As Elon Musk Becomes the Wealthiest Person Selling to Militaries,
Jeff Bezos Is, And Stays, the Wealthiest Selling to the Public.
16 April 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
The following is from U.S.-Government-(CIA)-approved media (which censors out what it doesn’t want the public to know, and which frames the rest in ways that sustain the public’s belief in the basic goodness of the Government the public are paying taxes to):
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https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/04/15/2026/semafor-flagship-the-next-battleground
18 April 2026
Amazon buys Starlink rival
Amazon will buy satellite company Globalstar for an estimated $11 billion, in an attempt to catch SpaceX’s Starlink in the internet space race. Starlink has 10,000 satellites, a commanding lead over Amazon’s 200-strong Leo constellation; Globalstar has a further 25, but the real prize is control over part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The rights to broadcast on given frequencies are controlled by regulators, and Globalstar has worldwide authorizations to do so on wavelengths used by mobile networks, boosting Amazon’s reach on the satellite cellphone market. Both Amazon and Starlink view this as the next battleground: Starlink is far ahead on space broadband, but has only 650 satellites dedicated to direct-to-phone connections. Amazon has permission for a fleet of 7,000.
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“Are governments the main customers of Starlink?” [Google AI on 15 April 2026]
AI Overview
Governments are rapidly becoming the primary and most significant customers for Starlink, particularly concerning national security and strategic infrastructure. While serving millions of residential users, SpaceX holds billions in government contracts, with the U.S. Department of Defense (via Starshield) and international agencies being major revenue drivers and users for defense and emergency services.
Wikipedia
+1
Key Aspects of Government vs. Private Usage:
Growing Government Reliance: The U.S. government, including the military and federal agencies, is heavily expanding its use of Starlink, with significant contracts for defense applications, specifically using the “Starshield” variant.
Massive Contracts: Reports indicate substantial investment from government agencies, with billions of dollars in contracts.
Infrastructure Support: Governments utilize Starlink for providing internet to remote, hard-to-reach areas, such as the Alaskan coastline or in other nations, which often involves government procurement.
Mixed Customer Base: Despite the growing government reliance, Starlink still maintains a large consumer base (roughly 5 million+ users) and commercial clients, including airlines and cruise ship operators.
Strategic Importance: The reliance on this technology is so significant that some entities, such as the Space Development Agency (SDA), use Starlink as a foundational technology.
Starlink
+6
In summary, while Starlink serves many commercial and residential users, its reliance on and service to government entities make them critical, primary customers for the company’s long-term business strategy.
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No, governments are not the main customers of Starlink, though they represent a rapidly growing and highly significant part of its business. Starlink’s primary customer base consists of millions of residential users around the world.
NBC News
+3
As of April 2026, Starlink has more than 9 million active customers globally. While the bulk of these are individual households in rural or underserved areas, the company has diversified into several massive commercial and government sectors:
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1. Consumer & Commercial Use (The Majority)
The majority of Starlink’s revenue and user count comes from its standard “Residential” and “Roam” (RV) plans. Major commercial partners also include:
Fierce Network
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Commercial Airlines: United Airlines and several other carriers use Starlink to provide high-speed Wi-Fi to tens of millions of passengers annually.
Cruise Lines: The three largest cruise ship operators globally utilize the service for their fleets.
Shipping & Maritime: Thousands of commercial vessels use specialized maritime terminals for deep-sea connectivity.
NBC News
+1
2. Government & Military Usage (The High-Value Growth)
While not the largest in terms of sheer user numbers, government contracts provide billions in revenue and high-stakes visibility:
Starshield: SpaceX developed a specialized military version of Starlink called Starshield for the Department of Defense (DoD). It is designed for national security applications like secure communications and Earth observation.
Civil Agencies: U.S. federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, and the GSA, have increasingly adopted Starlink as a primary network for remote sites.
Rural Broadband Grants: Starlink is a major beneficiary of government programs aimed at bridging the digital divide, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to connect hundreds of thousands of rural locations.
FedScoop
+6
3. Geopolitical Significance
Governments also interact with Starlink as regulators or strategic partners. The service has become a critical tool in conflict zones (e.g., Ukraine) and for circumventing state-led internet shutdowns (e.g., Iran, Myanmar).
Wikipedia
+4
Would you like to know more about the specific military capabilities of Starshield or how Starlink’s pricing for governments compares to residential plans?
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Yes.
Starshield is a militarized offshoot of Starlink specifically designed for national security and defense applications. While it leverages the same basic satellite technology as Starlink, it functions as a distinct, highly secure architecture.
Wikipedia
+2
1. Military Capabilities
Starshield focuses on three primary mission areas defined by SpaceX:
Secure Communications: It provides “high-assurance” global communications with additional cryptographic capabilities to host classified payloads and process data securely.
Earth Observation: Starshield satellites can be equipped with sensing payloads to deliver processed imagery and reconnaissance data directly to government clients.
Hosted Payloads: The Starshield satellite bus (the main body of the satellite) is modular, allowing the military to attach its own custom hardware, such as sensors for missile warning or radio intercepts.
Resilience & Interoperability: These satellites include laser terminals to communicate directly with other military satellites, creating a “mesh network” that is much harder to jam or disable than traditional systems.
SpaceX
+6
2. Pricing Comparison
Government and military pricing is significantly higher than residential plans, primarily due to specialized service requirements.
Residential Plans: As of April 2026, Starlink’s residential offerings typically range from $40 to $120 per month. Hardware kits for consumers have dropped as low as $199 during recent promotions.
Government/Starshield Pricing: While exact per-terminal monthly fees for classified military use are not public, the total contract values are massive.
Classified Contracts: SpaceX reportedly entered a $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for a spy satellite swarm.
Service Tiers: For non-military civil agencies, Starlink is offered through General Services Administration (GSA) contracts. These plans often include strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and prioritized data that command a premium over standard $120/month residential rates.
Revenue Impact: By 2026, total government contract revenue for SpaceX is projected to reach approximately $7 billion, with Starshield alone accounting for roughly $3.2 billion of that total.
Wikipedia
+8
Would you like to explore the specific agencies currently using Starshield or more details on the Gen 2 satellites that power these capabilities?
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Yes.
While Starlink has over 9 million active users as of April 2026, the government and military division, Starshield, is rapidly becoming a multibillion-dollar pillar of SpaceX’s business, with projected 2026 revenue of approximately $3.2 billion.
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Key Agencies Using Starshield
Starshield is primarily managed by national security agencies rather than civil ones, focusing on high-stakes defense missions.
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO): The primary operator of the Starshield network. It utilizes the satellites for a “proliferated” system of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). The NRO reportedly signed a $1.8 billion contract for this classified network.
U.S. Space Force: Directs a significant portion of Starshield contracting through its Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO). The Space Force uses the network for secure, low-latency military communications and data transport.
Space Development Agency (SDA): Collaborates with SpaceX to field large constellations for missile warning and tracking.
U.S. Navy & Air Force: The Navy is integrating Starshield into Gulfstream G550 (C-37) aircraft for executive lift and secure mobile connectivity. The Air Force has also conducted pilot programs for technical validation of Starshield connectivity.
Army Reserve: Soldiers use the technology for faster field communications during training and active missions.
SAM.gov
+9
Gen 2 Satellites: The Technical Backbone
The move to Gen 2 (Starlink 2.0) satellites is what truly enables these advanced government capabilities.
Increased Bandwidth & Size: Gen 2 satellites are much larger and more powerful than the original constellation. They offer 3–4 times more usable bandwidth per satellite, crucial for high-definition surveillance data.
In-Space Laser Links: Unlike early Starlink versions, Gen 2 includes standard laser terminals that allow satellites to communicate with each other and interoperate with existing military satellites. This creates a secure, global “mesh network” that doesn’t rely on local ground stations in hostile territory.
High-Assurance Security: Gen 2 is designed with enhanced cryptographic capabilities specifically to meet the Department of Defense’s requirements for hosting classified payloads.
Direct-to-Cell Capability: A key feature of the Gen 2 bus is its ability to beam service directly to unmodified mobile phones, which has significant implications for emergency and military field operations.
SpaceX
+5
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MY COMMENTS:
Almost everybody already knows that Elon Musk is a neocon (pro-U.S.-empire). What few know is that Jeffrey Bezos (like virtually all U.S. billionaires) also is. He owns the Washington Post. He also controls Amazon, which since 2014 has been doing all the cloud computing for the Pentagon and CIA, which turned Amazon profitable at long last, and has kept it so. On 30 January 2020, Geek Wire bannered “Amazon Web Services makes nearly 67% of Amazon’s operating profit in blockbuster quarter”. Bezos’s Washington Post is likewise reliably neoconservative. For example, on 15 September 2015, it bannered “One in five Syrians say Islamic State is a good thing, poll says”, as if that were alarming. 22% of Syrians, in a poll by the British firm of ORB International, (formerly WIN/Gallup) agreed with the statement “Islamic State is a positive influence.” But 78% disagreed with it. That’s far more important. And, buried at the bottom of the WP article was the fact that 82% of Syrians (comprising, of course, mainly the 78% who disliked IS) agreed with the statement “IS is US and foreign made group.” They blamed the U.S. for ISIS and they loathed ISIS. That would have been a better headline, but serving the newspaper’s subscribers weren’t as important to Mr. Bezos as was serving himself and the rest of the military-industrial complex are. Which he did and does.
However, now he is also going after the consumer market, aiming to come to dominate that, just as Musk now dominates the government market.
Incidentally, the CIA made Google. So, what’s mega-corporate is controlled by our billionaires, who constitute America’s Deep State, which includes both the Republican and the Democratic billionaires
This is an important reason, for example, why, when both AP and Yahoo News headlined on April 13th, “Dozens arrested as protesters demand Schumer and Gillibrand block sale of bombs to Israel,” the vast majority of the reader-comments on both sites were favorable to Trump’s sending Israel 12,000 1,000-pound bombs and 10,000 500-pound bombs to destroy whatever they want to destroy (Palestine, south Lebanon, and Iran), and condemned the demonstrators and their demonstrations against it. This despite the facts that polls show that a majority of the U.S. public actually are now favorable toward Iran and the Palestinians (and 60% of Americans now view Israel negatively) against both the U.S. and Israel in both wars, and only 27% of Americans support Trump’s February 28th invasion of Iran. So, Americans who care enough about the issue to post at Yahoo or at AP a comment about it are extremely unrepresentative of the broader U.S. public, who likely would support the demonstrators against Trump and those Democratic Senators who back his policy on this. The passionate ones are angry against the demonstrators, not against their own Government, and they view this as being a partisan matter between Republicans and Democrats, instead of between the U.S. government and the public. The passionate ones are far likelier to go to the polls and vote on November 3rd, and they still believe the lie created by operatives such as Robert Mueller that “Iran is the top state-sponsor of terrorism,” and the lie that the war between Israel and the Gazans was started by the Gazans on October 7th of 2023 instead of started by U.S. President Harry Truman’s creation of Israel on 14 May 1945 and the Zionist Israelis in that new Jewish-apartheid nation he had created, who then promptly began the “Nakba” or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians the next day. The passionate ones still see these issues as Democrats and Republicans against each other, instead of as their billionaires versus the entire public, against each other. This keeps the billionaires safe while the public are ever-increasingly fighting each other, and so prevents there being a Second American Revolution. The Americans who oppose what Trump is doing tend to be far less passionate about it than his supporters are, but neither side recognizes that BOTH of America’s Parties represent the billionaires against the public. The billionaires forbid this to be published in their media, because they want to protect themselves.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
We are perpetually at war because war is profitable. The entire arms industry and military intelligence industry should be nationalized. The average American taxpayer last year contributed $4,000 to the war machine. And the annual military budget just went up to $1.5 trillion. When you complain about your taxes being too high, this is the reason. It's also why government services that in the words of our Constitution "promote the general welfare" keep getting cut.