Musk's Starlink a Red Herring?
Update #5 | Tabulators were hacked, but Starlink is an unlikely culprit
If you haven’t read the initial post,
I highly recommend reading that first ↓
Author’s Note: I initially intended to publish Part 2 of yesterday’s article (“Russia’s Playbook For Stealing An Election, Part 1”) today, but the Starlink story took precedence. Stay tuned for the continuation of that post.
Update #5
Despite the many theories circulating, it’s unlikely Starlink was involved in stealing the election. Let’s talk about it.
I’m seeing widespread speculation on social media that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service was used in the election infrastructure hack that robbed Kamala Harris of victory. It’s a juicy story—one that, if true, would demonstrate a nauseating lack of election security preparedness.
And that’s why I’m confident it’s just rage-bait. It’s simply implausible. The real story of hacked ballot tabulation machines may be less flashy and harder for people to grasp, but its impact is even worse. Let’s dive in.
The Starlink theory
Before we can disprove the Starlink theory, we need to examine it.
What’s Starlink?
Starlink is a satellite internet service provided by SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by billionaire tech mogul and Trump cheerleader Elon Musk. The service aims to provide high-speed internet access, especially to underserved or remote areas around the world, by deploying a large constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).
The system provides broadband connectivity by establishing a two-way data link between a user’s receiver dish on the ground and the satellite network, which then communicates with ground stations to provide internet access.
The service has quickly become indispensable for governments—especially the U.S.—to provide mobile internet. Starlink has been used to support emergency communication during natural disasters, including in areas of North Carolina hard-hit by Hurricane Helene last month. Ukraine relies on Starlink for battlefield communications and to run its wartime fleet of military drones. Russian military units illegally use them too, bypassing sanctions. The U.S. Navy is experimenting with Starlink to help connect its warships to the web.
Because Musk is a real-life supervillain, this does cause some serious concerns.
What people are saying:
Generally speaking, the going theory is that Starlink’s technology was used to transmit vote tallies in swing states and California, which enabled Musk (or his people) to manipulate vote totals and make Harris lose.
It is true that in Tulare County, California, Registrar of Voters Michelle Baldwin told local news channel ABC30 that “access to connectivity was improved this year thanks to Starlink Internet.” Baldwin also noted that the county had experienced a software error affecting its tabulator machine (just like other hacked tabulators throughout the country!), but the error was quickly fixed.
Those who believe this theory also point to a statement made on on a post-election episode of podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE). On the episode, Joe Rogan told comedian Theo Von the following about Musk:
Apparently Elon [Musk] created an app and he knew who won four hours before the results. So as the results were coming in, four hours before they called it, Dana White told me Elon was like 'I'm leaving. It's over. Donald [Trump] won.' He just fuckin’— [laughs] somehow or another. It's like, I don't know where he's pulling his data from but he had like the most accurate data.
Regardless of whether Starlink was used in the hack, the claim that Musk had inside info before the results were made public is curious.
It’s also interesting that, in his Election Night victory speech, Trump praised Musk, SpaceX, and Starlink: “[Musk] saved a lot of lives. But he's a character,” Trump said. “He's a special guy. He's a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses. We don't have that many of them. We have to."
Why Starlink probably wasn’t used for the hack
The problem with the theory is that, for obvious reasons of cybersecurity, voting machines and tabulators aren’t (generally) directly connected to the Internet. For example, California state law prohibits this practice, stating, “No part of the voting system shall be connected to the internet at any time.”
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Outside of Baldwin’s vague mention of Starlink “improving connectivity” (which doesn’t specifically mean voting machines were illegally connected to the Internet using Starlink), I can find no proof that Starlink is utilized for any portion of any state’s voting system. If anyone has contrary information, please contact me via email (tinfoilmatt@proton.me).
Some states do allow some voting precincts to quickly transmit unofficial results by connecting ballot scanners/tabulators to a private mobile network. By policy, this is only allowed once voting has concluded and the memory cards with vote tallies have been collected, to isolate that important data.
These procedures, when properly followed, preserve the original vote tallies on memory cards. Paper ballots from each voter are also saved.
If Starlink really was used to transmit unofficial results, it would give Starlink/Space X access to hack the unofficial results being transmitted. But the hack would be limited to the communication of that unofficial Election Night tally and wouldn’t affect the data saved and later provided to the state’s election officials for confirmation. As I understand it, that means this would be a short-lived hack as the discrepancy between these two different tallies would be discovered before the vote is certified.
Instead, if the hack was performed on the tabulator itself (as originally speculated), it would manipulate the vote tally in real time. In this scenario, the vote tally would be manipulated before it’s saved to the memory card, so no correct version of the data would exist. This hack would be much harder to detect, only being found if the paper ballots were recounted by hand.
Musk is complicit either way
On October 18, 2024, two and a half weeks before the election, Musk made comments about how easy it is to hack voting machines during a town hall in Pennsylvania:
“In my view, we should only do paper ballots, hand counted. That’s it,” Musk said to applause from the crowd. He later continued, “I’m a technologist. I know a lot about computers, and the last thing I would do is trust a computer program because it’s too easy to hack. It’s too easy to add just one line.”
This came days after a revealing conversation between Musk and conservative bow tie enthusiast Tucker Carlson, in which Musk said he expects to go to prison if Trump loses:
Carlson: “If [Trump] loses man … you’re fucked, dude.”
Musk: “I’m fucked. If he loses, I’m fucked.”
Both laugh.
Musk: “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be? Will I see my children? I don’t know.”
Musk is clearly guilty of something (Perhaps buying votes? Secretly collaborating with Russian President Vladimir Putin?). He portrayed a voting machine hack as being easy to do. Why wouldn’t he assist with stealing the election when a Trump presidency is what would keep him out of prison?
On Election Night, about four hours before mainstream media had called the race, Musk tweeted, “Game, set and match.”
He later felt it necessary to defend the tweet, saying he was, “just reading X and combining that with real-time swing state voting data sent to [him] by [his] America PAC team.”
Guilty, much?
Here’s an alternate explanation for Musk’s behavior—Dana White witnessed Musk receiving confirmation that the hack had worked as intended, and thus he no longer needed to watch the results come in to know who would win.
On November 6, Musk tweeted, “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin phrase translating to “A New Order of the Ages” or, more popularly, “New World Order.” The phrase appears on the back of the Great Seal of the United States and the $1 bill. But it also refers to an established conspiracy theory that a shadowy group will secretly create a totalitarian global government.
A publication from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism describes the theory this way (emphasis mine):
The New World Order (NWO) is a conspiracy theory in which adherents believe that a cabal of powerful elites is secretly implementing a dystopian international governing structure that will grant them complete control over the global populace. Under this regime, dissidents will be arrested, and the masses enslaved.
Two days later, Putin echoed the billionaire’s words. In his speech congratulating Trump for his apparent reelection, Putin said “a new world order” is taking shape.
It may just be a dark joke shared between them, but we can certainly now identify a cabal of powerful elites who conspired to bring upheaval to the international balance of power: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin.
The fix was in and Musk knew about it, even if he probably didn’t use Starlink to do it.
Stay tuned for Russia’s Playbook For Stealing An Election, Part 2! Next, we’ll examine other elections Russia has rigged and look for patterns.
Subscribe to stay informed. This is a developing situation, and I’ll continue to report on it. There are so many other data points to discuss and analyze that will supplement the insights above. Watch your email for more.
If you have relevant information to contribute, please email: tinfoilmatt@proton.me
Read the previous update:
Russia's Playbook For How To Steal An Election, Part 1
Update #4 | The Hybrid War: Russia's Influence Operations in Europe and the U.S.