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What Elon Musk Really Wants

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  hallux  •  3 weeks ago  •  19 comments

By:   Franklin Foer - The Atlantic

What Elon Musk Really Wants
The Tesla and X mogul has long dreamed of redesigning the world in his own extreme image. Trump may be his Trojan horse.

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T


In Elon Musk’s vision of human history, Donald Trump is the singularity. If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government—not to mention the business opportunity of the century.

Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate   techno-authoritarian   fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an   Ayn Rand   novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state—and therefore American life—in his own image.

Musk’s pursuit of this dream clearly transcends billionaire hobbyism. Consider the personal attention and financial resources that he is pouring into the former president’s campaign. According to   The New York Times , Musk has relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee Trump’s ground game there. That is, he’s running the infrastructure that will bring voters to the polls. In service of this cause, he’s imported top talent from his companies, and he reportedly plans on spending $500 million on it. That doesn’t begin to account for the value of Musk’s celebrity shilling, and the way he has   turned   X into an informal organ of the campaign.

Musk began as a Trump skeptic—a supporter of   Ron DeSantis , in fact. Only gradually did he become an avowed, rhapsodic MAGA believer. His attitude toward Trump seems to parallel his view of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, AI might culminate in the destruction of humanity. On the other hand, it’s inevitable, and if harnessed by a brilliant engineer, it has glorious, maybe even salvific potential.

Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By  Politico ’s  tabulation , both companies have won $15 billion in federal contracts. But that’s just his business plan in beta form. According to  The Wall Street Journal , SpaceX is designing a slew of new products with “national security customers in mind.”

Musk has only begun to tap the pecuniary potential of the government, and Trump is the dream. He  rewards  loyalists, whether they are foreign leaders who genuflect before him or supplicants who host events at his resorts. Where other presidents might be restrained by norms, Trump shrugs. During his first term, he discovered that his party was never going to punish him for his transgressions.

In the evolving topography of Trumpland, none of his supporters or cronies will have chits to compare with Musk’s. If Trump wins, it will likely be by a narrow margin that can be attributed to turnout. Musk can tout himself as the single variable of success.

It’s not hard to imagine how the mogul will exploit this alliance. Trump has already announced that he will   place   him in charge of a government-efficiency commission. Or, in the Trumpian   vernacular , Musk will be the “secretary of cost-cutting.” SpaceX is the implied template: Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing the affairs of state to nimble entrepreneurs and adroit technologists. That means there will be even more opportunities for his companies to score gargantuan contracts. So when Trump   brags   that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, he’s not imagining a reprise of the Apollo program. He’s envisioning cutting SpaceX one of the largest checks that the U.S. government has ever written. He’s talking about making the richest man in the world even richer.

Of course, this could be bluster. But it is entirely consistent with the rest of the right’s program for Trump’s second term, which involves dismantling the federal government—eliminating swaths of the politically neutral civil service and entire Cabinet departments and agencies. It is exactly the kind of sweeping change that suits Musk’s grandiose sense of his own place in human history.

This isn’t a standard-issue case of oligarchy. It is an apotheosis of the egotism and social Darwinism embedded in Silicon Valley’s pursuit of monopoly—the sense that concentration of power in the hands of geniuses is the most desirable social arrangement. As Peter Thiel once put it, “Competition is for losers.” (He also bluntly admitted, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”) In this worldview, restraints on power are for losers, too.

With his government contracts—and his insider influence—Musk will become further ensconced in the national-security state. (He already   has   a $1.8 billion classified contract, likely with the National Reconnaissance Office, and, through a division of SpaceX called   Starshield , supplies communications networks for the military.) At a moment when the government is confronting crucial decisions about the future of AI and the commercialization of space, his ideals will hold sway.

At Tesla, Musk assigned himself the title of “ technoking .” That moniker, which sits on the line between jokiness and monomania, captures the danger. Following the example set by Trump, he wouldn’t need to divest himself from his businesses, not even his social-media company. In an administration that brashly disrespects its critics, he wouldn’t need to fear congressional oversight and could brush aside any American who dares to question his role. Of all the risks posed by a second Trump term, this might be one of the most terrifying.


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Hallux
Professor Principal
1  seeder  Hallux    3 weeks ago

Genius flirts with insanity ... cross a bridge too far and you may find yourself stuck on the other side. Twitter was just such a bridge and it has turned Musk into a dancing fool gesticulating like the "mine, mine, mine" madman who promises fool's gold to his minions.

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
1.1  Tessylo  replied to  Hallux @1    3 weeks ago

Who is the genius here?  Is he what used to be called an idiot savant?

 
 
 
devangelical
Professor Principal
1.2  devangelical  replied to  Hallux @1    3 weeks ago

 more side effects of ketamine abuse ....

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
2  Sean Treacy    3 weeks ago

hich involves dismantling the federal government—

Odd. I was told he was a fascist. Must be one of those libertarian/authoritarians. 

 
 
 
Hallux
Professor Principal
2.1  seeder  Hallux  replied to  Sean Treacy @2    3 weeks ago
I was told he was a fascist.

I'm sure it fell on deaf ears.

 
 
 
Igknorantzruls
Sophomore Quiet
3  Igknorantzruls    3 weeks ago
"Trump may be his Trojan horse"

Trump couldn't fill a Trojan Condom unless it was with dishonor.

 
 
 
Hallux
Professor Principal
3.1  seeder  Hallux  replied to  Igknorantzruls @3    3 weeks ago

You have not taken into account Trump smegma.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
4  JohnRussell    3 weeks ago

Musk and his cadre dont believe in democracy. They would like to get Vance into power as their puppet. If Trump wins he would be smart to find a food taster. 

 
 
 
Thomas
Masters Guide
5  Thomas    3 weeks ago

Musk wants to be the First person to head the Ministry of Truth.

 
 
 
bugsy
Professor Participates
5.1  bugsy  replied to  Thomas @5    3 weeks ago

No, that would be this person. Thankfully, good, honest Americans called it out and she never was able to initiate any of her radical censorship policies. 

Who Is Nina Jankowicz? Head of Joe Biden's Disinformation Governance Board - Newsweek

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
5.2  Tessylo  replied to  Thomas @5    3 weeks ago
Here's some good reasons not to vote for trump/vance with that freakshow musk also on board.
From Meta
Heather Cox Richardson
October 15, 2024 (Tuesday)
After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, cancel a scheduled live interview today with Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of Chicago. That interview echoed last night’s train wreck.
Trump showed up almost an hour late to the event with moderator John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. When he arrived, things went downhill fast. Micklethwait asked real questions about Trump’s approach to the economy, but the former president answered with aimless rants and campaign slogans that Micklethwait corrected, repeatedly redirecting Trump back to his actual questions. Trump quickly grew angry and combative.
When Micklethwait corrected Trump’s misunderstanding of the way tariffs work, Trump replied in front of a room full of people who understand the economy: “It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong.” Referring to analysis that his plans would explode the national debt, including analysis by the Wall Street Journal—hardly a left-wing outlet, as Mickelthwait pointed out—Trump replied: “What does the Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything. So have you, by the way….. You’ve been wrong about everything…. You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”
The economy is supposed to be Trump’s strong suit.
The former president seemed unable to stay on any topic, jumping from one idea to another randomly, or to answer anything, instead making statements that play well at his rallies—referring to people with insulting names, for example—or by rehashing old grievances and threatening to end traditional U.S. freedoms. He made it clear he intends to "straighten out our press,” for example. “Because,” he said, “we have a corrupt press."
As Micklethwait tried to keep him on task, Trump asserted stories that were more and more outlandish. He claimed that children could do the work of U.S. autoworkers in South Carolina, for example, and that he would be a better chair of the Federal Reserve than Jerome Powell.
Micklethwait did not fight with Trump, but he didn’t indulge him either. When Trump explained that “you don’t put old in” the federal judiciary because “they’re there for two years, or three years,” Micklethwait replied: “You’re a 78-year-old man running for president.”
And therein lies the rub.
Like Thiel, Vance has spoken extensively about the need to destroy the U.S. government, but while Thiel emphasizes the potential of a technological future unencumbered by democratic baggage, Vance emphasizes what he sees as the decadence of today’s America and the need to address that decadence by purging the government of secular leaders. A 2019 convert to right-wing Catholicism, Vance said he was attracted to the religion in part because he wanted to see the Republican Party use the government to work for what he considers the common good by imposing laws that would enforce his version of morality.
Their worldview requires a few strong leaders to impose their will on the majority, and both Thiel and Vance have rejected secular democracy. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in 2009.
In 2021, Vance called American universities “the enemy” and said on a podcast that people like him needed to “seize the institutions of the left, and turn them against the left.” In a different interview, he clarified: American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said.
Vance told an interviewer he would urge Trump to “[f]ire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” This plan is central to Project 2025, whose main author, Kevin Roberts, has a book covering those ideas coming out soon—it was supposed to come out this month but was postponed when Project 2025 became a lightning rod for the election—for which Vance wrote the foreword. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Vance wrote.
Like Roberts, Vance wants to dismantle the secular state. He wants to replace that state with a Christian nationalism that enforces what he considers traditional values: an end to immigration—hence the lies about the legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio—and an end to LGBTQ+ rights. He supports abortion bans and the establishment of a patriarchy in which women function as wives and mothers even if it means staying in abusive marriages. Vance insists this social structure will be more fulfilling for women than becoming “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.“
That desire to get rid of the current “ruling class” and replace it with people like him has prompted Vance to say that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have done what former vice president Mike Pence would not: he would have refused to count the certified electoral ballots for President Joe Biden.
“Let’s be clear,” former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said. “This is illegal and unconstitutional. The American people had voted. The courts had ruled. The Electoral College had met and voted. The Governor in every state had certified the results and sent a legal slate of electors to the Congress to be counted. The Vice President has no constitutional authority to tell states to submit alternative slates of electors because his candidate lost. That is tyranny.”
Early voting began today in Georgia, where more than 328,000 voters smashed the previous record of 136,000 set in 2020, during the worst of the pandemic. One of those voters was former president Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 on October 1, and said over the summer he was trying to stay alive to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
At a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, tonight, a slurring, low-energy Donald Trump told the audience: “If you don’t win, win, win, we’ve all had a good time, but it’s not gonna matter, right? Sadly. Because what we’ve done is amazing. Three nominations in a row…. If we don’t win it’s like, ah, it was all, it was all for not very much. We can’t, uh, we can’t let that happen.”
 
 
 
squiggy
Junior Silent
6  squiggy    3 weeks ago

"Obviously we have a difference of opinion,” Shapiro said, adding: “I don’t deny him that, right, but when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions.”"   ...   said Shapiro on Meet the Press over Musk's million dollar giveaway.

I remember waaaaaay back in the beginning of the week all the boasting of Harris' billion dollar haul, when nobody whined.

 
 
 
Thomas
Masters Guide
6.1  Thomas  replied to  squiggy @6    3 weeks ago

Yeah, but she wasn't handing out checks to buy voters.

 
 
 
Krishna
Professor Expert
6.2  Krishna  replied to  squiggy @6    3 weeks ago
I remember waaaaaay back in the beginning of the week all the boasting of Harris' billion dollar haul, when nobody whined.

Its not howmuch money a candidate raises that counts.

Rather-- it what they do with it!

 
 
 
Gsquared
Professor Principal
7  Gsquared    3 weeks ago
What Elon Musk Really Wants

In a word, power.  Untrammeled power.

Isn't it interesting how someone who earned a fortune selling electric vehicles is so full of gas?

 
 
 
CB
Professor Principal
7.1  CB  replied to  Gsquared @7    3 weeks ago

I am 'scared' of him! The world's richest man has just put no daylight between himself and the biggest liar in the country-possibly on the planet. . .Crooked Donald who wants to lead the world. What can go wrong? Lots.

Already the two combined have come up with 'buying votes' as a remedy for being on the edge of losing an election. Buying votes and registrations. . .is that true ELECTION INTERFERENCE?!!!

That is, isn't 'direct' payments to voters to join the voter franchise something money and wealth is not allowed to do, for obvious reasons.(And the reason why Citizens United was not allowed before the Roberts' court got involved)? 

BTW, once again hypocrisy is at play. These are the same trumpists who used their power to STOP people from getting free water and food in hour upon hour voting lines in several 'purple' states!

 
 
 
Sparty On
Professor Principal
8  Sparty On    3 weeks ago

Woooooohh ….. scary!  

 
 
 
Igknorantzruls
Sophomore Quiet
8.1  Igknorantzruls  replied to  Sparty On @8    3 weeks ago
Woooooohh ….. scary!

stay away from that mirror, cause if one reflects upon the non imagined image of a second grade Trump a tempting a second term, it will be an abortion of the third trimester type, asz Trump is so damn ripe with controversy, it's difficult to believe, or conceive, that so many can't see, what  they b leave, N this might include you, asz you N  they wish were not true, but wishing is not well, for Trump deserves to be sentenced, period, no question , asz he be guilty as hell

 
 
 
Sparty On
Professor Principal
8.1.1  Sparty On  replied to  Igknorantzruls @8.1    3 weeks ago

Baba yaga lives ….. oooooohhh, scary

 
 

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