Shortly after, Elon Musk himself intervened on his X network: “We are ready to provide Italy with the most advanced connection in complete security!” Enough to add fuel to the fire.
“Elon Musk’s Space X could become the most polluting company on the planet in ten or twenty years”
Dangerous relationships
The friendship between Elon Musk and Giorgia Meloni is not a state secret. But the question is whether real state secrets can be entrusted to the Starlink satellite network, a private American company, without endangering Italy’s national security. The agreement under discussion for months would concern a secure telecommunications contract for the government, a full range of encryption services for the Italian executive’s telephony and Internet. Military data, that of the secret and diplomatic services, but also of civil protection would pass through the network of 6,000 satellites sent into space by Space X.
According to the Bloomberg agency, the discussions would concern a five-year contract which received the approval of the intelligence services and the Italian Ministry of Defense. The agreement would also cover a backup connection in the event of a natural disaster or military attack. But the other side of the coin is to entrust a strategic service to a private company which could cut off the signal from its satellites when it wants.
A “shameful and dangerous” initiative, an “interference in the campaign of a friendly country”: the German government tackles Elon Musk’s support for the AfD
European concerns
“We have not received any information from the Italian authorities on this issue,” confirms a spokesperson for the European Commission. Certainly, the delays of the Iris2 project, the network of 290 satellites planned by the European Union to ensure strategic autonomy planned for 2027 but already postponed to 2030, gives an argument to the Italian government. Giorgia Meloni could present the agreement with Space Starlink network would recover delays.
Italy would then be the first European country to sign a contract of this importance with Elon Musk. “If you defend Made in Italy, you don’t sign a satellite agreement with Musk. That would be a mistake,” says French centrist MEP Christophe Grudler, to the journall The Pressas a member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee of the European Parliament, specialist in the European program for secure connections.
“Elon Musk is obsessed with the demographic decline of white men, to the point of flirting with eugenic ideas”
The Musk problem
It is above all the idea of bringing Elon Musk into the communication system of a founding country of the European Union that makes some people tremble. The richest man in the world shows his political preferences for far-right parties, with his multiple interventions on his social network X to influence voters in European countries or to discredit their governments as recently in Germany or the United Kingdom .
“Elon Musk is a great man and it’s always very interesting to talk with him,” cuts short Giorgia Meloni, herself the leader of a post-fascist party and head of a government that includes two far-right parties – her Fratelli d’Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Lega. “He is an inventor of our time who always has his eyes turned towards the future. There are things we agree on, others less so, but it makes me laugh that those who only yesterday praised him as a genius are calling him a monster today because he made the choice to support a political camp deemed ‘wrong’. I don’t think like that.” continues Ms. Meloni.
One thing is certain if the contract with Starlink is confirmed, a “space” battle will take place in the Italian Parliament.
