GOP pushes for oversight of Musk’s dominance of space

Republican lawmakers alarmed over Ukraine’s loss of access to Starshield, a critical battlefield tool, are pushing for more congressional oversight on what some view as Elon Musk’s “space monopoly,” fearing that Musk will have too much power over future national security operations.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Thursday said he’s concerned that U.S. national security has become overly reliant on Musk and his company, SpaceX, which owns Starlink and its military-oriented division Starshield.

Cramer visited the Senate’s secure compartmented information facility, or SCIF, to get a classified update on Ukraine’s loss of access to Starshield.

He expressed “concern” that “we’re putting too many eggs in one company’s basket when it comes to our space assets.”

He said he would appeal to Republican leadership that “we pour a lot of resources … into making sure there’s a lot of competition both for satellite production and satellite launch.”

Cramer said SpaceX has too much of a stranglehold on the commercial space industry and expressed concern that it could have major future implications for U.S. national security.

Cramer said he has significant concern that Musk “has as much power as he does as one individual and one company over America’s ability to protect the domain of space, which is a warfighting domain.”

A Senate Republican aide, who requested anonymity to comment on the sensitive topic, confirmed it’s “a concern” that Musk’s SpaceX has become too dominant.

Musk’s dominance over space operations was crystalized in March 2025 when NASA needed a SpaceX dragon capsule to rescue astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who had been stranded for 286 days on the International Space Station because of a critical propulsion failure suffered by Boeing’s Starliner, which was originally scheduled to pick up the crew.

There’s growing tension in the space policy world between legacy contractors such as Boeing and new commercial space ventures such as SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Blue Origin is trying to accelerate its heavy space launch program, but it still lags Musk and SpaceX, congressional sources say.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared to point some blame at Musk on Wednesday for Ukraine’s restricted access to Starshield last week.

Rubio told reporters Ukraine’s access to Starshield is “governed by a private commercial contract as to how their stuff can be used and what speeds they’ll allow it to be used at.”

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, over the weekend called for an investigation into who was responsible for limiting Ukraine’s access.

“There needs to be an investigation. We need to find out who these people are because lives are at risk and lives are lost over these things,” he told CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

Four Republican senators, Sens. John Cornyn (Texas), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), signed on to a bipartisan letter last week calling on the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate whether senior Pentagon officials had any role in limiting Ukraine’s access to Starlink or Starshield.

Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) also called for an investigation after The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk personally ordered the slowdown of Ukraine’s access to Starshield.

“We got to call the witnesses, got to bring them in, put them under oath, and get to the bottom of it,” he said Tuesday. “We cannot just move past this. This is a serious, serious issue because lapsing Starshield in that manner that costs human lives, there’s got to be consequences to that.”

Ross Gerber, a SpaceX investor, told CNN in an interview that the decision to restrict Ukraine’s data speeds on Starshield has “given everybody a reason not to use Starlink,” adding that “Starlink isn’t reliable for national security for anybody but Trump.”

At the same time, some NATO allies are now asking whether they can continue to rely on SpaceX to provide essential battlefield communications during a conflict.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski suggested the prospect of Musk “playing politics” with a vital national security-related technology is giving European governments reason to reconsider it as a pillar of their defense communications networks.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” he warned on the social platform X, which Musk also owns.

The growing GOP scrutiny of Musk’s power over the future of U.S. space operations sets the stage for bipartisan action in the next Congress as several influential Democrats, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), say that Musk’s power needs to be reined in.

Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, this week called for an investigation into who ordered the limit on Ukraine’s access to Starshield and warned of an “enormous risk” if Musk is “dictating our foreign policy” by having control of Ukraine’s ability to use its drones and other military aircraft.

“We’d like to know exactly who is responsible for what happened,” she told CNN. “If it is one man, Elon Musk, who is dictating our foreign policy, then he puts the United States at enormous risk.”

Warren called for an investigation of Musk and Starlink two years ago in response to a report that Musk had curbed a Ukrainian military operation that intended to strike Russia’s naval fleet in the Black Sea.

Some Republicans are predicting that Democrats will push hard to rein in Musk’s federal contracts if they win control of the House, and possibly the Senate, in next month’s election.

“Musk is in for a rude awakening,” warned a GOP aide.