The Darwin Awards Apocalypse:

From Techno-Optimism to Warlord Techno-Feudalism 

"Musk believes that humans must colonize Mars in order to become a multiplanetary species as insurance against the end of life on Earth. On Monday he explained to Jesse Watters of the Fox News Channel that eventually the Earth will be incinerated by an expanding sun, so humans must move to other planets to survive. In 2016, Musk predicted that humans would start landing on Mars in 2025, but in the Watters interview he revised his prediction to possibly 2029 but more likely 2031.

Critics note that while it is true the sun is expanding, the change is not expected to affect the Earth for another 5 billion years. As a frame of reference, humans evolved from their predecessors about 300,000 years ago.

Musk has the power of the United States government behind him. In December, Trump nominated Musk associate and billionaire Jared Isaacman to become the next head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Senate has not yet confirmed Isaacman, but the Republican-dominated Senate Commerce Committee advanced his nomination last week. The president’s proposed budget, released Friday, calls for cutting about 25% of NASA’s funding—about $6 billion—and giving $1 billion of the money remaining to initiatives focused on Mars.

Musk is trying to make Starlink dominate the Earth’s communications, a dominance that would give him enormous power, as he suggested last month when he noted that Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.” In April, Trump delayed the rural broadband program in what appeared to be an attempt to shift the program toward Starlink, and today Tom Perkins of The Guardian reported that the administration is going to end federal research into space pollution, which is building up alarmingly in the stratosphere owing in part to Musk’s satellites.

The attempt to gain control over artificial intelligence and human communication networks regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans might have a larger theme. As technology forecaster Paul Saffo points out, tech oligarchs led by technology guru Curtis Yarvin have called for a new world order that rejects the nation states around which humans have organized their societies for almost 400 years. They call instead for “network states” organized around technology that permits individuals to group around a leader in cyberspace without reference to real-world boundaries, a position Starlink’s terms of service appear to reflect.

Mastering artificial intelligence while dominating global communications would go a long way toward breaking down existing nations and setting up the conditions for a brave new world, dominated by tech oligarchs."

Letters from an American Historian 

This reads like a mad comic book bid for world domination. As if rewriting Zager & Evans 1969 number one hit, and comically dreary apocalyptic ballad, "In the Year 2525," as "In the Year 2025." They couldn't wait! Musk removing scientific research capacities to make room for AI technologies that don't yet exist is potentially the Darwin Awards winner to beat them all. What happens if the AI can't replace the scientists or the research they do? How many lives will be lost or setback because of this disruption in basic research? Of course such alarm is dismissed by the other side as a variation on TDS and rooting against America. But, actually, I'm rooting for America and against the country turning into a handful of ethnonationalist High tech corporate warlord island gulags. In 25 years of teaching I never shared the alarm raised at times about the moral direction of young people. If anything, I'd say the Millennials and Gen Z kids I taught seemed less frivolous and more generous than my generation. But the emergence of Musk as a icon to the young, so popular he might have swung the election to Trump, is very alarming. Particularly so because as his stature as a public figure has risen it has become increasingly evident to me that, like Trump, he can be a profoundly arrogant idiot. And that many young men believe in and admire this guy as a world building futurist is tragic and hateful. His thing against USAID is sick and inhumane. His support for white supremacy and Nazism repulsive. Apparently, he's a driven high tech production manager; achieving market dominance first in EVs and now satellites. If ever there was a good reason to ask someone to stay in their own lane, enforce some antitrust, and  leave the politics and moral leadership to others, this would be one such case. In Musk the fantasy of absolute private property and technological automation have fused. He makes greedy Robber Barons of old appear relatively benign.