Reading this article, I think Elon Musk is a genius. He's truly smart. He's cutting the budget of his smartest competitor, NASA, so that when national scientists and engineers are thrown out onto the streets, they'll end up at SpaceX.
Not only that, but real innovations like cancer treatments require decades of unprofitable 'basic science' grunt work. Musk and his friends don't care about saving humanity 30 years from now. He talks about going to Mars with nonsense lies to fatten his own pockets. And by filling the science advisory committee with VCs instead of scientists, he has turned science in America from a 'pursuit of truth' into a 'Silicon Valley VC portfolio.'
Elon Musk is a genius. He will destroy the growth engines that could produce his future competitors, and he will reign forever.
The smart thing about Elon Musk and his friends is their ban on international cooperation among scientists and their word censorship. They seem to think that viruses like Ebola will enter the country by getting a Trump card issued. Clearly, smart people like them cannot understand ordinary people like us. To them, it's only natural that everything comes through a visa, so they probably think viruses come through visas too.
Elon Musk's lecturing about border etiquette for viruses can be described as a kind of elite duty. Indeed, injecting morality into something immoral is 'noblesse oblige.
First of all, NASA is the main client of SpaceX. They pay SpaceX money. Sabotaging NASA is sabotaging SpaceX. If NASA can (or want to) compete against SpaceX directly it probably wouldn't have fund half the R&D cost of Falcon 9.
What DOGE has actually struck is not the procurement budget for launch vehicles, but the destruction of the internal engineering capability to design them. The benefit of destroying that capability, in turn, greatly favors SpaceX. SpaceX doesn't want NASA to be a smart partner that builds its own rockets; it wants NASA to be nothing more than a giant wallet that just pays money.
This is a classic monopoly strategy that cloud companies used to employ all the time: destroying the customer's internal capabilities[1]
To be clear, DOGE's strategy is not actually for America.
The bigger issue is that NIH, NSF, NASA, and public health agencies are no longer perceived by the US right as neutral expert institutions. They see these institutions as strongholds of left wing elites. So this is less about fiscal policy and more about cultural policy retribution.
That's why from the perspective of an outsider like me, it looks like 'they are killing their own country's science,' while someone like you might see it as 'smashing the power institutions of the opposing camp.' I think this is simply a difference between an external and internal perspective.
Honestly, just looking at the ban on international cooperation mentioned in the article, it comes across as nothing more than a desire for control.
> The bigger issue is that NIH, NSF, NASA, and public health agencies are no longer perceived by the US right as neutral expert institutions. They see these institutions as strongholds of left wing elites. So this is less about fiscal policy and more about cultural policy retribution.
It's genuinely amazing(ly depressing) how quickly and effectively "certain groups" can create enemies and whip up public sentiment to attack them and gain power because of it.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but he hasn't been part of this administration for a while. And also i'm not quite sure you have his views on NASA funding (one of his main customers) right, you're just making them up.
He is a genius though, great results on the market.
Not only that, but real innovations like cancer treatments require decades of unprofitable 'basic science' grunt work. Musk and his friends don't care about saving humanity 30 years from now. He talks about going to Mars with nonsense lies to fatten his own pockets. And by filling the science advisory committee with VCs instead of scientists, he has turned science in America from a 'pursuit of truth' into a 'Silicon Valley VC portfolio.'
Elon Musk is a genius. He will destroy the growth engines that could produce his future competitors, and he will reign forever.
The smart thing about Elon Musk and his friends is their ban on international cooperation among scientists and their word censorship. They seem to think that viruses like Ebola will enter the country by getting a Trump card issued. Clearly, smart people like them cannot understand ordinary people like us. To them, it's only natural that everything comes through a visa, so they probably think viruses come through visas too. Elon Musk's lecturing about border etiquette for viruses can be described as a kind of elite duty. Indeed, injecting morality into something immoral is 'noblesse oblige.