Starlink was also promised around $2.3 million in government assistance by USAID — an agency Musk has called "evil" and "a criminal organization" that needs to "die" — apparently as part of an infrastructure program in Macedonia.
To be clear, Musk’s companies — SpaceX and Tesla have been asked for comment for this story — are providing real services to the U.S. government, and those services cost money.
The bulk of the rest of SpaceX's contracts are with the Department of Defense, which has promised $5.6 billion and offered a maximum future payout of $32.8 billion.
While their boss takes a sledgehammer to federal agencies, SpaceX and Tesla are earning big money from government contracts, writes Io Dodds.
Yet according to federal data analyzed by The Independent, Musk's own companies have been promised or awarded nearly $21 billion by the U.S. government since 2008.
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