While Elon Musk was dominating the news with his principled stance on buying — and reforming — censorship-wracked Twitter, something else big was going on on the side, according to Breaking Defense:

WASHINGTON: The US military's electronic warfare enterprise needs to take a page from SpaceX when it comes to responding to new threats, the Pentagon's director for electromagnetic warfare said today.

After SpaceX sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine in February in an apparent effort to help Ukraine maintain its internet connection amid war with Russia, SpaceX founder Elon Musk claimed that Russia had jammed Starlink terminals in the country for hours at a time. After a software update, Starlink was operating normally, said Musk, who added on March 25 that the constellation had "resisted all hacking & jamming attempts" in Ukraine.

Assuming Musk — famously something of a showboater in his public comments — is providing an accurate picture, a private firm beating back Russian EW attempts with software updates is the kind of thing that makes Pentagon EW experts pay attention. 

"From an EW technologist perspective, that is fantastic. That paradigm and how they did that is kind of  eyewatering to me," said Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare for the Pentagon's acquisition office. "The way that Starlink was able to upgrade when a threat showed up, we need to be able to have that ability. We have to be able to change our electromagnetic posture, to be able to change very dynamically what we're trying to do without losing capability along the way."

Musk, in other words, besides fighting for free speech in the States, was also busy taking on the mighty Russian military machine — and beating it.  Even the Pentagon was awed, watching as Musk's Starlink Internet system beat back hacker after hacker from Moscow through a program of software upgrades, with the quoted official hoping and dreaming for something similar to be developed at the Pentagon.  It says a lot that the General Mark Milley crowd over there still doesn't have a clue.  

Musk didn't say much of anything about it as all eyes were focused on his Twitter war, but facts are facts: while Musk was brawling with the activist left and schooling the public about free speech over at Twitter, he was also quietly beating back monster state-sponsored internet attacks on his Starlink system, which rather miraculously was the only thing keeping Ukraine connected to the outside world.  The Pentagon stood by stupefied at the brilliant technology, and Russian president Vladimir Putin found himself schooled.

Putin is a bully, and tries to attack only things he believes can't or won't fight back.  Musk fought back, and left Putin's Russian military apparat with a bloody nose.

It was two kinds of single-combat heroism at once.  That raises Musk into some kind of "gladiator" territory, and of such things legends are made.  Perhaps he is the real "Ghost of Kiev."  For the rest of us, there seem to be a lot of reasons out there written in red, white, and blue to be impressed with Elon Musk.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.