Elon Musk has forged a relationship with a Republican figure who could open up a geyser of federal cash for his Starlink satellite internet business — and it’s not the person running for president.

Online and in person, the tech titan has been building a public alliance around his company’s policy goals with Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission — an unusual link between a regulator and his potential beneficiary that could mean a payday for the world’s richest man.

With Musk emerging as one of Donald Trump’s top supporters for president, their embrace offers a window into how Musk could use personal connections and the power of his X platform to push his own business agenda if he becomes part of a Trump administration.

Trump has said that if elected, he would name Musk to run a new commission to trim government waste. Musk appeared at a Trump rally and is pumping $75 million into a pro-Trump super PAC. At the same time, one of Musk’s companies — SpaceX, which runs Starlink — is in line to collect hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in federal subsidies if some key federal decisions go his way in the next administration.

As a widely rumored contender for FCC chair under a Trump administration, Carr could exert critical influence over those decisions. He has already inserted himself into Musk’s business before the government, saying the FCC treated the SpaceX founder unfairly.

The public relationship goes back to at least late 2023, when Carr said on X that the FCC and six other agencies were subjecting Musk to “regulatory harassment” under President Joe Biden. The post sparked discussion on the popular “All In” Silicon Valley podcast, which Musk amplified to his 200 million followers on X. Musk began following Carr’s account himself on July 1.

Over the past year, Carr has attacked Democratic FCC commissioners for denying Starlink money from a rural broadband subsidy program, blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for slow progress on broadband expansion (“Truly staggering levels of waste and incompetence!” Musk responded), and sent a confrontational letter to Brazilian regulators who tried to place limits on X and Starlink.

Musk boosted each move online. “Much appreciated,” he wrote to Carr after the letter to Brazil. In August, Carr visited the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and posed for a photo with Musk, which he posted on X with a warm endorsement of Musk’s business practices.

For Carr, a longtime conservative gadfly on telecom issues — and author of a chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — the sharp public critiques of Democrats are familiar. But his apparently tailored courting of one business leader is something new.

In an interview, Carr downplayed the idea he’s showing any special favor to Musk, saying he has held meetings and engaged with many industry figures over the years. He pledged even-handedness as a regulator — but said he does want the U.S. government to play a bigger role in fostering the expansion of Starlink and future satellite broadband players. And he said he has only met Musk in person once.

“I understand the focus on Musk is on a lot of people’s minds in the media space and otherwise,” Carr told POLITICO. “But I feel like my own conduct and my amount of posting on social media and the style and the type is pretty consistent with what I’ve done for the last four years.”

Spokespeople for SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not respond to a request for comment from Musk.

For Musk, the potential payoff is clear. Under the Biden administration, the FCC denied $885 million in broadband subsidies to his Starlink satellite internet service. Separately, the Commerce Department limited Starlink’s eligibility for Biden’s $42 billion program to expand broadband access. The agencies have said Starlink’s service — which relies on thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth in low orbit to beam down their internet signals — is still too new to count as proven technology at scale, and requires users to buy expensive receivers. The administration sees fiber-optic cable as a better choice.

Both Carr and Musk have brushed off the government’s technical concerns and accused the Democrats of playing favorites. “Starlink could play a lead role if we ensure that they’re eligible to participate,” Carr told a conservative radio host in August. “But the Biden-Harris administration, you know their position on any Elon Musk business.”

The two men seized on hurricanes Helene and Milton to make the case for Starlink’s utility: Musk rushed Starlink kits to communities hit by the storms, while Carr has posted stories suggesting “Elon succeeded where FEMA failed.” Critics see Musk’s approach as a symptom of the problem with Starlink: He promised free service to hurricane victims, but in fact they still had to pay nearly $400for the equipment and shipping.

With Musk increasingly close to Trump, what looked at first like a policy position for Carr — an embrace of new technology over old — has taken on a more personal cast, in the eyes of many observers.

“It seems like it’s all for the audience of Elon,” Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of consumer advocacy group Free Press, said in an interview. “It looks to me like Carr is reading the political tea leaves to say being in good with Elon is how you advance in the next Trump administration.”

‘A ton of upside’

Access to federal money is critical to Musk. His SpaceX rocket company is a major federal contractor, and Starlink stands to gain directly from Biden’s immense investment in federal broadband buildout.

Musk “can get a ton of upside when these regulatory decisions are going his way,” telecom analyst Roger Entner told POLITICO. “The bulk of his wealth comes from government contracts or government subsidized businesses.”

Musk has complained extensively about government decision-making, especially when it goes against him, and he found a ready-made ally in Carr — a minority Republican commissioner of a Democratic-dominated agency, appointed by Trump in 2017.

On the commission, Carr was a frequent messenger for Trump on cable news, backing Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to end the Section 230 liability shield for tech companies, discrediting the Senate impeachment trial against the former president and bashing social media companies for what he perceived as bias against conservatives.

In 2022, Carr praised Musk’s purchase of Twitter on Fox Business as a portent of “greater embrace of free speech.” And as Starlink increasingly became a player in Washington regulatory fights, he kept up the support.

As a relatively new company on the broadband scene — obtaining U.S. authorization to launch its batches of satellites only in 2018 — Starlink has had to fight for a spot in the world of telecom permits and subsidies. Because it is satellite- and not land-based, it has been able to deliver service to conflict areas, including Ukraine, which also puts it in the public eye for different reasons.

Carr has backed Musk’s operation at many turns, particularly in the last two years. In April, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America called for an FCC investigation into whether to revoke Starlink licensing over Musk’s “erratic” behavior, from reports around how he’s handled Starlink use in foreign conflicts to his reported use of illegal drugs. In response, Carr dashed off a statement accusing the “activist” group of seeking to weaponize the government against Musk for ideological reasons.

One seemingly permanent source of anger for both Carr and Musk is a 2022 FCC decision to revoke $885 million in rural broadband subsidies. Starlink applied for the money under the agency’s Trump-era Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and provisionally won approval in 2020 — but the commission’s Democratic majority later decided to deny it. Democrats point out that multiple bids, including Starlink’s, were denied for falling short of qualifications, and a spokesperson for the Democratic FCC chair maintains that “any notion that its decisions are politically motivated and not fact-based is false.”

Musk has never been mollified, and was still complaining about it on X this October. Carr told POLITICO that while he thinks that bid money is likely lost to Starlink “as a practical matter” now, he still believes “it would be fair to get [Starlink] back” into the FCC’s broadband program.

‘We should be like “go go go”’

The biggest federal subsidy available to Starlink would be a chunk of Biden’s $42 billion broadband expansion program, a Commerce Department effort that gives states funding to pay internet providers to build out infrastructure to rural areas. The program’s current rules limit Starlink’s involvement to extremely rural spots, and favor fiber-optic cable for the rest.

None of the expansion projects have yet broken ground, giving the next president leeway to shake up the effort. Although Carr’s current agency isn’t running the program, he has become its number one critic, writing social media posts almost daily blasting its sluggishness, blaming Harris and capturing those grievances in op-eds and in testimony this September before the House Oversight Committee — all moves Musk has readily amplified. Musk responded to Carr’s advocacy on X at least 14 times in September alone. While assailing the rollout of the program, Carr and Musk have advocated a bigger role for Starlink.

Some telecom industry officials, who stand to reap some of the subsidies now, worry about handing Starlink too expansive a role in scaling up its service.  

“We have no proof of concept that shows that [Starlink] could serve millions of Americans or more, on a widespread basis, on a simultaneous basis,” Michael Romano, the executive vice president of rural telecom trade group NTCA, said in a recent interview.

But Starlink has racked up customers — over four million worldwide at this point — and some officials increasingly believe the company can function at larger scale, even as it faces questions about pricey service, and grapples with the challenges of global growth and technical headaches like a growing cascade of space junk.

Carr believes much of the broadband program’s $42 billion broadband should still flow to land-based connections, but believes a big share — perhaps close to a third, he told POLITICO — could be used for satellite internet. The beneficiaries would include Starlink and, if it’s ready in time, a similar low-earth satellite system being launched by Amazon.

Despite some skepticism, and Musk’s politics, many Democrats share enthusiasm for Starlink as a rural broadband provider, and the service has counted some victories in addition to setbacks.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel launched a new Space Bureau in 2023, which promises a speedier regulatory treatment for satellite providers. She also sided with SpaceX in a key spectrum fight over frequencies that Musk says Starlink needs. And the FCC has worked with SpaceX on its partnership with T-Mobile to help supplement the carrier’s cellular service, which they received emergency permission to trial following Hurricane Helene.

Carr argued in the interview that his goal is less to support Musk personally than to boost U.S.-based satellite broadband technology in general. He says some of his casual references to Starlink are shorthand for the low Earth orbit satellite industry overall, which is competing globally with Chinese efforts to set up its own satellite broadband player.

“Right now we should not be putting brakes or harassing any U.S.-based satellite company,” Carr said. “We should be like ‘go go go — we’ve got your back.’”

A bigger hand Musk could play

What happens to Musk’s bids for federal cash if Trump wins? There’s no guarantee Trump would pick Carr to run the FCC — though Trump, clearly a fan of Musk, appears to now share Carr’s enthusiasm for Starlink. He has said the recent hurricane convinced him. While campaigning with Musk in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump recounted asking people how the new satellite-beamed service was working. “They said, ‘much better than the wires,’” Trump remarked.

It’s already clear Musk would have other telecom allies in a Republican-controlled Washington. Nathan Simington, the FCC’s junior Republican, declared in one 2023 dissent to a commission vote on Starlink subsidies that “SpaceX’s technology is proven” and said the “proof is the millions of subscribers.”

On Capitol Hill, Republicans have long worried the Biden administration placed a thumb on the scale in favor of wired technologies like fiber, and they hope a Trump victory could change that.

“I have a very rural district that struggles with connectivity, and we don’t particularly care who is competing or how it delivers, whether it’s from a Starlink satellite or if it’s fiber in the ground,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), a House Energy and Commerce Committee member who has pressed Biden administration officials over their digital agenda, told POLITICO. “They need to have options, and currently, we have none.”

Telecom analyst Blair Levin believes Musk has an even bigger hand he can play, and would be able to reshape the broadband program in his image under a Republican White House, when a Trump-friendly official would become the new Commerce secretary. In a recent New Street Research note to investors, Levin wrote that Musk might seek to, “as part of his promised job related to government efficiency, end the [broadband] program, return most of the $42.5 billion to the Treasury, while spending just enough to enable locations in unserved areas to obtain a subsidy for a satellite dish.”

If Carr gains power and begins shifting money toward Musk, observers foresee possible backfire, or at least some legal vulnerability. Agency officials generally don’t call out companies by name and seek to avoid impressions of regulatory favoritism. It’s possible these cozy relations could become fodder for future regulatory fights — or lawsuits.

“That would be my favorite line of attack,” Entner said. “The two of them have to think about it.”