Who else should pay them?
I used to root my phone and then could use the hotspot without my provider knowing.
I love it simply because it’s a Trek show that stopped taking itself seriously. Star Trek always had an amount of stoicism about it, and LD takes it away and points out all the stupid stuff fans have just taken. And the whole thing works because it isn’t a crew at the edge of being heroes. My two cents.
Check out Tailscale. They have 20 machine limit on the free plan. It runs on wireguard and is pretty secure.
The most important person in Starfleet and he does everything.
These people have always been bad. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford, all of them had their issues. The big difference between then and now is the information we have access to. These leaders are more or less forced to live a very public life. We can find all sorts of articles and investigative journalism reports about Elon actually having family money. And when you are rich enough to control the few newspapers, the stories are going to put you in a very good light.