Summary
Carlos Slim’s telecom giant, América Móvil, canceled $22 billion in planned Starlink orders after Elon Musk insinuated Slim had ties to drug cartels.
The decision, made within hours of Musk’s tweet, costs Musk his main partner in 25 countries and shifts business to Chinese and European competitors, further reducing U.S. commercial influence.
Musk’s increasing political entanglements and conspiracy-laden posts are alienating key business partners and consumers, with potential ripple effects on Tesla sales.
It’s nice that Elon is getting hit where it hurts. Hopefully the EU benefits from this.
Hopefully. For all the tragedy of his presidency, Orange Menace actually brought endless opportunities for us to unite and become properly Independent.
Am I the only one that’s not worried about the future? As a non-American I mean, it feels like we’re about to have more global unity and prosperity entirely at the expense of America, whereby it’ll become the futures new “No Man’s Land” of proxy-wars, weapons testing, and religious fundamentalism to satiate the MIC while everywhere else gets to make new trade partnerships and are free to explore more political possibilities without having to pay their dues to Uncle Sam.
Maybe i’m being too optimistic, but it sorta feels like the winds are blowing towards a new global alliance of Europe and NATO teaming up with China, purposefully excluding and at the expense of Russia and USA. Feels like the Cold War superpowers have both lost, Russia successfully defeating USA but not without collapsing themselves too. Almost as though this war in Ukraine was just part of the mechanism to collapse the USA/EU Atlantic alliance, and the war can only be over once Russia and USA are through.
You are forgetting that China and Russia are friends, and always have been. Sure, they have their dust-ups, but it’s never serious. Last summer they were having combined wargames along the Alaska/Canadian coast, and Russian and Chinese jets flew close enough to have our air command nervous. At the same time Russia was touting their alliance with North Korea.
I think the US will leave NATO, but NATO will not align with China. Instead, there will be a new alliance, and America will join Russia, China, North Korea, and a few others (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hungary, Turkey, etc.) in a new Axis Of Evil.
That’s an excellent point. Trump is replacing all the competent people with loyalists, without remembering a basic fact: It is better to keep your potential enemy inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.
All he has done is force all of his most competent leaders to join the opposition, as well as tens of thousands of inside operatives who are now unemployed, but know better than anyone how the system operates. There are are also a lot of people still on the inside, who hate what has happened to their workplace and their colleagues, and won’t be so compliant. They’ll be perfect moles for any espionage/sabotage.
Eventually they’ll get organized, and it will be the competent, motivated Patriots against the treasonous MAGA morons.
Eutelsat and Amazon’s Kuiper just got one more pre-order.
Well, Amazon isn’t exactly great for the EU, but at least it’s not Elon, IG…
Billionaires trying to preserve the status quo are far less dangerous than billionaires trying to disrupt it.
Damning with faint praise, but you’re not wrong. No billionaire getting stuck-in like Musk is doing it to make the world a better place for anyone else, and no one except autocrats and accelerationist wackos should be pleased with how things have changed in the last 6 months.
So? No billionaires at all are better than both cases. Bezos is evil too, any investment going towards him is terrible to. It’s better than Elon, but all this is terrible. Also, Bezos is not trying to preserve the status quo, he’s only trying to protect himself and his pockets, that’s all.
Bezos is just as evil
Not sure about that, but I can’t really say I disagree, fundamentally.
Shame that he’s going to bring the rest of us down with him
Just when the new EU launcher Ariane 6 is finally fully operational. That’s convenient. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/europes-ariane-6-stages-first-commercial-launch-2025-03-06/
I’d be very surprised if OneWeb ever launches on Ariane 6. It is not build for cheap LEO launches at all afaik. But maybe some ride shares, who knows.
Let’s bring back being decent to people.
Carlos Slim sounds like an RnB artist
Or Slow Jazz. Or a porn star. [wink wink]
Is he related to Slim Jim?
He should sound like the largest shareholder of the NYT because he’s the billionaire with their leash in hand. He’s one of the better billionaire paper owners since his interests aren’t as actively focused on the US but it’d still be great if he didn’t have extensive influence to control the news.
100%, we should guillotine all the billionaires.
Slim Charles, one of the Barksdale enforcers from The Wire.
Elon really is his own worst enemy. Buying Twitter was such a bad idea on multiple levels.
Other than the fact that it contributed heavily towards giving trump a win in the election and allowing for the speedrun of dismantling of western democracy and alliances. There’s a reason why a lot of the additional funds to purchase twitter came from dictatorship-like backers, such as Saudis/UAE/etc.
It’s served its purpose for them. They’d have been happy to just dismantle it for 44 billion. Musk gave them so much more than that though.
someone pointed out the trump has a history of making the people that help him succeed get ruined and a lot of his most vocal people from his first term lost everything
Good, Elon seriously deserves to lose it all from this. He threatens to shut off Starlink for Ukraine. He’s a nazi making the core buyers of Tesla take a stance. Governmental subsidies are cut to the bone, but not his SpaceX, yet? He’s more unreliable than Google at this point.
He just wanted a soapbox he could control.
This is a man whose only good ideas have been to buy other people’s good ideas with his father’s blood money.
That’s an uplifting news
and shifts business to Chinese and European competitors,
Well, at least he’s not also pissing off China and Europe as well…
Oh, that’s right, everyone hates Musk
Feels so good seeing Elon Musk get kicked in the dick.
He is kicking himself in the dick.
Kinda reminds me of Kanye West TBH.
Good move from Carlos Slim.
Why those accusations? Did he have hints from anonymous?
4Chan
Great news
Good.
Anybody here think that a mexican billionaire can be alive without having ties to drug cartels? Good for him for giving the finger to Musk though.
I mean he does have ties to drug cartels, but you don’t say it
Thanks for the business opportunity, Mr. Muskrat.
