As much as I love Musk, this is fucked up. Just a normal day in the American democracy I guess
> The central canard of these attacks is that John McCain did not, in fact, add "Section 1615" to the Defense Authorization Act, which is now being finalized by a conference between the House and Senate. This clause does not exist at all in the Senate language. Rather, it was inserted into the House legislation by US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama.
> Two sources familiar with the legislation told Ars that Rogers added Section 1615 specifically to benefit Aerojet and its AR1 rocket engine.
> "The purpose of the provision is simple," one Washington DC source said. "Instead of the Department of Defense continuing their open-ended, market-friendly risk reduction investment across several providers to enable Russian-engine-free launch capabilities, Rogers wants DOD to fund Aerojet to build AR1 to be inserted into Atlas V." In other words, the language benefits Aerojet by favoring its "drop in" engine solution over building a completely new Vulcan rocket.
The article is illustrating a much deeper level of fucked up - the fact that Brietbart and other media outlets are singling out SpaceX here and misrepresenting the facts to demonize them, while turning a blind eye to the real pork - deeply entrenched interests like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who've been siphoning billions out of government on space tech for decades. If anything, SpaceX has been disrupting the status quo there, opening the door to real market competition, in the long run reducing costs to taxpayers. The entrenched interests under threat are almost certainly behind these strangely framed (and outright dishonest) hit pieces.