A leaderless NASA faces its biggest-ever cuts
economist.com
economist.com
Why do you think anyone in D.C. cares about those endpoints?
When that happened in Iran 1953 the CIA fostered a coup; Cuba is under embargo since the 60s triggered by Fidel nationalising sugar mills; Chile's coup in the 70s with CIA support was triggered by nationalisation of the copper mines; invasion of Panama in the 80s was from tensions with Noriega wanting to take over the canal's assets.
Venezuela's sanctions were because Chávez nationalised oil under PDVSA. The rift with Bolivia's Evo Morales was from gas nationalisation.
So if the USA just takes over someone's private company it will be absurdly hypocritical, and shatter even more the USA's international reputation, the added risk to businesses in the USA after this precedent opens will probably also be of concern.
There's not really any need to charge him with anything to do that when he is making active threats to weaken national security, though its possible they might have separately gone after him.
And if the government did take that action they would have had incredibly high popular support for doing so among virtually everyone on both sides.
What? Where? If you mean expropriation, no, that has never been popular here, it’s part of why we have a massive economy.
And this isn't just a random expropriation. While I may have to cry myself to sleep at the thought of our once great nation having devolved into a bitchy slap fest by a couple of narcissistic man babies, the fact is that SpaceX probably wouldn't exist today without the US government, so with Musk having a temper tantrum and saying "I'm taking my toys and going home", the US government would have at least somewhat valid national security reasons to take over SpaceX.
Couple that with the fact that Musk is hated, extremely, by many folks out both sides of the political aisle, means that the rule of law concerns about a SpaceX expropriation would largely be ignored.
Your rationalization of it is not unreasonable, but the market would panic in a bad way if the government showed it was willing to take extremes.
I don't agree with this.
Like if it were merely a "tiff" between the administration and a CEO, then yes that would be destabilizing, but there is important context here that you are entirely glossing over.
Elon threatened to take his ball and go home in a literally life threatening (to astronauts) way after making SpaceX an essential aspect of the space program. If he didn't walk back that threat I think it would have been very easy for large companies to see the outcome as entirely Elon's fault and maybe just double-check in on their own CEOs to make sure they make sane decisions.
I'm personally convinced Elon realizing the likelihood of this outcome (probably because someone else reminded him of it) is exactly why he started walking the threat back.
And as a side effect of this mess, Elon also unintentionally gave everyone a pretty good reason to reconsider if its a great idea to allow any privatized entity to become "too big to fail" (or, more exactly, too big to easily replace if their CEO goes crazy) within any important government function.
It’s sort of a given in American capitalism that owners are free to be idiots with their money. Nationalising SpaceX would wipe hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth to zero (or close to it). That’s a taking of private property triggered by the personal animus of the President; that characterises Argentina more than America. It would absolutely freak investors out, because now you need to diversify your assets geopolitically in a way Americans aren’t used to (but Argentinians, Russians and Chinese are).
Better: target Elon personally. Yank his credentials. Force him to revoke his super voting status, potentially trim his shareholding.
> Elon also unintentionally gave everyone a pretty good reason to reconsider if its a great idea to allow any privatized entity to become "too big to fail" (or, more exactly, too big to easily replace if their CEO goes crazy) within any important government function
We’re overdue for antitrust reform. The Whigs, in particular, were animated by concerns around undue concentrations of power.
I hear this from folks on the coast a lot. Then our candidates lose in the middle of the country because when someone suggests taking a rich person’s stuff, every small business owner self identifies with them because that’s how American optimism has a habit of working.
Right here where I live, in the United States.
I never suggested expropriation in general would be widely supported, but when you have the richest man in the world (who has spent the last year making enemies of virtually everyone other than a small cadre of twitter shitposters) manically making decisions while reportedly on a downward spiral drug bender and he suggests taking action that would lead to endangering the lives of astronauts and an overall weakening of America's national security, yeah the government would have had massive popular support for seizing SpaceX.
If you don't think so I think you might be living in a libertarian bubble.
I’m not sure of this.
Criminal investigation into lying on clearance forms about drug use effectively sidelines him SpaceX’s chain of command without stealing his or anyone else’s shareholdings.
That said, it would be an authoritarian shot across the bow for Silicon Valley from this White House.
If he looses them, it will be as a revenge from Trump rather then voluntary something.
* The fact that SpaceX is currently the only US company with an available and reliable capacity to fly astronauts to/from the ISS is the main reason for many of the contracts, and they had this before and irrespective of Musk's political engagement.
* For other launch activities unrelated to the ISS, SpaceX offers the most cost-effective service, so again it's not unreasonable that they would win business irrespective.
* Most of SpaceX's active contracts with NASA predate Trump's second term.
a) NASA didn’t/doesn’t have the capacity
b) The Russians did have the capacity but it was expensive and also painful to American egos to utilise this repeatedly, not to mention a risk due to geopolitical uncertainty.
c) NASA therefore funded Boeing and SpaceX to develop ‘home grown’ capability. (Note: SpaceX received less than Boeing for this development.)
d) Boeing’s space division lost up a big lead (over SpaceX) through poor development and execution, echoes of which continue to this day with the issues seen with Starliner leading to the two astronauts being effectively ‘stranded’ for a period of
e) SpaceX did a good job of developing Dragon and getting Falcon 9 rated for human flight. Since then, their reliability, low cost, and high launch cadence, coupled with Boeing’s missteps, has led to multiple contracts and successful launches.
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It’s also worth mentioning that SoaceX was started when Musk wasn’t so crazy (remember, once upon a time, he was the woke darling of the progressive center-left) and also that a lot of its success and stability may be thanks to its COO, Gwynne Shotwell. Calling it Musk’s “toy company” ignores the huge advances it has made, thanks to the fantastic people that work there, and also (gulp) Musk himself.
So although the GP comment is a bit silly it's still in the ballpark.
SpaceX does a LOT of commercial launch. And Starlink is growing fast.
In a strange way, the middle path is targeting Elon personally. Not his companies.
Why? His companies command exorbitant multiples. There is unfortunately no evidence to date that he’s harming shareholders on the net.
-94.65 (-24.28%) past 6 months
I think that, at the true value of for Tesla, their accurate share price is in the range of $10-$20 per share. These numbers are not missing a digit.
I think 25x difference between what they cost and their actual value is due to Musk, and his reality distortion field.
So while I agree with you that he and his behaviour are ruining the actual real value of his businesses… what you're seeing in the stock price is still him keeping it up, more than him dragging it down.
BMW's P/E is currently about 7; Porsche about 12; Renault about 16; BYD (who has their own autopilot) about 24.
Tesla's models are no longer competitive, the plans for the robo-taxi release this month is about 5.5 years behind Waymo (or 6.5 years if they use safety drivers, even remote ones), and several other businesses already sell humanoid robots for less than his speculative price for Optimus.
Of Optimus: the public demonstration was uninspiring, because even if you assume it was all AI the only thing it did that was impressive was picking out a single voice in an environment with many unrelated background voices — but worse than that, there's increasing reason to suspect that even when Musk says "our AI does XYZ", it isn't and can't.
Clocking how far behind Tesla is remains tricky given the massive amounts of telemetry they collect from their legacy fleet. (As well as their seated production base.) We can only conclude, from their lack of a product, that they're probably no more than half a decade behind Waymo.
The DoD knows if SpaceX can't launch, they straight up will never get their assets into orbit. The ULA backlog is like a decade.
Citation? I’ve mostly been seeing win procedural motions.