Report: Musk's Starlink Is Close to Taking Over FAA Contract

The Federal Aviation Administration is close to canceling a massive Verizon air traffic control project and handing it to one of Elon Musk's companies, insiders tell the Washington Post report. Verizon was awarded the $2.4 billion contract in 2023 to upgrade the country's air traffic communication system. The move to hand the contract to Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk's SpaceX, "would represent a significant test of protections against conflicts of interest in government projects," the Post reports. The FAA announced Monday that it was testing Starlink satellite internet terminals at three sites, one in New Jersey and two in Alaska.

Records show that Verizon has already completed around $200 million of work on the 15-year contract, the AP reports. According to one of the Post's sources, the government was due to make a final decision on paying Verizon next month, but Musk's team decided Starlink should get the contract instead. The source says the lengthy process for unwinding a federal contract has not been followed in this case so far. Musk criticized Verizon in a post on X Monday, saying its system, which uses fiber optic cables, is "not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk." In recent days, a team of SpaceX employees has been working inside the FAA.

Ethics experts—and some former FAA officials—have questioned the lack of transparency and Musk's conflicts of interest, the AP reports. John P. Pelissero, director of an ethics center at Santa Clara University, tells the Post it appears that "because of Musk's current position in DOGE and his closeness to Trump, he and his company are getting an advantage and getting a contract." "I challenge anyone to question the honesty and my technical integrity on this matter," one of the SpaceX employees working at the FAA, Ted Malaska, said in a post on X. The AP reports that Malaska is one of three SpaceX software developers who have received "ethics waivers" from the administration that allow them to do work that could benefit Musk's companies. (More Starlink stories.)