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Unhinged? It is possible, that Musk didn't expect the twitter deal to become as politicised, as it did. Maybe he just got afraid of getting into the center of p
by MichaelMoser123 4y ago
Unhinged? It is possible, that Musk didn't expect the twitter deal to become as politicised, as it did. Maybe he just got afraid of getting into the center of politics in the US. For example the state is a major customer, and they could just stop buying launch services from SpaceX for example, as the president might not agree with the politics of Mr Musk.
I mean look at Bezos, he got into a fight with Trump, and the pentagon preferred Azure to AWS, all of a sudden. Yeah, and a year later that deal got cancelled too, by the next administration [1]. I mean Musk has a lot of business with Uncle Sam, he really can't play his own game, in terms of politics.
I mean, i mean, they really have a lot of 'leverage' with Musk, to begin with. I would guess that Musk would be looking for a way out of the twitter deal, in order to protect his business. Also the economy is going into a recession, therefore his deals with the various governments are going to be much more important. Look, there is even talk of Musk building an e-tank with a German firm, Rheinmetall [2]
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/pentagon-terminates-controversial-10-billion-jedi-cloud-contract-with-microsoft/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/pentagon-terminates-controvers...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDe7OGpPodM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDe7OGpPodM
- inglor_cz 4y agoAfter this war, Musk is probably in no danger of losing federal contracts just because of his free speech politics. The Russians knocked out the entire Ukrainian SATCOM infrastructure at the start of the war, plus quite a few stations elsewhere in Europe; AFAIK none of them went online again. Electronic warfare at its finest. Once this happened, Starlink was used as a drop-in substitute and defeated all Russian attempts to knock it out too. The Ukrainians coordinate their artillery, drones etc. over Starlink and the Russians can ... gnash their teeth. This is an impressive capability and it gives the U.S. a huge advantage in any potential future military conflict with a near-peer power. Advantages like that aren't discarded just because of random culture war flare-ups.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agoInteresting perspective. Actually the US government payed for the service: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietl... https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/spacex-ukraine-elon-musk-starlink-government-b2055491.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/spacex-ukraine-elon-musk-...
- inglor_cz 4y agoThey did, which actually indicates that they find value in it already in its embryonal phase. (The necessary satellite constellation is far from complete right now.)