Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other administration officials should be called to testify about restrictions affecting Ukraine’s access to satellite services provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, saying conflicting explanations surrounding the situation warrant congressional scrutiny. The defense secretary Hegseth should be brought in, anyone who has knowledge of what happened,” Schiff told NBC News’ Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker when asked whether he would call administration officials to testify if Democrats regain control of the Senate in this year's midterm elections. You've got Elon Musk saying another thing.
You have them both saying different things at different times,” Schiff said. Maybe they're all lying in different ways. But we need to find out.” Schiff added: “Certainly the world's richest person shouldn't be controlling our national security interests.
That is a spectacular threat to our national security if it is true. Something isn't adding up here.” Newsweek reached out to the Department of Defense for a comment from Hegseth by email Sunday. The dispute highlights Ukraine’s reliance on satellite communications for military operations as its war against Russia continues.
Ukrainian officials said access to Starlink and Starshield, the latter being SpaceX's military-grade system, had been restricted in the country without advance warning and that SpaceX had placed a speed limit on Starlink terminals earlier this month, disrupting battlefield operations. Ukraine has targeted Russian oil and gas facilities in an effort to curb energy revenue used to finance Moscow’s war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Ukrainian refinery attacks have cost Russia roughly 1 percent of its gross domestic product.
Moscow, meanwhile, has continued targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. President Donald Trump has pressured Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil facilities as high diesel prices remain an issue in the United States ahead of the midterms. Trump blamed Ukraine’s attacks for contributing to those prices, while his administration moved to allow Russian diesel back onto global markets and relaxed sanctions to authorize imports into the U.S.
Meanwhile, Musk distanced himself and SpaceX from Ukrainian-reported restrictions and said the U.S. government had the final say before saying Saturday that Ukraine had violated the terms of service. reported on October 22, citing two U.S. officials and a Western official briefed on the matter, that the order to slow the Starshield service used by Ukraine came from inside the White House. The officials did not identify who made the decision. However, a senior U.S. official told that “no such request was ever made by the president,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on October 18 that the instruction came from the U.S. government and was technically implemented by SpaceX.
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