“If I die under suspicious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya,” read Elon Musk’s cryptic tweet from earlier last week. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man—a real-life Tony Stark who builds revolutionary electric cars and game-changing reusable rockets for fun—is known for his bizarre tweets that generate much publicity. This time, sadly, it was not a joke. Musk was merely responding to a recent threat made against him by the gonzo Dmitry Rogozin, the man charged with running Russia’s space program, Roscosmos.
Rogozin’s comments did not occur in a vacuum, and they were not mere nationalistic posturing. The threat was made because, at the start of the Russo-Ukraine War, Musk had given Ukraine 40 Starlink terminals which effectively prevented the Russians from cutting Ukraine off from the global telecommunications network, providing Ukraine with desperately needed strategic advantages over their Russian foes.
Starlink is a system of small, easily replaceable satellites designed to give internet connectivity to parts of the world that otherwise would lack access to the global telecommunications network. Yet, it has real strategic value as well. After all, these small satellites are cheaper than their conventional satellite counterparts and can provide a country under attack the telecommunications capabilities needed to survive and thrive in such a degraded environment.
In fact, in recent weeks, according to the Pentagon’s director of electronic warfare, Dave Temper, Russia has initiated several cyberattacks directed against SpaceX’s Starlink properties in orbit. Every one of these cyberattacks, however, have been successfully thwarted by SpaceX. The cyber defenses on the Starlink satellites have worked so well that Temper described witnessing the defense in real-time as “eye-watering.” Temper would go on to tell Breaking Defense that the United States military needed to replicate these capabilities on its vital-yet-vulnerable satellite constellations.
China, for that matter, has already stated that they are threatened by Starlink’s obvious military implications. Yet what has Elon Musk and his stalwart space start-up gotten in return for all their troubles?
China is making veiled threats against Musk’s properties along with Rogozin’s threats of physical violence against Musk. Musk’s own government, which should be learning from and grateful for Musk’s contributions, has used its awesome regulatory power to punish Musk’s companies and has engaged in character assassination against him because of Musk’s personal political views.
Last year, I reported that the incoming Biden Administration was plotting to abuse the Federal Aviation Authority’s (FAA) regulatory powers to stunt the launches of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket. This is the system designed to get humans to Mars in the next 10 years. It is a massive spaceship made larger by the fact that it will be blasted into orbit atop a massive heavy-lift rocket. An impressive feature of this rocket is that it will be entirely reusable, like SpaceX’s other rockets which have been making headlines for the last decade.
In 2020, however, Musk had told the press that any SpaceX-built Martian colony would not be governed by Earth—specifically, American—laws. Understandably, many in the United States government, especially the Biden Administration, grew concerned about this statement because SpaceX is funded largely by the U.S. taxpayer. Any mission to Mars, or so the federal government believes, should at the very least wave the American flag once it gets to the Red Planet.
Although Musk’s comments were made in the Fall of 2020, when one of his loudest supporters, Donald J. Trump, was still president, in the first few weeks of Joe Biden’s presidency, the FAA began cracking down on Musk’s launches. As that occurred, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a massive crackdown on Musk’s other legendary company, Tesla. According to the NHTSA, Tesla was mandated to recall over 135,000 vehicles that may have had malfunctioning touchscreens. While these touchscreens are part of the Tesla safety packages, one can’t help but notice the fortuitous timing of the matter from the point of view of the current administration.
The Biden Administration is opposed to Musk’s freewheeling style and is making a statement in opposition to another freewheeling legend, Donald Trump, who was largely supportive of the innovative and daring Elon Musk. Whereas many other corporations and business leaders have shown no compunction about jumping onboard the Democratic Party’s wholly undemocratic woke agenda, Musk is but one of only a handful of notable holdouts who refuses to toe the line. He is therefore, from the point of view of the Biden Administration, a thought criminal. And as such, he will be crushed beneath the jackboots of the federal government until he kowtows to the wokerati.
Musk’s cryptic tweet earlier this week about dying under suspicious circumstances, therefore, is not just about the insanity of Dmitry Rogozin and the overall Putin regime against whom SpaceX under Musk’s leadership has acted. One should also be watching Musk’s domestic enemies, for they will not seek physical assassination as the bloodthirsty Russians do, but they will certainly attempt to cancel him. In fact, a wholesale cancellation of Elon Musk is already underway, as evidenced by the spate of negative press that has been pouring out of the “mainstream” media ever since the gonzo billionaire declared his intention to purchase Twitter for a staggering $44 billion.
Seemingly overnight, Musk went from being an obnoxious thought criminal to an enemy of the deep state. Musk made clear his intention to purchase the massive social media platform (and data mining enterprise) because he was deeply troubled by the way that Twitter’s managers were policing the Twitter community. Specifically, he was aggrieved that his favorite comedy website, the Right-leaning Babylon Bee, had been wrongly censored and Musk had had enough of the pettiness exhibited by generally left-wing partisans who control Twitter and other social media platforms.
Make no mistake: Elon Musk is the last of the Great American Tycoons and he has all the right enemies to prove it. The tragedy in all this is that if anything does happen to either Musk or his companies (notably SpaceX), the United States loses bigly. And if Musk’s attempt to purchase Twitter, probably the most ubiquitous social media platform today, is thwarted then the First Amendment as we understand it disappears behind a veil of corporate corruption and censorship.
Even if Musk isn’t taken out by the crazed Russians, he will constantly have to be on the lookout for the Biden Administration’s apparatchiks who have a political grievance with him. And should Musk lose either to the Russians or the corrupt U.S. government, the United States will fall so far behind its enemies—both foreign and domestic—that it may never be able to pick itself up again.