Because people hate Musk (understandably so) and since, apparently, we can't hold nuanced opinions anymore, then they must also hate whatever the man has produced.
By the way, I absolutely despise the man and his antics, but I don't want to live in a world where SpaceX fails, just to spite him.
I'm thinking about rebranding SpaceX with Gwynne Shotwell persona - I think she at least spends greater fraction of her time on SpaceX matters than Elon these days.
I normally say Gwynne Shotwell is underappreciated but I am really glad people here mention her. She is definitely the "rock" that holds the leadership team together it seems.
Same i didn't mind him before he went completely nutters, but i can love SpaceX, Tesla and the companies without loving him, it seems other people have decided everyone at tesla and spacex are evil because an idiot owns the company.
Why people hate him? Seems like a lot of “media” hates him and that’s what causes people to hate this guy, not the guy itself but the media. He does have some questionable behaviour for a CEO, but I highly prefer that kind of ceo that talks what he thinks rather than the one that reads from the brochure to make shareholders happy. Positives are far far more outweigh the negatives in this case.
You're talking about the guy suggesting an air cushion inside a vacuum tube. Meanwhile all he built is "Teslas in tunnels" without even demonstrating "full self driving" in this limited environment.
If anything, Elon has the media tamed. I see nothing but credulous praise for him in the mainstream media. But the actual words he says, the way he behaves, his constant lying about what his companies’ tech can do, the Cybertruck, the atrocious way he’s handled Twitter, the abusive way he treats his employees, the absolutely bonkers and counterproductive scam that is the Boring Company, and what he has shown himself to be by the type of content he promotes on Twitter, are all good reasons to dislike him.
He is a trans-phobic (because his daughter came out as LGBTQ and basically told him to screw off because he didn't accept her), he's an antisemitic (see recent X posts and shares), believes in science, but suddenly is anti-vaccinations for no reason, and honestly just seems to be posting things to make the right wing happy lately.
Not drinking _all_ of the trans-culture koolaid doesn't make someone trans-phobic.
I think he's posting a lot of crap, and probably doesn't have much of a filter and is impulsive at times. Clearly he's got some mental problems that lead him to say and retweet stuff on a whim that he probably doesn't actually believe. I think we can all understand these imperfections.
At the end of the day, he's an incredible human being, flaws and all. No one's perfect, and he's cocky and pushy and rude and stuff. But he'll be in history books, and mostly for having done a whole lot of good for humanity, while pissing off a lot of humans.
You’re being overly charitable suggesting he doesn’t believe the things he posts. He has a clear ideological bent and the garbage he posts, antisemitism included, is right in line with it.
- He has turned into a pro-Putin, right wing troll, regularly spewing out falsehoods on Twitter/X.
- How he has (mis?)managed Twitter so far.
- All the lying and broken promises regarding FSD and other shenanigans with Tesla stock (the “taking it private” debacle, the bitcoin pump and dump, etc).
I get a kick out of Elon/Twitter schadenfreude as much as the next person, but I also have to consider that maybe the "growth at all costs" Wall Street mentality has permeated our society and psyches so thoroughly that it triggers a strong kneejerk reaction to anyone going against that grain. Here is a leader who is finally saying, to hell with the investors and the board and kowtowing to the advertisers, I will make the changes I feel are right, and we are rejecting it because it's "mismanagement." Where mismanagement is defined as not playing along with the public market incentives.
I'm sure it's a swing too far in the apologist direction, but you gotta wonder...
Your comment is addressed directly by the great-grandparent comment in that
1) It lacks all nuance because your question implies that if a person provides benefits to [whomever] and it's greater than their antics/demons, then you should like them. And that's simply not how the world works. And
2) The comment even said they wouldn't want to live in a world without SpaceX despite his antics.
People are complicated and so too are the views individuals hold about other people. It's not a spectrum where people eventually just dismiss extremely concerning things because someone made something cool.
> It's not a spectrum where people eventually just dismiss extremely concerning things because someone made something cool.
That's the matter of the question. Elon Musk has some significant achievements which shouldn't be dismissed just because he behaves less than perfect somewhere else.
I understand you're trying to frame the question like that, but as has been pointed out now TWICE, and I will for a third time, it's a flawed question because you haven't left any room for nuance. OP literally said they want SpaceX to exist and that they don't like Musk. It's a nuanced thought out opinion and your question doesn't allow for that. Specifically because your premise is flawed, that by not liking a man you're somehow dismissing his achievements. That's obviously and clearly not the case here at all.
> I understand you're trying to frame the question like that
You don't seem to understand me at all. elteto listed a few things, which can be agreed with, and yet which aren't enough to explain cryptoegorophy's question "Why people hate him". I'm reminding that there's another side of things - people in this discussion generally quite aware of that, and only some focus on a one-sided picture. You don't need to repeat that the question is flawed - you just have to correctly understand the question. That is, it's a reminder of another side, which is necessary for cryptoegorophy's question. It's true that it's a complex question, but you don't understand me if you think I don't leave the room for nuance. Or, in other words, you can just dislike a man - but to explain why people in general have a correlated opinion, you have to look at the whole perspective.
> - He has turned into a pro-Putin, right wing troll, regularly spewing out falsehoods on Twitter/X.
This one is just baffling. He is literally the most important private person helping Ukraine right now.
He like once suggested that total victory maybe wasn't a viable goal and that at some point in time some compromise peace might have t be made. Something lots of political scientists have also predicted would happen.
Because it is a national priority for the US government to support Ukraine, and SpaceX and Tesla both have significant relationships, directly or indirectly, with the US government. Especially SpaceX.
- He has turned into a pro-Putin, right wing troll,
Have seen this claimed many times but nothing to back it
- How he has (mis?)managed Twitter so far.
Mismanaging a company is hardly unusual, nor a reason to hate someone unless you are a shareholder or employee
- All the lying and broken promises regarding FSD and other shenanigans with Tesla stock (the “taking it private” debacle, the bitcoin pump and dump, etc).
Tesla shares are up massively, so this is not a reason to hate him, even if you are a shareholder. It is a reason to hate him if you are a short seller, I guess. He has Tweeted about crypto, but there is no evidence he participated in any pump and dump
- All the COVID conspiracy idiocy and non-sense.
Can you cite anything for this? I assume it is just more of the same media hysteria about him being some kiind of right wing fascist with no actual backing.
This itself is a childish and naive take. Elon, in my opinion, is an egotistical asshole who still does have humanity's best interests at heart . . . as he sees them. What your statement reveals is that you can't differentiate between humanity's best interests and humanity's best interests as you see them.
For the sake of argument, you may be entirely right and, he may be entirely wrong. But your mode of argument still betrays an inability to understand that your view of humanity's best interests is not necessarily universalizable. Especially the fetish for mass transit. It has a use case, but is not a panacea for several reasons, many of which people who obsess over everyone living in cities choose to ignore.
The infrastructure around them (just one more lane and traffic will get better) is itself unsustainable. Our suburbs designed around cars are not dense enough to economically support them (roads, water, waste, etc) and the taxes required are bankrupting communities already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
To say they have a "fetish for mass transit" is both intentionally inflammatory and unnecessary. Also, it is essential for moving people around. Having personal vehicles sitting idle, worth $5K to easily $70K, for most of the day is a massive waste of resources, income, and more. Elon's imaginary robotaxis will not fix it.
Everyone doesn't need to live in cities but everyone needs to start paying for what they consume instead of taking (from cities) from others (the future generations). We would need several Earth's if everyone lived like Americans.
> We would need several Earth's if everyone lived like Americans.
People keep saying this, yet technology keeps advancing, and the poorest people today live like the kings of centuries ago. Henry VIII didn't have an HDTV or a smartphone.
> His technology encourages single use personal vehicles and does not improve mass transit
This doesn't seem like a very serious criticism.
1. If I understand correctly, most climatologists think that humanity should eventually stop contributing carbon into the atmosphere on net.
2. It's unlikely that we'll completely delete all car dependency any time soon. (Will every person living in a rural area have a personal train?)
3. Electric vehicles already contribute less carbon over their lifetimes than gas vehicles do, and can theoretically be made to be completely carbon neutral.
So electric vehicles seem helpful to me at mitigating risks from climate change. I also don't see why caring about climate change would cause me to care about endangered turtles in Texas
> ... most climatologists think that humanity should eventually stop contributing carbon into the atmosphere on net.
Yes, that makes sense.
> It's unlikely that we'll completely delete all car dependency any time soon.
That is not the goal I am advocating. I would like more transit and less people driving alone in SUVs and living in overly large single family homes.
> Will every person living in a rural area have a personal train?
No, that would not make any sense.
> Electric vehicles already contribute less carbon over their lifetimes than gas
Yes, but expanding highways and stroads is not carbon neutral. Heating individual homes is not carbon neutral. Mining lithium is not carbon neutral and pollutes the environment. His ideas around hyper loops and Tesla tunnels under Las Vegas make no sense when we already have trains.
> I also don't see why caring about climate change would cause me to care about endangered turtles in Texas
Yeah that is my point. There is a link to climate change and habitat destruction. Elon moves to Texas and supports conservatives that do not care about climate change at all. They profess that climate change is not happening at all. Elon recently advocated more natural gas and oil production and drilling. It is all incoherent. I am not saying all of his ideas are bad, but I am saying he does not seem to make coherent sense.
I can literally argue with almost every point here but I don't see the benefits, so I won't. I'm just again puzzled how different people can see the very same facts in different light - omitting inconvenient parts and emphasizing the ones which support their idea.
Elon wants to establish a human colony on Mars. Tesla is not about preventing climate change, it’s about battery tech, which you’ll need when you want to live on mars. The boring company is not about building tunnels on earth, it’s about the tech to build underground habitats on Mars.
He wants to go into the history books as the man who got humanity off earth. He wants to be space Christopher Columbus.
Go on reddit and ask them. They'll tell you that Elon Musk aligned himself with republicans aka 'literally nazis'. This outweighs anything positive he could possibly ever do. Any cred he once earned for himself by trying to popularize electric cars? Completely gone, he's a republican so he hates the environment. Building rockets is perceived to be little more than a cynical cover story for his real plan to ruin wetlands and murder ocelots.
My initial issues with Musk was that he tended to push ideas and time frames WAY beyond what was reasonable.
Tesla / Space X are already amazing in almost ever respect, it doesn't need all the silly hype machine on top of it. Yes, it is neat to think about Mars bases eventually but that should be a stretch goal not pushed as "It is 4 years away!".
Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) but Musk had always promoted time lines and ambitions that were silly. Like point to point public rocket travel by 2030. The thing cannot land yet and they are already thinking 50 steps ahead with a stated date. That doesn't detract from Space X's achievements but it does cast a shadow over them as a whole.
That over-ambitiousness is a big factor in attracting (and to some degree, keeping) talent I'd bet. It's one of SpaceX's key differentiators compared to incumbents where the overarching attitude seems to be, "well, we'll get back to the moon at some point in the future, maybe, if we're lucky". That's not to knock the brilliant people working for those companies but it's gotta be harder to be excited when it feels like the corporate gears are perpetually gummed up with cold tar.
>Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years)
You do know that the next Artemis mission is in 2024? According to your timeline it would be delayed more than the much hated space launch system which actually went to the moon
Who cares? If he builds the most advanced rocket in the world, nobody will remember he was late. Late is not a meaningful criticism when building things that have never been done before.
I’m of the belief that the reason he has so suddenly become hated in the last few years (because it’s really unjustified, if you look purely at his works) is a direct result of engineering by those who would suffer if he continued his ascent without public opinion against him. None of the public narrative about him (especially the Twitter stuff) or the reasons people generally mock him make much sense, or are very relevant to 99% of the things he is actually spending time and resources on. It’s 100% manufactured.
Starship and access to orbit, as well as Starlink (which cheap access to orbit enabled) are indeed insanely powerful geopolitical tools. Many of the existing geopolitical engineers would hate to see him not be firmly subordinate to themselves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the FAA’s decision is being used as a bargaining chip here. You don’t get to do things like this in the USA unless you play ball 100% with the existing people who control access to orbit.
Nobody is richer or more powerful than the people who presently control the satellite-based weapons and surveillance systems that the US operates. Nobody will be able to be in a position to replace or supplant them without some sort of negotiation with them.
Imagine it: with a working Starship, Musk could replace GPS, Keyhole, and whatever the rods-from-god system is codenamed, in a matter of months (or perhaps weeks, if the payload design work is already underway), for anyone on the Earth who he thinks would benefit his goals. A lot of the leverage that exists against him (and can presently be used to constrain him) would be gone, never to return. It’s already fairly obvious that the geopolitical status quo on Earth is not very important to him.
I think the recent wave of vitriol is mostly associated with his decision to destroy Twitter in the process of attempting to make it a safe space for racists. That and his seeming to align himself with our strategic adversaries on the world stage.
The latter is possibly dismissable as "Well, that's just your opinion, man..." but he gives muscle to his opinion by making business decisions with strategic policy implications (e.g. turn off Ukraine starlink service at strategig moments..)
The twitter vandalism is very clearly "his works".
Genuinely curious what is a Twitter vandalism? I’ve used Twitter for about 10years and for me it hasn’t changed, I still have the same logical timeline with people that I follow and their tweets. What is it that changed that I can’t figure out?
The only noticeable thing that's changed is the old blue check mark brigade isn't dominating what gets preference in the algorithm and subsequently what most often goes viral. This group strongly having been in one ideological group has made those in the same group notice they are no longer given automatic popularity points and they don't like it.
Social media has always been cancer, some people just want it more preferenced to their sort of cancer by a centralized system.
But otherwise I see little evidence it's actually stopped anyone from using it other than people giving heartfelt anecdotes on HN and lots of talk about Mastodon that unsurprisingly died off quick.
Ah, yes, replies are broken, you are right. When I go to one of the big account (ex Elon) then it is impossible to find a good discussion, you have to scroll a lot through blue check marked memes, scams and then you get a chance for something meaningful. Wish it was more like reddit/HN.
> or are very relevant to 99% of the things he is actually spending time and resources on
Twitter is irrelevant; he is doing product (read: design for manufacture) design on electric cars, battery systems, rockets, internet access satellites, brain computer interfaces, solar, humanoid autonomous robots, and tunnel boring machines, in approximately that order.
Twitter is like 20th on the list, but it’s a great target for narrative-based outrage (“the bullied one gets rich and buys the playground” etc). Also note that if you truly believe in freedom for one-to-many publishing of all legal speech (as I do) then an increase in racist publishing is naturally going to be a consequence of that. Freedom
of expression for all is far more important than censoring racists (which doesn’t stop them from being racist or stop the spread of racism anyway).
> the bullied one gets rich and buys the playground
What version of Elon Musk are you thinking of here? Read literally anything he says and it's immediately clear that he's always been the bully. He wasn't some underdog who was bullied and pulled himself up by his bootstraps to prove everyone wrong, he's the son of an apartheid emerald mine owner who made some good business bets and has now figured out how to scale up his bullying to a national scale. The already-rich bully bought the playground so that nobody could stop him from bullying everyone even more.
> Also note that if you truly believe in freedom for one-to-many publishing of all legal speech (as I do) then an increase in racist publishing is naturally going to be a consequence of that
Ah, the old "I'm free to publish racism but you're not free to call me out when I do so". These free-speech "absolutists" always abandon their morals as soon as they get the opportunity to censor someone who is making fun of them for being a douchebag. It's always about wanting a spout-racism-free card, never about the inalienable rights of mankind.
Please fact check the emerald mine thing. From what I understand it is wildly overblown, his estranged dad had a couple shares, that's all. The fact that it has gathered so much steam fits perfectly into a Manufactured Consent style narrative.
And FYI, if your 401k has some index fund exposure you're probably the partial owner of some cobalt mines in Congo that have questionable labor practices.
Elon Musk uses his power to censor people who make fun of him or that he otherwise disagrees with. One of his claims of why he bought Twitter was to restore free-speech on the platform, which really turned out to be allowing hate speech and alt-right propaganda while censoring opposing views. My claim is that everyone who claims to be a free-speech absolutist is secretly the exact same: they want free speech for themselves, to spout whatever hate-speech they are tired of having to contain, but will happily censor anyone else who opposes them or makes fun of them. It's been demonstrated hundreds of times over and I've never seen a counterexample.
People who actually value personal freedoms understand that there are always tradeoffs: you cannot simultaneously have freedom-to-bully and freedom-from-bullying. It's a difficult problem. People who claim it's simple are not actually interested in solving it. The people who say that freedom-to-bully is infinitely more important than freedom-from-bullying (as all "free speech absolutists" are inherently claiming) are, quite obviously, bullies that want to get away with bullying.
I mostly agree. The only thing which I'd learn more about is
> I've never seen a counterexample
Perhaps that Voltaire's "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" was made too much in jest and didn't really correspond to some real events, before or after. Or people like Vaclav Havel, who got to the power from the power's opponents, didn't have opportunity to refrain from silencing a political adversary. I don't know.
The automotive and space industry has been screaming from the hills about him for years now. Tesla and SpaceX are marvels of what you can do if you have billions to burn and the freedom to do so. The CEO of Ford or any other OEM couldn't spend the kind of dough and make the mistakes that Musk has made. Twitter brought his antics to the forefront in techie circles so software people who didn't listen to said people from other industries finally got the message.
> decision to destroy Twitter in the process of attempting to make it a safe space for racists
Can you back that up, with actual data, and not the politically motivated articles from democrat aligned media?
The only specific cases of this I’ve seen was an actual bot network saying the n word a lot when Elon took over, which was obviously a coordinated attack.
Other than that, where is this racist hell hole that twitter has become apparently? Where is the proof?
> turn off Ukraine starlink service at strategig moments
This makes absolutely no sense, yet people keep repeating it
TWZ: Do you trust Elon Musk?
KB: (Laughs) In what sense?
TWZ: There was the discussion over Walter Isaacson’s book excerpt and whether Musk shut off Starlink to prevent a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol last year, or whether as he claimed he denied a request to provide it.
KB: Look, [Starlink] is a private property of a private person. Yes we really very widely use his products and services. The whole of the line of contact talks to each other to some extent using his products and services. The only thing I can say here is that without those services and products it would be a catastrophe. But it is true that he did turn off his products and services over Crimea before. But there's another side to that truth. Everybody's been aware of that.
TWZ: So he did turn it off?
KB: This specific case everybody's referring to, there was a shutdown of the coverage over Crimea, but it wasn't at that specific moment. That shutdown was for a month. There might have been some specific cases I'm not aware of. But I'm totally sure that throughout the whole first period of the war, there was no coverage at all.
TWZ: But did he ever put it on and then shut it off?
KB: There have been no problems since it's been turned on over Crimea.
to me it's clear, if a private business sells a technology service that is being used in a war, the adversary is going to see that action as hostile and use powers within their means to neutralize the threat. I'm not sure you're using the word "conspiracy theory" correctly.
> to me it's clear, if a private business sells a technology service that is being used in a war, the adversary is going to see that action as hostile and use powers within their means to neutralize the threat. I'm not sure you're using the word "conspiracy theory" correctly.
But Ukraine is literally using services from a SAR satellite right now, which is run by a private business.
> They (the Ukrainians) requested that he re-enable it in that area specifically so that mass murder could be conducted with it
Let me see if I have this right. We know that the Russian government spends inordinate time and money intentionally spreading false propaganda on the internet. We know Russia loves Musk because he supports their illegal invasion of Ukraine. We see sneak here talking about how the "existing geopolitical engineers" (unspecified; is this a dog whistle?) hate Musk because he's so strong, and how Ukraine is committing "mass murder" for resisting the illegal invasion of their country. And I get flagged for calling him a Russian propagandist? Are we really doing the Emperor's New Clothes thing? Can we not just call a spade a spade here?
I get "assume good faith" -- it's a good rule -- but does it really have no limits? We really have to assume good faith in those who are claiming that destroying military targets that are being used by Russia in an illegal invasion of your country is tantamount to mass murder?
> We know that the Russian government spends inordinate time and money intentionally spreading false propaganda
And we know that people on the side of Ukraine, including lots of commentators in the west do the reverse. So maybe try to find the facts and use logic.
> We know Russia loves Musk because he supports their illegal invasion of Ukraine.
He is literally the most important private person helping Ukraine. That's just such an idiotic believe, its really next level stupid.
Please tell me one other private person literally in the world who has helped Ukraine more then Musk. I'll wait.
He literally gave Ukraine free material when the war started, before most governments had even reacted.
Not enabling Starlink in Crimea makes sense because that would literally enable the Russians to use it. Dynamically enabling and disabling it depending on Ukrainian war needs would be a crazy thing to do.
> I get "assume good faith" -- it's a good rule -- but does it really have no limits?
What you should maybe ask yourself is if "bad faith" assumptions has limits.
> We really have to assume good faith in those who are claiming that destroying military targets that are being used by Russia in an illegal invasion of your country is tantamount to mass murder?
I reject the concept of “just war” in general in all instances and think all war is mass murder, definitionally. “Military targets” is a euphemism designed to diffuse blame for premeditated mass slaughter of human beings. It’s not something anyone wants to do, feel, or think about, so euphemisms like these are practically essential to our ability to cope with the world. There is another conflict happening simultaneously where you can see the exact same labelling-war playing out. The scores of dead children remain dead, the hospital remains in ruins regardless of whether it was a failed terrorist missile or a solemn and justified defense of a victim of illegal invasion. It takes two to tango.
As I said, it’s not popular to be anti-war these days. Humans seem to like retribution and righting of perceived injustice more than they like peace. We still have the death penalty, for instance, a clear violation of our widely agreed-upon standard of human rights.
Furthermore, even in your worldview, an American citizen using nominally American-jurisdiction hardware to enable airstrikes in a war zone that has nothing directly to do with America is an unforced escalation in the proxy war unrelated to “illegal invasion” that invites retaliation against Americans and American space-based assets. It’s a fool’s game even if you subscribe only to Realpolitik and don’t care one whit about the lives of enslaved Russian teenagers.
> We know Russia loves Musk because he supports their illegal invasion of Ukraine.
I have seen precisely nothing to support either of the claims in this sentence. They are speculation, not fact. “If you don’t support me, you de facto support my enemy” is not sound reasoning in war. One may simply be against violence in all forms, which seems much more plausible, given what we know about humans on Earth, especially skeptics like Musk who tend to resist pro-just-war state messaging.
> I reject the concept of “just war” in general in all instances and think all war is mass murder
Okay, fair, there's a self-consistent point there we can work with. I also am extremely dubious of the idea of "just war".
> It takes two to tango.
It really only takes one to start a war. You seem to be under the assumption that Ukraine had a choice about whether it went to war or not. It didn't have that choice. War was forced upon it. Indeed Ukraine is not fighting a "just war" by any stretch.
It sounds like you're saying: it's bad that Russia is invading Ukraine, but it's also bad that Ukraine is trying to defend itself? Obviously we'd all prefer the world where Russia does not invade Ukraine. Given that Russia did invade Ukraine, what is the next best world? For me, 2nd best is that Ukraine defends its sovereignty with as little unnecessary death as possible. For you, it sounds like (and please correct me if I'm wrong) 2nd best is that Ukraine rolls over and lets Russia completely annex its territories, commit genocide on its civilians, reduce its cities to rubble and ash, execute or permanently imprison its current government, and install a puppet government, so that it is better positioned to do the exact same thing to the rest of Eastern Europe. Is that right? I think we'd both like to minimize death and suffering, but my intuition is that your 2nd best scenario has a lot more death and suffering than mine.
And again: the idea that Ukraine defending its sovereignty is "just as bad" as Russia invading it is yet another common Russian propaganda line. It may be complete coincidence that your statements happen to exactly match Russian propaganda lines, but they do. If you talk about how you found some cheap viagra at some link you post, you may feel like you have a legit reason for doing so and that you're not a "true" spammer. But to everyone else, you're just another spammer.
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.“
I will abstain from attributing the quote in an effort to avoid an appeal to authority, but this neatly sums up my feelings on it.
I am also of the belief that death is preferable to participating in war.
> I reject the concept of “just war” in general in all instances and think all war is mass murder, definitionally.
Then you must be for a swift Ukrainian victory right?, cause anything else just raises tensions in the region and increases the chance of another war in the near future.
> Furthermore, even in your worldview, an American citizen using nominally American-jurisdiction hardware to enable airstrikes in a war zone that has nothing directly to do with America is an unforced escalation in the proxy war unrelated to “illegal invasion” that invites retaliation against Americans and American space-based assets.
The war in Ukraine isn’t a proxy war it’s just a plain old war between Russia and Ukraine with both sides having allies that help supply them, and I’m not sure why “illegal invasion” is in quotation marks that’s exactly what it is.
> One may simply be against violence in all forms, which seems much more plausible, given what we know about humans on Earth, especially skeptics like Musk who tend to resist pro-just-war state messaging.
This is an easy view to have when you live the luxury of being able to choice whether or not to be involved in a war.
Ukrainians had no such choice war was forced upon them by the Russians.
AT&T wouldn't be happy with you pulling their cell tower repeaters into a warzone either. Using shared infrastructure for war purposes exposes it to retaliation.
Humans who subscribe to game theory have gambled against Russia with much higher stakes than these in years past. I would not depend on “nobody can launch satellites” being sufficient deterrent when GTO brinksmanship with the USSR put only Stanislav Petrov between reality and total human extinction.
If you believe, as I do, that Ukraine’s ability to export shale gas to the west is a literal existential crisis for Russia as a state in the long term, then it makes sense that they would go to quite significant extents indeed to ensure that that remains impossible, right up to things that would mostly destroy Russian society in the process, tragically.
If the first were true, I doubt Russia would be spending so much in the way of resources on simple territorial expansion (with the implicit long term expense of huge resources governing the conquered/occupied territory).
The invasion isn’t good ROI for them otherwise, even if it went well, which it does not appear to be.
I think the USSR restoration empire building narrative is overblown.
Also, if what you say about red lines were true, the US would
not be so hesitant to provide lots of advanced aircraft to Ukraine, which they have not done as yet despite this clearly being a full enemy-of-my-enemy proxy war.
Signs point to everyone trying to avoid escalation.
> Also, if what you say about red lines were true, the US would not be so hesitant to provide lots of advanced aircraft to Ukraine, which they have not done as yet despite this clearly being a full enemy-of-my-enemy proxy war.
They are literally starting training on the aircraft next month iirc, and will receive them in 4-6 months after that.
Nothing happened when all of Russias red lines were crossed, the Americans are merely boiling the frog to avoid escalation.
I think Russias red lines are akin to chinas final warning now days, a joke.
Yes, obviously, they are at war with Russia. All combatants in all non-proxy wars are involved in the systematic premeditated murder of as many of the Other Guys as possible.
> They (the Ukrainians) requested that he re-enable it in that area specifically so that mass murder could be conducted with it, and he declined. (This is an example of the geopolitical power he wields, and it will only increase after Starship.) Couching it in “strategic policy decisions” euphemism doesn’t change the fact that they tried to draft him into a conspiracy to slaughter hundreds of teenage Russian conscripts.
A lot of this paragraph is objectively false I don’t think conscripts are the ones that man boats and submarines.
Destroying those Russian missile boats and submarines would have taken out a large amount of the ships that where intentionally targeting Ukrainian civilians with cruise missiles.
I used to be pretty much a Elon fanboy. I don't hate him now, but feel mixed and largely neutral about him. What did that for me is that his communication on Twitter seemed to ignore the fact that having a very large audience brings responsibility. It's different if I mention to some buddies in the pub over beers that I read some research about vaccines that made me wonder if I should get the vaccine than if I tweet the same thing to an audience of many million people. I am just making this vaccine example up in this case because I am too lazy to go back through his history, but he has said a lot of things with wide-reaching implications without doing proper research and due diligence required when communicating to that many people, many of whom see him as a role model. This does very real harm and makes me question his maturity.
Same boat. I think he's been in a place where nobody has said "no" to him in such a long time that he's just lost touch a bit with reality. Also, I really don't think it's fair to make opinions of him unless you also make opinions of the other billionaire's based on what they actually think, not just their PR firm. You're not going to get _any_ off-the-cuff remarks from Bezos, for example.
> Also, I really don't think it's fair to make opinions of him unless you also make opinions of the other billionaire's based on what they actually think, not just their PR firm. You're not going to get _any_ off-the-cuff remarks from Bezos, for example.
That's my point though. I am not judging the content of his opinions. I am concerned about the fact that he is voicing them with little care. Everybody has some weird opinions and half-baked ideas. It's very different to have these thoughts in your head vs sharing them with friends and family or to to voice them to 160 million followers. He can think in private whatever he wants and I wouldn't care or judge him unless it starts to impact other people. I think lots of weird shit, but it just makes my wife roll her eyes. Nobody is gonna die from it.
By the way, I absolutely despise the man and his antics, but I don't want to live in a world where SpaceX fails, just to spite him.