This comment reads like something that is probably true but is hard to prove because it’s a judgment of something that is intangible by nature (motivations) unless its complimented by a bevy of concrete evidence (e.g. emails, testimonies).

I think that you’re tangentially right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon Musk purchased Twitter because he had to, but I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever motivated him to posture toward buying it in the first place was motivated by what you’re explaining.

To people who have seen similar deals in the past like this it was also my conclusion.

It’s like Elon is the modern government agency cut out, but instead of having a handler or agency association - he’s just generally a free agent cut out for anyone who will fund him.

But it’s also the plot of the much maligned movie ‘Aloha’. To the keen eye it is a disturbingly insightful film.

This seems to be giving him more credit than he deserves. If he's trying to get republicans on board, all he needs to do is keep crowing about free speech and cancel culture. Actually making any changes to twitter isn't required. IMO he banned journalists that criticized him... because they criticized him. occams razor

It's pretty much just a more elaborate '4D chess' post

Except that it's backed by solid references.

The references support facts that are not in dispute. The only fact in dispute is whether the Twitter purchase was instrumental to this contract, not that Starlink is a military contractor with industry connections.

But I agree that we should be concerned about the military applications of Starlink, and that we should be discussing it more. And I appreciate you highlighting it because I wasn't aware.

Republicans are strongest when they have plenty of liberals to criticize. No liberals on his platform means no ammo for Republicans which means they cannot get votes.

It makes no sense.

Exactly. Occam's razor needs some sharpening here. Musk is just red pilled. There's no need for a conspiracy theory involving the military industrial complex. It's unfortunate, but hardly unique.

Starlink would be the military industrial complex's wet dream, there's no way both parties aren't on board by default.

Trump talks a lot lately about Mars and a nuclear defense shield in space...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-promises-to-pl...

He has probably actually been radicalized by Twitter though, instead of just pretending to be. I suspect that he is actually emotionally invested in his chosen side in the “culture war” and feels genuinely compelled to “own the libs” and whatnot.

I'm highly skeptical that Elon decided to light billions of dollars on fire so he could get some DoD money for Starlink.

We’re approaching one year since a world leader decided to burn the cash of his nation due to arrogance, overconfidence and shortsightedness.

This seems very conspiracy-theory-ish. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

But the references back it up quite well.

That's kind of the hallmark of conspiracy theory.

Especially when abundant stupidness has already been demonstrated with the blue checkmark botch. Ain't no 4 dimensional chess going on.

This is more history, to understand what motivated Musk in the past. At this point who can say..

Dude, go blog this and submit it instead of pasting it on everyone one of these threads.

At least run it through GPT to make it sound new?

I have to say this initially rings to me like a conspiracy theory, but there's lots of info you shared that I wasn't aware of and is quite interesting.

I personally would not be against an interest group pushing over their lifetime for a common interest such as space exploration. Although turning this into a "Twitter is a way to curry favours" conclusion is a stretch.

This reads like an elaborate Skynet troll. Is this for real?

Explain like I'm a 5 year old Canadian please.

Read here about Elon and then the Space Development Agency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

The military wanting to spend money on a starlink like low earth orbit system is nothing new or surprising.

They have been spending vast amounts of money on various types of geostationary based two-way satellite communications technology for 40 years. And they currently do so on some very low term projects and contracts.

Remember that the US DoD is what saved Iridium too.

They are always on the lookout for new or better tech.

Musk entirely aside for the moment, fact is that the starlink Redmond team has been first to market with something that is WAY ahead of kuiper, oneweb, telesat or any other leo satellite network in real world results.

Didn't the Redmond team get liquidated?

What happened was: Musk was unhappy with progress so he fired bunch of executives and promoted others to take their job.

And voila: the new team successfully launched Starlink.

Remind me, what was the other company where Musk fired a bunch of people? It's been in the news recently.

I dunno. Why wouldn't Starlink have gotten that contract anyway...? And why would he threaten to cut off Ukraine if securing this contract were a number one priority for him...? Democrats aren't really less keen on military spending than Republicans, if you want to be a huge military contractor, you'd want the support of both.

flaming out and setting billions on fire does not accomplish this

I mean this is an intriguing rationalization, but I don’t buy it.

Buying votes simply doesn’t cost this much, by orders of magnitude. Burning your empire to ashes as a loyalty test doesn’t hold water either: It’s politicians that partake in loyalty tests, not donors.

> a massive DoD program, which requires Republicans to fund.

Contrary to the partisan memes, support for military funding is actually bipartisan. Republicans often like to say that Democratic politicians don't support the military, to pander to their base, but this isn't actually true. And Democratic Party sometimes like to play at being peaceniks, again to pander to their base, but this isn't true either.

Look up the composition of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. 50/50 split between parties. You don't get DoD projects funded by sucking up to Republicans, you need to convince politicians on both sides of the aisle.

But in this case, the DoD project is decidedly Republican. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a Reagan initiative and an attempt at rebooting it is a hallmark of every Republican administration since.