The white House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency? Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible in our actions. [00:00:18] We post our actions to the Doge handle on X. If you see anything you say like, wait a second. Hey, you know that that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there. It's not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately. [00:00:33] Yeah, that's why they had to change so goddamn many of the things they've posted on that stupid BS website. But that was Elon Musk saying that you don't have to worry about him rigging things in his favor or hurting his competitors, giving himself contracts because he's going to be transparent. [00:00:49] And I don't buy that in most cases. But I think he has been pretty transparent in some of the corruption, including the story that we're going to talk about today, because Reuters released a report just yesterday alleging that Musk is about to make a massive amount of money off the federal government. [00:01:04] Here's the headline. Musk's SpaceX is apparently a front runner to build Trump's Golden Dome missile shield. And that is going to be worth importantly, not only an ungodly amount of money to initially set up, but going forward, it could be massive [00:01:22] money for Elon Musk and for SpaceX. Jake, I know you've been waiting to talk about this. Musk and SpaceX building this system seems pretty convenient considering he's the co president. Yeah. So first of all, utter outrage [00:01:38] that the largest donor to any presidential candidate in any party, right. Just say, oh, I got a great idea. Let's do. By the way, first let's do cuts to like, Head Start and funding malaria treatment and all these, to Social Security offices to Medicaid, etc.. [00:01:58] But let's not save any money at all. Let's direct it all to my company. Well, if you're not outraged by that, then you like corruption. You love corruption. You. And really, if you're MAGA, you think, oh, what a coincidence. [00:02:13] The top donors company. It happens to be the best company for a project, by the way, we don't need at all. This is as big a boondoggle as you will ever find. Doge went looking for waste, fraud and abuse. [00:02:30] But what we didn't realize is they were looking to find it so they could promote it within the government. Because this is waste, fraud and abuse. So we thought they were going to find it to eliminate it, but apparently they were going to find it to put it on steroids because that's what this is. [00:02:46] What the hell is this crap? And what happened to cutting the Pentagon? I mean, that's why you get them on the record. So now you could turn around and go. Come on, come on. And, yes, even your own voters wanted you to cut the Pentagon. [00:03:02] Instead, you're doing the boondoggle of all boondoggles. 100%, yeah. So I'm going to give you a couple extra layers of corruption. Then we'll jump into a conversation about this. So first the details. What is the Golden Dome? Well, it's pretty different than the Iron Dome. And not only because it is a historically, characteristically stupid name, [00:03:20] via Donald Trump and the Golden Dome. So it's a plan to put up 400 to 1000 satellites to orbit the world. They would be tasked with sensing, monitoring and tracking missile launches. Then a separate batch of 200 more attack satellites would then destroy those with [00:03:36] a combination of missiles and or lasers. So we're back in Reagan era Star Wars policies. And Reuters notes that the plan is highly subject to change, probably because there will be world outrage, because you're not supposed to be surrounding the Earth with weaponized satellites. [00:03:52] There are multiple treaties designed to stop that, but that's the idea. So SpaceX and this would be partnering with software maker Palantir here, and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of the Golden Dome. The CEOs, the founders, I should say, of those two other companies, also have [00:04:08] been donors to Donald Trump in the past. So there's a lot of corruption to go around, to be fair. Now, SpaceX is pitching for the part of the initiative called the custody layer. That's to do preliminary engineering and design work that would cost between 6 billion and $10 billion, probably exactly between that, [00:04:26] because every time a defense contractor estimates estimates the cost of something, that's what it ends up being. Now, there were about 180 different companies that expressed interest. Strange that SpaceX would be the leader in this right now, except not so much. [00:04:43] And it is when you get the reporting from Reuters, it's as bad as it could possibly be. One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as a, quote, departure from the usual acquisition process. There's an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be [00:04:58] sensitive and And deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government. They're not even trying to hide that this is a blatantly corrupt act. And then the added layer of corruption is that we don't just pay a ton of money, not 6 to $10 billion, hundreds of billions of dollars, almost certainly. [00:05:17] And then we're done. And we own it. No, no, no, that's not how things work anymore in the tech industry. SpaceX has proposed setting up its role in Golden Dome as a subscription service, in which the government would pay for access to the technology rather than own the system outright. [00:05:33] So we would pay untold billions so that Elon Musk would own a fleet of attack satellites that ring the globe. We wouldn't even own it. He'd have control of the software. He could turn it off if he wants to. [00:05:48] He could let missiles go by if he wants to. He would have even more control over world affairs than he already does, thanks to Starlink. And in return, we pay him a massive amount of money now and then. We pay him money every month for the rest of our natural lives. Jake. This sucks. [00:06:04] No, no, it's even worse than what you're stating and what I said at the beginning. Because when you think about the fact that then Ellen would own it and it's a subscription service. Well, think about it. If we stop paying the subscription, someone else can. And in fact, since it's a company that's, as with all companies, [00:06:23] are designed to maximize profit. Well, they're going to say, well, I built this whole thing. I mean, you suckers paid for it, but it's mine. I own it, and I want to make more money off of it. So I am now handing over the satellite system to the highest bidder. Oh, look at that. It's China. Well, what are you going to do now? [00:06:38] China has a ring of satellites across the world that could destroy anything that they want. So. Oh, well, okay, that's point one. Okay. In a parade of horribles that are actually possible in this case. Point two is what if Ellen just goes, what do I need America or China for? [00:06:56] I now own the satellites all across the world that could knock down anything I want, destroy anything I want. Mission accomplished. Why do you think I took over the American government? So, by the way, this sounds like a science fiction movie. [00:07:11] It sounds far fetched, etc., but there is no option C, so option A is this is a massive boondoggle. It's never going to work, and we're going to waste hundreds of billions of dollars and they're going to go straight into Elon Musk's pocket. [00:07:28] And the worst, worst fraud, waste and abuse you've ever seen. The worst corruption you've ever seen. That's option A. Option B is it does work. But we spend all that money and we don't even own it. And a private person can literally control who wins wars. [00:07:45] Who doesn't win wars would literally run the globe. My answer to this. Hell to the effing no. No way. No how. Pure insanity. And I talk about corporate rule all the time on this show. This would let one corporation literally rule us all. [00:08:03] Absolutely. So, feel free to use the word doge as a verb to just describe any time anyone gets, ripped off, corrupted, taken advantage of, and grifted upon. I mean, me and my friends, it's maybe it's just some way [00:08:18] we're trying to cope with all of this. We just love saying, hey, you're being. We're dodging, dodging, dodging. So, you know, we can. I just think it's this is, there's something really interesting here, though, that I want to add to both your analyzes, which is what this is exactly how tech [00:08:35] companies and tech platforms function. They promise transparency, but they're really not transparency at all. And they leverage public investments, including people's data, in this case, our money and our resources. Maybe not our data, but that's another capacities with none, [00:08:54] no accountability whatsoever. And the idea of sort of a subscription service is also very straight out of Big tech. How do we make as much money while giving our users next to nothing, [00:09:09] no matter what the causes are? Right. So, for example, you know, when we talk about tech and whether it's AI or social media, you can imagine a pretty reasonable proposal that would pay people for their data. Is that any of that happening? No. Instead, what a subscription model assumes and mandates is ongoing, [00:09:28] continuous, never ending dependency. Right. So that's that's the first point I want to make. This is very tech. Big tech like the way this is being played. The other thing I want to say is, you know, I mean, sometimes I, [00:09:44] I have my podcast is called utopias. I'm always looking for something to make me, put me in a more positive mood. In the evenings, I was actually nerding out about the incredible James Webb telescope discoveries. You all may have heard of that. Possibly we found traces of life on another planet, [00:10:02] or at least the elements that could be produced only by organic life. Why am I saying all that? That's NASA. That's what NASA did. That's what government funding of science and education and research does. Think about NASA relative to space, which I consider a zombie [00:10:22] predator version of NASA, right? Think about how different these things are, and we must all ask questions. What do we actually want to support and what do we not? By the way, the only other final point I have to make on this is, the way that this should work. If we hadn't had our government entirely bought by an oligarch is, [00:10:41] you'd have SpaceX come and be like, hey, we want to do this thing, and we're going to make it a subscription service where you don't actually own it. And then the Pentagon would be like, oh, hey, the thing about that is there's 180 companies that would love this, contract. So go kick rocks. Go. If you can afford it, go suck an egg. [00:10:58] And we're going to go with one of the other hundred plus companies that would love to do this, but unfortunately, our government has been bought, so SpaceX knows they can make an absolutely horrible offer. And I guess the government will just take it because there's not going to be any actual competition. [00:11:14] Again, I know that it's difficult, like, for the Democrats to fight back on everything because there's so many things they need to be fighting back on, but this feels like a pretty big one. I feel like you could score something on this. I have last two words from our audience. So you'll have to forgive their, you know, bluntness. [00:11:32] And you could join their bluntness at Titcomb. Infinity says is is Elon Musk Doctor Evil or Lex Luthor? And it's a good question. And, we're hoping Doctor Evil so that he's clownish and does not succeed in any of this. [00:11:47] And Turkish taffy writes in Elon gets the Golden Dome. The US taxpayers get the golden shower. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.