Tesla supports Ukraine with powerwalls powering starlink.

[bob/lego/gamer]

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-keeps-ukranian-workers-employment-salary-russian-war/

tweet from elon

Sponsored

 

[Ogre]

This whole story is insane.

The whole idea that SpaceX could start air-dropping internet access as humanitarian aid is just bizarre. That the leaders of *multiple* countries would reach out this way to Musk during times of crisis and he would respond almost immediately with more or less instant delivery. Then follow it up with a second request for more flexible installation options for flakey power.

The cynic in my would point out how massive this is in terms of publicity for Musk/ SpaceX & Tesla, but generally it’s just awesome.

 

[JBee]

Epic is what epic does. EM is epic.

All while my McFlaface has now been shipped from Germany. Are they being made there? That might explain why they got to Ukraine that fast, it's literally one truck trip away.

 

[Crissa]

I don't think it's weird.

Ever since there's been companies, there have been requests for them to come help with their supplies.

Coors famously delivers water for disaster aid, for instance. (Or maybe I just know this because my uncle worked for them.)

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

I don't think it's weird.

Ever since there's been companies, there have been requests for them to come help with their supplies.

Coors famously delivers water for disaster aid, for instance. (Or maybe I just know this because my uncle worked for them.)

-Crissa

I think the scope of this is a bit beyond delivering water. But it’s a fair point.

 

[Crissa]

Oh, yeah, it's totally amazing.

But it's like when they first ran telegraph wires out to disaster sites. It's a sign if technology and a new step on the world.

It's going to be so harder for a belligerent to cut people off in the future. Everything will look much messier.

-Crissa

 

[flowerlandfilms]

Looks like state actors are afraid of outright war, so can't offer concrete physical assistance which would be counted as direct support. Apparently that leaves private companies and citizens in a grey area where they can help without so much backlash. That's a surprising side effect of the growing power of corporations which I had never predicted/thought about.

 

[JBee]

Probably a side effect of just how big corporations are. Tesla with 100,000 employees, plus robotics, are bigger than many governments. Let alone probably better funded, organised and motivated to be productive. There's really nothing "magical" in being a labelled a government that instantly means they are capable, it's just another management body, typically filled with people that didn't want to or couldn't make it in the private sector...sadly.

Even those that go in there to make it change are thwarted by those that don't, and a system that doesn't let them.

 

[Crissa]

It's how war has worked for a long time. The start of WWI worked like that, with private citizens and non-state actors stepping in as alliances and agreements tied the hands of the states either to or against war.

On the steamy side, George W Bush's grandfather campaigned against US involvement while supplying the German side as a profiteer. Others joined the allied force in France, that's how they got enough pilots early on.

This was more common is ships and aid, of course, as liners were employed by both sides long before they were commissioned or commandeered into the war effort. It's why that wasn't really the first world war - that happened back in the golden age of pirates and the colonial wars up and including the Spanish-American war which wasn't just in the Philippines. The US went from being generated in the wars between globe-spanning powers of England, France, and Spain to being its own imperialist force itself. As have Japan, India, and to a lesser but not less deadly output the modern wars in the Middle East.

The US famously avoided war except when it profited corporations. Companies have been involved in war as a side unto themselves since companies have existed. Like, say, the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

-Crissa

Sponsored