Trump drops Elon Musk’s SpaceX from the Golden Dome project
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Trump has officially iced out Elon Musk’s SpaceX from the heart of his $175 billion Golden Dome missile defense project and is now pulling in Jeff Bezos’ Amazon instead. The decision comes directly from the White House after Trump and Elon’s relationship collapsed publicly on June 5. Before that fallout, Pentagon officials were already getting nervous about letting Elon control too much of the nation’s military communications network. Now, the administration is doing what it rarely does, opening the doors to other players, including traditional defense firms and Amazon’s space division, Project Kuiper. According to reporting from Reuters, the Pentagon began reaching out to Amazon and other defense tech companies as tensions with Elon deepened. Elon claimed on X that SpaceX hadn’t bid on any contracts for Golden Dome and that the company’s focus “would be to stay focused on taking humanity to Mars.” But despite the statement, SpaceX is still expected to handle some of the program’s launch operations because of its dominant rocket capabilities and deep experience with government contracts. Pentagon contacts Amazon, startups, and old-school defense firms Project Kuiper has only deployed 78 of its planned 3,000 low-earth orbit satellites so far, but that didn’t stop the Pentagon from making contact. In January, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, told Reuters, “There will be defense uses for these [low-earth orbit] constellations, no doubt,” even though he originally pitched Kuiper as a commercial play. Officials say Kuiper is being strongly considered to supply the satellite layers for Golden Dome — a system modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome, but built for broader coverage across U.S. territory and beyond. Trump’s administration wants multiple vendors in play. “Each individual launch is going to get bid, and we have to actually give bids to other people,” one official told Reuters. That includes new…
