Musk could use the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ for self-enrichment

So the following paragraphs show just what a person Musk is. His product can not meet the standards so he screams the program that won’t give him money is a waste of taxpayer’s money. Just like tRump, rather than fix the problem he instead attacks the standards demanding they be lowered so his product can qualify. Hugs

After years of negotiation, lawsuits and politicking, the FCC and the NTIA settled on a modern definition for broadband service: 100 megabits per second (Mbps) download speeds, 20Mbps upload speeds, with less than 100 milliseconds of latency.

Right now, Starlink doesn’t meet that standard. It has been getting slightly slower over time even as more people sign up for service, according to internet performance testing service Ookla’s speed tests. In 2022, the FCC rescinded a $900m grant from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to Starlink to connect rural communities to the internet, citing its failure to meet the speed and latency standards and declining network performance.

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/30/elon-musk-government-efficiency-self-enrichment

He’s said $42.45bn spent by the US for rural internet isn’t efficient. His Starlink company stands to benefit if he reduces that investment

Elon Musk attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on 14 November 2024. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Elon Musk, named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, is poised to undermine funding for rural broadband services to benefit his satellite internet services company, Starlink.

Musk has long been a critic of the Biden administration’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (Bead) Program, which provides $42.45bn through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill to expand high-speed internet access in rural communities. Starlink, the satellite internet services subsidiary of SpaceX, has largely been shut out of this funding after government agencies deemed it too slow to qualify.

But with Trump’s election, and the deference Trump appears poised to give to Musk’s desired reforms, the world’s richest man could re-prioritize how the federal government provides high-speed internet to rural America, creating an immense conflict of interest. If Musk recommends cuts to government spending on rural fiber optic broadband – as he has repeatedly suggested – it directly increases the value of Starlink’s satellite internet services.

“We have never had a situation where the leading shareholder of a communications company has both a position – both in terms of influencing the president, but also having an assignment to drive efficiency in government – with so many government contracts,” said Blair Levin, a telecommunications industry analyst with New Street Research and the Brookings Institution. “That is an extraordinary situation. That is unprecedented.”

Levin suggested that Trump could order Bead funding to be withheld indefinitely as soon as he takes office, even though Congress has authorized the funding.

Doing so would violate the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, a law Trump fell afoul of in his first term that ultimately resulted in one impeachment. But Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-lead the commission to reduce the size of the federal government, argued in a Wall Street Journal editorial last week that Trump should pursue impoundment when he deems it necessary.

“Mr Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current supreme court would likely side with him on this question,” they wrote.

Any move like this would tie the program in legal knots as lawsuits abound, Levin said. But the delay is the point. “While states and others could file legal actions to stop such a pause, we think most courts would be reluctant to enjoin or otherwise stop the administration from reconsidering some elements of the program. Even actions of dubious legality can benefit Starlink through delay or through litigation.”

Musk had set his sights on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) long before Trump’s victory. The NTIA administers federal grant funding for the Bead program.

Without a government subsidy, rolling fiber optic lines down country roads to serve a handful of houses at a time is usually too cost-prohibitive for an internet service provider. But to companies like AT&T or Verizon, a government subsidy to a local internet service provider also looks like the government funding the competition.

Big telecom companies and the FCC argued long and loud about what parts of the country had access to high-speed service, and thus didn’t need government money. But the definition of “high speed” used by industry and the government was often slow by many standards.

After years of negotiation, lawsuits and politicking, the FCC and the NTIA settled on a modern definition for broadband service: 100 megabits per second (Mbps) download speeds, 20Mbps upload speeds, with less than 100 milliseconds of latency.

Right now, Starlink doesn’t meet that standard. It has been getting slightly slower over time even as more people sign up for service, according to internet performance testing service Ookla’s speed tests. In 2022, the FCC rescinded a $900m grant from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to Starlink to connect rural communities to the internet, citing its failure to meet the speed and latency standards and declining network performance.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is launched, carrying 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in May 2024. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

Musk erupted on an X post.

“Starlink is the only company actually solving rural broadband at scale! They should arguably dissolve the program and return funds to taxpayers, but definitely not send it those who aren’t getting the job done,” Musk wrote. ”What actually happened is that the companies that lobbied for this massive earmark (not us) thought they would win, but instead were outperformed by Starlink, so now they’re changing the rules to prevent SpaceX from competing.”

In June, Musk described the Bead program, which began rolling out grants to states this year, as “an outrageous waste of taxpayer money and is utterly failing to serve people in need”.

A month later, Musk endorsed Trump and began a $100m spending campaign in support of his candidacy.

After Musk started to gain Trump’s ear – and particularly after Musk’s endorsement and Starlink’s deployment of satellite terminals to areas hit by Hurricane Helene, which Trump praised regularly on the campaign trail – Trump’s language about rural broadband began to shift in Musk’s direction.

Trump described Starlink as “better than the wires”, when talking with Joe Rogan in the much-watched podcast interview. “We’re spending a trillion dollars to get cables all over the country, right, up to upstate areas where you have like two farms … They haven’t hooked up one person.”

Over the last year, the FCC commissioner – and Trump’s newly named FCC chair – Brendan Carr has also echoed Musk’s position, arguing that the public might be better off by subsidizing the cost of Starlink terminals instead of fiber optic broadband.

After Trump’s election, Carr said the FCC is unlikely to revisit its rescission of Starlink’s grant, citing procedural hurdles. But Carr, who authored the FCC chapter of Project 2025, has suggested that as much as a third of Bead funding could go to satellite internet providers.

7 thoughts on “Musk could use the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ for self-enrichment”

we’re about to find out just what it is like to live in a ‘kakistrophic kleptocracy‘, a government by incompetent thieves.

LikeLiked by 2 people

ali redford says:

December 4, 2024 at 5:34 pm

I was just going to say-the larceny against the US public begins.

We have fiber. We used to have high speed internet and it was great. Fiber internet is wonderful.

sigh

LikeLiked by 1 person

Reply
1. brucedesertrat says:
  
  December 4, 2024 at 6:25 pm
  
  We would love to have fiber as a choice, but I cannot get it in my neighborhood. Fortunately Cox’s internet here is pretty reliable.
  
  LikeLiked by 2 people
  
  Reply
2. Scotties Playtime says:
  
  December 5, 2024 at 2:06 pm
  
  Hi Ali. Our internet choices are limited to either phone line limited speeds or cable speeds at different tiers that get prohibitively expensive. We do not have the choice of fiber. What angers me is while the US stumbles along with slow speeds of internet 1.0 Europe and other governments have long had internet 2.0 and even more. They have higher speeds at a much lower price. I was stunned at the price Barry pays for his internet with extreme high speeds compared with what I pay. His is a less than half of mine. And I pay $126.00 for roughly 300 Mbps. Sometimes my speeds are over that but often much less. Florida is an expensive state to live in. Hugs
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
  
  Reply
  1. ali redford says:
    
    December 5, 2024 at 3:35 pm
    
    FL is expensive, it has been ever so. I remember my great aunt and uncle complaining. Except for when relatives from WI came to visit in January! But that was years ago. It still was expensive.
    I can’t believe someone hasn’t brought fiber to FL, though. That’s just amazing to me, that even a town in South Central KS with fewer than 8,000 people has 3 fiber options, but other places do not.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    
    Reply
    1. Scotties Playtime says:
      
      December 6, 2024 at 4:44 am
      
      Here in the US and the kingdom of DeathSantis, corporate profit is king. It doesn’t hurt that many pass some of those profits to him via campaign donations. Hugs
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
      
      Reply
Scotties Playtime says:

December 5, 2024 at 1:59 pm

Hi Bruce. I fear you are correct. tRump is president elect and he is still finding things to hawk, grifting for a few thousand dollars. But he is a billionaire … right? But think of the bribes that could be paid by the wealthy and foreign governments to make tRump far more favorable to them. Many governments bought large numbers of rooms at tRump hotels and in tRump Tower along with joining his clubs at exorbitant prices. Oh for the days of Presidents having dignity and being of such good character to be held up to children as a role model. Hugs

LikeLiked by 1 person

Reply

brucedesertrat says:

December 4, 2024 at 4:22 pm

we’re about to find out just what it is like to live in a ‘kakistrophic kleptocracy‘, a government by incompetent thieves.

LikeLiked by 2 people

1. ali redford says:
  
  December 4, 2024 at 5:34 pm
  
  I was just going to say-the larceny against the US public begins.
  
  We have fiber. We used to have high speed internet and it was great. Fiber internet is wonderful.
  
  sigh
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
  
  1. brucedesertrat says:
    
    December 4, 2024 at 6:25 pm
    
    We would love to have fiber as a choice, but I cannot get it in my neighborhood. Fortunately Cox’s internet here is pretty reliable.
    
    LikeLiked by 2 people
    
  2. Scotties Playtime says:
    
    December 5, 2024 at 2:06 pm
    
    Hi Ali. Our internet choices are limited to either phone line limited speeds or cable speeds at different tiers that get prohibitively expensive. We do not have the choice of fiber. What angers me is while the US stumbles along with slow speeds of internet 1.0 Europe and other governments have long had internet 2.0 and even more. They have higher speeds at a much lower price. I was stunned at the price Barry pays for his internet with extreme high speeds compared with what I pay. His is a less than half of mine. And I pay $126.00 for roughly 300 Mbps. Sometimes my speeds are over that but often much less. Florida is an expensive state to live in. Hugs
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    
    1. ali redford says:
      
      December 5, 2024 at 3:35 pm
      
      FL is expensive, it has been ever so. I remember my great aunt and uncle complaining. Except for when relatives from WI came to visit in January! But that was years ago. It still was expensive.
      I can’t believe someone hasn’t brought fiber to FL, though. That’s just amazing to me, that even a town in South Central KS with fewer than 8,000 people has 3 fiber options, but other places do not.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
      
      1. Scotties Playtime says:
        
        December 6, 2024 at 4:44 am
        
        Here in the US and the kingdom of DeathSantis, corporate profit is king. It doesn’t hurt that many pass some of those profits to him via campaign donations. Hugs
        
        LikeLiked by 1 person
        
2. Scotties Playtime says:
  
  December 5, 2024 at 1:59 pm
  
  Hi Bruce. I fear you are correct. tRump is president elect and he is still finding things to hawk, grifting for a few thousand dollars. But he is a billionaire … right? But think of the bribes that could be paid by the wealthy and foreign governments to make tRump far more favorable to them. Many governments bought large numbers of rooms at tRump hotels and in tRump Tower along with joining his clubs at exorbitant prices. Oh for the days of Presidents having dignity and being of such good character to be held up to children as a role model. Hugs
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person