Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, March 6th.

Today on Forbes, Elon Musk wants SpaceX to fix air traffic control.

Here's why it won't work.

Across the US, a web of ancient copper wires connect airport control towers to radars and weather observation stations.

These copper wires help air traffic controllers communicate and get the data they need to make

sure planes get where they're supposed to go safely.

But this decade's old system is starting to fail.

Airports have been forced to ground planes due to telecommunications failures.

Now, after a series of near misses and a shocking mid-air collision in Washington, D.C. that killed

67 people in late January, the pressure is on the Trump administration to address rising public

fear over air safety.

Newly minted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reassured the public a week after

the disaster saying help is on the way. Elon Musk and SpaceX were stepping in. The billionaire's

company reportedly may be tapped for an upgrade of the FAA's telecom system, never mind that it

didn't play a role in the Washington

disaster. And never mind that Verizon already has a $2.4 billion $15-year contract to replace

all that copper wire with lightning-fast fiber optic cables. A SpaceX engineer tasked to the FAA

told agency staffers that Musk himself had directed

that they deploy thousands of the company's Starlink satellite internet terminals, according

to Bloomberg.

That creates obvious and serious conflicts of interests, with Musk's Department of Government

Efficiency, or Doge, currently burrowing into the agency that acts as SpaceX's primary regulator.

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