Out on the howling edge of the Aleutian Islands, far beyond where most Americans could find on a map, sits the ghost town of Adak. Once bustling with 5,000 sailors and families during the Cold War, the place was a vital Navy hub for four decades.
Today, it’s more like a movie set for post-apocalyptic training—abandoned homes, collapsing roofs, howling winds, and now, one of the most absurd examples of government waste you’ll find this year.
The former Naval Air Facility Adak closed its gates in 1997. What’s left is a tiny population of government workers and Alaska Natives, barely a hundred souls scraping a living where America once stationed giants of sea and sky.
The rest is rot and ruin. Yet, taxpayers are being billed a jaw-dropping $340,000 every single year to keep “broadband” internet running in buildings that have no walls, no people, and no purpose.
That figure comes from a joint probe by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica.
The investigation found that an Anchorage internet contractor continues to receive massive federal payouts to maintain internet service for nearly 300 old Navy buildings across Adak—most empty, many falling apart, and not one actually using the network.
This is Washington’s “efficiency” in action: fiber lines to dollhouses split open by Aleutian gales. Journalist Kyle Hopkins described the decay vividly—bathroom mirrors, kitchen sinks, and furniture sitting in the open, half-eaten by storms. Yet bureaucrats in D.C. apparently believe those ruins still need high-speed connectivity.
In fairness, Hopkins didn’t find a single actual user of the tax-funded broadband. Instead, nearly every local relies on Elon Musk’s Starlink, a faster and cheaper satellite option.
Meanwhile, the government keeps cutting six-figure checks for service to ghosts—quite the metaphor for how disconnected the federal bureaucracy really is.
The absurdity doesn’t end there. The internet boondoggle is funded through the Universal Service Fund, a massive program run by the Federal Communications Commission. Every American who pays a phone bill helps bankroll it, through that quiet “Universal Service” surcharge you see each month. The goal was to ensure rural areas could get online.
Noble enough. But when the cash fuels contracts for internet access to crumbling Navy housing a thousand miles from civilization, you start to wonder who exactly benefits.
Here’s the kicker: The Navy, which originally built all those Adak facilities, has absolutely nothing to do with the current operation.
The War Department doesn’t maintain it, doesn’t use it, doesn’t want it. Yet some Anchorage firm pockets hundreds of thousands each year to keep a signal alive in a wind-blasted wasteland.
It’s a maddening snapshot of what happens when oversight falls asleep. While warfighters stretch every dollar to keep readiness up, bureaucrats at the FCC and their pet contractors seem perfectly content to shovel cash into the Aleutian abyss. Could that quarter-million a year fund new barracks, better gear, or troop training? Absolutely. But instead, it pays for Wi-Fi routers no one touches in houses without roofs.
Adak isn’t unique, either. Across America, closed military bases dot the landscape—most of them reclaimed into something useful.
Former Navy training centers in Florida and Colorado have become thriving communities. Even the ruined Homestead Air Force Base in Florida turned part of its footprint into a racetrack. But Adak? It’s the coldest joke in federal spending, and taxpayers are the punchline.
Still, the story might not end with decay. Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has wisely argued for expanding U.S. naval presence in the Arctic region. Admiral Samuel Paparo echoed that call last year, suggesting that reopening Adak could give America a critical edge against Russian aggression in the North Pacific.
As Paparo put it, a revived Adak base could “gain time and distance on any force capability that’s looking to penetrate.” In other words, the Aleutians could once again be the front line of freedom.
If that happens, at least the sailors will arrive to find a working internet connection—thanks to years of clueless bureaucrats paying for it. But if Adak remains the ghost island it’s been for two decades, this story will continue as yet another embarrassing symbol of Washington waste.
For now, the island’s decaying structures serve as training grounds for Marines who come to simulate expeditionary survival in harsh conditions. Ironically, that might be the only truly useful purpose Adak has served in years. The rest? It’s bureaucracy gone feral.
Until Congress or the War Department steps in, we’ll keep footing the bill for internet in empty buildings beneath the Alaskan storms—a chilling reminder that once Washington spends your money, it never stops, no matter how absurd the outcome.
