SpaceX has always been a about convincing private industry to fund the militarization of space.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
Mars is a thin cover story to get the engineers to feed the War machine. "National security" / nuclear threat is a great excuse to get politicians to sell out the country.
How about we focus on global security?
I thought it was obvious that "God Emporeror of Mars" was a satirical answer. There are a whole bunch of new markets that cheap access to space open up. Like Bezos' dream of in-space manufacturing. Or Musk's dream of data centres in space. Or power gen in space. Or the "cis-lunar economy". Or space tourism. Or He3 on the moon. People will buy SpaceX stock for the potential, even if that potential is pretty much worthless and the chance of SpaceX capturing the gains rather than some other company is fairly low.
"National Security" is just one more in a big list.
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