On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-CA) said Elon Musk’s SpaceX should lose some of the approximately $733 million to $770 million federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program grants.
Cooper said, “A group of Democratic congressmen representing the Silicon Valley have written to the White House demanding an investigation into the slowdowns and interruptions to Ukraine’s Starlink service. Joining us now, one of those congressmen.”
He asked, “You write in this letter, quote, Congress and the American public deserve to know who authorized the restrictions, how they were implemented, and whether they were directed by the Trump administration or Elon Musk. I’m wondering, have you received any response from the White House to this request?”
Liccardo said, “No we haven’t. And certainly we’ve heard lots of calls for investigations through this last week and a half. It feels a lot like we’re listening to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” back and forth between the administration and Elon Musk. The truth is, both parties are responsible. Somehow, the Department of Defense decided an oligarch was going to enable the throttling of a critical service. That’s resulting, undoubtedly in the death of Ukrainian civilians who are under a barrage of 2300 drone attacks from Russia in a single week. So, frankly, everyone’s at fault. And Elon certainly got his own explanation. But we need a full investigation and then we need consequences. Elon Musk and Starlink need to lose contracts, starting with the BEAD contracts that currently have hundreds of millions of dollars locked up with the Commerce Department.”
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