FCC Boss Brendan Carr Shamelessly Plugs Elon Musk’s Starlink Like A Dodgy Used Car Salesman
The first Trump FCC tried to give Musk nearly a billion dollars to deliver expensive Starlink access to sometraffic medians and airport parking lots. The Biden FCCclawed back those subsidies, (correctly) worrying that the service couldn't deliver consistent speeds, and arguing (also correctly) that if we're going to spend taxpayer money on broadband, affordable fiber (and fixed wireless and 5G) should be prioritized.
Elon Musk (who purportedlyhates subsidies... while gobbling them up) and Republicansthrew a giant, protracted hissy fit, falsely claiming that the Biden administration was unfairly targeting Musk for retribution. They held a bunch ofshow hearingsand seeded right wing media with bottomless whining about how a billionaire didn't get showered with billions in taxpayer subsidies. You know, populism (?).
So a big part of the second Trump term is making sure that a full-diapered Musk gets all the Starlink taxpayer subsidies he thinks he's owed. That includes trying to hijack a big chunk of the $42.5 billion in infrastructure bill broadband subsidies headed to the states and redirect it to Elon, and away from better, cheaper, more local broadband providers.
But it also apparently involves having the Trump's head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, abuse his professional" position to behave like a used car salesman for Starlink. This week that involved Carr trying to scare the whole of Europe toward using Starlink, by falsely claiming that the only alternative is scary communism:
FCC chair Brendan Carr told the Financial Times that allied western democracies" needed to focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party".
If you're concerned about Starlink, just wait for the CCP's version, then you'll be really worried," he said.
Carr intentionally ignores the fact that, scared away by Musk's erratic and often-unhinged behavior, countries like Ukraine and Germany have increasingly been moving toward using Eutelsat's OneWeb, a European Starlink Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite competitor that's still trying to ramp up satellite launches.
Europe is cooking up its own alternatives, which Carr and Musk obviously don't like. Amazon is also working on Project Kuiper. Canadian Telesat hopes to join the fun. So the idea that Europe will only have two choices for LEO satellite communications - Starlink or communism - is just Carr engaging in xenophobic scare mongering to help Musk sell satellite dishes.
It's also worth noting that Carr routinely likes to fear-monger about China, then fall flat on his face when it comes to real-world policy solutions for real problems.
For example, he spent years and years hyperventilating about TikTok (a company he doesn't regulate), then went obediently quiet when Trump eased off a ban to the benefit of his billionaire buddy. He's also been absent on any push for a useful U.S. privacy law. Carr spent years demanding telecoms rip out Huawei network gear from their networks, only to go quiet when Congress forgot to fund the project.
Carr has also been super keen to help Trump defang federal governance and corporate oversight to the detriment of U.S. security and privacy.
Like the unprecedented recent Chinese hacking of U.S. telecoms made possible, in part, by the kind of mindless deregulation Carr and his friends at AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast prefer. He's spent more time threatening telecoms for not being racist enough than he has on protecting Americans from Chinese hackers. Carr is pure artifice. A clumsy little kid's version of what a serious policymaker might be.
It's also worth reiterating that contrary to what many Republicans andc-tier comedians turned fashy-apologist podcasters imply, Starlink isnot magic. And it comes with a growing list of caveats.
The technology has been criticized forharming astronomical researchand theozone layer. Starlink customer service islargely nonexistent. It'stoo expensivefor the folks most in need of reliable broadband access. The nature of satellite physics and capacity meansslowdowns and annoying restrictions are inevitable, and making it scale to permanently meet real-world demand is expensive and not guaranteed.
So if you're going to dole out taxpayer subsidies, it still makes sense to prioritize driving fiber and wireless into most places, filling in the remaining gaps with satellite. And even then, when you choose a satellite option, you probably want to go the one not being run by a pudding-brained fascist who spends all day sharing racist memes and conspiracy theories on his own ego-boosting propaganda website.