Starlink, Palantir and cloud companies | New power for saboteurs on all sides

The new Amazon location in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Iran responded to attacks by Israel and the USA that violated international law with successful drone attacks on the company's data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. Photo: dpa/Fabian Sommer In Ukraine, the satellite connections of the Starlink system, which is important for air defense, were throttled this week. Defense drones could therefore no longer reach the new Russian jet drones. According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company operates Starlink, is said to have personally ordered the restrictions. Musk, on the other hand, referred to the US government, which President Donald Trump in turn denies. As early as 2022, Musk had prevented the use of Starlink for a Ukrainian attack with sea drones on the Russian Black Sea Fleet off Sevastopol.

The events show how dependent armies are today on the decisions of private technology companies and their sometimes erratic owners. That's why this week the US company Palantir felt compelled to distance itself from such sabotage of military operations. There is no "kill switch" for its military applications, explained Europe boss Louis Mosley, referring to the reports about Musk's Starlink. It's about Palantir's AI system "Maven", which combines data from satellites, radars and other sensors to form a military situation picture and is intended to accelerate human decisions using calculated forecasts. NATO is already using the system. Germany, France and countries like Switzerland have so far refrained from introducing it to the military, also to avoid becoming dependent on a US provider.

Cloud providers also play a key role in today's battlefields. For example, Israel uses digital infrastructure and applications from Amazon, Microsoft and Google for its software-based warfare in Gaza. The three US companies control around two thirds of the global cloud market. How vulnerable their infrastructure is became clear in the spring: Israel and the USA responded to the attacks on Iran, which violated international law, by firing drones at Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The cloud services were then severely impaired and some data was even lost. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was running on the servers, which reportedly accounts for half of the parent company's profits - which are likely to have been significantly reduced after the Iranian counterattack.

Even if Palantir denies it: The market power of the IT giants enables extensive security policy influence on governments worldwide by either withholding, offering or withdrawing services from US companies. It is therefore logical when anti-militarist left-wing groups like “Ende Gelaender” direct their protest against “Big Tech” and its digital infrastructure: whoever controls it also controls the war these days. And anyone who wants to fight against these global developments now has more and more data centers - including the necessary new gas power plants - on their doorstep.

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