Once upon a time, my dream was to work for Elon Musk.
I was a young mechanical engineering graduate with hopes of inventing the machines of the future. Unlike other tech billionaires whose inventions existed in boring binary and flat 2D, Musk seemed like a man from a different era, a man after my own heart. He wanted to revolutionize the automobile, travel to space, shift earth and change the world, and he wanted to do it all through the transformative power of mechanical engineering. Four years into my technical career and at the precipice of a life-changing decision, a friend asked who I most wanted to work for. My answer was immediate.
“If Elon Musk called me right now, told me to drop everything and come work on his project,” I said on the phone as I paced the cold, concrete sidewalks of Melbourne, “I’d do it. No questions asked.” I ignored the fact that he was not a trained engineer but actually a student of arts and science, turning the glaring inconsistency into part of the myth. I would say I ignored his politics, but I simply didn’t know them.
Oh, how things have changed.
Like many of my peers today, the first thing that comes to mind when hearing the name Elon Musk is not, “What a transformative innovator in engineering!” My thoughts are more along the lines of, “What has he done this time?” Has he tried to dismantle another U.S. government agency? Has he taken over another beloved social media platform, or attempted to colonize another town? Has he joked about making another racist gesture in public or, finally, flown himself to Mars?
The scope and scale of the absurdities attributable to the richest man in the world boggle the mind. However, unlike many of my peers, as a Sudanese woman, there remains a part of me that finds it challenging to entirely disregard his achievements. Even as the government department he launched slashed USAID funding, shuttering 80% of Sudanese emergency kitchens amid a gruesome conflict and worsening the deadliest famine anywhere on Earth in the last half-century, Musk’s innovations were playing a critical role in ensuring the safety of millions of Sudanese people. Enter SpaceX’s Starlink.
Starlink was launched by Musk’s private rocket company, SpaceX, in 2019, with the aim of providing a global broadband network. The network utilizes a huge constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to provide high-speed internet around the world. Users connect to the network using a small, Starlink-provided satellite dish and a Wi-Fi router, making it ideal for geographically isolated locations or contexts, like Sudan, in which traditional telecommunications infrastructure is unavailable.
Internet shutdowns began soon after the conflict erupted in Khartoum on April 15, 2023. It was clear from the outset that telecommunications would be a key front of the war. Within hours, Sudan’s largest internet provider, MTN, blocked internet services across the country at the behest of the government telecommunications regulator (ostensibly the Sudanese Armed Forces). Other internet service providers, including Zain and Sudani, rapidly followed suit. As fighting raged on, infrastructure was systematically targeted, destroyed and shut down by the warring parties, with entire regions cut off and civilians left without phone or internet access for months at a time. In February 2024, a nationwide blackout severed communications for 30 million people for almost a month.
In Sudan, disruption to communication is catastrophic. Not only does it deny the population access to information on safe areas and routes, aid distribution and health services, it strikes at the heart of household funds. Cash is scarce. Without the internet, mobile banking — the primary functioning financial system in the country — grinds to a halt, forcing the already faltering economy to a standstill. “In this context,” Affan Cheema, director of international programs at Islamic Relief Worldwide, tells New Lines, “Starlink has been a lifeline and the only option for many people.”
This is not hyperbole. From international agencies to grassroots organizing, Starlink is the primary connector. It allows international agencies like Islamic Relief to keep in contact with staff who are otherwise unreachable, coordinate needs assessments and monitor aid delivery in highly unstable situations. Hala Alkarib, the regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network, tells New Lines that “without the availability of Starlink machines, our work in being able to literally rescue and save the lives of hundreds of women and their families and other civilians wouldn’t have been possible.” SIHA provides remote counseling services and medical aid, organizes evacuations, facilitates grassroots political forum spaces and gathers information via Starlink. If not for the network, “the level of isolation that the women would have been enduring would have been horrific. It would be a total isolation,” Alkarib says.
How do these organizations square their dependence on Starlink with Musk’s politics?
“It’s a war,” says the Sudanese political analyst Dallia Abdelmoniem. “We’re not in a ‘normal’ situation. We are in the midst of a destructive war that has impacted every facet of life in the whole country.” Millions rely on mobile bank transfers in order to survive, she points out. This is not a time for ideals, this is a time to face reality. Alkarib agrees. In this “extremely catastrophic” situation, the Sudanese are not thinking about the ethics of Starlink beyond using it as a tool to communicate for the most urgent needs.
Some critique the validity of the question itself. “Decrying the choices people are making on the ground is the privilege of people who have options,” says the Sudanese-American musician and grassroots activist Alsarah. Her position is emphatic. “What form of communications around the globe is not privately owned? Without Starlink devices people would not be able to communicate. You can’t send money, you can’t buy food … you’re truly isolating people and killing them.”
Across agencies and activists, there is a consensus that while the dependence is not ideal, nobody really has the luxury of choice. “Yes, it’s a huge vulnerability right now to be reliant on one source or one provider,” says Mathilde Vu of the Norwegian Refugee Council. However, there are no viable alternatives in the market at the moment, certainly not for average Sudanese civilians. International aid organizations might, if forced, be able to find a way, but “your uncle in Khartoum will not go and buy a satellite phone.” While not free, Starlink internet access is the most accessible option for many Sudanese.
Cheema agrees that, because telecommunication facilities are critical civilian infrastructure, there need to be “diverse and affordable options.” But unfortunately for Sudanese people, this reality feels a long way off.
Despite understanding the need, some in the diaspora still caution against complacency and accepting the status quo. “We can’t just trust and assume that it will always be working with the best intentions,” the Yale history doctoral candidate Bayan Abubakr says of Starlink. “Right now, maybe it hasn’t been fatal, but it really has a potential to be.”
How might the vital service that Starlink provides be fatal? According to Ahmed Soliman, a senior research fellow in the Africa Programme at Chatham House, precisely because of its importance, to both civilians and the wartime economy. At the individual level, the devices (either the dish or the routers) are military targets, so if civilians gather where these systems operate, they can inadvertently be caught in the crossfire. “The reliance on this infrastructure essentially makes people sitting targets in this ongoing guerrilla warfare,” Soliman tells New Lines. At the macro level, it further entrenches the destructive militarization of Sudanese society. Soliman argues that this leads to the securitization of markets, trade and transportation, and the extortion of Sudan’s economy and civic society.
This tallies with the observations of Khattab Hamad, a former telecoms engineer turned digital rights activist. For example, Starlink devices are not freely available for public use in areas controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Instead, they are regulated by the militia, which imposes fees. “There is an annual licence fee of 500,000 Sudanese pounds ($830, which is about an average month’s salary) per internet cafe,” Hamad explains, and that money goes directly to the RSF.
There is a conflict of ethics, Hamad admits, when it comes to usage of Starlink devices. But on balance, the benefit for civilians outweighs what the RSF gains. So much so that, in 2024, after exposes in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg prompted Starlink to email customers warning of an impending shutdown in “unlicensed areas,” Hamad worked with aid groups and activists who banded together, urging Musk to keep the service active. In that case, SpaceX responded, not through a public announcement but by allowing usage to continue.
The same leniency does not look likely for USAID.
“USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” Musk posted to X in February. A few days after the post, he wrote, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
In 2024, the U.S. was Sudan’s largest donor, providing nearly 44% of all aid funding. According to the Sudan INGO Forum, at least half of the international nongovernmental organizations as well as national responders delivering Sudan’s lifesaving assistance rely on funding from the U.S. USAID was also an unusually flexible donor, “providing vital cash programs for community responders in areas more difficult to access,” reports the Norwegian NGO Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS). When the aid freeze kicked in, days into Trump’s current administration, the impact was immediate. According to a recent ACAPS report, the stop-work orders meant the shuttering of 900 of the 1,400 community kitchens that serve an estimated 2 million people. The full scale of the devastation is difficult to ascertain due to the uncertainty still surrounding the funding landscape.
The USAID gutting is significant, Vu notes, since “European donors are very much cutting as well.” Despite the many public declarations of assistance, the support received barely touches the sides. “We’re halfway into the year, and only 13.4% of the humanitarian plan for Sudan is funded,” Vu tells New Lines. “That means that only 14% of the people that we’re supposed to support will hopefully receive assessments. It’s a huge gap.”
“Short term, the aid cuts are nothing short of a disaster,” Abdelmoniem says. While she supports the narrative that, in the long run, the cuts will “force all of us to think outside the box and not be dependent on foreign assistance,” in this moment, “it’s a lifeline that’s been abruptly truncated.” To pull out so suddenly, Alsarah says, is like “starving people before your eyes and holding the tray behind your back.” Mutual aid work was already happening, she notes. But there was no warning of this reduction, no time for alternative plans to be put in place. Worse, “nobody’s going to fill the gaps,” Vu says. With Europe focused on raising defense budgets, the Gulf’s lukewarm response and the rest of the world’s attention elsewhere, Soliman, from Chatham House, tends to agree. “There’s no other bilateral or multilateral stakeholder that’s going to step up to provide that shortfall.” Even with the $160 million pledged by the U.K. government to Sudan in April, “we don’t know what of that is new, what’s already committed, and, you know, when that will be delivered, frankly.”
In the face of the dire situation, optimism is difficult to come by. “I’m worried about Sudan,” Bayan says, “because we really are at the edge of so many different frontiers of violence. We’ve transgressed all these benchmarks, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the world’s worst famine, the world’s worst X, Y and Z … we say this over and over again, it just goes into the ether.”
“What does the world need?” asks Vu. “Sudan has a genocide, a famine and the largest displacement crisis in the world.” The two sides also seem to be separated less fundamentally than is the case in many other conflicts around the world. Yet, still, nothing has been done. “I don’t know what it takes for world leaders to take the Sudan crisis seriously,” she says.
So, I come back full circle, to Musk. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the service provided by Starlink is lifesaving. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the impact of the USAID cuts he spearheaded will lead to deaths across Sudan and, arguably, the world. Do these impacts cancel each other out? What does that say about how Musk conceives of Sudan and his power over it?
“I don’t think Elon Musk is even aware of Sudan,” Alsarah tells New Lines. “He’s got his eyes on bigger prizes. He doesn’t see the people using it, to him it’s about the technology.”
Perhaps this is true, and all my efforts trying to decide how I feel about Musk are a misuse of energy. Far more interesting than the whims of an individual man, no matter how powerful, is another question for Sudan and for Sudanese people: how to move beyond and outside the imaginations of techno-imperialists and elite-led, authoritarian, militarized governance.
“We have to be courageous,” Alkarib says. “We have to look inside.” The international community has lost legitimacy, she says, given their silence and complicity on Gaza and their lack of interest in Sudan. So rather than turning to them, “fundamentally, Sudanese have to start looking inside, and try to figure it out.”
An inspiring sentiment. The question of how remains.
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