Following the horrific mid-air collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter in the nation's capital, the US transportation department is readying to "remake" American airspace — with Elon Musk at the wheel.
That's according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — and, of course, Musk himself.
"I had a conversation with Elon Musk yesterday, pretty remarkable guy. He thinks differently than I think probably a lot of us do, but he has access to the best technological people, the best engineers in the world," Duffy said Wednesday at a Washington event, as quoted by NBC News. "We're going to remake our airspace, and we're going to do it quickly."
After Duffy's comments, Musk made his own announcement, in which he also emphasized the need to carry out the vast overhaul in great haste.
"With the support of President [Donald Trump], the [DOGE] team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system," Musk tweeted later that afternoon. "Just a few days ago, the FAA's primary aircraft safety notification system failed for several hours!"
Musk was referring to an incident over the weekend when the Federal Aviation Administration's "Notice to Air Mission" system, which is used to send alerts to pilots about changing conditions, went offline.
The outage occurred just days after an American Eagle flight collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter as the airliner was attempting to land, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft.
The deadliest US air disaster in over 23 years, it's raised serious questions about the state of the country's air regulators. And much of that scrutiny was cast on some of President Trump's decisions barely a week before the horrific plash took place, such as freezing all new hires of air traffic safety controllers, firing the head of the Transportation Security Administration, and disbanding a key aviation safety group at the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, the president is apparently leaving it to Musk to clean up the mess — who you'd think would be too preoccupied with gutting other wings of the government.
It couldn't be a more striking choice to lead air traffic reform, in any case. Musk has beefed with the FAA in the recent past and threatened to sue the agency for "regulatory overreach" — all for the mortal sin of questioning the safety practices of a guy whose enormous experimental rockets frequently explode. He's also outright defied the FAA's orders on occasion, fueling up a spacecraft even after being told to halt the launch.
Basically, everything Musk has done up to his point has suggested he'd rather have less government meddling in what goes on in the air, which doesn't bode well if he's tapped to "remake" an entire country's system of air traffic control.
The fact that both Musk and Transportation Secretary Duffy have emphasized carrying out these changes speedily is also worrying. Musk's ethos of "move fast and break things" may be suited for uncrewed rocket launches. But when human lives are on the line, it sounds incredibly reckless.
What his overhauls will look like is unclear. But Duffy tweeted that Musk would help "upgrade our aviation system," which could be interpreted as something tech-related.
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