[paganel]

This is Spirit’s current CEO [1]:

> Patrick Michael Shanahan (…) is a former United States federal government official who served as the acting United States Secretary of Defense in 2019.

which is to say that these are companies that are, in essence, controlled by the US Government when it comes to their strategic future, so in cases like this one here the money involved is of secondary importance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_M._Shanahan

[JumpCrisscross]

> which is to say that these are companies that are, in essence, controlled by the US Government

Shanahan was in government for two years under a different administration, after 31 years at Boeing, and then returned to the private sector at the helm of a publicly-traded company. Nothing about this screams “controlled by the U.S. government.”

[paganel]

A high-executive getting appointed as Minister of Defence and then rapidly returning as a CEO of a company which has lots of Government contracts tells me exactly that. Had this happened in Russia or China the Western media would have had no qualms in painting said companies as Government pawns.

[JumpCrisscross]

> returning as a CEO of a company which has lots of Government contracts

Spirit has negligible government contracts. They supply Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier.

> Had this happened in Russia or China the Western media would have had no qualms in painting said companies as Government pawns

No. If anything, it would have been pitched as quasi-oligarchic.