WEBVTT - The Danger of Elon Musk 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:11.440 A zone media, this could be a giant disaster. Those 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:15.080 were the words that Elon Musk texted biographer Walter Isaacson 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.280 on a Friday evening in September twenty twenty two, claiming 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.200 that the Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.640 the Russian naval fleet in Sebastopol. In the annexed region 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.319 of Crimea must have been providing starlink Internet to the 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.240 Ukrainian military for months as part of their ongoing conflict 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:35.040 against Russia's invasion, and the resourceful Ukrainians began using stalink 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.560 as a way to remotely control the Kamikazi drones. Musk, 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:41.760 having spoken to a Russian ambassador, saw Crimea as a 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:45.800 red lion that, when crossed, would escalate the conflict, potentially 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.520 even provoking a nuclear retaliation, and so he acted disabling 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.360 or depending on who you ask, refusing to enable starlink 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:57.240 access in the Crimea region. When the Ukrainian drones serbs 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.680 approached their targets, they suddenly stopped communicating with the operators 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:04.360 and eventually washed up ashore, harmless and impotent. While the 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.600 specific details of this episode are hazy, the core truth 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:12.440 is unambiguously clear. Elon Musk is a supremely powerful individual 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.800 and through action or inaction, has the ability to influence 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.280 the outcome of combat operations and the bloodiest war inflicted 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:23.080 upon Europe in generations. It's a level of power typically 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.919 only reserved for nation state actors, not tech company CEOs. 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.000 Throughout history, we've seen plenty of examples of individuals and 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:34.800 companies with outsized country like power and influence. Musk isn't 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.600 unique in that regard, nor is he the sole cautionary 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.240 tale about why this shouldn't be allowed to happen. As 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.600 a private individual operating within his capacities as CEO, he's 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:48.560 unconstrained by democratic accountability, and as a private businessman he 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.520 has his own conflicts of interest, from Tesla's long history 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.600 of sourcing aluminum from Russian companies to his contacts with 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:59.960 the highest echelons of Russian leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself. Historically, 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.840 the only real accountability mechanism for people like Muscus to 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:05.680 be in the media, and yet in this case, the 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.840 media is chosen instead to fate the Elon Musk creation 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.320 myth that he's a trailblazing real life Tony Stark that 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.600 will take humanity to the stars, rather than asking him 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:19.120 many hard questions of any kind. This situation is the 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.200 product of a media industry dominated by journalists seeking access 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.040 to popular public figures, pulling their punches in the process. 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:28.880 The most notable access journalist is Kara Swisher, who spent 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.920 decades covering the tech industry with a pantomime like aggression, 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.000 asking the quote unquote hard questions without ever really pushing 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.240 the level of discover that might make a source un 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:42.080 willing to participate. Swisher famously, in an interview during the 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.720 All Things Digital conference in twenty ten, convinced Meta CEO 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.160 then called Facebook Mark Zuckerberg to take off his hoodie 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.280 after asking him a challenging question about Facebook's invasion of privacy, 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.320 only to be distracted by the design of the inside 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:58.919 of what he was wearing, effectively objecting to her own 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:03.520 line of questioning for endstainment purposes. Eight years later, Swisher 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.880 would interview Zuckerberg about Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.480 the twenty sixteen elections, lobbing softball questions like make a 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.359 case for keeping info wars on Facebook and responding to 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.440 Zuckerberg outright saying he wouldn't ban Holocaust and Sandy Hook 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.600 deniers by asking how it made Zuckerberg feel when people 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.920 said Facebook killed people Myanmar. The Swisher house style is simple, 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.280 ask a big meeting question, and then failed to interrogate 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.200 a single answer in any way, shape or form. Around 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:34.560 a month later, Swisher would interview Elon Musk, who at 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.560 that point indid harassment campaigns against reporters, called a man 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.840 saving children a pedophile, and had his companies face multiple 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:44.880 allegations of sexual harassment and racism. When asked about his 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.520 fights with the press over Twitter must claim that the 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.400 Wall Street Journal, whose Swisher used to work for, outright 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:55.120 lied about investigation into Tesla's production figures, to which Swisher 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.840 asked him if he realized the dangers of him saying 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.800 such things about the press and need to help Musk 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:04.200 paper over his claims, saying that he quote just doesn't 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.760 like falsehoods. One of the richest and most powerful men 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.080 in the world sat before Swisher, and her interrogation involved 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.680 asking him simple questions about why he was doing things, 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.120 lightly teasing him and saying that he looks and I 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:21.159 quote rested in calm to be clear, this is an 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.159 ultra powerful billionaire, and this is a was at the 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.799 time enterprising journalist who everyone looked to. In April twenty 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.560 twenty two, the week that Musk announced the Twitter acquisition, 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.400 Swisher gave a strange interview to James D. Walsh of 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.440 The New Yorker, defending Musk, who had of course waived 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:40.880 du diligence on the acquisition, did not seem to have 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.640 a single clear plan about how he might run the same. 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.400 She claimed that you couldn't pin Musk down, that he 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:51.320 was quite complex, and that we would be surprised about 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.240 what he likes and doesn't like. Musk, who has invented 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:56.640 none of the core products that make him rich, is 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:01.520 a quote visionary that gave Swisher genuine answers and arguably 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.880 the most damning things she could have said, would call 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.120 her back. That was her litmus test that he would 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.200 return her calls. Her ultimate defensive Musk was that and 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:16.160 I quote inventors were very difficult, problematic people, and the 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.200 moderation on Twitter was not working at the time of acquisition. 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.920 These are all, of course demonstrably force based on the 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.320 events that followed the growth of hate speech the lack 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.760 of accountability, that biggest face on the platform, and the 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:31.039 fact that every third post seems to be some kind 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:35.520 of spambot, either selling t shirts or pornography or cryptocurrency scams. 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.359 Swisher only turned on Musk when he emailed her calling 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.320 her an asshole in November twenty twenty two, including a 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.680 screenshot were according to Swisher, she was actually defending him, 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.000 saying that the US government should pay Elon Musk for starling. 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:51.760 Since then, Musk has gone from a difficult to pin 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.760 down visionary to carver Swisher calling his social network a 0:05:55.360 --> 0:06:02.080 and this is agonizingly horribly written a thunderdome of toxic asininity. Swisher, 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:06.480 it appears, only worried about what she'd called Musk's price 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.360 of cocktail of ignorance and big ego until he was 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.920 rude to her. One of the most famous tech journalists 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.080 in the world, who has failed to take any real 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:21.200 shot at any of the people she's questioned across decades 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.120 of doing this, has now been reduced to making epic 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:28.120 dunks that sound like a twenty one year old Harry 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:32.679 Potter fan trying to cast a spell. It's embarrassing. Swisher 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.320 isn't the sole media figure guilty of having treated Elon 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.120 Musk with kid gloves or treating his bloviating with otherwise 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:42.320 on due credulity. This is a problem that affects almost 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.880 every news outlet and reporter that covers billionaires. The assumption 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.320 is always that billionaires will act with empathy, patience, and grace, 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.160 three things that Musk, Bezo, Zuckerberg, and the Ilk totally lack. 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.800 Failing that, one would suppose they'd act like a normal person, 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.240 a losing proposition. If you've ever read Jeff best as 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.600 his texts, these people are not like us. They do 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.960 not experience human struggle. They don't have bills or bosses 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:11.960 or fear of anything, let alone authority. Each and every 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.840 billionaire is effectively above the law, and that is the 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.800 place that you must start to understand them. It's deeply frustrating, 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:21.600 especially when you consider the myriad of opportunities where the 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.360 media could have taken must task and held him accountable. 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.160 Take High Poloop, for example, Musk's concept for a high 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.680 speed mass transit system where pressurized capsules would hurtle between 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.080 cities through vacuum tubes at speeds as fast as seven 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.800 hundred and sixty miles an hour. Hyperloop Musk promise would 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.560 allow commuters to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:44.960 in as little as thirty minutes, and with the network 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:48.800 powered primarily by solar power, with no real environmental impact. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.720 If anything, this could have been a much bigger deal 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.840 than Tesla. High speed transit that doesn't burn fossil fuels. 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.800 Could truly have changed the world. So what do you 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.840 think happened? Do you think that must delivered on this 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.600 on this product that helped play a vital role in 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.760 cementing his image as a real life Tony Stark. Not 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.560 only would it be faster and cheaper than anything currently 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.120 in existence, but it'd be greener too. What followed was 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:20.280 a gushing or at least gredulous flow of media coverage, 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.640 including from The Washington Post and The New York Times, 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.440 both papers of record. It wasn't until the hype gradually 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.680 died down that people began asking serious questions about Hypepoloop's viability. 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:35.240 An exhaustive report published by the Transportation Research Laboratory earlier 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.480 this year raises serious questions about the feasibility of hyperloop, 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:43.000 particularly when it comes to passenger transportation writers, it noted, 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.280 would be exposed to extreme physical and mental stress, with 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.800 the noise, vibrations and rapid acceleration and deceleration inflicting an 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.600 unknowable toll on the human body. Questions about safety still linger. 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:57.480 And then there's the thorny issue of cost, with high 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:01.640 bloop requiring an all new infrastructure. Even the shortest routes 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.240 would involve a multi billion dollar upfront investment. These points 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:09.520 were for the most part, absent entirely from the earliest 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:23.920 coverage of highperloop. The media also missed the fact that 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:27.040 hypeloop wasn't even a new idea. In the nineteenth century, 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.600 countless inventors toyed with the notion of an atmospheric railway 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:34.000 where vehicles traveled through a near vacuum environment on the 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:38.880 momentum of pressurized air. A small demonstrator route was even 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.720 built by Ismbard Kingdom Brunel, the legendary British engineer who 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:47.120 designed the first transatlantic steamship. While Highpoloop differdence and meaningful ways, 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.640 it was still, nonetheless, much like many Musk products, a 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:55.640 derivative of an earlier idea. The boring company Musk's hilariously 0:09:55.960 --> 0:10:00.640 named tunnel. Boring startup earned similar credulous C coverage upon 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.800 its inception, driven in no small part due to Musk's 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.640 decision to raise working capital by selling branded flame throwers 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:11.400 dubbed the not a flame Thrower to anyone that paid 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:15.319 five hundred dollars. This stunt, aside, the Boring Company one 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:17.560 praise due to its state admission to reduce the cost 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:21.079 of digging tunnels, which are often an inevitable and expensive 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:25.280 part of road and mass transportation development like hyperloop. The 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.040 Boring Company fed into the Tony Stark image of a 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.000 billionaire that could, through sheer force of will, change the 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:35.480 world and fix once intractable problems. I quote Mashable when 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.240 they said, must build machines to travel more efficiently on 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.680 the Earth and above it. So traveling through Earth seems 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:45.800 within the realm of his capabilities. If anyone can transform 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.920 the seemingly absent minded half joke into world changing technology, 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.920 it's Elon Musk, said The Guardian, and then reality here. 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:57.120 The Boring Company's first commercial project, a one point seven 0:10:57.200 --> 0:10:59.920 mile tunnel in Las Vegas, where I in fact live, 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.320 wasn't a traditional road tunnel or part of an underground 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:07.760 metro system. It was in fact far less impressive, a 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:10.760 single lane loop where human driven tests. There's varied passengers 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.600 between points of interest in the Las Vegas Convention Center 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.880 and where traffic jams are a routine frustration for passengers. 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.840 Other projects in other cities, most notably Chicago and Los Angeles, 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:25.600 have either been canceled or are on indefinite hiatus. There 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.480 is nothing that the boring company has done. The tunnel 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:34.760 in Vegas is useless. It's claustrophobic, it's ugly, feels like 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:39.000 being in an airport lounge, except there's no food. It's strange. 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.800 It doesn't feel like it solves a problem other than 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:46.360 how can Elon must get more attention, and that really 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:51.760 is what he craves. Musk's wafer thin skin, his volatility, 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.640 and his propensity to overpromise an under the liver has 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.760 never been a secret. While he's been able with some 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.600 success to obfiscate a misdirect through a well crafted media persona, 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.960 the clues have always been there. Musk's reality distortion field 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.640 goes some way to explaining how he has managed to 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:10.719 amass the extent of the power he has and how 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:17.000 he cemented himself into our nation's most vital industries like transportation, communications, infrastructure, 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.280 and social media. He has a fairly consistent battle plan. 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.439 He makes a big promise, he delivers enough to make 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:26.800 the media believe he's for real, and then he relies 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.000 upon the fact that very few parts of the media 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:33.160 will ever follow up with him. There is no challenging 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.640 Elon Musk in the media. The thinnest amounts of criticism 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:41.040 are usually met by a horde of crazed tesla fans, 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:45.520 or at times Elon Musk himself. He's created the paper 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:50.040 thin media image built on the smallest, thinnest structures of reality. 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.400 He has found a way to manipulate the media using 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:58.440 his large amounts of power, money, and his few friends. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.920 Elon mush Usk is a danger to society. He's a 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.040 capricious demagogue, desperate for more power and attention, and he 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:10.080 will do whatever he wants, whereever he wants, wherever he wants, 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.720 because we are societally unprepared for billionaires. It's no longer healthy, 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.520 or safe or honest to see Elon Musk as a 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:21.640 dorky charlatan carrying sinks into offices or destroying social networks 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.760 to settle insular beefs Elon Musk is a nation state 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:28.720 level actor with a net worth larger than the GDP 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:33.600 of Ukraine. He associates only with equally spurious reactionaries like 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.960 Bill Maher, Ronda Santis, and David Sachs, and he's easily 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:39.840 influenced by anyone who agrees with his thinly backed beliefs. 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:45.680 Musk isn't polarizing. He's polarization given life, an empty man 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.839 made of contrarianism and grievances, and he'll happily change the 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.400 world based on his own personal beliefs. As a result 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.679 of our market driven government and compliant media, Musk has 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.760 caused and will continue to cause human suffering an actual 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:04.040 death in his pursuit of fame, power, and capital. It's 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.680 time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur, an investor, 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.200 an executive, or an industry blow hard. As a result 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.920 of our market driven government and compliant media, Musk has 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.880 caused and will continue to cause human suffering an actual 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:24.440 death in his pursuit of fame, power and capital. It's 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.680 time to stop treating him as just an entrepreneur, an investor, 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.040 an executive, or an industry blow hard and see him 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:33.720 as a man who has used his incredible wealth and 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.640 status to twist the world to his petty, ignorant, and 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:41.960 selfish desires. It's important to realize with complete clarity that 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:44.600 Musk makes electric cars that are sold around the world 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.720 and sells rockets to NASA. He runs Twitter X or 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:52.080 whatever it's called these days, one of the largest communication 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.840 networks in the world, and of course Starlink, the satellite 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.320 isp used aroount the world that is specifically marketed to 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:03.480 places that are otherwise inaccessi to traditional broadband. This is 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.240 not just the goofy redditor posting epic means and saying 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:10.160 exactly anymore. Elon Musk has chosen to and will continue 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.440 to choose to use his influence over these networks to 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:15.720 interfere with global events. And because the media and the 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.600 government has been so utterly tepid in their approach to him, 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:21.920 he's accumulated such power and influence that he is on 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:26.840 some level unstoppable. Since his acquisition of Twitter in twenty 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.560 twenty two and the subsequent layoffs of six thousand people, 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.920 Musk has revealed to the world his deep seated reactionary 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:38.320 beliefs and his noxious pathetic victim complex. He has become 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.160 obsessed with the woke mind virus, a term that he 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.040 uses to vaguely refer to everything from progressive education on 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:48.240 college campuses to San Francisco's growing homeless problem. He's made 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.120 Twitter's bot problem, one that he tried to use to 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:55.840 cancel the original acquisition, significantly worse, littering replies with bots 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:57.520 trying to sell you T shirts or make you join 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.760 the latest script ocurrency scam, some of which even include 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:05.520 Elon Musk's face. He took Twitter's verification system, a flawed 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.040 yet workable solution to verifying whether a tweak came from 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:09.960 the person who actually sent it, and turned it into 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.560 an eight dollars a month's premium account that verifies nothing 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:15.680 other than whether someone is capable of completing a credit 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:19.680 card transaction, and by destroying Twitter's trust and safety team, 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:22.920 Musk has allowed the world's real time communications channel to 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.360 become one rife with racism and other hate speech, leading 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.280 to Fortune five hundred advertisers worrying that the network and 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:33.840 I quote perpetuates racism, which was raised in a Semaphore 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.280 story from earlier in this year, Musk has shown he 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.200 is more than willing to do things based on not 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:41.760 what's good for the world, his businesses, or his users, 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.360 but on what will confirm his biases and protect his 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.960 financial interests. As a result of these moronic and malicious choices, 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:51.640 Twitter's valuation is tanked less than a third of the 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:54.360 forty four billion dollars he paid for it, losing half 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:57.320 of their advertising revenue, and changing their name to X, 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.880 which some have argued killed further billions of the original 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:06.240 company's brand value. Being a selfish, ignorant, and gormous charlatan, 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.480 Musk has now blamed Jewish non profit the Anti Defamation 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:12.560 League for ruining his company, claiming that the ADL had 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.400 pressured advertisers into killing x slash Twitter. Musk had previously 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:20.280 sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another nonprofit that 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.080 published research showing the growth and hate speech on the platform. 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.600 Musk is now fine with the ADL because they resumed advertising, 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.560 a deeply confused and utterly pointless exercise that only sought 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:36.639 to further increase bigotry on his website. For all his 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:40.320 statements around freedom of speech, Musk is the ultimate capitalist dictator, 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:42.920 willing to use his money to intimidate and censor those 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:46.359 who dared to criticize him. He's already done so on Twitter, 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:49.639 banning an account that tracked publicly available records of private 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.119 jet flights centering over four hundred tweets critical of Turkish 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.800 President Urdigan in the week's running up to an election, 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.119 suppressed accounts critical of Indian Prime Minister Nearendra Modi, and 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.080 cut access to links to newsletter platform Substack when they 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:07.040 launched a network competitive to Twitter. Musk is a propagandis 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.720 willing to work with any fellow reactionaries who feel scorned 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:14.320 by progressivism, personally helping Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis launch 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.120 his campaign on Twitter and funneling money to alleged sex 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:32.400 trafficker Andrew Tait through Twitter's Creator program. On on Nations roads, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.680 Muscus created another problem in March twenty twenty three. According 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:39.240 to The Washington Post, a seventeen year old stepped off 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.040 of a school bus on North Carolina Highway five point 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:45.080 sixty one. As he stepped off, a Tesla Model Y, 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:49.720 allegedly with Tesla's autonomous autopilot engaged hit him at forty 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:52.200 five miles an hour, throwing him into the windshield and 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:56.160 leaving him lying face down on the pavement. He thankfully survived, 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.840 but broke and fractured his leg in the process. The incident, 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:04.080 which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still investigating, 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.520 is part of a growing list of victims of Tesla's 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:10.280 open beta test of quote full self driving, a buggy 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:14.400 dangerous software available on hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:18.200 allowing users to let the car drive, which has resulted 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.000 in the deaths of seventeen people and led to seven 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.919 one hundred and thirty six other injuries and crashes. In theory, 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.600 activating Tesla's full self driving lets your Tesla take the wheel, 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.080 making turns, avoiding other vehicles, maintaining speed, avoiding objects, and 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:36.600 theoretically helping you arrive safely at your destination. The problem 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.359 is that this has only ever been a beta, meaning 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.720 that every new release involves some sort of new bug, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:45.840 such as the one that Electric Car Blog editor Fred 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:50.159 Lambert claimed tried to kill him in September twenty twenty 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:52.679 three by trying to veer at highway speed into the 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:56.080 median strip on the road. One might imagine that such 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:58.920 a thing is illegal. Effectively unleashing beta software onto the 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.400 world's roads without s efficiently testing it would for any 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.320 normal person lead to imprisonment and a lifetime of fines. Musk, 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.040 thanks to his incredible wealth and power equivalent to that 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.520 of a small nation, has managed to avoid much scrutiny. 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.160 With the occasional government investigations that never seem to go anywhere, 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:20.160 and despite a well documented culture of racism and sexism, 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.040 very little seems to happen to test the at all. 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.840 This is because our society, in its government, its media, 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:31.760 and its citizen try, is woefully unprepared to deal with billionaires. 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:35.159 Musk is able to operate as a noxious, abusive, and 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:38.240 reckless monster in public, using his companies as vehicles to 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.480 lend himself money and political weapons, with little scrutiny or 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:45.760 punishment on their own. One might fob off these concerns 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.679 as one time things, but the reality is there's a 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:53.159 pattern of malicious and capricious acts or one after another, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.960 again and again, done in broad daylight for all to see. 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:00.560 Musk has shown he will push whatever on envelope he 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:04.080 sees fit, and as Ronan Pharaoh's New York magazine piece shows, 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.520 there are very few people in the government, former and 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:12.359 otherwise anywhere really, not investors, not other members of the 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.840 Silicon Valley elite who are willing or able to get 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:20.480 in the way. Musk is so unbelievably rich, well connected, 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.919 and powerful that he can push around just about anybody, 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.680 even if they work for the Pentagon. Yet, Musk's desperation 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:29.880 for attention and adulation mean that he can be pulled 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.920 in any direction that feels like it scorns his critics, 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:35.840 And when his critics are pretty much anyone who isn't 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:39.720 a right wing lunatic, it almost guarantees he will continue 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:43.320 to power around with authoritarian regimes that will influence his 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:48.840 remarkably malleable brain. The actual solution will be to treat 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:52.399 Musk as what he is, a dangerous entity with a 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:56.000 higher GDP than Ukraine and an ego that rivals their 0:21:56.040 --> 0:22:01.040 invaders president regardless of what happened in crimea Musk is 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.760 the ability to know when attacks are happening and influence 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.760 their outcome as a result of his for profit, privately 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.480 held satellite internet communications firm that the US government is 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:15.679 paying for. Elon Musk is a nation state global threat 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.680 and must be treated as such, he must be treated 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:22.359 as if he will make decisions based only on what 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.840 he believes will benefit or amuse him. He's the wish 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:31.840 dot Com version of Bond's earned stavro Blofeld, an offensive, charmless, 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:35.040 and boorish monster that has successfully bought his way into 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:37.280 the elite and found that no matter what he does, 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:41.399 their patience is unlimited and their scruples are few. Musk, 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:44.840 like another high profile narcissist, the former President Donald Trump, 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:48.760 routinely finds himself ensnared in litigation, both from regulators and 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:52.399 private individuals, even though the government never really seems to 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:55.600 actually do anything to him. The SEC is currently investigating 0:22:55.680 --> 0:23:00.080 Musk for securities violations concerning his acquisition of Twitter. This 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:02.440 would be his third tryst with the Commission, the first 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:05.960 in twenty eighteen, the second in twenty nineteen. In both cases, 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:11.280 very little happen. However, at the same time, he faces 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:14.320 actions from former employees stiffed on severance pay and from 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:17.200 those who allege age and gender discrimination with factors in 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:21.360 their dismissal from Twitter. For Musk, these lawsuits are unlikely 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:23.960 to be anything other than the minor annoyance rather than 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:27.159 any kind of existential threat or something that otherwise curbs 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:31.360 is most egregious of behaviors. There are people who could help. 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:35.320 There are people that could sway you on Musk. You know, 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:40.040 people as rich as him, Tim Cook, Mark Benioff, Jeff Bezos, 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:42.720 Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the world's billionaires feel 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:45.760 no need to correct Musk's behavior. They don't need to 0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:48.560 interfere or even chide him through his disgraceful acts, because 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:52.120 doing so would potentially make their actions and wealth more conspicuous, 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:55.560 which is far more important to protect than free speech 0:23:55.680 --> 0:23:59.800 or human lives. Really, anything that normal people face. They 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:02.439 they act as if they have civic responsibility. But the 0:24:02.480 --> 0:24:05.240 few people we have that could actually change things, the 0:24:05.320 --> 0:24:08.040 ones with the war chest to box out Musk, blocking 0:24:08.240 --> 0:24:10.560 X from app stores and excluding him from their circles, 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:14.840 are sitting on their hands. One approach proposed by Stephen 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:18.400 Feldstein in The Atlantic is to treat Musks businesses as 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:21.879