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Pentagon Watchdog Declines Senators' Request to Inspect a Slowdown
· New York time
The Pentagon inspector general has rejected a request from Democratic and Republican senators to investigate a Starlink and Starshield slowdown in Ukraine. The decision leaves the lawmakers' requested inquiry unopened, despite support for it from both sides of the aisle. The satellite services are relevant to communications in a war where reliable connectivity has major military and policy implications. A request for an investigation is not itself a finding about what caused a slowdown or who was responsible. It is a request for an oversight office to examine the issue, and in this case the office declined. That distinction leaves senators with the same question that prompted their request, but without the inquiry they had asked the Pentagon watchdog to undertake. Bipartisan agreement can be hard to assemble in Washington. Here it succeeded in producing a shared request, not a shared investigation. The episode also illustrates the limits of a watchdog's docket: lawmakers can ask for scrutiny, but the office decides whether to open a particular inquiry. The result is a very Washington form of closure, where the letter receives an answer while the underlying concern remains on the table. The oversight machinery has demonstrated that it can process a request; the senators wanted it to process something rather more technical.
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