Elon Musk made flying even worse so Palantir could profit
On August 6th, the Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center lost radar and communications for around two hours. The outage disrupted more than 1,100 flights across the center's 330,000 square mile, nine-state airspace sector. Two days earlier, on August 4th, President Donald Trump departed the White House inside his Marine One military helicopter. As Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) protocol requires, the pilots tried to contact Reagan National Airport to tell them to
Get smart on it
When a government efficiency initiative led by Elon Musk failed to modernize the nation's air traffic control system, it ended up creating opportunities for Peter Thiel's analytics company to win major contracts instead. Musk's department terminated hundreds of FAA employees but did not deliver the promised safety upgrades, while recent years have seen multiple equipment failures, staffing shortages, and record flight disruptions. Congress authorized $12.5 billion for air traffic control improvements, with roughly $5 billion designated for software upgrades that appear likely to go to Thiel's company through no-bid and competitive contracts. Air traffic controllers have stated that the system's most urgent needs are personnel-related, yet none of the new funding is directed toward hiring and staffing solutions.
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