On the October 25, 2026, broadcast of CBS’s Face the Nation, moderator Margaret Brennan said Elon Musk had explained the day before that it was his decision to throttle Ukraine’s SpaceX satellite access because of Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia. She also said Ukraine reported that the services had been fully restored as of the previous day.
Democratic Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said the case appeared to show an unelected private citizen making life-and-death decisions on a battlefield through systems that US service members and partners and allies rely on. He said he had written to President Donald Trump with Adam Smith of the Armed Services Committee and Jim Himes of the Intelligence Committee demanding answers. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, cited on the program, said the disruption affected the battlefield and showed how a single point of control can degrade service and disable missions across a military theater.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he shares that concern. He said Musk first denied doing it and later said he had, and that lawmakers still need to know whether Starlink and the separate Starshield capability are controlled by Musk or by the Department of Defense. Tillis said people died while the service was down, that he is glad it is back, and that whoever was responsible for the lapse should be ashamed. He said he helped organize a call this past week with Blumenthal and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Brennan asked whether plans to expand access so Ukraine can strike inside Russia are on hold. Tillis said that, as far as he could tell, Washington was being thanked only for restoring capabilities that had already been working, including when he was in Ukraine about a month earlier and two weeks before the cutoff. He called Ukraine the country Western nations should support and Vladimir Putin the adversary, and said the capability should be increased rather than merely returned to its earlier level.
The same discussion noted failures in early warning: two, and possibly three, BC3 systems did not detect incoming Russian ballistic missiles into Ukraine. Brennan said Secretary Rubio had described technical issues. Tillis said the full timeline should be examined in a secure setting, because the warning problem came at the same time as the Starlink or Starshield outage, and that the public back-and-forth over who ordered the cutoff is unacceptable.
Crow also criticized recent US contacts with Moscow. He said Steve Witkoff had sat across from Putin and called him a humanitarian, and that Trump had eased sanctions in a way Crow said would provide tens of billions of dollars to Russia’s war effort. Crow linked that criticism to a memo from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton reporting that Iranian lethal plotting against US personnel had reached advanced stages, and he said Russia is Iran’s main supporter in intelligence, supply and targeting.