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Comment by bagful | Hacker News Reader

A privately-held strategic advantage?

It doesn't really matter who owns it as long as it can be bent towards national goals when it matters.

American vehicle manufacturing was a strategic advantage during WWII because they swiftly pivoted to selling tanks to the government instead of cars to civilians.

It's already been bent towards missile defense https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

Like all other US defense companies, why not? Do you think US Navy produces their own ships?

The distinction here is that ships are built by nongovernmental private enterprises, whilst Starlink is operated by a nongovernmental private enterprise. With a somewhat volatile executive.

Which isn't unprecedented. But it's also far from the equivalence your comment suggests.

The US military already uses commercial satellite communication systems.

and commercial sensor system like 'Planet'.

and commercial cargo transport.

And lots of other stuff.

Note that, historically, the US Navy had plenty of its own shipyards, and did produce many of its own ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_Navy_sh...

But that's mostly been "optimized away" in more-recent times, in the name of Capitalism and Campaign Donations.

>did produce many of its own ships.

Problem is that we're talking about how it works currently. US also used to send its own specifically owned spacecrafts into space. But it hasn't in ages.

Plenty of US strategic advantages are privately held or otherwise very dependent on the private sector. It's fine because the company can't really leave the US.

At that level of strategic usefulness ownership stops mattering if shit hits the fan. It'll simply get commandeered.

Offloading the risk on private players, reduces the amount of government investment required, and shields them from any criticism, should the project fail.

Also, if it is that strategically important, the government can just buy SpaceX.

They probably wouldn't have to buy them, if there's a war on they probably have enough legal tools to just require SpaceX to sell them whatever capabilities they have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950

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