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Who Controls Starshield? The Military Satellite Network Behind Ukraine’s Drone War
In mid-October, Ukrainian drones flying faster than 100 miles per hour began losing their satellite link. Interceptors chasing Russian jet-powered Shahed drones dropped out of contact. Missions failed. Ukraine's Defence Ministry said the restriction arrived “without warning” (NPR).
The network involved is Starshield, the military version of SpaceX's Starlink internet service. Nearly a week later, nobody in Washington has publicly taken responsibility for the cap. Elon Musk says the U.S. military and the president decide its limits. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says no one at the White House ordered a slowdown. The Pentagon has said nothing on the record (NPR, Reuters).
The episode raises a question that reaches well beyond Ukraine. The United States is moving more of its spy-satellite, missile-tracking and battlefield communications work onto one privately built network. Who actually decides when that network is switched on, off or down?
The Pentagon Is Testing a Havana Syndrome Device. Its Own Spy Agencies Say There Isn’t One.
In late 2016, intelligence officers at the newly reopened U.S. embassy in Havana began reporting a strange sequence: a sudden, localized sound or a feeling of pressure, usually at night in their homes, followed by headaches, dizziness, ringing in the ears and trouble concentrating. Over the next five years similar reports came from Guangzhou, Moscow, Vienna, Berlin, Tbilisi, Hanoi, Bogotá, New Delhi and Washington itself. The government calls them anomalous health incidents. The public calls them Havana Syndrome.
Ten years on, three records sit side by side and do not agree. The medical record says the symptoms are real and often disabling, but that brain scans show no injury. The scientific record says pulsed radio-frequency energy is the most plausible external cause, but no device has ever been tied to an incident. The intelligence record is formally split: five agencies say foreign involvement is very unlikely, two dissent, and a House subcommittee says the majority finding was engineered.
Two things changed in 2026. The Pentagon has spent more than a year testing a pulsed radio-frequency device that the government bought covertly for an eight-figure sum, and in July it renamed its task force the Directed Energy Bio-Effects team and issued its first compensation payments. Meanwhile Canadian diplomats whose children fell ill in Havana are pressing Ottawa for an inquiry.