I’d Like Some Choices, Please

Kim Bellard Oct 28, 2026• By KIM BELLARD Let’s say your favorite social media platform is bought by a right wing trillionaire, who espouses free speech, but only when it echoes his. You can switch to, say, Threads, but – whoops – that’s owned by Mark Zuckerberg, another of the super-rich who have turned to the right. There’s always Facebook but – damn! – Zucked again! So you migrate to Bluesky, where the discourse is more civil but the audiences admittedly smaller. At least you have some choices. Not so much if, say, you are the President of Ukraine. Ukraine has unexpectedly held off the much bigger Russia for over four years now, in the process reinventing modern warfare by turning it from the traditional men, tanks, and artillery to a technology-powered war, especially with drones. To do so, it relied heavily on Starlink and its Pentagon-version Starshield. Unfortunately, Ukraine was blindsided a couple weeks ago when Starlink speeds were drastically lowered. Drones were literally falling out of the sky. President Zelensky raised the alarm. Secretary of State Rubio said he thought software “glitches” were to blame, but most people suspected either Starlink’s owner Elon Musk and/o...