It would be great if NASA had a number of rocket suppliers run by boring corporate types who competently provided a service and then quietly went home to their families each night. But we don’t. NASA as well as the Department of Defense have become more and more reliant on one erratic man and one company for most of its rocket needs. This is a problem.
Elon Musk does not go home each night to relax with a drink or attend charitable events. No, he spends his time interfering in foreign affairs, be it Ukraine or England, while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on US elections. Even more troublesome, he joined the current administration to systematically destroy parts of the government based on incomplete, inaccurate or fabricated data. This is a problem.
So with the recent election and the coming change in Congress, what can we expect regarding Mr. Musk and SpaceX?
The newspapers are full of potential problems that were foreseeable yet ignored or hidden by the White House.
SpaceX Starlink: The new Congress is likely to open investigations on Mr. Musk’s involvement in the degradation of Starlink services shortly after President Trump announced plans to import Russian fuel while also telling Ukraine to cease the destruction of energy facilities in Russia – a country that continues to randomly murder Ukranian civilians.
In a recent letter to the White House, California Democratic Congressmen proposed an investigation of SpaceX, writing:
As Silicon Valley’s elected members in Congress, we represent hundreds of innovation economy employers and workers whose livelihoods depend on the credibility of American technology abroad..Politically motivated service interruptions or erratic throttling will undermine reputations developed through decades of work that Americans have led to support our allies and customers throughout the world.
An October article in The Economist made it clear that Europe needed to move away from Starlink and Mr. Musk a well, stating:
Recent days have made clear the folly of relying too much for your national security on a capricious private citizen named Elon Musk.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): The destruction of various government offices and services by DOGE, particularly the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the potential misuse of private government data, will also be the subject of congressional investigations. Government audits have already determined DOGE activities were poorly documented and its findings overstated.
Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) recently stated:
The DOGE chickens are coming home to roost. Elon Musk waved a chainsaw on stage and laughed while firing public servants and gutting the services Americans rely on. Then he lied to the American people about the savings. He must answer for it under oath.
SpaceX Rockets: Many on the Hill will question the risks associated with the government’s reliance on a single rocket company run by an individual with questionable ties to Russia’s President Putin. Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has also called for the nationalization of SpaceX – an unlikely event, but an indication of the current mood among some Democrats.
Greater scrutiny of SpaceX’s government contracts were called for In the same letter noted above, with the Democratic Congressmen stated:
We will ensure that the 120th Congress will closely scrutinize federal funding awarded to Mr. Musk’s businesses, including whether these companies meet their contractual obligations, and whether adequate safeguards exist against political interference, arbitrary service restrictions, and misuse of federal resources.
Mr. Musk also shot himself in the foot by spending over $45 million on the recent Texas US Senate race only to see his candidate lose, in part because of the backlash against Musk’s excessive involvement. This lost race, as well as the election of a Democratic governor, is not good news for Texas-based SpaceX.
This does not consider the many federal investigations that were already underway related to Musk’s companies before the start of the second Trump administration. These investigations mysteriously disappeared.
None of this will go away under the new Congress, and if the past is any guide, Mr. Musk’s attempts to try to make it go away will only make it worse for him and for the rest of us.
Note: I have seen various accounts regarding the amount that Mr. Musk spent on the election. According to Scripps New, the amount is estimated at about $474 million nationwide, with about $224 million targeted at Texas alone. Of that $224 million, at least $158 million was given to the Senate Republican super PAC.
