'You Can't Hide': Elon Musk & Space X Are Helping US Intelligence Build the World's Largest Spy Satellite Network
Written by Derrick Broze
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.
SpaceX’s Starlink now has more than 5,000 satellites orbiting Earth 🌎 up from 0 operational satellites at the start of 2019
Here’s what that journey looks like 👀 pic.twitter.com/ZPTXcXOhjg
— Evan (@StockMKTNewz) January 27, 2024
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”.
Prior to joining SpaceX, O’Shaughnessy served with the Air Force, United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) where he was responsible to the President and Secretary of Defense. O’Shaughnessy was also reportedly responsible for the DOD supplying 16,000 medical personnel during the U.S. military National COVID response.
In a 2019 interview with National Defense University Press, O’Shaughnessy discussed the proliferation of low-Earth orbit satellites and the military's relationship with companies like Starlink and One Web. This relationship, he said, is "something our military needs to take advantage of because of not only space access but also the significant decrease in the cost to reach space. We can also take advantage of the capability that’s going to be in LEOs for communications down the road."
O’Shaughnessy called for "an intuitive sensing grid—from undersea, to maritime, to terrestrial, to air, to a space-based layer" which can "ultimately lead to a system of systems".
However, he emphasized that this grid is brought together in a "resilient, redundant architecture" where the military can "effectively command and control" the "networked capabilities" they will have established an "all-domain sensor network, where anything can sense anything".
"Information could be brought into a central data bank where that data could ultimately be used to come up with a defeat solution and that solution could be put independently out to a capability to defeat a threat," O’Shaughnessy imagined.
It's important to note that these statements were made by O’Shaughnessy before he retired from the military and joined SpaceX as an advisor to lead the Starshield program. Now that he has joined the "private sector" he can continue to bring to reality his vision for the military to establish an "all-domain sensor network" as part of an "intuitive sensing grid".
The NRO's History of Scandals: Billions of Dollars Lost, Secrets Stolen, & Invasions of Privacy
A Secret Agency's Secret Budgets Yield Lost Billions, Officials Say, The New York Times headline read in January 1996. The story detailed how the NRO -- which had only been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government four years earlier -- had "lost track of more than $2 billion in classified money" in 1995.
One Senate intelligence committee aide blamed the lost funds on the NRO's "own internal secrecy". More than $1 billion in funds would eventually be found.
"Critics of the reconnaissance office said today that the money had been hidden in several rainy-day accounts that secretly solidified into a 'slush fund'," the Times reported.
Interestingly, the report states that the NRO "operates in the deepest secrecy" more so than any government agency. The Times describes the NRO as more a set of interlocking, compartmentalized groups operating mostly in the dark about what each other is working on. As of 1996, the NRO was running a "$28-billion-a-year 'black budget,' or classified above top secret, for military and intelligence programs".
The Times notes that the NRO's satellites in 1996 were capable of "transmitting detailed images from deep space, eavesdropping on communications and using radar to see through clouds."
One month before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, former Air Force intelligence officer Brian P. Regan was arrested by FBI agents at Dulles International Airport for stealing classified materials from the NRO.
Regan had stolen classified materials, including photographs of Iraqi missile sites and "encoded tactical information" which he accessed through classified networks. The former intelligence officer buried the stolen materials in various underground locations. About 20,000 pages of classified documents, videotapes, and CDs were later found buried underground in Maryland and Virginia's state parks.
The FBI did not disclose whether Regan was able to share the classified materials with other parties, but did claim he wanted to sell the information to Iraq, Libya, and China.
A decade later, in 2012, McClatchyDC released an investigation detailing how the NRO was accused of pressuring its professional polygraphers to obtain intimate details on the private lives of thousands of job applicants and employees.
"The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting confessions of personal or illicit behavior that officials have admonished polygraphers who refused to go after them and rewarded those who did, sometimes with cash bonuses," McClatchy reported at the time.
The confessions collected by the polygraphers include drug use, child abuse, suicide attempts, depression, and sexual preferences. The NRO records the polygraph sessions and stores them in a private database.
McClatchy reviewed hundreds of documents, internal memos, and emails, and found that the NRO was pushing ethical and potential legal boundaries by establishing a database which tracks the number of confessions per applicant or employee and then uses the number of confessions extracted by polygraphers to grade them in annual performance reviews. The NRO was also accused of requiring employees and applicants to take multiple polygraph tests in an effort to obtain details about a wide range of personal behavior.
Bizarrely, while the NRO was reportedly interested in knowing the criminal background of its current and future employees, the agency did not turn over information to law enforcement when a contractor admitted to molesting a child. The contractor was a substitute teacher in Escondido, California and admitted to abusing a third-grade student in 2005. McClatchy reported that the NRO never contacted the Escondido Police Department or the school district where the man had been employed.
Finally, in December 2013 the NRO launched a reconnaissance satellite known as USA-247, NRO Launch 39 or NROL-39. While the launch of these satellites would usually go unnoticed by the general public, NROL-39 generated controversy after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) tweeted the logo of the satellite. The logo featured an animated octopus wrapping its tentacles around the world with the phrase, "Nothing is beyond our reach."
Ready for launch? An Atlas 5 will blast off at just past 11PM, PST carrying an classified NRO payload (also cubesats) pic.twitter.com/ll7s0nCOPg
— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) December 5, 2013
"NROL-39 is represented by the octopus, a versatile, adaptable, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide," says Karen Furgerson, a spokesperson for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). "'Nothing is beyond our reach' defines this mission and the value it brings to our nation and the warfighters it supports, who serve valiently all over the globe, protecting our nation."
Needless to say, the logo and the statement was perceived as insensitive and "tone deaf" following the Snowden leaks which were released only months earlier.
Elon Musk is a Technocrat Not a Hero
With a full understanding of the history of the National Reconnaissance Office, the Starshield program, and the extensive relationship between SpaceX and the military-intelligence networks we can clearly state that Elon Musk is a tool for the Military-Industrial-Complex. Even further, Elon Musk is a Technocrat, a proponent of Technocracy, a system wherein management of governments is handled by technical experts, often involving technology-focused solutions.
Early proponents of Technocracy claimed that the concept would lead to better management of resources and the protection of the planet. However, this system of governance by technological experts and their technology would also involve a loss of privacy, as well as centralization of power and the management of all human behavior. Although the term appears to have been largely forgotten, the technocratic philosophy and influence can be seen everywhere in our modern digital world.
When we examine the world of 2024 we clearly see the signs of technocratic influence. For example, we can see this influence in the wealthiest companies and most influential CEOs. These individuals are running companies that have amassed large amounts of financial wealth, as well as unfathomable amounts of digital data on all of their customers.
From Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, lesser known names at Google and Apple, and, of course, Elon Musk of Tesla/SpaceX/Twitter -- we can see the technocratic ideology. In fact, Elon Musk has assigned himself the title of “technoking” at Tesla, a term similar to the Technocrat's "Technate King".
These men and their colleagues in various technological industries wield immense power through their companies, wealth, and cultural influence. These individuals have enough money, resources, and connections to shape elections, geoengineer the climate, and cause dips in the stock market, to name a few examples. They are the technocrat class of 2024.
Elon Musk is perhaps the most infamous technocrat who is now working directly with President-Elect Trump. He has advocated for implanting chips in human brains, transhumanism, turning Twitter into an "everything in one app" similar to China's WeChat, merging with AI, and is now working directly with the U.S. military and intelligence to develop a classified spy satellite network.
What will it take to educate individuals who profess to love freedom and value privacy to reject Musk's Starlink?
Yes, I like what Elon has done with X, and space; but, I have the same questions regarding eyes in the sky and Constitutional freedoms from search and seizure.