Global adoption of Starlink sure seems like it will be another likely casualty of the current Elon Musk political era. Why do any of this?
2.) He believes in far right and government is far right. He is at home in this goverment.
3.) Attention and power. He got both now to unprecedented degree.
Unfortunately, like most things from Canada, there was never enough market for it to catch on. Maybe that will change now the US has unlocked the demand.
That’s not to say he’s dumb - it’s just that there is no one (!) who is generally smart - there is no generally applicable intelligence, experience always matters, and you always learn by doing.
It’s an illusion of the high IQ crowd that high IQ will means you will always succeed.
He is also always taking high risk bets. The X/politics/Trump bet paid off, in a way, but it also has its blowback.
edit also having said all this, it’s extremely unlikely that Europe will be successful at this. The future is US-China dominated.
I think the events of the last few weeks have been a wake-up call to many people around the globe who now see the value of not having their entire economy (or telecommunications &etc) be vulnerable to the whims of one person, be that the richest person in the world or a president nobody in Europe voted for.
I suspect there's a lot of really smart people who were previously happily living/working in the US who are now looking to emigrate to other lands, Europe could easily allow them to go over there and practice their skills on a Europe First initiative. Could also rope in the Chinese to help as they also aren't too happy with the current state of affairs.
Are you talking about the European Commission, which we didn’t vote for?
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> Could also rope in the Chinese to help
This is pretty funny. That's just switching who you rely on.
> Europe could easily allow them to go over there and practice their skills on a Europe First initiative
In Europe we prefer unskilled labour from third world countries so that they can do uber eats for cheap
No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory, though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say that nobody including Trump expected him to go that far.
How much of Elon’s conversion was genuine vs mercenary is impossible to know, but it’s likely.
That won't work with Trump. Not if you built your businesses on sectors that he is targeting, ranging from EVs to space exploration and research. Musk had to pick a side. Neutrality was never an option.
Few if any of us, regardless of wealth, have any real "agency" with Trump in office. There's nothing he can't fuck up and no one he can't fuck over. This is not an attempt at justification or absolution, just a simple statement of fact.
If you're under the impression I think any of this is a good thing, that would be grossly incorrect.
Musk's all-in fervent support wasn't necessary. He doesn't get a triple pass from having to support the fascist candidate to avoid being put up against the wall, and then again for his natural tendency to embrace things and go hardcore, and then again for working to destroy/loot our institutions because it's just lucrative business. This isn't some British comedy sketch where someone is trapped by social pressure in an increasingly escalating role - at a certain point he is just a neonazi (or "sparkling autocratic authoritarian" for the "akshually" simps).
If it turns out that Musk was showing so much support as a cover for acting behind the scenes to oust Trump, I will happily change my opinion. But given Musk's longer trend of spiraling into debilitating social media addition, I'm not holding out hope.
If your business relies on the USPS as much as Amazon's still does, you want to have a seat at the table when the administration decides how they're going to kneecap the USPS. Same with tariffs, when half of the crap they sell comes straight outta Shenzhen. See also NASA and Musk. Being locked out of the rooms where these decisions get made is potentially fatal for them.
for Jeff Bezos - it is.