Who is paying for all this? Starlink revenue? I don't think so. To 100x what they've done over the last ten years and also fund it with money they're not being paid by others is implausible. They've got money, but they don't have THAT much money. They'd need to significantly juice up the whole rest of their business to not just be substantially more profitable, but also launch far more payloads. Does that much demand (for SpaceX) to get stuff into space even exist?
More than they're launching now? It's not like a surveillance payload costs dramatically more to launch than a non-surveillance payload. Even the US doesn't have that many satellites to launch.
A fantastic way to break your economy. Even the extra half trillion/year Trump wants to spend on the military is increasing investor concern about buying US treasury bills.
I've seen it suggested that the IPO they're targeting (plus the similarly-timed ones from OpenAI and Anthropic) may be so high as to break the financial system. Investors need to have a trillion dollars available to invest if the stuff being added to the market is going to be worth a trillion dollars.
(Phrased that way because while I hear they're targeting 1.5T valuation that doesn't mean they'll be selling 1.5T of shares).
