Government to Musk: “Nice business you got here, shame if something happened to it.”
The press and the feds negotiate with Elon Musk
Over the past week a series of events relating to the Ukraine War, Elon Musk, and Starlink illustrated starkly the growing corrupt, aggressive, and unrestrained power of our federal government and the administration state and press that supports it.
Our story begins in early October when Elon Musk put forth his own proposed solution to the Ukraine War, suggesting that to end the war the Ukraine should cede the Crimea to Russia and forgo its attempts to join NATO, making itself a neutral power instead.
Not surprisingly, Ukrainian officials responded to this somewhat naive though sincere proposal with great hostility. So did the press, the Biden administration, and many in social media.
Then, on October 14, 2022 Elon Musk said that his company Starlink cannot continue indefinitely providing service to the Ukraine, without some reimbursement. At the beginning of the war Musk had made Starlink available for no charge, and it has been an important factor to the Ukrainians in their recent military successes.
The billionaire who runs Tesla said Starlink says he spends nearly $20 million a month for maintaining satellite services in Ukraine. He recently said that SpaceX had spent about $80 million to enable and support Starlink there.
“SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Musk had asked the U.S. government to pick up future costs. Considering the billions the Biden administration is pouring into the Ukraine, such a request appeared more than reasonable.
Instead, it was revealed over the weekend that the federal government was investigating Musk concerning his effort to buy Twitter. Intriguingly, though this story was first made public in a filing in the courts on October 6th, no press stories were written about it until immediately after Musk made his Starlink funding request public. Moreover:
The filing does not specify which arm of the federal government is conducting the investigation, what the probe is focused on or whether it’s a civil or a criminal probe, but the Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledged in May that it was investigating whether he properly disclosed a 9% stake he bought in the company, which became public in early April.
The vagueness of the filing, combined with the known SEC investigation revealed in May, I think explains why no news outlet covered it when it was first filed in early October. There wasn’t any real story to cover. Yet, less than 24 hours after Musk made his request for help, the press suddenly decides this filing is a news story.
Let me translate: Musk to the government: “I need help to save my business.” The press (speaking for the government): “Nice business you got here. Sure would be a shame is something happened to it.”
The very next day Musk threw in the towel, saying in a tweet, “The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
Meanwhile, as far as I can find, no one in the press or social media once suggested that the Ukraine start paying the bill. That country could certainly put aside $20 million a month out of the more than $50 billion the U.S. government has sent it. The Biden administration could certainly pressure the Ukraine to do this.
Nope. Rather than provide some assistance to an American company that has so generously helped one of our allies, the Biden administration, the press, and the administrative state took out its knives and threatened Musk with them, making it very clear that it has every intention of destroying him, should he dare do anything it doesn’t like.
Though he might think so, Musk’s decision to back down concerning Starlink and the Ukraine provides him only a little bit of protection. Biden, the Democrats, and the administration state want a large cut of his business, and will not stop their threats until he turns it over to them. The attacks, the investigations, and the bureaucratic stonewalling against him will not cease, but only increase the more Musk shows his independence and financial success.
And as long as the public continues to allow that government the power it has, its mobster tactics will only grow more vicious and blatant.
Just ask those pro-life activists whose homes were raided by armed FBI agents.
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Trump should announce he will provide at least partial compensation to SpaceX, while avoiding becoming involved in what he should call “Biden’s War” – there is no doubt Putin would not have tried this stunt had Trump remained as President. He should simply position such a contribution as a help to a successful and responsible American company.
I have to be honest… I’ve been following this story with interest.. expecting a private company to donate charity at the end of a gun kinda removes the charitable aspect from the whole transaction.
Musk is entirely reasonable to ask for a bung towards keeping this vital communication channel open, so far at his own cost to date. Especially given the donations handed out elsewhere. It all smells a bit fishy to even pinko commie me!
Are the arms companies expected to provide millions in aid for free? Highly bloody unlikely, but they have all their fingers in the pockets of the elites, and vice versa.
I genuinely don’t think this is a left Vs right problem, Musk is making waves that many of your entrenched politicians on both side are scared of, and who will, and indeed are, trying their best to derail anything that rocks the status quo.
Ask said politicians if they are willing to give up their salary for a few months to help out over their…
( And yes, our politicians over here in Europe are just as corrupt, it’s just hidden better)
Lee S.
You hit the nail on the head.
“Are the arms companies expected to provide millions in aid for free? Highly bloody unlikely, but they have all their fingers in the pockets of the elites, and vice versa.”
Elon learned that the Russians can shut down Starlink over Ukraine. Why get beat up by the Biden Crime Family when the Ukies/Deep State won’t be using Starlink much longer. Lets hope help is on the way for all of us in November.
This could all be easily settled if the Ukraine just pays his bill out of the billions the US is handing them in cash. Whats a million or so less out of a billion?
Musk made a simple and quick proposal that could have stopped this present problem. A personal opinion. The Ukraine came back with a jingoistic response, thus not sounding a single bit better than Russia. Our politician and media response to Musk is fully expected and even less important than his.
Our politicians wanting to support the Ukraine is not so much for the Ukraine but against Russia. Russia should hold to the agreement they made with the Ukraine when they split up years ago instead of invading thinking no one would stop them.
Proof that “No good deed goes unpinished”
It was never a good deed, Col; getting involved in Ukraine in the least – on either side – was stupid.
Elon goofed and is now learning how hard he goofed.
Silly Musk, he still has no idea how things work in D.C.
It isn’t whether he’s paying for Ukraine’s Starlink, the problem is Musk wants the Feds to pick up some of the cost but he hasn’t paid tribute to “the big man”.
Remember when Ukraine wanted aid from the Obama admin they had to stuff hundreds of thousands into the Biden’s pockets?
Isn’t Hunter selling “art works” for $500,000/ea? Musk should buy ten and things will go smoothly.
Kind’a late for Trumpists to start wishing that they’d gotten off their duffs as far back as 2015, walked their neighborhood’s precincts regularly in order to chat up their neighbors with an elevator pitch for supporting Trump, and stood up in public from time to time to have Trump’s back. The corollary of Barack Obama’s “elections have consequences” remark is that sitting on one’s hands during elections also has consequences.
As for Musk and Starling specifically, it’s one thing to be Steve Jobs offering Macintosh computers to schools on the drug dealer’s “first one’s free” pitch; it’s something else entirely to pad one’s business that way by exploiting a national strategic DOD/State Dept. matter.
I can see the Ukrainians getting emotional about public suggestions that they give up big hunks of their territory to the Russians, especially from outsiders no matter how helpful they may have been.
But this is not about the money – it’s about who controls the channels of communications within the US. It’s about Twitter. I don’t see SEC investigating Twitter for inflating their customer base with bots in their prior 10Ks and other official filings.
Musk is getting some brush back. I hope he’ll hang tough on the important stuff – which the Starlink fees are not.
And as long as the public continues to allow that government the power it has, its mobster tactics will only grow more vicious and blatant.
QFT
Elon’s mistake was offering it for free as a virtue signal.. Now he’s stucco. But I agree with what others have said, he needs to pay tribute to the big guy, then he might get paid for his services.
100 Starlink set ups with a monthly fee of 200 US would cost 360,000 for the last 18 months.
Paying off any DC politicians would actually cost him more money than he could possibly ever make.
Even if he charged 1000 per month for each unit he would not make enough to make up for any noticeable payoffs.
He needs to pay for a hundred monitors and programmers to keep the Russians out of the Ukrainian systems.
Someones government should foot the bill for this special service.
So it seems Elon is having his “Reardon Metal Moment”.
I wonder how he will react to future events now that he knows who really calls the shots on world affairs.
Musk, like Trump, strikes many as extremely arrogant. I have been a business professor for 50 years, the last 20 in Europe.. I have seen innumerable responses to such arrogance, often not communicated, which “take such people down a peg”. I recommend Teddy Roosevelt’s “walk softly and carry a big stick”..
The answer is simple. Just shutting off the free Starlink will likely bring about exactly the early end to the war Musk proposed. Pay attention to the news. Russia is coming for Alaska next, and if anywhere Starlink will be needed, it’ll be there. There are even a few historic Russians still living there to be used as pretext.
Shutting off the service would get the Ukraine to pay inside a few days. No questions asked no excuses given.
Related:
AOC / TWITTER: CAN YOU APPRECIATE THE IRONY? (Please copy and share)
“Progressive” Democrat Socialist AOC has an issue with Capitalist Elon Musk and his decision to charge $8.00 per month if you want to maintain your Blue identity verification check mark on Twitter. (God she is sooo cute :)
https://apis.mail.aol.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-_95qz8vtNQnj2guvJpSi615JXjYizy9bcZuM2MCqJDk8zBIwKj0CmLH_qmCDE5NsTJVJXmOu9vG5vVhaOWavzw/messages/@.id==APyH9MMrlYhKY2PIFQYx8LIBDvw/content/parts/@.id==3/thumbnail?appid=AolMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=3
Elon Musk mocks AOC’s take on Twitter subscription fee (nypost.com)
AOC apparently has a problem with Musk and his restructuring decision regarding his newly purchased social media platform formerly exclusively controlled by radical extremist Silicon Valley “Progressive”, Left leaning internal Twitter free speech censors.
Did AOC Tweet her complaint to Musk about his newly purchased social media platform while driving her brand new *WHITE* Telsa model 3 long range which sells for around $60K? Can you appreciate the Irony?
Musk replies: “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8.”
Actual free speech is not free.
(It is funny, in 2019 AOC allegedly had 5 million Twitter followers. And today? AOC apparently now only has 765 thousand followers. Can you say fraudulent Twitter BOTS trying to make people like “Progressive” radical AOC more than they actually are? AND / OR, people are now able to see through the AOC phenomenon and have canceled HER?)
https://apis.mail.aol.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-_95qz8vtNQnj2guvJpSi615JXjYizy9bcZuM2MCqJDk8zBIwKj0CmLH_qmCDE5NsTJVJXmOu9vG5vVhaOWavzw/messages/@.id==APyH9MMrlYhKY2PIFQYx8LIBDvw/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=AolMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2