Musk Stealing A $2.4 Billion FAA Comms Contract Is Far More Horrifying Than You Think.
It's not just the open corruption and conflict of interest.
It’s fair to say that Musk’s conflict of interest with DOGE is palpable. Over the past 20 years, he has gobbled up over $38 billion in federal contracts and subsidies. Musk wouldn’t be a billionaire without these assets, and unsurprisingly, DOGE isn’t cutting any funding to Musk, even though he hasn’t delivered on many of the contracts, and many were only possible through open corruption (such as NASA HLS). But Musk isn’t satisfied and still wants more. On Tuesday, he claimed without a shred of evidence that the FAA’s $2.4 billion comms system operated by Verizon “is not working and so is putting air travellers at serious risk.” Then, the FAA announced that Musk could swipe this contract from Verizon, as they are currently testing Starlink terminals. Not only is this a terrifying oligarchical level of corruption and conflict of interest, but should Starlink secure this contract, it will place Musk in a position of horrific power.
Okay, so what does Verizon do for the FAA anyway?
Well, they operate their FAA Enterprise Network Services (FENS). This is the FAA’s primary telecom service; it doesn’t directly perform air traffic control but instead is used to support these systems by allowing different air traffic control systems to exchange data effectively. In other words, it is a vital service.
The FAA has been satisfied with Verizon’s service since securing the $2.4 billion contract to operate FENS in 2023. They have pointed out that it struggles in remote locations like Alaska, but this hasn’t impacted safety.
The FAA has also been looking into satellite internet technology, like that of Starlink, to fill in these gaps in FENS service since the Biden administration. However, the fact that the FAA is only testing Starlink and not other satellite internet providers and Musk’s open criticism of FENS heavily suggests he is using DOGE to pressure the FAA into giving him the entire FENS contract.
To say this is a bad idea is a wild understatement.
Firstly, Starlink is not suitable for such a vital comms service. Starlink has a major bottleneck issue, meaning speeds regularly crash to unusable levels during peak usage times. Also, rain and snow disrupt its signals, making the connection very unreliable (particularly in snowy locations like Alaska). Starlink-wide outages are surprisingly regular and can last hours. The entire system is also incredibly susceptible to solar storm damage, meaning even a small flare can permanently damage a huge amount of the Starlink infrastructure. This also makes this infrastructure susceptible to foreign attacks, such as Russia’s upcoming nuclear EMP weapon (read more here). On top of all of that, there is basically zero customer support, meaning that you are left on your own to fix any issues, making this already unreliable system even worse.
Starlink is great if having dodgy internet is better than having no internet. It is not suitable for functioning as a vital communications service on which people’s lives depend. Otherwise, we will have planes crashing into each other because of a bit of rain.
And it gets worse!
Musk has, historically, withheld Starlink to further his gains. For example, Ukraine has had to rely on Starlink ever since Russia took down their telecom systems. But when Zelensky started operating in locations Musk disagreed with, he pulled the service from those locations without warning, endangering the lives of the brave Ukrainian fighters and preventing these vital operations from happening.
Now, Musk is angry at the FAA. Their persistent need to ensure Starship launches are safe or that the night sky isn’t blotted out by thousands of Starlink satellites has massively hampered SpaceX’s progress, at least from Musk’s perspective.
So, if Musk gets the FENS contract, his track record heavily suggests that he will threaten to pull the service if the FAA moves against SpaceX.
This is what oligarchy looks like. A complete disregard for the open market, desperately grasping for control over the government divisions that hold their business interests to account, all while pocketing billions while not actually delivering a service any better than before. We cannot allow this to happen.
Wake up, America. You are being exploited. You can stop this. You outnumber them.
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Sources: The Register, AP, The Byte, Canso, PC Mag, Smithsonian