Elon Musk & SpaceX Are Helping US Intelligence Build the World’s Largest Spy Satellite Network – Derrick Broze 12/5/24

Source: TheLastAmericanVagabond.com

Why are so many freedom loving, privacy aware people using a military contractor’s satellite service, and turning a blind eye to the surveillance grid he is co-creating with the U.S. military and intelligence?

On Monday, former Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul told his audience on Twitter/X that due to an “internet outage in our area” he would not broadcast his daily live broadcast, The Ron Paul Liberty Report.

Elon Musk, the executive chairman and chief technology officer of Twitter, responded to Paul, stating, “You should get Starlink”. Finally, Paul asked, “That sounds like a great idea! How much does it cost?”

Starlink is what is known as a satellite internet constellation which is operated by Starlink Services, an international telecommunications company that is wholly owned by Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX. Starlink satellites were first launched by SpaceX in 2019, and now reportedly provide internet access to people in more than 100 countries. They have become increasingly popular because of their ease of setup and relatively low cost.

The most recent numbers on Starlink satellites say the satellite constellation consists of more than 7,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit. SpaceX has plans for 12,000 satellites over the coming years. Starlink is said to have more than 4 million worldwide subscribers.

Ron Paul obviously knew what Starlink was, and he might even be aware that Starlink has been a vital part of SpaceX’s success. However, what Ron Paul and most of the general public might not know is that SpaceX has become a key partner of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, and is helping them build a massive surveillance grid.

SpaceX, Starshield, and the Military-Industrial-CompleX

In September 2023, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX had received its first contract from the US Space Force to “provide customized satellite communications for the military” under SpaceX’s new “Starshield” program. The move, Bloomberg noted, would “extend” Elon Musk’s role as a “defense contractor”.

Starshield will offer service to the military for one year using SpaceX’s existing Starlink satellites. Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Bloomberg that the contract “provides for Starshield end-to-end service via the Starlink constellation, user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management and other related services.”

That is to say, the U.S. military and intelligence will be piggybacking off the Starlink satellites which are being sold to the average person as a convenient and fast way to access the internet.

The pursuit of military contracts is not a new feature of SpaceX’s business model. In 2002 it was reported that SpaceX had contracted with an undisclosed U.S. intelligence customer. More recently, Musk’s Starlink contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense for an undisclosed amount to provide Starlink communication to the Ukrainian military.

The official website for Starshield says the program is aimed at providing satellites to customers for processing encrypted communications, as well as capturing data about the Earth. Starshield also offers “satellites buses” for the “most demanding customer payload missions”.

While little else was known about the Starshield program at the time of its announcement, the public has learned more details about the program.

In February 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported on the existence of yet another contract between SpaceX and the U.S. government. The previously unknown 2021 contract was worth a whopping $1.8 billion, and related to the secretive Starshield satellite constellation. The U.S. government agency contracting with SpaceX was unlisted in the documents viewed by the WSJ.

“The size and secrecy of the agreement illustrate a growing interdependence between SpaceX—a dominant force in the space industry—and the national-security establishment,” the WSJ noted.

The WSJ also reported that Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, acknowledged there was “very good collaboration between the intelligence community and SpaceX”.

In March, Reuters spoke to five sources with inside knowledge of a classified contract between SpaceX and an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency. According to these sources, SpaceX is building a network of spy satellites with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) as part of the previously reported $1.8 billion contract.

These same sources told Reuters that if the program is successful it would “significantly advance” the U.S. government and military ability to rapidly find targets “almost anywhere” on the planet.

By April the report appeared to be confirmed after it was announced that SpaceX would partner with long time military contractor Northrop Grumman on the classified spy satellite system. The project was apparently already capturing high-resolution pictures of the planet, according to “people familiar with the program” who spoke with Reuters. These same sources claimed the classified project was being developed by the National Reconnaissance Office.

The National Reconnaissance Office and SpaceX

The NRO is an intelligence agency within the U.S Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites for the government. The agency was founded in 1961 but its existence was classified secret until 1992.

The NRO provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

In May, SpaceX carried out its first mission to help the NRO launch satellites into space. The headline “SpaceX launches first batch of new spy satellites for NRO” tells you everything you need to know. The number of satellites launched into orbit by the NRO and SpaceX were not disclosed to the public.

While the public has been watching with joy and awe as Elon Musk and SpaceX bring America into the “Space Race” of the next generation, Musk is actually launching spy satellites aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

“This mission is the first launch of the NRO’s proliferated systems featuring responsive collection and rapid data delivery. NROL-146 represents the first launch of an operational system following demonstrations in recent years to verify cost and performance,” the NRO said.

The third batch of satellites for the NRO were launched by SpaceX in September. Once again, the NRO’s satellites launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The latest partnership between SpaceX and the NRO came in October when the company was awarded contracts for nine launches under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program. The $733.5 million contract was for seven missions for the Space Development Agency (SDA) and two for the NRO which were projected to launch in late 2025 and 2026.

Some supporters of Musk might argue that he is simply being a smart businessman and cashing in on U.S. government money while remaining agnostic about how the technology he supplies is deployed. Not only is such an excuse a cop-out, and an attempt at absolving Musk and his cohorts of personal responsibility, it is utterly ignorant to deny the danger in supplying the world’s largest military with an even greater ability to spy on the world.

Take a look at the words of Christopher Scolese, the Director of the NRO, to understand the danger posed by Starshield. Scolese reports directly to both the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense.

In October, Scolese spoke at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies detailing how the NRO is planning to use the satellites provided by businesses like SpaceX.

“From last June to December of this year, we’ll have probably launched 100 satellites. So we are going from the demo phase to the operational phase, where we’re really going to be able to start testing all of this stuff out in a more operational way,” Scolese said at the time.

“What are they going to be doing? They are part of the proliferated architecture to go off it and get us reasonably high-resolution imagery of the Earth at a high rate of speed,” Scolese said. “Now you can’t hide because you’re constantly being looked at.”

However, Scolese warned that with such an influx of satellites in orbit and “heaps of data” coming in, humans won’t be able to keep up. Thus, he claimed, the NRO will get help from artificial intelligence (AI). No doubt Musk will be ready to offer some assistance in the form of data gleaned from Grok, the AI bot integrated into Twitter which has gathered billions of data points from the platforms hundreds of millions of users.

“Operating a proliferated architecture means that it’s no longer possible to go off and for an individual sitting at a control center to say, I know what the satellite is doing. So we have to have the machines to go off and help us there. We need artificial intelligence, machine learning, [and] automated processes to help us do that,” he said.

The NRO is yet another intelligence agency within the massive surveillance network operated by the U.S. government. The relationship between the NRO and Musk’s SpaceX and Starshield is obviously growing by the day. Musk is increasingly allied with the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, and further entrenching himself and his companies as part of the Military-Industrial-Complex. This is why it is valuable to understand the man behind the Starshield spy satellite program.

The Man Behind Starshield

Starshield is part of SpaceX’s Special Programs Group, and the Vice President of SPG is retired Air Force General Terrence O’Shaughnessy. In 2020, after a 39-year career in the U.S. Air Force, Terrence O’Shaughnessy retired and later became a “Senior Advisor to Elon Musk on matters regarding SpaceX”….

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