Elon musk

Is the West ready to face the challenges of advancing technology?

The theme of this month’s edition is technology. The advancement of space exploration, defense technologies, artificial intelligence and the like should excite us. Yet the geopolitical issues they present are great and Western governments seem ill-prepared to grapple with them. Watch any congressional hearing where a crusty congressman tries to keep pace with Silicon Valley’s top autists if you need further evidence — and read Spencer A. Klavan’s analysis of the high-skill but low-status rejects uniting into a formidable social class on p.12. The Silent Generation and boomers simply cannot keep up. The Space Race is back on, as tycoons seek to cash in on the final frontier.

space technology

X and the return of the social-media sandbox

Elon Musk’s X, the social media site once known as Twitter, is a wasteland. It consists of uncontrolled pornography, crypto spambots, broken “mentions,” unpaid invoices for subscriptions, a useless search algorithm and unverified accounts spreading baseless conspiracy theories and being financially rewarded for juicing controversial or untrue content. It has become practically unusable as a functioning social media platform. But old Twitter, after what it had become, had to be absolutely and unequivocally destroyed for the sake of the future of open online discourse. The Jack Dorsey-Parag Agrawal iteration of Twitter had become part of an intelligence and corporate media censorship apparatus, which would spring into action against any user it viewed as an ideological opponent.

X

Mike Johnson’s olive branch

Speaker Mike Johnson is extending a high-profile olive branch to one of his biggest intra-party foes of the day: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Johnson made her one of the impeachment managers as the House hands the reins of the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas to a less-than-excited Senate. Just days ago, Greene was performatively threatening to oust Johnson hours before Congress headed into a multi-week recess. Now, she’s joining with a group of Republicans in asking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to expeditiously schedule an impeachment hearing for Mayorkas. It’s not just Greene who is obviously being helped out by Johnson with this announcement.

Elon Musk cans Don Lemon

Just when Cockburn feared Don Lemon might be able to salvage the remnants of his career, the former CNN host's shot of success slipped away. Lemon, who had cut a deal with X to host The Don Lemon Show, announced on Wednesday that Elon Musk had ended their partnership. The news came just hours after the two had sat down for an interview for the upcoming show.  “Elon Musk is mad at me,” Lemon said in a video while sipping his Starbucks latte. “Apparently, free speech absolutism doesn't apply when it comes to questions about him from people like me.” On Wednesday night, Lemon came crawling back to CNN to spill tea with Erin Burnett and share some tense moments from the interview. https://twitter.

don lemon

Of course Taylor Swift deserves to be TIME’s Person of the Year

Well, it had to happen. Taylor Swift has been the most talked-about person in the world for some time now. After 2023 saw her conquer both stadiums and the world’s cinemas with her Eras Tour film — which, with a current gross of $249 million, is now the highest-earning concert movie ever made — her remarkable year has been capped off both with the enormous success of her re-recorded album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and now, the news that TIME magazine has awarded the thirty-three-year-old musician the accolade of Person of the Year. She follows in the footsteps of everyone from Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. There are several noteworthy features of the accolade.

taylor swift

Santos kicked out of Congress

The House of Representatives kicked out its only Jew-ish member today, sending George Santos into the pages of history as one of only a handful of House members to be booted from the body. Former congressman Santos had an eventful second wedding anniversary yesterday, as he held a feisty, fiery press conference to proclaim his innocence — but declined to ask any of his colleagues to defend him against the latest charges. This third attempt at expulsion proved to be the charm for Santos’s foes, who rode the wave of an almost-comedic House Ethics report that alleged Santos spent donor dollars on everything from OnlyFans subscriptions (which he somewhat denied) to Botox (which he basically confirmed).

tesla cybertruck

The Cybertruck is a dud

The Cybertruck is here. Finally. Maybe. Sort of. Thursday was the “Cybertruck Delivery Event,” where they finally rolled off the production line and were handed over to waiting customers. Musk served as chaperone, host and speaker, and the event was a hype-fest for fanboys. As the presentation started, it was hard to tell whether some in the crowd were shouting “Elon” or “hallelujah” (I think the latter). He presented a polished marketing video, markedly sparse on specs, but promised that the Cybertruck was one of those rare products that change how we see the world; that it is “more truck than truck,” while also being “a better sports car than a sports car” and the best product Tesla had ever made. It’s not.

What would life on Mars actually look like?

From our UK edition

Just as extreme altitudes have notable effects on the human body and mind, so too does extreme wealth seem to have a particular effect on psychology. Or at least that’s how it appears when you look at the shared ambition of two of the world’s most prominent billionaires, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Both men are fixated on the idea that humanity’s future lies beyond Earth and are funnelling fortunes into the vision that we will soon have significant human settlements off-planet, whether on the moon, Mars or elsewhere. It’s an argument grounded not just in exploration and discovery, but in survival. If humanity’s future on Earth looks to be in doubt, is living off-world not the ultimate insurance policy for our species?

Was Rishi Sunak’s AI summit a success?

From our UK edition

14 min listen

This week the prime minister hosted his landmark AI summit at Bletchley Park which wrapped up with an interview with Elon Musk, who warned that AI will one day render all jobs obsolete. The who's who of AI were in attendance over the two days as well the likes of Kamala Harris and Ursula von der Leyen, but what was actually achieved? Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Madhumita Murgia, AI editor at the Financial Times.

The EV election?

You can lead an electorate to the electronic vehicle charging station, but you can’t make them plug in.   That’s the lesson President Biden is learning as American consumers reject the “green” future the administration has been trying to mandate through the EPA’s proposed emissions standards and billions in EV subsidies and tax credits.   The American people, however, just aren’t buying the climate change is “even more frightening than a nuclear war” line Biden is selling.

What exactly is the new space race all about?

The recent spate of articles about attempts by different countries to land vehicles on the Moon make it clear that a new space race is on. Just last month, Russia launched its first mission there in forty-seven years. And although the automated Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed at the last minute, India’s heavily-instrumented Chandrayaan-3 landed successfully just four days later. NASA itself aims to return humans to the lunar surface in 2025 with its Artemis program. Remarkably, more than eighty countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates, have thus far established some kind of presence in space.

space

The new Elon Musk biography lacks a clear vision

In the prologue to his biography of Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson evokes the Hero’s Journey in its most pop-culture incarnation: It’s one of the most resonant tropes in mythology. To what extent does the epic quest of the Star Wars hero require exorcising demons bequeathed by Darth Vader and wrestling with the dark side of the Force? Isaacson’s assumption is that Luke Skywalker is the hero of the original film A New Hope. His preamble is titled “Muse of Fire,” a reference to the most famous prologue in literature, the opening lines of Henry V. In Shakespeare’s play, the poet, recognizing the gargantuan feat before him, asks the Muse for help: O, for a muse of fire that would ascendThe brightest heaven of invention!

elon musk

The (r)evolution of Lauren Boebert

Lauren Boebert first gained notoriety back in 2019 as the pint-sized, gun-toting citizen who confronted Beto O’Rourke over his “hell yes” pledge to take our AR-15s and AK-47s. Since then, of course, Boebert has been elected twice to the US House of Representatives, where her behavior — “clashing with Capitol Police after setting off metal detectors,” feuding with Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House floor — habitually makes headlines.   Yesterday, news broke that Boebert and a companion had been escorted out of a musical adaptation of Beetlejuice in Denver for “vaping, singing, recording and ‘causing a disturbance’ during the performance.

Elon Musk: Ukraine hero or villain?

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Elon Musk responded to calls for supporting the Ukrainian cause by donating thousands of Starlink satellite units to the country. In essence, the move provided free internet to areas where the commodity was inaccessible via a satellite internet constellation built by Musk’s SpaceX. Yet now for CNN and the New York Times, Musk’s heroism has faded away. According to an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s new biography Elon Musk, the entrepreneur ordered Starlink’s services near the Crimean coast be switched off last year, disrupting a Ukrainian sneak attack on Russian warships, thus avoiding what Musk labels a “mini-Pearl Harbor.” “How am I in this war? Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars.

elon musk
donald trump legal reelection funds

Will Trump stop using reelection money on legal bills?

Donald Trump is in the process of setting up the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, a fund to help pay off legal bills for him and his co-defendants in the four indictments he is facing, according to a report in the Messenger. Up until this point, the former president’s legal fees had been paid by his Save America super PAC. “Save America wasn’t really designed as a legal defense fund, so as the legal landscape evolved, so did this effort,” a Trump official told the site’s Marc Caputo. So who can expect to be covered? Rudy Giuliani, presumably, who is named as a co-conspirator in Fani Willis’s Georgia case, and was the beneficiary of a Trump-hosted legal fundraiser at Bedminster last night. Giuliani’s fellow election attorney Jenna Ellis?

Elon Musk wants your biometric data, please

Get a sample of your bodily fluids ready: Elon Musk is coming for them.  X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, announced in its updated privacy policies that it will begin collecting users' biometric data next month. “Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the policy says. The catch — you don't have a choice. According to X users, they have already been prompted to accept pop-ups for the policy that wouldn't close unless they hit "got it." But the new policy, which goes into effect on September 29, won't be the first time X has gathered biometric data.

elon musk remote work biometric data

Elon is offering us a raw deal with X

Elon Musk, the owner of X — once known as Twitter, may she rest in peace — is making Americans an offer that they must refuse. When he purchased the social media platform last year for a whopping $44 billion, he led us to believe he was doing it in order to save free speech, an ideal in regard to which he said was an absolutist. Today, what he is actually offering instead is a censorship regime slightly more friendly to the right than his predecessor. It’s a recipe for disaster. Back during the bad old Twitter days of Jack Dorsey, most of us had a fairly consistent idea of how the site should moderate its content.

elon musk

The FBI has a problem with Catholics

From our UK edition

On board Aello She was built in 1921, a beautiful wooden ketch that is as graceful to look at as she’s uncomfortable for fat cats accustomed to gin palaces. I’ve sailed her over many years, the last time giving her to my children as I was in plaster having fallen from a balcony in Gstaad. This time it was worse. In fact it was the greatest no-show since Edward VIII skipped his coronation and showed up on the French Riviera instead. Michael Mailer had hinted that some Hollywood floozies were eager to sail around the Greek isles, but arrived empty-handed. The absent floozies were missed, but were immediately replaced by my son and his son, and off we went, four males looking for mates down the Peloponnese coast.

Is the Musk-Zuckerberg cage match off?

It may not come as a great surprise to readers that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will not, in fact, be having a cage fight with one another. Ever since Musk had posted on Twitter (now known as X) in June that he was interested in battling the Meta tycoon, only for Zuckerberg to reply “send me locations,” the saga has turned from a typically absurd piece of Muskian humor to a story that has oscillated between what has seemed like a serious piece of corporate warfare and utter silliness. There was never any serious doubt that Musk would have come off a poor second to Zuckerberg had the fight taken place.

musk zuckerberg

The online fight between Musk and Zuck is more fun than the real one will be

Social media was always a weird place — and it's only gotten wackier. When Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which used to be Facebook, announced it was starting Threads, a rival to X, which used to be Twitter (catch all that?), X owner Elon Musk “took a dig about the world becoming ‘exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,’” the AP reminds us, “but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu-jitsu training.” Musk responded, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.” Since then, Musk and Zuck have continued to poke one another (remember when “poking” someone on Facebook was a thing?) with infantile barbs that show them to be the tech nerds they really are. Cockburn is enjoying the taunting tweets (if they’re still called that?

musk zuck