes in 2026, Trump's team asked Musk to open Starlink service inside Iran, in the hope that satellite internet access would aid anti-government protesters challenging Tehran's leadership, the former officials told Reuters.
The report highlights how a commercial product sold by a private company has become an instrument of statecraft. Starlink terminals can deliver internet access almost anywhere on Earth without relying on local cables, cell towers or government-controlled gateways. That makes the service valuable to armies coordinating operations in war zones — and to protesters trying to communicate when their own government restricts or shuts down the domestic internet. It also means decisions about where the service works, and where it does not, carry direct military and political consequences.
Those decisions have repeatedly rested with SpaceX and with Musk personally, rather than with any elected official or treaty body, a concentration of influence that has drawn scrutiny throughout the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The Reuters report suggests that, behind the scenes, US officials of both parties treated the company's coverage map as something Washington could seek to shape — asking for service to be denied to adversaries in one theater while requesting that it be extended to friendly forces and demonstrators in another.
The episodes described by the former officials span three regions and two very different kinds of request. In Yemen and Lebanon, the service was a tool in the hands of Iranian-backed militias, and Washington wanted it gone. In Ukraine, it was a lifeline for a US partner under invasion, and Washington wanted it on. In Iran, the request tracked the politics of the moment: activation sought as a channel of support for dissent, and fresh access sought again after each round of US-Israeli strikes. In every case, the same commercial network sat at the center of American strategy — and the same private company decided whether to comply.
The report is based on accounts from six anonymous former officials and could not be independently verified. Even so, it adds significant detail to what was previously known about the quiet diplomacy surrounding Starlink — and about how deeply a single company's technology has become woven into American foreign policy.
Sources: Reuters