The incumbents have 200 years of collective head start over SpaceX, which started from scratch in 2002. They had 18 years to use that advantage to beat everyone else to reusable space access while remaining in the cherry procurement positions. Instead, they mismanaged, wrecked their quality culture, and lobbied for more handouts.
Unable to compete on merit, schedule,or price, ULA is reduced to buying another congressman, who's implying SpaceX is a security threat via the China card.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-s...
That's quite the leap, although I can see your logic.
Ultimately Musk should have seen this coming because it's obvious. He's tied a huge amount of his net worth to the favour of the CCP and involved himself with a program of national importance to a country that is at odds with the CCP.
What's worst, Musk has zero respect for any sort of arms length separation between his companies, so it's almost guaranteed that the CCP has some level of access to SpaceX IP as they expand their grasp on Tesla through Shanghai.
This was all easily avoidable if Musk didn't insist on thinking that if he didn't personally come up with the idea, the idea must be idiotic.
But after opining there should be separation, instead of arguing the merits of that plan, GP uses a personality characterization instead, leaving the comment lacking support.
It's been interesting to see them improve too. It used to be that the video compression always used to ruin the final moment when the boosters landed at the sea platform. But now, they've even solved that.
I love that he's growing up with the idea that we don't need to throw away giant piles of metal just to launch something into space.
It also shows how clever it was to livestream so much of what they do. So many people have seen a rocket booster land. Children today will hear that ULA doesn't land their boosters and ask "why not?".