Musk Wants to Improve Our World, Feds Seek to Destroy Him

Every now and then, there is a tear in the Matrix, a ripping apart of the reality that is fed to us by the media, our leaders, the government, and NGOs. This reveals the truth behind the facade, the real intent of the players and their worst flaws.

And so it is that the Biden administration, via the Federal Communications Commission, has attacked its Public Enemy No.2: Elon Musk — on a new front. The FCC just rescinded an $885 million contract it had awarded to Musk's SpaceX in 2020.

The contract called for SpaceX to beam high-speed internet service to 640,000 rural homes and businesses across 35 states. For 20 years, this has been a goal of the government amid fretting that poor Americans in the back-country would be left behind in a Digital Divide.

Now the Democrat-controlled FCC has set this aside in favor punishing a political enemy. The government is baring its claws and showing its real intent.

And why not?

Rural America voted for Trump, and the Biden administration is doing all it can to stop him from running for re-election (see my latest episode of "What's Bugging Me.")

The FCC move is one of half a dozen government assaults on companies owned by Elon Musk. He made himself an enemy of the Biden bunch when he bought Twitter and exposed rampant government censorship of conservatives.

And when Musk dared to reopen the banned-for-life account of Biden's Public Enemy #1, President Trump.

Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr calls this out in his dissenting opinion in the FCC's 3-2 vote to fire Starlink:

"Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter and used it to voice his own political and ideological views without a filter, President Biden gave federal agencies a greenlight to go after him.  . . .

"The Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all initiated investigations into Elon Musk or his businesses."

Carr said the FCC vote last week "is a decision that cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts, or policy."

Musk won the contract in December 2020 as Trump was leaving office. The Biden FCC in August 2022 reversed this and called Starlink "a nascent LEO (low Earth orbit) satellite technology."

Starlink appealed — to the same FCC that had just rejected it. Thus, the FCC, as both judge and jury, last week denied the appeal of its own verdict. This is justice?

SpaceX said in a letter to the FCC that it "is deeply disappointed and perplexed" by the decision, and that Starlink "is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable."

The company said the FCC had "arbitrarily penalized SpaceX--and only SpaceX--

for not meeting (FCC) speed requirements years before SpaceX had any obligation to do so. "

SpaceX has launched 5,500 satellites into orbit, each one the size of a sofa; NASA has just 1,619 aloft.

Starlink serves two million customers in 60 countries on all seven continents.

But this was insufficient for the FCC, so, let the hillbillies go years more without high-speed broadband, who cares about the Digital Divide? And this is only the latest swipe against Elon Musk. Elsewhere:

—The NLRB accuses SpaceX of discriminating against refugees, based on one complaint among millions of applicants.

—The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla, first sparked by just three dozen accidents in a nation with two million car crashes per year.

—The Department of Justice has launched a criminal probe of reports that Tesla was building a glass house for Elon Musk, using shareholder money. The SEC is pursuing a civil case. Musk has denied any glass house is underway.

—Federal prosecutors have launched a probe of Tesla's mileage claims for its EVs.

—Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has called for probes by Congress and the Defense Department of Starlink's role in satellite communications in the Ukraine war, as I wrote here.

All of this is part of a strategic, all-out assault on Elon Musk. A lot of us, if we had one-tenth of his wealth, might give up and retire to life on our own island, but this man keeps working incredibly hard to improve the world. Why is the federal government out to stop him?

Dennis Kneale is a writer and media strategist in New York and host of the podcast, "What's Bugging Me." Previously, he was an anchor at CNBC and at Fox Business Network, after serving as a senior editor at The Wall Street Journal and managing editor of Forbes. Read Dennis Kneale's reports — More Here.