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.
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.
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.
That is a bit too optimistic, though only by a little. China is still an immoral authoritarian state, and the EU should definetly not overdo any possible deals with them, as not to get dependant on yet another bully. The cheeto man may still straight up team up with his russian overlords and try to screw us in the butts. However, if we play the cards right, stay united, and keep russian-funded politicians away from our parliments, we just might come up on top.
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.
I’m likely not well informed enough to know for sure, but from what I’ve been gathering is that China Russia relations are more or less based on weapons deals while otherwise remaining neutral and shakey at best. As in they’re sort of “fair weather friends” but I think China has a better future in weapons deals with a United Europe and a collapsing USA and Russia Vs. a future with a collapsing Russia and the likes of Iran or Hungary (Turkey is NATO btw). China certainly wouldn’t approach Europe with a deal, but rather I feel like China is in the position to choose between deals that are coming to them, and while China is certainly not an ideal Big Daddy I feel like they’d do a better job at overseeing more peaceful relations with themselves on top instead of America. Iran and North Korea would get a better deal out of it too than this new Axis of Evil you’re proposing. Everyone just wants USA to collapse so they can get on with their countries without USA’s meddling interference schemes and paying dues to Uncle Sam, that alone would placate a lot of these “Evil Countries” to be more willing and able to be less “evil”. It’s not a solution but it’s progress.
AGAIN i’m most likely wrong, would like to be enlightened further if anyones got some good reads/vids for me.
I don’t know where you get your info, but China and Russia have a frenemy relationship, a friendly rivalry, basically. This goes back to Stalin’s limited support for the CCP in their early days, or even before when the Russian Tsar conquered huge swaths of land from the Qing Dynasty during their Century of Humiliation, about the time when we Americans were busy having our Civil War. We see it to this day, where China could have a huge and decisive effect on the Russo-Ukrainian War if they wished and fully threw in with Russia, but instead are happy to sit back and war profiteer while Russia takes heavy loses and the West spends money instead of making it.
Then Iran and Saudi Arabia are archenemies. Iran is a Shia-majority theocracy, SA is a Sunni-majority secular monarchy with a history of persecuting Shias, and even warming up to Israel before Oct 7th. They have a long history of conflict.
Not sure how Turkey gets on the list either, Turkey has consistently played both sides, always being in it for Turkey. I don’t see the benefit for them to actually pick a side, thus losing their benefits from the other. We see this clearly, again, in how they’ve approached the Russo-Ukrainian War. Like cozying up to Putin, but hey, have some free Bayraktars, Ukraine!
I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying to make it seem like a real WW3 with fairly even sides is plausible in the near future, but it always requires a lot of cherry picking and ignoring realities for them to spin their stories together.
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.
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.
Nowhere did I claim that billionaires are good. I’m saying which type are the most dangerous.
It’s like saying “which tiger is more dangerous, the hungry one or the hungry AND rabid one?” Obviously both are existential problems to us, but one is still worse the others.
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.
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/
The problem is that Ariane 6 is already an obsolete previous-gen design, not one part is reusable. SpaceX is the dominant launch provider for a very solid reason and ultimately the only way to compete with them is going to be to adopt their ideas and methodologies.
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.
He ruined his dick with his ketamine habit
Kanye is not a gay fish!
But he does like fish sticks!
Technically that makes him captain Iglo.
Yesterday someone posted a thread that claimed that was the actual intention. Awfully questionable but it’s a funny enough idea to spread anyway ……
The claim is some economic mastermind in the administration believes our entire problem is interest rates and the dollar is too strong. Ok as far as that goes, but the further claim is all the tariffs, flip flopping, broken contracts are just to persuade countries to kick us in the dick until we feel better. They may not have used those exact words
There’s some merit to them purposefully tanking stocks. Prior to the flip-flopping, a lot of big money pulled out of the market significantly (which also contributed to it crashing and people freaking) As far as the dollar being too strong, it just has to stay stronger than the stockmarket so they can buy back cheap.
Of course, it’ll cause a recession. fuck over everyone and just about every company in the country, but Elon doesn’t care, he’ll just grant himself a bunch of defense and aerospace contracts, maybe order a 30 billion in teslas for the government.
No, they said it right.
In this case, Elon is mouthing off like a bitch, and someone else kicked him in the dick for it (if it did really happen).
That’s really really important, because usually these guys do shit, then no one kicks them in the dick. That’s what allows them to continue doing the shit.
Carlos Slim sounds like an RnB artist
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.
Sounds like the leader of a cattle rustling gang in a cheesy western.
Or Slow Jazz. Or a porn star. [wink wink]
Is he related to Slim Jim?
Slim Charles, one of the Barksdale enforcers from The Wire.
And here I was feeling good about myself after I canceled an order of 4 units for work. But every magnitude matters, I guess.
Honestly, more small orders getting cancelled is also awesome, good on you!
Thank you for your service!
I’ve never been a customer so this might be a dumb question. What does 4 units represent?
In terms of what? Cost? No idea, that’s some other departments problem.
As for use case, it is for outfitting two ships with internet access better than the usual 2-5mbit VSAT. Two antennae each to account for loss of coverage on one antenna due to the superstructure possibly getting in the way.
We use it to improve remote operation of offshore hardware, but starlink isn’t as good as it used to be. When first installing it in January 2021 it was great, 150mbit+, but as more and more people bought starlink, performance dropped significantly.
Good. Seeing a Nazi face consequences for his actions in real time is so satisfying.
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.
This is a good point, and I will choose to believe this is what is happening to muskrat.
This is a man whose only good ideas have been to buy other people’s good ideas with his father’s blood money.
Carlos also cancelled a more immediate $7 billion business plan with Starlink, which makes it closer to 30 billion lost.
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
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’m sure every Mexican billionaire has a private army on their payroll, drug cartel of not.
Billionaires literally cannot exist without doing a ton of evil shit. But he’s an enemy of my enemy, so I take this as a win.
Drug cartel money would be chump change to Carlos Slim. At one point he was the richest man in the world. His holdings include Grupo Carso, it is like Berkshire Hathaway in scale.
That’s an uplifting news
Good move from Carlos Slim.
Why those accusations? Did he have hints from anonymous?
Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain’t calling.
I left my cell, my pager and my home phone at the bottom
I have some doubts. Only small or weird outlets have any news on this and there is no good original source linked anywhere.
The Canadian Press explains a potential path by which this claim could have arisen, namely that Slim’s company América Móvil had stated in an earnings call that they were going to invest 22 billion pesos (! not USD) in infrastructure over three years and they didn’t have plans to invest it in Starlink, instead looking more towards two other satellite companies, and only for rural backbones where laying fiber would be more expensive.
Good.
