The Pentagon has awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX its first confirmed contract for the Starshield network it’s developing, a military-specific version of the company’s Starlink satellite internet system, the defense agency said Wednesday.
A Space Force spokesperson confirmed that SpaceX on Sept. 1 was awarded a one-year contract for Starshield with a maximum value of $70 million. The award came alongside 18 other companies through a program run by the Space Force’s commercial satellite communications office.
“The SpaceX contract provides for Starshield end-to-end service (via the Starlink constellation), user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management and other related services,” Space Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek told CNBC.
Until Musk decides to play with the service? Based on his own ideas of how to play God in the war? CNN: Musk turned off Starlink near Crimea to disrupt Ukraine’s strike against Russian fleet
Maybe it’s a trap. Perhaps its harder to punish musk for his Ukraine shortcomings, but if he decideds to fuck up under federal contract with the MIC of the US government . . .
I only think of this because I cant imagine the pentagon thinks highly of him, hes a borderline (possibly unwitting) russian apologist at best and asset at worst. Usually Im not so sure bad things happen to rich people, but crossing the MIC would probably be the line that does it if anything does.
I’m sure the US government would love nothing more than to smash musk open like a piggy bank and annex everything he owns through some mix of civil asset forfeiture and eminent domain on sloppily and carelessly assembled rhetorical basis that boils down to “because we say so,” and also “what are you going to do about it anyway loser, we have nukes” plus furthermore “you can’t possibly pretend like this dipshit didn’t have it coming. If one does not wish to find out, one should not fuck around”
They don’t need to make up a basis to take over his stuff, it already exists and has existed for almost 75 years. They’d just tie his hands with the defense production act if push came to shove. They could then just lock Elon up if he refused to do what he was told.
He’s an intentional Russia apologist. Period. You don’t get to be the richest person on Earth and not be invited to a few private meetings with international leaders. He regularly promotes the idea that Ukraine is evil and Russia is doing good on Twitter.
I have a conspiracy theory that Musk utilized Russian troll farms to hype up his pump and dump scheems when those were his big thing. That would explain the meetings with Putin, the proclivity to do what Putin says, and his purchase of twitter under the guise of removing the bots and free speech then not removing the bots. He probably just removed the evidence.
That kinda makes sense.
Sanctions only work because of pre-existing trade with unscrupulous powers. Similar logic.
Our government shouldn’t be rewarded him shit and we should seize it and nationalize all his companies. After all our taxes subsidized it to begin with.
Wait, I thought he didn’t want to militarize his company because he was afraid of antagonizing the russians!?!?
He didn’t want to militarize for free
Hey, let’s buy critical services from a right-wing shitbag who has a history of tampering with those services to affect the outcome of military operations on behalf of Russia.
What could go wrong?
They’re buying control.
