In 2025, three years into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Musk boasted that his Starlink system was “the backbone of the Ukrainian army”. Two years earlier, he had claimed to possess “more real-time global
economic data in one head than anyone ever”, referring to the data available to him through Tesla, Starlink and Twitter, now known as X.
These statements raise a fundamental question: should one individual or company have such extensive control over communication systems and access to data? Musk’s public interventions in the domestic politics of other countries, including his backing of political opponents of governments in the UK, France and Germany, add another dimension to the concern. Against this backdrop, Starlink’s growing reach could pose a significant challenge to India’s internal security.
The issue is not merely the discovery of Starlink terminals in Manipur, where ethnic tensions remain high, or their use by smugglers in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is also about how the company responded when the Indian government sought information about the devices.
“This is false. Starlink satellite beams are turned off over India,” Musk said on X in December 2024, after reports emerged that security forces had recovered Starlink equipment in Manipur. But the reality is more complex, as a research paper by the Takshashila Institution points out.
“Because of the imperfections in geofencing, the devices may have worked in parts of the state bordering Myanmar,” the paper says. Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites operate much closer to Earth than conventional geostationary satellites, making their signals harder to block through traditional methods.
The challenge is technical as well as regulatory. Starlink terminals use electronically steered antennas that maintain narrow, constantly shifting connections with satellites. Jamming these links requires a jammer to target the signal precisely, potentially from close to the terminal. And even if one connection is disrupted, the terminal can switch to another satellite within milliseconds. Unlike a geostationary satellite, which remains in a relatively fixed position in the sky, Starlink’s satellites move across different orbital paths, making them much harder to target consistently.
Musk’s Erratic Conduct
The Manipur and Andaman and Nicobar Islands incidents, along with Starlink’s response to the Indian government’s request for information, also raise questions about how the company handles security concerns flagged by national authorities.
After Musk responded on X, Starlink cited data privacy laws and directed Indian authorities to channel their requests through US law enforcement or established international protocols. The company declined to provide the requested details of the users and usage history of the devices.
The concern extends beyond the company’s response to individual incidents. Musk also has considerable influence in Washington, while SpaceX occupies a strategically important position in the US government’s space and defence programmes.
His relationship with US President Donald Trump has survived a public spat in 2025. Musk played a prominent role in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and later became the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Meanwhile, SpaceX launches satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office and the US Space Force, including those supporting missile-warning and tracking capabilities. It is also a crucial partner for NASA’s human-spaceflight programmes, including its efforts to maintain a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit and undertake the Artemis lunar exploration programme.
This combination of political influence and strategic importance makes Musk’s control over Starlink a concern for India, the Takshashila paper argues.
The relationship also works in reverse as SpaceX depends on US government contracts and regulatory approvals for its commercial and national-security launches, spectrum allocations and orbital licences. Washington therefore has considerable leverage over Trump’s pal Elon.
In a scenario where American strategic interests demand it, the US government could potentially pressure SpaceX to share data from Starlink’s Indian operations, maintain or deny coverage over particular regions, or otherwise act in ways that serve American rather than Indian interests. Ultimately, Starlink’s operations remain under the control of a company subject to the authority and interests of a foreign government.
The paper points to Musk’s conduct in Ukraine as a warning. Starlink became central to Ukrainian government and military communications after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Yet Musk reportedly restricted access to the service on multiple occasions and denied a Ukrainian military request to activate Starlink near Crimea, affecting operations on the ground.
The concern, therefore, is not simply that Starlink is a foreign service. It is that a system on which governments and security forces might come to depend can remain subject to the operational decisions of a private company and its owner.
“Allowing widespread retail use of Starlink could result in loss of the state’s ability to regulate internet access for reasons of internal security. Relying on Starlink for critical applications could mean the loss of connectivity when it is needed most, especially during a disaster, crisis, or conflict,” the paper says.
Ungovernable Satellite Systems
The limits of government control become clearer when attempts to block Starlink are examined. Its LEO architecture makes the service difficult to disable through conventional jamming, while its operator retains the ability to determine where the service is available.
Iran offers a striking example. During protests in 2022, Musk activated Starlink over the country, allowing people with terminals to bypass government restrictions on internet access. In June 2025, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, he again indicated that Starlink’s satellite beams were active over Iran.
The paper says Iran responded to the use of Starlink during the protests that intensified in January 2026 with GPS and radio-frequency jamming, including attempts to disrupt the Ku-band and Ka-band frequencies used by satellite communications. These measures caused localised and temporary disruptions rather than a comprehensive shutdown.
Iran also reportedly used long-range jammers, drone surveillance to identify terminals on rooftops and door-to-door raids to seize devices. Yet the difficulty of disabling the service persisted.
Tehran subsequently complained to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), arguing that Starlink was violating Iranian sovereignty. The ITU’s Radio Regulations Board expressed “grave concern” over the situation. According to the Takshashila paper, the board noted that Starlink had claimed its terminals were not marketed, sold or activated in Iran, but had not made efforts to disable all unauthorised terminals.
The board also noted that Starlink had demonstrated the ability to disable terminals en masse according to their geographic location in other countries, but had chosen not to do so in Iran.
The episode illustrates the dilemma for governments: a satellite operator may possess the technical ability to restrict access in a particular territory, but the state where the terminals are operating may not be able to compel it to act.
As the Takshashila paper puts it, “Starlink services may remain illegally active when the Government wants them to be halted in an area. Conversely, Starlink services may be halted when the Government needs them to be operational.”
For India, this creates a two-way risk. Starlink could remain active in an area where the government wants communications restricted for security reasons. Conversely, connectivity could be withdrawn during a crisis when authorities need it most.
What The Indian Government Wants
India has attempted to address these concerns through a set of security conditions imposed on satellite communications providers. In May 2025, the Department of Telecommunications issued additional requirements for operators holding a Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) licence.
The rules require operators to provide real-time monitoring facilities to security agencies and ensure that traffic to and from Indian users is routed through gateways located in India. They prohibit the use of inter-satellite links to route Indian user traffic, including in the event of a gateway failure, and require operators to support metadata collection by the Department of Telecommunications’ Telecom Security Operation Centre. Licensees must also undertake not to copy or decrypt Indian telecom data outside the country.
The conditions extend to border security. Areas within 50 kilometres of international and coastal borders, including the Exclusive Economic Zone up to 200 nautical miles, are designated as special monitoring zones. Operators must support user-activity monitoring by law enforcement agencies and restrict or deny service to individuals, groups or areas during hostilities or when directed by authorities. The rules also prohibit location spoofing and require blocked websites to remain inaccessible through satellite services.
India has sought to exercise control over the technology’s development as well as its use. The licence conditions call for operators to submit a phased manufacturing programme aimed at indigenising at least 20% of the satellite network’s ground segment within five years of commercial launch. Operators are also encouraged to integrate India’s indigenous satellite navigation system, NavIC, into user terminals, with a transition plan for full implementation by 2029 on a best-effort basis.
Separately, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) rejected Starlink’s application for its Gen 2 satellite constellation in January 2026. The Gen 2 system incorporates direct-to-device (D2D) capability, which allows satellites to connect directly to mobile phones without conventional ground terminals. India currently has no regulatory framework for D2D satellite services, and the Department of Telecommunications is still considering its policy approach.
But the paper authored by Ashwin Prasad Rao, Aditya Ramanathan and Col. Das (Retd.). argues that stringent conditions on paper do not necessarily translate into effective control in practice.
The restrictions on inter-satellite links are a case in point. Starlink’s architecture relies on these links to route traffic across its satellite constellation. Under India’s conditions, traffic originating from an Indian terminal must travel through a satellite and return directly to an Indian gateway, rather than pass through the orbital network. If an Indian gateway fails, the connection cannot be rerouted through another satellite or gateway; it simply stops working.
That requirement undermines one of the key advantages of a satellite constellation: the ability to maintain connectivity by routing traffic through an interconnected network. More importantly, Indian authorities can monitor activity at domestic gateways but cannot independently verify what happens between satellites in orbit. The paper argues that ground-based monitoring cannot reliably establish whether a packet has travelled through an inter-satellite link before reaching an Indian gateway.
Other requirements also rely heavily on undertakings and self-certification rather than independent technical verification. The rules require operators to make commitments on data handling, while the NavIC integration requirement is framed on a best-effort basis. Geofencing, on which several security safeguards depend, has already raised questions in the Manipur and Andaman and Nicobar Islands incidents.
The Iran case presents a further complication: the ITU found that Starlink had the capability to disable terminals in bulk based on their location, but had not done so in that country.
The proposed D2D technology could create another regulatory challenge. A mobile phone connecting directly to a satellite would not need a conventional ground terminal, potentially bypassing the gateway-dependent architecture on which India’s current rules are built. Depending on how such a system is designed and routed, India’s existing requirements on traffic routing and data localisation could become harder to enforce.
The central problem, the paper argues, remains unresolved: operational control of the constellation rests with SpaceX. India can impose conditions and revoke a licence for non-compliance, but it cannot necessarily compel the company to keep services running during a crisis or to shut them down when national-security requirements demand it.
