Maggie Harrison
Sat, September 16, 2023
Not So Absolute
It would appear that billionaire Elon Musk's self-avowed free speech "absolutism" has its limits — and according to Bloomberg, saying mean things about Musk is one of those non-absolute ceilings. Convenient!
Serial biographer Walter Isaacson's new book about the founder, "Elon Musk," unsurprisingly includes several anecdotes about Musk's takeover of the social media company formerly known as Twitter (it's since been rebranded to just "X," for some reason.) Per Bloomberg, one such Isaacson-penned vignette from Musk's purchase of the platform explains that during the mass layoffs that took place at the beginning of Musk's Twitter tenure, the billionaire had a team take a fine-tooth comb to the platform's Slack, using keywords like "Elon" to find and log any less-than-favorable remarks. Any employees found making "snarky comments" about Musk, as Isaacson apparently put it, were added to a list, and everyone on that list was fired.
In the SpaceX and Tesla CEO's world, "unfettered free speech," as Isaacson wrote, "does not extend to the workplace."
Cherry Picking
As Bloomberg points out, free speech laws don't technically extend to the workplace. Musk also famously retains a certain degree of paranoia, so it's not terribly surprising to see the world's richest man fire naysayers for the sake of perceived loyalty.
Regardless of whether firing employees for making fun of their boss is technically legal, though, it's still wildly uncool, and certainly seems to speak to Musk's long record of really, really needing people to like him. And still, considering the billionaire's eternal quest to prove his loyalty to the cause of inhibited First Amendment rights — even spending $44 billion on the internet's slowly-dying-and-probably-former town square to do it — it's usually worth calling out the founder's wide-ranging bending, and occasional all-out breaking, of his own proclaimed ideology. From penning columns for censored Chinese state media, to suspending journalists and even shadowbanning entire publications that he doesn't like, the alleged emerald scion's absolutism is known to warp to his whims and mood swings.
We'd also be remiss to note that Musk is currently waging war on the antisemitism nonprofit the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which Musk is threatening to sue for, uh, defamation, on grounds that the ADL's claims that Twitter's antisemitism problem has gotten worse since the billionaire's purchase of the platform (it has) has caused the social media platform to lose massive amounts of revenue. You know, because Free Speech.
‘Seriously Sick’ Elon Musk Gets Trash-Talked All Over Ukraine
Anna Nemtsova
Fri, September 15, 2023
Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images
America’s richest man appears to be going through something of a public image crisis in Ukraine, with leading public figures across the country accusing Elon Musk of being selfish, ignorant—and an alien, even.
The outpouring of criticism and insults comes days after the Tesla founder said he rejected a request from the Ukrainian military to re-activate his satellite communications system, Starlink, to help with an attack on Russian forces in the Crimean peninsula last year.
Musk, for his part, has blamed the U.S. government, arguing that sanctions against Russia in the Kremlin-occupied region left him with no choice but to deny the request. But prominent Ukrainian politicians, businessmen, and media professionals—who spoke with The Daily Beast about their views on Musk in the aftermath of the Starlink controversy—aren’t quite buying it.
“What Musk has done was an unfriendly act against Ukraine, a present for Putin,” Svyatoslav Dubina, a Ukrainian platoon commander, told The Daily Beast.
Starlink began providing a nationwide service to Ukraine in February 2022, after a Ukrainian minister appealed to Elon Musk for help on Twitter. The service was initially funded by SpaceX, but the Pentagon reached a deal with the company to purchase the Starlink service for Ukraine in June. The service, which provides high-speed internet access to remote areas, has been an invaluable resource for the Ukrainian resistance effort.
The U.S. Government Can’t Allow Elon Musk the Power to Intervene in Wars
“We depend on Starlink. It plays a number one role, together with drones and artillery on the front, in our war against the occupiers,” Serhiy Leschenko, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, told The Daily Beast.
For Garik Korogotsky, one of Ukraine’s leading philanthropists, Musk has gone from being “a hero of Ukraine” to a person he views as “seriously sick with a God complex” after the Crimea ordeal.
“Musk made a fatal mistake, a wrong moral choice,” he said. “Ukraine does not like its dependence on Musk, and the United States should put an end to its dependence on him very soon.”
Some of those on the front lines shared similar concerns: “U.S. law enforcement agencies and courts should be looking into Musk’s influence on the course of history; a private company cannot be controlling the security systems of other countries,” said Dubina, the platoon commander.
Betrayal
Meanwhile, Russia’s state media has been spotlighting Musk’s decision to deny Ukraine’s request in Crimea as a victory for the Kremlin. Shortly after news of the Crimea incident broke, Russian President Vladimir Putin heaped praise on the Tesla founder, likely fueling the outrage against Musk in Ukraine.
Musk “is an active and talented businessman and he is succeeding a lot, including with the support of the American state,” the Russian President said this week. “As far as private business and Elon Musk is concerned, he is undoubtedly an outstanding person.”
Peter Zalmayev, a prominent Ukrainian TV presenter, recently told his viewers that he believes “Musk is influenced by Russian propaganda”—before cracking a joke about Tesla bumper stickers that read: “I bought this car before I knew that Elon was crazy.”
Speaking with The Daily Beast, Zalmayev echoed concerns of other Ukrainians who believe it’s “very risky to rely on one individual when it comes to Starlink for Ukraine.”
“As far as the messaging goes, Musk’s voice is so amplified, it is very disturbing. In Ukraine, truth is our key appeal to the world,” he said. “We understand that nations represent their often narrowly divided interests. But the unity around Ukraine’s defense showed that the truth is still there.”
The ex-governor of the Donetsk region, Serhiy Taruta, knows all too well the price Ukraine is paying for Putin’s brutal war after witnessing the destruction of his hometown of Mariupol.
“Musk helped us a lot in the beginning of the war, we should not cross that out and now—and he should come to Ukraine and see with his own eyes the level of destruction,” Taruta told The Daily Beast on Friday. “Over 100,000 people died from Russia’s violence in my home city of Mariupol. Let Musk imagine that one of his 11 kids was kidnapped… that is what we feel, when our territories get occupied.”
Others, like Ivan Petukhov—the Vice President of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, which represents 10,000 businessmen across the country—have chalked up the matter to a simple lack of intellect.
“Every Ukrainian has turned away from Musk,” Petukhov told The Daily Beast. “He stabbed us in the back, and he is not smart.”
Does Elon Musk have too much power? Ukraine Starlink episode sparks concern
The tech mogul’s refusal to let Kyiv use SpaceX’s satellite communications to launch a surprise attack on Russia draws scrutiny in Washington.
Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
Fri, September 15, 2023
Elon Musk speaks at a satellite conference in Washington, D.C., in 2020. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Elon Musk — the Tesla co-founder and SpaceX chief technology officer; owner, chairman and CTO of X, the company formerly known as Twitter, and world’s richest person — has long been a powerful figure on the global stage.
But revelations in a newly published biography of the outspoken entrepreneur suggest that Musk may have amassed too much power, especially when it comes to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Satellite communications
According to Walter Issacson's book, “Elon Musk,” the mercurial tech mogul refused to allow Ukraine to use SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications to launch a surprise drone submarine attack on Russian forces in Crimea last September. Musk refused over concerns that Russia would launch a nuclear attack in response, telling Isaacson that he was trying to avoid a “mini-Pearl Harbor.”
“He believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014,” Isaacson wrote. “He had just spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States [who] had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response.
So Musk “decided not to enable Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast,” Isaacson continued. “When the Ukrainian military learned that Starlink would not allow a successful attack, Musk got frantic calls and texts asking him to turn the coverage on.”
Elon Musk departs from a closed-door meeting with lawmakers and tech CEO on artificial intelligence in Washington, D.C., Wednesday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, begged Musk to reconsider. “We made the sea drones ourselves, they can destroy any cruiser or submarine,” he texted using an encrypted app. “I did not share this information with anyone. I just want you — the person who is changing the world through technology — to know this.”
According to Isaacson, Musk was soon on the phone with Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other high-ranking administration officials to address their concerns about his decision.
“Whether intended or not, he had become a power broker U.S. officials couldn’t ignore,” CNN noted this week.
Read more on Yahoo News: ‘How am I in this war?’: New Musk biography offers fresh details about the billionaire’s Ukraine dilemma, via CNN
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk explained in a post on X last week. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
The decision drew praise from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who called Musk “an outstanding person” at an economic forum in eastern Russia earlier this week.
"He is undoubtedly an outstanding person,” Putin said, according to a Reuters translation of his remarks. “This must be recognized, and I think it is recognized all over the world."
Senate launches probe
Elon Musk laughs while speaking to reporters after attending a closed-door meeting with lawmakers and fellow tech CEOs on artificial intelligence in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The episode has drawn the attention of Congress, which has launched an investigation into Musk’s actions in Ukraine.
Bloomberg reported that the Senate Armed Services committee is looking into national security issues raised by Musk’s decision not to extend the private Starlink satellite network to aid a Ukrainian attack on Russian warships.
Read more on Yahoo News: Musk’s denial of Ukraine’s Starlink request prompts Senate probe, via Bloomberg
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the committee’s chairman, said in a statement Thursday that the reports on the use of Starlink exposed “serious national-security liability issues” given the “outsized role Mr. Musk and his company have taken.”
“Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to U.S. national security,” Reed added.
Musk to meet with Netanyahu
Elon Musk poses prior to his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 15. (Michel Euler/AP)
The tech billionaire’s influence on world affairs does not appear to be waning.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Musk during a trip to the United States next week, Netanyahu's office said Thursday.
Their meeting, which is scheduled for Monday, will reportedly include discussions about artificial intelligence.
Read more on Yahoo News:
“It comes at a time when Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform X,” the Associated Press noted. “The Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil-rights organization, has accused Musk of allowing antisemitism and hate speech to spread on X. Its director, Jonathan Greenblatt, said Musk had ‘amplified’ the messages of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to ban the league by engaging with them recently on X.”
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