Private infrastructure in geopolitical conflicts: the case of Starlink and the war in Ukraine

Abstract

Privately owned infrastructures play a central role in the unfolding of geopolitical conflicts. While academic contributions generally support this argument, businesses are mostly treated as enablers or spoilers of state action rather than actors in their own right. This article develops a theoretical framework around the relationship of state and transnational corporations in times of intense global competition, combining it with a political–economic perspective on how private ownership of transnational infrastructures shifts this relationship. It argues that private businesses develop and operate infrastructures for profit-seeking purposes, but that this logic can be amended by preferences for political outcomes. The article undertakes an analysis of the role of Starlink, the world’s largest satellite constellation owned by US-based company SpaceX, in the events following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It reconstructs SpaceX’s initial decision to enable Starlink in Ukraine and its ensuing strategic readjustment that limited Ukraine’s abilities to retake Russian-occupied areas. The findings support the relevance of both profit-seeking and political motives for explaining businesses’ decision-making, with substantial implications for contemporary state–business relations. SpaceX viewed the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to secure capital and contracts, largely from the United States; at the same time, it sought to appease other states on which it depends, most centrally China. The findings furthermore demonstrate that states will seek to reestablish independence from private infrastructure where other forms of hedging fail. While China and the European Union opted to build their own satellite constellations, the United States relied on its economic pull to ensure SpaceX’s cooperation.

Introduction

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, states have provided Ukraine with humanitarian, financial, and military aid worth over €100 billion (Trebesch et al., 2023). In addition to public sector commitments, private companies also contributed significantly. Their support mostly concerned Ukrainian infrastructure. US-based tech companies like Microsoft offered cyber security and cloud computing services to the Ukrainian government free of charge (Beaty, 2023). These and comparable efforts have greatly reduced the efficiency of Russian cyberattacks. A decisive contribution that received much publicity came from spacecraft, communications, and defense company SpaceX. Funded, partially owned, and headed by business magnate Elon Musk, the US-based company operates Starlink, the world’s largest satellite mega-constellation that provides Internet coverage to remote areas. Following a Russian cyberattack that had successfully disabled most Ukrainian military communication, Musk (2022a) announced that Starlink would be made available over Ukraine. In the following months, over 20,000 Starlink terminals were supplied to Ukraine. Starlink became indispensable as a communications infrastructure for Ukraine’s military. However, starting in summer 2022, SpaceX shifted its strategic orientation. Following Musk’s proposal of a “peace plan,” which showed many similarities with Kremlin demands, SpaceX demanded the US government cover its expenses for services to Ukraine. In parallel, Ukraine’s military began experiencing outages of Starlink-based communications along the frontlines. In February 2023, SpaceX announced that it would no longer make its satellite services available for offensive action of the Ukrainian military, hampering efforts to retake Russian occupied areas. This adjustment led observers to speculate how the shift had come about and what strategic interests were driving SpaceX’s actions.

As in the case of Starlink, private infrastructures influence contemporary geopolitical conflicts, and their control underlies a self-willed logic. International Relations (IR) as a discipline is catching on to an “infrastructural turn” that has taken place in other fields already, calling for a greater weighting of the socio-materiality of infrastructures when studying transnational processes (Harvey et al., 2016). Recently, in light of a renaissance of geoeconomic thought (Babić et al., 2022), scholars found that (inter)dependencies between states, previously theorized to induce cooperation, were exploited for political control and self-assertion (Farrell and Newman, 2019; Gertz and Evers, 2020). These works filled a glaring gap in the IR literature but remained largely tied to state-centric paradigms. As a consequence, private businesses were limited to a role of enablers or spoilers of state measures and the impact of privatization and commercialization processes concerning essential infrastructures has not been properly integrated in these discourses (Abels and Bieling, 2024; Gjesvik, 2023). This omission keeps IR theorists from accounting for dynamics of infrastructure development and control in their conceptualization of state–business relations. It also stands in stark contrast to seminal works that stressed the role of private corporations in the making and unmaking of global and regional order (Baldwin, 2020; Bowen, 2005). The influence of transnational corporations has risen greatly with economic concentration processes on a global level (Heemskerk and Takes, 2015). This reconfiguration raises questions about who the primary actors in contemporary politics are, whether established conceptions of the state–business nexus still hold up, and about the conditions under which business action is still subject to state influence and those under which it escapes public control. Geopolitically relevant infrastructures owned by transnational businesses are an important factor whose study can be expected to contribute to our understanding of the aforementioned issues, but which have been underexposed so far.

This article focuses on the case of Starlink and its role in the geopolitical conflict in Ukraine, asking how SpaceX’s strategizing in Ukraine can be explained. Aside from its immediate relevance, the case is supposed to further our understanding of the role of privately controlled infrastructures in IR and the reconfigurations of state–business relations. The article primarily focuses on the motives underlying private control of infrastructures, arguing that these develop in close contingency alongside the geopolitics of key state actors. Starlink in Ukraine serves as a prototypical case in this respect. The emphasis here is more on the “proto” than the “typical.” In fact, Starlink’s technological edge and monopolistic position is pretty unique, so it should serve as a case that magnifies trends that are visible, yet less pronounced, in other contemporary conflicts. At the same time, it might be considered as a precursor for things to come. With tech giants such as Amazon in the process of developing comparable satellite constellations—and with them growing to such an extent that they might rival governments’ capacities to produce infrastructures in other high-tech fields—SpaceX’s involvement in Ukraine is likely to be a “first example of future examples” where private infrastructures, for better or worse, shape the course of global politics.

Offering a theoretical lens with which to interpret private infrastructural action, the article brings together IR arguments of a strategic production and instrumentalization of infrastructures with a political–economic perspective on their role in global production and geoeconomic competition. It argues that private businesses engage in the production and operation of infrastructures for profit-seeking purposes, but that this calculus is amended by preferences for political outcomes that might be detached from the interests of their countries of location. Generally, they follow geoeconomic interests that are juxtaposed with, rather than subordinate to, state interests. This implies incentives to spur rather than mitigate conflict if profit opportunities arise, or to align with the political objectives of foreign countries if businesses expect to benefit from the order these states seek to establish. Consequently, businesses use their control over infrastructures to increase their political influence and make states adjust their position. State actors will adapt their strategies accordingly and seek to reestablish independence from private infrastructure if other forms of hedging fail.

Empirically, the article undertakes a reconstructive case study of the events between Starlink’s activation over Ukraine in February 2022 and its restriction to defensive measures in early 2023. It relies on a triangulation of media reports, statements, and official documents, as well as social media communication. The study finds that SpaceX’s actions in Ukraine were indeed driven by a combination of profit-seeking—gaining publicity and showcasing their capabilities to secure further public contracts and capital—and a strategic calculus: adhering to Chinese and Russian red lines and influencing Ukrainian military action accordingly. Musk’s business dependencies on the Chinese government, which views Ukraine as a precursor for how an invasion of Taiwan might unfold, particularly influenced SpaceX’s room for maneuver. This balancing act resulted in infrastructural measures that at times seemed contradictory. State responses have varied between strategies of contracting (US), and the creation of parallel public infrastructures, either complementary (European Union (EU)) or competitive (China).

The article proceeds as follows: the first section takes stock of the literature on infrastructures in IR, highlighting seminal contributions and the evident gaps that still characterize the “infrastructural turn” and perspectives on private infrastructures. The second section develops a theoretical perspective on infrastructures that stresses both their strategic and economic elements. It discusses the implications of such a perspective for business action and provides a typology for potential state responses. The third section presents the methods and materials employed in the analysis, while the fourth section outlines the significance of the Starlink mega-constellation and retraces how the initial provision of Starlink in Ukraine came about. The fifth section then highlights the strategic shift in SpaceX’s policy as well as its implications for the conflict environment, whereas the sixth section classifies the diverging responses of the central state powers involved, with a focus on the United States. The conclusions discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings, in particular for the future of state–business relations.

Private infrastructures in global (and space) competition

Generally, infrastructures are networks that comprise material or digital facilities and their connections. Their central purpose is to allow for the flow of goods, services, people, energy, and data across space. Science and Technology Studies (STS) conceptualize infrastructures as socio-technical systems: they are embedded in a context of social relations (Borrás and Edler, 2014). At the same time, they have repercussions for the power relations and ideological formations underlying societies (Bernards and Campbell-Verduyn, 2019). The lens STS provides on large-scale technical systems has contributed to a spillover of the infrastructural turn in the political sciences. Yet, as it resonated mostly with works from International Political Economy (IPE), this spillover has largely been centered around the study of financial infrastructures (Campbell-Verduyn et al., 2019; De Goede and Westermeier, 2022; Petry, 2021).

Recent shifts in global order, most centrally the US–China strategic competition, provided fresh impetus to geoeconomic and geopolitical discourses and thought (Babić et al., 2022). The pronounced role of infrastructures in the contemporary mode of competition led to attempts to look at them from a more systemic and geoeconomic perspective (Abels and Bieling, 2024). Infrastructural (inter)dependencies between states play an increasing role in interstate rivalry and strategic action in foreign policy. Scholars of “weaponized interdependence” take this observation as an indication that liberal approaches of “complex interdependence” (Keohane and Nye, 2012) and its pacifying, cooperation-inducing effects have reached their limits. They emphasize the asymmetric influence actors have on infrastructural networks and the power that control over such networks constitutes in a globalized world (Farrell and Newman, 2019; Gertz and Evers, 2020). The focus in respective works is on the ex-post instrumentalization of extant infrastructures to extract informational advantages or to cut others out of their use. Processes of infrastructure financing, production, and regulation play a subordinate role.

Central to the argument made in this article is the approach’s neglect of private action. Gertz and Evers (2020) in principle acknowledge that “businesses have become key actors in contemporary politics” and that “businesses are not necessarily under the direct authority of states” (p. 119). Still, they treat them widely as what they call “a force multiplier,” securing via their alignment with national interests the effectiveness of state measures (Gertz and Evers, 2020: 117). Gjesvik (2023) criticizes weaponized interdependence for this. He argues that global shifts eroded ties between states and national corporations, rendering their alignment more insecure and creating a pattern of authority on the international level that transcends the nation state. Abels and Bieling (2023) state that private businesses are in control of essential elements of infrastructures and thus themselves may be enactors—and recipients—of weaponization measures.

Such calls for the acknowledgment of private channels of influence in matters of infrastructure go back to fundamental debates about the influence of non-state actors, particularly (transnational) corporations, in global politics. These debates have been a major concern of IR and IPE and their general view on the ontology of the international sphere (Bieler et al., 2011; Strange, 1996). Scholarship on interstate conflict and competition has shown that, historically, businesses played a substantial part in the formation of great power rivalry and even the coming about of empires. Bowen’s (2005) widely recognized book discusses how the East India Company, a private venture controlling large parts of the global maritime transport infrastructures, contributed to the expansion of the British empire. Harvey’s (2003) account of the US empire highlights the influence private business interests had on landmark US foreign policy decisions.

The literature on ‘economic statecraft’—states’ ability to influence economic activities for political objectives—shows how private business capacities are leveraged and brought in line for foreign policy measures such as sanctioning (Baldwin, 2020; Norris, 2016). Generally, when it comes to the discussion of a potential instrumentalization of infrastructures through private entities, the focus is often on predominantly state-controlled or state-owned corporations located in state capitalist economies. This is understandable against the backdrop of prominent cases such as Gazprom’s leveraging of the Nord Stream pipelines or Chinese maritime transport infrastructures in the Indian Ocean (Khurana, 2008). Yet, as Farrell and Newman (2019) show, weaponization attempts are by no means limited to enterprises owned by state capitalist economies but extend to corporations in market-liberal economies as well. They cite large telecommunication companies in the United States as examples of how private infrastructures have been successfully coopted by the government.

At the same time, however, historical trends of economic globalization and privatization have led to the emergence of corporations that are transnational in nature and whose actions frequently escape state control (Babić et al., 2017; Heemskerk and Takes, 2015). Particularly in market-liberal societies, the relationship between states and businesses has become more complex and fractious. Due to the widespread privatization of public assets throughout the past decades and the commercialization of infrastructures, the expansion of private authority increasingly concerns infrastructure policy (McCarthy, 2018). Looking at recent works that systematically take into account the role of private businesses in the development and operation of infrastructures, the focus is again on financial infrastructures (Genito, 2019; Petry, 2021). Braun (2020) points out how the provision of infrastructures and related services provide private actors with leverage over policymakers. States will consider private interests when forming infrastructure policy so as not to lose their access to essential privately owned networks.

In space, the commercialization of infrastructure development and operation has been particularly pronounced. Formerly a domain dominated by state actors during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, the space industry has seen the rise of private activity to the point where states withdrew from some space-related activities. As with other infrastructural arenas, this had to do with an ideological shift toward public–private partnerships and privatized management models. Furthermore, the rising costs of space exploration were irreconcilable with shrinking agency budgets following a period of fiscal restraint (Newlove-Eriksson and Eriksson, 2013: 287). Against this backdrop, states were willing to cooperate with private companies and outsource critical services to commercial providers (Maraš and Dangubić, 2022). In this period labeled “New Space,” businesses exploit space for profit as they offer space-related services, for example, in communication and observation, and land profitable contracts from public agencies that outsource industrial activities to them (Pražák, 2022).

Samson (2022) views this as a fundamental shift where “the major actors in space will no longer be nation-states [. . .] but the private sector, changing the timbre of the space domain” (p. 6). Eriksson and Newlove-Eriksson (2023), on the contrary, stress that businesses are still highly dependent on government contracts and thus it is more appropriate to talk about a “government-industrial space complex, which continues to display a considerable degree of continuity” (p. 58). In any case, space infrastructures—or crucial elements of infrastructure—are increasingly owned and controlled by private companies. This has strong geopolitical implications. The technology behind many of the infrastructures and related services provided by the private sector is inherently dual use: their capacities and utilities can in principle be utilized for civilian and military purposes. Still, political scientific arguments on space infrastructure activities are comparable to those in other fields: businesses are portrayed as profit-seeking entities that “are dragged into the environment of states’ power projection” (Pražák, 2022: 179). The next section takes the literature presented here as a starting point for developing a theoretical lens with which to analyze private action on infrastructure and its determinants.

State–business relations in the geoeconomy of infrastructures

When discussing the role of private infrastructures in the unfolding of geopolitical conflicts, the focus is on transnational infrastructures that transcend borders or are, while located on a local or regional level, integrated in wider cross-border networks of exchange. They form the material prerequisites of transnational processes, including geopolitical competition. Central to this article is the idea that private action plays a decisive role both in the formation of infrastructure measures and in the unfolding of international rivalry. To this end, private actors such as transnational corporations are viewed as juxtaposed to state actors.

As the previous section has outlined, a perspective on state–business relations where businesses are viewed as subordinate to the state or where the strategic leveraging of privately controlled infrastructure is directly attributed to an overarching state strategy is oversimplifying at best and misleading at worst. Babić et al. (2017) make the case for bringing a more state-centric IR in dialogue with a more capital-focused IPE. While IR highlights the organizing forces of the state and its preeminent role in the international system, IPE and its focus on transnational capital adds corporate power to the equation (Babić et al., 2017: 21–22). Conceptually, states and businesses are not of the same nature—and neither are their geoeconomic motives—but they have a dynamic relationship in which sometimes the state can bring into line the activities of its national businesses while, in other cases, businesses can challenge or even bend state power.

Thus, their relationship is one of interdependency, but fraught with frictions. State actors rely on the cost-efficient provision of services and technological innovation which they themselves cannot provide. Businesses in turn are dependent on a favorable political framework and on government support in the form of accommodating regulations, public contracts, and funds. It is an inherent part of the geoeconomic logic that states look to expand the economic activity of national businesses (Abels and Bieling, 2024). As surplus capital generated within economic areas seeks investment opportunities elsewhere, states have to act strategically in order to secure the best of those opportunities for domestic businesses—in terms of markets, technologies, regulations—while excluding rivals. For that reason, state action and private profit-seeking are not antagonistic but—mediated by the state–capital nexus—often mutually buttressing processes. A lot depends on the political–economic organization of the space in which these interactions unfold. While state capitalist economies often enjoy a stronger handle over national corporations due to them being partially state-owned or at least state-controlled (McNally, 2013), liberal market economies are characterized by a more pronounced juxtaposition of state and private actors, but nevertheless by close public–private networks (Van Apeldoorn and de Graaff, 2012). One implication of this is that we are more likely to observe diverging geopolitical strategies of states and nationally based businesses in less centralized societies (Gertz and Evers, 2020).

It is important to note that the juxtaposition of states and businesses does not imply that these two groups of actors necessarily compete. The term refers to the fact that their relationship is dynamic and reciprocal, not strictly hierarchical. This does not preclude cases where transnational corporations strongly align with the geoeconomic interests of the state where they are headquartered. Yet, it views this as a strategic decision rather than one predetermined by a form of political–economic subordination of business interests to those of government.

The argument made here is that, while the logic of private profit-seeking and associated political strategies clearly are major determinants of business activity, they are amended by less straightforward preferences for certain political outcomes. Businesses may have incentives to spur rather than mitigate conflict if this entails profit opportunities for them. Choer Moraes and Wigell (2022) differentiate three fundamental strategies of what they call “corporate geoeconomics”: the strategic alignment of private businesses in light of international conflict. Businesses may seek to conserve a mode of “business as usual” by discouraging or pushing back against state’s confrontational action; they might try a balancing act which consists of satisfying—and profiting of—the geoeconomic interests of all parties involved; or they can opt to align with one country—often the one where they are based, in a display of “patriotic capitalism”—securing for themselves public support and benefiting from the consolidated geoeconomic position of said country.

Naturally, these options are not available to every company. It is primarily transnational corporations, acting more flexibly due to their globally diversified investment and production structure, which can consider such strategies. This goes in particular for those corporations operating transnational infrastructures, whose ties and nodes are spread across several regions or even outer space, which grants individual states less control.

Infrastructures are at the same time means and ends of private and public action: they represent systems that can be exploited for political goals, yet infrastructure development is a goal in itself due to its economic significance.

For businesses, infrastructure development and public infrastructure policy constitute opportunities to generate profits and enter new markets in which they have the prime mover advantage. Against the backdrop of increased geoeconomic competition, states are more actively steering the development of infrastructures and related sectors through industrial policy measures (Aiginger and Rodrik, 2020). Businesses thus face major incentives to compete for public funds in the form of contracts and subsidies and to support policies that are in their favor. Lobbying activities play a major role in this. For example, US business associations have contributed to a narrowing down of the Biden administration’s domestic infrastructure agenda that would secure for them investment opportunities, contracts, and a modernized infrastructure (Scherrer, 2022). Another form of businesses’ political influence lies in their role in realizing public plans. Under conditions of shrinking fiscal spaces, Western infrastructure programs like the US-led Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment rely on the leveraging of private investments through the provision of public incentives. Businesses’ pronounced role in infrastructure financing then equips them with the ability to steer the overall programs. Finally, businesses can establish their own infrastructures on which governments can grow dependent and will adjust their programs accordingly. Infrastructural networks generate patterns of dependency and allow actors in control of critical hubs to exploit this for territorial or social control. This includes not just the instrumentalization of extant infrastructures, but also the strategic planning, financing, and regulation of infrastructures—aspects that have been mostly highlighted in the context of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (Chen, 2021; Petry, 2023).

With regard to infrastructure policy, businesses’ decisions are a balancing of the profit potentials of infrastructure investment and associated public incentives with a strategic calculus that cannot be subsumed under that of national governments. In fact, businesses might partially align with the political objectives of foreign countries if they expect to benefit from the order these states seek to establish. This preference for specific outcomes of geopolitical conflicts might also be guided by longer-term profit interests: the victory of one party or the persistence of a conflict may, for example, be linked to further contracts. Beyond that, however, the strategic calculus is far more complex and uncertain. The course of a conflict also determines aspects such as the nature of regulations on private infrastructures, the likelihood of economic sanctions, or, in extreme cases, even the very political–economic system under which the company might operate in the future.

In infrastructure policy, businesses are hence best viewed as juxtaposed to states, with their own, partly independent motives and strategies that vary between alignment and autonomy. In some infrequent but significant cases, businesses use their control over infrastructures to increase their political influence and make states adjust their position. As the empirical sections of this article illustrate, this does not always result in coherent behavior.

In the case of Starlink’s role in the geopolitical conflict in Ukraine, private infrastructure and its deployment has been decisive for the unfolding of a conflict as core state interests depended on it. There are certain conditions under which states engage in activities that reduce their strategic and economic dependencies on private infrastructures and seek to reestablish state–business hierarchies. Government responses depend primarily on the extent to which foreign control of infrastructure limits the effectiveness of their strategic action and their ability to provide critical services in the event of a disruption. Abels and Bieling (2023) argue that there are three basic strategies with which states can react to such uncertainty. These are associated with different levels of autonomy, but also of costs. First, states may gain access to privately controlled infrastructures through contracting, as the United States does with private space flight and commercial launch services in the era of New Space. Second, they may create interdependencies so as to reduce the likelihood that the other entity restricts access or exploits its control over infrastructure in any other way. For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is opening its launch site infrastructure to businesses that offer services for it. Third, in an attempt to maximize autonomy and minimize dependencies, states may also build parallel infrastructures that can offer the services they require—albeit, at times, at higher costs. In doing this, states may either ensure interoperability with extant infrastructures, as the EU’s navigation satellite system Galileo did with the US-controlled GPS, or rival these by establishing new standards.

Generally, we should expect an interplay between business action and such state forms of hedging. Corporations will adjust their strategic orientation to maintain dependencies or avoid negative consequences as state responses feed back into their strategic calculus. To what degree states achieve this readjustment then sheds light on state power and how it might be projected onto highly networked and influential transnational corporations.

Methods and materials

The following analysis undertakes a reconstructive case study that seeks to produce a social–scientific explanation of business strategizing in geopolitical conflicts, based on the reconstruction of a historically significant process. The analysis covers the time period between the Russian invasion of larger parts of Ukraine in February 2022 and SpaceX’s decision to restrict Ukrainian access to its satellite services in early 2023. It draws on data from various sources. Whereas official documents and political statements provide evidence for relevant actor’s positions and publicly communicated interests, the sources most central to the analytical exercise are media reports, social media communication, and investigative journalistic works. Media reports are analyzed to cover and reconstruct the unfolding and chronological sequence of events. In that sense, they outline the historical context for the further investigation. Social media communication is a particularly rich, yet delicate source to use for this case. Starlink’s deployment and provision in Ukraine was accompanied by a pronounced case of “Twitter diplomacy,” where digital communication has replaced aspects of traditional diplomacy and more institutionalized channels (Duncombe, 2017; Manor and Segev, 2020). Politicians and business leaders rely on social media to communicate with political partners and adversaries and, as a distinctive feature, to make these communications visible to a global audience. SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk—who by now owns the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter—has been highly active in showcasing his standpoints and decisions on the platform.

A major caveat for using social media statements as a source is that there are justified doubts about their authenticity. Communication has a strategic facet to it and this in particular concerns publicly made statements on large digital platforms. It is unclear whether the motivations actors convey for their actions are indeed those that have driven their decisions. Further factors might influence decision-making processes which actors are unwilling to disclose. In the analyzed case, this particularly concerns the persona of Elon Musk, as the business structure of SpaceX is strongly centered around him. Musk’s public statements on Twitter are equated with business strategizing by SpaceX, yet there are other factors that might play a role in how they come about beyond commercial considerations. This concerns psychological and personal factors as well as potential political entanglements with state and security apparatuses. The best way of treating social media communication in this case is thus to take it as an indicator for subjective viewpoints, but not at face value. Social media posts are used to reconstruct informal diplomatic exchanges and the contents of political and business decisions. In cases where they concern the motivations and justifications for action or information on events that is not commonly known, the data are contrasted with other sources. Plenty of insightful investigative journalistic work has been conducted on the Ukraine crisis and the role of Starlink in particular (Farrow, 2023; Khalaf, 2022; Marquardt, 2022; Metz et al., 2022; Miller et al., 2022). Again, as a verification of these sources is impossible, the article undertakes a triangulation and plausibility probe: if statements, reports, and empirical observations correspond and form a coherent narrative, this narrative is presented, yet a degree of uncertainty is acknowledged in cases where sources are contradictory or where information appears insufficient.

The analysis is divided into three parts. The first part introduces Starlink and outlines its technical features and political relevance. It reconstructs the events surrounding Starlink’s provision in Ukraine and its implications for the course of conflict. The second part then retraces and seeks to explain SpaceX’s strategic shift and measures on the basis of the introduced theoretical framework. Finally, the last part provides an overview of the responses shown by major state actors, with a focus on the United States. While space infrastructures in the form of satellite constellations are chosen as the focal point of the analysis, the conclusions discuss the extent to which insights can be potentially generalized to other infrastructural fields such as transportation, energy, or other forms of communication infrastructure.

The provision of Starlink in the war in Ukraine

Satellite systems play a critical role in the provision of services in communication, broadcasting, and navigation, in technological research and space exploration, as well as in earth observation. Most of these activities are inherently dual use, meaning they can serve either civilian or military purposes. This makes satellite systems relevant for states not just as an infrastructure underlying business activity and the social everyday, but also as one of security and warfare. Commercial providers recognized early on the benefits of stationing satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) as they communicate with the ground at a much faster rate than from Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). This reduces the latency of communication services. LEO satellites thus replace or make redundant vast amounts of immobile ground infrastructure like cables and transmission masts. However, as compared with navigation satellite systems that are mostly located in MEO, a lot more satellites are required to ensure global coverage due to their relatively low altitude. This has led to the development of private mega-constellations. Of those, Starlink is the largest and most advanced, consisting currently of over 3,500 satellites in LEO, with an expansion to 12,000 satellites approved by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Plans for the deployment of an additional 30,000 satellites of a newer generation have already been presented. Starlink is operated by SpaceX, a spacecraft, communications, and defense corporation founded by business magnate Elon Musk. Musk currently owns 42 percent of shares and acts as the company’s CEO, making him the key figure in the enterprise. SpaceX began deploying mass-manufactured, small satellites for its Starlink infrastructure in 2019. The satellites communicate with designated ground terminals to provide Internet coverage mostly to previously underserved areas around the globe. Starlink’s progress has caused business rivals such as Amazon to enter the field and look to deploy their own mega-constellations. However, these competitors are mostly still in the planning and early deployment phases.

Starlink possesses many productive and technical advantages. Due to the mass production of satellites and terminals, SpaceX benefits from declining marginal costs (Jayanti, 2023), while the sheer number of satellites makes Starlink highly resistant to any kind of interference with its services. Furthermore, as it is independent from fixed infrastructure on the ground, new connections to the designated terminals can be established within minutes. A major problem, however, comes with the size of mega-constellations and the crowding of LEO. There have been close encounters of Starlink satellites with satellites operated by the European Space Agency and even with China’s space station Tiangong. As collisions have exponentiating effects on the occurrence of space debris, the fear is that they could render LEO unusable and block the access to higher orbits.

As Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, reported, the company was in negotiations with the Ukrainian government over the provision of Internet services several weeks before the Russian invasion (Foust, 2022). SpaceX waited for official permission to deploy its infrastructure in Ukraine but had not received any before 24 February. When Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory that day, Russian hackers successfully disabled Ukraine’s communication infrastructure (Miller et al., 2022). This cut the military frontline and the civilian population in the affected areas off from communication channels. On 26 February, Mykhailo Fedorov (2022), Minister of Digital Transformation in the Ukrainian government, addressed Elon Musk via Twitter:

@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars—Russia try to occupy Ukraine! [. . .] We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations [. . .].

SpaceX’s COO Shotwell reported that her company took this as permission to become engaged as it came from an official source (Foust, 2022). Shortly after, Musk (2022a) replied to Fedorov on Twitter:

Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.

A senior official at the US Department of Defense reports that Musk had already called a meeting the day before, expressing his ambition to set up Starlink over Ukraine (Miller et al., 2022). Two days after Musk’s tweet, 500 ground terminals arrived in Ukraine. Between February and December 2022, Starlink sent over 22,000 terminals to Ukraine. The infrastructure quickly became essential to Ukraine’s military strategy. Ukrainian troops used Starlink for reconnaissance, to coordinate counterattacks, to direct artillery fire, and to conduct drone strikes (Marquardt, 2022). During the siege of Mariupol, Ukrainian helicopters flew a ground terminal into the Azovstal metallurgical facility to support entrenched troops in defending the area (Schwirtz, 2022). Due to the terminals’ low energy consumption, Internet connection could be maintained even in cases of power outages or when operating in remote areas.

Yet, Starlink also quickly spoiled Russian attempts to interrupt social and political dialogue and shape the global narrative about the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used Starlink terminals to negotiate with foreign political leaders and to communicate with the public, whereas the infrastructure allowed Ukrainians to stay in contact with friends and family and share footage of their experiences on social media. On Twitter, Musk (2022b) called Starlink “the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine”.

While the public focus was on SpaceX’s donations to Ukraine, states played a major role in the rollout and financing of the infrastructure. France and Poland assisted with the logistics of getting equipment into Ukraine. Poland hosted a ground station that would connect Starlink to Ukraine’s Internet infrastructure (Miller et al., 2022). Of the 20,000 terminals SpaceX delivered to Ukraine until October 2022, about 85 percent had at least partially been financed by public funds from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Poland, among others (Marquardt, 2022). Governments also paid for 30 percent of Starlink services, whereas SpaceX donated roughly 70 percent—however, the company charged its highest rate for these services and terminals were priced significantly higher than the going order rate (Marquardt, 2022). While the provision of Starlink in Ukraine was associated with short-term costs for SpaceX, the company used the war to showcase the capabilities and resilience of its systems to attract public and private customers. In December 2023, SpaceX’s value stood at around US$180 billion, making it the second most valuable not publicly traded company in the world (Roof et al., 2023).

SpaceX’s strategic shifts and motives

Whereas SpaceX had a pronounced profit interest in delivering Starlink services to Ukraine and showcasing its systems, its geoeconomic motives were more complex. As a transnational corporation, SpaceX has dependencies way beyond the US market. This goes in particular for Musk, who is also CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla. Tesla’s business relies on good relations with the Chinese government as China represents its second-largest sales market. Critical battery production and assembly halls are located there. Beijing has taken a relatively ambivalent stance on the war in Ukraine. President Xi Jinping’s government is allegedly supporting Russian war efforts as it views the war in Ukraine as indicative of how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan might unfold (DeYoung and Ryan, 2023). At the same time, China shies away from the costs of openly supporting Russian aggression and for the destabilizing effects this might have on global production (Chestnut Greitens, 2022).

Also, Musk’s relations to the Kremlin have been under scrutiny. Political analyst Ian Brenner has claimed that Musk talked to Putin directly. Bremmer (2022) stated on Twitter that Elon Musk had told him about his talks with Putin about the war and the threat of a Russian nuclear strike in case of a potential retaking of Crimea. Indeed, Dmitry Medvedev, leader of Putin’s political party United Russia has raised the possibility that “Russia is forced to use the most fearsome weapon against the Ukrainian regime” in response to “a large-scale act of aggression that is dangerous for the very existence of our state,” which would also include Crimea and the annexed regions in the South and East of Ukraine (Faulconbridge and Davis, 2022). SpaceX’s CEO Musk (2022c) has denied Bremmer’s claims, stating on Twitter:

I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago. The subject matter was space.

He also argued:

SpaceX’s out of pocket cost to enable & support Starlink in Ukraine is ~$80M so far. Our support for Russia is $0. Obviously, we are pro Ukraine. (Musk, 2022d)

However, according to US government officials cited by The New Yorker, Musk himself informed the pentagon that he had been speaking directly to Putin about the war (Farrow, 2023). While the nature of his communication with the Russian leadership cannot be clarified conclusively, Musk’s diplomatic intervention in October 2022 strongly reflected Russian interests. On Twitter, he presented his roadmap to Russian–Ukrainian peace, which included permanently surrendering Crimea to Russia. In line with long-standing Russian claims, Musk (2022e) called the 1954 transfer of the Crimean oblast to Ukraine “Khrushchev’s mistake”. He also proposed to redo—under UN supervision—the referendum in the annexed regions about their future territorial belonging and suggested that, in the long run, “Ukraine remains neutral.” Musk (2022f) justified his proposal by stating that it was in any case “highly likely to be the outcome in the end—just a question of how many die before then”. Musk’s peace plan provoked sharp criticism from Western political leaders, including Ukraine’s president Zelensky, who claimed that Musk was rewarding Russia for its aggression and adapting Kremlin talking points (Marquardt, 2022). Yet, the proposal put the Ukrainian leadership in a bind as it could not risk losing its access to Starlink. Mykhailo Podolyak (2022), one of Zelensky’s main negotiators, stated on Twitter that “@elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war.” However, Musk’s plan was well received by the Russian leadership, with a Kremlin spokesman praising Musk for “looking for a peaceful way out of this situation” and for acknowledging that “achieving peace without fulfilling Russia’s conditions is absolutely impossible” (Reuters, 2022).

On social media, Musk framed the plan as his contribution to averting nuclear war, stating that “a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war” (Musk, 2022g) and warning that “trying to retake Crimea will cause massive death, probably fail & risk nuclear war” (Musk, 2022d). Regardless of the uncertainty about Musk’s personal motivations for his interventions, the plan he presented was a first of several strategic adjustments by SpaceX that accommodated Chinese and Russian foreign policy preferences.

The occurrence of Starlink outages along the Ukrainian frontline was another development that indicated a shift in SpaceX’s strategy. Starting in September, Ukrainian troops engaged in fighting over occupied territory reported losses of connection to communication services provided by Starlink. This concerned Ukraine’s counter-offensive advances into the oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, all of which Russia had previously claimed for itself after a series of rigged referendums (Srivastava et al., 2022). The disruptions severely hampered Ukrainian efforts to recapture territory and cut off counter-offensive forces from military command. Reports state that the connection failures happened because SpaceX had “geofenced” its service, meaning that it was available in Ukraine-controlled territories but not in those occupied by Russia (Metz et al., 2022). Musk (2022h) did not address the outages, claiming that “what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified”. It has been suggested that geofencing was part of SpaceX’s efforts to keep Russian troops from exploiting its infrastructure and that it had to adjust the fencing to moving frontlines (Srivastava et al., 2022). However, the fact that the Starlink outages over Russian-controlled oblasts coincided with Musk’s proposals to stop fighting over these territories and to hold further referendums cast some serious doubts on this. Furthermore, Musk (2022d) had made it repeatedly clear over the course of the conflict that he would not activate Starlink over Crimea, indicating that he was looking to limit Ukraine’s liberation efforts to what he considered politically feasible.

In September, SpaceX sent a confidential letter to the US Department of Defense, which constituted a departure from its previous stance. In the letter, the company stated it considered maintaining its services too costly and demanded the US government pay for Starlink in Ukraine (Marquardt, 2022). Attached to the letter was a request by Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, asking SpaceX for thousands of additional Starlink terminals for its military and intelligence units. On Twitter, Musk (2022h) claimed that until then providing Starlink to Ukraine had cost his company US$80 million. Yet, journalistic investigations showed that the bulk of terminals and Starlink services delivered to Ukraine had at least been partially funded by governments and that the company was over-pricing its terminals and services (Jayanti, 2023). This led to speculation about whether SpaceX was just trying to extract money from the US government or if stepping back from its donations was related to its more restrained support for Ukraine (Marquardt, 2022).

On Twitter, Musk (2022i) emphasized that all other infrastructures—“internet fiber, phone lines, cell towers & other space-based comms”—had been destroyed in the embattled territories and that “Starlink is all that’s left”. He also went on to say that “if anyone else wants this job, please be my guest” (Musk, 2022j). On this matter, at least, SpaceX undertook a turnaround. The US government entered in talks with the company and publicly stated that it was negotiating with other providers that could offer their services to Ukraine (Howie, 2022). Undersecretary of the Pentagon, Colin Kahl, got on the phone directly with Musk to secure a contract that would guarantee SpaceX’s further provision of connectivity in Ukraine (Farrow, 2023). While the terms of the deal remain unknown to the public, the company withdrew its request for funding, with Musk (2022k) writing on Twitter that “even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free”. He confirmed to the press that this would apply “indefinitely” (Murphy and Waters, 2022). Overall, the episode represents a situation where SpaceX’s decision to accommodate Russian red lines came into conflict with its financial dependencies on the US government. New Space businesses are still largely dependent on government contracts to remain profitable and hence SpaceX sought to avoid the prospect of losing US contracts to a competitor.

Still, the turnaround on this issue did not coincide with a realignment with US interests. In February 2023, SpaceX’s COO Shotwell announced that the company would limit Starlink usage for the operation of Ukrainian drones, arguing that the infrastructure was “never intended to be weaponized” or to be used “for offensive purposes” (Suliman, 2023). In her view, Ukraine had used the technology for purposes beyond the initial agreement and that there were “things we can do to limit their ability to do that.” Drones had played a critical role in Ukraine’s military efforts as they had been used for observation and planning, for air strikes, and to down Russian drones. In October 2022, Ukraine used drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. SpaceX was now disabling Starlink usage over territories occupied by Russia, at sea, and when traveling above a speed of 100 km/hour (Carroll, 2023). This meant that Ukraine had to rely on multiple costlier and less reliable alternatives when conducting long-range strikes and when trying to retake territory. The Ukrainian leadership was irritated by that decision as it had been a well-established fact that the country was using Starlink for offensive measures (Bajak, 2023). Anton Gerashchenko (2023), advisor to Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs, argued on Twitter that “Ukraine doesn’t offense, we liberate”. Elon Musk (2023a), however, remained adamant that “we are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes”.

This fourth move by SpaceX coincided with Russian threats to shoot down Starlink satellites. The rise of the commercial sector has run parallel to Russia’s decline in space. With a lack of domestic competitors and its technological edge waning, Russia has specialized in anti-satellite systems to stay relevant in space affairs (Samson, 2022: 8). Russian hackers repeatedly conducted cyberattacks against Starlink, yet SpaceX had been able to maintain the functioning of its infrastructure (Miller et al., 2022). Russian officials also represented Starlink as a tool of US foreign policy and threatened to disable their satellites (Erwin, 2023). SpaceX’s decision to block Ukraine from using Starlink for offensive measures was also relatively coherent with the measures it had taken several months earlier: it enabled Ukraine to continue defending the territories it still held while making it harder to retake Russian-occupied ones, in effect contributing to a freezing of the conflict along present lines. Again, SpaceX used the war to demonstrate its capabilities and secure profitable contracts, while balancing Western interests with Chinese and Russian red lines.

State responses in infrastructure policy

As theorized earlier, state actors will look for ways to restore their autonomy from private infrastructure if they fear businesses may exploit their control over this infrastructure for purposes that run counter to core state interests. State action might take the form of contracting, creating interdependencies, or building parallel, even competing infrastructures, depending on the degree of autonomy states strive for and the costs they are willing to accept. Indeed, the United States, China, and the EU showed varied responses to Starlink’s role in Ukraine, relying on different strategies and aiming for different degrees of autonomy.

The response of the United States as SpaceX’s country of location and main public customer is particularly instructive for our understanding of contemporary relations between governments and businesses. The United States generally relies on a strategy of contracting and establishing interdependency, but the war in Ukraine served as warning not to over-rely on one commercial partner. Historically a dominant power in space with large publicly funded programs, the United States and its space agency NASA have shifted to a strategy of partnering with commercial providers for essential services for reasons of cost-effectiveness (Maraš and Dangubić, 2022). This strategy of contracting US businesses for highly confidential and security-relevant projects has increasingly affected the military sphere. In 2023, the United States again ramped up the national defense budget and its space component.

SpaceX has recognized the enormous profit potential that lies in commercial services for military programs in times of geopolitical tension. In December 2022, the company announced Starshield, a portfolio of services offered to governmental agencies that covers all steps of setting up space infrastructure: from the manufacturing and customized equipment of satellites to their operation. Starshield targets military and defense contracts, mainly eyeing the well-funded US government programs (Erwin, 2023). It seems imperative for SpaceX’s profitability to expand beyond civil services. In August 2022, SpaceX was denied US$900 million in subsidies for its development of broadband coverage over the United States (Wattles, 2022). Around the same time, however, the US military granted contracts to SpaceX for the equipment of and services to its Air Force, with follow-up agreements already in sight (Erwin, 2022). Based on the experiences in Ukraine, the United States still considers contracting the best way to deal with private infrastructures run by domestic businesses, assuming that the country’s economic and political pull is sufficient to prevent defection. Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense, argued in December 2022:

We have in the United States by far the most resilient commercial space enterprise anywhere in the world. The Chinese know that. We’re going to lean into that. (US Department of Defense, 2022)

Starshield builds on business relations SpaceX has established with the Space Development Agency (SDA). The SDA is subordinate to the Department of Defense and is currently setting up its own space infrastructure. A Transport Layer of several hundreds of data relay satellites in LEO would pass on data from other satellites to military facilities and vehicles on the ground. In 2020, SpaceX was awarded with a contract to develop Tracking Layer satellites for the SDA. The company has a good chance of also producing satellites for the next tranches. At the same time, the Transport Layer relays data not just from US surveillance satellites for the purposes of missile detection but also establishes links to private satellite constellations to make use of their services (Erwin, 2023). Accordingly, SpaceX’s Starshield program is focused on both satellite production and Earth observation and communications services.

The SDA’s plans reflect the general strategy the United States follows in space: building its own infrastructure based on the purchase of industrially produced components, but making it interoperable with commercial infrastructures that offer services which the United States does not want to copy. John Plumb, Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, found that “it’s pretty clear now that the Department of Defense doesn’t have to build its own constellation for every mission set to introduce resilience,” raising the question of whether “the department really need[s] to build its own when so much is available at the commercial level” (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2022). The war in Ukraine has revealed vulnerabilities associated with a reliance on business-controlled infrastructures and a strategy of contracting. As reports reveal, the United States has been alarmed about SpaceX’s considerations to discontinue its satellite communication services over Ukraine and the implications this might have for the further course of the conflict and the pursuit of US interests (Farrow, 2023). The case of Starlink underlines that companies like SpaceX, and business leaders such as Elon Musk, are private entities with which the government is negotiating and at times cooperating, but which it certainly does not control. This reflects in attempts to curtail SpaceX’s room for maneuver via government policy. While the United States counts on financial and technological interdependencies to ensure business cooperations, it currently engages in building its own infrastructures such as the Transport Layer to maintain control. Still, these projects heavily involve components and services offered by commercial providers.

China, while not directly involved in the war in Ukraine, has high stakes in the conflict due to its bilateral relations with Russia and its ambitions as regards Taiwan. As argued earlier, Elon Musk, as CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, had to take Chinese interests into account. The provision of Starlink over Ukraine entailed direct economic consequences for Musk, as the Chinese government put expansion plans for Tesla’s largest production plant Gigafactory Shanghai on hold in January 2023 (Bloomberg, 2023). These political decisions are also driven by Beijing’s fear of SpaceX interfering with Chinese geopolitical ambitions. In a press interview, Musk confirmed that he has been under pressure from Beijing about the rollout of Starlink over Ukraine. He claims that the Chinese government sought reassurances that he would not provide Starlink in China or Taiwan (Khalaf, 2022).

Government-affiliated Chinese researchers have warned that SpaceX’s relations with the US government and its upcoming program Starshield would provide the United States with the ability to closely observe Chinese military activity (Cadell, 2023). These concerns are not unfounded: as recently confirmed by media reports, under Starshield SpaceX is currently building several hundreds of spy satellites for US intelligence agencies (Roulette and Taylor, 2024). Beijing has strong economic leverage over Musk, but still views SpaceX’s contracts with the United States with distrust. Therefore, the Chinese government initiated plans to set up a competing satellite infrastructure called Guowang, a mega-constellation that would consist of up to 13,000 satellites in LEO, for which it has already filed with the International Telecommunication Union. Yet, despite being a dominant space power, China is relatively late to populating LEO and only a small number of associated satellites are thus far in orbit (Cadell, 2023).

The EU is an open supporter of Ukraine’s defensive efforts in the war, providing large amounts of financial and military support to the country. As one of the world’s largest markets, it has for a long time relied on building economic interdependencies for the stability of its political relations. However, there has been a recent shift toward “strategic autonomy” and a more pronounced infrastructure political agenda (Abels and Bieling, 2023). The European Commission has viewed space infrastructures as critical at a relatively early stage and has pushed the member states to set up their own global navigation satellite system Galileo (COM(1999) 54 final). For Galileo, the EU countries decided to establish a European infrastructure parallel to the US-American GPS but ensured interoperability with the said system. Member states opted for a similar strategy in response to Starlink’s increasing geopolitical importance and influence. In November 2022, they agreed on a program which pools financial resources to deploy an EU satellite constellation called Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) into LEO that should, however, remain interoperable with commercial systems (European Commission, 2023). This time around, the EU is trying for a public–private partnership. IRIS² duplicates Starlink as it seeks to provide low-latency and secure Internet connection to undersupplied areas as well as governmental sites. Its focus on regions in Europe and Africa is linked to the member states’ intention to support military missions, but also highlights the role the satellite system could play in border surveillance (Brzozowski, 2023). The EU plans to have IRIS² fully operable in 2027, yet the procurement process is currently stuck due to exploding costs (Foust, 2024).

Conclusion

The previous sections analyzed SpaceX’s actions and geoeconomic motives in the war in Ukraine. When Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the US-based company made Starlink communication services available over the country, which has—without a doubt—played a crucial role in Ukraine’s successful military operations. After several months, SpaceX adjusted its strategy, taking decisions that limited Ukrainian counter-offensive efforts and contributed to a freezing of the conflict. As part of this strategic shift, CEO Elon Musk presented a Russia-biased “peace plan” which, among other things, would permanently surrender Crimea to Russia and prohibit further military attempts to liberate the Russian-occupied oblasts. In parallel, Ukrainian forces at the frontlines to said regions experienced outages of Starlink services. Despite several states contributing financially and logistically to the provision of Starlink in Ukraine, SpaceX demanded compensation for its services from the US government. Several months later, the company then disabled Starlink for Ukrainian military drones, making the service unavailable behind the frontlines and at sea.

The question raised was how these seemingly contradictory strategic decisions made by SpaceX could be explained. Theoretically, the article brought together IR arguments about the instrumental character of infrastructures with political–economic arguments about their (geo)economic and productive value, arguing that both aspects guide businesses’ decision-making on infrastructure. SpaceX viewed the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to improve its reputation and publicity and to prove the capabilities and resilience of its infrastructure. Against this backdrop, the company successfully secured additional investment capital and public contracts, most centrally in the realm of defense. Yet, in line with the theoretical arguments offered in this article, the profit-oriented logic was amended by preferences for particular political outcomes. As a transnational corporation—and with its CEO Musk involved in other ventures as well—SpaceX did not fully align strategically with the United States but sought not to antagonize other forces on which it depends in one way or another, most centrally the Chinese government. This led to strategic behavior that at times seemed contradictory, but that reflected SpaceX’s attempt to satisfy both logics and play both sides.

A theoretical implication of these findings is that scholars in IR should view private actors such as businesses neither as subordinate to state interests nor as purely utilitarian profit-seeking entities. Particularly in Western market economies, businesses are best viewed as juxtaposed to states, with power disparities and dependencies varying with the respective political–economic environment. Furthermore, businesses interests may not align with the strategic interests of their countries of location as they may follow certain preferences for the outcome of geopolitical conflicts. State actors do take private infrastructures and their influence seriously and adapt their own strategies accordingly. Whereas the United States relied on its economic pull and systemic interdependencies to ensure SpaceX’s cooperation, both China and the EU opted to build their own LEO satellite constellations. More generally, the article underlined that states will seek to reestablish independence from private infrastructure by building parallel infrastructures—rivaling or interoperable—where other forms of hedging fail.

The article argued that Starlink serves as a prototypical case that highlights larger shifts in state–business relations in an age of transnational tech firms. Naturally, SpaceX displays some specific characteristics, such as the prominent position of its CEO and his eccentric habitus, but highlights broader dynamics in the political influence of tech companies. The size and capital of companies such as Apple or Amazon allows them to engage in a struggle with state actors over matters of taxation, regulation, and economic policy. These companies seized the infrastructure gap extant in Western societies after decades of public underinvestment to seek out business opportunities and establish themselves as indispensable providers of high-tech infrastructures. This dynamic is reinforced by the fact that Western countries, operating under tight public budgets, increasingly rely on leveraging private investment in the infrastructure sector (Abels and Bieling, 2024). First and foremost, the findings presented in this article underline that, while states remain the key actors in large parts of international politics, transnational corporations are able to diversify their activities and assets across the globe. This puts them in new dependencies in one place, while removing them from state control in another. Under these conditions, businesses engage in strategic action that is meant to change the very political conditions under which they operate. SpaceX’s strategizing in Ukraine is a particularly remarkable example of private infrastructure influencing the course of geopolitics that can be observed—to a substantial, if lesser degree—in other conflicts as well. Other cases, like Apple’s persistent refusal to break the encryption of its mobile devices on request of the US government, may be infrequent but significant instances wherein transnational power relations are re-negotiated.

While space and satellite networks have been the focal point of this article, its theoretical arguments and empirical findings can be extended to other communication networks such as cloud infrastructure, where centralization effects have led to the emergence of big US tech players dominating the global market. In fields such as transportation and energy, infrastructure markets are also frequently dominated by large companies in the form of fossil fuel or shipping companies. However, the infrastructures they operate are more geographically bound, and to a substantial extent publicly owned. Hence, the geoeconomic dynamics portrayed in this article can be expected to be visible there as well, but less pronounced.

Communication infrastructures might provide a glimpse into a future where privately controlled infrastructures become even more influential in global politics. As businesses enjoy cost advantages and a technological edge, relying on private infrastructure for the enforcement of core interests can come with a certain appeal for states. Yet, dependency on transnational corporations for indispensable services might result in unintended and risky consequences. By now, Elon Musk (2023b) openly supports an end of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and a truce between the two parties. Musk (2023c) also applauded US senator Rand Paul for promoting an interim US budget that would drop any aid to Ukraine. Earlier statements furthermore underline that, in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, it is unlikely that SpaceX would make Starlink available the way it did in Ukraine (Khalaf, 2022).

This begs the question of how much the provision of critical infrastructure should be left to private companies and where public infrastructures should be developed as an alternative. This is not to say that public infrastructures are per se “better” or more reliable than private ones. However, in democratic societies at least there is a chance that people might get a say in their development, regulation, and operation.