Musk’s Twitter Buy Makes No Sense – Unless It’s Part of Something Bigger | Hacker News Reader

Musk’s Twitter Buy Makes No Sense – Unless It’s Part of Something Bigger

bylinetimes.com

29 pointsBerislavLopac59 comments

This article doesn't seem to have much evidence to back it's theory about displacing the dollar.

Elon's primary motivation is quite well documented, a massive DoD program*, which requires Republicans to fund. Twitter helps him curry favors to earn these (potentially ~$500B) Republican-backed contracts.

Mike Griffin is the ringleader but he's only useful when Republicans are in power (see parts about Elon and Space Development Agency / SDI). https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

* The DoD program is a space constellation of ballistic missile defense satellites for tracking and targeting nuclear ballistic missiles, including HGVs and hypersonic cruise missiles".[110] " However, (UCS) warns developments could escalate tensions with Russia and China and called the project "fundamentally destabilizing".[111] They later called for a treaty halting development to prevent an arms race in space.[112] The Biden administration has largely agreed to slow it down and has been stiffing Elon (e.g. ignoring Tesla) for his involvement.

Starlink's military satellite development is overseen internally at SpaceX by retired four-star general Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy.[113][114] O'Shaughnessy advocated before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services for a layered space capability with lethal follow-on that incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather and act upon sensor data quickly.[115]

It is based on Starlink platforms and requires heavy lift (Starship) for actual orbital weapon deployment.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

Also see: Strategic Defense Initiative. It's a big project, the recent establishment of the Space Force under Trump is built around this new program.

Space weapons is a pandoras box I don't think we want to open.

China and Russia will do it, just like with the hypersonic missiles and that nuclear torpedo/UUV designed to take out coastal cities.

From my reading, China is only looking at it in response to the US.

And the US is only doing it to protect the dollar being the global reserve currency from people like Musk.

At least that’s what TFA is trying to pull out of their asses.

No, it's more simple. China wants to be world hegemon by 2049. Everything China does is aimed at that.

Military technology is subject to very real, very dangerous prisoners' dilemmas. In a way it doesn't matter if one side is starting it or not, the real question is if it can be ruled out that either one of the sides could be doing it.

And it's shit, because unilaterally declaring you're not gonna do it won't work at all, so there needs to be enough trust between the parties to institute a supervision regime, otherwise, if something is technological possible and promises military benefits, it will be done sooner rather than later.

I agree space weapons are a bad idea, but I think Elon isn't JUST doing it for the money. He sincerely believes it's needed to stop nuclear war.

The counterpoint is that it could start WWIII

I suppose so long as whomever is control of the space superiority, and it's used only as a suppression system - similar to the Iron Dome providing a fairly effective wall to protest Israel, then it doesn't matter if someone gets annoyed that all of their missiles can be efficiently knocked down.

If that system is however deployed and its controller launches its own missiles in attack, while suppressing others', then that's a very big problem - and probably very close to a total global tyrannical control state.

We might all have to live underground in tunnels

Satellite mounted weapons systems that can block ballistic missiles, i.e. reach at least into the upper atmosphere, but can't ever be used offensively? That seems like a tall order.

In addition, anything making MAD impossible will have very, very far reaching consequences for world politics, many of which are offensive. Any state that can unilaterally deploy nukes without fear of reprisal is on it's way to the total global tyranny you mention.

So, corruption basically?

>Elon's primary motivation is quite well documented

Huh? Where?

I haven’t seen anything about buying Twitter being related to space missiles. This claim needs a lot more evidence, it sounds more like a conspiracy theory.

All the evidence I’ve seen honestly just seems to point to politically moderate people like Musk genuinely being concerned about Twitter’s previously heavy-handed approach to banning/silencing people that disagreed with their political views. There are tons examples of popular right-leaning accounts being banned/suspended for saying the wrong thing, the Babylon Bee being an obvious tipping point.

Read the links

Trump highlighted this program in his 2024 announcement yesterday,

We will again have peace through strength, that's all it is. As events overseas have shown to protect our people from the unthinkable threat of nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, the United States must also build a state of the art next generation missile defense shield, we need it, the power of these missiles and the power of a word that I refuse to say, nuclear, we have to have it, we need a defense shield. And we have to do it and we actually have the technology and we're gonna build it. Just as I rebuilt our military, I will get this done.

We will plant our beautiful American flag very soon on the surface of Mars, which I got started. But we need everyone involved. We need everyone's help. We need to look out for one another. We need to be friends. And we need every Patriot on board. Because this is not just a campaign, this is a quest to save our country, talking about saving our country. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Most Republicans including DeSantis also support the program. I think Elon believed the Senate would go Republican last week and he could be called a kingmaker.

You honestly believe Elon spent $44B on Twitter because he was mad about accounts like the Babylon Bee?

Billionaires buy media companies to control the narrative and push their politics, it's not much more complicated than that. Except he definitely overpaid and probably bit off more than he can chew.

> genuinely being concerned about Twitter’s

If we consider that Musk secured funds for this also from Saudi prince and sovereign wealth fund Qatar Holding... I'm not sure if we can talk about politically moderate genuine concerns.

I think one of the very common errors surrounding Musk is ascribing him too much credit. Musk does something dumb and people shout "he's playing 4d chess!". I think there is a heuristic at play here - which is that he's a billionaire and therefore a genius. But it goes against another heuristic - when people tell you who they are, believe them. Musk just has a very simplistic approach to this problem, he doesn't understand the issues and hasn't shown any interest in learning. So yeah, he can run a company employing smart people who use massive government subsidies to build rocket ships and he can also be a silly petulaent child. Both those things can be true. It doesn't need to be part of something bigger. Listen to an hour of the All-In podcast and you'll very quickly understand the dumb, lazy thinking that went into this acquisition.

Also people seem to forget SolarCity that essentially had to be bailed out with Tesla money... If he was actual business mastermind, wouldn't that company also be successful?

I much more subscribe that he got lucky and hired the right people. And managed to exploit VC and retail investors.

Well you could argue he wasn't running SolarCity until it was acquired by Tesla.

SolarCity was founded by Musk's cousins.

Did they solicit his advice along the way?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity

I'm sure they did, but I don't think it's a very strong point.

I understand and agree :). Cheers wilg

Exactly this. Musk announced buying Twitter, immediately liquidated $10B of Tesla stock without deal being even written down and when Twitter's shareholders decided that they want to be bought, Musk started backing off. It was never an intention to buy Twitter. It was a miscalculation and he ended up stuck with Twitter.

    Musk announced buying Twitter, immediately liquidated $10B of Tesla stock without deal being even written down

Or he knew Tesla was way overvalued at the time (which turned out to be true) and needed an excuse to liquidate a huge chunk without spooking investors before the price dropped?

It's only a small part of this share and why would he liquidate that by buying another asset for more than it's worth?

More than it's worth financially or as a tool to control narrative in the US? I mean, why do you think certain people are so apoplectic about it? We pretended it didn't shape the narrative in the country until the wrong guy got ahold of it, now it's mask off.

Why are all downvotes? Seems pretty compelling.

The bigger thing is obvious and already happening: Musk wants to influence and control politics. Use Twitter to become a kingmaker. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589639376186724354

I'm not sure how essentially being a referee to make the playing field fair fits under "influence and control politics" description.

A referee doesn't say "I recommend that the home team wins", otherwise they'd be tossed out of the game.

This could just be a narrative he’s pushing because he’s trying to curry favor with Republicans right now. If he needed a favor from Dems he’d probably be talking about how congress is too slow to act and we need a united legislature.

When he is in the position of power he's in, and posts things like this[1] it is hard not to assume he has ulterior political motives.

[1] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-reacts-elon-musk...

Troy has a strong tendency to confuse “these two powerful people are expressing similar goals” with “these two powerful people are conspiring.” He’s doing the same thing here with Putin and Musk. Extraordinary claims require stronger evidence.

What if Musk’s Twitter purchase was a somewhat frivolous whim that he failed to back out of? That’d also explain the current situation, but Troy doesn’t even examine it. Note that if Musk’s purchase was part of a sinister plan it makes absolutely no sense to risk it for the possibility of saving a few billion. Troy keeps papering over that whole flaw.

The obvious answer is in plain sight but the author's ideology makes him blind to it.

Musk is a new billionaire. Virtually none of this wealth has converted to tangible usable wealth. It mostly sits in the floating number of tesla's stock price.

If Tesla fails, he loses practically everything. Tesla practically can't fail anymore by itself. But more importantly, he has global sprawl. Factories in China and USA. He is incentivized around not having anything cause the failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_American_Civil_War

This is the primary threat which concerns him. His intention with Twitter is to prevent this from happening.

The article is a decent example of what I'm labeling as the hyper-rational hermenutic in the domain of postmodern exegesis for the purpose of discussion. Postmodern exegesis in this form is a form of social narrative building facilitated by the internet. One of its hermenutics is hyper-rationalization especially the hyper-rationalization of great men beyond the realm of realism. This is facilitated by the narrative bias and is most embodied in the 4D-chess meta-narrative, but we also see it along with other interpretative mechanisms in QAnon and others.

One should at least be familiar with this framing as it's one of the most powerful forms of inoculation against it. In a mental landscape that's more turbulent than in the past, it's natural to want to attribute a narrative to it. What's insidious about some of these narratives is that they are a trojan horse for ridiculous assumptions - like the one the author makes. ie: Musk's hyper-rationality is beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. It's not.

1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trump-is-playing-4d-chess

whut

They said its hard to believe how dumb some very rich, succesful people are.

But they do be that dumb.

This is going to get so much worse...

Trying to make sense of one person in a position so atypical isn't going to work unless you know them personally.

It could be a master plan for world domination. It could be a bluff that backfired. What he does with it is what matters.

Well of course buying twitter is not only about twitter. Twitter being capable of shape politics and society should not be regarded as a revolutionary idea, I bet everyday Joe can come into it in a pot trip. Will Musk be able to do such because he's "playing 5d chess" or will he run twitter to the ground because "he's just a rich idiot" which seem to be the postures in the comment section is totally unrelated.

When he originally announced it, it was the perfect excuse to sell off heavily overvalued Tesla stock.

At the same time, as one of the top 10 tweeters in the world, Elon Musk + Twitter is a big part of why Tesla doesn't need to run ads.

Twitter is also one of the main ways Elon gets with the ladies.

Elon may have fumbled this acquisition severely IMO. Twitter stock would've crashed more than Tesla stock did over the same period, but Elon was legally obligated to go through with it. He's now the bagholder for some overpriced shit.

Well he is still rich AF. So what did he lose?

Money, free time, face, sanity and the ability to remain unbiased , now every right wing nut wants and expects a favour from him. The right to “free speech” ha

You mean he expects a favor from every right-wing nut.

From buying twitter to displacing the dollar. Talk about your slippery slopes…

TFW you’re debating what to order at Panera bread while thinking about some bug you found. Meanwhile ppl be out here plotting and playing out world domination.

Wasn't he forced to buy Twitter? I mean he wanted out of the deal because 40 billion acquisition will never pay itself back.

I mean, he was “forced” to buy Twitter after he signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter. So if he didn’t want it, the time to figure that out was before signing on the dotted line.

I believe he didn't want to do it in the end. But he was too arrogant and thought that he would get out of the singed deal in any case. Maybe he did want to force some info out of Twitter. But he ended up playing himself.

>I mean he wanted out of the deal because 40 billion acquisition will never pay itself back.

Exactly. But every fan is out here trying to explain to us normies how he's playing 5D chess.

It’s still interesting to consider why he wanted to buy Twitter in the first place. It clearly wasn’t because he thought the company was thriving.

I always saw it as an Ambien-induced impulse buy.

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