Just when you thought the night sky might remain a sanctuary for poets and the occasional delusional stargazer, Jeff Bezos has decided to bedazzle the vacuum of space with 5,408 more pieces of high-tech debris. Blue Origin, a company that has spent most of its existence proving that money can indeed buy a phallic rocket but cannot necessarily buy a seat at the big-boy table of orbital dominance, has finally announced its grand plan to clutter the low-earth orbit. Because, apparently, Elon Musk’s Starlink didn't provide enough space-junk for the coming Kessler syndrome to truly feel like a global achievement.

This isn't for you, of course. Don't be so provincial. The planned network is designed for 'data centers, governments, and businesses.' In the vernacular of the elite, that translates to: war machines, high-frequency trading algorithms, and the digital storage of your most embarrassing consumer habits. With speeds of up to 6 terabits per second, this network is built to ensure that the AI revolution can proceed at a velocity that completely bypasses the sluggish, meat-based processing power of the human brain. While the Right babbles on about 'innovation' and 'the frontier' as if Bezos is Meriwether Lewis in a silver jumpsuit, and the Left performs its scheduled outrage about environmental impact while simultaneously refreshing their Amazon Prime delivery status, the reality is far more banal. This is simply the final commodification of the horizon.

Bezos’s move into the satellite constellation market is the ultimate 'me too' from a man who has everything but the adoration of a public that has finally grown weary of his monotone billionaire-speak. The deployment, scheduled for 2027—a year that feels increasingly like a deadline for the extinction of civil discourse—aims to target roughly 100,000 customers. Let that number sink in. Five thousand satellites for one hundred thousand customers. That is a ratio of vanity to utility that would make a Roman Emperor blush. It is a boutique internet for the people who already run the world, ensuring that even if the terrestrial fiber optic cables are severed by the inevitable uprisings or climate catastrophes, the overlords can still trade stocks and coordinate drone strikes with millisecond latency.

We are witnessing a pissing contest between the two richest men on Earth, played out in the thermosphere. On one side, we have Musk, who treats the atmosphere like a personal dumpster for his rapid-fire ego projects. On the other, we have Bezos, the calculating librarian of late-stage capitalism, who can't stand the idea of being out-littered. They aren't 'competing' to provide a service; they are competing for the right to own the view. The optical communications technology they boast about—lasers in space, for the uninitiated—is a marvel of engineering used for the most pathetic of purposes: ensuring that data centers can talk to each other without the indignity of touching the earth.

It is intellectually insulting to frame this as a 'market expansion.' It is an enclosure movement of the heavens. For centuries, the sky was the only thing the poor couldn't have stolen from them. Now, thanks to the miracle of private spaceflight, your view of the Milky Way will soon be cross-hatched by the glint of silicon and titanium designed to help a hedge fund in Greenwich shave three milliseconds off a trade. The sheer arrogance required to claim that this serves 'humanity' is breathtaking. It serves a very specific slice of humanity—the slice that views the rest of us as data points to be harvested or 'users' to be managed.

By 2027, when the first batch of these 5,408 satellites begins its ascent, we will be told this is a triumph of Western ingenuity. The politicians on both sides of the aisle will scramble for the photo-op, eager to lick the boots of the man who holds the keys to the orbital kingdom. The Right will call it 'freedom' because it’s private property; the Left will call it 'connectivity' while lamenting the lack of a diverse board of directors for the space-lasers. Meanwhile, the actual people of Earth will look up and see nothing but a grid of billionaire-owned stars, a permanent reminder that even the void of space has been partitioned and sold to the highest bidder. It’s not progress; it’s just the same old greed, now with better line-of-sight.