Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.
Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil’s top court.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.
The move also led to the freezing of Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a “dictator.”
Brazil is a sovereign nation, the bearer of the force from which these rights derive and the one who has the power to change them. Sovereign nations very famously have the right to control their airspace by force and while none have tested it I don’t doubt they can remove satellites from their low earth orbit if they give sufficient time to remove them.
The difference between musk and Brazil is that Brazil has an Air Force in addition to just a space program.
You really, really should doubt that. If we were talking about a handful of traditional communication satellites, I’d agree with you. The US military has demonstrated the capability of shooting down a couple satellites. But for what it costs, and in the time it takes to shoot down one satellite, Starlink can launch hundreds.
The idea of forcefully downing the Starlink constellation is well beyond the collective capability of every nation on the planet. Humanity does not have the ability to take direct, forceful action against that constellation. They can simply put them up faster than the rest of us can take them down.
No, the only way Brazil could even begin to try to impact Starlink would be by attempting to jam the RF spectrum in which it operates.
Ok, but then you can get into the diplomatic capacity. An American company is subverting the sovereign capacity of Brazil. Now, this is South America so it could go either way here, but this is an area where it’s reasonable to request the host country to stop this behavior or face strained relations.
And for the “they can put them up faster than we can take them down”, that’s absolutely true if we only take them down rather than stopping them from putting them up.
There you go: he is outside Brazilian law, but Brazil can call on the US to rein him in.
Brazil does not have the capacity to stop Starlink from putting up satellites.
But also what happens in Brazil and Brazilian airspace is recognized to be within Brazilian authority. Calling their bluff they won’t shoot it down may be correct but it’s also exactly the shit that gets Americans our bad reputation