A Program to Expand Rural Internet Access Now Looks Like a Slush Fund for Tech Billionaires
Notably, the program almost immediately started to shift funding to tech billionaires promising to use satellite internet to reach communities that have previously been underserved by wired internet providers. That includes a $738.8 million contract that went to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and $311 million that was awarded to Jeff Bezos and Amazon Leo. Investments in Trump are paying dividends You’ll of course remember that Elon Musk spent about a quarter of a billion dollars trying to get Trump elected, so getting a nearly 3x return on that in a single contract means it was an effective investment.
- ▪Notably, the program almost immediately started to shift funding to tech billionaires promising to use satellite internet to reach communities that have previously been underserved by wired internet providers.
- ▪That includes a $738.8 million contract that went to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and $311 million that was awarded to Jeff Bezos and Amazon Leo.
- ▪Investments in Trump are paying dividends You’ll of course remember that Elon Musk spent about a quarter of a billion dollars trying to get Trump elected, so getting a nearly 3x return on that in a single contract means it was an effective
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/a-program-to-expand-rural-internet-access-now-looks-like-a-slush-fund-for-tech-billionaires-2000776173 |
| Publication time | Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:05:37 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-23T21:22:48.299Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-23T21:22:48.299Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
During the 2024 Presidential campaign, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, meant to bring broadband internet to rural communities across the country, became a cudgel for Donald Trump and Republicans—a symbol of government inefficiency under the Biden administration because of its failure to put a dent in the internet access divide. Once Trump took office, there was a promise to revive the program and make good on the initial promise of getting people…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Gizmodo.
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