How SpaceX became the MyPillow of government contractors

It was really special to see Elon Musk make SpaceX the MyPillow of rocket companies, wasn't it?

Gosh, I guess I have to list all the depressing things of the last few months: the Trump rally, the creepy murder comments, the even scarier comments about Taylor Swift getting pregnant, the spread of hurricane misinformation on X (thus hindering relief efforts). , He claimed his own child was “killed” by the “woke mind virus,” something like that. I've seen a lot of people suggest that this is political radicalization, and sure, maybe that's it too. But I can't help but notice some sick business logic too.

I've never accused Musk of being anything other than self-serving. As I see it, his only real policy is that Elon Musk can do whatever he wants forever. And his recent political outbursts are, in my opinion, clearly linked to his money. He has come to the same conclusion as Donald Trump, namely that it is particularly easy to defraud Republican voters and that doing so brings many rewards and very few consequences. Donny, these men are nihilists.

At first glance, it might seem foolish for a businessman to anger one of the major U.S. political parties. Musk has a long history of accepting subsidies from local, state and federal governments. His company SpaceX is essentially based on agency contracts in the highly regulated aerospace industry. But I suspect Musk has figured out he can use the culture wars to his advantage.

Those of you familiar with SpaceX may remember the litany of lawsuits against the government. For example, in 2005, the company alleged that Boeing and Lockheed Martin engaged in anticompetitive behavior to stop SpaceX from letting its Falcon 9 compete for government contracts. (The Falcon 9 didn't make its first launch until 2010.)

And in 2014, Musk sued the US Air Force over an $11 billion contract with the United Launch Alliance. (The Falcon Heavy wouldn't have its first launch until 2018.) SpaceX won concessions and dropped the lawsuit after the Air Force agreed to accelerate its efforts to certify SpaceX to launch military satellites — and to provide SpaceX with more launches to compete with it.

As a woman familiar with the linear concept of time, I personally find these suits strange. How could SpaceX compete with a rocket it hadn't yet launched? Sure, there were “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity” contracts for the Falcon I, but that wasn't what SpaceX was complaining about. And yet these lawsuits gave Musk what he wanted: more possible government contracts. In fact, such suits were as much a hallmark of SpaceX as its rockets.

If you're the type of person who uses lawsuits to get what you want, you may have taken note of the fact that Donald Trump has appointed 200 federal judges, including “almost as many powerful federal appeals judges in four years as.” Barack Obama appointed in 2011.” eight,” as Pew Research puts it. In 2021, more than a quarter of active federal judges were appointed by Trump. Let's not pretend this is insignificant; If that were the case, the Federalist Society would not exist. If Musk supports Republicans, they will continue to appoint judges who believe things that favor Musk – and he might even get lucky and get some obviously partisan judges who would support him based on his affiliation.

Consider Texas, which is really interested in Musk's affairs. During Musk's Twitter takeover, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into Twitter bot numbers – an investigation that matched exactly the argument Musk made to back out of buying the social media company. Of course, there's also the Texas judge who owned Tesla stock and greenlit a Musk-backed lawsuit against Media Matters for America. (The judge in question is known for his politically conservative rulings.)

But wait! There's more. In 2020, SpaceX received nearly $900 million in rural broadband grants from the FCC under Trump. But in 2022, the Biden-era FCC revoked that funding because “the applicant had failed to meet its burden.” Two Republican FCC commissioners objected, and now a Republican House Oversight Committee chairman is reviewing the FCC's decision.

Culture war themes are designed to motivate a largely apathetic voter base that doesn't give a damn about government resources. They have been used by Republicans in the past, starting with Barry Goldwater, to push through specific financial policies that have largely harmed lower-class Americans. It seems that Musk has paid enough attention to this particular historical quirk to conclude that the culture war can help him too.

Does that sound cynical? I suppose. Sincere, coherent political beliefs are largely the domain of the bourgeoisie and nerds who were attentive in the governing class. The Elon Musks of this world are interested in power. Not everything Musk says is necessarily calculated or politically advantageous — his partisan loyalties also extend to friendly conversations with masked white nationalists and spreading theories that women are incapable of thinking. Crucially, these actions have no negative consequences – just more attention to what appears to be his personal hero.

Consider the missile situation. For NASA, Musk is the only game in town besides Boeing, and he knows it. He also knows that NASA won't take any punitive action even if he behaves badly in public – like smoking weed. And I blame the brain geniuses at NASA. Instead of having our own rockets to launch our spy satellites, we now rely on Boeing (lol, lmao), the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture that includes…Boeing), and SpaceX. (Of course there's Blue Origin, also run by Jeff Bezos, I guess, but come on.) By outsourcing its technology, NASA has left the national security apparatus at the mercy of wild contractors.

And Musk's bet seems to be that being a visible Republican will benefit him more than being neutral, presumably because he assumes – probably correctly – that Democrats won't punish him for it. So when it comes to, for example, SpaceX's environmental damage, the safety record of Tesla's “Full Self-Driving” and the working conditions of its employees, his alignment with Republicans makes him suspect that any investigation into his behavior is politically motivated. Practical, isn't it?

Even on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, you can see the ambition. By courting the law, which he undoubtedly did, he was attempting to create a value proposition for a company he largely destroyed. The distortion also gives him an excuse: if X dies, Musk can claim that it wasn't because it was mismanaged, but because it was destroyed by the radical left or whatever. Thanks to his friendly judges, he can even put “radical left” critics in their place in court!

Look, Musk's appearance at the Trump rally sparked a thousand think pieces and the silly photo sparked a thousand memes. But to talk about Musk's political beliefs, you have to talk about the only thing he really believes in: money.