Cleared for Manipulation: Musk’s Bid to Seize FAA Control
A calculated effort to take over air traffic communications
For years, Elon Musk has used his considerable fortune and political influence to create innovative companies and edge out competition. In the run up to the 2024 election, he contributed $250,000 to Donald Trump’s campaign which bought a presence and position in the Trump administration. It gave the richest man in the world a measure of access and control never before seen by an unelected person in U.S. government. Nowhere is his power more evident than in Musk’s efforts to hand control of a critical piece of America’s aviation infrastructure to his communication company, SpaceX Starlink.
Elon Musk began a campaign to discredit the FAA and fire its administrator, Michael Whitaker, more than a year before he used his DOGE chainsaw on government agencies. Livid about fines of $633,009 for Space X safety and environmental violations, Musk warned on his social media platform, X on September 17, 2024 that Space X would sue the FAA for regulatory overreach. One week later, Whitaker testified to Congress about the violations, and Musk posted on X, “He needs to resign.”
What do you know! Whitaker stepped down when Trump took office in January, even though the position normally overlaps presidential terms to maintain continuity. Having solved the problem of FAA fines, Musk turned his attention to getting rid of other investigations - 11 government agencies, looking into 65 actual and potential illegal activities across all of Musk’s companies. Using unlimited DOGE power and influence over Trump, Musk has “disappeared” the investigations as easily as ICE “disappears” people.
While Musk was taking our government systems apart in February, he was also strategizing a way to get around the FAA’s $2Billion air traffic communication contract, awarded to Verizon in 2023. Although there was no evidence that the contract was scuttled (and still isn’t), Musk regularly complained about the national air traffic control systems and boasted of Starlink superiority throughout the month of February.
With only an acting director at the FAA, and a woefully unqualified MTV Real World star as Secretary of Transportation, it isn’t surprising that Musk has already intruded on the Verizon contract. It has been reported that FAA approved 4000 Starlink control terminals and equipment was installed in at least three FAA facilities in February. It looks like a trial run for a complete takeover of the Verizon contract.
Trump and Musk regularly demonstrate their disdain for ethics, so I expect it is only WHEN, not IF we will learn that Verizon is completely out and Starlink is all in.