I'm not going to read the article, but here's a gift link.

I thought a couple of years ago he was pressured to put the military-facing part of Starlink into Starshield which he had less control over. But that could be all potemkin.

Starlink, but also SpaceX, I would think - the only safe, non-Russian, non-Chinese method of human spaceflight.

I'm so angry about the sensitive habitat destruction that SpaceX is wreaking on the Texas coast.

But also there is a lot of vague awe towards HAVING A SECURITY CLEARANCE from people who don't have one. Literally millions of people in the US have a security clearance of some sort; I should think it's hundreds of thousands in the UK. But, at least in the UK, there are clearances and clearances. Just because you have one doesn't mean you get to see whatever you want - anything seriously sensitive will be not only held at TOP SECRET but also compartmentalised, and getting at it means a very detailed background check and someone in authority saying "yes he needs to see this specific stuff for his job".

I love this hill to die on for you. Tell me more about how Musk has security clearance that's just right-sized for him.

I'm pretty sure being in secret contact with Putin would get all clearances dropped for anyone not a billionaire.

Being in secret contact with Putin where Putin asks to turn off Starlink in Taiwan as a favor for Xi Jinping no less.

6: I have no idea what clearance Musk has, and I can't read the Atlantic article because it's behind a paywall. If Musk has exactly the right clearance for his needs, then he is probably the only person in the US for whom this is true - the US government hands out TOP SECRET clearances in exchange for coupons off cereal boxes.

Moby gave us all a clearance to read the article. I don't want to have to go to a debriefing afterwards so I haven't clicked through.

I only eat steel-cut oats for breakfast.

10: link doesn't work for me.

Maybe if you went to France or New York.

The Atlantic, where Brexit means Brexit.

the US government hands out TOP SECRET clearances in exchange for coupons off cereal boxes

Matches my experience with government projects.

Two countries separated by a shared internet.

Don't forget shutting off starlink to save Putin ships and reveal ukraines naval drones.

Yeah. I think he's treasonous. Maybe not by a strict legal definition, but morally. Ukraine and ROC are important foreign policy goals and he's deliberately undermining the elected government on both.

Whatever clearance he has, I wonder if the whole (alleged) immigration fraud story ever came up in a background check.

There are clearances, and then there are clearances, in the U.S., too. The article doesn't say which kind Musk has.

The article doesn't say which kind Musk has.

Thank you for your service. (reading the article)

i had a security clearance for a couple of years that required a lengthy investigation with multiple interviews (loooong ass one of me, many of other people that i hope were a lot shorter bc that dude had a heavy hand with the cologne & it wasn't a good smelling one). i can't remember what type of clearance it was but if they are handing those out to a lot of people my god the expense of all those investigators must be staggering. not to mention the cologne budget. the dude seemed personally offended that i my relationships hadn't since high school been with us- born people, & was clearly pissed that i listed one possible sharing of a joint - i think it required him to do a bunch more work to clear me. but everyone insisted i disclose all all all, the worst thing possible would be to not disclose, automatic disqualification, yadda yadda.

my brother had a clearance for the 20 yrs he spent in mil intelligence that also entailed investigators showing up every couple of years asking var questions all seeking to establish whether we had any clue what he did for work or even where the hell he was or had been - nope to both.

maybe we had super duper clearances or else it was the family background of hippie unitarianism that raised red flags.

Yeah, I know people who have that sort of clearance but they're very much in the minority; for most people a security clearance just involves various automated checks (criminal record, bank records, name lookup on various databases) rather than the full-on visit and interview process.

I got an intrusive interview once for a friend in the JAG corps, but I don't actually know what she was doing that made it necessary, maybe it was exciting. But the guy showed up at my office to quiz me about her in person.

She's, considered as a muppet, about halfway between Prairie Dawn and Bert, so I spent most of the interview trying to stifle giggles at the idea of her ever having done anything remotely questionable.

I had no idea that Prairie Dawn was the name of that muppet.

Me neither. And Bert is obviously a Putin spy.

"Prairie Dawn" sounds like the name of a radical separatist group.

ahhh - so all you children of hippie unitarians lurking about - breathe easy as you pursue those stringent security clearance requiring professional opportunities!

27: no, it's clearly a Mormon wife on MomTok with 2 million followers.

My Voyage, by Prairie Dawn Treader

Heh.

This sort of should be in the distraction thread, but this is a sweet article/interview about the Prairie Dawn puppeteer.

https://www.nextavenue.org/the-surprising-history-of-sesame-streets-prairie-dawn/

But the distraction thread is too political (if not in a partisan election way) to be a good distraction!

I enjoyed the article in 32.

I liked 32. It hadn't occurred to me that the Muppets are being operated by people standing up with their arms above their heads - somehow I'd assumed that they were at about table top level and the puppeteers were crouching down.

The point about the US clearance system being huge is very true. "ClearanceJobs" is often the second biggest recruiter by name in a massive database of AI-related job leads I have access to. That's not an employer itself, it's a job board, but the fact there are often literally hundreds of jobs on it in just a few specializations should give you an idea of how big the totality of the thing is.

As I understand it, the point of Starshield is to hive off the DOD and NRO work into what may as well be a nationalized entity.

However it is still weird to say the least that literally every time SpaceX launches a rocket or does nearly anything involving radio spectrum, someone there has to tick a box on FCC Form 442 to deny ever touching teh Drugs while the CEO's brain has been completely consumed by his massive ketamine addiction.