Can he not?
All's Fair
SpaceX Elon Musk apparently has never learned to think before he tweets, even since buying the entirety of Twitter, as most recently evidenced by his bizarre assertion that one of his companies could potentially be responsible for a third world war.
Musk's strange comments came during a minor spat with ex-astronaut Scott Kelly. To be fair, Kelly had been beefing with the multi-hyphenate entrepreneur about his Starlink internet service in Ukraine, to which Musk curtailed the Ukrainian military's access last week.
"Ukraine desperately needs your continued support," Kelly, a staunch Ukraine advocate and regular Musk critic, tweeted on Saturday. "Please restore the full functionality of your Starlink satellites. Defense from a genocidal invasion is not an offensive capability. It’s survival. Innocent lives will be lost. You can help."
Taking His Time
Nearly a full day after the celebrated astronaut's plea, Musk finally responded — though what he said was about as murky as if he'd just left it alone.
"You’re smart enough not to swallow and other propaganda [bullshit]," the Twitter owner responded. "Starlink is the communication backbone of Ukraine, especially at the front lines, where almost all other Internet connectivity has been destroyed."
Here's where it gets weird: Musk also appeared to suggest that if Starlink continued to supply internet to Ukraine, that country's military would use it to turn the heat up on its resistance to Russia, which has led its land-grab offensive there for a year now — and could ultimately result in a world war.
"We will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3," he concluded.
Twitter Fingers
Though he did not initially tag Kelly, Musk appeared to subtweet the ex-astronaut hours before actually responding him when he tweeted that he found it "amazing" that "some of the smartest people I know actively believe the press."
This is far from the first time the South African-Canadian billionaire has expressed opinions that are strikingly convenient for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Once again, in other words, the guy whose politics often boil down to half-baked Martian utopianism peppered with stupid memes is wading into wartime geopolitics — and once again, his commentary is far from welcome.
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