✦ Starshield & the Golden DomeNarrow moat

The quietest future bet wears a uniform. Starshield — the military sibling of Starlink — won the space layer of Golden Dome, the American missile-defense program: a roughly $2 billion order for some 600 satellites to track aircraft and missiles, inside a set of awards reported around $6 billion, with full operational capability targeted for January 2029¹. A separate $2.29 billion Space Force contract makes SpaceX the backbone of the military's data network in orbit².

Strategically this is the AWS playbook in national-security dress: the government stops building exquisite bespoke satellites and rents capability from the company that already mass-produces them. The revenue is steadier than anything else on this page — defense contracts survive recessions — and it anchors the launch cadence with a customer who cannot take its business elsewhere. The risks are political in both directions: programs this large attract rivals, protests and administrations, and the company's fortunes become entangled with its founder's politics in a town that keeps score. Watch the 2029 date, follow-on awards as Golden Dome scales, and any sign of the Pentagon deliberately funding a second source — the government, too, reads concentration risk.