I’m beginning to wonder if reports like this 2002 one about Russian arms dealers are the real reason SpaceX was founded that same year and keeps sticking its nose into conflicts.

…corporate armies, often providing services normally carried out by a national military force, offer specialized skills in high-tech warfare, including communications and signals intelligence and aerial surveillance, as well as pilots, logistical support, battlefield planning and training. They have been hired both by governments and multinational corporations to further their policies or protect their interests.

For example, the South African-born man who founded SpaceX was very well aware that…

Two helicopter gunships piloted by South African mercenaries, for example, altered the balance of war in Sierra Leone in 1999 in favor of the government.

Fast-forward and that South African-born founder of SpaceX has been widely panned for being a Private Military Company (PMC) meddling in the Ukraine war, especially after fraudulently trying to claim he altered the balance (e.g. helped Russia).

SpaceX keeps failing on its supposed “primary” mission to get a rocket to work properly, and yet it is again distracted and diverting resources into another war that seems to involve Russia.

Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, will only be allowed to operate in the Gaza Strip following approval by the Israeli Ministry of Communication. … [The Self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk] has “identified and removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts” since the start of the war.

Related: With all the bluster and bombast of a typical South African mercenary outfit, SpaceX promises to build a time machine to renegotiate all its broken promises to land on Mars by 2018.