We’ve noted how Republicans are rewriting the 2021 infrastructure bill (they voted against) to ensure that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded broadband grants wind up in the back pocket of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (and their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband ventures, Starlink and Project Kuiper). This is billions of taxpayer dollars being paid to billionaires in exchange for doing nothing differently.
Republicans are framing this as something that’s going to save taxpayers money, but it’s a lie.
At up to $120 a month for a “real” plan at next-generation speeds, plus hundreds of dollars in up front hardware fees, the service is too expensive for most of the Americans desperate to be connected. Apparently aware of the criticism that taxpayers were giving billions of dollars to a billionaire for a system many people can’t afford, Starlink briefly introduced a slower, $40 monthly tier.
“The 100Mbps plan was not widely available, as it seemed to pop up in a relatively small number of areas where Starlink likely had excess network capacity. Some customers speculate that new users and existing subscribers scrambled to take advantage of the bargain deal, which caused Starlink to reach capacity in the eligible areas. The plan stood out for its low price while capping download speeds to 100Mbps.”
Starlink also imposes massive “congestion fees” in areas where it lacks capacity. These fees can be upwards of $750 in some areas. So again, you can probably see why it’s a bad idea for Republicans to treat Starlink as a connectivity panacea while showering it with subsidies that could be going to better, more affordable, higher capacity options.
Ideally, if you’re going to throw billions of subsidies at U.S. broadband, your technology priority should be fiber (preferably open access, community owned to counter monopoly dominance), wireless (either fixed or 5G), and then LEO satellite to fill in the gaps. Instead, Republicans are putting Starlink at the front of the line, and Musk and friends are whining about and harassing states that balk at this dumb idea.
Back in June, researchers showed in detail that given the limited nature of satellite physics, the more people that use Starlink, the slower the network is going to get. What, exactly, do folks think is going to happen when the network sees a mass infusion of taxpayer subsidized advertisement and usage?
To be clear: Starlink is great if you have no other options and can afford it. But it shouldn’t be the top priority in a historic round of taxpayer subsidies. That’s just begging for trouble down the road. But Republicans are so excited to throw billions of new dollars at their white supremacist billionaire godbaby, they don’t really care about the actual real world impact at the other end of the line.
This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune and the Texas Newsroom and co-published with ProPublica. Republished under the Texas Tribune’s republish feature.
Months after fighting to keep secret the emails exchanged between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s companies, state officials released nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom.
The records, however, reveal little about the two men’s relationship or Musk’s influence over state government. In fact, all but about 200 of the pages are entirely blacked out.
Of those that were readable, many were either already public or provided minimal information. They included old incorporation records for Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, a couple of agendas for the governor’s committee on aerospace and aviation, emails regarding a state grant awarded to SpaceX and an application from a then-Musk employee to sit on a state commission.
One is an invitation to happy hour. Another is a reminder of the next SpaceX launch.
The documents were provided in response to a public records request by The Texas Newsroom, which asked Abbott’s office for communications with Musk and the businessman’s employees dating back to last fall. Abbott’s and Musk’s lawyers fought their release, arguing they would reveal trade secrets, potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges or confidential legal and policymaking discussions.
Abbott’s spokesperson, Andrew Mahaleris, said the governor’s office “rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and releases any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure.”
Open government experts say the limited disclosure is emblematic of a larger transparency problem in Texas. They pointed to a 2015 state Supreme Court decision that allowed companies to oppose the release of records by arguing that they contain “competitively sensitive” information. The ruling, experts said, made it harder to obtain records documenting interactions between governments and private companies.
Tom Leatherbury, who directs the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, said companies took advantage of the ruling. Among the most prominent examples of the ruling’s effect on transparency was McAllen’s refusal to disclose how much money was spent to lure pop star Enrique Iglesias to the city for a concert. The city argued that such disclosures would hurt its ability to negotiate with artists for future performances. Eventually, it was revealed that Iglesias was paid nearly half a million dollars.
The problem has been exacerbated, Leatherbury added, by the fact that the Office of the Attorney General, which referees public records disputes, does not have the power to investigate whether the records that companies want to withhold actually contain trade secrets.
“Corporations are willing to assert that information is confidential, commercial information, and more governmental bodies are willing not to second-guess the company’s assertion,” Leatherbury said. (Leatherbury has performed pro bono legal work for The Texas Newsroom.)
Musk and his companies’ representatives did not respond to questions about the records.
As part of an effort to track Musk’s clout in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom on April 20 asked Abbott’s office for communications with employees from four of the businessman’s companies: SpaceX, car manufacturer Tesla, the social media site X and Neuralink, which specializes in brain nanotechnology.
The governor’s office said it would cost $244.64 to review the documents, which The Texas Newsroom paid. After the check was cashed, lawyers representing Abbott’s office and SpaceX each sought to keep the records secret.
SpaceX’s lawyer sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dated June 26, saying that publicly releasing the emails would hurt its competitive advantage.
Abbott’s public information coordinator, Matthew Taylor, also asked Paxton’s office for permission to withhold the documents, arguing they included private exchanges with lawyers, details about policymaking decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Taylor said some of the records were protected under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consisted of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public.”
Releasing the Musk emails, he said, would have a “chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”
Ultimately, Paxton’s office mostly sided with Abbott and Musk. In a Aug. 11 opinion, Assistant Attorney General Erin Groff wrote that many of the documents could be withheld. Groff, however, ordered the release of some records determined to be “either not highly intimate or embarrassing” or of “legitimate public interest.”
A month later, the governor’s office released 1,374 pages of records, the vast majority of which were completely redacted.
Some records included a note that appeared to explain why. A note on page 401, for example, cited the exemption for competitive bidding records for 974 redacted pages. Names and emails of Musk’s employees were also removed.
“The fact that a governmental body can redact more than 1,000 pages of documents that are directly related to a major business’s activities in Texas is certainly problematic,” said Reid Pillifant, an attorney specializing in public records and media law. (Pillifant has represented a coalition of media outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, in lawsuits seeking the release of public information related to the May 2022 mass shooting at an Uvalde elementary school.)
He and other experts said such hurdles are becoming more common as legislation and court decisions have weakened the state’s public records laws.
Four years after the 2015 Supreme Court decision, legislators passed a new law that was meant to ensure the release of basic information about government deals with private businesses. But open government experts said the law did not go far enough to restore transparency, adding that some local governments are still objecting to the release of contract information.
Moreover, lawmakers continue to add carve-outs to what qualifies as public information every legislative session. Just this year, for example, legislators added the following exceptions to public records and open meetings laws: information relating to how government entities detect and deter fraud and discussions during public government meetings about certain military and aerospace issues.
Even with the increasing challenges of accessing public records, Leatherbury and Pillifant were stumped by the governor’s decision to release thousands of pages only to black them out fully. Leatherbury said that the governor’s office may have wanted to show the volume of records responsive to the request.
“They wanted you to see what little you could get in the context of the entire document, even though that’s kind of meaningless,” he said.
The Texas Newsroom has asked the Office of the Attorney General to reconsider its decision and order the release of the Musk emails. There is little other recourse to challenge the outcome.
If a member of the public believes a government agency is violating the law, they can try to sue. But the experts noted that a recent Texas Supreme Court decision made it more difficult to enforce the public records law against the governor and other executive officers. Now, Leatherbury said, it’s not clear how challenging such a records decision would work.
“Every Texas citizen should care about access to these kinds of records because they shed light on how our public officials are making big decisions that affect the land where people live and how their taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Pillifant said.
Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT News in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.
Way back in Trump’s first term, back when he was still claiming he was going to build some enormous border wall and get Mexico to pay for it (neither happened), the lovely people over at Cards Against Humanity bought a parcel of land along the boarder with the intention of taking every possible action to prevent a wall being built upon it. It was part of a marketing campaign where a percentage of sales of the game would go to buying the land, which eventually happened in 2017. And that’s where things stood for the rest of Trump’s term and all the way up to 2024. No wall was built on the land, Mexico paid for nothing, and the land remained empty.
Until, that is, SpaceX decided to dump a bunch of trash on it. The Elon Musk-owned company has a fabrication plant nearby and apparently just decided to use someone else’s property to dump a bunch of construction materials and trash. The irony that a parcel of land that was bought to keep a border wall from being built to keep out foreign trespassers that was instead trespassed upon domestically is not lost on me.
Well, CAH sued for $15 million and seemed like it had a very good case. SpaceX must have eventually agreed, as they have now settled the case days before the trial was set to begin.
A court document shows that SpaceX admitted it did not ask for or receive permission to use the property. SpaceX admitted that its “contractors cleared the lot and put down gravel,” parked vehicles on the property, and stored construction materials. An Associated Press article yesterday said that “Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3.”
The game company said a victory at trial wouldn’t have resulted in a better outcome. “A trial would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX,” the company’s statement to Ars said. “Under Texas law, even if we had won at trial (and we would have, given their admission to trespassing), we likely wouldn’t have been able to recoup our legal fees. And SpaceX certainly seemed ready to dramatically outspend us on lawyers.”
Given that the details of the settlement are annoyingly confidential, we can’t really suss out just how just this outcome is. But the folks over at CAH seem to be satisfied, so I have to imagine at least a decent amount of money changed hands here. Still, part of the idea here was supposed to be sending money won from Musk to all the donors to the campaign, but it appears the settlement money won’t be enough to do so in an update CAH provided publicly.
Dear Horrible Friends,
Remember last year, when we sued Elon Musk for dumping space garbage all over your land, and then you signed up to collect your share of the proceeds? Also, remember how we warned you that we’d “probably only be able to get you like two dollars or most likely nothing”?
Well, Elon Musk’s team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and fucked off. But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls.
So while we can’t give you what you really wanted––cash money from Elon Musk––we’re going to make it up to you, our best, sexiest customers…with comedy! We’re sending you each a brand new mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk, which you can sign up to receive for free right here.
You’ve got to give it to these folks: they’re never not on brand.
Sequoia Capital just showed us exactly what “institutional neutrality” means—when billions are at stake.
Sumaiya Balbale—the firm’s chief operating officer, a Shake Shack board member, someone “well regarded internally and by the start-ups she worked with as an experienced operating executive”—resigned in August after complaining about partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic posts. Senior partners declined to discipline him, citing free speech. Her position became untenable. She left.
Maguire stays. Because his bet on SpaceX netted Sequoia roughly $4 billion on paper—earning him “a lot of rope” at the firm.
Let’s be precise about what happened. Maguire wrote on X that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything. It’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda. The West will learn this lesson the hard way.”
This wasn’t his first offense. He’d endorsed Germany’s far-right AfD party—prompting London-based partner Luciana Lixandru to publicly distance herself, writing she felt “compelled” to share that “extremism on either side” is dangerous. He’d endorsed Tommy Robinson, a convicted criminal and UK anti-immigration activist. He’d accumulated enough controversial statements that more than 1,000 founders and tech employees signed an open letter demanding discipline.
Balbale—a practicing Muslim who has spoken publicly about how her gender, ethnicity, and faith shaped her career—complained to senior partners. They told her Maguire was exercising free speech. She resigned. Balbale walked out not because she couldn’t handle internal bias, but because the firm chose not to act. That tells you everything.
The asymmetry reveals the calculation.
When your COO complains that a partner’s Islamophobia creates a hostile environment, the firm’s version of “institutional neutrality” means she leaves. When that partner’s posts cause private complaints from portfolio company executives and institutional investors, when Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds say “he is not welcome here,” when a financier calls his behavior “a humiliation”—institutional neutrality means he stays.
Because SpaceX returns are good.
This isn’t neutrality. This is a choice about whose value to the firm matters more. And Sequoia decided: $4 billion in paper gains from betting on Elon Musk outweigh retaining your chief operating officer, maintaining relationships with Middle Eastern capital, and avoiding the reputational damage of 1,000+ founders demanding accountability.
Managing partner Roelof Botha—who has described the firm’s approach as “institutional neutrality” where “staff are entitled to their own positions”—held an all-hands meeting to “keep peace internally” while “trying to limit wider fallout by not commenting publicly.” Translation: we know this is indefensible, we’re hoping it blows over, and we’re not taking action because Maguire’s returns matter more than our stated principles.
But neutrality would mean consistent standards. It would mean either everyone can post inflammatory political content without consequence, or no one can. What Sequoia actually practices is selective tolerance calibrated to financial returns and network positioning.
Maguire replied to Lixandru’s criticism of his AfD endorsement: “One of the beautiful things about Sequoia is that we’re comfortable disagreeing with each other. Personally I think it’s the secret to the firm’s historical investment success.”
That framing is instructive. “Disagreement” suggests a marketplace of ideas where different perspectives coexist productively. But when one person endorses far-right extremists and another says that’s dangerous, and the firm protects the first while losing the second—that’s not comfortable disagreement. That’s a choice about which positions are tolerable.
One Middle Eastern financier told the Financial Times: “You work for your limited partners and founders, you are entrusted with serious capital by investors. This is not good for the brand.”
Except it might be exactly the brand Sequoia is building—one aligned with what many observers see as the Musk/Thiel ecosystem where democracy is treated as failed experiment and hierarchy as inevitable solution. Losing Middle Eastern LPs becomes acceptable if you’re gaining position in networks where SpaceX access and Musk proximity matter more than sovereign wealth fund relationships.
This case is specific to Sequoia, but it suggests a broader pattern emerging across Silicon Valley venture capital—where political tolerance gets calibrated to returns, where “institutional neutrality” becomes cover for protecting positions that serve certain networks, where the choice between principle and profit consistently resolves the same way.
Sumaiya Balbale walking out the door while Shaun Maguire keeps his partnership isn’t a scandal Sequoia is managing. It’s a decision Sequoia made—about whose presence matters, whose complaints count, and which political positions are compatible with partnership.
The firm decided a Muslim COO objecting to Islamophobia was more expendable than a partner whose extremism alienates sovereign wealth funds but who made them billions betting on Elon Musk.
Sequoia didn’t remain neutral. It sided. And the side it chose is clear: profit first, principle second. Fair enough. But that’s not neutral.
It’s a choice.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Elon Musk is having a very bad week. The man who bought Twitter for $44 billion to secure unaccountable power over public discourse is discovering what unaccountable power actually looks like when wielded by someone who understands dominance better than he does.
Trump just stripped SpaceX of a government contract and handed it to Jeff Bezos. Musk’s response? Rage-tweeting at Trump officials, including the immortal question “why are you gay”—the rhetorical sophistication we’ve come to expect from the richest man-child on the planet having a public meltdown because Daddy won’t give him what he wants.
This isn’t just delicious schadenfreude, though it is that. This is the neo-reactionary project—the Silicon Valley movement to restore hierarchy and reject democratic constraints—consuming its architects in real-time. A perfect demonstration that the oligarchs funding authoritarian politics fundamentally misunderstood what they were building.
They thought they were buying hierarchy with themselves at the top. They’re discovering that authoritarian hierarchy doesn’t work that way. It requires constant demonstration of dominance through arbitrary humiliation of subordinates. There are no stable positions. No guaranteed seats at the table. No amount of money that exempts you from being the example.
Musk thought he’d bought partnership. He bought the privilege of being degraded publicly.
This is what Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin and the entire Silicon Valley neo-reactionary apparatus never quite explained to their fellow travelers: In the systems they’re building, someone has to be subordinate. The hierarchy they’re restoring doesn’t stop conveniently at their own necks. And Trump—whatever else he is—understands this instinctively. He knows that power in authoritarian systems isn’t demonstrated through competent governance or policy achievement. It’s demonstrated through the arbitrary exercise of dominance over those who thought themselves powerful.
Musk genuinely believed his wealth made him Trump’s equal. That his “genius” and his billions and his control of critical infrastructure (Twitter, SpaceX, Starlink) secured him a permanent seat at the table. He thought he was Roy Cohn but permanent. He thought “First Buddy” meant something.
He’s learning what Roy Cohn learned: You’re useful until you’re not. And when you’re not, the humiliation is public, arbitrary, and designed to demonstrate to everyone else what happens when you forget your place.
The contract going to Bezos isn’t about SpaceX’s technical capabilities or cost-effectiveness or any rational criterion. That’s the point. It’s about Trump demonstrating he can take from Musk and give to his rival for no reason except to show he can. And Musk—for all his billions, for all his companies, for all his supposed genius—can do exactly nothing except tweet impotently while the adults laugh at him.
This is the system they built. This is what they wanted—rule by the strong, unencumbered by democratic constraints, where power flows from dominance rather than from consent. They just thought they’d be the ones doing the dominating.
Here’s what makes it particularly delicious: Musk can’t even exit. All that crypto-libertarian fantasy about “exit” and seasteading and network states—it was always cope. You can’t exit power when the person wielding it controls access to the government contracts your companies depend on, the regulatory environment your businesses operate in, and the geopolitical decisions that determine whether your satellites stay in orbit.
Thiel’s dictum that “competition is for losers” works when you’re the monopolist. But Trump is the ultimate monopolist—of attention, of dominance, of the willingness to humiliate anyone anywhere for any reason. There’s no competing with that. Only submitting or being destroyed.
And Musk will submit. He’ll apologize. He’ll grovel. He’ll delete the tweets and post something obsequious about how President Trump is making brilliant decisions for America. Because the alternative is watching everything he’s built get systematically dismantled by someone who understands that in authoritarian systems, the point isn’t good governance—it’s demonstrating who’s subordinate.
The man who bought Twitter because he wanted absolute control is learning what absolute control actually means when someone else has it. The irony would be poetic if it weren’t so terrifying. Because this isn’t just about Musk’s bruised ego. This is about oligarchs discovering that the authoritarian systems they funded don’t stop at the people they don’t like. Hierarchy has teeth. And those teeth point in every direction.
Ask yourself: in the system you’re part of, are you ever really at the top—or always potentially the subordinate? The architects of neo-feudalism are learning the answer the hard way.
This is what authoritarian dominance looks like—cultivated by the powerful, weaponized by the dominant, and turned back on its architects.
Welcome to the world you built, Elon. How’s it feel?
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has taken money directly from Chinese investors, according to previously sealed testimony, raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of the United States’ most important military contractors.
The recent testimony, coming from a SpaceX insider during a court case, marks the first time direct Chinese investment in the privately held company has been disclosed. While there is no prohibition on Chinese ownership in U.S. military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated and the issue is treated by the U.S. government as a significant national security concern.
“They obviously have Chinese investors to be honest,” Iqbaljit Kahlon, a major SpaceX investor, said in a deposition last year, adding that some are “directly on the cap table.” “Cap table” refers to the company’s capitalization table, which lists its shareholders.
Kahlon’s testimony does not reveal the scope of Chinese investment in SpaceX or the identities of the investors. Kahlon has long been close with the company’s leadership and runs his own firm that acts as a middleman for wealthy investors looking to buy shares of SpaceX.
SpaceX keeps its full ownership structure secret. It was previously reported that some Chinese investors had bought indirect stakes in SpaceX, investing in middleman funds that in turn owned shares in the rocket company. The new testimony describes direct investments that suggest a closer relationship with SpaceX.
SpaceX has thrived as it snaps up sensitive U.S. government contracts, from building spy satellites for the Pentagon to launching spacecraft for NASA. U.S. embassies and the White House have connected to the company’s Starlink internet service too. Musk’s roughly 42% stake in the company is worth an estimated $168 billion. If he owned nothing else, he’d be one of the 10 richest people in the world.
National security law experts said federal officials would likely be deeply interested in understanding the direct Chinese investment in SpaceX. Whether there was cause for concern would depend on the details, they said, but the U.S. government has asserted that China has a systematic strategy of using investments in sensitive industries to conduct espionage.
If the investors got access to nonpublic information about the company — say, details on its contracts or supply chain — it could be useful to Chinese intelligence, said Sarah Bauerle Danzman, an Indiana University professor who has worked for the State Department scrutinizing foreign investments. That “would create huge risks that, if realized, would have huge consequences for national security,” she said.
SpaceX did not respond to questions for this story. Kahlon declined to comment.
The new court records come from litigation in Delaware between Kahlon and another investor. The testimony was sealed until ProPublica, with the assistance of lawyers at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the law firm Shaw Keller, moved in the spring to make it public. SpaceX fought the effort, but a judge ruled that some of the records must be released. Kahlon’s testimony was publicly filed this week.
Buying shares in SpaceX is much more difficult than buying a piece of a publicly traded company like Tesla or Microsoft. SpaceX has control over who can buy stakes in it, and the company’s investors fall into different categories. The most rarefied group is the direct investors, who actually own SpaceX shares. This group includes funds led by Kahlon, Peter Thiel and a handful of other venture capitalists with personal ties to Musk. Then there are the indirect investors, who effectively buy stakes in SpaceX through a middleman like Kahlon. (The indirect investors are actually buying into a fund run by the middleman, typically paying a hefty fee.) All previously known Chinese investors in SpaceX fell into the latter category.
This year, ProPublica reported on an unusual feature of SpaceX’s approach to investment from China. According to testimony from the Delaware case, the company allows Chinese investors to buy stakes in SpaceX so long as the money is routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs. Companies only have to proactively report Chinese investments to the government in limited circumstances, and there aren’t hard and fast rules for how much is too much.
After ProPublica’s report, House Democrats sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth raising alarms about the company’s “potential obfuscation.” “In light of the extreme sensitivity of SpaceX’s work for DoD and NASA, this lack of transparency raises serious questions,” they wrote. It’s unclear if any action was taken in response.
Kahlon has turned his access to SpaceX stock into a lucrative business. His investor list reads like an atlas of the world. The investors’ names are redacted in the recently unsealed document, but their addresses span from Chile to Malaysia. One is in Russia. At least two are in mainland China. One is in Qatar. (In one email to SpaceX’s chief financial officer, Kahlon said a Los Angeles-based fund had money from the Qatari royal family and was already invested in SpaceX.)
“You made a big fortune,” a China-based financier wrote to Kahlon four years ago. “Lol something like that. SpaceX has been the gift that keeps on giving,” Kahlon responded. “All thanks to you.”
Kahlon first met with SpaceX when it was a fledgling startup, according to court records. SpaceX’s CFO, Bret Johnsen, who’s been there for 14 years, testified that Kahlon “has been with the company in one form or fashion longer than I have.” Johnsen also testified that SpaceX has no formal policy about accepting investments from countries deemed adversaries by the U.S. government. But he said he asks fund managers to “stay away from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean ownership interest” because that could make it “more challenging to win government contracts.”
There are indications that by 2021, Kahlon was wary of raising funds from China. The U.S. government had grown increasingly concerned about Chinese investments in tech companies, and that June, Kahlon told an associate he was “being picky” with who he’d let buy into a new SpaceX opportunity. “Only people I want to have a relationship with long term. No one from mainland China,” Kahlon said.
But as he raced to assemble a pool of investors, those concerns appeared to fade away. By November 2021, Kahlon was personally raising money from China to buy SpaceX stakes. He told a Shanghai-based company that if it invested with him, it would get quarterly updates on SpaceX’s business development, “visits to SpaceX, and the opportunities to interview with Space X’s CFO,” court records show.
What if I told you the Trump FCC just leveraged a fake investigation into an American company to force it to sell valuable assets to companies and billionaires loyal to the administration? Well that’s exactly what’s happening with the news that Dish Network and Echostar are selling $17 billion in valuable spectrum to Elon Musk, after being repeatedly threatened by Trump’s lackey at the FCC, Brendan Carr.
That task completed, the second administration is now forcing Dish to strip the project for parts and send its valuable assets to administration friends. AT&T recently scored $23 billion in valuable spectrum from Dish, with Musk now hoovering up much of the rest. This puts to bed the lie that the Trump administration was ever serious about Dish becoming a serious fourth wireless competitor.
Using Dish Network as a prop to justify this consolidation — then letting the biggest industry players hoover up the spectrum when the gambit inevitably failed — was always the play. Though Carr, when he first launched this “investigation” into Dish last May, did his best to pretend he was a serious adult regulator simply worried about rural ‘merica:
“As you know, buildout obligations are one way that the FCC can ensure that Americans, including those living in rural communities, have a fair shot at next-generation connectivity. After all, failure to meet buildout obligations leaves these communities behind.“
Carr’s primary focus has been in destroying whatever’s left of FCC corporate oversight and consumer protection authority, yet he’s curiously involved when it comes to things like pressuring CBS to kiss Trump’s ass, or forcing Dish to sell valuable assets to rich Trump donors. Keep in mind, Dish was technically meeting these requirements; they’d struck an extension with the FCC last year.
Carr’s bullying of Dish pissed off everybody across the political spectrum, from consumer groups incensed at the obvious corrupt cronyism (see this lawsuit against the FCC by Nina Burleigh and Frequency Forward), to “free market” Libertarian groups clearly pissed at the FCC bullying Dish into selling assets less than a year after the previous FCC had granted Dish an extension for its 5G network build (there are probably some lessons here in seeking dependable common cause with authoritarians).
Curiously, most of the media coverage I’ve seen on this Musk sale so far (from TechCrunch to Deadline to the LA Times) doesn’t mention any of the cronyism despite pretty broad bipartisan complaints about it.
And those that do mention it, like this Fast Company report, frame the FCC’s efforts as clinical and in good faith:
“The deal also has one other benefit for EchoStar—it’s another step in helping the company resolve concerns by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its wireless spectrum licenses.
Notably, SpaceX has long argued that EchoStar’s spectrum was being underutilized. Earlier this year, the FCC opened an investigation into the matter.
“EchoStar anticipates this transaction with SpaceX along with the previously announced spectrum sale will resolve the Federal Communications Commission’s inquiries,” EchoStar said in a statement.”
Again, neither the Trump administration — or its top donors like AT&T — ever wanted this Dish Network 5G gambit to succeed. Neither Trumpism nor Brendan Carr give a fleeting fuck about improving real world connectivity or market competition, and AT&T and Verizon (long GOP allies) never wanted serious wireless competition to materialize. And Dish CEO Charlie Ergen is happy to sell hugely appreciated spectrum assets hoarded over decades and head off into retirement.
And it appears to be getting worse as Musk (and other companies, like Amazon) launch more LEO satellites. A new study (hat tip, Gizmodo) found that all of the launched satellites exceed brightness limits established by the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky (CPS), harming scientists’ ability to conduct scientific research:
“Although there are no official regulations in place, the CPS established recommendations for maximum acceptable brightness for satellites orbiting below 341 miles (550 kilometers). The IAU established a maximum brightness of +7 magnitude for professional astronomy and below +6 magnitude as the aesthetic reference so it does not impact the public’s ability to stargaze without interference from satellites.”
Again, it’s worth reiterating that Musk initially stated this would never be a problem. While the study found that the brightness levels of Starlink satellites have improved some, the lower orbiting altitude of some of the newer Starlink satellites means the brightness impact is actually worse.
Despite Musk’s endless whining about “burdensome regulations,” the U.S. doesn’t really regulate this sort of thing. And the damage goes well beyond astronomy.
Last June scientists warned that low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites constantly burning up in orbit could release chemicals that could undermine the progress we’ve made repairing the ozone layer. Researchers at USC noted that at peak, 1,005 U.S. tons of aluminum will fall to Earth, releasing 397 U.S. tons of aluminum oxides per year to the atmosphere, an increase of 646% over natural levels.
Starlink’s about to get a big boost by taxpayers, too. Republicans are rewriting the 2021 infrastructure bill to redirect billions in subsidies to Elon Musk and Starlink, despite the service’s high costs, congestion problems, and increasingly problematic environmental impact. And, of course, Starlink is just one of several emerging competitors in the LEO space, all jockeying for a huge boost in taxpayer subsidies.
The lawsuit also points out that Trump’s FCC and agency boss Brendan Carr have “acted favorably on several Starlink initiatives,” and recently opened a dodgy “investigation” into Dish Network, which the suit alleges is flimsy cover to force Dish to sell its valuable spectrum holdings to Elon Musk and Starlink.
The lawsuit also claims that the Trump FCC violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by wrongfully withholding records on DOGE’s activities at the FCC.
The Judge managing the lawsuit apparently doesn’t think much of Trump and Brendan Carr’s FCC responses to the inquiry so far. The plaintiffs in the case filed a motion for preliminary injunction last week (hat tip, Ars Technica) and received a quick ruling from US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the District of Columbia.
While Jackson said the plaintiffs failed to meet the legal requirements for an injunction, she did take time to point out that Trump’s FCC is stonewalling on providing documentation:
“On July 2, 2025, the Court ordered that defendant “must file a dispositive motion or, in the alternative, a report setting forth the schedule for the completion of its production of documents to plaintiff, on or before July 23, 2025.” However, defendant’s July 23, 2025 status report provided no timeline, and it was vague and uninformative. Further, the anticipated “initial production” defendant referred to [in] that filing, amounted to only 35 pages.”
DOGE has also provided flimsy “innovation efficiency” cover in the press for the brutal dismantling of both corporate oversight and the social safety net, in addition to just generally being a wasteful, costly mess all by itself. What’s left of federal consumer protection and corporate oversight really is being summarily executed by radical assholes, and the impact will be massive and generational. Yet, with scattered exception, most U.S. journalists, politicians, and policy folks don’t seem particularly interested.
So I’ve noted how Republicans are rewriting the 2021 infrastructure bill (they voted against) to ensure that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded broadband grants wind up in the back pocket of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (and their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband ventures, Starlink and Project Kuiper).
I’ve also explained in detail why that’s a problem: these networks may be initially cheaper to deploy, but the networks lack the capacity to actually scale to meet demand. Data indicates they harm astronomy research and the ozone layer. Money directed toward Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is also money directed away from higher-capacity, faster, locally-owned (and usually cheaper) fiber and wireless alternatives.
Quick background: the 2021 infrastructure bill created a $42.5 billion grant program dubbed the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program (BEAD). BEAD is overseen on the federal level by the NTIA, but individual states are largely going to be in charge of how money is spent.
A few months ago, the Trump administration retooled the program in order to strip away any language related to climate, fair labor practices, equity, or affordability. But the changes also urged states to redirect as much money as possible to Bezos and Musk.
Most states were happy to purge their BEAD plans of any language ensuring that taxpayer-funded broadband is actually affordable. But not all states have been quite as quick to slather Musk with the kind of subsidies he wants. Virginia, for example, released a plan that continues to primarily fund fiber networks over satellite, something Space X and Starlink immediately started to whine about.
Colorado doled out $25.4 million BEAD award to Amazon, despite the fact that the company’s LEO network is barely operational. Starlink received $9.16 million for 5,400 locations. The two companies won the bids because they promised to do it so much more cheaply than other companies, including cellular or fixed wireless providers:
“The LEOs were primarily picked because they could do it much cheaper than everyone else, Reitter said.
“LEO was really aggressive in their coverage and also their pricing,” she said. “They decreased their cost per BSL (broadband serviceable location) quite a bit to be more competitive against the other technologies. Fixed wireless is probably their main competitor.”
But again, simply stating that these LEO satellite systems are cheaper to deploy that cellular, fixed wireless, or fiber is extremely misleading.
One recent study found that Starlink struggles to deliver the FCC’s already flimsy definition of broadband – 100 megabits per second (Mbps) down, 20 Mbps up – in any areas where Starlink subscribership exceeds 6 households per square mile. In many areas, these capacity constraints are causing Starlink to issue “congestion” charges as high as $750.
Ideally, if you’re going to spend taxpayer money on broadband, you want to prioritize pushing fiber as deeply into rural America as you can. From there, you want to leverage higher-capacity cellular and fixed wireless. After that, you can leverage LEO satellite broadband to fill the gaps. And you probably want competent regulators to prevent telecoms from ripping off captive customers in monopolized areas.
Especially given that one of the two companies is led by a highly erratic, extremely conspiratorial, overt white supremacist with a history of empty promises and labor violations.
Hoping to appease their billionaire friends, Republicans have turned this program on its head. So unfortunately, that means in many states, a big chunk of your taxpayer money is being directed away from locally-owned fiber and wireless companies, cooperatives, or city-owned utilities, and toward unproven LEO satellite ventures with a long list of caveats.
This is, of course, complicated by the fact that lobbyists for our biggest, shittiest cable and phone companies (also traditionally directly allied with Republicans) are also in the mix, trying to direct money their way, and away from more popular alternatives (like the surging number of municipal broadband projects scattered around the U.S., or the kind of popular city-owned utilities in cities like Chattanooga).
States that resist the Trump administration’s desires to ignore affordability and slather Musk with subsidies risk having their funding plans rejected entirely by the NTIA, potentially losing out on billions in historic broadband subsidies. So it will be interesting to see how hard states are willing to fight over the next six months or so.
Should Musk and friends get what they want, in a few years, when these LEO networks are overloaded and over-billing captive customers in rural locations, a lot of these policymakers will slap a stupid look on their faces and wonder how it happened. But because the Trump administration has also taken a hatchet to federal regulatory oversight, holding these satellite companies (or giant telecom monopolies) accountable when they once again fail to deliver will be an uphill climb.
