Why do I get the feeling that the market shifted beneath their feet to drones and these old aircraft companies are using "loyal wingman" to make a half-hearted half-way play between old/new products to stay relevant, which just buys them time to keep selling expensive jets... until pure drone upstarts start eating their lunch.

Like when Blackberry tried to make BlackBerry Storm after iPhone and Blockbuster tried to make Blockbuster Online after Netflix.

Technology shifts rarely wait for these stodgy middle ground transitionary products to find a market.

That story keeps being spun by people who don’t read articles (or don’t expect people to). What SpaceX did there was limit the use of Starlink in Russian controlled territory. The very same new pattern of Ukraine whitelisting and geofencing access which is what everyone is praising today.

The only reason Ukraine complained was their special ops were running drone boats deep in Russian territory. After they asked for permission (following this controversy) SpaceX did a deal with DoD to let them manage those special cases allowing its use behind enemy lines.

Starlink has been nothing but positive for Ukraine

The theory is the US let some Russians use it as a trap to get them dependent on it and then pulled the rug which gave Ukraine a big advantage to clear some areas and generally disrupted Russian operations.

The DoD has always been deeply involved in running Starlink there

> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict

This describes Boeing and lots of other firms

The US has also done lots of protectionism for a bunch of monopolistic businesses out of (alleged) national security interests.

FDR also bullied Congress into passing laws and threatened their individual reelections using his cult of personality the same way Trump has been doing for a decade now to keep the moderates and fiscal conservatives in his party from making any noise.