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Despite not really being a fan, Elon's relationship with the government (and perhaps more of his life generally) seems to me oddly similar to what I know of late-in-life Howard Hughes. He came across to the public as the eccentric-turned-crazy with riches from early business ventures, but my understanding is that the craziness became part of the public image, which made the manganese nodule mining cover story for Project Azorian all the more effective. I could imagine some of Elon's projects being cover stories (probably not recovering sunken Soviet submarines, though) or generally in the direction of creating things the government wants (high-bandwidth, difficult to deny satellite networking?) without tying themselves to it up front.
But it isn't a perfect comparison: Elon isn't much of a recluse. I'd be curious if anyone old enough to recall Hughes being in the news has thoughts on the comparison.
The US has been building up it's space warfare capabilities significantly for decades, though most of it is heavily classified. There's an entire branch of the US military devoted to space warfare. SpaceX takes military contracts for satellite launches and who knows what else; they effectively are the non-missile orbital launch capacity of the US government.
SpaceX is effectively the non-missile orbital launch capacity of most governments in the world, with something like 85% of all upmass movement in 2023. It's not that the Americans bought all that mass lift, as much as it is that other countries spend buy the space for their needs rather than very expensive rocket programs themselves.
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