This is a two day old article. But with so much else going on I hadn’t seen it. If you haven’t really must read it. It’s one of growing number of examples that the US government is at present essentially being held hostage by the clique surrounding Elon Musk.
Donald Trump got really jazzed up about Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Based on that he decided that the US should build one as well. But the US is quite a bit larger than Israel. And because of that nothing like that is really feasible at all. So the plan quickly evolved into a new version of Reagan’s SDI. All of this was contained in a late January executive order in which Trump committed the country (purportedly) to building it. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea, both destabilizing but also unfeasible. But let’s set that aside for the moment.
It now emerges that Musk’s SpaceX, Thiel’s Palantir and Palmer Luckey’s Ardruil have combined forces to build what Trump is calling ‘Golden Dome’. Needless to say, since Musk basically controls federal contracting he’s essentially giving the contract to himself. Through the article there are gently phrased characterizations of the situation like this (emphasis added).
