As a rather introverted and cautious nerd, I feel rather apprehensive about a lot of what Musk does. It often seems a bit risky and not thoroughly evaluated.
But the reaction on the left is pure cope. He is objectively one.of the most impressive and accomplished men of our era. If anyone counts as a Great Man these days, he's on the list. I get why people don't like him (see also: Napoleon) but he is worthy of great respect
If it turns out this month that asteroid YR4 is headed for Planet Earth in 2032, Musk is obviously the first choice out of all living humans to organize the defense of the planet.
Peter Thiel was planning his memoir. He decided to call his chapter on Musk "The Man Who Didn't Understand Risk". Then Thiel reflected. Perhaps, given all Musk's success, he understands risk better than any of us?
I really despise that writer Walter. He is so incredibly smug. He is just a writer, pretty mundane at that, but goes around casting judgment on much more accomplished men, “man child, not potty trained”
A bit of an oxymoron, liberal-centrist. Can one also be center-right? Would think that one theoretically could, but in practice, especially in the MSM, where all conservatives are near cousins of that dude in 30's Germany, one doesn't always see that being reciprocated.
It's really just whiteism. It's the moderate, balanced social and political philosophy that bourgeois whites, the Anglo-Americans in particular, tend to gravitate toward just like the Han and their Confucian authoritarianism and the Bantu and their tribal Big Man rule.
Like a lot of gentlemen his age, Sailer would love a return to Reagan's America and and we could debate the proper scope of the 14th amendment and levels of taxation. But as the US fills with East Asians, Hindus, Arabs, Latinos, Africans, the global wealthy and global poor, the Anglo-American center does not, cannot hold.
I pray that this is not the time when our grandchildren look back and say this is when we should have dismantled the nukes.
Steve once debated Jared Taylor. Mr Taylor chose whiteism, while Steve chose what he termed "Citizenism". Citizenism worked really well pre-1965, and even then managed to survive for a couple additional decades, until about 2000-2010, when it became obvious that it's not feasible anymore.
Historically, US Citizenism depends upon a solid white majority in charge of setting the tone, the rules, and seeing that they're enforced. Since the US is rapidly coming to the day when it no longer is a majority white nation, uh, citizenism is no longer a realistic approach to long term societal problems.
Basically, citizenism is stuck in the past (its height would've been pre 1965), while Whiteism is a much more forward looking solution or a survival mechanism to adopt for whites regarding how to maintain their ever decreasing influence, levels, etc. in an ever changing US.
Until yesterday I'd never heard a peep about a USAID tool named "The International Republican Institute." Republican congresspersons associated with I.R.I. are paid much more than a congressperson's salary for pretending to defend the Republic.
I got nearly to the end of his biography on a work trip and stopped when I got home. When Musk turns to the right late in the book the authors negative editorializing becomes grating to listen too. I got through the entire Steve Jobs biography and didn't detect the same problems.
I tried reading the Jobs biography and did detect it. Walter is subtle about it. But he's so glib and smug and judgmental every once in a while it comes through.
“This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.”
—channelling his inner John Gault
“These companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus,” [Matt] Taibbi wrote, “although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed.”
Isaacson acidly observes:I think the second half of his sentence is more true than the first.”
Evidence of that? What’s the best way to be “persuaded”? Let the underlings you’re trying to control think they’re on the team without knowing it, so that they become “Useful idiots”.
Sounds as if Isaacson is on the team and doesn’t have to be fully “persuaded”
(e.g. bad evil Republicans, the fuddy duddy Establishment vs Citizen Jouralists like Woodward and Bernstein)
"But beginning in the 1990s"
When one of their own, Baby Boomer Bill Clinton was elected.
"established journalists felt increasingly comfortable sharing information and cooperating with top people in the government and intelligence communities"
An additional example of being on the team since the Good Guys are finally in charge, so obviously it's patriotic to cooperate with the likes of Bill Clinton as opposed to Richard Nixon.
“I suspect a lot of the personal bad blood between Biden and Musk stems from Biden being a 1970s labor Democrat—he’s marching on a United Auto Workers picket line this week—who dislikes Tesla for being nonunion.”
Probably true in main. Although, while in the Senate, Biden voted for NAFTA, so he was a loyal party man even above US workers rights.
“the 71-year-old Isaacson, an impressive example of the best type of Establishment baby boomer, occasionally seems nonplussed by the generation gap between himself and the 52-year-old Musk,”
That’s pretty much what happens with younger and older generations. I’m sure the older Xers will find the Gen Z’ers baffling as well.
“In contrast to Musk, Jobs was an Italian renaissance cardinal commissioning the finest artists.”
Jobs was Baby Boomer, and grew up in the US when it still had the semblance of a serious higher education. Musk by contrast spent his formative years abroad and is LARPing at how he imagines a serous man of cultural tastes should behave.
They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”
Isaascon’s on the team and isn’t quite aware of it. Or he has reconciled it at this time of his life that the future, will be brighter bigger…and better. Somewhat akin to midcentury modernist thinking pervasive in the US, like JFK’s the New Frontier.
Will Musk lead the US into the New Frontier? Only time will tell.
I remember Musk's previous interest in suddenly getting high-speed rail going. Something about loops or the like. He seems to have abandoned that interest. I'm glad he's doing what he's doing now---slashing the government, exposing corruption, saving bloated social media companies, rocketing us back into space. But I wonder if he'll "loop" back to high speed trains eventually.
Trains, cutting government, hating government waste, saving dead companies, space race, going on about how we need to take risks and be inured to loss---he sounds positively Ayn Randian.
And yet Randian Objectivists seem to be highly ambivalent about Musk, even tending toward antipathy. The man, his ventures, methods, and aims are under constant suspicion and attack from the O-ist community. I'd wager envy, jealousy, and disdain for the good at the cost of the perfect are in play.
He’s got a tunnel boring machine company. He wanted to build a subway in Las Vegas. He’s basically a Bond villain that has chosen to use his powers for good. For now.
As much as I despise the term, Musk seems like a circle back kind of guy. He has been promising self-driving cars for years and years now. One of the things illustrated in the biography is that Musk is not nonplussed by failure. Rather he sees it as a step in the process.
Musk's goal is to get humans on Mars. All the other technologies he's building are technologies that will be needed on Mars. Mars doesn't have fossil fuels, hence electric cars. Mars has a weak atmosphere and no magnetic field, hence boring machines.
That's a brilliant insight, you're probably right.
Musk seems dedicated to make his mark on history, only not through subtle means. He wants his legacy to be taking man to Mars. The Columbus of the Space Age.
The problem is that Twitter (now X) loses money every month. Musk just does not care. And building high speed rail given the limits imposed by the U.S. makes it beyond the management ability of any U.S. company unless that company is subsidized by the federal government or given exemption from a long list of laws.
If Musk wants a quantum leap in output per man hour, he should learn about "incentive-based work-sprints." It is based on the idea that workers can work faster for shorter periods of time (just as we see in track and field where short-distance runners always run faster than long-distance runners) combined with the idea that if you tie workers pay directly to their output they will give it their all.
In my own little company the result was an immediate 40 percent increase in labor productivity. I describe it all in my book, A Part-time Job in the Country: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
> Musk’s tweets (or Xs or whatever he calls them these days)
History may prove me wrong, but the rebranding of Twitter still seems like an own goal. The fact that no word has naturally emerged to mean "a post on X" is the best evidence of this; after all, the word "tweet" evolved organically
Perhaps. He certainly bought Twitter on a whim. He made his offer (including the meme number 420) after one of his Twitter followers suggested it. Then when it looked like the offer might actually get accepted, he tried to back out, but a court forced him to follow through anyway.
Rebranding it "X", by contrast, may have been a little more thought out. He had a stated strategy of turning Twitter into an "everything app" (like China's Weixin or AliPay), so he wanted it to have a name that didn't suggest mere chatter. "X" is about as generic yet memorable as a name can be.
The payment side of his app plan hasn't worked out so far, probably stymied by the Biden administration, which is an overlooked reason for Musk's recent hostility to the Democrat's regime.
> "His public-political persona has not matched the idea that he is supposedly a business-genius."
Yes, ironically Musk's success may have something to do with the fact that he is not really a good businessman. Going into the heavily-regulated, capital-intensive, commodity-competitioned automobile and rocket industries are pretty much the opposite of what any modern business school would advise you to do. Yet Musk made spectacular successes in both. Overpaying for Twitter, letting disgruntled employees alienate advertisers, and tweeting things that annoy electric car owners are things that would also be vetoed by a business consigliere if he had any, yet Musk has ridden the (probably unprofitable) Twitter acquisition to global influence and a seat in the White House. The whole story is so improbable that if it were in a novel the reader would dismiss it as too fictional. Yet Musk really did it. While also playing video games.
I read at the time of the buyout that he really wanted it for the deep space communication potential. That it was especially suited therefor and would not require construction of a new system from the ground up. This rang true to me at the time and still does. As for "X" not catching on, my bet is that he is good with that given the name he gave the little boy he carries around on his shoulders. Organic does not seem to be his motif.
My sense is that he bought Twitter as an insurance policy, as he was a natural target for cancel culture. It might not be profitable on its own but it’s allowed him to grow his wealth to $400B and now basically run the country.
Yes, at least he knows himself. Musk is the man for the time, but that will end at some point. For his sake I hope he learns to live with peace when the time comes.
Too many in our generation have a hard time with that.
This comment is marginally about how Musk attempting to downsize the government:
With all the controversy about federal government staffing levels I asked DeepSeek this question.
Does Congress set federal agencies staffing levels or is that task left up to the executive branch?
It’s thinking process:
“First, I think Congress controls the budget. They pass appropriations bills that fund the government. If staffing levels are tied to funding, maybe Congress has a say through the budget.
But the actual hiring and managing of staff is probably done by the agencies themselves, which are part of the executive branch.
Wait, but how exactly does it work?
Maybe Congress sets the overall budget, which includes money for personnel. So they might allocate a certain amount of money for salaries, which would effectively limit how many staff an agency can hire. For example, if an agency has a budget that allows for 1,000 employees, they can't hire more than that without additional funding.
But generally, I think the executive branch has more discretion in how they use their allocated funds, including staffing. However, Congress can influence staffing through funding levels and specific legislative mandates. So the answer might be a combination:
Congress controls the budget which affects staffing levels, but the executive branch manages the actual staffing within those constraints.
Wait, but sometimes there are hiring freezes or increases directed by the President. For example, a President might order agencies to reduce staff or hire more in certain areas. That would be part of the executive branch's management.
So in summary, Congress doesn't directly set the exact number of staff for each agency, but they control the funding that determines how many staff can be hired. The executive branch agencies then manage their staffing within those budgetary limits, unless Congress has specified particular numbers in legislation.“
This response seems to suggest that the president has considerable discretion in determining how many employees are needed to carry out the functions of any agency funded by the Congress.
What I always get from reading these things is that I'm glad Elon Musk exists, but I would never want to work at one of his companies. It sounds really rough! But I'm glad someone's willing to help put in the work to take us to Mars.
As of late, it seems that the Chinese are the new innovators. But with Musk, we will own the Mars landing. Both Trump and Musk want to be historical figures. As long as they can keep their alliance together, it should work. That all depends on their respective egos.
Why have we heard nothing of a Mars mission? Instead it's all petty fighting over the existence of relatively minor agencies (petty/minor per share of "federal spending")?
I think that's why Musk really wants to increase the cadence of Starship launches. Orbital Starship refueling is the first holy grail, this is a contract for the presumably doomed NASA/Boeing Artemis moon mission. Mars insertion missions ( 2026 trans Mars insertion trajectory window) are a a great chance to put a unmanned Starship on Mars. That would be the ultimate PR victory for Spacex. Face it looks like the SLS Artemis mission will be killed off.
The problem with Musk is, what are his political goals? What is his vision? Trolling and haw-hawing and a series of (what were once called) publicity stunts --- does not amount to a political program.
As a rather introverted and cautious nerd, I feel rather apprehensive about a lot of what Musk does. It often seems a bit risky and not thoroughly evaluated.
But the reaction on the left is pure cope. He is objectively one.of the most impressive and accomplished men of our era. If anyone counts as a Great Man these days, he's on the list. I get why people don't like him (see also: Napoleon) but he is worthy of great respect
If it turns out this month that asteroid YR4 is headed for Planet Earth in 2032, Musk is obviously the first choice out of all living humans to organize the defense of the planet.
I seriously think a lot of people would just let the asteroid hit.
The left wildly overreacted to the so-called “Nazi salute.” Still the autistic Musk might not be the best manager of people.
He handles autistic nerds pretty well. He gives them interesting projects to work on.
Now the rest of the population...
Peter Thiel was planning his memoir. He decided to call his chapter on Musk "The Man Who Didn't Understand Risk". Then Thiel reflected. Perhaps, given all Musk's success, he understands risk better than any of us?
I really despise that writer Walter. He is so incredibly smug. He is just a writer, pretty mundane at that, but goes around casting judgment on much more accomplished men, “man child, not potty trained”
Musk wanted Isaacson to write his bio.
I've read a half dozen books by Isaacson.
> Musk wanted Isaacson to write his bio
Probably because he wrote Jobs'. I had no idea Isaacson wrote this book at all; I thought the pic that accompanies this post was a mockup
No doubt Musk read Isaacson's "Steve Jobs" and wanted the same author.
Isaacson, who headed the Aspen Institute for many years, a favorite of USAID, epitomizes liberal centrism at its best.
A bit of an oxymoron, liberal-centrist. Can one also be center-right? Would think that one theoretically could, but in practice, especially in the MSM, where all conservatives are near cousins of that dude in 30's Germany, one doesn't always see that being reciprocated.
It's really just whiteism. It's the moderate, balanced social and political philosophy that bourgeois whites, the Anglo-Americans in particular, tend to gravitate toward just like the Han and their Confucian authoritarianism and the Bantu and their tribal Big Man rule.
Like a lot of gentlemen his age, Sailer would love a return to Reagan's America and and we could debate the proper scope of the 14th amendment and levels of taxation. But as the US fills with East Asians, Hindus, Arabs, Latinos, Africans, the global wealthy and global poor, the Anglo-American center does not, cannot hold.
I pray that this is not the time when our grandchildren look back and say this is when we should have dismantled the nukes.
Steve once debated Jared Taylor. Mr Taylor chose whiteism, while Steve chose what he termed "Citizenism". Citizenism worked really well pre-1965, and even then managed to survive for a couple additional decades, until about 2000-2010, when it became obvious that it's not feasible anymore.
Historically, US Citizenism depends upon a solid white majority in charge of setting the tone, the rules, and seeing that they're enforced. Since the US is rapidly coming to the day when it no longer is a majority white nation, uh, citizenism is no longer a realistic approach to long term societal problems.
Basically, citizenism is stuck in the past (its height would've been pre 1965), while Whiteism is a much more forward looking solution or a survival mechanism to adopt for whites regarding how to maintain their ever decreasing influence, levels, etc. in an ever changing US.
You could have ended that comment three words earlier.
Maybe four words.
Whatever
That was a reply to Steve.
Speaking of USAID:
Until yesterday I'd never heard a peep about a USAID tool named "The International Republican Institute." Republican congresspersons associated with I.R.I. are paid much more than a congressperson's salary for pretending to defend the Republic.
https://omega4america.substack.com/p/ngo-paying-off-both-parties-thats
I got nearly to the end of his biography on a work trip and stopped when I got home. When Musk turns to the right late in the book the authors negative editorializing becomes grating to listen too. I got through the entire Steve Jobs biography and didn't detect the same problems.
I tried reading the Jobs biography and did detect it. Walter is subtle about it. But he's so glib and smug and judgmental every once in a while it comes through.
“This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.”
—channelling his inner John Gault
“These companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus,” [Matt] Taibbi wrote, “although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed.”
Isaacson acidly observes:I think the second half of his sentence is more true than the first.”
Evidence of that? What’s the best way to be “persuaded”? Let the underlings you’re trying to control think they’re on the team without knowing it, so that they become “Useful idiots”.
Sounds as if Isaacson is on the team and doesn’t have to be fully “persuaded”
"During Watergate and Vietnam,"
(e.g. bad evil Republicans, the fuddy duddy Establishment vs Citizen Jouralists like Woodward and Bernstein)
"But beginning in the 1990s"
When one of their own, Baby Boomer Bill Clinton was elected.
"established journalists felt increasingly comfortable sharing information and cooperating with top people in the government and intelligence communities"
An additional example of being on the team since the Good Guys are finally in charge, so obviously it's patriotic to cooperate with the likes of Bill Clinton as opposed to Richard Nixon.
NO LIES DETECTED.
“I suspect a lot of the personal bad blood between Biden and Musk stems from Biden being a 1970s labor Democrat—he’s marching on a United Auto Workers picket line this week—who dislikes Tesla for being nonunion.”
Probably true in main. Although, while in the Senate, Biden voted for NAFTA, so he was a loyal party man even above US workers rights.
“the 71-year-old Isaacson, an impressive example of the best type of Establishment baby boomer, occasionally seems nonplussed by the generation gap between himself and the 52-year-old Musk,”
That’s pretty much what happens with younger and older generations. I’m sure the older Xers will find the Gen Z’ers baffling as well.
“In contrast to Musk, Jobs was an Italian renaissance cardinal commissioning the finest artists.”
Jobs was Baby Boomer, and grew up in the US when it still had the semblance of a serious higher education. Musk by contrast spent his formative years abroad and is LARPing at how he imagines a serous man of cultural tastes should behave.
They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”
Isaascon’s on the team and isn’t quite aware of it. Or he has reconciled it at this time of his life that the future, will be brighter bigger…and better. Somewhat akin to midcentury modernist thinking pervasive in the US, like JFK’s the New Frontier.
Will Musk lead the US into the New Frontier? Only time will tell.
I remember Musk's previous interest in suddenly getting high-speed rail going. Something about loops or the like. He seems to have abandoned that interest. I'm glad he's doing what he's doing now---slashing the government, exposing corruption, saving bloated social media companies, rocketing us back into space. But I wonder if he'll "loop" back to high speed trains eventually.
Trains, cutting government, hating government waste, saving dead companies, space race, going on about how we need to take risks and be inured to loss---he sounds positively Ayn Randian.
And yet Randian Objectivists seem to be highly ambivalent about Musk, even tending toward antipathy. The man, his ventures, methods, and aims are under constant suspicion and attack from the O-ist community. I'd wager envy, jealousy, and disdain for the good at the cost of the perfect are in play.
No one hates libertarians more than other libertarians.
He’s got a tunnel boring machine company. He wanted to build a subway in Las Vegas. He’s basically a Bond villain that has chosen to use his powers for good. For now.
As much as I despise the term, Musk seems like a circle back kind of guy. He has been promising self-driving cars for years and years now. One of the things illustrated in the biography is that Musk is not nonplussed by failure. Rather he sees it as a step in the process.
Musk's goal is to get humans on Mars. All the other technologies he's building are technologies that will be needed on Mars. Mars doesn't have fossil fuels, hence electric cars. Mars has a weak atmosphere and no magnetic field, hence boring machines.
That's a brilliant insight, you're probably right.
Musk seems dedicated to make his mark on history, only not through subtle means. He wants his legacy to be taking man to Mars. The Columbus of the Space Age.
The problem is that Twitter (now X) loses money every month. Musk just does not care. And building high speed rail given the limits imposed by the U.S. makes it beyond the management ability of any U.S. company unless that company is subsidized by the federal government or given exemption from a long list of laws.
lol. Sure little deep-state troll, sure.
Did your USAID money come in yet?
If Musk wants a quantum leap in output per man hour, he should learn about "incentive-based work-sprints." It is based on the idea that workers can work faster for shorter periods of time (just as we see in track and field where short-distance runners always run faster than long-distance runners) combined with the idea that if you tie workers pay directly to their output they will give it their all.
In my own little company the result was an immediate 40 percent increase in labor productivity. I describe it all in my book, A Part-time Job in the Country: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
> Musk’s tweets (or Xs or whatever he calls them these days)
History may prove me wrong, but the rebranding of Twitter still seems like an own goal. The fact that no word has naturally emerged to mean "a post on X" is the best evidence of this; after all, the word "tweet" evolved organically
A dumb decision.
What induced Elon to make the decision? Whim(sy)? His public-political persona has not matched the idea that he is supposedly a business-genius.
> "Whim(sy)?"
Perhaps. He certainly bought Twitter on a whim. He made his offer (including the meme number 420) after one of his Twitter followers suggested it. Then when it looked like the offer might actually get accepted, he tried to back out, but a court forced him to follow through anyway.
Rebranding it "X", by contrast, may have been a little more thought out. He had a stated strategy of turning Twitter into an "everything app" (like China's Weixin or AliPay), so he wanted it to have a name that didn't suggest mere chatter. "X" is about as generic yet memorable as a name can be.
The payment side of his app plan hasn't worked out so far, probably stymied by the Biden administration, which is an overlooked reason for Musk's recent hostility to the Democrat's regime.
> "His public-political persona has not matched the idea that he is supposedly a business-genius."
Yes, ironically Musk's success may have something to do with the fact that he is not really a good businessman. Going into the heavily-regulated, capital-intensive, commodity-competitioned automobile and rocket industries are pretty much the opposite of what any modern business school would advise you to do. Yet Musk made spectacular successes in both. Overpaying for Twitter, letting disgruntled employees alienate advertisers, and tweeting things that annoy electric car owners are things that would also be vetoed by a business consigliere if he had any, yet Musk has ridden the (probably unprofitable) Twitter acquisition to global influence and a seat in the White House. The whole story is so improbable that if it were in a novel the reader would dismiss it as too fictional. Yet Musk really did it. While also playing video games.
I read at the time of the buyout that he really wanted it for the deep space communication potential. That it was especially suited therefor and would not require construction of a new system from the ground up. This rang true to me at the time and still does. As for "X" not catching on, my bet is that he is good with that given the name he gave the little boy he carries around on his shoulders. Organic does not seem to be his motif.
My sense is that he bought Twitter as an insurance policy, as he was a natural target for cancel culture. It might not be profitable on its own but it’s allowed him to grow his wealth to $400B and now basically run the country.
“I am wired for war,” Musk says...
Yes, at least he knows himself. Musk is the man for the time, but that will end at some point. For his sake I hope he learns to live with peace when the time comes.
Too many in our generation have a hard time with that.
> "I hope he learns to live with peace when the time comes."
I don't foresee peace any time soon.
Musk's war-wiring should be safe.
This comment is marginally about how Musk attempting to downsize the government:
With all the controversy about federal government staffing levels I asked DeepSeek this question.
Does Congress set federal agencies staffing levels or is that task left up to the executive branch?
It’s thinking process:
“First, I think Congress controls the budget. They pass appropriations bills that fund the government. If staffing levels are tied to funding, maybe Congress has a say through the budget.
But the actual hiring and managing of staff is probably done by the agencies themselves, which are part of the executive branch.
Wait, but how exactly does it work?
Maybe Congress sets the overall budget, which includes money for personnel. So they might allocate a certain amount of money for salaries, which would effectively limit how many staff an agency can hire. For example, if an agency has a budget that allows for 1,000 employees, they can't hire more than that without additional funding.
But generally, I think the executive branch has more discretion in how they use their allocated funds, including staffing. However, Congress can influence staffing through funding levels and specific legislative mandates. So the answer might be a combination:
Congress controls the budget which affects staffing levels, but the executive branch manages the actual staffing within those constraints.
Wait, but sometimes there are hiring freezes or increases directed by the President. For example, a President might order agencies to reduce staff or hire more in certain areas. That would be part of the executive branch's management.
So in summary, Congress doesn't directly set the exact number of staff for each agency, but they control the funding that determines how many staff can be hired. The executive branch agencies then manage their staffing within those budgetary limits, unless Congress has specified particular numbers in legislation.“
This response seems to suggest that the president has considerable discretion in determining how many employees are needed to carry out the functions of any agency funded by the Congress.
What I always get from reading these things is that I'm glad Elon Musk exists, but I would never want to work at one of his companies. It sounds really rough! But I'm glad someone's willing to help put in the work to take us to Mars.
As of late, it seems that the Chinese are the new innovators. But with Musk, we will own the Mars landing. Both Trump and Musk want to be historical figures. As long as they can keep their alliance together, it should work. That all depends on their respective egos.
Why have we heard nothing of a Mars mission? Instead it's all petty fighting over the existence of relatively minor agencies (petty/minor per share of "federal spending")?
I think that's why Musk really wants to increase the cadence of Starship launches. Orbital Starship refueling is the first holy grail, this is a contract for the presumably doomed NASA/Boeing Artemis moon mission. Mars insertion missions ( 2026 trans Mars insertion trajectory window) are a a great chance to put a unmanned Starship on Mars. That would be the ultimate PR victory for Spacex. Face it looks like the SLS Artemis mission will be killed off.
Musk is the antithesis of communist China.
The problem with Musk is, what are his political goals? What is his vision? Trolling and haw-hawing and a series of (what were once called) publicity stunts --- does not amount to a political program.
His goal is to get humanity into space. His politics are whatever is most useful to that goal at the moment.
"Isaacson acidly observes: I think the second half of his sentence is more true than the first."
This was written before Zuck claimed he was threatened. Wonder how much threatening Aspen does.