In a move that absolutely everyone could have seen coming, the White House now has Starlink. Don’t worry, though; Elon Musk didn’t sent a broccoli-haired teen onto the White House roof to install a terminal the federal government had paid for. According to the White House, Musk donated it and even checked with an ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office before doing so, the New York Times reports. If you’re concerned about security, though, don’t be. The White House’s official position is that it “did not consider this matter a security incident or security breach.”
Under previous administrations, Clare Martorana, a former White House chief information officer, told the NYT people weren’t allowed to simply gift tech products to the government. And if someone wanted to introduce new tech, it would have to be vetted by the chief information officers at both the White House and General Services Administration. You know, because of national security and international spies and all that. Allegedly, the DOGE staffer in question worked with the White House’s IT office in some capacity before installing Starlink, but it isn’t clear whether any security vetting was actually done or if either CIO signed off on it.
Don’t worry, though, it’s probably secure. The White House just had crappy wifi, and Elon needed to fix it.
Secret Service alert
Some will point to the way Chris Stanley, the DOGE staffer in question, who went about installing the Starlink terminal as proof of Musk’s reckless disregard for national security, but you have to remember, he only hires the nation’s top minds. While I, an idiot, only went to Georgia Tech, Stanley graduated from the far superior Kentucky State. The TSLA shorts in the Secret Service, however, reportedly didn’t appreciate him opening a door onto the roof of the White House’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building without coordinating it with them first, since doing so activated an alarm that left uniformed officers rushing to respond to what they believed to be an imminent security threat.
It wasn’t, of course. Nothing Elon Musk has done in the White House since he joined as an unpaid “special government employee” creates a national security risk for the U.S. in any way, and we should be thanking him for fixing the terrible Democrat wifi that Biden made everyone use. Sure, the White House already has fiber internet, Space Internet is better because it’s in space. Spacelopnik approves of doing things in space.
Cybersecurity experts are also probably Tesla shorts
Some will also question how secure Starlink is and whether foreign governments may find a way to use it to spy on the U.S. For example, Jake Williams, a vice president for research and development at the cybersecurity firm Hunter Strategy, told the NYT that “[i]t’s super rare” to replace government infrastructure that’s already been vetted and secured with Starlink or other new internet tech. “I can’t think of a time that I have heard of that,” he said, presumably grinning as he checked his phone to see how much richer shorting Tesla was making him. “It introduces another attack point. But why introduce that risk?”
An unnamed White House official also told the NYT the Secret Service was initially worried Musk will run his Starlink install through already secure hard wires it and other federal agencies use, but it’s currently running on a different data hub. So see? No problems whatsoever. Plus, this is an Elon Musk product we’re talking about here. Musk-tier security is on another level that foreign governments couldn’t even begin to comprehend. If anything, Musk communicating over Starlink while gutting the federal government’s ability to regulate anything makes us more secure, not less. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just spreading FUD.
