One of Elon Musk’s goons has infiltrated the Federal Aviation Administration and reportedly issued a chilling warning to its staffers on day one.
Ted Malaska, a Department of Government Efficiency volunteer, told FAA employees anyone who impeded his work would be reported to Musk and “risked losing their jobs,” sources told Bloomberg.
Malaska, 47, is a temporary special government employee, allowing him to work for DOGE while keeping his gig as a top engineer at Musk’s SpaceX aerospace company.
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There have been no reports of FAA firings tied to clashes with Malaska, nor have any clashes been reported, but sources told Bloomberg the engineer made clear “anyone who impeded progress” will be reported to the very top of DOGE’s chain of command.
Malaska has not wiped his social media and gone into hiding like others in DOGE. Instead, he has posted enthusiastically to X about his work and addressed criticisms of his mission.
“I love how none (sic) technical media is questioning my work at the @FAANews,” he wrote on Feb. 26. “I challenge anyone to question the honesty and my technical integrity on this matter. I am working without biases for the safety of people that fly.”
Malaska was dispatched to the FAA to implement Starlink’s technology there—a mission Bloomberg reported was a “directive” that came from Musk himself.
The engineer told FAA staffers last month he was launching a program that will “deploy thousands of the company’s Starlink satellite terminals to support the national airspace system,” sources told Bloomberg.
The first Starlink terminal at the FAA went online last week at Birchwood Airport in Alaska, which Malaska wrote on X would improve “weather information distribution to pilots,” among other things.
Malaska reportedly told FAA staffers his Starlink project needs to be nationwide by the summer of 2026—a timeline that was apparently “unsettling” for federal aviation safety employees who said such large scale changes are too delicate to be rushed.
Ethics experts are also concerned about a partnership between the FAA and Starlink, saying it is a conflict of interest as SpaceX’s mishaps are probed by the very administration Musk now has vast influence over.
Not controversial, however, is the FAA’s need to upgrade its telecommunications network, which has been plagued by outages in recent years. This is why the administration, after a lengthy bidding process, awarded a $2.4 billion contract to Verizon in 2023 that would see its aging systems modernized over the coming years.
That contract may be on the fritz, however. Musk recently posted on X the “Verizon system is not working” and “is putting air travelers at serious risk.” He has reportedly pushed to have contract nixed so Starlink can handle the upgrades instead.
Bloomberg reports “talks are fluid and much remains unclear” about the future of Verizon’s contract and how much it may cost for SpaceX to do the same job.
The news site adds that Verizon executives appear to be as in the dark about the contract as the rest of us. In the meantime, however, Verizon is still requesting its monthly payment of $5 million to continue working on the contract, a source said.
