The News
Elon Musk is facing several Pentagon reviews into whether he violated federal security protocols, The New York Times reported, as concerns grow among US officials that SpaceX’s chief executive is not disclosing required information about foreign leaders.
Musk was recently denied high-level security access by the Air Force, while at least nine foreign countries have raised concerns about him in meetings with US officials.
Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to President-elect Donald Trump requesting he set conflict of interest rules for Elon Musk, The Washington Post reported. The senator argued that while members of Trump’s transition team operate under an ethics policy, Musk is not yet bound by any rules due to his unofficial role.
SIGNALS
Musk may have Trump’s ear, but faces limits to his influence
Elon Musk has become a key player in Trump’s incoming administration, discussing geopolitics with foreign leaders and playing a role in the selection of the incoming cabinet. The Trump team is also proposing policies that the Tesla founder has long favored, such as dropping a car crash reporting requirement opposed by his electric vehicle firm , although it is unclear whether Musk had a direct influence in crafting the recommendations, Reuters reported. Even so, the world’s richest person faces limits to his influence: While Musk has blasted Congress’s stopgap government funding bill, for example, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson pressed ahead with the measure, saying “We gotta get this done.” Another Republican congressman pushed back against the idea that Musk would influence the vote: “I never saw where he was elected to Congress,” he quipped.
The US government has grown ‘dependent’ on Musk’s technology
Beyond Musk’s informal influence on the incoming administration, Musk also wields considerable power through SpaceX, whose technology has become a key part of the US military’s digital communication. “There is only one thing worse than a government monopoly. And that is a private monopoly that the government is dependent on,” a former NASA administrator told the New Yorker. “I do worry that we have put all of our eggs into one basket, and it’s the SpaceX basket.” Although the Pentagon has taken steps to cultivate SpaceX’s competitors, offering development funding for firms building rockets to carry satellites into space, every time the US military has launched a satellite into space in the last six years, it has done so with a SpaceX rocket, the trade publication C4ISRNet reported.
Europe seeks to shake its reliance on SpaceX
The EU signed contracts this week to develop a multibillion-euro satellite network dubbed IRIS2, intending to provide the bloc with a constellation of satellites aimed at rivaling Musk’s Starlink. “We cannot afford to be too dependent” on non-EU companies, the EU space commissioner said at the signing. But the project is already years behind schedule, and the original goal of having the network up and running this year has been pushed back to 2031. Musk has called the program “a child’s toy compared to Starlink,” and the European effort is only planning to launch 290 satellites, compared with SpaceX’s fleet of more than 7,000. European countries have struggled to cooperate on space projects, leaving the bloc’s capabilities splintered between competing firms while SpaceX raced forwards, Le Monde reported.