The Switch That Belongs to No One

This is what democratic societies do to themselves when the habit of distributing responsibility, so that no single hand can be blamed, goes unchecked until it reaches the instruments of war. In ages of aristocracy, a man knew whose bridge he crossed and whose permission he required. The toll-keeper had a face, and the lord behind him had a name and a house that could be burned. Democratic peoples have chosen a different arrangement. They prefer power that is everywhere present and nowhere located, because they can obey such power without the humiliation of obeying a person.

The question of who controls Ukraine’s access to Starlink belongs to this tendency, and the conflicting accounts are the most important fact in it. American officials describe one arrangement and Elon Musk describes another. President Zelensky must plan the defence of his country without knowing which version is true. A casual observer might call this a failure of communication, but I believe it is closer to a form of government. The ambiguity is not a gap in the system. It is how the system works.

The strongest objection deserves its full weight. A private company placed working communications in the hands of a besieged army faster than any ministry could have done. Governments drafting treaties would still have been arguing over clauses while the satellites were already overhead. Some will add that ambiguity has its uses. If Washington never quite owns the switch, it can never quite be accused of escalation, and if the entrepreneur never quite owns it, he can never quite be accused of making foreign policy. Diplomats have always valued a door that is neither locked nor open.

I grant all of this, and I think it reveals the danger rather than answering it. Speed and deniability are virtues for those who hold power. For those who must judge power, they are poisons. A democratic citizen holds an office of his own, which is to decide whom to blame. The American voter can punish a Secretary of Defense, and the shareholder can in theory reproach a chief executive. But when each points toward the other and both point vaguely toward the terms of service, the citizen does not lose a right. He loses something to exercise it upon. He keeps his vote and finds that there is nothing at the end of it.

I am told that the satellites move continuously and that no single one hangs over any particular trench. There is a comedy in this that is more instructive than amusing. The engineers have built in metal exactly what the officials have built in their statements, a service whose coverage at any given moment depends on a pattern no ordinary person can follow. One may imagine a committee meeting in some capital where every participant agrees that the decision is very important and that it was, regrettably, made elsewhere. Each person in that room is sincere. The modern tyranny does not need anyone to lie. It only needs every party to tell the truth about the small piece it holds.

The tendency does not stop with Ukraine. Democracies now rely on private networks for functions that once defined the state, such as moving armies, coordinating fires, and carrying the voices of commanders. Every such dependence repeats the Ukrainian uncertainty in a quieter form. Formal sovereignty remains with the nation, while practical sovereignty passes to whoever can disable the service. Then, because no one wants to examine that arrangement, a fog of statements settles over it. Nations will not give up their independence through conquest. They will give it up through a long series of reasonable conveniences, each one too small to debate.

The counterweights are old ones. Contracts can be published, authority can be written down, and some legislature can insist that a single named official answer for the switch. None of these is beyond our capacity. They are only tiresome, and democratic peoples will put up with nearly anything except tedium.

Meanwhile, somewhere east of the Dnipro, a young Ukrainian signals operator kneels beside a flat white dish in the mud and waits for its small light to turn green. Military communications and operations depend on that light, and the limits imposed on it continue to shape what his unit can do. He does not know whether to address his complaint to Kyiv, to Washington, or to a man posting at midnight in Texas. So he does what free men do when power has no address. He taps the dish once with his knuckle, as one knocks on a door, and listens.