I disagree with you here, bert.
I think the author sees quite clearly what is going on, but I think you and the author are looking at it through different prisms.
As I said in my post above, there is much to like about Musk and I admire him for those things, and he is a capitalist in it to make scads of money, often playing both sides of the fence.
It is what it is, for me. I can handle him sucking off the government teat if we get SpaceX types of things. Heck, I would rather my tax money go to subsidizing that, rather than the other silliness I see.
The Musk SpaceX engineers have bested the world. They developed products that were superior to those of giants NASA, Boeing and Russia.
Rather than suck on the tit, SpaceX is dominant because of excellence in providing a superior product that the US government and others want and need.