Explained: The conspiracy theory surrounding Elon Musk’s Starlink hacking 2024 US election

Was the 2024 election stolen?

Ever since Donald Trump became US President-elect, some are spreading a conspiracy theory on social media that billionaire Elon Musk hacked the election.

And how did he do it?

By using his Starlink internet service they allege.

But what do we know about this theory?

Let’s take a closer look:

A brief look at Starlink

First, let’s take a brief look at Starlink.

The firm is a satellite-based internet service provider.

It is an arm Musk’s SpaceX.

The Musk-led rocket maker operates the largest constellation of communication satellites and provides internet connectivity to residential and business customers, largely in locations with limited or no access to the internet.

“Starlink is ideally suited for areas where connectivity has been unreliable or completely unavailable,” its website states. “People across the globe are using Starlink to gain access to education, health services and even communications support during natural disasters.”

Over the past few years, Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has sought to expand Starlink’s coverage to reach more users worldwide.

Starlink owns around 60 per cent of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting Earth and is a dominant player in satellite internet.

The thousands of Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit use inter-satellite laser links to pass data between one another in space at the speed of light, allowing the network to offer internet coverage around the world.

It has been used by the Ukrainian forces and proved invaluable to their defence.

What do we know about this conspiracy theory?

Those spreading the theory are pointing to the popular vote count achieved by Harris and Trump.

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Trump has thus far won 74 million votes, while Harris has 71 million votes.

This even as the popular vote count continues to come in from multiple states.

Biden, on the other hand, received 81 million votes in 2020, while Trump received 74 million votes.

The theory espoused by some online goes that ‘millions of votes’ for Harris somehow went missing – particularly in all seven swing states that Trump won.

Who is behind these ‘missing votes?’

Starlink – which is owned by Trump supporter Musk – which they claimed was being used at polling stations to tabulate votes.

Adding fuel to the fire were comments Trump made before the election about how he ‘had all the votes he needed’ and that he had a ‘little secret’ with House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Some are also are pointing to podcaster Joe Rogan’s comment that Musk knew the results of the election ‘four hours before’ Trump beat Harris.

Rogan also claimed that Musk had an ‘app’ that allowed him to know the winner of the election hours before the results.

The problem with this theory is that experts say voting machines are usually not connected to the internet.

As Chip Trowbridge, the chief technology officer of Clear Ballot, a voting system manufacturer tested and approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), told ABC News, “Those systems absolutely cannot have any network.

“In fact, if you look at the machines from Clear Ballot, the only wire that comes out of them is a power cord.”

Ishan Mehta, director of media and democracy at Common Cause, told Al Jazeera that the election was safe and secure.

“There is no evidence that any votes disappeared,” Mehta said.

“There is no one ‘hack’ to change the outcome of an election or to change vote totals,” Mehta said. “Each state has its own independent, non-connected systems.”

What about the ‘missing votes?’

Well, there’s a simple explanation for that.

Paul Gronke, a Reed College political science professor, told Al Jazeera turnout comes down to many factors including voter enthusiasm and a campaign’s efectiveness.

“Election officials, election monitors, election lawyers, partisan observers, non-partisan observers, and election science experts like myself pay very close attention to elections at every level,” Gronke said. “There have been reports of a few glitches in scattered locations. There is no evidence at all of anything fraudulent, certainly not on the kind of scale being suggested here.”

The irony is that Trump and his allies including Musk, both recently and 2020, were happy to jump aboard the conspiracy theory train when it suited them in the run-up to the polls.

Trump after all spent the past few months complaining about voter fraud and claiming that the election was rigged.

Musk, who campaigned for Trump, called voting machines ‘too easy to hack’ and called for the use of paper ballots.

This, despite the fact that America overwhelmingly uses paper ballots.

Of course, Trump and Musk are no longer making such claims now that their candidate won the election.

Harris and Biden, on the other hand, have not disputed the election results.

With inputs from agencies