Elon Musk is now a government contractor. His company SpaceX will build out a satellite service program for the Pentagon called Starshield.
This means that the military won’t use Starlink, the satellite Internet service that he had previous leant out to the Ukrainian military. Instead, they’ll lease their own dedicated satellite service from the company.
“Starlink needs to be a civilian network, not a participant to combat. This is the right order of things,” Musk said.
This deal is worth up to $70 million for SpaceX and could be worth close to $1 billion for contracts extending into 2028. So before you get too cozy with Musk as the archetype of freedom, remember that he now makes a lot of money from the Pentagon.
