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\n

North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer<\/a> said Thursday that he had concerns about Elon Musk\u2019s influence over national security matters after Ukraine was blindsided by a disruption of a satellite communications service developed by Musk\u2019s SpaceX.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re putting too many eggs in one company\u2019s basket when it comes to our space assets,\u201d the Republican member of the Armed Services Committee said. He added about Musk that he was concerned about the power<\/a> of \u201cone individual and one company over America’s ability to protect the domain of space, which is a war-fighting domain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cramer received a briefing Thursday from Air Force Secretary Troy Meink that he said focused on getting an update on Starshield \u2014 a military product based on SpaceX\u2019s Starlink technology. Cramer told reporters before the briefing that he wanted Congress and the Pentagon to \u201cpour a lot of resources \u2026 into making sure there’s lots of competition both for satellite production and satellite launch.\u201d \u201cI’m uncomfortable with the potential vendor lock<\/a> in space, and I think the events of the last couple of weeks have demonstrated greater concern, even than just simply cost,\u201d Cramer said.<\/p>\n

Musk has been under days of scrutiny \u2014 including fresh pledges by Democrats to investigate him next year \u2014 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he ordered the recent slowdown in Starshield capabilities<\/a> over the Russia-Ukraine war theater.<\/p>\n

Cramer, asked about the Journal reporting after the closed-door briefing, said that he wasn\u2019t sure if Musk ordered the slowdown and that the \u201cculpability of multiple people … was left somewhat loose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy that I mean, discussions with the president before, discussions with the president after. \u2026 Obviously I don’t think it could have possibly happened without Elon Musk’s knowledge, whether or not you know how supportive he was one way or the other,\u201d Cramer said.<\/p>\n

Cramer added that he believed there could have been a broad misunderstanding within the U.S. government and within SpaceX about how reliant Ukraine was on the satellite technology. But he said it was incumbent that the operation of satellite technology like Starshield must \u201cbe exclusively with the authority of the United States government.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are certain things the government has to do that can’t be so dependent on others,\u201d Cramer said. \u201cAnd fighting wars is one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said Thursday that he had concerns about Elon Musk\u2019s influence over national security matters after Ukraine was blindsided by a disruption of a satellite communications service developed by Musk\u2019s SpaceX. \u201cWe\u2019re putting too many eggs in one company\u2019s basket when it comes to our space assets,\u201d the Republican member of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}