The Unbelievable Lightness Of Being Musk – CleanTechnica – TechnoNews

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The thought for this story has been kicked round within the govt eating room at CleanTechnica headquarters for some time now, as Elon Musk seems to be going additional off the rails with every passing day. Let’s be trustworthy. Musk and Tesla pay plenty of payments round right here. The time period “clickbait” is used pejoratively at any time when anybody doesn’t like one in every of our articles, as a result of we are within the click on enterprise, as is each different digital media website. The gods of Google rely each click on, each key stroke, and each “like.” Clicks are the forex of the digital world. There isn’t any monetary incentive for CleanTechnica writers to get extra clicks today, although, so we’re not individually pushed to chase tales for clicks. It’s maybe a pure tendency, however now we have definitely pushed away many, many readers by not praising the whole lot Musk does, so the conclusion that we write tales like this to earn more money is essentially flawed.

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” is an previous expression but it surely’s good recommendation. However, the newest actions by Elon Musk have soured most of us on him, to the purpose the place some are contemplating promoting their Tesla vehicles as a result of they now not want to be seen as supporting his cockamamie worldview. Ever since he purchased Twitter and rebranded it as X, he has promoted the notion that each one speech must be free, but it surely ought to solely be amplified if he personally approves of it, and he’s very happy to sue others for what they are saying in an effort to attempt to shut them up (a basic assault on free speech, as one decide concluded). He has set himself up because the one and solely true giver of reality for your complete world. In case you put up stuff he likes, it will get handed on to his legions of followers. In case you put up stuff that he doesn’t like, it’s typically deleted and your account is deactivated. It must be apparent this isn’t free speech in any respect. It’s megalomania writ massive.

About That Musk Submit On X

The newest instance occurred final week when the Secret Service arrested a person with a rifle close to a golf course the place Donald Trump was taking part in. Quickly afterwards, Musk posted this disgusting piece of rubbish on X:

That put up sparked a backlash so fierce that the nice and highly effective Musk was compelled to delete it — after it had been considered tens of thousands and thousands of instances. In keeping with Wired, after deleting the put up, Musk mentioned it was merely a joke that fell flat given the context. “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏. Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

Nicely, duh. How is it potential that the person who considers himself to be the neatest one that ever lived doesn’t know this? He’s the grasp of the world’s strongest social megaphone and but doesn’t perceive essentially the most rudimentary rules about the way it operates? That has raised considerations that Musk, who’s the beneficiary of billions of {dollars} price of contracts with the US Division of Protection and NASA, might himself be a menace to nationwide safety if he makes use of his energy at X to encourage political violence.

“In my experience, the Secret Service would take such a comment very seriously,” Michael German, a former FBI particular agent and a liberty and nationwide safety fellow at NYU College of Regulation’s Brennan Heart for Justice, informed Wired. “Typically, agents would go out and interview the subject to ensure that there wasn’t an existing threat, and to make the subject aware that the agency takes such statements seriously.”

Musk Is A Social Media Addict

The US authorities’s heavy reliance on corporations managed by Musk has repeatedly raised considerations by nationwide safety specialists, particularly a 12 months in the past when he denied a request by Ukraine to allow Starlink in Crimea so it might launch an assault on Russian troops. There are considerations about Musk’s enterprise relationship with China and his reliance on financing from Saudi Arabia to partially finance the acquisition of X. Critics are fast to level out that whereas he’s fast to lash out on the Biden administration for what he considers violations of his model of free speech, he by no means, ever has something damaging to say in regards to the rulers of China or Saudi Arabia, two nations through which free speech is taken into account against the law punishable by loss of life or lengthy intervals of incarceration.

Simply how concerned Musk is with X was revealed in a latest article by The Guardian that reviewed his exercise on the platform throughout one 24 hour interval in August of this 12 months. The sub-headline for that story mentioned, “A controversial tweet may make it to the news, but reading every post from the world’s richest man shows how frenzied and extreme he really is.” It then went on to element 145 tweets Musk made the day after his on-line interview with Donald Trump. The report exhibits him lively on the platform throughout most of that point except a number of 2-hour intervals once we was away from the location.

Through the day, The Guardian says Musk shared anti-immigrant content material (he himself is an immigrant, in fact), election conspiracies, and assaults in opposition to the media. He exchanged tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers, and sycophantic admirers. Although Musk has claimed that X is a spot for all politics and viewpoints, he has little to no interplay with left-wing activists or vital journalists. His replies and reposts mirror each his personal private echo chamber on the platform, in addition to the broader right-wing ecosystem that he has cultivated as proprietor of X.

Since Musk took over the corporate in late 2022, far-right and conservative voices have grown on the platform whereas advertisers and extra mainstream A-list customers have fled. Republicans are actually way more prone to imagine that their views are welcomed on the platform and that it has a optimistic impression on democracy than Democrats, in response to a Pew Analysis Heart research from earlier this 12 months, whereas Democratic voters report far larger ranges of harassment.

A Rising Paranoia

One of many indications of maximum wealth and energy is a rising sense of paranoia. In keeping with the New York Occasions, Musk has more and more barricaded himself behind a phalanx of armed bodyguards as he has develop into extra rich, extra well-known, and extra outspoken. Whereas many excessive profile folks face threats, Musk has expanded his private safety past that of different billionaires.

His safety group now operates like a mini Secret Service and he’s guarded extra like a head of state than a enterprise govt, safety specialists mentioned. He now travels with as many as 20 safety professionals who analysis escape routes or clear a gathering room earlier than he enters. The threats to his security have precipitated Musk to develop into extra fearful, three folks near him informed the New York Occasions. He’s hardly ever with out bodyguards even when utilizing the lavatory.

On the annual Tesla shareholder assembly in June, Musk mentioned he thought the threats in opposition to him had been getting crazier. “The probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name. So they hear my name a lot — I’m like, ‘OK, I’m on the list,’ you know.” He added this had compelled him to be extra standoffish with the general public.

The Takeaway

So, what are we to make of Elon Musk? Is he the best engineer who ever lived or a charlatan who leverages the skills of others to burnish his personal halo? In all probability the truth is someplace within the center. There are a number of potential takeaways right here.

One is that Musk used Tesla to propel himself to monumental wealth and fame after which did what different rich and well-known folks do — flip inward to bask within the glow of different rich and well-known individuals who feed one another’s inflated egos and plot learn how to maintain the hoi polloi from absconding with their wealth and fame. Douglas Rushkof did a wonderful job of explaining this dynamic in his guide Survival of the Richest. In case you haven’t learn it, you actually can’t be totally conscious of what’s occurring within the rarefied stratosphere the place Musk and his friends (if there are any) function.

Two, Tesla exploded like a supernova greater than a decade in the past however has slipped into complacently currently as Musk’s mania for robotaxis has outmoded the corporate’s give attention to bringing inexpensive electrical automobiles to market. The world doesn’t want $100,000 vans or $200,000 Roadsters. It doesn’t want automobiles that may make the Kessel run in beneath 12 parsecs. It wants inexpensive automobiles that do what folks want them to do reliably for years and years. They should take the youngsters to soccer observe and the dentist, and get folks to work on time in consolation and with a specific amount of fashion.

Musk’s give attention to the offbeat to the exclusion of selling analysis is intriguing however presumably opposite to the purpose of long run profitability for Tesla. He pooh-poohed criticism of the Cybertruck, saying he personally didn’t care if it was a business success. That’s straightforward for somebody with a number of hundred billion within the financial institution, however hardly a foundation for constructing an organization with a historical past of sustained progress.

Third, some readers could have famous the reference to a 1984 novel by Czech author Milan Kundera with an identical title. In that guide, the protagonist, Tomáš, is a extremely regarded surgeon and mental. He’s additionally a womanizer. Musk, for all his achievements and wealth, has a simplistic relationship with girls which appears to contain impregnating as many females as potential. One nearly will get the impression that he intends to populate his proposed colony on Mars solely together with his personal progeny. The newest instance was a put up on X that he made shortly after Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

As soon as once more, Musk noticed this as a humorous joke, however others discovered it crude and creepy. Hillary Clinton informed the San Francisco Chronicle the put up was “another way of saying rape.” At a time when girls’s reproductive well being is such a major half of the present political local weather in the USA, Musk’s put up was silly, ignorant, tone deaf, and offensive. His apologists all the time make excuses for him as a result of he’s on the autism spectrum, however that’s no excuse for being an smug ass and it definitely doesn’t make him a very good candidate for the gatekeeper of free speech for your complete digital world.

We’d like to see Elon make Tesla essentially the most profitable automobile firm on the earth, however he’s so distracted by his X escapades that it appears he doesn’t have time for Tesla anymore. He was as soon as the pinnacle cheerleader for Tesla and the first motive why its inventory was valued far larger than different automakers’. Tesla was completely different and the distinction was Musk and his indefatigable promotion of the Tesla model. However he has abdicated that function so he can put up a thousand instances per week on X.

A part of the blame should fall on the corporate’s board of administrators, who appear unwilling to rein Musk in, or incapable of it. Maybe sometime some good securities lawyer will maintain them to account for breaching their fiduciary obligation to stockholders. The sense now we have right here at CleanTechnica is that Musk is a unfastened cannon, and due to that, the promise that Tesla as soon as had is being squandered.

We’d fairly he keep on with his unique goal of constructing Tesla the preeminent electrical automobile firm on the earth. As an alternative, BYD is effectively on its technique to doing exactly that and Musk has no reply for it. What Tesla desperately wants is an expert supervisor working the corporate who will not be micro-dosing medication and who will not be tilting at windmills on social media 24/7. Elon, we hardly know you anymore.