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Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

I'm not comfortable with the power Elon Musk has, given his behaviour and views. But I don't think weaponizing SpaceX rockets is a big concern.

The ability to manufacture rockets like this would of course be very valuable to anyone developing ballistic missiles for military purposes. But there are also big differences as those use mostly solid fuel. Selling this information to other countries could be a potential national security risk.

Musk's rockets are inside the US, he would probably be able to launch one rocket on a target before the US military would stop any further launches. So I don't think any direct threat here by Musk would be that worrisome.

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He’d also need to persuade everybody involved in the launch guidance, and presumably also the payload development, transfer and integration to commit treason, and for none of them to break silence.

No one thought Musk would abuse his ownership of Starlink either, but in 2022 Musk personally ordered the shutdown of Starlink satellite coverage over key parts of Ukraine. Supposedly he was motivated by concerns that a successful Ukrainian advance might provoke a Russian nuclear response. He is not a head of state, but gets to make such decisions? (FWIW he later denied intentionally turning off Ukraine's Starlink terminals).

I have no idea what Musk might do, so I'm not excluding anything. But to do anything with a SpaceX rocket he would need co-conspirators, and in the end he would only get a single shot. So the result would be similar to a larger terrorist attack.

I would assume that the risk here is similar to that of many other companies or persons that use large amounts of explosives or other tools that could be weaponized. Musk has a delivery system that is superior to just driving a truck with explosives somewhere, but in many cases that doesn't matter much.

There are some scenarios I could imagine, but they're really more like movie scripts than reality. Musk doesn't have the power to prevent retaliation, and he also couldn't threaten or demand ransom as he couldn't defend his rockets against the US military.

> He is not a head of state, but gets to make such decisions?

Starlink is his property, he doesn't need to be head of state to suspend a free service and that's how it should be.

Right... so he could also, for example, decide that Starship will only take MAGA astronauts to the moon. And that's why taxpayer funds should not be used for developing Starship.

No he can't because the US is paying for that, it is the government's mission. And fwiw now the gray area of free starlink in Ukraine also taken care of, the US government is handling that contracting like they do with all weapons systems. Before starlink was made available for free in Ukraine for humanitarian purposes, but the military also obviously found good uses for it before the gray areas were resolved.

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