How America lost control of space
Why SpaceX's monopoly threatens democracy and national security
The threat arrived on a Thursday afternoon, delivered with the casual cruelty of a social media post. Elon Musk, responding to Donald Trump's promise to terminate his government contracts, announced that SpaceX would "begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately." The implications struck Todd Harrison, a defence analyst who has tracked Pentagon spending for decades, with crystalline clarity: America's astronauts could be stranded in orbit, its military satellites grounded, its missile defences silenced—all because one man felt slighted by a president.
"It's almost like an embargo of the space station," Harrison observed, grasping what Musk's tantrum truly represented. "Musk was saying he is going to cut NASA off from its own laboratory in space." Though the threat was later retracted, it illuminated a transformation so gradual it had escaped notice: the nation's most critical infrastructure had been quietly surrendered to private control, creating what Harrison called the prospect of missile defences "held hostage to the twittering whims of Elon Musk."
This isn't merely about rockets and satellites. It represents how America's most critical infrastructure has been quietly surrendered to private control, creating what systems analysts call a "single point of failure" that could cripple the nation's defences, strand its explorers, and isolate its allies. The concentration of space capabilities in SpaceX represents one of the most dangerous infrastructure dependencies in modern history—and it happened whilst the public barely noticed.
The making of a monopoly
The transformation occurred with the methodical precision of a systems failure. In 2024, SpaceX conducted 138 of America's 145 orbital launches—a 95 per cent market share that would trigger antitrust investigations in any other sector. China, with its state-directed space programme, managed just 68 launches using multiple providers. Somehow, America's space access had become more concentrated than the Soviet system it once competed against.
This wasn't market triumph but infrastructure capture, built on $38 billion in government funding that flowed to SpaceX at precisely the moments needed to prevent collapse. When the company faced bankruptcy in 2008, NASA's $1.6 billion contract arrived like battlefield medicine, with Musk later acknowledging it "rescued" the company. His computer password that year revealed the dependency: "ilovenasa."
The irony would be amusing if the consequences weren't so severe. NASA, the agency that created the technological foundation for American space dominance, now depends entirely on a private company for its most basic function: getting to space. The budget cuts grinding through Congress—reducing NASA funding to its lowest level since 1961—have transformed the symbol of American technological supremacy into little more than a passenger service customer.
The Space Force, despite explicitly seeking to avoid "overreliance on any single provider," faces the same impossible constraint. When Musk threatened to withdraw services, defence officials were "stunned," according to The Washington Post, suddenly confronting the prospect that military communications satellites and classified intelligence missions could be held hostage to one individual's political grievances.
The anatomy of dependency
The depth of America's SpaceX dependency extends far beyond launches. Through its Starlink constellation of nearly 8,000 satellites, the company now provides crucial communications infrastructure for military operations. Its Starshield division supplies space-based surveillance that reportedly extends the government's intelligence reach "to nearly every corner of the globe."
This infrastructure has become so embedded in military operations that the Pentagon awarded SpaceX a majority of its national security contracts in 2024, worth billions more. The company's satellites reportedly track hypersonic missiles and provide battlefield communications that have become "the backbone of the Ukrainian army," as Musk himself has boasted.
Yet this critical infrastructure remains subject to the whims of its owner. When Ukraine requested Starlink coverage extension to support a naval strike against Russian forces in Crimea, Musk simply refused, citing his personal view that it might escalate to "World War III." Ukrainian battlefield operations became subject to the geopolitical opinions of a single entrepreneur.
Such arbitrary control over military infrastructure would have been unthinkable during the Cold War, when the Pentagon maintained rigorous oversight of defence contractors. Today, Musk's companies operate with minimal regulatory constraint whilst wielding unprecedented influence over national security operations that were designed to remain insulated from individual caprice.
The scientific sacrifice
The cruelest irony lies in what America is abandoning to fund its infrastructure dependency. NASA's scientific missions have been humanity's greatest act of collective curiosity—the Hubble Space Telescope revealing galaxies formed when the universe was young, the Perseverance rover drilling into Martian rocks that might contain signs of ancient life, the James Webb Space Telescope capturing light that travelled for 13 billion years to reach its mirrors.
Now these achievements face systematic dismantling. The proposed 2026 budget would slash NASA's science funding by 47 per cent, eliminating 41 active and planned missions in what amounts to the largest single retreat from scientific discovery in modern history. All Venus exploration missions: cancelled. The Roman Space Telescope, nearly completed after $4 billion in investment: indefinitely delayed. Projects spanning astrophysics, planetary science, and Earth observation: terminated.
Nearly 300 current and former NASA employees signed an unprecedented letter of dissent, warning that such cuts "threaten mission safety and the nation's global standing in space exploration." The letter reads like a desperate attempt to preserve institutional memory—scientists who spent careers expanding human knowledge watching their life's work systematically destroyed.
Meanwhile, Trump's 2026 budget proposal includes $1 billion to accelerate Mars mission development, funds extracted directly from NASA's scientific portfolio. The trade-off is explicit: abandon the systematic exploration of the universe to fund one man's colonisation fantasies. John Grunsfeld, who led NASA science during Barack Obama's second term, captured the civilisational regression in clinical terms: "We're basically removing the wonder and awe from our portfolio."
The democracy deficit
Traditional infrastructure privatisation transferred existing public assets to private control whilst maintaining regulatory oversight. The SpaceX model inverts this: it created private capabilities that replaced withered public ones, then leveraged that dependence to capture regulatory authority.
Musk now heads the Department of Government Efficiency whilst his companies receive billions in government contracts—a conflict of interest so blatant it would have triggered congressional investigations in earlier eras. Instead, officials defensively insist that Musk "will excuse himself" from decisions affecting his companies, as if recusal could address structural conflicts built into the system.
The regulatory capture extends beyond individual conflicts to institutional decay. NASA's budget starvation forces greater dependence on SpaceX, which increases Musk's leverage, which enables further public sector hollowing. The feedback loop is self-reinforcing: as alternatives disappear, dependency deepens, and democratic oversight becomes meaningless.
Representative Mikie Sherrill has called for inspector general investigations into Musk's "vast conflicts of interest," noting how DOGE reviews contracts at agencies where his companies hold billions in agreements. But investigations assume alternatives exist. When SpaceX provides services no other company can match, oversight becomes performative rather than protective.
International implications
America's competitors have watched this infrastructure surrender with the calculating attention of chess masters studying an opponent's self-inflicted weakness. China, investing $19.89 billion annually in space capabilities, has made institutional redundancy a strategic principle—deliberately building competing systems to avoid the single-point failures that now characterise American space infrastructure.
The contrast is striking. As America debates whether to fund the Roman Space Telescope, China has achieved the first sample return from the lunar far side, operates a functioning space station with over 130 research projects, and launched the first satellites of its Guowang constellation—a direct competitor to Starlink that remains firmly under state control. Chinese space scientists publish prolifically in international journals whilst their American counterparts face unemployment as missions are cancelled.
The strategic implications compound daily. When critical infrastructure becomes personal property, adversaries can target individuals rather than institutions. Musk's reported conversations with Vladimir Putin, his business interests in China, and his mercurial political positions create unprecedented vulnerabilities in systems that were once insulated from such personal influence.
European officials, despite budgetary constraints that limit their own capabilities, have expressed alarm at America's infrastructure consolidation. The European Space Agency maintains institutional independence that America has abandoned, deliberately avoiding over-reliance on any single provider—a principle that once defined American strategic thinking.
The failure cascade risk
Infrastructure experts have identified the SpaceX dependency as a potential "civilisational single point of failure"—where one entity's disruption could cascade across multiple critical systems. Modern military operations depend on space-based communications; civilian GPS systems rely on satellite networks; internet infrastructure increasingly depends on low-Earth orbit constellations.
The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021 demonstrated how single infrastructure nodes can cripple entire regions. A comparable disruption to SpaceX operations—whether from cyberattack, mechanical failure, or deliberate withdrawal—could simultaneously disable military communications, civilian navigation, internet services, and scientific missions.
Such vulnerabilities were precisely what motivated post-war infrastructure policy to distribute critical capabilities across multiple providers and maintain public alternatives. The concentration in SpaceX represents a systematic abandonment of resilience principles that took decades to develop and moments to discard.
The path not taken
The tragedy of America's space infrastructure surrender lies not in what has been built, but in what has been abandoned. NASA's scientific missions have revealed the cosmic microwave background radiation that confirms the Big Bang theory, discovered organic compounds on Mars that suggest past habitability, and identified thousands of potentially habitable exoplanets around other stars.
These discoveries represent humanity's greatest intellectual achievements—fundamental advances in understanding our place in the universe. They required patient institutional commitment, international collaboration, and the kind of long-term thinking that markets typically cannot sustain.
The pivot toward Mars colonisation abandons this scientific heritage for spectacle. Rather than expanding human knowledge, resources now flow toward Musk's personal fantasy of escaping Earth's problems by fleeing to another planet. It's a profound diminishment of ambition—from exploring the cosmos to escaping it.
The contrast with China's approach is instructive. While America debates whether to fund the Roman Space Telescope, China has landed rovers on Mars's far side, built a functioning space station, and launched the first satellites of multiple competing constellations. Chinese space scientists publish in leading international journals whilst their American counterparts face unemployment as missions are cancelled.
Reclaiming the commons
The infrastructure hostage crisis in space represents a broader challenge to democratic governance in the technological age. When critical capabilities become private property, public accountability disappears, and society becomes vulnerable to individual caprice.
But the situation isn't irreversible. Congress has begun rejecting the White House's most draconian NASA cuts, with both House and Senate appropriations committees proposing budgets that would restore scientific funding. Nearly 300 NASA employees have signed formal dissent to budget cuts, demonstrating institutional resilience that political pressure cannot entirely suppress.
The Space Force has acknowledged the need to "broaden the diversity of potential vendors," though building alternatives will require sustained political commitment and substantial investment. More fundamentally, it requires recognising that some capabilities are too important for private monopolisation—that space access, like highways or electrical grids, serves public purposes that market incentives alone cannot sustain.
The stakes extend beyond space to the broader question of how democracies can maintain control over critical infrastructure in an age of technological concentration. If America cannot maintain public alternatives to private space monopolies, what prevents similar capture of other essential systems?
In conclusion
That Thursday afternoon when Musk's threat flashed across social media, it lasted only hours before deletion. But in those hours, the architecture of American vulnerability stood exposed: missile defences subject to personal pique, astronauts dependent on corporate goodwill, scientific discovery hostage to private priorities.
Harrison's warning about systems "held hostage to twittering whims" was diagnostic precision masquerading as rhetoric. By surrendering space capabilities to private control, America has engineered a catastrophic design flaw into its most critical infrastructure—creating dependencies that constrain democratic choice and vulnerabilities that adversaries will inevitably exploit.
The universe remains what it has always been: vast, mysterious, filled with questions that could occupy human curiosity for millennia. Black holes spin at the edge of comprehension, exoplanets orbit distant stars that might harbour life, and gravitational waves carry messages from cosmic collisions billions of years past. These discoveries await patient institutional commitment, international collaboration, and the democratic ambition that built NASA's original capabilities.
Whether America participates in these discoveries, or merely serves as a launching pad for one man's escape fantasies, depends on choices made in the coming months. The infrastructure hostage crisis in space is ultimately a crisis of collective will. It demands not just technical solutions, but the recognition that some achievements belong to humanity rather than individuals—and some infrastructure is too important for private ownership.
The alternative—permanent dependence on systems controlled by individuals accountable only to themselves—represents nothing less than the privatisation of the future itself.