Defence expert: 'Trump likely sabotaged Starlink'

Well, I'm joined by Dr. Thomas Withington, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, known as RUSI, specialising in electronic warfare, radar and military communications. It's probably good afternoon to you, first of all. It's probably worth starting, isn't it, by talking about what Starlink and Starshield are. So Starlink is is the sort of civilian level use of satellite. But tell us more about it and then Starshield. Well, good afternoon, Sheila. It's great to be with you today. So Starlink and Starshield, what are they? well imagine um your smartphone um my smartphone we all use and we all rely on them and what we get with our smartphones is we get an incredible level of connectivity so we get a very wide pipe through which a lot of data and a lot of things can flow from our phones uh to the outside world and vice versa except when we we use that phone we need to have a cell phone tower or something like that nearby now imagine you've got that same level of connectivity all those wonderful things that you can do but you're using a satellite as the means of carrying that signal so what that means effectively what Starlink and Starshield allows you to do is move a huge amount of data a huge amount of information across very long distances without much degradation to the service so it's an incredibly capable system Starshield is the militarized version of it so what that means in principle is it has a level of encryption that has like a military grade of encryption So it's very difficult to either intercept that traffic or to jam that traffic. And Starlink, as you mentioned in your question, it's like the civilian version, which is still encrypted, but not to the same kind of level of intensity, one could say. So in battlefield and battle conditions, whether that be an attempt to stop missiles coming into Kiev or battle conditions on the eastern border between Ukraine and Russia, Starshield is a major advantage to whoever has use of it. It is indeed. Yes, it's a highly capable system. It is very secure. That's one of the key attributes that it has, as well as being able to carry a lot of traffic. So within the Ukrainian theater of operations, it has become absolutely essential, really. Starlink doesn't operate over Russia at the moment because Mr. Musk made it unavailable to Russia earlier on this year, but certainly is active over large parts of Ukraine. It's proven very useful indeed, not just to the Ukrainian military, but to Ukrainian civilians as well. And the bottom line is, isn't it, that the ability is that both really, but certainly Starshield in a very particular way, as you've described, gives Ukraine the ability to see what's coming and therefore the ability to protect people from what's coming. It does. But I would argue that the key thing that it does actually is it provides you with the connectivity you need to effectively know what's going on on the battlefield. So because you can move a lot of data across Starlink and Starshield, that translates into information and information is knowledge on the battlefield. And when you say data, do you mean do you mean communications rather than missions? It's a really good question that, yeah, data is everything from video pictures, still pictures, a conversation like you and I are having, written information, you name it. If you can turn it into zeros and ones, it becomes data and you can move it with Starlink. Now, what this means for the commander on the ground is that they get an unprecedented idea of basically what is going on. And by having the richness of information, hopefully this allows you to take better decisions quicker than the bad folks. So the Russians in this case. And am I right in saying that Starshield, the military grade version, was designed for the Pentagon? Correct. Yes, it was a United States Department of Defense initiative. the US DOD became very interested in what Starlink could do for understandable reasons but this militarized version sort of adds that level of security to the system so it can be used on a battlefield so sorry to get Miss Marple on you but if Star Shield suddenly slows down that's less likely to be Elon Musk's activities and more likely to be Pentagon on White House activities I'm delighted you mentioned Miss Marple this has never happened in an interview with me before but you're absolutely right yes i mean effectively the Pentagon has ownership over Starshield so how it decides to use it is largely up to the department of defense but you're absolutely right yes i'm straying a little from your expertise here but if Donald Trump gave the order Reuters are reporting that the order to slow down Starshield came from inside the White House. If that's the case, then that is a very deliberate attempt to weaken Ukraine's position in this war. And that is a very serious moment, isn't it, in this war between NATO, of which the US is clearly a leading partner, and him and the rest of NATO, him and Ukraine, NATO and Ukraine. How many more moments like this can that alliance take, do you think? It's an excellent question. I think what we've seen since the second Trump administration is a seesawing of that administration's position regarding backing Ukraine. Which I thought West Street sounded rather relaxed about in that clip we played, didn't they? Oh, they've fallen out a couple of times before. Well, I think what's interesting with this is that knowing the Ukrainians, I've been privileged to visit the country several times and see Ukrainian defence innovation in action. What we will see is the Ukrainians will eventually develop a workaround of some sort for Starlink and Starshield. Now, it probably won't be a single technology, but it will be an amalgamation of other communication systems that are developed in Ukraine that are provided by European allies that will make good that shortfall. Because each time this happens, you see a Ukrainian reaction. Patriot missiles, for instance, very important for ballistic missile interception in Ukraine. We see the supplies diminishing and immediately there is a Ukrainian bid to develop something domestically that can do that task. And we'll see that happening again. Which Britain is helping it with, isn't it? With design? Correct. Yes, absolutely. And each time we see one of these sort of diplomatic maneuverings from the Trump administration, we do see a corresponding reaction to degrade the effectiveness of that maneuvering from the Ukrainian government. And I think that dynamic will just continue. It struck me this morning hearing President Zelensky saying how pleased he was to be amongst his EU partners and supporters and referred to them as real leaders. I mean, he is, you know, he's clearly not taking the kind of cool-blooded British approach to diplomacy here, is he? He's trying to stick the boot in a bit there and you can kind of understand why. Might not be wise, but you can understand why. I think it's the interesting thing with diplomacy that invariably it is a multi-armed beast, if you like. So on one hand, you have, as you mentioned, Mr. Streeting is sounding a little bit more sanguine about the situation. But on the other hand, you have Mr. Zelensky sounding more robust. And I think that's often a feature of what you get. You know, there's a multi-pronged approach here to ensure that the U.S. stays in the tent. The U.S. understands that supporting Ukraine is absolutely essential. It's essential for the US's own security as well, not just a European question. And this is a sort of multi-pronged approach to getting to that strategic end state, if you will. And I was reading this morning that the Starlink, so the lower grade, still incredibly impressive, but the civilian grade satellite link, Starlink, is made up of 10,000 active satellites. So the largest satellite system anywhere. indeed you can sometimes see them zooming across the sky which i've done in the past you'll see the string of satellites and yes it's a global constellation and one of the intentions behind it was to provide kind of the world's population with this wide band amazing internet access so wherever you are you could access the web do whatever you need to do so that's how it started life but the military utility of that became immediately obvious and ukraine just kind of supercharged that, I think, even further. Should Wes Streeting have asked outright of Pete Hegseth, you know, he can take a bit of roughing up, asked outright why the Starlink or Starshield was stopped, was slowed down, why that decision was taken? I think without being in meetings, it's very hard to know what path that conversation took. But I think... Well, he said they didn't get into that. Yeah. I mean, I think that generally speaking, what's important for NATO as an alliance, obviously which britain is a member of is to continually remind the u.s of the importance of of the ukrainian struggle um the u.s understands and the u.s government understands it faces its own security challenges from russia and from mr putin's government and the ukraine situation is part and parcel of that so i i think despite all of the shenanigans this week with diesel prices whatever it might be there is a need if you like for nato to keep the pressure on not just for the sake of europe's own security um but for the us as well and keep the pressure on who on trump on the on the trump administration i think you know and to be fair there are there are a lot of people in mr trump's party who get it with Ukraine you know they really do and they're very very supportive of it but he's the commander-in-chief and he can do what he likes most of the time can't he he is indeed the commander-in-chief that's correct yeah if he i mean i i'm kind of half reassured by so many people being sanguine in the face of this but i'm also still worried about him and what else he might do and and the you know the serious very serious matter is that it threatens the lives of Ukrainian people so if the U.S. tampers with this again or withdraws Ukraine's access to Starlink or Starshield again surely there comes a point where that is a serious threat to our allegiance to the United States and therefore people like Wes Streeting may have to be a bit more blunt in his conversations with Hegseth it's a good point i mean obviously behind closed doors it's hard to know exactly what's happening but i think yes that there's there is a debate to be had here about what does U.S. support if you like of European NATO look like now now remember Trump has a finite term you know at some point he leaves office and things and even if there is another Republican victory that will be different and it will have a different complexion but i think and i would i don't know but i would wager that probably behind closed doors we do hear much firmer language perhaps one could say than what's sometimes articulated publicly um as i say i'm not i'm not privy to that but i think what it underscores actually with your question is also Europe has to be very cognizant that there are capabilities we will just have to develop ourselves and ensure that we have them unilaterally exclusive of the U.S. what's that saying we've all heard from our mothers necessity is the mother of invention is that what we're looking at here with America it is an and often sadly one of the factors of warfare is it it rapidly accelerates innovation and it concentrates minds so um thank you it's been very interesting and very informative as well to talk to you thank you very much indeed Dr Thomas Withington an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute specializing in electronic warfare radar and military communications i hope you think you know i feel you know a lot more about Starlink and Starshield I don't know.