SpaceX IPO: Rocketing Profits for the Usual Suspects, Not Humanity
📰 THE STORY: Financial Times reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for a massive IPO, having secured four prominent banks – including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan – to manage the offering, signaling a significant valuation for the space technology company. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: While presented as a private innovation, SpaceX heavily relies on massive government
contracts. Since its inception, NASA and the Pentagon have poured billions into SpaceX. For instance, in 2008, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract for ISS resupply, providing critical capital during its early, less profitable years. This pattern of 'private' innovation being bootstrapped by taxpayer money, only for the profits to be privatized, is a recurring theme in the
military-industrial complex. Remember how the internet itself, ARPANET, was a Pentagon project before commercialization? Double Standard: When governments like China or Russia invest heavily in their state-backed space and tech industries, it's framed by Western media as a sinister concentration of power or a threat to free markets. Yet, when the US military-industrial complex bankrolls 'private'
companies like SpaceX to gain a strategic advantage in space, it's lauded as a testament to free-market innovation. The key difference isn't the state's involvement, but which state's flag is flying. Follow the Money: The banks lining up for this IPO – Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley – are the same behemoths that finance every major facet of the Western imperial machine,