The Shadow Network: How Three Companies Built a Permanent Backdoor to American Democracy

Starlink satellites, Palantir surveillance, and compromised power systems create an interconnected threat to election integrity that extends far beyond 2024

Our investigation into the 2024 election has uncovered a permanent shadow network threatening every future American election. Three companies have quietly built overlapping infrastructure that can compromise voting systems through multiple pathways. Two are directly linked to Donald Trump through founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

“We’ll Have It Fixed So Good”

During the 2024 campaign, Trump made a statement that now seems prophetic rather than hyperbolic. Speaking to supporters, he declared:

"In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote."

Combined with his post-victory admission that Musk "understands those computers better than anyone else... the ones used for counting votes," Trump's words suggest advance knowledge of technological capabilities that could indeed "fix" future elections.

The Power Grid Backdoor

Eaton Corporation's 2021 acquisition of Tripp Lite positioned them as the dominant provider of power systems to American elections. Their devices power 70% of voting equipment nationwide, including ES&S and Dominion systems processing millions of ballots.

The vulnerability: Over 100,000 devices remain visible online with unchanged default passwords. The widely-deployed SmartPro series contains exploitable flaws allowing unauthenticated access to control power outlets. Most critically, 55% contain unpatched vulnerabilities with cellular modems connecting to major carrier networks.

While Electronic voting machines are said to air-gapped, Eaton's Brightlayer platform aggregates data from millions of devices into centralized cloud environments, creating a single point of failure across voting infrastructure.

The Surveillance Integration

Eaton's May 2024 partnership with Peter Thiel's Palantir brings a surveillance contractor with $1.2 billion in government contracts into direct contact with election power infrastructure. Palantir's AI platform now processes operational data from the systems powering American elections across 160 countries.

This grants Palantir real-time access to electrical parameters and equipment health from voting machines. The company's Apollo system provides remote software deployment with zero-downtime upgrades across all Eaton installations.

The Satellite Connection

Elon Musk's Starlink Direct-to-Cell technology completes the triangle. The constellation can connect to any LTE device without special hardware, including cellular modems in voting equipment. Emergency authorizations during Hurricane Milton in October 2024 established precedent for satellite networks to bypass telecommunications oversight.

Partnership documents between Eaton and SpaceX reference "exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity"—active experimentation with satellite-to-voting infrastructure connectivity.