The primary 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency have confirmed universally horrible— until you’re the world’s cringiest billionaire. Whereas Elon Musk and his rabid pack of misplaced boys on the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity have been busy making the nation worse for everybody, the primary 100 days have given him stratospheric returns on the roughly $260 million he spent to purchase a president.
Starlink Broadband: Some chunk of $42 billion
The previous Biden administration devoted $42 billion in Broadband Fairness Entry and Deployment grants to deliver high-speed web to rural, underserved areas. This can be a yearslong challenge, and it’s been centered round fiber-optic web, which is cheaper in the long term and quicker than Musk’s satellite tv for pc web service, Starlink. Additionally, like all Musk corporations, Starlink overpromises and underdelivers, which is partly why the corporate didn’t obtain a $885 million grant from the Rural Digital Alternative Fund in 2023, when the Federal Communications Fee decided that Starlink “failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.”
Demonstrators protest in opposition to Elon Musk outdoors a Tesla dealership on April 12 in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri.
After all, merely having a worse, dearer product ought to be no bar to Musk making a living, so the federal government is now rewriting the BEAD guidelines to get rid of the “extreme tech bias in favor of fiber,” as Trump’s decide to supervise BEAD put it. It’s unclear how a lot of that $42 billion Starlink might see, however the firm already receives billions from BEAD. And in relation to cash, an excessive amount of isn’t sufficient.
Starlink for the FAA: $2.4 billion
Not content material to power Starlink on rural areas alone, Musk seems to be on the verge of forcing Starlink on the Federal Aviation Administration, once more together with your tax {dollars}. The federal government had awarded $2.4 billion to Verizon to improve a communications platform, however now it seems to be like that could be diverted to Starlink as an alternative. Don’t ask how the federal government can shuffle billions from one firm to a different like this. It could’t, however it looks like it’s going to.
Golden Dome: Unknown billions
Apparently, we’re constructing a missile protection defend, Golden Dome, as a result of by some means we’re caught within the Nineteen Eighties and should preserve making an attempt to invent former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Protection Initiative, aka Star Wars. The truth that the expertise principally nonetheless doesn’t exist and, if it could possibly be willed into being, would run anyplace from a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} to $2.5 trillion.
Unsurprisingly, SpaceX is within the operating for this, and Musk has put collectively a real nightmare staff of corporations owned by conservative weirdos, becoming a member of with Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril to jockey for this new monumental pile of defense-contractor cash. SpaceX’s proposal is that it will personal the expertise and lease it again to the federal government through subscription. Sure, similar to a vastly dearer Adobe Photoshop subscription.
NASA telescope launch providers: $100 million
This one’s somewhat deal with, kind of an amuse-bouche, so small as to nearly not be value mentioning. NASA has given SpaceX $100 million to supply launch providers for a large telescope that may observe near-Earth objects. To be truthful, that is extra in SpaceX’s wheelhouse—and but, with Musk within the authorities, it’s nonetheless a battle of curiosity.
Launch supplier for the army: Virtually $6 billion
No, this isn’t a double entry. This can be a totally different launch supplier contract, and now SpaceX would be the high launch supplier to the U.S. army, getting near $6 billion of your cash to do it. The difficulty isn’t whether or not SpaceX is an acceptable alternative for this. As with the NASA providers, SpaceX has a profitable document offering this kind of factor. But additionally, as with the NASA providers, it’s an unimaginable battle of curiosity that nobody is meant to say.
An individual holds an indication throughout a protest in opposition to Elon Musk close to a Tesla automobile dealership on March 8 in Decatur, Georgia.
Eliminating pesky investigations: $2.37 billion
Typically it’s not simply the cash you make. There’s additionally the bills you keep away from. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, put collectively a memorandum making an attempt to estimate simply how a lot cash Musk will save from authorities inquiries into his corporations merely disappearing.
Blumenthal discovered that Musk and his corporations face “at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies.” Blumenthal’s estimate was primarily based on solely 40 of these, as his workers wasn’t in a position to present estimates for the opposite 25. So $2.37 billion might be on the low finish. Musk’s affect over the Trump administration’s regulatory efforts—or lack thereof—doubtless signifies that investigations into Tesla’s shoddy self-driving expertise, for instance, will probably be memory-holed shortly, by no means to hassle Musk’s pocketbook once more.
Free Tesla promoting: In all probability not as invaluable as Musk hoped
Confronted with plummeting Tesla inventory costs, Musk didn’t should do something that normie CEOs must do, like minimize prices, cut back stock, or rethink advertising and marketing. No, he simply acquired the president to do a cheesy business in entrance of the White Home, which even included Trump pretending to purchase a Tesla. These efforts don’t seem to have moved the needle, since Tesla continues to flounder. Who knew that trashing the federal government and being a part of constructing an autocratic state wouldn’t lead to extra automobile gross sales?
Authorities knowledge: Priceless
All of those billions pale compared to what permitting DOGE to infiltrate authorities knowledge programs does: It provides Musk entry to knowledge that only a few others have. So it’s not simply that DOGE helps mix authorities databases to show the entire of the nation right into a surveillance state that tortures immigrants. A Nationwide Labor Relations Board whistleblower informed Congress that after DOGE acquired entry to delicate labor knowledge, that knowledge seems to have, effectively, been despatched outdoors the company. There are additionally studies that DOGE tried to show off all monitoring instruments and delete any data of accessing the system.
Earlier than authorities knowledge privateness collapsed beneath the DOGE onslaught, it will have been inconceivable to suppose {that a} non-public actor might get their mitts on Individuals’ most necessary, most private knowledge. Now it appears inconceivable to suppose Musk doesn’t have already got it.
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