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These are solely the most recent examples of why the federal authorities has no viable approach to break up with Mr. Musk, no less than so long as the US decides it’s going to proceed area exploration and deter its largest superpower rivals. It might denounce him and declare that each one People ought to reject his views. But it surely wants him, or no less than his rockets and his satellites, greater than ever.
And the White Home and Pentagon each know that.
Not often has the U.S. authorities so relied on the know-how offered by a single, if petulant, technologist with views that it has so publicly declared repugnant. And but, by the account of administration officers, they haven’t any selection — and won’t for some time. As a result of there are, proper now, few viable alternate options.
It’s an uncommon predicament. If a prime government of one of many conventional publicly held protection contractors — Raytheon or Boeing or Lockheed Martin — had embraced an antisemitic conspiracy concept the best way Mr. Musk did, there can be strain from shareholders and prospects alike for a resignation. In reality, advertisers like IBM and Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery have been saying in current days that they’ll pause doing enterprise on X, previously generally known as Twitter. Mr. Musk, quite than apologize, has threatened lawsuits.
However SpaceX is privately held, completely managed by Mr. Musk. (Tesla, his electrical automobile firm, is publicly held.) And to date, whereas the White Home has been outspoken, the Pentagon has been silent.
“It could be good to have alternate options, and the U.S. authorities has tried to develop some,” Walter Isaacson, Mr. Musk’s biographer, stated in an interview on Sunday. “However no different firm,” he stated, together with United Launch Alliance, a Boeing and Lockheed Martin enterprise, has “been capable of make reusable rockets, or get astronauts into orbit, or get a few of these heavy satellites into high-Earth orbit.”
