SpaceX Has Already Infiltrated The Agency That Regulates It

In the weeks since Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, he's set his pet billionaire Elon Musk loose on a whole host of government services and departments. Under the guise of his Department of Government Efficiency, Musk and his cronies rolled out cuts on budgets, staffing, and services, impacting everything from national parks to foreign aid. Now, it turns out that Musk's department sent engineers to the Federal Aviation Administration, which is the government agency that's currently probing his rocket company.

The FAA opened investigations into SpaceX after a rocket exploded over the Caribbean last month and another probe was opened after a launch was delayed when a commercial jet drifted into its airspace. Space X also faced questions over its launch practices and the safety of its StarLink network of orbiting satellites.

You might think, then, that a few degrees of separation between Musk's rocket company and the FAA is essential to ensure impartiality and safety across the board. You'd be wrong, as Musk has already deployed engineers from SpaceX to the FAA, according to Wired:

On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. "The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter," Musk replied. "SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer."

By the time these posts were made, though, according to sources who were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation, SpaceX engineers were already being onboarded at the agency under Schedule A, a special authority that allows government managers to "hire persons with disabilities without requiring them to compete for the job," according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The appointment of engineers from SpaceX comes when the U.S. is in the midst of one of its deadliest periods in aviation for more than a decade, after three separate crashes resulted in more than 70 fatalities.

The SpaceX engineers on the ground at the FAA are reportedly "special government employees" who have been granted tours of the facilities. Wired also reports that FAA acting administrator Chris Rocheleau said the team would be tasked with engineering "solutions while we keep the airspace open and safe."

That's all well and good, but it appears as though the newest hires at the FAA were not "fully vetted by their start date," Wired adds. At least the new hires have some experience of the systems they're dealing with, unlike the appointees who have found themselves in charge of gutting other government departments:

[Ted] Malaska is currently, according to his LinkedIn profile, a senior director of application software at SpaceX, where he started working in May 2021. Formerly the senior director of data engineering at Capitol One and a senior architect at FINRA, he graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2000 and cowrote a 2015 book on Hadoop application architectures.

[Thomas] Kiernan is currently a lead software engineer at SpaceX, according to his LinkedIn page. Before joining SpaceX in May 2020, he worked at Wayfair and is a 2017 Dartmouth graduate.

[Sam] Smeal is a software engineer who has worked at SpaceX since September 2021, according to his LinkedIn. He graduated from Saint Vincent College in 2018.

So far, the new employees from SpaceX have toured FAA sites such as the Command Center and Potomac TRACON, which Wired explains is a facility that controls the airspace around D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

With four SpaceX engineers now installed at the agency that's currently investigating their employer, it's reasonable to be concerned that Musk may use his influence over the FAA to sweep any investigations into his private rocket company under the rug.

So far, the FAA has fined SpaceX more than $600,000 for violations relating to its rocket launches in the U.S., explains explains The Independent. Musk also previously called for former FAA administrator Michael Whitaker to resign.

Suspicions stepped up a notch last month, when United States secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, pledged to review the fines imposed on SpaceX during his Senate confirmation hearing. Isn't it handy what a mere $250 million donation to a presidential election can bring you just a few short months later.

Before Duffy can begin looking into the fines, there's the small matter of American aviation safety that needs addressing following a spate of crashes in U.S. airspace. To try and rectify the issues that led to these incidents, Duffy has sent–you guessed it–Elon Musk out into the world to try and clean up the FAA and its air traffic control systems.