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Elon is basically a defense contractor now (see Starshield). Chinese government is going to turn the screws.

justapassenger 4y ago
SpaceX was always a defense contractor. Their own payloads and military are bulk of the launches. I would be worried more about USA turning the screw. Elon is extremely close and exposed to their biggest adversary, China. I’m actually surprised he wasn’t forced out of spacex by the military by now.
- paganel 4y ago
  And replace him with who? The bloated NASA thing? The guys from Detroit who saw their lunch eaten several times during the last few decades by foreign car companies? (that is if you treat the car industry as a strategic one, as I think the US military does). By the looks of it there are still some cooler heads at the Pentagon.
  - meepmorp 4y ago
    I think OP was just talking about removing him from SpaceX, not ditching SpaceX entirely. The company would be fine without him, it's run by Gwynne Shotwell anyway.
    - paganel 4y ago
      > The company would be fine without him I don't think that to be true on the middle to long term, things would just settle into a nice local maximum for SpaceX/Tesla as companies but most of the real innovation would be gone for good. Just look at Apple, they're a nice $2 trillion company but they've got nothing Earth-shattering since Jobs has been gone. To put it another way, without Musk there would have been no Starlink, which is an Earth-shattering thing in its own way (satellite internet for the masses is Earth-shattering). Without Starlink being possible the West wouldn't have had the same military results on the war front against Russia as it now has. Move Musk aside and who will come with the next Starlink? Later edit: Speaking of the car industry and its strategic value, we all know at this point that Henry Ford was literally a Nazi sympathiser and a Hitler groupie. That didn't stop him from doing business with Stalin's USSR since early in 1929, when the US hadn't established diplomatic relations with the Soviets just yet. If it hadn't been for Ford and for the American vehicles Stalin and USSR would have found it next to impossible to defeat Hitler and the Nazis a decade later. Stalin himself praised Henry Ford in 1944, i.e. after Ford's direct contacts with the Nazis in the late 1930s. > Stalin wrote to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calling Henry Ford “one of the world’s greatest industrialists” and expressing the hope that “may God preserve him.” In other words, without the help of Nazi-loving Henry Ford most probably the Nazis wouldn't have been defeated. Like I said, hopefully there are still some cooler heads in the Pentagon who try to look at the middle to long term and try not to be influenced by the latest ideological scandals. [1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-signs-agreement-with-soviet-union https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-signs-agree...
      - meepmorp 4y ago
        I think you're blindly buying into the narrative of Musk as visionary genius, and that's not really a well supported by the facts.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    At this juncture the system needed a warm body to play the role of shrewd and daring entrepreneur. Alas warm bodies come with wards attached.

SpaceX was always a defense contractor. Their own payloads and military are bulk of the launches. I would be worried more about USA turning the screw. Elon is extremely close and exposed to their biggest adversary, China. I’m actually surprised he wasn’t forced out of spacex by the military by now.

paganel 4y ago
And replace him with who? The bloated NASA thing? The guys from Detroit who saw their lunch eaten several times during the last few decades by foreign car companies? (that is if you treat the car industry as a strategic one, as I think the US military does). By the looks of it there are still some cooler heads at the Pentagon.
- meepmorp 4y ago
  I think OP was just talking about removing him from SpaceX, not ditching SpaceX entirely. The company would be fine without him, it's run by Gwynne Shotwell anyway.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > The company would be fine without him I don't think that to be true on the middle to long term, things would just settle into a nice local maximum for SpaceX/Tesla as companies but most of the real innovation would be gone for good. Just look at Apple, they're a nice $2 trillion company but they've got nothing Earth-shattering since Jobs has been gone. To put it another way, without Musk there would have been no Starlink, which is an Earth-shattering thing in its own way (satellite internet for the masses is Earth-shattering). Without Starlink being possible the West wouldn't have had the same military results on the war front against Russia as it now has. Move Musk aside and who will come with the next Starlink? Later edit: Speaking of the car industry and its strategic value, we all know at this point that Henry Ford was literally a Nazi sympathiser and a Hitler groupie. That didn't stop him from doing business with Stalin's USSR since early in 1929, when the US hadn't established diplomatic relations with the Soviets just yet. If it hadn't been for Ford and for the American vehicles Stalin and USSR would have found it next to impossible to defeat Hitler and the Nazis a decade later. Stalin himself praised Henry Ford in 1944, i.e. after Ford's direct contacts with the Nazis in the late 1930s. > Stalin wrote to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calling Henry Ford “one of the world’s greatest industrialists” and expressing the hope that “may God preserve him.” In other words, without the help of Nazi-loving Henry Ford most probably the Nazis wouldn't have been defeated. Like I said, hopefully there are still some cooler heads in the Pentagon who try to look at the middle to long term and try not to be influenced by the latest ideological scandals. [1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-signs-agreement-with-soviet-union https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-signs-agree...
    - meepmorp 4y ago
      I think you're blindly buying into the narrative of Musk as visionary genius, and that's not really a well supported by the facts.
- college_physics 4y ago
  At this juncture the system needed a warm body to play the role of shrewd and daring entrepreneur. Alas warm bodies come with wards attached.