Texas Politicians Slowly Realize Elon Musk Hijacked Billions In Taxpayer Broadband Grants

Texas Politicians Slowly Realize Elon Musk Hijacked Billions In Taxpayer Broadband Grants from the even-the-corruption-is-bigger-in-texas dept Back in June I wrote a feature for The Verge about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare. But wait! It gets dumber and more corrupt! Originally, Congress set aside $42.5 billion in taxpayer money in the infrastructure bill to spend on broadband upgrades. But after shoveling a large chunk of that money to two billionaires for slower satellite networks they already planned to build without subsidization, Trump Republicans claimed they’d “saved” taxpayers $21.5 billion dollars in “non-deployment funds” that appear to have mysteriously fallen into a deep hole in the federal government. Obviously states are pissed off, and have been waiting for much of the last year for the Trump administration to green light that money for the purpose Congress earmarked it for. But wary of upsetting the Trump administration, many haven’t been willing to publicly comment on how stupid this all is for fear of losing out on their promised money. But they’re getting increasingly pissed all the same. That includes Texas, which was slated to get the most “BEAD” (Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment) funds ($3.3 billion) of any state in the country. Over the last month or two there’s been a growing, bipartisan annoyance in the Lone Star state at the fact that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos appeared to have hijacked billions of dollars originally slated for fiber optics for their satellite ventures. That’s forced the Texas Broadband Deployment Office (BDO) to put all grant awards on hold while the state investigates questions of cronyism and favoritism at the agency: “When Texas was awarded more than $3 billion to expand broadband services to every corner of the Lone Star state, broadband advocates celebrated. Fast-forward four years, and that same pool of money has become the subject of tense speculation. Lawmakers have lobbed allegations of favoritism to companies — namely Elon Musk’s Starlink — that are set to receive federal money from an official state office.” I predicted this would happen, and warned repeatedly as it was happening, for whatever good it did. But as belated awareness dawns, anger in Texas appears to be quite bipartisan and the fingers are very much starting to be pointed: “I have my eye on y’all regarding the way y’all are conducting your business,” [Republican Texas State Senator Charles Schwertner, told BDO director Bryant Clayton]. “I don’t care who’s messing with your business, but we, as an oversight committee, are going to oversee it regarding fairness and transparency.” This is all going to get worse. Billions directed to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service is money directed away from local area businesses that deploy faster, more reliable, and more future-proof fiber optics. There’s also the fact that as customers get shoveled toward Starlink by the government, the network’s congestion and capacity problems are only going to get worse. Starlink is great for folks in the middle of nowhere with no other options, but the nature of satellite physics means it simply can’t scale to meaningfully cover U.S. broadband needs in any serious way, regardless of what Musk’s fraud-riddled IPO prospectus claims. And that’s bad for a company notable for not really having any notable customer service. To be clear, many Republicans helped Musk here simply because they’re corrupt. But many others, enamored with Musk’s crumbling reputation as an innovative tech genius, genuinely appear to believe that Starlink is some sort of magic pixie dust they could just sprinkle over U.S. broadband woes, then run off with the “savings” they’d magically created by being so forward thinking. The problem for them is that congressional law dictated that the entire $42.5 billion in infrastructure bill grants was supposed to be spent on broadband. The other problem is that as constituents in states across America get congested, expensive Starlink service (which again, they could have already gotten without subsidizing it) instead of gigabit fiber, the backlash is only going to grow. It’s important to remember that Republicans spent all last election season complaining that this BEAD program was a bureaucratic hellscape they were going to immediately fix once in office. Instead they redirected billions to billionaires, eliminated any provisions requiring the broadband be equitably deployed and affordable, hijacked $21. billion for what they clearly hope will be their own personal use, and created years of additional delays due to corruption and bureaucracy. Folks like Ezra Klein, who helped Republicans parrot BEAD concerns in 2024, have been nowhere to be found since. I’m not so naive as to think Musk will face any serious penalties for hijacking billions in taxpayer money for projects he’d already planned to build. But as the public and political awareness dawns of what a gargantuan mess Republicans made out of this program, I do think more than a few heads (belonging to bodies in lower tax brackets) will roll. Filed Under: bead, broadband, charles swertner, corruption, elon musk, jeff bezos, subsidies, texas Companies: starlink Comments on “Texas Politicians Slowly Realize Elon Musk Hijacked Billions In Taxpayer Broadband Grants” Physics FO as terrestrial links is less costly than LEO RF (or lasers) but the “physics” don’t make one preferable over the other. IF money is no object than LEO RF is a better option. IF money IS a factor then terrestrial FO will have more bw and no launches and lower cost to deploy all day long. It is, however, not immune to natural disasters (e.g earthquakes, ground fault, and not the electrical kind) and idiot monkeys on backhoes. Respectfully, Musk and Bezos are pieces of shit, but their corporations have their own governing boards, C-suite people, ops people, and design/build people. So while they are a blight on our universe and have a hand in taking our money for their use… the blame should rest on those who give the grifters, and then on the grifters, not their majority rich stockholder. If I had my druthers I’d go for unmolested LEO BW vs FO. I trust outer space more than the backhoe monkeys Xfinity has working for them. Odds are space will work until the birds fail but new ones in a similar plane can be retasked. E NB I use monkeys as indicative of ‘not fully developed brains’ as applied to heavy machine operators. Not at all racist. Zero accountability Falsify or destroy records to funnel Billions into his buddies pockets, for quite possibly a few million in kickbacks, check. Only when individual states realize they’re missing THEIR (congressionally allocated) money from BEAD does anyone outside the WH or 2 main recipients (Musk, and Bezos) notice. There will be ZERO penalties, and ZERO accountability for either of these clowns, or their trained circus dogs in this maladministration. Fraud Waste and Abuse at it’s lowest, condoned and directly assisted from the remains of the White House. "Lawmakers have lobbed allegations of favoritism . . ." I wonder if Texas Republicans will realise by November 2028 that Trump’s regime is not on their side and never has been. It does share some of their prejudices, but is only interested in its own benefit, not theirs.