Britain pays Elon Musk for half its satellites whilst he funds its far right
A Parliamentary report warns of dangerous dependency on a billionaire actively working to destabilise British institutions
Half of Britain's satellites depend on Elon Musk's SpaceX. This fact, buried in last week's House of Lords report on space infrastructure, would be concerning enough on its own. Satellite systems underpin military communications, banking transactions, weather forecasting, and GPS navigation. Strategic dependency on any single supplier creates vulnerability.
But Britain isn't paying just any supplier. In September 2025, Musk told a far-right rally in London that Britain needs "revolutionary government change" and that "violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die." He has funded the legal defence of Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist currently serving eighteen months for breaching court orders. During August 2024 riots targeting asylum seekers and ethnic minorities, he declared "civil war is inevitable" in Britain.
Britain is now paying critical infrastructure bills to someone actively working to destabilise its government. The Lords warn of "potential politicisation" of these services. The politicisation is already happening. The question is what Britain can do about dependency that deepened precisely as the supplier became hostile.
Half of Britain's satellites
The dependency is substantial and growing. Half of British satellites now rely on SpaceX for launch, tracking, or communications. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket completed 138 orbital flights in 2023—more than the rest of the world combined.
For rural Britain, the dependency runs deeper. Starlink provides broadband to 87,000 UK customers, predominantly where fibre cables remain economically unviable. These are communities where children can finally do homework online and businesses can process card payments. Musk's politics matter less than the internet connection. Globally, Starlink serves over 6 million customers, making it the world's largest satellite internet provider.
Britain's space sector—worth £18.6 billion annually, employing 55,000 people—increasingly operates within an ecosystem where SpaceX sets terms. When European satellite operator EUMETSAT needed to launch a weather satellite in 2024, it abandoned Europe's delayed Ariane 6 for SpaceX. When Britain needs rapid satellite deployment, SpaceX is often the only practical option. Market dominance creates its own momentum.
This dependency developed remarkably quickly. Britain last launched its own satellites in 1971. The space sector contracted 8.9% between 2021 and 2023 whilst reliance on American infrastructure deepened. What the Lords call strategic vulnerability emerged not through crisis but through accumulated decisions, each individually sensible, that collectively created an uncomfortable reality.
The economics of dependency
SpaceX didn't capture market share through coercion but through ruthless efficiency. Falcon 9 launches cost roughly £50 million against £85 million for Europe's Ariane 6. More importantly, SpaceX's reusable rockets enable launch cadences competitors cannot match. Ariane 6 managed one launch in 2024. SpaceX conducted over one hundred.
For procurement officers allocating budgets, the arithmetic is straightforward. SpaceX launches cost less, happen faster, offer greater scheduling flexibility. The company's vertical integration—building rockets, launching them, operating the world's largest satellite constellation—creates efficiencies traditional aerospace cannot replicate. When Britain's Ministry of Defence needs satellites launched, SpaceX often represents not just the best option but the only timely one.
Starlink's rural dominance follows similar logic. Telecommunications companies won't lay fibre where customer density doesn't justify costs. Previous satellite internet meant slow, expensive service with frustrating latency. Starlink offered something genuinely better at prices rural customers could afford. The 87,000 UK subscribers aren't ideologically committed to Musk. They're solving practical problems government programmes haven't addressed.
Here lies the trap. Each rational decision—choosing the cheaper launch, buying the better internet—inadvertently increases national dependency. Multiply that decision across dozens of agencies and companies, add thousands of rural households seeking connectivity, and strategic vulnerability emerges not through planning but through distributed rationality. The invisible hand points toward dependency.
The Lords recommend Britain "reduce its reliance on SpaceX and use other launch sites abroad." But wanting alternatives and having them are different propositions, particularly given Britain's choices about European cooperation.
Sovereignty through isolation
Brexit adds bitter irony. Britain left the EU promising to "take back control" and escape dependency on European institutions. The space sector became an unlikely test case for whether sovereignty through separation outweighed capabilities lost through isolation.
Britain had contributed over £1.2 billion to Galileo, the EU's navigation system. British companies provided crucial encrypted security technology. After Brexit, Britain lost access to Galileo's military-grade signals. British firms could no longer bid for contracts on systems British engineers had built.
The government's response revealed the gap between sovereignty rhetoric and engineering reality. In 2018, Theresa May announced Britain would develop its own navigation system, allocating £92 million for studies. International space experts reacted with puzzlement. An Australian researcher observed dryly that "a new system might be interesting, but it's not necessary." Building a satellite constellation costs billions, takes decades, requires perpetual funding. Only the United States, Russia, China, and the European Union operate such systems—not because others lack ambition but because few nations can sustain the commitment.
By 2020, the "Brexit Satellite" had quietly died. The study was never published. Britain briefly explored whether OneWeb, a satellite broadband firm in which the government held a stake, could somehow provide navigation services. It couldn't. The £92 million bought no satellites, no system, no sovereignty—just confirmation of what experts already knew.
Meanwhile, European exclusion continued. Access to Copernicus, the EU's Earth observation programme, was suspended until 2024. New EU space regulations will impose 10% cost burdens on British satellite manufacturers, 20% on launch firms. The European Space Agency remains technically open to British participation, but faces political pressure to prioritise member states.
In 2018, Britain's government said it "cannot let our Armed Services depend on a system we cannot be sure of" when rejecting Galileo. Yet the alternative—depending on SpaceX, over which Britain has zero governance influence—represents less control, not more. With Galileo, Britain had partial European input. With SpaceX, it has none. Sovereignty pursued through isolation produced greater dependency on suppliers less accountable to British interests. The sovereignty gained was rhetorical. The dependency is real.
Europe's launch gap
The Lords suggest Britain could reduce SpaceX dependency by using "other launch sites abroad." This recommendation confronts an uncomfortable reality: there aren't many that work. Europe's launch capabilities have atrophied whilst SpaceX surged ahead.
Ariane 6, Europe's answer to SpaceX, finally launched in July 2024 after years of delays. The achievement ended a year-long period when Europe had no independent space access. But Ariane 6 isn't reusable, launches infrequently, costs far more than Falcon 9. Josef Aschbacher, director of the European Space Agency, acknowledged in October 2025 that Europe must "really catch up" with reusable launchers. Europe likely won't have one until the 2030s.
European small launcher startups face their own struggles. Rocket Factory Augsburg's rocket exploded during testing at Scotland's Saxavord Spaceport in August 2024. No European startup has yet completed a successful orbital flight. Analysts say the problem isn't funding—companies have raised hundreds of millions—but operational experience. Building rockets proves harder than raising money.
Britain's own launch capabilities remain notional. Saxavord received its licence in December 2023, planning three pads capable of thirty annual launches. But the spaceport has yet to conduct an orbital launch. Even when operational, these facilities will host foreign rockets, not British ones. Britain hasn't manufactured launch vehicles in decades and shows no sign of rebuilding that capability.
The Lords recommend doubling space spending from £640 million to £1.2 billion annually. Consider the scale gap: SpaceX's annual revenue exceeds $6 billion, NASA's budget approaches $28 billion, China's space programme operates with similar resources. Britain's proposed increase would barely register against competitors operating at vastly different scales.
Britain isn't helpless. European cooperation could resume on better terms than isolation allows. British companies excel at satellite manufacturing. The sector remains a genuine strength. But reducing SpaceX dependency requires alternatives that don't exist and won't materialise quickly. The gap between recognising dependency and escaping it may be measured in decades.
When markets override strategy
The situation reveals something fundamental about 21st-century power. Traditional thinking assumes critical infrastructure either belongs to the state or operates under close state regulation. But satellite internet, launch services, space infrastructure increasingly belong to private companies operating globally with limited state control. When one company achieves SpaceX's dominance, even powerful states find options constrained.
Musk's political activities compound the dynamic. His companies aren't merely commercial entities pursuing profit—they're platforms for activism that directly challenges British institutions. When he calls for "revolutionary government change" whilst Britain pays his companies for critical services, the contradiction couldn't be starker. Yet Britain cannot simply stop using SpaceX without immediate costs. Rural communities would lose internet. Satellite launches would face delays. The space sector would contract further.
The Lords frame this as Britain's problem to solve through planning and spending. But the dependency reflects global patterns that British policy alone cannot reverse. The United States fostered SpaceX through NASA contracts and regulatory support, creating a national champion that dominates global markets. China builds similar capabilities through state direction. Europe pursues coordinated programmes through multilateral cooperation. Britain, having chosen isolation from European efforts whilst lacking American resources or Chinese state capacity, occupies uncomfortable middle ground.
The lesson isn't about legal authority but about capabilities that enable genuine choices. Britain can legally refuse SpaceX services, but without alternatives, that authority means little. Market forces, technological requirements, accumulated decisions constrain options more effectively than formal restrictions ever could.
The dependency on Musk specifically will eventually diminish. SpaceX won't remain uniquely dominant forever. Chinese companies are expanding, European capabilities will improve, Blue Origin may provide competition. But the broader pattern—critical infrastructure controlled by billionaire-owned companies whose interests may conflict with national interests—seems likely to persist.
The immediate question remains: what does Britain do about half its satellites depending on someone who funds far-right activists and predicts British civil war? The honest answer: not much, quickly. The Lords recommend spending increases, diversified suppliers, domestic capabilities. These make sense as long-term objectives. But they don't solve the immediate problem, which is that Britain allowed dependency to deepen precisely as the supplier became hostile, and escaping requires years Britain may not have.
Parliamentary warnings concentrate minds. But institutional dysfunction revealed through dependency cannot be reversed through recognition alone. It requires building alternatives that should have been maintained all along—or never needed if European cooperation hadn't been sacrificed pursuing sovereignty that turned out to be something else entirely.