Elon's Boring Company Is ‘Helping' the Government With an $8 Billion Amtrak Tunnel Project
Musk has his finger in yet another pie.
Elon Musk's tunneling firm, the Boring Company, has agreed to 'help' the government's Federal Railroad Administration with a multi-billion dollar project to build a train tunnel in Maryland. While it's not yet clear that Musk's company will actually get a contract related to the project, it seems like yet another conflict-of-interest for the billionaire, who has exerted undue influence over the government ever since Donald Trump took office.
The New York Times reports that Musk's company is helping the government assess 'the costs and progress' of the Frederick Douglass Tunnel program, a new underground Amtrak route that has been designed to replace an aging tunnel system that connects Baltimore to Washington and Virginia. Department of Transportation officials recently met with representatives from the Boring Company to discuss the project and were told that Musk's firm could 'find ways to build the tunnel more cheaply and efficiently,' the newspaper writes.
The project has been in development for what seems like forever. The FRA and the MDOT initially announced a notice of intent for the project in 2014, over ten years ago. Since then, the projected price of the tunnel has also ballooned, tracking upwards from the original estimate of $6 billion to a more recent price tag of just over $8 billion, the Times writes. Last year, Amtrak picked two construction companies—Kiewit and J.F. Shea—to build the tunnel.
A Transportation Department representative told the newspaper that no 'decision has been made on bids' yet and that 'Amtrak in coordination with D.O.T. will follow standard procedures for bidding out contracting and subcontracting.' Gizmodo reached out to the Department and to the Boring Company for more information.
The Boring Company was founded in 2016 and allegedly sprang from Musk's desire to create a transportation solution that could allow drivers to avoid traffic jams. The firm has announced many projects over the years, many of which have failed to come to fruition. Currently, the company is working on a new tunnel system under Las Vegas, which it calls the 'Vegas Loop.' A recent ProPublica investigation showed that the Vegas venture, which is being privately funded by Musk, is proceeding without much of the regulatory oversight that a project of such a size and scope would traditionally have. The company also recently announced plans to develop a 10-mile tunnel in Dubai.
Musk's prominence in the Trump administration is well-known and, everywhere you look, the billionaire appears to be benefiting from his government ties. A recent report from the Washington Post showed that the White House has been bullying tariffed countries to adopt services from the billionaire's satellite internet company, Starlink. Starlink has seen other nebulous and problematic pacts with the U.S. government, including at the Federal Aviation Administration and in the White House. SpaceX also seems to have a variety of potential conflicts of interest, thanks to DOGE's interactions with NASA. Another recent report also shows that the billionaire's companies may have saved nearly $2.37 billion from federal fines and penalties that were active under Biden but have since been 'neutralized' in the Trump era.
As Musk has profited off his work in government, he has also sought to undermine many of the social services that are designed to benefit everyday Americans. His so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has taken aim at many agencies that protect consumers, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would have potentially overseen Musk's platform, X, had the agency not been gutted by DOGE. Critics also maintain that DOGE is working to wreck the Social Security Administration, which is the bedrock of the national retirement system.
At the same time, Musk's work with the government has also spurred problems for his businesses, including a nationwide political movement—the #TeslaTakedown protests—that have sought to target Musk through his car company Tesla. The EV company has suffered egregiously since Musk began helping the Trump administration. A recent earnings report showed the company's profits were down 71 percent in the first three months of this year.
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Founded in 2015 and headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has established itself as a quantum computing leader through its distinctive trapped-ion architecture. The firm offers quantum computing as a service (QCaaS) through cloud platforms like Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure Quantum, and Google Cloud. Users can also run quantum programs remotely on IonQ's hardware, without having to own the machines. The business model revolves around becoming a platform provider for next-generation computing, similar to how NVIDIA (NVDA) enables AI with GPUs, IonQ wants to enable quantum breakthroughs with trapped-ion systems. These systems can operate at room temperature while maintaining fidelity rates of 99.9% for two-qubit gates, providing significant advantages over competitors that require extremely cold operating conditions. 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These financial challenges raise important questions about the timeline for achieving sustainable profitability. IonQ's competitive advantage stems from the distinctive strengths of its trapped-ion quantum architecture, which offers several benefits over superconducting approaches used by peers such as IBM (IBM) and Alphabet (GOOGL). Key differentiators include all-to-all qubit connectivity, longer coherence times, and significantly lower error correction overhead, estimated at a 13:1 ratio compared to approximately 100:1 for some competing platforms. While often complex for investors to understand, these details provide IonQ with a meaningful competitive advantage. The roadmap outlines a clear path to scaling, with plans to reach 100-qubit systems in the coming years and eventually millions of qubits through the integration of multi-core technology and photonic interconnects. An extensive patent portfolio of over 950 patents, spanning both quantum computing and networking, also provides additional competitive protection. Recent commercial deployments, including a $22 million Forte Enterprise quantum system to EPB in Chattanooga, demonstrate that practical applications are taking shape. While these developments are encouraging, the quantum computing market remains in its early stages, with uncertain commercial timelines and a heavy lean towards revenues generated in the U.S. for now, as reported by Main Street Data. While IonQ has established itself as a leader in trapped-ion quantum computing, several key risks warrant investor caution. The company remains significantly unprofitable, with ongoing cash burn primarily driven by substantial investments in research and development. 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