I would bet that is also the case in this instance, and the media’s outage needs to be tempered until they do the leg work to actual understand the cost effectiveness of this change, and how the decision was made.
Since governments are positions of power and demand trust, the appearance of not being corrupt is almost as important as the actual act of not being corrupt.
Personally I don't know that I think that any acting CEO should be in charge of government decisions, but even if I was more amenable to that, I think we shouldn't have one who will directly financially benefit from these decisions. It just gives an appearance of impropriety, and it erodes trust in our institutions, which I think are important. I would be similarly against the Verizon CEO being in charge of this decision.
Suppose they hired a disinterested third party, someone with experience with communications infrastructure, who doesn't stand to directly benefit from this [1], and then that person determined that Starlink was actually the best product for the money for this; that would be fine. I'm not opposed to everything that the Diablo cheater has ever breathed on, and if Starlink is the best tool for the job then it's totally fine to use it.
[1] I know everyone has an S&P500 fund or something, so most professionals in the US could indirectly benefit.
Even if it is cheaper, it’s a very clear and obvious conflict of interest. There’s 350 million people in this country; choose one that doesn’t have a direct financial interest in this. If that person says Starlink, then that’s fine.
The media outrage right now is completely justified.