That's it. That's all. He's rich enough to do literally anything he wants. He could use the FBI as his own personal dead hooker disposal company if he wants. Welcome to America.
Yes, plus, he owns contracts with the government that likely contain classified information. It is just much easier to have him under a contract that allows them to just spy on him, in this situation.
Security clearances have dependent requirements. His admitted and open drug use should have been the first thing to get his clearance revoked but as others have stated: in America you are only liable for the crimes you cannot afford to commit; as long as you have the money for it you can do anything here.
I have crossed paths with a couple celebrities that I was surprised had top secret clearances at the (based on open drug use). That part doesn’t really surprise me. His propensity for blackmail is what I find troubling. He may not be a financial risk but he’s certainly a risk due to his desire for control and/or power.
I suspect not. Even if they still work with SpaceX, the contracts could be handled in a way that doesn't involve him. He could still manage the overall direction of the company but have others manage projects that require a clearance. I don't know if this has ever been done before or if it would ever be done, but it is theoretically possible.
Alternatively, they could make a requirement that either Musk steps down, or is removed, from his position at SpaceX or they stop getting contracts. This would almost certainly work because the company doesn't survive without these contracts most likely, or at least makes far less money. The board cares more about money than they do about him probably.
I've said for a long time now that the U.S. government needs to stop relying on SpaceX and I've got a ton of pushback. "He's not in charge of the company! He just owns it!" Yeah, well I am guessing he wasn't talking to Putin about electric cars or Twitter.
Actually, Musk is not running the day to day operations at spacex, so removing spacex is not really a big need. He was driven out successfully from there a few years ago. But he's still wrecking havoc at tesla.
I mean, he absolutely was talking to Putin about Xitter as well, I'm guessing! This "champion of free speech" has pretty much silenced any opinions about Trump and his companies that he doesn't like. Nice little preview of the world we're careening toward where billionaires get all the money, all the power, and they can even direct the speech of media outlets...
Nice little preview of the world we're careening toward where billionaires get all the money, all the power, and they can even direct the speech of media outlets...
It's already like that. It'll just get a lot worse in the U.S. if Trump wins. There are plenty of countries where this is the norm already unfortunately.
They only are the best rockets in the world because the U.S. government has been giving them piles of money to develop them.
That should not have happened in the first place, but I would like to at least see the government seize their patents since they were paid for by our taxes.
The US should honestly just nationalize SpaceX and merge it into NASA. Add its operating costs into NASA's budget, cut some redundancies, and I'm sure we'd see a lot of progress happen pretty quickly.
I'd rather see it run like the USPS. Let it be a quasi-independent company owned by the government. Even though Congress fucks with the USPS, they don't fuck with it like they do NASA.
Nationalizing SpaceX would probably be financially disasteous (seeing as how Musk has to keep pulling money from his businesses to fund twitter, and to buy out Gwynne Shotwell, who was approached by Boeing to be their new CEO in late 2022)
Most people assume Musk's businesses are all on incredibly shaky ground financially and are propped up entirely though hype and speculative credit.
Now imagine the Roman empire with the most endgame capitalism for-profit motive on every strata of society and they also have nukes. If/when America falls, it would be reckless to think they'll fall alone. I think it may actually look similar to how Russia tried to take Ukraine because their country was falling off a cliff economically, but like if Russia has military bases in the vast majority of countries on earth.