BREAKING: Elon Musk has broken his silence on the Texas floods, claiming that more than 100 lives could have been saved if authorities hadn’t ignored Starlink’s warning technology.

The Fourth of July weekend turned into a nightmare in the scenic Texas hill country, with flash floods sweeping through cabins, campgrounds, and riverside towns, killing more than 100 people and leaving more than 160 missing. Among the dead were 30 children, including a second-grader who loved glitter and pink bows, and a 19-year-old counselor who had dedicated her summer to mentoring younger girls at Camp Mystic.

But as search teams, armed with airboats, helicopters, and even horses, scour the treacherous banks of the Guadalupe River for signs of life, a different storm is brewing—not in the sky, but in public discourse. This storm has a name: Elon Musk.

In a surprise move that sent shockwaves through political and tech circles, Musk took to social media Tuesday night to issue a powerful statement: “This tragedy didn’t have to happen. A simple flood warning system powered by Starlink, implemented years ago, could have saved every single one of these lives.”

Her words quickly went viral, amplified by videos of research teams digging through mountains of debris and devastated parents holding mud-stained teddy bears found near their children’s camps.

Musk’s comments come at a time when state and local officials are facing intense scrutiny. The state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, visited the disaster zone by helicopter and told reporters it was not the time to place blame. “That’s the word that losers love,” he said, comparing the situation to a football team learning from its mistakes.

But for many, including Musk, it’s time for accountability. “Championship teams don’t ignore the scoreboard,” Musk responded in a follow-up post. “And in this case, the result is 100 lives lost because leaders were too cheap or too proud to modernize.”

At the center of this growing controversy is Kerr County, home to the century-old Camp Mystic and dozens of other youth camps on the banks of the Guadalupe River. Authorities confirm that at least 90 bodies have been recovered so far, and that five children and a counselor remain missing.

Locals have long known the area’s nickname: “Flash Flood Alley.” However, despite this history and a $1 million grant application for a warning system submitted eight years ago, the municipality never received federal support, and the project was abandoned.

Musk’s criticism focused on this failure. “Eight years ago, Kerr County asked for $1 million. That’s less than a SpaceX launch. They were denied. And now here we are, mourning children who never had a chance,” he said.

He also revealed that, in previous years, SpaceX and Starlink had quietly offered to pilot a rural warning system based on low-orbit satellite internet and artificial intelligence storm tracking. According to Musk, the offer was rejected by local officials who didn’t see the urgency or questioned the need for outside technological solutions.

Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet venture under SpaceX, has quickly become a global communications infrastructure, especially effective in hard-to-reach and underdeveloped areas. In recent months, it has been used to restore internet in disaster-stricken areas, facilitate communications in Ukraine during wartime blackouts, and support rural schools in the Amazon rainforest.

The technology enables instant broadband access with minimal infrastructure. More importantly, it enables real-time communication and emergency transmissions in areas where cell phone towers are down or nonexistent.

According to Musk, integrating Starlink’s artificial intelligence with weather data, river level sensors, and predictive analytics could deliver personalized flood alerts to every family, cabin, and campsite within minutes or hours before the deadly wall of water rises 26 feet in less than 60 minutes.

“You wouldn’t need a siren or someone with a megaphone,” Musk argued. “Every device, from a child’s smartwatch to a parent’s phone, could broadcast a single, synchronized evacuation signal.”

But that warning never came. Witnesses describe how the waters rose before dawn on Friday, surprising entire camps. Some children had to break cabin windows and swim all night. Others clung to trees for hours before being rescued.

Videos shot by local residents showed the roads disappearing in seconds. Outside the cabins at Camp Mystic, only mud-covered blankets and small suitcases remain, some still bearing bright stickers.

For Aidan Duncan, a 17-year-old who escaped just in time from the Riverside RV Park, the trauma is fresh and profound. “I cried so much,” he said, pointing to his birdcage and sports cards, now buried under the mud. Across the river, 91-year-old Charles Hanson swept up wood and debris near his senior living facility.

“Let’s settle for the best we’ve got,” he said, but the pain in his voice was evident. The best they had wasn’t enough.

What worries many families and citizens now is not just the devastation, but the feeling that it was all preventable. Generations in the Hill Country have warned about flooding. A deadly event in 1987 claimed the lives of ten teenagers. Local leaders have been stressing the need for a better system for years.

And yet, as Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly admitted at a press conference, there is still no countywide alert system.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has rejected funding requests in the past, and local residents reportedly refused to pay taxes to fund it. In Musk’s words, “They chose budget cuts over body counts, and now they’re counting bodies.”

Governor Abbott, for his part, attempted to focus the conversation on recovery, vowing not to rest until all the missing people are found and all families are supported. He added that President Donald Trump has promised full federal assistance and will visit the state on Friday. However, this failed to stem the growing wave of online criticism.

Elon Musk is rumored to be in talks with nonprofits and private emergency response coalitions to launch an independent, red tape-free alert system funded by his foundations. Insiders suggest it could begin as a pilot in Kerr County and expand to flood-prone regions across the United States, leveraging Starlink and Tesla’s battery-powered hardware for uninterrupted operation even during blackouts.

Whether or not that plan materializes, Musk’s intervention has reignited a national debate: In a country with billionaires building rockets and potato chips, why do children continue to die in cockpits without a five-second warning?

For grieving families in Texas, it may be too late. But for the rest of America, the question remains: Will we listen the next time someone like Elon Musk tries to warn us?

Or are we going to wait – once again – for the water to rise?