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- Elon Musk and DOGE plan to make “safety upgrades” to the country’s air traffic control system.
- Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the committee overseeing the FAA, is on board.
- “I can’t think of anyone better to help upgrade the technology to keep people safe,” Cruz told BI.
Sen. Ted Cruz is getting behind Elon Musk and DOGE’s plans to make upgrades to the country’s sprawling air traffic control system.
“For some reason, Democrats and their acolytes in the media have decided that Elon Musk is the devil,” the Texas Republican told Business Insider at the Capitol on Thursday. “He’s an extraordinary entrepreneur, and I can’t think of anyone better to help upgrade the technology to keep people safe.”
Musk, along with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, announced the plans on Wednesday, with the billionaire businessman saying he and the DOGE team would “aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system.”
The White House has offered few details beyond that, and Cruz indicated he didn’t have further information beyond Wednesday’s public announcement.
The Texas senator did say that he had confidence in Musk handling the job.
“We have one of the world’s premier technology CEOs with access to extraordinary engineering talent who can lend his expertise for how to bring air traffic control technology out of the 1950s and into the 21st century,” Cruz said, later adding: “The extraordinary precision with which he runs SpaceX and every other company that he’s leading should give us real comfort in his ability to navigate complicated technologies.”
Cruz’s assessment isn’t shared by all.
Democratic Rep. Greg Casar, also of Texas, told reporters at a “Fire Elon Musk” press conference earlier on Thursday that Musk’s moves at X — which suffered multiple outages as the Tesla CEO took it over — should give everyone pause.
“Elon Musk crashes and breaks everything he buys. He thinks he can buy our government. We cannot allow him to crash and break our air traffic control system,” Casar said. “Not a big deal if your app doesn’t open one day. It is a really big deal if Americans don’t know whether or not their air safety is protected.”
Much of the current air traffic control system’s technology is outdated, and the deadly plane crash near Washington, DC last week has put the strained system under a microscope.
Cruz told reporters that “significant restrictions on helicopter traffic in and around” Reagan National Airport may be warranted, given that the crash was caused by a collision with a Blackhawk helicopter.
