Newark’s recent air corridor failures are not just about radar outages or overworked air traffic controllers. They’re about something much bigger — the convergence of negligence, performative politics, and Silicon Valley hubris.
What was it’s cause? There is blame to go around: the gutting of federal agencies, billionaire egos thinking they can reinvent physics, scapegoating of social progress, and a crumbling public infrastructure that looks like it was built with duct tape and a lot of praying. While it’s becoming more visible in today’s administration – for good reason – it’s a problem that didn’t just begin in January.
We’ve been warned about this for years. You can’t just “disrupt” aviation safety. But that’s exactly what’s been happening — slowly, dangerously, and now visibly in the skies over one of the country’s busiest corridors.
The FAA has been under assault during the current Trump administration, where public service is being treated like a joke and actual experts have recently been tossed overboard in favor of loyalty and chaos. We’ve had massive layoffs of FAA employees, especially air traffic controllers, all while the administration now flirts with privatizing the entire system. The attack on the FAA may be one of the first areas where administration incompetence takes the biggest toll.
Then there’s the recent culture war blaming DEI. When there’s a mistake — like at Washington National earlier this year — the blame isn’t pointed at staffing cuts or neglected infrastructure. It’s pointed at DEI, with Musk blaming the brave woman helicopter pilot because she is a female, before any of the facts were known. The idea that diversity initiatives are responsible for system failures is not only wrong, it’s ignorant. It’s a deflection from the very real issue of gutting technical expertise in the name of ideology.
But wait, it gets worse. The FAA has reportedly been considering a deal to move parts of its air traffic communication systems from its long-standing partner Verizon to Elon Musk’s Starlink. Nothing says “reliable” like a satellite network that drops out when there’s heavy rain or solar flares and suffers from latency when millisecond response is vital for managing planes converging at hundreds of miles an hour.
Musk and his DOGE buffoons have been positioning themselves as the answer to every problem — from cars to rockets to… government infrastructure, such as the FAA. But his approach to regulatory organizations like the FAA is basically to simply blow it up and fire the bastards!
He’s mocked the National Weather Service, NOAA, and aviation regulators — all while trying to replace them with his own barely-tested alternatives. Trust me -you do not want to be on a plane that’s being guided by someone that’s overpromosed on self-driving cars that are still crashing.
Meanwhile, people like Sean Duffy, the FAA Commissioner, who supposedly oversee transportation policy, is too busy picking performative culture war fights, like removing religious art from buildings, to actually deal with the nuts and bolts of keeping planes from crashing into each other.
This isn’t just about Newark. It’s about a nation that’s treating vital systems like hobby projects. It’s about leaders who think governing is a reality show and tech billionaires who think “failing fast” is acceptable when lives are on the line.
Here’s a wild idea: maybe we stop treating aviation like it’s something you can outsource to a guy with a flamethrower and a Twitter account. Maybe we rehire the experts. Maybe we fund the FAA. Maybe we rebuild trust in the institutions that keep planes in the sky and not in the Hudson River.