Elon Musk appears to be laying the groundwork to privatize some space and satellite operations now under the authority of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), or steer lucrative contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency employees say.
They’re sounding the alarm as at least four other federal agencies have reportedly begun pushing new contracts toward Musk’s Starlink satellite internet company. Musk, the world’s richest man, has been tasked by Donald Trump with drastically slashing the federal government workforce and costs.
The situation raises conflict of interest questions for one of Trump’s closest allies who backed him with millions of dollars of funding in the 2024 election. Musk boasts that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) “slashes spending”, but critics say he’s using his position to steer government funding toward his companies.
Noaa could offer the biggest prizes yet for Musk, presenting the opportunity for SpaceX to have a commanding financial advantage in a commercial US space market expected to grow to a value of nearly $2tn in value over the next decade. Already Doge likely has access to competitors’ confidential business information at Noaa, former employees at the agency say.
More importantly for the public, it would put control of the nation’s communications infrastructure in the hands of a rightwing billionaire. Noaa’s activity quietly touches the basic functions of daily life, and everything from dependable cellphone service to how Americans connect to the internet to weather forecasting is at stake, five former Noaa employees who spoke with the Guardian said.
“There’s a lot of smoke but we’re not sure where the fire is yet,” a former employee said. “We’re waiting to see when the next shoe drops.”
In the wake of a firing spree that gutted some Noaa space operations, Donald Trump Jr’s investment firm stoked speculation by purchasing $50m worth of SpaceX shares. Noaa operates as part of the US commerce department and is responsible for a range of economic activity relied upon by the public. Musk’s Doge team has laid off about 1,300 Noaa staff so far.
SpaceX primarily launches rockets and satellites for Musk and national governments. Starlink, meanwhile, has nearly 6,000 satellites in low-earth orbit and provides satellite broadband internet service and military communications to at least 2.7 million people in 100 countries.
SpaceX is the biggest player in the private space industry and several former Noaa employees praised the company as an often good partner prior to Musk’s attack on the agency. The space technology company had strong momentum prior to the new Trump administration, making it difficult to parse what is legitimate business and what could be construed as corruption, former employees said.
A new emergency Freedom of Information Act request for communications among Noaa offices and Doge in part seeks to shine some light on those questions. The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) request noted that privatization of the agency has long been a goal of the right and was called for in the Project 2025 rightwing playbook. The move “is driven by greed and corruption”, Peer’s executive director, Tim Whitehouse, said.
“The danger is that Musk’s enterprises could morph into government-sponsored monopolies that would operate with no fear of antitrust prosecution,” Whitehouse added.
New contracts for Starlink
Leadership for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered staff in February to find tens of millions of dollars in funding for new Starlink contracts, Rolling Stone reported. The FAA is in the process of updating ageing air traffic control networks and last year awarded a $2.4bn contract to Verizon, but Starlink has already edged into the process.
At the US Government Services Administration, Doge ordered federal staff to use Starlink for internet services, an employee told NBC News. Another agency plans to contract with Starlink, according to a federal employee familiar with the situation who spoke with NBC News. Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection recently authorized an evaluation of Starlink to help monitor the border.
Gutting space traffic control
The nascent space traffic coordination program manages thousands of satellites, debris and spacecraft, and helps prevent up to 50,000 near-collisions, called conjunctions, daily. Starlink accounts for a large number of those.
Called the Traffic Coordination System for Space (Traccs), the program would also eventually provide launch and re-entry services for commercial satellites and spacecraft, former employees said. Musk’s company already works closely with Traccs, but the program has avoided “vendor lock” and contracts with multiple companies, in no small part because Musk’s agenda may not always align with the nation’s, one former official said.
“SpaceX is a great service provider, but as long as he’s in control of the company it’s not anything that can be counted on,” a former Noaa employee said.
Those who spoke with the Guardian said it didn’t appear that SpaceX had any interest in privatizing or taking over Traccs prior to Trump’s re-election, but Musk’s Doge fired all but one Traccs member – in effect crippling a sorely needed operation. That could open the door for privatization, and SpaceX is best positioned.
“They discover something is broken and conveniently say: ‘Oh, we can fix this,’” a former Noaa employee said.
Weather forecast privatization
Noaa satellites in lower-earth orbit are largely utilized to forecast weather three to seven days out, and the data is given for free to weather forecasting providers such as AccuWeather, and utilized in aviation, shipping, defense and other critical industries.
Some companies want to profit off the data, and few are better positioned than Musk’s to land contracts or take over. But private industry’s data and forecasts are of extremely poor quality compared to those from the Noaa, a former employee said.
Noaa weather satellites have redundancies and fail-safes intentionally built in, and huge effort is put into calibrating them with weather on earth: Noaa flies planes into storms to confirm that the data its satellites are providing is accurate, for example.
The data is “highly reliable, 24/7, no breakdowns, no ifs, ands or buts”, a former agency employee said. If Noaa satellites fail, explode or crash, they added, then people who rely on that data may die, or serious economic damage may be inflicted.
“The risk of having outages is so significant because that data is used all the time for everything, and for far more than people realize,” a former employee said.
Musk, by contrast, has a mission of eliminating redundancies and finding efficiencies, and former agency employees noted his rockets and satellites have a history of crashing and exploding.
Meanwhile, Noaa monitors space weather, including solar flares, coronas and radiation, and geomagnetic storms that can damage the electric grid and telecommunications on earth and beyond. That could have implications for Musk’s well-known plans to colonize Mars.
“If you’re serious about sending people to Mars, then you have to be able to monitor and respond to space weather,” an employee said.
Radio frequency
SpaceX, telecom giants and other industries are lobbying the federal government to auction off valuable bands on the radio frequency spectrum – the electromagnetic waves that enable wireless communication, including among the military, the CIA, Noaa and their satellites.
The obscure function is essential to a wide range of commercial activities, such as cellphone use, and industry “wants to get their hands on all that they can” because it’s a finite resource, a former agency employee said.
A large part of Noaa’s forecasts stem from its satellites monitoring water vapor movement in the atmosphere, and the agency owns the radio frequencies at which vapor vibrates. If the Musk-aligned FCC sells bands too close to that frequency, potential interference could impede satellite function and disrupt reliable weather forecasting and cellphone use.
“Starlink wants more and more spectrum, and you hope [the FCC] would not be stupid enough to auction off the bands next to where water vibrates, but … I wouldn’t put it past anybody,” an employee said.
