Casual White House Starlink Use Is A Cybersecurity Nightmare, A Transparency Problem, And A Weird Marketing Stunt

It’s best to view Elon Musk’s DOGE as an attack. While right wing propaganda (and gullible media outlets and politicians) frame DOGE as a “cost saving” effort at “improving government efficiency,” that’s just flimsy-ass cover for its real purpose: the dismantling of corporate oversight, environmental guard rails, consumer protection, civil rights, and the social safety net by weird zealots.

But DOGE is also just an incompetently run clown show.

There were already widespread concerns about Musk’s tween 4chan brats having widespread access to sensitive public information with no real oversight. But the randos that make up Trump and Musk’s rotating orbit of drooling sycophants also appear to be accessing this data using all manner of unsecured personal devices They couldn’t even launch the DOGE website competently with proper security.

Now there’s reporting out of the New York Times suggesting that Musk is casually integrating Starlink systems into the White House telecom network for no coherent reason outside of the fact it gives the illusion that it’s helping:

“Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.”

The New York Times falsely calls this a “Wi-Fi” network, when Starlink is Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network. And in a complex as wired as the White House, there’s really no coherent reason to install it. The White House network is rife with gigabit capable fiber and gigabit-capable Wi-Fi that can far exceed anything Starlink delivers. Starlink would be a clearly inferior, slower, connectivity option.

According to the NY Times, one of Musk’s DOGE brats from X just decided one day to install a Starlink terminal on the White House roof, tripping security alarms and setting off a confrontation with Secret Service. All, purportedly, to “improve internet access” at probably one of the most well-connected buildings in the world.

There are only a few reasons to do this. One, is as a marketing stunt to help advertise Starlink as a miracle fix to a nonexistent problem. Two is to have a communications backchannel for stuff you don’t want tracked by any sort of White House network logging technologies. But even then, there are suggestions the Starlink traffic isn’t encrypted, creating a huge security risk:

“It was also unclear if Starlink communications were encrypted. At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”

It’s very rare, weird, and very dangerous to just mindlessly intermingle a private, and potentially unencrypted telecom connectivity option with existing White House systems and workflows, as numerous IT folks on Bluesky were quick to note:

And slapping a nontransparent comms channel on the roof of the White House so you and your weird authoritarian buddies can giggle about your illegal and unpopular dismantling of government functions is pretty far afield from all the “full transparency” they promised.

Again, if you don’t have any respect for the function of governance, you’re not going to be particularly careful as you and your earlobe nibbling tweens go about dismantling it. And if you have no shame or ethics, you also think nothing of leveraging your unelected influence to use the White House as a glorified marketing stunt. And if you’re incompetent, you’re going to be incompetent.

All very much in character for the fake government agency run by the fake super-genius engineer tasked with fake innovation and efficiency improvements.