Thank you, Elon Musk

OPINION:

Thank God for Elon Musk.

President Biden and his pals in the White House don’t like Mr. Musk and avoid doing business with him, even when he offers the best solution to problems they say they want to solve.

That’s a mistake.

Mr. Biden would say that his products aren’t as good as he claims, but even the casual observer knows it’s his politics. They used to like Mr. Musk, who said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Mr. Biden in 2020. In a series of interviews in the early days of the new administration, Mr. Musk said he liked the new president’s agenda.

Still, administration officials cut Mr. Musk from discussions promoting electric vehicles because his factories weren’t unionized. In touting electric vehicles, the president refused for months to refer in any way to Mr. Musk or his electric vehicle company, Tesla, and finally threw his support behind legislation that restricts government subsidies to EVs produced by unionized labor.

Then Mr. Musk bought Twitter and released emails that revealed how the Democrats pressured social media companies to help them win the 2020 and 2022 elections. He also began criticizing Mr. Biden’s economic plans and announced that he wouldn’t vote for Mr. Biden in November. Since then, the White House has been doing all it can to avoid doing business with Mr. Musk despite contracts with his company SpaceX, which is vital to the space program and the communications infrastructure Ukraine relies on in its war with Russia.

Just last week, another stark example of how this political animosity has hurt Americans and the Biden administration’s ability to implement its own programs was revealed.

In 2021, Mr. Biden talked Congress into appropriating $42.5 billion to bring internet service to the underserved corners of rural America. Still, a recent government report reveals that not one more business, house or school has gotten access to the web under his program. The reason: Funding is restricted to potential providers willing to install costly fiber-optic cable in remote areas that could be much more easily and cheaply reached through Mr. Musk’s Starlink, a subsidiary of his SpaceX, which relies on satellites rather than cable to reach its customers.

Mr. Biden and his Federal Communications Commission rejected Mr. Musk’s approach as less reliable than what came before and excluded Starlink as a means of reaching the underserved rural areas of the country.

Mr. Musk is best known for the ubiquitous Tesla. Still, he also provides rockets used by the military and private corporations to launch satellites and out-of-the-box solutions to other problems. His Starlink system is a typical Musk solution. He began by rejecting older ways of linking people to the internet, came up with an alternative and then built it just as entrepreneurs used to do.

Ukraine had no qualms about Starlink. Ots military relies on Mr. Musk’s service for communication in the war with Russia. When Vladimir Putin’s army invaded, Mr. Musk immediately donated Starlink access and terminals to Ukraine. It is estimated that Mr. Musk provided as much as $100 million worth of equipment and service, and without his assistance, that country might not have survived the early days of the war.

But one doesn’t have to go to Ukraine to find support for Starlink. A million and a half Americans have Starlink and, like the Ukrainian military, beg to differ. For decades, my wife and I spent as much time as we could in rural Montana, but for most of this time, there was little or no practical access to the internet anywhere near our home. I was, at the time, opinion editor of The Washington Times, so I had to review the work of our contributors and get their copy and my own to the paper every day.

The satellite hookups available at the time never worked, so I drove 35 miles one way every morning to the nearest McDonald’s for coffee and Wi-Fi. It was inconvenient, but the chain’s reliable Wi-Fi was far better than its burgers, and the daily 70-mile round trip became routine.

Then, the local phone company offered a bundle that included cellphone and internet service via satellite. It was expensive, less reliable, and couldn’t compare to McDonald’s service. It didn’t come with coffee, and it worked in only one part of the house.

Eventually, my wife came to the rescue, as she often does. She had lobbied for regulations that opened up the satellite industry and was waiting for Mr. Musk’s Starlink to provide service in our area. Now, thanks to Elon Musk, we have reliable, fast internet service not just in the house but also in my workshop and on the outside deck, where I can write overlooking one of my favorite trout streams.

• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.