Robert Reich proposes nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink: Europe depends on Musk’s infrastructure

Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink It is no longer a tabletop eccentricity: Robert Reich has proposed it out loud and the Democratic Party already take note.

What Reich has asked for and why no one laughs anymore

The one who was Secretary of Labor with Bill Clinton —and today one of the most heard voices of the American center-left— said it bluntly in a radio interview broadcast this week: ‘We have to defund Musk… 75% of his wealth depends on taxpayers who buy Starlink systems for the Department of Defense.’ And he added the part that matters: ‘If there is a Democratic administration, Democrats should start this, not just with oversight hearings, but by laying the groundwork to nationalize Starlink and SpaceX. Nationalize it. It should be a public corporation.’

The proposal already has an institutional echo. The senator Alex PadillaDemocrat of California, calls for federal investigations into the companies of Elon Musk. And the reading of the American conservative press is that Reich is not an isolated voice: the Washington Examiner He maintains that the former secretary, considered radical in the nineties, today occupies the ideological center of the party. What Reich says is not the edge: it is the thermometer.

It is advisable to lower the proposal to the legal field, because that is where its seriousness is measured. The American Constitution does not prohibit expropriation; prohibits doing so without compensation. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment—the takings clausethe rule that forces the State to pay a fair price when it takes private property—was designed precisely so that a Government cannot keep a business because of its owner’s ideas. Nationalizing SpaceX would require an act of Congress, an appraisal of a private company and years of litigation. None of that makes it impossible. It just makes it expensive.

Nobody gives a launcher.

Because SpaceX is not just any company. It is the one that has made access to orbit more than 80% cheaper with reusable rockets and the one that executes most of the US military and commercial launches. Starlink, and its military version Starshield, support command communications in Ukraine. Whoever controls that infrastructure controls more than just a balance sheet.

Nationalizing private companies based on the ideas of their founder was unthinkable a decade ago; Today there is a legal framework, senators behind it and a state precedent that makes it plausible.

The precedent that paves the way: the State is already a shareholder

The most uncomfortable argument does not come from the left, but from the conservatives themselves. In the last two years, the White House of donald trump has taken direct stakes in more than thirty American companies invoking national security and supply chains: 10% of Intel articulated with incentives from the CHIPS Act – the 2022 law that subsidizes the manufacturing of semiconductors on American soil – and 35% of North American Blue Energy Partners through the War Department, the new name of the Pentagon. The American State is no longer just a regulator: it is a shareholder.

Washington does not ask permission.

The conservative thesis is that this precedent has broken the taboo. ‘When state capitalism is blessed by a Republican president, it nullifies conservative objections to Democratic nationalization,’ wrote these days the Washington Examiner. It is a criticism of the White House formulated from the right and it should be read for what it is: a warning about doctrinal coherence, not about the intention of trump. Washington has been arguing for two years about who can own a strategic company.

Washington Logic

It is convenient to separate two discussions that are mixed in Europe. The first is the logic of the current administration: the state positions in critical companies respond to a specific problem—the fragility of supply chains that broke in 2020 and 2022—and to a coalition that supports it within the Republican Partywhere the industrialist wing today weighs more than the libertarian wing. It is the same family of arguments that led to trump to impose tariffs for national security in his first term. It is not an anomaly: it is a doctrine with its own grammar.

The second is what happens when that instrument changes hands. Nor would it be the first time: in 2009 the American Treasury rescued General Motors and Chrysler and came to control 61% of the largest manufacturer in the country; Amtrak was born in 1970 as a public corporation to save passenger rail. The difference is the reason. So the trigger was bankruptcy; Now the question is whether the trigger could be the owner’s ideas. Therein lies the real risk.

Private property is negotiable.

For Spain, that nuance is no longer theory. The Spanish operator Hispasat It is part of the SpaceRISE consortium that deploys IRIS², the European constellation called to compete with Starlink and that will not be operational before 2030. Until then, the tactical communications of the Spanish Armed Forces—like those of the rest of NATO—depend on low-orbit commercial links, largely American. And there is a second channel: Spanish companies with assets in the US —Iberdrola, Ferrovial, Santander— operate in a country where the line between national security and expropriation has become thinner. Nobody expropriates a highway for ideological reasons; Nobody rules out anything anymore.

The projection is immediate. The midterm elections on November 3, 2026—a week from now—will decide whether oversight hearings on Musk They go from announcement to summons. If he Democratic Party recovers one of the two chambers, Padilla will have a committee; If not, the debate moves to the 2028 presidential primary, where no candidate wants to be the one who defended the most powerful businessman in the country. Meanwhile, SpaceX will continue to sign with the Pentagon: each military launch is at the same time an income for Musk and a hostage in the discussion.

One week left.

Case File

• The case: Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, proposes laying the foundations for nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink considering that the wealth of their founder depends on the American taxpayer.
• Key data: 75% of Musk’s fortune comes from public contracts, according to Reich; More than 30 American companies already have direct state participation, including Intel (10%).
• For Spain: Without its own operational constellation before 2030, Spanish military communications depend on low-orbit commercial links, mostly American; Hispasat participates in the European IRIS².