Trump denies role as WSJ says Musk ordered Starlink cap

Elon Musk personally ordered the speed cap on Starshield, the military version of SpaceX's Starlink network that Ukraine relies on. The Wall Street Journal reported this on Tuesday, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter. The newspaper said the move "triggered alarm in Kyiv and bewilderment within the Trump administration." It also said the cap effectively crippled some Ukrainian attack and interceptor drones.wsj.com

The report deepens a week-long dispute over who is responsible. Musk, President Donald Trump and the Pentagon have each pointed elsewhere, and Ukraine says its access is still limited.

Conflicting Accounts

According to the Journal's sources, Musk and Trump discussed the decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public. One source said Musk also raised the issue with several senior officials, Trump among them, before he imposed the cap, CNBC reported. The Journal said it could not verify whether Trump knew about the order in advance, Stars and Stripes noted. CBS News gave a different picture. Its sources said Musk made the decision and that it surprised some administration officials, who said neither Trump nor the Pentagon had ordered limits on drone operations. Reuters had earlier reported that the order came from inside the White House.reuters.com+3

On Wednesday, Trump again said he had nothing to do with the slowdown and did not know who ordered it. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters, "We haven't pulled anything back… We haven't made any directives or anything like that." He added that Starlink has "terms of service" that allow it to make such decisions, CBS reported. Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said on Fox News on Wednesday that SpaceX is "a private company" and that the issue was "more of a dispute" over its terms of use, Mediaite reported.cbsnews.com+2

Those statements clash with what Musk said earlier. Last week he posted on X that Starshield is "owned and controlled by the US government" and that "any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS," The Independent reported.independent.co.uk

Battlefield Impact and Fallout

Ukrainian troops started having trouble with Starshield equipment around October 13 and 14, according to CBS. Serhii Beskrestnov, a defense technology adviser to Zelenskyy, reported the restrictions on October 14. Zelenskyy said a cap of about 100 miles per hour made terminals shut down. Interceptor drones chasing Russian jet-powered Shahed drones then crashed. On Wednesday he said access was "still limited," Stars and Stripes reported.stripes.com+2

In Congress, Democratic Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Betty McCollum wrote to Hegseth asking for an investigation and a report within 30 days. One lawmaker warned that if Musk issued the order, "that is likely a violation of law," Stars and Stripes reported. A White House official kept to the administration's line: "We didn't slow down Starlink at all, and the service is currently operational."stripes.com