The escalation of Starlink not complying comes from that, not the other way around.

I’ve looked closer (at other articles, too). You’re right - the freezing of the SpaceX accounts came from the same order that ordered that Twitter be blocked, and before SpaceX announced it would refuse to comply.

The proper thing to do is to recognize the legally distinct personhood of SpaceX, which isn’t part of Twitter, even if Twitter/X itself is wrong on the law.

The order to block Twitter went to all Brazilian ISPs, and Starlink is the only one that didn’t comply on Saturday. So the escalation stems from the disregard of an order that everyone was required to obey, but the intertwined nature of both companies being controlled by Musk is both part of the reason why SpaceX would even consider not complying with local law in a country it operates in, and why the Brazilian courts seem to be willing to aggressively enforce their own orders.

Edit: I’m convinced. This comment as originally written presented the facts out of order.

When the machine costs 350 million euros, what’s a few hundred thousand in saved shipping costs?

And that introduces a specific type of supply chain threat: someone who possesses a computer can infect their own computer, sell it or transfer it to the target, and then use the embedded microcode against the target, even if the target completely reformats and reinstalls a new OS from scratch.

That’s not going to affect most people, but for certain types of high value targets they now need to make sure that the hardware they buy hasn’t already been infected in the supply chain.

That’s the joke.

In the late 80’s, there was a huge consumer push for tuna fishers to change their techniques so that they didn’t kill dolphins while catching tuna. Before then, tuna fishers used to actually track dolphins, because following the dolphins generally meant being able to find the tuna faster. Then, they’d surround the tuna with their nets, indifferent to the dozens of dolphins they were drowning as part of the process.

By the 90’s, there was legislation on how tuna cans could be labeled as “dolphin safe,” and stepped up enforcement of the existing laws that made it illegal to intentionally kill dolphins.

During the height of this debate in the popular consciousness, of course, this comic came out joking about that link between dolphin deaths and tuna canning.