The A&N thread on DOGE coming for Booz Allen Hamilton puts a thought in my head that has probably been better articulated in previous pages of this thread, but still, I felt like commenting on it.
DOGE is already auditing NASA. They have a DOGE Team Lead sitting in the A-suite at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Therefore, DOGE is in a position now to tell NASA to cancel contracts, task orders, and awards it deems non-essential or discriminatory by nature. SpaceX is, of course, NASA's second-largest contractor, but they also have contracts with companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, Quantum Aerospace, and so forth...
You see the problem: these are all SpaceX's direct competitors in the aerospace industry. If Elon is now in a position to decide what government contracts his competitors should and should not have, that seems like a serious anticompetitive practice. Penalties for anticompetitive practices can range from fines to outright debarment and suspension from government awards. Is that likely to happen to SpaceX? Probably not, under this administration, but if I were Lockheed or Northrop and I found out that even
one of my contracts was terminated after it was deemed "non-essential" by DOGE, I'd be lawyering up by lunchtime.
So it's really a question of just how carefully Elon wants to proceed with NASA. His friend Jared Isaacman is poised to become the new NASA Administrator within (I think) the next month or two, and I can't imagine they're diametrically opposed on this approach, but in their shoes, I would be very, very careful with that agency more than any other. It's one thing to bully the - let's face it - very bullyable federal workforce, and make them write redundant status e-mails and sit in their grungy, aging buildings five days a week. It's another when you start costing your peers in the private sector their business.
