Elon Musk Set to Win Big With Trump’s Trillion-Dollar Pentagon Budget
The White House unveiled a barebones budget blueprint last week that would pump more of the federal budget into the Pentagon while taking a chainsaw to teaching foreign aid wellness care and masses assistance programs While chosen analysts claim that the outline also known as a skinny budget represents a modest cut to Pentagon spending that fails to take into account the White House s call for billion in defense spending to be included in a reconciliation bill presently being debated in Congress With that added to the base budget proposal which keeps the Pentagon budget at roughly the same billion level as last year total defense spending would increase by percent to trillion Elon Musk the world s richest man and a personal adviser to the president claimed that he would cut costs at the Pentagon with his minions at the so-called Department of Authorities Efficiency Instead experts say that if approved Donald Trump s bloated Pentagon budget will almost certainly benefit Musk and his company SpaceX with huge new projects The first is a missile shield dubbed the Golden Dome which is reminiscent of the Reagan-era Star Wars missile-defense boondoggle Trump s budget plan also calls for an undisclosed flood of funding for U S space dominance to strengthen U S national measure No matter how you slice it the Pentagon budget is obscenely high at a time when the fundamentals of our diplomatic infrastructure are being decimated the social safety net is being shredded and healthcare and scientific research are under attack William Hartung a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft stated The Intercept Add to this that the funds for the Pentagon have as much to do with pork barrel politics and techno-fantasies like the Golden Dome as they do with a sound defense strategy and it becomes clear that current tools going to the Pentagon are not only excessive but are more likely to undermine than promote our assurance Current tools going to the Pentagon are not only excessive but are more likely to undermine than promote our guard Trump s Golden Dome appears to be little more than a warmed-over version of the s Strategic Defense Initiative a fanciful project that hoped to shoot down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs retitled with a name swiped from Israel s Iron Dome anti-missile defense Its ultimate price tag is estimated in the hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars Musk s SpaceX has emerged as a front-runner to win crucial parts of the Golden Dome project which aims to build a organization of satellites to detect and track missiles streaking toward the United States SpaceX not only manufactures rockets that can launch military payloads into space but also satellites that can provide surveillance and targeting apparatus The firm is already the top Pentagon supplier of launch services and low-Earth-orbit communications systems Unlike Israel s Iron Dome which defends that tiny country against short-range threats America s Golden Dome would need to cover a much larger area against a more challenging range of weapons including ICBMs and hypersonic missiles Even if blanketing the United States with these defenses were economically feasible the machinery isn t The Golden Dome is basically a fantasy declared Gabe Murphy a framework analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense a nonpartisan budget watchdog advocating for an end to wasteful spending Israel s system necessities to defend just square miles while the U S system requirements to cover million Physicists say that this device to defend against ICBMs and hypersonic missiles doesn t exist Funneling tens perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars into mechanism with only a faint hope of success is extremely wasteful SpaceX has proposed providing its Golden Dome system to the Defense Department through a subscription organization according to reporting by Reuters Pentagon bureaucrats and experts have expressed concerns about this rare model for a critical defense venture which runs the hazard of leading to cost overruns and a lack of oversight and control over the operation Building to satellites doesn t mean you can veritably defend the United States against ICBMs and hypersonic missiles With his subscription model plan Musk is looking to both retain control of these systems and keep taxpayer dollars flowing his way stated Murphy But just like a blue check mark doesn t make you famous building to satellites doesn t mean you can really defend the United States against ICBMs and hypersonic missiles A group of Democratic lawmakers has already called for a review by the Pentagon s acting inspector general of Musk s role in the bidding process for the missile defense shield Mr Musk in addition to his role at SpaceX is a Special Regime Employee SGE Senior Advisor to President Trump and a key official at the Department of Establishment Efficiency DOGE the lawmakers wrote Mr Musk s formal or informal participation in any process to award a ruling body contract raises serious conflict of interest concerns including the possibility that SpaceX is a top contender for the Golden Dome contract because of Mr Musk s position in the executive If the inspector general launches an inquiry and finds Musk provided an advantage to SpaceX in the bidding process the lawmakers requested the findings be referred to the Justice Department for a criminal research SpaceX broke into major defense contracting through the courts In the company sued the Air Force after it awarded a sole-source contract for rocket launches to a Boeing Lockheed Martin joint venture called United Launch Alliance arguing that opening the contract up to competition could save the regime hundreds of millions of dollars per launch SpaceX prevailed and now has according to countless observers a near-monopoly on the U S satellite launch arena Related DOGE s Pentagon Budget Cuts Don t Touch Elon Musk s SpaceX SpaceX s chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell explained the company has about billion in administration contracts mostly from NASA But SpaceX s deals with the Pentagon have ballooned totaling almost billion as it has provided an increasing number of services to the Defense Department NASA is slated for a budget cut under Trump s plan but SpaceX is still likely to win big Trump s budget blueprint takes aim at the old guard of the military industrial complex including the rivals SpaceX displaced to gain its foothold at the Pentagon Trump is calling for NASA to end funding for the Space Launch System a massive Boeing and Northrop Grumman rocket and Lockheed Martin s Orion astronaut capsule which was to be employed to take the U S back to the moon SpaceX in the past few days won an million contract to de-orbit the International Space Station when it is retired in Musk urged Trump to speed up its demise and focus on his own pet project posting on his own website X com Let s go to Mars To that end Trump s cancellation of key parts of NASA s lunar initiative allows for a Mars-focused agenda His budget blueprint also calls for billion in new spending to specifically focus on a mission to the red planet Related Elon Musk Is His Own Rogue Nation Colonizing Mars has long been one of Musk s leading obsessions Cutting the United States out of the equation and violating international law appears to be part of his plan The terms of utility agreement for SpaceX s Starlink internet system offers up a Wild West vision for that planet For Services provided on Mars or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based regime has authority or sovereignty over Martian sessions Accordingly Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles established in good faith at the time of Martian settlement SpaceX is already taking aim at Mars with its heavy-lift Starship rocket and Musk is publicly calling for direct rather than representative democracy on the planet The Martians will decide how they are ruled he wrote on X late last year But the Outer Space Treaty of under which the United Nations declared a set of principles for space unequivocally states that outer space is the province of all mankind and subject to international law This is an unelected billionaire who is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs for diplomacy and basic patronage for Americans in need Trump s indulgence of Musk s Martian fantasies with U S tax dollars Musk s billions in contracts with NASA and the Pentagon and the additional billions his company stands to reap from Trump s fantastical Golden Dome project all raise profound pay-to-play issues These new contracts and budget priorities are all coming to a man who spent close to million getting Trump and other Republicans elected This is an unelected billionaire who is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs for diplomacy and basic promotion for Americans in need Hartung advised The Intercept The conflict of interest is jaw-dropping and his power and how he is wielding it is obscene The post Elon Musk Set to Win Big With Trump s Trillion-Dollar Pentagon Budget appeared first on The Intercept
