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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately I feel like this is unavoidable, but isn’t China a lesser evil? I mean instead of doing what USA is doing by foreign meddling and destabilizing for profit, China is actually making proactive relations to help build up countries (for profit) rather than exploit them, China Africa relations for instance. I also think the China Africa relations is a huge factor that isn’t considered enough, as China certainly offers a better deal for Africa than America or Russia’s Wagner gold-mine psychos are offering. USA and Russia appear to be in the business of isolating themselves and will suffer for it like every country in history does. Iran and North Korea could be placated by better trade agreements that could be facilitated by China. Africa is rising fast, thanks to China’s help. China’s rising fast, and are building more positive relations than negative. Even their politics and social progressiveness is becoming less authoritarian, and is currently a more progressive place than America is. Europe has a better chance of being more progressive under China than it has been under America. Again, I agree that China isn’t ideal and is certainly a bully, they just simply offer a better deal.
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.
100% agree, but in our current reality of being a global digital village Europe can’t just unite amongst themselves to be part of the future, they have to make relations with everyone. The geopolitical landscape is moving at breakneck speeds right now, it’s fascinating to watch, mostly because now more than ever it looks like anything is possible (for better or for worse.) If I were to think about what’s in Europe, China, Middle East, and Global South’s best interests are is to unite in a way that was previously impossible due to America Russia tensions. Whether it be a new Russia/USA Axis, an isolated USA and/or Russia, or both (which I believe without confidence is happening just looks that way) it is in everyones best interest to create a new global partnership without USA and Russia, at the expense of USA and Russia.
Nicely put. I would just add that while China is indeed a lesser evil at the moment, so was the USA once. Being dependant on anyone WILL come back and bite the Union in the ass every single time. Might take 10 years, might take a 100, but it will. I would advise extreeme caution.
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.
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…
Bezos is just as evil
Not sure about that, but I can’t really say I disagree, fundamentally.
Billionaires trying to preserve the status quo are far less dangerous than billionaires trying to disrupt it.
Shame that he’s going to bring the rest of us down with him
I’ve managed to not lose a single cent from all my others investments combined thanks to the little I had in Eutelsat. I’m for sure reinforcing that one. Also, shorting tesla has been fun, but I don’t have the means to do it at a risk safe scale.
After Tesla, starlink should come next (X will die organically) so unfortunate starlink is not public to short.
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.
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 are better ways to devalue your currency. It’s not such an uncommon thing for countries to do. Why go out of your way to be a dick? This new type of behavior we are observing from US officials just smacks of sheer incompetency and lack of direction on the diplomatic stage.
Kanye is not a gay fish!
But he does like fish sticks!
Technically that makes him captain Iglo.
Let’s bring back being decent to people.
And here I was feeling good about myself after I canceled an order of 4 units for work. But every magnitude matters, I guess.
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.
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.
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.
I’m sure every Mexican billionaire has a private army on their payroll, drug cartel of not.
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.
So every U.S.Billionaire is alive because the drug and gun cartels in the U.S. by this logic right? Being that the company is a telecom company, it would be directly comparable to saying AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on are all tied to illegal cartels and not just use legal lobbying that shouldn’t be allowed.
Eh I see the point you’re making but cartels in Mexico are a whole other breed to what’s here in the US. Our politicians aren’t being murdered in droves by cartels like they are in Mexico.
Carlos Slim sounds like an RnB artist
Or Slow Jazz. Or a porn star. [wink wink]
Slim Charles, one of the Barksdale enforcers from The Wire.
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.
100%, we should guillotine all the billionaires.
Elon really is his own worst enemy. Buying Twitter was such a bad idea on multiple levels.
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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
Would you want to live with him!? Though I guess if you were him, you presumably could have some introspection and choose not be an entitled Nazi asshole…
He just wanted a soapbox he could control.
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.
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/
I’d be very surprised if OneWeb ever launches on Ariane 6. It is not build for cheap LEO launches at all afaik. But maybe some ride shares, who knows.
That’s an uplifting news
Good. Seeing a Nazi face consequences for his actions in real time is so satisfying.
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
I mean he does have ties to drug cartels, but you don’t say it
What ties? Can you elaborate?
The cartels are the silent oligarchs of Mexico, you don’t control telecoms in their territories and lands without dealing with them. Just about every politician and business leaders in cartel territory have to deal with em
Good.
Great news
