The Wall Street Journal reported recently on Elon Musk’s alleged fondness for LSD, cocaine, mushrooms and ketamine. (He previously said he has a prescription for the last one.) The billionaire once took a puff of marijuana on commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast, but that is old and small news compared with reports of illicit substances frequently consumed. Many members of Tesla’s board, the Journal reported, are nervous. But it’s the government that should worry most.
Mr. Musk owns or leads several companies, each of which affords him influence over American life and the country. But it’s his leadership of SpaceX in particular that presents a serious problem. More than 4,500 of the 8,000 or so satellites in the skies today are Starlink satellites launched by Mr. Musk’s SpaceX. The goal is to send up nearly 10 times that number in the near future. This high concentration could provide communications even in remote locations and world flash points.
Starlink has become essential in the Ukraine war, subjecting Ukraine’s fight for survival to Mr. Musk’s sometimes unhelpful whims. Similar scenarios could arise in future conflicts. The undersea cables connecting Taiwan to the world’s communications system are vulnerable, and Starlink could prove critical to repelling an invasion. But Mr. Musk stands to lose from alienating China; last month, more than half of Tesla’s global electric vehicle deliveries were assembled in its Shanghai plant.
Starlink’s newly unveiled Starshield program, by the way, builds and launches sites specifically satisfying the objectives of government clients, including the Defense Department. Right now, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is NASA’s only vehicle for transporting crew to the International Space Station. Its Starship megarocket is key to the agency’s Artemis 3 mission aiming to return humans to the moon. Tesla and its manifold charging stations, meanwhile, are key infrastructure for the energy transition.
That any private individual could wield this degree of economic and political influence is troubling — but it is more alarming when that individual has a tendency, as does Mr. Musk, toward erratic behavior, and more frightening if the individual is abusing drugs that could make him more erratic still. What’s more, the drug use reported by the Journal, says the paper, likely violates the many, and hefty, federal contracts SpaceX has signed: According to Information, SpaceX raked in more than $2.8 billion in deals with the government in a single year.
These rules ought to be enforced consistently. But, so far in his career, Mr. Musk has flouted rules with few consequences.
Remember when he moved markets with an inaccurate 2018 tweet that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share (a weed joke)? His punishment was a fine that was, for Mr. Musk, the relative size of a parking ticket. When, in 2022, he was 11 days late in declaring his possession of a large stake in Twitter, buying stock in the meantime, the omission earned him $156 million. Recently, a Florida judge found “reasonable evidence” that Mr. Musk knew about a flaw in Tesla’s EV autopilot systems but decided to ignore it and that he has been comfortable with marketing as “self-driving” cars that can’t actually drive themselves. The ruling allows a wrongful death suit by a crash victim’s widow to proceed. (Tesla denies fault.)
NASA began conducting random drug tests of SpaceX employees after the episode with Mr. Rogan. Mr. Musk, who holds a security clearance giving him access to classified information, claims that he has been tested, too, and that the results have returned negative. If true, that’s good. The scrutiny should continue, just as people close to him say his drug use does. If the reports are confirmed, government agencies should at the very least consider whether it is wise to renew their contracts or sign on to others.
“Whatever I’m doing, I should obviously keep doing it!” Mr. Musk tweeted this week in response to the latest allegations. Is this country really so desperate for creative thinkers that it must allow this man so much leeway? The country seems to have staked a lot of its future in communications, transportation and exploration on one man — the capricious, careless Mr. Musk. All the more reason for the government to avoid building this type of dependence again.
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