Pentagon IG Refuses to Investigate Starshield Restrictions That Enabled Russian Attacks on Ukraine

It was less likely that the sun would rise this morning than that the Trump-installed inspector general (IG) of the Defense Department would rebuff a bipartisan Senate request for an investigation of the restrictions the Trump administration placed on Starshield. Those restrictions enabled Russian aerial assets to evade Ukraine’s defenses and bombard its cities. The Associated Press reported last night that, on Tuesday, Pentagon Inspector General Platte Moring had informed the nine senators (five Democrats and four Republicans) that he would not get involved and that they should direct their inquiries to the Air Force (i.e., to an armed service commanded by Trump’s “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth and to the commander-in-chief himself).

As I’ve detailed (see here, here, here, and here), the Trump administration, in collaboration with Elon Musk, the head honcho of SpaceX, which operates Starshield, the military version of its Starlink satellite communications system, is attempting to baffle Americans with a dizzying storyline. Government officials are banking on the public’s general unfamiliarity with Starlink and consequent failure to distinguish it from Starshield, and on deceptive “terms of use” (or “terms of service”) talking points that administration officials and Musk himself numbingly recite.

The tale goes like this. Acting totally on his own, with no direction whatsoever from President Trump and his minions, Musk “throttled” Ukraine’s defenses — i.e., imposed speed restrictions on Starlink (they go out of their way not to say Starshield). This disabled the system’s capacity to track objects moving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, thus leaving Ukraine defenseless against savage Russian aerial attacks on civilian infrastructure (which, as our editorial recounted, killed dozens of civilians and left over 600,000 people without power — consistent with Putin’s barbaric strategy to freeze Ukrainians into submission during the harsh winter). But the administration, of course, needs to keep Musk on the team, so it can’t completely hang him out to dry. Hence, the simultaneous suggestion that, though the administration of course has nothing to do with this dispute between a private company (SpaceX/Starlink) and its Ukrainian customers, it understands Musk had a good reason for what he did: (all together now!) Ukraine violated the terms of use.

Rich and I discussed this crock during our podcast both today and last week. The administration’s story got a major boost from a Wall Street Journal report — particularly the bombshell-style headline — that government officials (unidentified, of course) had said Musk had ordered the restrictions. This, notwithstanding that (a) the report itself says that Musk had spoken with Trump and other administration officials prior to orchestrating the restrictions; (b) Reuters had previously reported (also based on unidentified government sources) that the restriction order had come from the White House; (c) in the recent Anthropic controversy, both Hegseth and Trump were emphatic that the administration does not allow private contractors to impose use restrictions on services that affect battlefield operations and intelligence; and (d) Musk himself asserted, after the restrictions became public, that Starshield is provided to the U.S. government and decisions about how it is used are made by the Pentagon and, ultimately, the president — although naturally, since this departure from the president’s preferred narrative, Musk has gotten back on-script, chanting the “terms of use” mantra.

And then there’s the most important point: The contracting customer for the Starshield system provided by Musk’s SpaceX is the United States Department of Defense, not Ukraine.

Obviously, that is why Musk’s first impulse, before the administration settled on the “terms of use” BS, was to say that decisions about Starshield’s use are made by the government and the president, not Musk. The terms of use would be relevant if the controversy were essentially about Starlink, the satellite communications system commercially available to the public. When people contract with a private service provider, they agree to the limitations on how the service can be used. This unremarkable fact provides the yarn-spinners with room for mischief because there is a Starlink angle here: The Ukrainians use it domestically — although Musk, on whom Russian dictator and war criminal Vladimir Putin just lavished praise yesterday, does not allow Ukraine to use Starlink in Russia, which would render parts of the Kremlin’s war machine vulnerable.

Nevertheless, the principal issue here is the restrictions placed on Starshield, the military application on which Ukraine relies for defense against Russian aerial attacks. It’s not complicated: Either the Trump administration ordered the restrictions as part of its disgraceful Putin appeasement campaign, or the commander-in-chief and his “War” Secretary have delegated control over battlefield operations to a private tech executive — thus contradicting the strident position they’ve taken in the Anthropic controversy that only government officials can be authorized to make decisions about how defense capabilities are used.

So which is it? Either possibility reflects badly on the administration, so it is no surprise that Pentagon IG Moring (a Defense Department lawyer in the first Trump administration) is dodging the question.

From the beginning of the second Trump administration, it has been a White House priority to gut the inspectors general that Congress has planted in executive agencies to root out waste, fraud, and abuses of power. Even after Trump fired the previous Pentagon IG and installed Moring (who was confirmed through a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled Senate), Secretary Hegseth — who, because of national security considerations, has more leeway to block IG investigations at his department than do most other cabinet principals — has tinkered with regulations to make it harder for personnel to report misconduct.

The drama reached new heights last week. To promote the administration’s story, unidentified government officials told the WSJ that President Trump called Musk and “asked him to lift restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink [i.e., Starshield] in Ukraine that the SpaceX chief had throttled” [emphasis added]. The implication was that Trump had to request that Musk restore Starshield to full capacity because it was Musk who had unilaterally imposed the restrictions. The WSJ report elaborated: “Trump told Musk he was frustrated the system’s speeds remained capped at around 100 miles an hour, officials said. The speed limit rendered some of Ukraine’s offensive drones and interceptors powerless against Russian attacks.”

Yes, I’m sure the president was very frustrated . . . but mainly because the issue — namely, that the president of the United States is lending aid and comfort to the monstrous Putin regime in its war of aggression against America’s allies — isn’t going away. If Musk had truly imposed the restrictions unilaterally, there would be nothing for the administration to fear from an IG probe and no reason to stonewall Congress.

Keep it simple, and you’ll see through the BS: The controversy is about Starshield, the military application, not Starlink, the publicly available satellite system. Musk’s customer on Starshield is the United States government, not Ukrainians. Any terms of use Musk imposes on Ukraine regarding Starlink are irrelevant to the American military’s use of Starshield. The restrictions that enabled the Russian attacks were on Starshield. The question is who ordered them. That’s the question the Trump administration is refusing to answer.