My father was involved in the development and testing of the Patriot missile system back in the late 70’s. I’m not sure how strict they were with his clearance, but even though he has a mechanics coverall with Patriot Mech US Army emblazoned on the back of it, he never really told us what he did when he went on TDY to White Sands, New Mexico every six months or so. As a middle GenXer, there are still remnants of Cold War “patriotism” left in the dark corners of my psyche and Musk’s bullshit behavior plucks those rusty strings on a regular basis. Just as a human being, the dude seems unhinged, but as one of THE major defense contractors for the USGOV…? It doesn’t sit well with me at all. Long before the Starlink refusal over Ukraine, I thought he was shady. He’s like a shitty carbon copy of Steve Jobs: the face and the money behind innovation and technology he would fail a written exam on.
Wanna be a billionaire playboy? Cool, go do that. But he needs to be supervised just as strictly as any other business owner with US national security contracts. Just my $0.02.
My father worked at Lockheed Missiles & Space, and his resume was classified until the mid 1990’s. I then learned that he worked on the software that controlled the targeting and trajectory calculations of Polaris missiles fired from submarines.
He also worked on programming the primitive CNC machines that cut the heat shield tiles for the Space Shuttle.
A lot of that reflexive cold war era stuff still is in my psyche. We may not have had active shooter drills, but (living in the burgeoning Silicon Valley) we did have air raid and nuclear attack drills — yeah, hiding under the desk wasn’t going to do bupkis with a 20 megaton H-bomb targeting the area.
Now I need to go take a shower the PTSD is so bad. :-)
Time to nationalize SpaceX or fine them so hard that Elon actually feels it. He’s not allowed to donate to political campaigns or use drugs or destroy the environment around his plant in south Texas or … or …
I would augment that thus: All future contracts will insist that Musk has no managerial, or fiscal ties to any company that gets contracts from the government.
That is, he will have to disassociate himself from the operation and ownership structure of SpaceX, and Tesla will be ineligible for tax subsidies for purchasers of their vehicles.
Idk. It honestly depends on who Kamala gets (or keeps) to head up certain divisions of DOJ (like Jonathan Kanter @ Antitrust), if she keeps Lina Khan @ FTC and if she puts people in at DOD that aren’t pussy ass bitches afraid that Elon is too powerful to fuck with. They need a whole of government Elon task force to extricate him.
Ya know, the one thing that nobody seems to mention in any of this is the fact that HAD THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT NOT PRIVATIZED NASA AFTER THE CHALLENGER BLEW UP, ELON WOULD NOT CONTROL ALL OUR SPACE SHIT!
If Harris wins and survives the inevitable coup attempt, the threat of yanking his clearances should be held over him to bring him back in line.
Also, ironically, if the New Axis makes any REALLY big moves, or Musk goes full-adversarial to the USG, that may provide the predicate for Harris using the DPA to nationalize his defense businesses. It'd be a dark ass path, but dark times lie ahead of us no matter what.
Because while cold warriors like Nichols may be outdated fossils, they aren't obsolete in the context of the Second Cold War.
My father was involved in the development and testing of the Patriot missile system back in the late 70’s. I’m not sure how strict they were with his clearance, but even though he has a mechanics coverall with Patriot Mech US Army emblazoned on the back of it, he never really told us what he did when he went on TDY to White Sands, New Mexico every six months or so. As a middle GenXer, there are still remnants of Cold War “patriotism” left in the dark corners of my psyche and Musk’s bullshit behavior plucks those rusty strings on a regular basis. Just as a human being, the dude seems unhinged, but as one of THE major defense contractors for the USGOV…? It doesn’t sit well with me at all. Long before the Starlink refusal over Ukraine, I thought he was shady. He’s like a shitty carbon copy of Steve Jobs: the face and the money behind innovation and technology he would fail a written exam on.
Wanna be a billionaire playboy? Cool, go do that. But he needs to be supervised just as strictly as any other business owner with US national security contracts. Just my $0.02.
C’mon man, that is worth WAY more than $0.02!
My father worked at Lockheed Missiles & Space, and his resume was classified until the mid 1990’s. I then learned that he worked on the software that controlled the targeting and trajectory calculations of Polaris missiles fired from submarines.
He also worked on programming the primitive CNC machines that cut the heat shield tiles for the Space Shuttle.
A lot of that reflexive cold war era stuff still is in my psyche. We may not have had active shooter drills, but (living in the burgeoning Silicon Valley) we did have air raid and nuclear attack drills — yeah, hiding under the desk wasn’t going to do bupkis with a 20 megaton H-bomb targeting the area.
Now I need to go take a shower the PTSD is so bad. :-)
My hope is that the Feds are secretly using him like the only toilet brush in the entire barracks of Fort Liberty.
Time to nationalize SpaceX or fine them so hard that Elon actually feels it. He’s not allowed to donate to political campaigns or use drugs or destroy the environment around his plant in south Texas or … or …
I would augment that thus: All future contracts will insist that Musk has no managerial, or fiscal ties to any company that gets contracts from the government.
That is, he will have to disassociate himself from the operation and ownership structure of SpaceX, and Tesla will be ineligible for tax subsidies for purchasers of their vehicles.
Yeah, I would also like a pony.
Idk. It honestly depends on who Kamala gets (or keeps) to head up certain divisions of DOJ (like Jonathan Kanter @ Antitrust), if she keeps Lina Khan @ FTC and if she puts people in at DOD that aren’t pussy ass bitches afraid that Elon is too powerful to fuck with. They need a whole of government Elon task force to extricate him.
Ya know, the one thing that nobody seems to mention in any of this is the fact that HAD THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT NOT PRIVATIZED NASA AFTER THE CHALLENGER BLEW UP, ELON WOULD NOT CONTROL ALL OUR SPACE SHIT!
If Harris wins and survives the inevitable coup attempt, the threat of yanking his clearances should be held over him to bring him back in line.
Also, ironically, if the New Axis makes any REALLY big moves, or Musk goes full-adversarial to the USG, that may provide the predicate for Harris using the DPA to nationalize his defense businesses. It'd be a dark ass path, but dark times lie ahead of us no matter what.
Because while cold warriors like Nichols may be outdated fossils, they aren't obsolete in the context of the Second Cold War.