This is naked corruption. It's way worse than just stealing the contract, it essentially means Starlink will get a free antenna on every airplane in the country (at taxpayer expense?) and will then have the airlines as captive customers. Musk is going to make way more than $2bn out of this.
I'm gonna say this every time this comes up: These people should be in PRISON. They are criminals. If we care about law and order, we must remove them immediately from office. End of story. I am sick and tired of apologists for these people, if you believe they are conducting themselves legally, you do not believe in our Republic, you are complicit, you are a traitor to our country and to the American project. We will find you with our pitchforks, it is only a matter of time.
Don't forget the 44 billion USD he paid to control one of the world's largest vehicles for dissemination of information, transforming it into a superspreader of disinformation and propaganda.
Does it strike anyone else as sadly funny that the country which has meddled in other countries for so long, has finally had a foreign puppet + stooge installed in itself?
Obligation to have a starlink terminal on the plane to enable communication with the radio tower. This comes with the added bonus of enabling Elon to sell Starlink internet in-flight.
Prescribed users will get access to net and non-users will get forked as per-usual. But with an Elon branded fork instead.
I also expect he's eager to make it proprietary. That way it would then force all other airlines that route through the USA to have a Starlink terminals too.
I use a mini in-flight. I welcome anything to bring the price down (currently $250/mo for 50 GB)
However, this "fix" not being put out for bid is ridiculous. That's not how competition and the market works. This feels like African-style "whatchu gonna do about it" big man corruption.
You'll forgive a significantly large body of people for not being willing to trust a man who has "also claimed" a ton of things that have turned out to not be true.
Let's not pretend like every president and congressperson has the same track record for corruption and hypocrisy. I don't need to "suddenly give a shit about integrity, capability, or neutrality" to wonder why a particular president lets a billionare give unhired people access to treasury data, lie about "read-only access", redirect earmarked contracts to the billionaire's companies, and pretend that Elon Musk does not have anything to do with DOGE or firing decisions, or to question why certain legislators are telling citizens that "nobody should bellyache" about the unconstitutional actions committed by DOGE and Elon Musk with Trump's permission.
Going forward I think we can assume that conflict of interest doesn't exist anymore. No DEI but they'll replace it with nepotism and full on corruption.
The genius move by Trump is doing full on corruption out in the open leaves people confused. Full corruption, foreign brides/influence, blatant political favors are the norm now. I remember when the MAGAs complained about Hilary's emails and Hunter on the board of some company. Now we have a full on corruption out in the open and no one gives a shit.
This is the true secret of American government, though. We do everything that every other corrupt government does, except we've managed to legalize it.
The new administration just cut 400 jobs at the FAA [1], and now Musk will directly pocket the "savings" to "work" on some bullshit useless tech. When Musk talks "waste and bloat", he means public money that doesn't end up in his pocket.
As a result, air traffic is noticeably more dangerous, and many lost their livelihoods in these increasingly uncertain times, just to make the wealthiest man on Earth a bit more wealthy. The "Fell for it Again Award" goes to...
Even with the proper contract awarding process, corruption is widespread.
Decisions made at lunches and then the contract award process skewed to award the correct person, at some insane markup over real market prices for the same service.
The process is unfixable. Instead we should just look at a teams total cost and total achievement every year, and if the money they've spent doesn't look good value for money, we give them a bad performance review and their government career will be tricky to repair.
That is a far stronger incentive to get the most out of taxpayer money than ever stricter, yet super easy to game, anti corruption measures.
Unfortunately this doesn’t work either. Contracting is risk adverse and tries to avoid legal battles at all costs so even bad reviews often get scrubbed and edited until they look glowing.
The risk adverse nature of the govt needs to be fixed before the incentives align.
Do any governments employ a competitive approach to awarding contracts that isn't winner-take-all? If there were a way to build an ATC system utilizing both Verizon and Starlink we might get the benefits of price competition and redundancy.
Yes. The US does this with some larger programs ("systems of systems") if the components are sufficiently distinct. An aircraft? Not so much. A comms system? Absolutely, if it's not sold as one complete system. For instance, radios might be contracted to multiple vendors with the intent to drive down cost.
It's not universally done, though. It depends on how the program office(s) involved decide to run things.
EDIT: To expand. Look at space systems. The ground stations are not tied to specific space systems (though some space systems develop their own ground networks), that is a separate program from the satellites and SOCs. There is no one "space program". And even for a particular satellite system the SOC may be under a separate contract vehicle than the satellite itself.
Right, that's similar to the radio example I gave (multiple vendors so that there was no single point of failure, it mitigated risk and, in theory, reduces cost by introducing competition). What I meant by aircraft though was that for a specific aircraft, it'll be run by a specific contractor for all or nearly all its subcomponents. Though there could be exceptions. See the way that heavies (cargo, AWACS, and the like) are given multiple missions and some of the mission specific components may be separate programs rather than executed by the prime for the aircraft. But you won't have the government contract for the engine and the airframe separately.
Though you also have that done for aircraft. The F-35 was selected among several aircraft that were being developed by various contractors as the one to move forward as the JSF. This is where the lifecycle of a program comes into play. In the R&D stages you'll see multiple options quite commonly because they want to compete different vendors. Eventually it whittles down to one for things like aircraft to move forward. Though, using the JSF as an example, maybe they should select multiple. LM were the geniuses that thought you could increase software productivity by hiring more programmers and having them work in shifts.
Isn't the logical way to do that for a contractor to make a bid intending to use multiple subcontractors to provide a better service than any one contractor could provide alone?
Given the systemic corruption elsewhere, I can’t summon anger about this until I can verify if the utility is necessary and uniquely provided by Starlink. If so, then this is just bad optics. If not, it should be aggressively fought.
It’s a 15 year contract awarded in 2023 so it may be too early to tell. The strongest public claims that Verizon isn’t capable comes from their competitor so those claims should probably be taken with a boulder of salt until more information is made available.
Is the "Moving fast and breaking things" attitude commonly associated with these types of companies compatible with ATC?
While I acknowledge their success in space, a LOT of guardrails/regulation were placed upon them to assure safe progress. Now they're both running the regulatory agency while also providing the end-product, which may mean faster progress but less safety overall.
Air travel is, generally, safe. The US has an issue with low staffing levels in ATC, and while automated systems have helped, the workload is still too high. It will likely be years before a Starlink product would come online, so staffing levels need to be addressed in the near-term.
Not to mention the early model was built on govt contracts because the govt was the only institution capable of shouldering the risk of an unproven space vendor.
Not saying that’s a bad thing, just that the success of SpaceX and the govt were tightly coupled.
Interestingly, it looks like the “BEAD program” - a rural broadband initiative was allocated more funding ($42b) than SpaceX and Tesla combined ($37b).
That last number includes loans, too.
I chose that example in particular because Starlink has done more for rural broadband access than everything else the federal government has done combined.
I agree Starlink is poised to be very successful at providing high speed internet to rural areas. But that doesn’t negate the point that it required the govt to do so because SpaceX would not exist if it didn’t get high risk govt contracts. Also, I wouldn’t compare it to terrestrial internet unless you advocate it being a regulated utility in the same way, which I doubt Musk or investors would want. Different rules, different constraints.
Elon is exactly the person to want to rewrite things from scratch and break shit. Hopefully, a drop in air travel due to safety fears leads to the workload decreasing, thereby allowing these forced system upgrades to happen with less harm.
While I don’t like the way it is handled, I’m going to be a contrarian here and say this could be a good thing. Previously, the contract was awarded to Verizon at the same price. I have more faith in SpaceX’s ability to deliver than Verizon and if starlink antennas are on every plane, aircraft internet will likely be better overall as a side effect.
Please convince me why this view is incorrect, I am open to listen.
> I have more faith in SpaceX’s ability to deliver than Verizon
Why? Verizon has been delivering top of the line cellular service for multiple decades now. Starlink is quite new on the scene and given that they’ve now captured management of the agency they’re selling to, they have no incentive to actually provide high quality service. They could do a shitty job and keep the contract, so why would they bother to do well?
> They could do a shitty job and keep the contract, so why would they bother to do well?
I think this is probably the key piece I didn’t consider. SpaceX’s previous work was done under heavy competitive pressure so they had to do good. Here it doesn’t matter what they do.
With Verizon, my doubts came from all of the reporting that’s happened on rural broadband funding. A lot of the companies, including Verizon, essentially took the money and ran without doing all of the work (from my understanding).
Arbitrary power can achieve a lot of good things but it always ends the same way. So better WiFi on the plane but one day you find you can't get on a plane anymore because you said the wrong thing.
Isn't that already how it works? At least for specific values of "the wrong thing" - one day you find you can't get on a plane because you said "I want to blow up this plane."
But also "I am going to Colombia to bring some cocaine home." and "I am going to Washington to assassinate the president." and "The right of the people to keep and bear nuclear bombs shall not be infringed." and any number of other things that don't immediately threaten the plane's integrity.
Bans from planes are already arbitrary and capricious, so I don’t think changing which arbitrary power is responsible really makes a difference here. Look at all the news articles of people ending up on the no fly list for garbage grounds.
In concerns such as this, the process matters. If we don't follow it this time, then why follow next time or the time after? Then, if this rule or that law doesn't matter, then do any of them matter?
I think people would have been more comfortable if they decided to send it out to bid again - not great since it was already awarded, but at least going back through the public process.
You're making those assertions with no absolutely no data though. In a sane, non-corrupt system a trusted third party with recognised industry experience would assess the contract, what has been agreed to and what been delivered and make an evaluation based on the cost, risk, timetables etc. None of that happened here. It's just naked corruption.
The existing system is already corrupt so I don’t think that hypothetical is helpful here. The process by which contracts are awarded is already unfair and biased towards certain players with the right connections to get a contract written in a way that only they can fulfill.
It’s possible, although I have not verified, that the contract was written in such a way that Verizon was the only qualified applicant because of lobbying.
What you are talking about is a pure theory and never exist in real world. Start with trusted 3rd party - trusted by who?
Starlink technologically can provide better connectivity in terms of speed and reliability compared to Verizon (can doesn’t mean it will of course). So there is some credibility to the decision.
But of course populace prefer to focus on flamboyant personalities instead of “based on cost, risk, timetables” ain’t it?
What’s the tradeoff between reliability/cost/performance between different infrastructure approaches? I’d assume for safety critical applications, reliability is the priority.
Can't give real answers without data on Starlink reliability (or non-consumer features), but personally as someone who depended on ATC both as small time pilot and more regularly as passenger, I'd be wary of sat radio as main backhaul.
Of course Verizon can fsck it up as well, but multiple leased fiber lines, possibly direct MPLS with guarantees on latency and bandwidth, or maybe even DWDM between major locations sounds more reliable to my instincts.
Most importantly I don't trust the hatchet job way this is done, not just on Starlink use, but the whole hatchet job with FAA.
With density of flights in USA, intra-ATC Comms are non trivial part of safety - passing flight information on structured messages rather than by hand between areas is... More than important.
I haven't before, but due to certain private interests I can explain what they mean by "legacy copper TDM infrastructure".
A lot of interconnections between US ATC services were done back with the good old Bell System over then new T1/T3 digital carriers, plus analog leased lines in some cases, that provided high reliability and high quality of service links for both data and voice (which could include voice connection to remote radio transceivers).
This is, of course, being phased out even from "compatibility mode" setups where you get old style trunks that are backed by newer infrastructure. So the network infrastructure is literally dying out.
A comparable setup with modern tech would be MPLS fiber backbone with capacity reservation (thus actually getting stable latency and bandwidth guarantees), which would allow creation of virtual meshes with different QoS requirements that would provide both stable voice service (including from centralized ATC to remote radar transceivers), guaranteed performance data links (for example for radars etc), slower but still guaranteed service bulk data transfers, etc.
I might have also mentioned DWDM, which essentially lets you create a physical fiber optic path where switching is done by optical elements based on frequency of the signal (so you can pack multiple signals into one fiber then route them to different ports etc. etc.) - very useful if you want no variability in connection while still be able to reroute them fast.
That exactly is the point of the program. A shift to an IP network.
Where Starlink comes in is in the intermediate step. Before Verizon finishes running their MPLS network, there's a program called RTRI that provides an off ramp for TDM, so when Lumen stops serving, they have something. It's contracted to L3Harris and runs over SDWAN while using any network as an overlay. Satellite (including GEO), Cable and 5G (anything available really)
Sidestepping the corruption piece, which is a huge problem here to be clear, my understanding is that SpaceX has promised to provide starlink antennas at no cost to be used in commercial aircraft. Assuming that is true (again, a big if), then wouldn’t a natural consequence here be Starlink back Internet on the planes?
That said, I may have been reading misinformation and it’s only provided to ATC towers.
They wouldn't be used for ATC though. Internet access from aircraft is, outside of questions whether it interferes with aircraft operations, outside of FAA purview (at most, it's FCC and ITU-T depending scope)
The concern is specifically the way it is handled, though?
So, could bad things still lead to good things? Of course. Do we generally accept "ends justifies the means"? I didn't think so?
As for downsides, I confess the five year life cycle of the satellites is of some concern to me. Seems more so of a problem the more of them you have to put up there?
Why would it be better? If you can cancel your competitors contracts and award them to yourself, the only incentive you have is to just...raise the price.
Even giving the benefit of the doubt that they would do a good job: The ends do not justify the means. That's really all it is. Pragmatically speaking, Americans simply abhor an unelected hundred-billionaire who behaves in a mean, trollish, and "hateable" manner, forcing himself into the institutions of their home country in a way that appears destructive and careless. For each individual case, whether it actually ends up improved by some metric (and whether Elon is even actively involved) is overshadowed ten-fold by the societal damage caused, the dangerous precedent created, and the fighting spirit of Americans against authoritarianism.
Leaving aside the corruption thing there could be a lot to be said for satellite coms for aircraft and air traffic control as air traffic is global and the only way to have a system that will work anywhere including over oceans is satellite really.
SpaceX changed the rules of the game - before SpaceX we all used stationary satellites, needed to point antennas to them, deal with atrocious latencies and low bandwidths.
The enabling technology is constellations in low orbit and SpaceX isn't the only one anymore.
Yep obviously Verizon is a bloated company with zero innovation and no particular experience relevant to the FAA. Meanwhile SpaceX has experience in software, hardware, telecom, and flight. I trust them more with modernizing the FAA.
There’s also very little information on who else bid for this contract that Verizon got. How do we know it wasn’t corrupt to begin with, especially with Biden engaging in lawfare against Musk and doing bizarre things like excluding him from EV summits? The entire FAA modernization plan looks corrupt - everyone else that got contracts are random unknown companies. I bet they have ties back to some congressman.
If we think that, isn't the solution to reopen the bidding with more transparency, rather than hand it to the guy who just so happens to both be in charge of the team pushing for this and owns the company the new contract is awarded to?
Your replacing "maybe this was corrupt", with 'this is blatantly and obviously corrupt"
I can't think of anything much more corrupt than someone in government directing a government contract to a vendor they own with no process for considering other vendors. If that seems fine to you, then I don't think we'll ever agree on what corruption looks like.
If Starlink is actually "very likely to be better for taxpayers" it should have no problem going through the normal bidding process competing with other vendors.
Put aside the Musk hatred. Maybe the company that has 8k satellites in orbit and can bring internet to anywhere in the world, is a better fit than a cell phone company?
Not much more to say, really. There's blatant conflict of interest going on, but I guess we're way past that. Four next years is going to be a non-stop firehose of grift, good thing they won't even bother to hide it.
It kind of doesn't matter if this is the best choice or not. If Elon wants to occupy the position he does in the government, he needs to remove his companies from the pool of government contracts.
I like DOGE's stated objectives. I like SpaceX, and Starlink. They probably ARE a better choice than Verizon. It doesn't matter.
That being said, do I think that bankers and defense contractors and tech companies and oil execs etc have not bought their way into similarish positions of influence for the last many decades? Probably. But Elon's power at the moment feels far less bounded and far more arbitrary.
Verizon has a valid solid network when you're outside of the consumer network. In the business world, Verizon is actually pretty decent and very established. Verizon business is very different to Verizon consumer.
It does matter, imo. You don't want planes to lose communication with base. Satellite has its faults and his ISP has only been around for five years.
Here are the facts regarding the situation with Starlink, the FAA, and the Verizon contract as of February 28, 2025:
The FAA awarded Verizon a $2.4 billion contract in 2023 to upgrade its air traffic control communication system, known as the FAA Enterprise Network Services (FENS) program.
As of February 27, 2025, reports indicate the FAA is considering canceling this contract and potentially shifting the work to Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary owned by Elon Musk.
The FAA has not finalized this decision, stating "no decisions have been made" about the Verizon contract.
Currently, the FAA is testing three Starlink terminals: one in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and two at non-safety-critical sites in Alaska.
Elon Musk has claimed the existing Verizon system (though later corrected to an L3Harris system) is failing rapidly, posing risks to air travelers, and that Starlink is providing terminals "at no cost to the taxpayer on an emergency basis." The FAA has not publicly confirmed this risk assessment.
SpaceX employees are working within FAA facilities, assisting with technology upgrades, amid a broader Trump administration effort to modernize the agency.
The process to unwind a federal contract and reassign it typically requires a competitive bidding process or justification under specific legal exceptions (e.g., national security or urgent public interest), which has not been publicly detailed in this case.
These aren't the facts sorry. The program is still going to Verizon, but there's a transition from TDM to IP called RTRI. That's where Starlink comes in. It's run by L3Harris, not SpaceX.
it seems like US govt always either 180s from the previous president, or morphs into it's last enemy, in one way or another.
Osama, Obama
Russian Oligarchy, American Oligarchy
I almost expect a Putinesque invasion of a 'threatening' nation, maybe Cuba, or somewhere around the south-east-asian sea (the so-called south-china sea), or maybe rotten Denmark if they won't give up Greenland.
I see a lot of pessimism here which makes me think Elon Musk is right when he says they are just having some fun and people lack a sense of humor. Cheer up, people! Geez. /s
In the mid 90s, I recall talking to some of the people working on the current scheme to modernize ATC. This was the 3rd or 4th attempt, and billions had already been spent.
Since then, there have been many efforts and many more billions spent. I'm sure all of these efforts went through the proper channels, etc, but all that has shown is that (a) FAA has no clue how to manage these contracts, and (b) the normal way of doing this absolutely doesn't work.
In contrast, this is how civil infrastructure used to get done in the US:
The difference between those previous contracts and this particular move is in how he/his companies earned those contracts. If they followed standard procedures for the others but not for this one, then yes, one could argue this is corruption.
For background, RFPs are not value neutral. It is not uncommon for customers who have a preferred vendor to shape the RFP to fit in a more natural way to the preferred vendor. To use a simplified example: you want a web server vendor and only IIS and Apache exist. If you have a RFP requirement that the service runs on Linux, then you have a RFP but your requirements have pre-selected the vendor which can achieve the objectives. This is hard to catch from the outside, but focus on ultra specific requirements which seem relatively arbitrary (Linux vs. Windows isn't arbitrary, but the example is super simplified for illustrative purposes).
I am also curious about examples, but as someone from the vendor side, I'll be the first to admit that if the purchasing group has any semblance of intelligence, you can easily hide these biases. The bias only is obvious if you are in the industry and grok the subtle nuances of the capabilities.
When you want to buy something but you don't know how to get what you want you call around to the vendors. They tell you about the products they're representing, and you figure out what you like best. When you put out your solicitation you confine it to products that narrowly match the description of the actual product you want (without naming it, that would be sole source which is different). This is achieved by naming features that are patented or otherwise IP protected, therefore excluding competing products. Sometimes if you're sloppy you can get stuck with a competing product and then you've got a problem on your hands. If you're not worried about price this is a great way to get what you want. But it can mean a 20%+ cost premium, depending on the niche and how aggressive the salesman is.
This is a lot of words to miss a basic point. In those examples, the contract was sent out for bids, won by Starlink, then signed. In this case it was given to another vendor through the same process, then that contract is being cancelled and awarded (without, as far as I know, any further bidding process) to the person making decisions in the US government.
This isn't some deep or complicated point. Surely you cannot write that many coherent sentences and fail to understand the issue here, right? I can only assume you are arguing in bad faith.
> In this case it was given to another vendor through the same process, then that contract is being cancelled and awarded (without, as far as I know, any further bidding process)
No. In this case wapo (hah, no conflict of interest there) is reporting that "unnamed sources" are claiming that this is happening. Nothing has happened yet, but everyone is crying wolf, on a "people say" tangent. Yeah, and I'm the one arguing in bad faith.
Both can be true - you definitely know that the main concern here is that people feel it's a conflict of interest.
You deliberately ignore the fact that all the instances you listed were done through proper procurement processes, and so far, reporting does not suggest this one is. You then try to use it against someone here, amusingly.
It certainly may be wrong reporting!
But arguing that this is identity politics or whatever is definitely bad faith - this entire thread is full of people concerned that this is not going through the normal process, and appears to have happened after Elon complained about the existing contract, and exerted influence on the situation, despite stating (and others stating) he would not involve himself in things that are a conflict of interest.
So, in good faith, what, precisely, is your argument that this is not a clear conflict of interest?
He should have not offered an opinion, or been involved, in any way, with anything here.
That's what it means to recuse from a conflict of interest. Instead, regardless of whether the reporting about the process is wrong, he has literally offered multiple opinions and appears to be trying to exert influence. You don't need reporting for this - you can get it directly from the source - Elon himself.
You also don't even have to guess or opine what it means to have a conflict of interest or what is required in this case - FAR is pretty thorough.
Meanwhile, you are complaining that this is bad faith identity politics, and "wondering" why you are downvoted.
> So, in good faith, what, precisely, is your argument that this is not a clear conflict of interest?
The fact that spx has had 30+b worth of contracts and the us gov saved probably double that on those contracts, and that those contracts delivered, and the usgov is happy. (for context, spx doesn't bid for "cost+" contracts, it only bids for fixed price. e.g. the entire crew dragon programe was half the cost of their competitors, they've launched everything in tranche1, half of tranche2, and are still the only provider that can reliably fly to the ISS)
Literally none of that has any relevance to whether it's a conflict of interest, and whether he should have recused.
How do you not see that?
How can you possibly, in good faith, think that "some of these contracts went well and saved money" has any relationship to whether something is a conflict of interest or not.
Do you just not understand what a conflict of interest is?
Or do you really think conflicts of interest don't exist if "ends justify means" or "they have the best interests of the government at heart" or something really out there like this?
If so, this is a pointless discussion, and man you should take a business ethics (or conflicts of interest) class, because you don't really don't seem to understand conflicts at all.
Or at the very least read the authoritative source I gave you of what a conflict of interest is for the purposes of federal contracting, that you seem to have completely ignored.
The same way you completely ignored that even in your weird world of what a conflict in, in this case, he literally said he would recuse himself, and did not.
Which, whether it saves government money, or whatever the heck, is definitely unethical.
So overall, based on your response i'd say you are either not having this discussion in good faith, or you are so unequipped to meaningfully participate in this discussion that people are mistaking it for you arguing in bad faith.
Here's what should happen - by law, by statute, and what any more general conflicts of interest policy would tell you in roughly any situation:
"Oh, this is a thing that appears <doesn't have to be actual> it might have material effect on a business I own <for example, there are other reasons he would be required to recuse here>, and I am in a position of apparent <it doesn't have to be actual> power over some portion of it.
Therefore, i'm not supposed to be involved at all. I have to go out of my way to be disinvolved. I don't opine on it, I don't try to learn anything about it, I don't try to influence it. If my subordinates are involved, I deliberately refuse to talk to them about it as well".
That's generally the rule. The rules are actually worse for him here, but i'm made it less worse for the sake of my response.
No matter what though, you can see he doesn't have to be involved in the decision for it to be a conflict, and it's not enough to not be involved in the decision making. He also can't opine on it or try to influence it through opinion, or talk to others about it.
That's what it means to recuse from something - you are not involved at all, and involvement is not just "active" involvement, but "passive" involvement (opinion offering, influence) as well.
So regardless of whether he is involved in the decision making itself (i would not be surprised if he was, but let's put it aside) ... here is clearly doing the other things - hopefully you've read his tweets and other opinions on this, but if not, happy to link where he is clearly giving opinions and views and trying to influence the result, post being employed by the government.
So, move the goal posts. If you are doing it, and you are, turnabout is fair play. And with lives at stake (I can give examples) you’ll understand that he might get some shit done and yeah that is not perfectly comfortable for everybody, but maybe, just maybe, he is in there with a better view of the situation than you and I have.
“Meddling” hmm. Perhaps he’ll choose to be “guilty” if the alternative means more air traffic accidents, leaving astronauts stranded in space, and watching the bankruptcy of the country leave everything in shambles.
People keep citing his accomplishments (for lack of a better term) as if it has any bearing on whether something else a conflict and whether he needs to recuse or not. As if to imply that because they believe he helps in the end, it makes it not a conflict for him to be involved.
To be clear: It is irrelevant. It would be a very strange definition of "conflict of interest" if the answer depended on what happened after you already participated. The whole point of conflicts is to not participate in processes where you may be seen as unfairly advancing your own self interest, or your bias may make you not objective in a situation that requires objectivity (IE judges at trials). Note the "may be seen", etc. Conflicts policies rarely, if ever, require actual self-interest or actual non-objectivity, only the appearance of it.
Often, government and legal policies go even further, and for example, judges are required to recuse if "their impartiality might reasonably be questioned". That's it. That's the bar. It's a very low one. Government contracting is similar.
So in Elon's case, it does not matter whether he would be helpful, harmful, or whatever.
This is not a particularly tough ethical quandry, or out of the ordinary.
As for whether he'll "choose to be guilty", he was the one who said he would step aside and not participate in anything with a conflict. He's also required by law to do it, but he specifically said he would.
He also chose to subject himself to these policies - he knew what being a government employee would require of him. To then ignore them is at best, wildly unethical.
We have a process by which these policies could be changed, and the party in office has enough power (legislative, executive) to change them.
If they think they aren't getting the outcomes needed, then change the policies, then operate according to the new ones.
Heck - there is even a process for exempting people from various conflict requirements that they could use if Elon needs to be exempted. They have not done this either (it requires public publication of the reasoning, etc, so it would not be missed if it had happened).
There are a lot of ways to get things done without running afoul of ethics rules.
Which means "ends justify means" type arguments are mostly nonsense.
>He's also required by law to do it, but he specifically said he would.
Do you know him as a man of his word? I don't.
I think he'll do whatever makes sense for his goals in the circumstances. And those goals are often aligned with long term good for humanity, but with a strong dose of irreverence toward the hypocritical supposed ethics rules of his detractors.
>there is even a process for exempting people from various conflict requirements
Sure, have you requested a copy of the waiver? Most likely a SGE waiver under (208(b)(3)). No? Didn't think so. I doubt most journalists have either, since they hate him.
>it requires public publication of the reasoning
Public publication is not required. They are required to disclose upon request. You may be thinking of Individual Waivers, (208(b)(1)) where publication is required, unlike special government employees serving on advisory committees.
There are inquiries happening now into waste, fraud, and abuse.
It's not surprising that as poorly decided contract decisions are going to come under review, some may be overturned or cancelled.
There's no evidence saying Verizon has a larger footprint than Starlink. So if it turns out Starlink has much better coverage (surprise, surprise, it does) then that's a big red flag.
This isn't some deep or complicated point.
You should not accuse bad faith and I won't assume it of you. But there is a lot of derangement right now, because a lot of people are in bubbles and consuming lies and hate. The poster you replied to was perfectly reasonable, but you showed you have no clue that there's an effort underway to discover and cancel contracts that had been awarded with corruption. Not knowing that may not be bad faith on your part, but it's on you to stay informed before accusing others of bad faith.
One can speak facts and still be lying by omission, maybe that’s why you’re getting downvoted. And now you just got downvoted for complaining about being downvoted.
It's sort of a nonsense opinion because it ignores: All of those things they are talking about were from a competitive bidding process that presumably followed normal procurement rules.
If this change does/did, great, no problem. If it's not, problem.
We don't know yet, no reports either way.
It's hard to believe this person doesn't know this, and it's obvious this is the main concern people in this thread have.
Ignoring this and trying to transform it into "identity" politics is ... something.
Sorry, but no.
Even if it was an arguably reasonable opinion (It's not), claiming bad faith with those that argue with it is even worse.
That should not be a point of pride. If it was a reasonable opinion, and they didn't just try to paint everyone else as arguing in bad faith, I would agree. We all can differ. Cool.
But if this particular comment is what you think "good discourse" looks like, your standards are way too low.
It's a very easy trap to fall into to think of yourself as the truth-guarding underdog when you get downvoted on some social platform - remember to stay grounded.
You are ignoring the rather obvious problem here, that this contract was only awarded to a musk company after musk began wielding great influence over every federal agency, and only after the contract had already been awarded to someone else.
And it's pure nonsense to bring up purely irrelevant bugaboos like identity politics.
I try to assume good intent, but I can't see any way your comment could be an earnest argument.
>Start from that price, and then figure out what service you can offer with that money.
I say this not to attack you personally, but because I can't think of any other way to describe this idea (and I do realize that this does not contribute to a high quality discussion)...
Approaching something as vital and complicated as air traffic safety by saying, "I will only take the services I can get for some completely arbitrary amount of money," is utterly fucking stupid.
Dude, $800k won't even pay for a new piston single. That's like three ATC salaries.
I don't know where you get the idea that this is enough money. It's not, it's absurdly low, and "half an on-call" to stop airplanes from crashing when your Node.js app crashes sounds more like a joke than a serious proposal.
