Elon Musk’s financial interests put him in a position of having his own personal foreign policy, but new reporting shows that whether it’s manufacturing in China or the Starlink network being used in Ukraine, Musk’s decisions can run counter to stated US policy.
Musk is South African. We should expect his loyalties to reflect his home country more than the US.
What good does this really do south africa though? Id more expect his loyalty to be to himself and his own profit than any country regardless of where he’s native.
Elon Musk is a US interest. The US is a bunch of business interests in a trench coat, and they don’t always agree on everything. Some want to do business with China, some want the Chinese competition destroyed, and some want to create tension so they can sell more weapons.
The idea that Musk is “counter” to US interests is wrong, he just represents a faction of the ruling class that’s not on board with the (trade) war on China. Since it’s not in the interest of the working class to have a US-China (trade) war, neither in the US nor anywhere really, he is inadvertently aligned with the interests of the majority of humanity on this one.
I see, so it’s not in the working class interest to have a trade war with, checks notes… A genocidal authoritarian government whose stated aim is to subjugate a smaller Democratic neighbor. That same China who is allied with a war mongering mafia state and has aggressively targeted whole industries with intellectual theft, product dumping, and unfair trade practices which has hollowed out whole domestic industries and has been one of the leading causes of low wage growth.
It is now a terrible thing for workers, that the US is in a low intensity trade war which is decoupling it’s economy from said genocidal power and rebuilding the industrial plant in North America. Reshoring millions of jobs and keeping the unemployment rate at historic lows despite increased interest rates.
It was a lot to unpack, I just wanted to make sure I understood that correctly.
You’re just thinking of the worker aristocracy in the West, not the global working class, clearly. China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. And it’s neat how you blame China for something done by your own ruling class. Furthermore, this trade war (not to mention a war war) will be terrible for workers everywhere. Do you think the billionaires are going to bail you out? No, they’re going to squeeze workers even more to finance this conflict, and they’ll tell you suffering is your patriotic duty.
And imagine thinking China is the genocidal one out of those two. The US has had a hand in so many genocides and has directly and indirectly killed millions in the last decades. If you compare this to what China has done recently they look like angels.
Less Evil, is still evil.
Besides, it is not like people can’t multitask, this isn’t a zero sum game.
I can hate the fact that Americans don’t have paid family leave, or sick leave, but we send billions to Israel because we are scared of other religions.
I can also hate China’s policies on Uyghurs basically enslaving them and putting them in concentration camps.
A genocidal authoritarian government whose stated aim is to subjugate a smaller Democratic neighbor.
It’s absolutely terrible what the genocidal US regime is doing to Cuba, but the rest of your comment doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Actually I personally think it is wrong what the US is doing to Cuba… you throwing the argument into an non related discussion about Ukraine is whataboutism on the other hand.
Truly, the pinnacle of modern journalism: YouTube.
I know dude what the fuck… I saw the “headline” and looked at the source. what in the real fuck
Like you can’t even argue that this is at least a perspective from a foreign state. It’s literally the thoughts of one guy.
“One guy” is a strange way to describe Ronan Farrow, who just did a huge New Yorker article on Elon Musk.
Yes, MSNBC’s YouTube channel posting clips from their TV programs is definitely not a valid news source 🙄
It’s wild how quickly some of y’all love to (smugly) dismiss things at a glance.
A YouTube clip interviewing a New Yorker journalist from a news station’s official channel. 🤨
…sometimes, absolutely!
Youtube is a video hosting platform, just saying a piece of news is hosted on youtube says exactly nothing about it’s credibility.
Youtube did not create this video, if you want to say anything useful about its validity you’ll have to be a bit more specific about the actual video itself or it’s creators.
But I guess cheap pot shots make for easier upvotes.
If Rachel Maddow says it, then it must be true.
If you’re skeptical, here’s the article the interview was about.
I know redditors and lemmies are eager to fight to the last Ukrainian, but atleast half the country wants to stop unlimited Ukrainian funding. So Musk prohibiting Ukrainians to use his tech for offensive warfare against another country, is him saving the world from nuclear war.
In his own words, “The United States Congress has not declared war on Russia”. And that is 100% true.
I know many of you guys had your bunkers ready for the nuclear fallout. But understand that many others want to live normally.
Here is Walter Isaacson (on whose book this story is based) himself saying,
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.
https://twitter.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1700342242290901361
Yeah - Isaacson walked back on the initial story. we will probably never find out which version is true … but you can be sure that the last published version of any story is not necessarily the truth.
And that you are insinuating that the Ukrainian people are being used „to the last Ukrainian“ is in itself a sickening twist of the truth. This is Russian Propaganda language.
Can someone double check the content of the quote? I’d need documents to believe this because that’s a big claim.
You’re mad at Musk for this???
Musk has done so many terrible things. Treats his workers like shit, destroys the environment, platforms racists (he’s a racist pos himself), false advertising, siphons government subsidies, scams investors (including pension funds, I don’t particularly care about scamming venture capitalist and the like), lobbies against public transport and god knows what I forgot right now.
But oh no! He only supports the war effort up to a point, and he doesn’t want to have a cold war with China. For once he’s kinda reasonable, and for that the libs are calling him a traitor.
We are calling him a traitor for having Starlink turned off in Ukraine to protect Russia from a counter attack.
Last I heard, he simply didn’t turn it on when Ukraine asked him to, before the DoD had explicitly contracted him to support Ukraine’s military. The narrative of him throwing a switch mid-attack and laughing maniacally as Ukrainian drones drifted helplessly to shore has been spreading like wildfire but that seems to be based on a quote from one guy who has since walked it back.
Is there some Fediverse equivalent to /r/enoughmuskspam? My feed is starting to get flooded with these five-minute-hates of Elon Musk and it’s wearying.
That’s because you identify with the US empire, which is not, and never was, on your team. And neither was Musk.
Musk isn’t even against the US empire, he just didn’t want to escalate. The White House regularly does (not) do a thing because they don’t want to escalate. They’re all traitors to the US too, are they?
Treason is not wanting total war, got it.
If Musk really wants to prevent escalation then he should help the US and it’s allies stop Russia from invading other countries as they have been doing for decades.
Russia is starting total war. Musk is helping them continue by preventing efforts to stop Russia.
Civilian space assets cannot be used for warfare or they become legitimate targets in a war. When the US commits to defending and replenishing starlink satellites lost in conflict I’ll blame Musk for not enabling his network to be used for warfare.
The Ukraine military was already using starlink. Starlink agreed to provide their service to the Ukraine military as a US military contractor with the US paying the bill.
So they can do that because they have already done that.
The US has committed to defending and replenishing Starlink because they’ve been doing that by protecting the antennas and replacing them as they get attacked.
Again. Starlink already agreed to be used in Ukraine and at the time that Musk interrupted service to the Ukrainian military it had been in use for a long time.
Musk only interrupted service long enough to prevent the counter attack on Russia. Then agreed to turn it back on after the opportunity for a counter attack had passed.
Seems pretty obvious that Musk stepped in to help Russia as a traitor to the US.
The country he lives in, and the military that paid to have the service of his business to be used … by the military.
We’re mad that one person could have this much power, especially because they’re a narcissistic man child who thinks he knows better than everyone else and is quickly becoming radicalized to the far right.
