The whole concept is rotten right from the start.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk maintains an extremely close relationship with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr.

Under Carr's leadership, Musk's rocket company has effectively been given carte blanche in its efforts to roll out its orbital Starlink broadband service to more Americans, a glaring conflict of interest that could have profound implications for society.

That's despite concerns over thousands or even millions of satellites cluttering our planet's already extremely busy orbit and the environmentally damaging rocket launches that send them up.

And the space-based network is already starting to experience some major strains — as some experts have long predicted.

"How can Europe compete with that?" I ask myself more and more often (also AI bubble/data centers). Hopefully in the long term.