Billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday slammed the Biden administration’s $42.5 billion rural high-speed internet plan as an “outrageous waste of taxpayer money” on the heels of media reports that the plan, despite its big budget, failed to provide connectivity to the people.
What Happened: “This government program is an outrageous waste of taxpayer money and is utterly failing to serve people in need,” Musk said. The CEO was responding to a media report from The Washington Times that said that not a single home or business has been connected to new broadband networks nearly three years after President Biden signed the $42.5 billion federal modernization program into law in November 2021.
Musk, who has often criticized Biden as too “old” to serve as President, also opined that “some people” must lose their jobs over the lack of results from the program.
“Wow, that's crazy! Surely some people should lose their jobs over this? If wasting billions isn't enough, what *does* it take!?” the CEO wrote.
The billionaire CEO also agreed with an X user who said the government wasted money and SpaceX’s Starlink could have solved rural America’s connectivity issues for way less money. “True,” Musk said in affirmation to the user.
This comes at a time when SpaceX’s Starlink has been scaled up to cover over 100 countries and over three million users. SpaceX is also doubling down on Starlink’s success so far with a new, cheaper, and smaller version that is more portable and can be carried around in a backpack. Dubbed Starlink Mini, its dish is of the same size as an Apple MacBook, according to documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC.)
Why It Matters: As per the Washington Times report, the project start dates for modernizing rural internet access have been pushed to 2025 and 2026 owing to the slow pace of allocating funds and other red tape.
Musk termed this “insane” and alleged that the Biden administration is wasting money instead of using his company’s products as it is “utterly controlled” by unions at the cost of the American people.
This is not the first time that the CEO has slammed the administration. In May, Musk also slammed the administration for lack of results despite huge investment into EV charging.
The Washington Post, in March, reported that only seven EV charging stations are operational across four states despite the administration allocating $7.5 billion to help build 500,000 EV charging stations in the country by 2030 more than two years ago.
Musk slammed the government over the report and said, "I'm starting to think that the government is … not efficient at spending.”
Relative Success Of Musk’s Companies: Musk's Tesla has its own fast charging network. As of the end of the first quarter, the company had over 6000 supercharger stations around the globe and over 57,000 connectors.
In the U.S., the company currently has over 2,200 public supercharger locations with nearly 26,000 charging ports, according to data from the U.S. Department Of Energy. Earlier this year, the company also opened over 15,000 of its superchargers across North America to non-Tesla EV owners.
SpaceX’s satellite internet segment called Starlink, meanwhile, is currently available across 100 countries and connects over 3 million customers.
Check out more of Benzinga’s Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.
Photo: Musk: Daniel Oberhaus via Flickr; Biden: David Lienemann via the White House
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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