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1 week ago | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma
In the Sahel region of West Africa, an ascendant jihadist group is using Starlink, SpaceX's high-speed satellite internet service, to increase its operational capabilities, recruiting, and fundraising.
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1 month ago | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma |Judd Legum
"Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion."That was the cut to federal spending promised by Elon Musk at a Trump campaign rally in late October. As he defined the objectives of the Department of Government Efficiency for the first time that day, Musk was shooting from the hip. The centibillionaire was supposed to commit to a $1 trillion cut, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who helped plan the speech. But Musk doubled the number in a moment of fervor.
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2 months ago | 
open.substack.com | Caleb Ecarma
Not long after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Elon Musk’s $7 billion tunneling company registered as a small business on a government portal for federal contractors. The Boring Company registered with the System for Award Management portal, better known as SAM.gov, on November 12, 2024, exactly one week after Trump’s victory. Some federal government contracts are designated only for qualified small businesses.
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2 months ago | 
open.substack.com | Caleb Ecarma
Elon Musk announced on Friday that xAI, his artificial intelligence company, had purchased his social media platform X. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” he wrote on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution, and talent.
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Mar 10, 2025 | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma
In an affidavit filed in federal court on Friday, a former senior civil servant at the Social Security Administration (SSA) detailed how deputies for Elon Musk forced their way into the agency, formed a clandestine unit, and gained access to its most sensitive databases.
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Mar 7, 2025 | 
open.substack.com | Caleb Ecarma
Every time the U.S. DOGE Service (DOGE) has updated its “wall of receipts,” an online database where it reports the money it has supposedly saved taxpayers, massive new errors have emerged. Last week was no different. DOGE claimed credit for saving $53.7 million by cancelling U.S. Coast Guard contracts that were fulfilled in 2006 and 2011 and a Treasury Department contract that was axed when former President Joe Biden was still in office, according to the New York Times.
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Mar 3, 2025 | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma
In a series of social media posts last month, White House advisor and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called for deorbiting the International Space Station (ISS) as soon as 2027. “The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible,” Musk wrote on X. Although NASA intends to operate the ISS through 2030, Musk argued the station “has served its purpose” and should be supplanted by his dream of colonizing Mars.
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Feb 18, 2025 | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma
Meta removed an advertisement earlier this month criticizing Elon Musk’s use of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to seize Americans' private information. "A single individual now controls sensitive U.S. data, risking our national security. Urge Congress to enforce strict oversight," read the rejected Facebook ad purchased by Ekō, a watchdog group that says it is committed to curbing corporate power.
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Feb 17, 2025 | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma
When Elon Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, the pair was seated in front of the American and Indian flags, an arrangement that typically accompanies a meeting between world leaders. Formalities were curtailed slightly by Musk bringing along three of his young children and their mother, Shivon Zilis, who is also an executive at one of Musk’s companies, Neuralink.
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Feb 11, 2025 | 
muskwatch.com | Caleb Ecarma
Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched an image-sharing website in 2021 that featured custom “shitposting” web addresses that redirected to content hosted on his site. URLs that redirected to Coristine’s site referenced the sale of child sexual abuse material, racial slurs, and rape. Among the links were “child-porn.store” and “kkk-is-cool.club,” according to web traffic tracked by BuiltWith.
