Go look at the panel gaps on your director’s Tesla, Elon is not all he is made to be. SpaceX has done some impressive things, but most of his other ventures have been plagued by issues or never come to fruition. He is an egotistical hype man in a world d-mb enough to listen to egotistical hype men.
He holds enough control over both Tesla and SpaceX to have access to the funds and borrowing power necessary to build a network if he chose to do so and could sell the spending of Tesla’s money to its shareholders by claiming having their own network is essential for self driving cars, maybe turn it into some new necessary AI infrastructure overpromise. It is starting to feel like some of the AI hype is finally starting to be taken back by reality but the people who buy stock in companies like his are the people he holds Charles Manson like control over.
It would be incredibly stupid to spend a massive amount of money to attempt to enter a slow growth, mature, and low margin industry where he would have to immediately compete on price further lowering margins just to sell phone and internet service, but he may try to do it. I don’t think Elon is financially irresponsible enough to do it but he is childish enough to do it.
What is scary is the way he has been laying with politicians over the last few years, if he is able to get favorable costs on spectrum licenses or convinces the government to subsidize part of a network buildout under the promise of rural coverage or some play on access equality, the calculus and threat changes dramatically. Imagine a SpaceX network paid for by the taxes on our severance packages.