An published this week by Business Insider informs us that there are now six members of an elite group of people whose personal fortunes are valued at more than $200 billion: Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They are all American and they all appear to align with the political logic and ideology of US President Donald Trump. It is widely believed that they have all shared phone numbers with the president.

As Devil’s Advocate, I would hardly expect — now or in the future — to receive a request for the canonization of any of this crew. Most of them were present at Trump’s inauguration and all have demonstrated an “interest” in politics. The word “interest” has at least three meanings in this sentence. Curiosity and empathetic concern is one of those meanings, but certainly not the dominant one. “Intent to influence” is closer to the mark.

Most ordinary, rational people, typically engaged in making a living, would reason that if they were in possession of a measly one billion dollars — or even a few million — they would focus on the myriad ways available to them of enjoying their good fortune, rather than spending their precious time and vast resources seeking new opportunities to exercise their skills at managing conflicts of interest.

Was there really a pre-conflict of interest world?

Although it appears to some as a novel trend, this culture built around a post conflict of interest mentality didn’t wait for Trump to be elected to become either the defining trait of the US politico-economic system or its official ideology. Michael Douglas’s character  Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film, Wall Street, famously, “Greed is good.” Moving from New York’s Wall Street to Washington, DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue, the direct translation of Gekko’s wise words would be “conflict of interest is good.”

How does the current system work? And are Republicans the exclusive practitioners? In a recent, political activist and writer Corbin Trent excoriated his fellow Democrats essentially for defending a supposed “moral order” that has long encouraged, to use his words, “selfish, narcissistic egoism” as the driving force of the economy. The difference is that what Democrats nourished passively and privately, Trump promotes brazenly and with his patented brio.

“Trump didn’t single-handedly infect our institutions. They were infected long ago. He’s just a selfish, narcissistic egotist who saw a weak government, weak institutions, a weak judiciary, and a weak opposition party, and took it over.

When Democrats focus all their energy on the exploiter rather than the rot that enabled him, they guarantee that nothing will change.”

So long as those who mastered DC decorum honored the prevailing system without advertising its flaws, they could count on the population’s resigned approval. The political custodians of the system, both Democrat and Republican, invested in defending it from criticism. Trent accuses the Democrats of identifying with an elite that wants to bring “us back to ‘normal,’” which he describes in the following terms: “Back to when people still struggled to afford the basics, when the USA was still a weakening nation, when all the broken and corrupted institutions that served their interests were humming along just fine. They just want to get rid of the madman who screwed up the good time they were having.” Trent even cites the deleterious role of “massive think tanks, policy shops, entire ecosystems dedicated to maintaining the status quo or getting us back to ‘normal.’”

In other words, any way you look — left (Democrat) or right (Republican) — candidates for sainthood among the political class will be few and far between. We are encouraged to think of think tanks as institutions that conduct high-powered research in the public interest. Many of them turn out to be exemplars of a special category: “conflict of intellectual interest.” Alas, the pattern even spills over into academia, which just as for the political class has its “.” Our intellectual establishment, private and public, finds itself at a far cry from the ideal expressed by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer seven centuries ago in the English of his time in his description of his “clerk of Oxenford” (Oxford cleric, a student and teacher):

Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche;

And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.

(Resounding with moral vertu was his speech;

And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.)

I’m not claiming that conflicts of interest didn’t exist in the 14th century, but intellectuals of the time could, according to the author of The Canterbury Tales, be content to simply study and teach.

The case of Bill Gates

How bad is it, really? Are there no cases of billionaires who put virtue above interest? On the contrary, we know about one:. He died two years ago, but not before giving his entire fortune away. He apparently had the same taste for personal austerity as Chaucer’s clerk.

But wasn’t there another one, much more a household name than Feeney? Who doesn’t remember the glorious image the founder of Microsoft managed to achieve, not so many years ago, as a paragon of public virtue? Some deemed him a veritable industrial saint. This achievement was particularly notable given that in the late 1990s most people perceived him as an unflinching, monopolistic corporate bully.

The wealthy have one distinct advantage over the rest of us: the capacity to hire people skilled in recrafting their image and spreading the new, improved version across the media. The basic requirement is to build the image around a noble cause. John D Rockefeller the precedent after the in 1914, demonstrating that no-holds-barred capitalism could become sanctified through philanthropy. Rockefeller’s clever ploy, as he harnessed the talents of publicist , effectively gave birth to the modern “science” of public relations. The rehabilitation narrative for the formerly reviled Gates had the added attraction of appearing as a classic tale of .

How did Gates do it? He simply applied his business acumen to philanthropy, promoting a model that became labeled as “.” He cleverly recruited the second-richest man in the world, Berkshire Hathaway Chair Warren Buffett, to accompany him and validate his claim. (The two often traded places as the uncontested world champion of wealth). This not only burnished Gates’s image, the media fawned over it for another self-interested reason: Gates’s conspicuous philanthropy appeared to justify predatory capitalism as an effective instrument of human welfare and collective prosperity.

Buffett was the perfect foil for Gates. Avoiding the spotlight, many saw him as a kind of innocent idiot savant who had mastered all the secrets of finance but, despite his visible wealth, maintained an austere, saintly lifestyle. This contrasted with Gates whose lifestyle was clearly flamboyant, despite the man’s singular lack of charisma. The media embraced the now thoroughly reformed “good billionaire,” who openly practiced enlightened self-governance alongside the genius investor from Omaha.

For several years, the public and the media perceived Gates as a problem-solving genius applying his purportedly exceptional intellect and efficiency-focused business models to the world’s most complex problems, including what is perhaps the most complex of them all: education. In that particular field, his formulas failed to work, but his wealth permitted him to persist.

Gradually Gates’s sanctified image began fading, at first imperceptibly, but it steadily eroded, notably when people discovered that the Gates Foundation — theoretically dedicated to noble causes such as health and education — was investing its wealth in companies known for gleaning profits from ignoble practices that compromised the health of both the planet and human society.

Bill’s candidacy for canonization finally imploded spectacularly when the media revealed his close relationship with human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. That relationship was close enough in any case to incite Melinda, his wife and philanthropic alter ego, to sue for .

During the Obama years in particular, Gates was one of the billionaires who more or less discreetly exercised disproportionate and unelected power over global policy. This became scandalously clear during the Covid-19 pandemic. His case suggests that great wealth may easily convert into an irresistible structural power that is at odds with democratic ideals, even when used for supposedly “good” ends.

The deeper roots of the post conflict of interest culture

The Trump administration has done nothing to disguise the omnipresence of conflict of interest within the political, financial and industrial world. But is it new, as Kafka and Robertson, cited above, suggest? Was it different in previous administrations? Six decades ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson had personal investment in both the defense industry and media and used his political clout to a disastrous war in Vietnam. He wasn’t being influenced by billionaires, but he was his own source of influence.

Without examining similar cases — and there are many —  we should perhaps ask ourselves a more general question. We know that the US is a nation that maintains a quasi-religious belief in the idea of a natural affinity between democracy and capitalism. Hasn’t it now become obvious, in part thanks to Trump, that conflict of interest is a feature of the system rather than a vice to be avoided?

I discussed this very question with a colleague who made the following point. While conflicts of interest have always existed, the recent apparent disavowal of traditional ethical restraints and the unprecedented scope of private financial ties at the highest levels of government have led many to conclude that the system has transitioned from attempting to manage an undesirable vice to merely accepting and working within a de facto feature.

Looking for an illustration? Just this week, the most recent Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, upon learning of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s death,:

To what was Dick Cheney “devoted” as a “public servant” under President George W. Bush? One thing is uncontestable, he had no lack of devotion to the good fortune of the company he had previously managed as chief executive: Halliburton. Cheney to receive annual payments of deferred compensation from his former energy company throughout his time as vice president. He retained a large number of unexercised Halliburton stock options upon taking office. And of course, Halliburton’s good fortune mirrored — and contributed to —   the ill fortune of millions of civilians in the Middle East.

And how did Halliburton do during his vice presidency? Halliburton’s subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, billions of dollars in no-bid or limited-competition government contracts for logistics and rebuilding work related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Thankfully, no one has yet submitted a dossier of canonization for Mr. Cheney.

*[The Devil’s Advocate pursues the tradition 51�Թ� began in 2017 with the launch of our “Devil’s Dictionary.” It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself — political and journalistic rhetoric — to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of the 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be seen from an outsider’s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Cheney, Trump and Billionaires Define Our Post-Ethics Era appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In other words, they would like me to use this column to declare officially that the current president of the United States is either the Devil himself, a bona fide member of Satan’s cohort or, at the very least, worthy of being publicly recognized as one through a process mirroring the canonization of a saint. I remind them that the business of a Devil’s Advocate only concerns dossiers for sainthood, not demonhood. 

At first I resisted, but I must admit that I increasingly find the question compelling. Therefore, though I honestly consider it outside the realm of physical or even metaphysical possibility — since among living humans there is clearly no consensus that devils even exist — I’ve decided to review the available evidence for the case concerning Trump’s possible demonic identity.

What’s in the dossier concerning Trump’s devilry?

Most of the plaintiffs who have brought my attention to the case highlight what they call Mr. Trump’s “fascist tendencies.” A nation whose military is now called upon to wage war on its major cities at some point stops resembling a democracy. On that score, they have good reason to highlight Trump’s treatment of two statistically significant classes of people the president clearly wishes to either exile or suppress.

The first category includes individuals whose is neither Caucasian nor African, but somewhere in between. They are usually referred to as “brown” and represent approximately of the current American population. Their facial and morphological traits suggest traces of Native American ancestry and family origins linking them to Spanish-speaking American nations. My friends typically refer to them as Hispanics, Latinos or (the silliest among them) Latinx. Trump has spent a lot of energy and resources reinforcing an arm of government called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest, manhandle, bully, intimidate or deport them. ICE was originally created in the wake of September 11 when US President George W. Bush’s administration took a major step in installing xenophobic paranoia as a permanent feature of the logic and culture of the federal government.��

The second category includes people of any race or origin who publicly (and even privately) convey messages indicating disapproval of policies, actions or attitudes manifested by or associated with the state of Israel. Washington is fair game (to some extent), but Tel Aviv is sacred. NDTV World US District Judge William Young in saying: “the Trump administration targeted non-citizen students backing the Palestinians as the war in Gaza grinds on, with the ‘goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated’ students.”��

Concerning the first category, the Hispanics, Trump appears to believe that they do not qualify as archetypical “Americans,” despite the fact that most have bloodlines reaching far back in history to a period before the first Europeans had even set eyes on the New World. (Note that I’m using the term “American” inaccurately, following traditional practice. Instead of designating a continent, we have been told that “America” should refer exclusively to the United States of America).

For Trump, true Americans are easy to identify. They have similar sounding names, such as Vance,, Jones, Petitbon, Macgregor, Stevenson, O’Neill, Rosenfeld, Barzetti, Van de Camp, Kowalski, Johanson. In other words, a similar style of name that so clearly connotes a people with a common origin and shared culture. Cutaneous pigmentation (or a paucity of it), we should be reminded, has nothing to do with defining this perfectly unified group. Why should it?

To put it more bluntly, as Trump sees it, there’s already enough diversity just among white people, meaning there’s no need in such a broadly inclusive system to so much as think of adding supplementary colors when seeking to define what it means to be American. It’s been hard enough bringing together all those varied people of European extraction. Inclusion and diversity have their merits, but like any good thing, one must never overdo it.

It isn’t just about race

The reasoning doesn’t stop there. Trump has consistently reminded us that there are totally pragmatic reasons to seek to exclude a lot of the darker-hued people. Terrorism and narcotics trafficking, for example. Trump is now using these criteria with increasing aggression as the means of preventing random South Americans in speedboats from getting anywhere near the US coastline. If they’re speeding they must be terrorists or narcotraffickers, or preferably both.

J. Michael Luttig, writing for The Atlantic, that “Trump has turned the federal government against the American people, transforming the nation’s institutions into instruments for his vengeful execution of the law against honorable citizens for perceived personal and political offenses. He has silenced dissent by persecuting and threatening to prosecute American citizens for speaking critically of him, and he has divided us, turning us against one another so that we cannot oppose him.”

Most observers would classify such a political attitude as neo-fascist if not simply fascist. But the complaints include more than just the pressure on US citizens. My friends cite other factors that could lead us to qualify Trump’s policies as resembling the classic fascism of Italy and Germany in the last century. For example, in January, Trump began talking about invading and conquering Panama and Greenland, as well as annexing Canada. It’s difficult not to see a resemblance with Adolf Hitler’s ambition to extend Germany’s Lebensraum. Journalist and geopolitical analysis Ben Norton on Geopolitical Economy Report the broader implications: “The Donald Trump administration seeks to forcibly impose the US empire’s hegemony in Latin America. While hypocritically using “war on drugs/terror” rhetoric, it is reviving the colonial Monroe Doctrine, which top officials now call the Donroe Doctrine.”

One of the diabolical traits of political personalities associated with fascism that people like to highlight is their appetite for killing for the sake of killing, including a delight in the numbers of people they are willing to sacrifice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has built up a solid case, successfully prosecuted at the International Criminal Court, for designating him as a sanguinary, genocidal sadist who, in a world that believed in justice, would not be allowed to walk the streets, let alone govern a nation. But does Trump live up to that image?

During a press conference last week, Trump why declaring war made no sense when one can simply “kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK. We’re gonna kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.” To some people that sounds even more diabolical than the genocidal programs of Hitler and Netanyahu. After all, those two villains carefully “reasoned” their campaign, which they conceived as a scientific plan destined to fulfill their own perverse vision of a world that reflected their understanding of their role in history as the master race, in one case, and the chosen people, in the other. Trump’s delight in killing isn’t ideological, religious or even nationalistic. It appears as something personal, symbolizing his power over life and death.

Devils or monsters?

I have to admit that the case for branding Trump as an incarnation of the devil seems superficially attractive. But for the moment I don’t find it totally convincing. A better case for demonic identity could be made for what some call the “” of Silicon Valley. They’re a select group that have assumed greater power over the world’s population than any US president. That makes sense since any president may disappear from the scene at four-year intervals, at least under the current constitution. The technofascists, all of whom exhibit different degrees of diabolical intent, have names like Peter Thiel, Alex Karp and Elon Musk. Their ambitions are quite literally cosmic as is ready to sanguinelty envision the end of humanity and Musk is convinced that humanity, lacking both his intelligence and especially wealth, isn’t ready for the coming, for which only he has the answer. Unlike Trump, these people actually spend massive amounts of money on recrafting the world and even the universe to make it conform to their vision.

It doesn’t matter that they do such things in the framework of a political democracy. The people have no say concerning their influence and decision-making and no access, other than as passive users, to the tools they control. Politics, even at Trump’s level, cannot compete with the technofascists with regard to the capacity for evil. 

Former New York Times and now independent journalist Patrick Lawrence just this week the moral failure of the Trump administration with regard to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. He compared their insensitivity and moral cowardice to the bold stance of Ireland’s newly-elected president, Catherine Connolly, who has not hesitated to Israel a “terrorist state.” “The president, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and the others on Trump’s foreign policy ‘team’ are by comparison monsters diametrically out of touch with the world, the zeitgeist, of another time, of another cause—a cause other than the human cause.”

At this point, terming such people “monsters” seems to me more appropriate than devils. Monsters appear threatening because of their sheer force and physical capacity to do harm. But is all harm evil? The monsters are what they are, and some may exist to do harm, but “evil” is about intentions, not just force. Think of Frankenstein’s monster or King Kong.

The reason politicians who endorse harmful policies are monsters and not devils is that, like Frankenstein’s monster, they execute the program that has been devised for them by people who have decided to play with evil, whether their specific intention is to wreak evil or not. Trump is a special case. Nothing he does is inconsistent with the institutions that he has under his full or partial control: the military, intelligence and the executive branch of the US government. He didn’t invent the logic of a system that has been built over decades, if not centuries, to exploit and rule the nation’s resources and, increasingly over time, the world’s resources.

Trump merely has a more frank and openly aggressive way of doing it and making it more visible. Doing the bidding of Israel, for example, has been the game that every president since Lyndon B. Johnson has embraced and played with increasingly high stakes. Provoking wars around the world and supporting the “allies” (puppets) who are sacrificing their populations in those wars is not a practice Trump invented.

For the moment, let’s prefer to call Trump a monster. The case for his demonic identity remains to be examined.

[The Devil’s Advocate pursues the tradition 51�Թ� began in 2017 with the launch of our “Devil’s Dictionary.” It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself — political and journalistic rhetoric — to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of the 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be�� seen from an outsider’s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Halloween Special: Is Trump a Devil Masquerading as a Monster? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The mystery of the Epstein files

The phrase Epstein files itself is contested. Do they exist as a coherent dossier? Or are they simply a mass of raw material — documents, recordings and testimonies — collected over years? Trump has publicly insisted, “No, there are no Epstein files,” yet former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi asserted in February, “They’re sitting on my desk.” This contradiction immediately underlines the deep uncertainty surrounding the subject.

Despite the ambiguity, the general assumption is that these files refer to an enormous cache of evidence seized by authorities. Reports claim the Federal Bureau of Investigation collected thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of videos and other documents from sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s properties after his arrest and death in custody. Whether this has been systematically analyzed and compiled or still exists as unprocessed evidence remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that public pressure continues to mount for their disclosure.

The conversation also highlights Epstein collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell’s central role. American lawyer Alan Dershowitz once remarked that she “knows everything.” But even if she does, can she be compelled to speak honestly and comprehensively? Peter and Kaitlyn say this uncertainty makes the entire affair even more combustible.

Trump’s promises, broken and reversed

A major focus of the discussion is Trump’s shifting stance. While campaigning for the presidency in 2024, Trump promised repeatedly to release the Epstein files and expose the truth. But once in power, he reversed course, casting doubt on the files’ very existence.

Kaitlyn interprets this as a familiar Trump tactic. “He just lies to his followers,” she states bluntly. She recalls his infamous boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing support, arguing that this cynical view of loyalty is now rebounding against him. Some of Trump’s base have grown disillusioned because of his inaction on Epstein. What once seemed like a weapon against Democrats has become a source of doubt.

Peter agrees that Trump lied, but nuances Kaitlyn’s position. While Trump assumed supporters would always fall in line, he is now facing unexpected defections. Figures like former strategist Steve Bannon, Turning Point USA nonprofit founder Charlie Kirk and former special government employee Elon Musk have distanced themselves. Peter broadens the perspective: “Everybody lies, but Trump is particularly egregious … He doesn’t try to cover his tracks.”

Another reason for Trump’s original push, Peter suggests, was his campaign against the so-called “deep state.” Epstein’s rumored intelligence ties made the case an ideal rhetorical weapon to dramatize the “swamp” Trump pledged to drain. But his personal ties to Epstein made that strategy self-defeating. His hope that those links would be ignored has proven false.

Epstein, intelligence and the deep state

The discussion turns toward Epstein’s puzzling rise and mysterious connections. How did a college dropout and former math teacher amass such influence and wealth? Alexander Acosta, who as US attorney oversaw Epstein’s controversial plea deal in 2008, allegedly told investigators that Epstein “belongs to intelligence.” This phrase, Peter notes, suggests higher powers ordered leniency.

Peter speculates that Epstein’s case represents a web of intelligence involvement designed to remain hidden. Reporter Clara Ward’s coverage, he recalls, cited testimony that Acosta explained his hands were tied; Epstein’s protection came from above his pay grade.

The conversation also considers Epstein’s ties through Ghislaine Maxwell to her father, Robert Maxwell, long rumored to have worked with Israel’s national intelligence agency, the Mossad. If Epstein was indeed an intelligence asset, it may have involved cooperation among the Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s MI6.

Peter stresses he isn’t asserting proof, but highlighting plausible storylines. For him, this intelligence angle is a vital part of the Epstein affair and potentially the most dangerous contradiction for Trump. He compares it to ongoing revelations about CIA involvement in past American traumas — the assassinations of US President John F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. — arguing that the Epstein affair fits into a broader history of deep state secrecy.

MAGA cracks begin to show

The Epstein files debate, Peter and Kaitlyn agree, has fractured Trump’s MAGA coalition. Some supporters demand disclosure while others reflexively defend Trump’s retreat.

Kaitlyn remarks that many are realizing Trump is the figure the political left always warned he was. Yet his sexual scandals are not decisive for his base, who long ago proved willing to excuse them. Instead, she sees psychological contortions — cognitive dissonance and narrative rewrites — allowing defenders to rationalize his U-turn. Still, she remains uncertain how far loyalty can stretch this time.

Peter argues a “major change in the landscape” is underway. If Trump loses enough support, Republicans will face an identity crisis. He mentions rumors of Vice President JD Vance and other rising figures preparing to step into the vacuum, perhaps even trying to humiliate Trump in the process.

Elon Musk, Rasputin or pretender?

The conversation then turns to Musk, who once reportedly donated over $100 million to Trump’s cause but now openly breaks with him. On his platform X, Musk demands a release of the Epstein files.

Peter is unsurprised by the fallout, given Trump’s and Musk’s egos. He believes Musk is positioning himself as a political manipulator, though he doubts he can succeed. Kaitlyn, however, views Musk as a dangerous opportunist. “He’s like the modern-day Rasputin,” she says, arguing that he is attempting to seize Trump’s disillusioned followers and build his own cult of personality.

Can Musk credibly enter politics? Peter doubts Americans see him as ideologically serious. Kaitlyn, however, thinks his celebrity power and alignment with Trump-like populism could propel him into politics, given how unconventional candidates have succeeded before. She recalls controversy over whether Musk performed a Nazi salute on television, treating it as a hint at extremist sympathies.

Still, Peter insists Musk cannot replace Trump. He likens Musk’s prospects to those of US President Ronald Reagan, once dismissed as a cartoonish actor, but quickly adds that American politics is now so unpredictable that almost anything is possible. Kaitlyn concedes Musk would probably need to pursue the Republican nomination rather than a third-party bid, and even then, it would be a long-term play.

They also address the constitutional obstacle: Musk’s South African birth bars him from the presidency unless the US Constitution is amended. Kaitlyn acknowledges that Americans have cherry-picked constitutional clauses to suit elites before, but she doubts Trump himself would champion reform, given his anti-immigration stance.

Democrats smell blood

Turning to the Democratic Party, Peter and Kaitlyn outline a strategy of opportunism. Democrats, Peter says, have always obsessed over portraying Trump as an “outsized villain,” from the Access Hollywood tape in 2016 — a 2005 recording of Trump telling television host Billy Bush about his history of sexual harassment — to his current Epstein entanglements. Now they sense an opening to use the scandal against him.

A crucial part of that strategy, Peter suggests, is their willingness to sacrifice US President Bill Clinton. During US President Joe Biden’s administration, exposing Clinton’s Epstein ties was too costly. But now, with Bill Clinton aged and former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sidelined, Democrats may accept collateral damage if it means fatally wounding Trump. Kaitlyn agrees, describing a spiderweb effect that could entangle numerous elites, not just Clinton. In her view, Democrats are willing to “shoot themselves in the foot” if that is the price of defeating Trump.

What if the files are released?

Finally, the speakers consider what the release of the files might mean. Kaitlyn foresees a massive scandal, possibly involving politicians, tech billionaires, media moguls and especially Hollywood. The impact, she believes, would ripple far beyond government, damaging entertainment and culture itself.

Peter, meanwhile, stresses the deeper revelation: The exposure of a transpartisan elite “big club” where ideology is irrelevant and power, pleasure and secrecy rule. If this truth emerges, he warns, Americans’ understanding of their country could change permanently.

Above all, Peter insists the intelligence dimension is decisive. If these agencies fail to maintain secrecy, revelations could stretch beyond sexual scandal to matters of war and covert regime change. He predicts fierce resistance, with implicated actors colluding to bury the truth. Yet he also notes pressure from figures like Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who demands transparency on Epstein. The deep state’s secrets may eventually come under unprecedented scrutiny.

What lies ahead

The Epstein files, whether myth or reality, have already shaken American politics. For Kaitlyn, they reveal Trump’s pattern of manipulation and betrayal. For Peter, they expose intelligence-world shadows and elite complicity. Both agree that the issue is splitting the MAGA movement, tempting Musk into politics and giving Democrats a new weapon.

But the greatest unknown remains: Will the files ever be released? If they are, will they confirm suspicions of individual depravity or something even more profound: a system of elite power that transcends parties and nations?

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: What Are the Epstein Files and Why Is Trump Trying To Stop the Release Now? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Legislative drama in Washington

US President Donald Trump secured a major legislative victory with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The bill cleared the House of Representatives before heading to the Senate, where it passed by the slimmest margin possible — 51 to 50 — after Vice President JD Vance cast the deciding vote on July 1. Atul quips that while the 24-hour Senate session showed “stamina,” he could not offer equal praise for senators’s intellect. The bill then returned to the House, passing 218 to 214 largely along party lines on July 3.

Trump signed it into law on July 5, aligning its enactment with the July 4 Independence Day holiday. Atul describes the timing as “all jolly good cause for celebration,” sarcastically adding that “Trump gets to be emperor.”

Despite celebratory rhetoric from the administration, economists projected that the act would inflate the US deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next decade.

Elon Musk responds: outrage and a new political vision

Former Special Government Employee Elon Musk, already estranged from Trump, publicly condemned the OBBBA. He expressed outrage over its fiscal implications and questioned the point of having a debt ceiling if lawmakers repeatedly raise it.

Musk proposed the creation of a new political party to disrupt the dominance of both Republicans and Democrats. He pledged to finance primary challenges against any Republican who voted for the OBBBA, signaling the deepening divide between himself and Trump.

Paramount’s settlement and the CBS shake-up

American mass media and entertainment conglomerate Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to Trump’s future presidential library as part of a legal settlement over a lawsuit involving CBS News. Atul dryly comments on the payout: “How wonderful.”

Simultaneously, CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Known for his sharp critiques of Trump, comedian Stephen Colbert had become, in Atul’s words, “inconvenient” to keep employed.

Trump had previously approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with American entertainment company Skydance Media, raising eyebrows. Atul questions whether the $16 million payment was “an act of goodwill for the great leader” or simply “protection money to capo dei capi [Italian: ‘boss of the bosses;’ mafia leader],” suggesting deeper transactional politics at play.

Wall Street booms amid budget woes

Despite deficit concerns and political turbulence, the US stock market soared. The S&P 500 hit a record high, appearing unfazed by trade tensions.

American technology company Nvidia became the world’s first $4 trillion company — its value has surpassed India’s $3.5 trillion GDP. American computer and apparel corporations Oracle and Nike, respectively, also saw major gains. Atul sums up the financial landscape by stating the market was “performing swimmingly well.”

Economic turbulence and policy shifts abroad

In Great Britain, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to support Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves on controversial welfare reforms. Reeves broke down crying in Parliament, and the political drama caused British bonds to plummet.

Meanwhile, French Prime Minister François Bayrou declared France “addicted to public spending” and announced a spending freeze. Additionally, he unveiled sweeping cuts, including benefit reductions, a new solidarity tax on the wealthy and even proposals to eliminate public holidays like Easter Monday and Victory in Europe Day. Atul predicts major public protests against this move.

In South America, Jeannette Jara won the Chilean left’s presidential primary, becoming the first communist candidate since the 1973 CIA-backed coup against former President Salvador Allende. Atul sardonically comments, “For all the efforts of the CIA in 1973, you’re still left with the challenge of communism.” Glenn humorously responds, “It was part of the plan.”

Other headlines from around the world

Atul concludes this segment of FO° Exclusive by quickly running through other noteworthy events. Gang violence in Haiti claimed over 3,000 lives in a worsening humanitarian crisis. Australia banned teenagers from accessing the video-sharing platform, YouTube, marking a sharp move in digital regulation. Just as Atul and Glenn prepared to broadcast this episode, Trump announced 25% tariffs and additional import taxes on Indian goods. The administration linked the move to India’s continued purchase of Russian oil.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: Elon Musk Wants to Take On Republicans and Democrats With America Party, Can He? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Indian Government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in , underlined the necessity of foreign social media enterprises adhering to national laws if they intended to operate within the country. It emphasized that requiring them to comply with such laws on combating destructive online content should not be equated with “unfortunate and condemnable” words such as “censorship”. The case has been filed in the Karnataka High Court, a provincial judicial authority in Southern India, and is awaiting a court ruling.��

Social platforms operate in murky waters

This development has again brought to light the contestations regarding what qualifies as censorship: whether it is appropriate at all, and who sets the criteria for determining online content as harmful and thus censorship-worthy? At the same time, including, of course, the general discourse surrounding national sovereignty and the fundamental right to free speech. 

While it’s clear the Indian government is seeking to regulate and streamline online content, it doesn’t automatically follow that every state-led move to manage public information is unethical or repressive. Nor should every tech company’s claim of standing up to a rudimentary idea of democratic freedom of speech be taken at face value. 

State-led regulations imposed on social media giants should not predispose them to rational sympathy simply because they seem to initiate transparent information-sharing and a more-informed public discourse or speak the “truth” of state power and hold it accountable.

These platforms’ real-world operations often enjoy unearned moral high ground, positioned as champions of transparency and accountability. But no matter how hard such corporations bend over backwards to present free-speech absolutism as their sole guiding principle, in reality, their own operations are steeped in political motivations and interests, geopolitical alliances, ideological leanings and overall lack of internal checks or self-reflexivity. 

Take Musk’s own jaunts and wrangles with Grok, an Artificial Intelligence chatbot he designed to, as he claims, “maximize truth and objectivity” on X. However, when Grok’s seemingly factual imperative pointed out the in his own statements and the right-leaning ideological rhetoric he sympathized with, he claimed it had been “parroting legacy media” and is “working on it”. Earlier in July, he then on X that “We have improved @Grok significantly.” The new Grok has since made anti-semitic statements and �ᾱ�ٱ����.��

The Indian government’s regulation isn’t just a reactive policy

The dialectics over content regulation hinges on two opposing claims. The first is whether the state is making a legally and ethically legitimate decision by blocking and controlling content that its democratic institutions constitutionally deem harmful. The second is that these (officially) politically neutral social media companies have the right to resist such oversight when their internal mechanisms to moderate and combat harmful online content already exist and are operational.

Scrutinizing both positions reveals that the reality is far murkier than these tech platforms belie. And in that murk, the Indian government’s regulations begin to look less like repression, and more like a necessary reckoning — one that goes beyond the rhetoric and recognizes the actual political and economic inclinations behind their operations.

The government seeks to establish the necessity of such a regulation because tech giants have operated for years with little to no real scrutiny. There has been almost no accountability for whether their internal systems actually succeed in curbing harmful content, or whether they even try to guard against their own ideological leanings’ ability to skew moderation decisions. 

These platforms, be it X or , have blocked users with viewpoints ideologically opposed to theirs or their management’s, throttled reach, flagged users as politically affiliated in the absence of official declaration from the users themselves and in some cases, erased profiles entirely — all while claiming neutrality.��

The 2018 Cambridge Analytica has already shown how IT companies work with social platforms — in this case, Meta (formerly Facebook) — to improperly harvest data from millions of users without consent, and then use it to target voters with political ads during elections. Meta faced global backlash and investigations for failing to prevent the misuse of its platform, and the exact concerns we face here: data privacy, electoral manipulation and platform accountability.

In the case of X, particularly, evidence demonstrates the brazen and unilateral abuse of power, as the of progressive, American Democrat politicians and representatives were imposed with a limited reach, whereas accounts of far-right American politicians were heavily circulated and amplified. Similar cases were observed in India, where Grok has, on repeated occasions, published opinionated content in favor of Congress, an Indian political party currently in the opposition, showing little regard for non-partisan objectivity.��

And this raises a pertinent question: if the European Union can regulate these social platforms and take actions to curb on platforms like Meta, why can’t India?��

What makes matters much worse, apart from the blatant ideological bias and political engineering, is the unabated mushrooming of user accounts that confidently indulge in hate towards people of colour, having implicit backing from the enterprise’s top brass; those who employ racist staff “normalizing Indian hate” on X in the American federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), without any repercussion.��

It is necessary to note that of X’s revenue comes from advertising, and the remaining from the sale of data licenses. This implies that X is heavily reliant on conservative Western political representatives using X as a platform for election campaigning and propaganda. This results in the intensification of discriminatory content against people of colour and minority religions.

Quite understandably, this inclination flows into the moderation of content posted in India by Indian users, and content that exposits ideas contrarian to the strict doctrine of Western conservatism is, in a way, expunged or restricted. There is, however, a rational concern as to whether the Indian government’s regulation of social media intermediaries would result in content critical of the government being removed. 

The scales tilt heavily towards government regulation

At the heart of this concern is the simple question: who legitimately and ethically determines which content is censorship-worthy — and why? When the choice lies between a foreign tech giant and the democratically elected government of the country where it operates, the tilt should be obvious.

An institution vested with the responsibility of safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, and which, however flawed, can be held accountable through courts, elections and and provisions. A private company headquartered abroad, answerable to shareholders and driven by profit, will not be.��

That’s why India’s IT Act matters — it creates a channel to institute some level of accountability in the operations of tech companies within India’s territorial boundaries.

Even when governments or parties misuse their power — say, by silencing criticism — the solution isn’t to hand the reins to Silicon Valley. Its panacea is to strengthen domestic democratic institutions: constitutionally-bound independent entities like the , special non-partisan investigative and grievance redressal commissions such as the and legal provisions such as the Indian ������.��

There are constitutional pathways to address state overreach. But when tech platforms take incidents and spin them into ideological narratives, it doesn’t promote justice. It risks spurring social unrest and antagonism. 

The priority of the elected legislature should be to democratically empower domestic institutions to create a more informed Indian electorate — instead of allowing Western tech corporations to shape public discourse, misrepresent real-time developments and impose their often carefully fabricated, biased and geopolitically motivated viewpoints that masquerade as objective information onto the Indian public.

As foreign media companies deepen their footprint in India, it is high time for the Indian government to draw clear legal boundaries. The unchecked influence of these occasionally deleterious, unchecked platforms cannot be allowed to compromise the country’s legal preeminence or democratic institutions. 

Foreign tech firms operating here must be held to the same constitutional standards as any domestic entity. And most importantly, adherence to the constitutionally mandated laws of the land by foreign companies should continue to be rightfully emphasized — it forms a cornerstone of the nation’s right to self-determination and sovereignty.  

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Over the next few years, the same bill will add another to a Pentagon budget already soaring towards a record . In short, as of now, in the battle between welfare and warfare, the militarists are carrying the day.

Pentagon budget and the people it harms

The bill, passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, would allocate tens of billions of dollars to pursue US President Donald Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project, which Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has described as “a fantasy.” She exactly why the Golden Dome, which would supposedly protect the United States against nuclear attack, is a pipe dream:

“Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. This effort has been plagued by and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat… Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons.”

The bill also includes billions more for shipbuilding, heavy new investments in artillery and ammunition and funding for next-generation combat aircraft, like the F-47. 

Oh, and after all of those weapons programs get their staggering cut of that future Pentagon budget, somewhere way down at the bottom of that list is a line item for improving the quality of life for active-duty military personnel. But the share aimed at the well-being of soldiers, sailors and airmen (and women) is less than of the $150 billion that Congress is now poised to add to that department’s already humongous budget. And that’s true despite the way Pentagon budget hawks invariably claim that the enormous sums they routinely plan on shoveling into it — and the overflowing coffers of the contractors it funds — are “for the troops.”

Much of the funding in the bill will flow into the districts of key members of Congress, to their considerable political benefit. For example, the Golden Dome project will send billions of dollars to based in Huntsville, Alabama, which calls itself “” because of the dense network of outfits there working on both offensive missiles and missile defense systems. And that, of course, is music to the ears of Alabama Representative Mike Rogers, the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

The shipbuilding funds will help prop up arms makers like HII Corporation (formerly Huntington Ingalls), which runs a in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the homestate of Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker. The funds will also find their way to shipyards in , and .

Those funds will benefit the co-chairs of the House Shipbuilding , Connecticut Representative Joe Courtney and Virginia Representative Rob Wittman. Connecticut hosts General Dynamics’ Electric Boat plant, which makes submarines that carry ballistic missiles, while Virginia is home to HII Corporation’s Newport News Shipbuilding facility, which makes both aircraft carriers and attack submarines.

The Golden Dome missile defense project, on which Trump has promised to spend over the next three years, will benefit contractors big and small. Those include companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (now RTX) that build current generation missile defense systems, as well as emerging military tech firms like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. Both of these are rumored to have a shot at playing a leading role in the development of the new anti-missile system.

And just in case you thought this country was only planning to invest in defense against a nuclear strike, a sharp in spending on new nuclear warheads under the auspices of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) has been proposed for fiscal year 2026. Thirty billion dollars, to be exact, which would represent a 58% hike from the prior year’s budget.

Meanwhile, within that agency, nonproliferation, cleanup and renewable energy programs are set to face significant , leaving 80% of NNSA’s proposed funding to be spent on — yes! — nuclear weapons alone. Those funds will flow to like Honeywell, Bechtel, Jacobs Engineering and Fluor that help run nuclear labs and nuclear production sites, as well as like the University of Tennessee, Texas A&M and the University of California at Berkeley, which help manage nuclear weapons labs or nuclear production sites.

Weakening the social safety net — and America

And while weapons contractors will gorge on a huge new infusion of cash, military personnel, past and present, are clearly going to be neglected. As a start, the Veterans Administration is on the block for , including possible layoffs of up to 80,000 employees — a move that would undoubtedly slow down the processing of benefits for those who have served in America’s past wars. Research on ailments that disproportionately impact veterans will also be cut, which should be considered an outrage.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of from this country’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to suffer from physical and psychological wounds, including traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Cutting research that might find more effective solutions to such problems should be considered a national disgrace. In the meantime, active-duty personnel who are getting a tiny fraction of the potential Pentagon add-on of $150 billion are similarly in need.

Worse yet, turn away from the Pentagon for a moment, and the cuts in the rest of that “big beautiful bill” will likely have an impact on a majority of Americans — Democrats, independents, and MAGA Republicans alike. Their full effects may not be felt for months until the spending reductions contained in it start hitting home. However, enacting policies that take food off people’s tables and deny them medical care will not only cause unnecessary suffering but cost lives. 

As President (and former general) Dwight D. Eisenhower, a very different kind of Republican, said more than 70 years ago, the “ultimate security of a nation lies not in how many weapons it can pile up, but in the health, education and resilience of its people.” The “big beautiful ” and the divisive politics surrounding it threaten those foundations of our national strength.

Clash of the contractors?

As budget cuts threaten to make the population weaker, distorted spending priorities are making arms producers stronger. The Big Five — Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman — produce most of the current big-ticket weapon systems, from submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles to tanks, combat aircraft and missile-defense systems. Meanwhile, emerging tech firms like Palantir, Anduril and SpaceX are cashing in on contracts for unpiloted vehicles, advanced communications systems, new-age goggles for the Army, anti-drone systems and so much more.

But even as weapons spending hits near-record or record levels, there may still be a fight between the Big Five and the emerging tech firms over who gets the biggest share of that budget. One front in the coming battle between the Big Five and the Silicon Valley militarists could be the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI). According to Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, one of the goals of ATI is to “ obsolete systems.”

Driscoll is a harsh critic of the way members of Congress put money in the budget — a process known as “pork barrel politics” — for items the military services haven’t even asked for (and they ask for plenty), simply because those systems might bring more jobs and revenue to their states or districts. He has, in fact, committed himself to an approach that’s incompatible with the current, parochial process of putting together the Pentagon budget. “Program lobbyists and bureaucrats have overtaken the Army’s ability to prioritize Soldiers and warfighting,” he .

Driscoll is talking a tough game when it comes to taking on the existing big contractors. He’s evidently ready to push for “reform,” even if it means that some of them go out of business. In fact, he seems to it: “I will it as success if in the next two years, one of the primes is no longer in business, and the rest of them have all gotten stronger.” (“Primes” are the big contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics that take the lead on major programs and get the bulk of the funding, a significant portion of which they dole out to subcontractors all over the country and the world.)

Ending pork-barrel politics in favor of an approach in which the Pentagon only buys systems that align with the country’s actual defense strategy, as Driscoll is suggesting, might seem like a significant step forward. But be careful what you wish for. Any funds freed up by stopping congressional representatives from treating the Pentagon budget as a piggy bank to buy loyalty from their constituents will almost certainly go to emerging tech firms ready to build next-generation systems like swarms of drones, weapons that can take out a hypersonic missile, or pilotless land vehicles, aircraft and ships. Driscoll is a major tech , as is his friend and Yale law school JD Vance, who was first by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, who then backed his successful run for the Senate from Ohio.

Since the tech firms don’t have the equivalent of the Big Five’s extensive production networks in key congressional districts, they need to find other ways to persuade Congress to fund their weapons programs. Fortunately, the Silicon Valley militarists have a number of former employees or financial backers in the Trump administration who can plead their case.

In addition, military-tech-focused venture capital firms have at least 50 former Pentagon and military officials, all of whom can help them exert influence over both the Trump administration and Congress. The biggest “catch” was Palantir’s of former Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who had run the hawkish Congressional special committee on Communist China.

Some journalists and policy analysts have wondered whether the feud between Trump and Musk will hurt the military tech sector. Well, stop fretting. Even if Trump were to follow through on his threat to the government funding of Musk’s firms, the tasks they’re carrying out — from launching to developing more secure for deployed military personnel — would still proceed, just under the auspices of different companies. There would be some friction involved, simply because it’s hard to shift suppliers on a dime without slowing down production. And the transition, should it occur, would also add cost to already exceedingly expensive programs.

But Trump’s threat to cancel SpaceX’s contracts may just be more grist for his verbal combat with Musk rather than anything his administration plans to follow through on. Even if Musk and his president , the DOGE cuts to international diplomacy and domestic social services that Musk spearheaded will still do serious damage for years to come.

Money can’t buy security

A shift toward emerging military tech firms and away from the Big Five will be about more than money and technology.�� Key figures among the growing cohort of Silicon Valley militarists like Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, see building weapons as more than just a necessary pillar of national defense. They see it as a measure of .

Karp’s new , The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, mixes the Cold War ideology of the 1950s with the emerging technology of the 21st century. He decries the lack of unifying concepts like “the West” and sees too many Americans as slackers with no sense of national pride or patriotism. His solution, a supposedly unifying national mission, is — wait for it! — a modern Manhattan Project for the development of the military applications of artificial intelligence.

To say that this is an impoverished version of what this country’s mission should be is putting it mildly. Many other possibilities come to mind, from addressing climate change to preventing pandemics to upgrading our educational system to building a society where everyone’s basic needs are met, leaving room for creative pursuits of all kinds.

The techno-optimists are also obsessed with preparing for a with China, which Luckey believes will happen by 2027. And many in his circle, including Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, are convinced that any potential risks from the development of AI in comparison to the need to “beat China” — not just in getting to sophisticated military applications first, but in winning a future war with Beijing, if it comes to that.

Talk of diplomacy to head off a war over Taiwan or cooperation on global issues like climate change, outbreaks of disease and building a more inclusive, less unequal global economy rarely come up in discussions among the hardcore militarist faction in Silicon Valley. Instead, that group is spending inordinate amounts of time and money seeking to influence the future of US foreign and military policy. This is a dangerous development indeed.

Whether the emerging tech firms can build cheaper weapons with superior capabilities will be irrelevant if such developments are tied to an aggressive strategy that makes a devastating conflict with China more likely. While the fight between the Big Five and the tech leaders may prove interesting to observe, it is also ominous in terms of this country’s future economic and foreign policies, not to speak of the shape and size of our national budget.

The rest of us, who aren’t billionaires and don’t draw in annual compensation packages like the CEOs of the big weapons firms (which are funded by our tax dollars), should play a leading role in rethinking and revising this country’s global role and our policies at home. If we don’t rise to that challenge, this country could end up swapping one form of militarism, led by the Big Five, for another, spearheaded by hawkish, self-important tech leaders who care more about making money and spawning devastating new technologies than they do democracy or the quality of life of the average American.

[ first published this piece.]

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America stands at a perilous crossroads, caught between the calcification of its democratic institutions and the ascendance of a plutocratic elite intent on remaking society in their image. This moment encapsulates the nation’s existential struggle: whether to renew its foundational commitment to democracy and accountability or to yield to the unchecked power of oligarchs cloaking their ambitions in the language of freedom and progress. Figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, Vivek Ramaswamy and the like are not merely “entrepreneurs” or “investors” — they are the architects of an opportunistic agenda that threatens to dismantle democracy while exacerbating inequality and societal division.

At the core of this crisis is the erosion of the democratic institutions that once served as a bulwark against authoritarianism and economic monopolization. For decades, the executive branch and its sprawling bureaucracy have become increasingly ineffective, weighed down by redundancy, opacity and political polarization. The result is a government that struggles to adapt to modern challenges, fueling public frustration and a growing sense of alienation. This institutional stagnation has created fertile ground for those who claim that the system is beyond repair — often the same actors who have most benefited from its failures.

The privatization of power

The need for reform is real. Bureaucracies must be restructured to serve the public, with a renewed focus on transparency and accountability. Yet those now leading the charge for “efficiency” are anything but reformers. Plutocrats like Musk and Ramaswamy exploit public discontent, offering false solutions that prioritize privatization and corporate capture over genuine progress. Musk and Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE — a non-governmental, undemocratic, unaccountable organization) is emblematic of this strategy. Under the guise of streamlining government, it seeks to shift public functions into private hands, funneling resources to corporations while eroding the public’s ability to hold them accountable.

This approach reflects a broader oligarchic playbook. Wealthy elites position themselves as champions of freedom and innovation, while lobbying to weaken the regulatory frameworks that safeguard democracy. Musk, whose businesses have on government subsidies and contracts, now rails against the very state that enabled his success. Thiel openly dismisses democracy as with capitalism’s purest forms, advocating instead for a society where decision-making is concentrated in the hands of the competent few — a thinly veiled justification for oligarchic rule.

These actors weaponize societal divisions to advance their agendas. Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform, Twitter (now X), illustrates this strategy, a platform for public dialogue into a megaphone for conspiracy theories and divisive rhetoric. By amplifying grievances and stoking distrust in institutions, they cultivate a base of disillusioned followers who view them as truth-tellers and saviors. Yet their populist rhetoric masks a darker reality: Their ultimate goal is to dismantle the structures of oversight that stand in the way of their consolidation of power.

The capture of public discourse is matched by a parallel assault on regulatory and judicial systems. The Supreme Court’s unleashed a flood of corporate money into politics, allowing billionaires to exert disproportionate influence over policy and governance. Figures like Thiel and Andreessen leverage this dynamic to shape legislation and public policy, ensuring that the rules bend to their advantage. Their investments in political campaigns, such as Musk’s contribution to US President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, are not acts of civic engagement but strategic moves to entrench their dominance.

The rhetoric of these oligarchs is steeped in the language of classical liberalism and free-market economics, but their actions betray a profound misunderstanding — or deliberate distortion — of these philosophies. Thinkers like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman championed free markets, but they also acknowledged the necessity of institutional guardrails to and . In the hands of today’s plutocrats, these ideas have been twisted into an anarcho-capitalist fantasy, where government exists solely to protect property rights and privilege, not to serve the collective good.

This feedback loop between institutional erosion and plutocratic capture is deeply pernicious. As democratic systems falter, they become less capable of addressing legitimate grievances, fueling further disillusionment and creating openings for oligarchic exploitation. Musk’s obsession with and Thiel’s investments in reveal their ultimate outlook: a society where escape and survival are privileges reserved for the elite, leaving the rest of humanity to grapple with the consequences of their unchecked extraction.

The warning is clear: These figures have no interest in preserving democracy, equality or collective progress. Their vision is one of opportunistic disruption, where the mechanisms of accountability are dismantled under the pretense of efficiency and innovation. Regulatory agencies, courts and public oversight, imperfect as they may be, are the only barriers preventing the concentration of power into a few hands. Their dismantling would leave society vulnerable to exploitation on an unprecedented scale.

Reform to save democracy

And yet, while resisting this encroaching oligarchy, we cannot ignore the urgent need for institutional reform. America’s bureaucracies must evolve to meet the demands of the 21st century. This requires not just efficiency but transparency, equity and a renewed commitment to serving the public. Reform must aim to modernize outdated processes, empower regulatory agencies to oversee complex industries and rebuild public trust in government. Crucially, it must prioritize the public good over corporate and oligarchic interests, ensuring that democracy serves all Americans, not just the privileged few.

The American experiment is at a tipping point. The promise of democracy — a government of, by, and for the people — is under siege by those who would replace it with a system where power is synonymous with wealth. The stakes are nothing less than the soul of the nation. If we fail to confront this threat, we risk surrendering our future to the ambitions of a few, abandoning the ideals of equality, freedom and shared prosperity that define the American dream.

This is not merely a battle for governance; it is a battle for the essence of who we are as a society. The time for complacency is over. To safeguard democracy, we must demand reform that serves the people and reject the hollow promises of those who seek to exploit our divisions. America’s future depends on our ability to see through the rhetoric of freedom and efficiency and to recognize these oligarchs for what they are: opportunists intent on consolidating power at the expense of the nation. The choice is ours, and the time to act is now.

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Casey Given: Thanks. It’s so great to be here.

Atul Singh: Brilliant. So Casey, let’s talk about civil liberties and free speech. From your background, it seems you’ve always cared about these issues. What do you really mean by civil liberties and free speech?

Casey Given: Ooh, good question. Well, I think I would just go with the definition of at least my priors. I am what would be called a classical liberal or libertarian. So I’m really interested in free speech and civil liberties, really more in the sense of the individual liberty standpoint.

Atul Singh: Are you a John Stuart Mill sort of liberal?

Casey Given: Yes, exactly. So I would say that. But of course, as an American, the Bill of Rights, I think, is really the type of liberties that I seek to preserve and defend, especially through my organization as a vehicle.

Atul Singh: I see. And so, the Bill of Rights. So give us a little more meat, then. What do you see as the role of the state? Should the role of the state be minimal? Should the role of the state be limited to foreign policy and defense and perhaps running the Federal Reserve — or maybe not? Or should it extend to other areas, such as regulating the environment or providing welfare to those who have been left behind?

Casey Given: Yes, all good questions. We were just talking before the stream about my undergrad days at UC Berkeley, and I used to love getting into these size-of-the-state articles—

Atul Singh: Where I taught, by the way. You didn’t take my class. (Both laugh)

Casey Given: And we were both knocking it! I wish I had taken your class. But I used to get into arguments all the time with my fellow students about minarchy versus anarchy. And to some degree, as I get older, I’m less interested in that. I like to describe myself as a directional libertarian, in the sense that I think the size of the state should be directionally smaller. But that’s not—

Atul Singh: You’re not an absolutist anymore. Let’s say in the UK context, you’re not someone who’ll say, “Let’s get rid of the National Health Service.”

Casey Given: Exactly, yes, that’s a great example. Or in the American context, of course, things like Social Security, or — you specifically mentioned welfare. I think that overnight abolition is a ridiculous concept. But I think that there’s plenty of halfway measures to reform these programs that desperately need it.

DOGE and the case against tariffs

Atul Singh: Yeah. So I read your column in The Hill, and you had predicted that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would find it hard going in Washington. And the budget seems to have proved your point. And indeed, Elon Musk has talked about the big and beautiful bill and said it can either be big or beautiful — it can’t be both. Are you dissatisfied with the budget, which is going to increase trillions of dollars of government debt and boost the deficit?

Casey Given: Yes, absolutely I’m dissatisfied with it. I was a cautious optimist for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And now that he’s leaving, I still think it was a good faith effort. But the thing is, in many ways, he was getting all of the blame for the dysfunction, when I think there should be more blame exactly on Congress, which is an actual branch of government that has basically absolved itself of any responsibility and has given into the big government, wasteful spending, as seen in the budget. So I think it’s very disappointing. I think that conservatives in Congress aren’t actually being conservative. And that’s why I still firmly identify as a libertarian rather than a conservative or Republican, is that I think that we need to actually activate the branches and have smart governance.

Atul Singh: So let’s talk about what you would like to see. Would you like to see a cutting down of regulation for small business? Would you like to see a cutting down of, say, defense spending, Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security? Would you like to see an increase in taxes to balance the budget a little bit? What is it that you would like to see? And since you’ve said you’re a libertarian, where do you stand on tariffs?

Casey Given: Yes. Well, first, to return to DOGE, I think that a lot of the cuts that they made were directionally sensible. There’s just so much waste when it comes to the feeding off of the trough of pork-barrel spending when it comes to NGOs, where their mission is not exactly clear. Of course, that is a drop in the bucket, and I absolutely understand the points that critics have of DOGE — that the real wasteful spending, or at least statistically, the biggest areas of the federal budget are, of course, entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and defense spending on the discretionary side.

So to really tackle those, I would say that with defense spending, obviously, there needs to be a lot more auditing of the Department of Defense. I mean, it seems like regularly that they lose billions of dollars that they can’t account for, which is just completely unacceptable. And in terms of Medicare, with Social Security, I think that we need to raise the retirement age for the future. When it was created by FDR, 65 was well above the average lifespan. Now people are, fortunately, living so much longer. So I think it’s fair to raise the age of payout.

And Medicaid — I think that it’s really disappointing. I think that Elon, in a brief tweet, talked about a lot of fraud. I suspect that’s probably the biggest program where there’s a lot of wasteful spending, of people claiming to be disabled, etc., who actually aren’t. So I think there are ways to meaningfully save the budget. But again, as a directional libertarian, I think it’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think that there needs to be halfway measures and more rational reform slowly.

Atul Singh: I mean, you’re making the case for a responsible right, really. What you’re doing is saying: Let us have sensible policies. And so talking about sensible policies, let me take you back to tariffs. Most people who are libertarians — indeed, going back to the original classical liberals — they stood for free trade. The Economist magazine began on the principle of free trade. And where do you stand on that? Because we are living in a very different era now, with industrial policy under Joe Biden and, before that, tariffs as an instrument of trade policy under Donald Trump 1 and Donald Trump 2.0.

Casey Given: Yes, this is the area where I would be the most critical of Donald Trump. I think that his tariff policy has been an absolute disaster. I think that it’s really, if anything, so far punishing our closest friends in terms of Canada, the EU, etc. And even if you believe in tariffs — this is something I often tell to my friends who are big Trump supporters — I think the way that he’s going about it is completely irrational, where he changes his mind every 24 hours. It’s like, if you’re going to set a policy, just by pure regime stability, is that markets will adjust if you just put the tax in place.

So I think that tariffs are destructive. I think the whole framing of a tariff deficit is completely twisted and not really what a state should try to pursue. Because, of course, trade is a mutual benefit. It goes back to Economics 101, which I won’t dare even have to bring up in front of an political economy professor, but I think it’s completely silly and destructive what the admin is doing. So I hope they’ll knock it off.

Free speech in Casey’s Berkeley days

Atul Singh: I see. So you have been libertarian, and you went to Berkeley, where you and I both spent time — you as a student, I as faculty — and I found Berkeley very ideological, very to the left. What was it like being a young libertarian in Berkeley — and, of course, even in George Washington University?

Casey Given: Yes, well, I should say also — I should probably reveal my age — that I’m 35. So I graduated in 2012, which I feel that in the scope of my life is not that far away — or doesn’t feel like it — but it really is, I think, a separate era of history, at least in the US. Of course, this was under the Obama years, but also in terms of campus attitudes towards free speech.

Greg Lukianoff and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education really say that 2014 is when there was a new regime when it came to free speech and the growth of the administrative state in universities, etc., that kicked off the current wokeness age backed by law.

So I would say that I actually really enjoyed my time at UC Berkeley. It was certainly predominantly left when it comes to the average student body. But I would say even at that time, most of the people I encountered were very cordial. We had fun. I ran the college libertarian group, so we had debates with the College Republicans, with the Democrats, etc. It’s a top-tier school, maybe not in the humanities, but at least in STEM I would say—

Atul Singh: Oh, it’s one of the best in the world. I mean, for computer science, for physics, for so many disciplines, it is a school with Nobel Prize winners, cutting-edge research and really clever young people.

Casey Given: Yeah, and so I would say that most students were heads down, wanted to do the homework, and there was just a small faction of ideological, very lefty students that created trouble — which is often the case on college campuses.

Atul Singh: Got it. Now, the reason I asked you was whether your experience led you to run Young Voices, the organization you are supporting. You’re supporting young people of the right who are commenting on politics, policy, civil liberties, and I was wondering if your student experiences were formative or not in working on this?

Casey Given: Oh, absolutely. That is really where I solidified in my mind that I have a knack for leadership. I started the libertarian student group my sophomore year. And I also, in my senior year, became known on campus enough that I became the political columnist for the student newspaper, The Daily Californian, which really, I think, put me on my current trajectory, ultimately leading to my position as CEO of Young Voices. So in many ways, I’m living the fantasy that I had in my undergrad days of pursuing political commentary and running an organization like that full time.

Threading the needle between extremes

Atul Singh: So let me ask you a question: How do you thread the needle between the liberal establishment and the populist right? Because you clearly don’t fall into either camp. You very much, as you’ve said, want to be the responsible right. You are libertarian, but you’re directionally so. You’re not saying, “Let’s slash and burn, let’s throw the baby out with the bathwater.” So you’re in a tricky situation, Casey.

Casey Given: Yes, that is a very good question and one that I’ve thought about a lot. I feel like, in many ways, libertarians, at least of my ilk — I like the “responsible right” moniker, or “classical liberals” is probably what many of my peers call ourselves — really do try to walk a tightrope of not trying to throw out the liberal establishment, as you mentioned, but also not trying to be too radical, especially when it comes to populism or illiberalism or the national conservative economics, as they like to call themselves.

Atul Singh: The Steve Bannon approach that you need tariffs, you need economic nationalism, you need to bring jobs back for the working class, and a combination of immigration controls and tariffs will resuscitate the American working class.

Casey Given: Yes. So here’s how I thread the needle. I want to give both sides their due. I think that the Steve Bannon populist right has hit on something that I think is correct, in the sense that there has been widespread failure of institutions going back for decades now — failure to respond to security challenges, I mean even going back to 9/11, failed wars, the Covid pandemic, the 2008 financial crisis. We are living in an era — even down to everyday living, of crumbling infrastructure — where government institutions are failing, and people are feeling like they’re getting the short end of the stick. And I think that anger is justified in many ways.

However, I think that the way that it has manifested — especially with MAGA, of “we need to tear everything down” or “we need to punish our enemies” — that is ultimately a philosophy of destruction rather than a philosophy of building. And I think it’s very dangerous, again, to throw the baby out with the bathwater of trying to just completely destroy things or really express your anger rather than trying to actually reform.

So, I do respect people on the populist right who are trying to do a little more of the building. And I respect people on the left, too. Like, I’m very encouraged by trends on the left like the “abundance agenda,” who are really looking for more proactive good institution-building that involves markets. And I hope to see more of that on both sides — that solution-oriented, not just culture wars, destructive anger expressed in that way.

Young Voices’s funding, training and mission

Atul Singh: Alright, fair enough. Let me ask you a more pointed question: Who funds Young Voices, and how do you ensure editorial independence? We are a nonprofit, too, and we’ve had to fight really hard — and ours is a crowdsourced approach. So that’s why I ask this question, having gone through this myself.

Casey Given: Absolutely, that’s a question I get often. Young Voices — we are completely privately funded, 100%, from individuals, foundations and corporations. These are a mix of people who give anywhere from $1 to $100,000 or so. We have over 50 donors who give us above $5,000, I believe. So it’s a good mixture of people, and I think just having a diverse portfolio of supporters is a great way to keep ourselves independent and not be anyone’s toady, if you will.

But beyond the who question, we also have lots of practices in place. We have a code of ethics that’s on our website that specifically outlines our approach to editorial independence in the fact that no donor can ever influence or edit our drafts. And more so than that, actually, we’ve restricted the editorial independence of our writers as well. We allow our writers to more or less write whatever they like, so long as it is broadly within classical liberal principles. So we really take independence and ethics quite seriously.

Atul Singh: I see. Now, tell me: What exactly do you do in Young Voices, and how do you do it? We have an idea, but I’m very curious. Obviously, you have a number of people from the libertarian school or the classical liberal philosophy whom you’re schooling. How do you find them? What exactly do you do with them? And what is the vision?

Casey Given: Yes. Well, first of all, we’re a program that’s in high demand in the sense that what we do is offer editorial services, media training and placement services at absolutely no cost. That means we edit and pitch op-eds, we schedule radio and TV hits, we get people onto broadcast media, arrange in-person speaking events, etc., at no cost to the participant.

So just through the appeal of that offer, we get over 200 applications every year for our programs, of which we accept about half, or just under half. In terms of where we find our folks, we are trying to get better about actively recruiting because I think we’re more interested at this point in the quality of participants rather than the quantity of applicants.

And we find them from undergraduate groups that are classical liberal, libertarian, conservative groups — sourcing them — as well as probably the biggest area we’ve had success with, which is think tanks, both in DC, where we’re headquartered, but also across the country and in Europe, through networks like the Atlas Network or State Policy Network. We really try to find people who are getting their first roles, looking to build a career in the world of ideas and grow with us in that way.

Classical liberalism outlook: Europe and the US

Atul Singh: So let’s talk about Europe. Since you’ve mentioned Europe, you’re just back from Europe, we have a strong presence in Europe. In fact, part of our editing team is in Europe. Right from the outset, which countries are you focused on, and where are you finding classical liberals of great promise in Europe?

Casey Given: Yeah, so we are in about 20 countries across the continent. Of course, when I say that, I mean we’re working with individual writers in the country. So it’s not super institutional in that sense, but rather individual relationships. We have one employee based in the UK who does all of our editing and pitching across the continent.

But really from there, we’re not trying to put dots on a map, but rather work with people in the think tank and journalism world that we think are aligned with our values and are very excited to develop their careers in media.

Atul Singh: So no relationships with political parties yet in Europe? Not a single political party?

Casey Given: No. As a 501(c)(3), even in the United States, we don’t have any formal relationships with the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or anything. We work purely with individuals.

Atul Singh: Purely with individuals. I see. The reason I asked is because in Europe, classical liberalism often means something different from what Americans mean. And often, the people you’d call liberals — liberals in Germany, for instance — are extremely free market. And liberals in the US are quite interventionist. Hence the question. And also, the change in the zeitgeist in Europe now is leading to a curious combination of populism, both on the left and the right, and classical liberalism is finding it hard to stay afloat.

Casey Given: Yes, it absolutely is. And I think that’s something that I hope to try to change. (Chuckles)

Atul Singh: I see.

Casey Given: And to answer a question that you didn’t ask, but I do think about this a lot: I do think it comes to that metaphor you used of threading the needle. You really have both sides: one, the left, that has the establishment, the neoliberal order; versus the right, which is increasingly more populist and aiming to destroy that order.

And so I think the middle ground is where classical liberals can really lean into and say that institutions are important. Elites are important — but they need to be held accountable. That’s really where I see at least my version of classical liberalism can do something. But I know that’s a message that is not really satisfying to one side completely.

Atul Singh: So let me ask you — since you have an employee in the UK, and I’m sure you go to the UK — and I, of course, lived and studied in the UK for a while. In fact, I’ve written a book chapter on Brexit, amongst other things, and I follow Britain very closely. Where do you see classical liberalism in the political landscape of Britain today?

Casey Given: Yes. I would say— 

Atul Singh: This is the country that gave birth to the idea. It’s the land of John Stuart Mill, who, by the way, worked for the East India Company. And although he was very liberal, he did not advocate freedom for Indians, because he felt they were not in the majority of their faculties. (Laughs)

Casey Given: Wow, yeah. (Laughs)

Atul Singh: No turkey ever votes for Christmas. I suppose he didn’t want to lose his paymaster. (Laughs)

Casey Given: Exactly. He actually did the same for Catholics, too. I’m a Roman Catholic, so I would not, in his world, either have been granted— 

Atul Singh: So both of us wouldn’t have had the vote. Women could have the vote, though, if they were Anglican and Protestant. (Both laugh) So he was progressive in many ways—

Casey Given: Exactly.

Atul Singh: But not too progressive. (Laughs)

Casey Given: Yeah. To answer your question, I do go to the UK at least once a year. It seems like at least politically, in the parties, it’s very difficult. I mean, I would say that, of course, historically the Conservatives — the Tories — have been the party that embraced more classical liberal ideas. With the current wipeout they had recently, it seems like their stock is really on the decline.

Atul Singh: Yeah. Rishi Sunak — he did the same degree as me. He did Philosophy, Politics and Economics as well. And he was, I think, two or three years my senior. And shall we say, he was very efficient, very clever, very hardworking, very good at time management. But he has the charisma of a dead mouse (laughs) and the convictions of a middle manager in Goldman Sachs. (Laughs)

Casey Given: Yeah, absolutely.

Atul Singh: That does not fly in electoral politics.

Casey Given: And I actually was in London in February for the ARC Conference, the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship. So I heard there was a lunch with — I always mispronounce her name. Is it Kemi, Kemli?

Atul Singh: Kemi Badenoch.

Casey Given: Kemi, yes. So I heard her give a speech. And it certainly seems like there’s more energy — she seems to at least be an improvement on Rishi. But it seems like all the Brits in the room afterwards were really not very happy with her.

Atul Singh: Well, she is very weak right now and is unlikely to stay in the job for long. So you don’t see very many people in that space. What about the US? What’s your great shining light for the US?

Casey Given: Yes, for the US, I would say that there’s really not too many classical liberal, libertarian voices in government either. I think, of course, the closest we have is like Rand Paul or Thomas Massie or whatnot. So I think it’s a little bleak right now politically. But I think the great thing about the US — the hope — is that we have so many nonprofits like Young Voices, but so many other think tanks like the Cato Institute, Reason magazine, Mercatus Center, the Atlas Network, etc. There are hundreds and hundreds of them that, I think, we have strong civil society NGOs in the US that, hopefully, if we’re doing our job well, the stock of classical liberalism will be on the rise.

Just to return to the UK really quickly, I think that’s the problem, that there’s not as strong of a nonprofit/NGO sphere for classical liberals there. Although I do think the one hope I would see is exactly that conference I just mentioned: ARC, the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship, which was explicitly classical liberal and had over 4,000 attendees. It was at the Expo Center in East London. So I think that there is hope. That would be, hopefully, the long-term hope in the UK — building more of that civil society, nonprofit sphere that will hopefully eventually manifest itself in politics.

And I would say in the US, hopefully — I think the libertarian, classical liberal movement is perhaps a few decades ahead in terms of at least the strength and the quantity. But I absolutely understand the frustration — especially donors might have — that we need to start racking up wins, especially when it comes to the political sphere.

Atul Singh: Excellent, Casey. Thank you very much for your time. We’ll have you back, and we will continue to publish Young Voices that you send our way. Good luck. You have your job cut out.

It is certainly living up to the Chinese proverb — or Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times.” So you have your work cut out in interesting times.

Casey Given: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this chat.

Atul Singh: Thank you.

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Lo and behold, that future is all too distinctly here. What happened in the first quarter of this century is already being weaponized in a startling fashion in the second era of US President Donald Trump. In fact, the deluge of eye-opening, antidemocratic policies that we’ve witnessed in just the first 50 days of his presidency should be considered nothing short of a perverse escalation of the recent past. Think of it, in fact, as — if you don’t mind my inventing a word for this strange moment of ours — the “perversification” of War on Terror-era law and policy, which might once have been hard to imagine in this country.

While there are already all too many examples of that very sort of perversification, let me just focus on several that could prove crucial when it comes to the future of our imperiled democracy.

Rising racism

Among the numerous anti-democratic trends of this century, state-sponsored racism has been a constant concern. Of the many low points in the response to September 11, the unleashing of government policies of racial and ethnic discrimination stands out. Fearing a follow-up attack, law enforcement targeted Muslim Americans, surveilling mosques and casting a startlingly wide net of suspicion with a sweeping disregard for civil liberties. That approach was only strengthened by the militarization of police forces nationwide in the name of targeting Arabs and Muslims. In 2002, the government even introduced the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System , a “Special Registration” requirement mandating that all males from a list of 24 Arab and Muslim countries, as well as North Korea, register and be fingerprinted. In the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, the program amounted to “a discriminatory policy that ran counter to the fundamental American values of fairness and equal protection.”

A dangerous template for discrimination based on race, religion or national origin was thereby set in place. In his first term in office, Trump promptly doubled down on that Islamophobic trend, even though his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had revoked the registration requirement. By Executive Order , Trump authorized a ban on the entry into the United States of citizens from seven Muslim countries, an order that would be reined in somewhat by the courts and finally by President Joe Biden.

In Trump’s first term, discrimination was not limited to those from Arab and Muslim countries. As the Costs of War has pointed out, the Islamophobia of the War on Terror years had set a racial-profiling precedent and example for the more broadly racist policies of the first Trump administration. “The exponential surveillance since 9/11 has also intensified the criminalization of marginalized and racialized groups… and has increasingly targeted protest movements such as Black Lives Matter.” Yes, Trump did indeed go after Black Lives Matter protesters with a vengeance during his first term, even unleashing armed without insignia to tear gas, beat and detain such protesters in Portland, Oregon.

While Obama would end the Special Registration program and Biden would revoke the Muslim ban, no preventive measures were undertaken to guard against future racist policies and, all too unfortunately, we see the results of that today.

Trump 2.0 has already escalated discriminatory policies, focusing on protecting white males at the expense of people of color and women. In fact, his very first executive orders included several measures cracking down on and closing off legal avenues to citizenship, as well as a brazen decree aimed at eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) throughout the country. Executive Order (“Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”) was issued on January 21, 2025, the very day he took office. It ordered organizations and entities — from government offices and the US military to schools, businesses and more — to end their DEI policies “within 120 days” or risk losing government funding.

Recently, making good on its threats, the Trump administration $400 million of federal funding in the form of grants and contracts to Columbia University as a sign of disapproval of that university’s supposed tolerance of pro-Palestinian protests. This was, as National Public Radio reported, “described as the school’s failure to police antisemitism on campus.” Nine other universities are believed to be under similar scrutiny.

In other words, the discrimination enshrined by federal authorities in law and policy after September 11 opened the way for a far more widespread governmental embrace of racial and ethnic discrimination now underway.

Disappearing the record

Secrecy was likewise baked into the government’s response to the War on Terror, often to keep what would have been obvious abuses of the law well hidden. Whether it was the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — the phrase employed by the administration of President George W. Bush for acts of straightforward — or mass surveillance, the for the targeted killing of an American citizen or the implementation of other policies that deviated from accepted law and practice, all of that and more was initially kept well hidden from the American public.

Now, many have described the brazen upheavals decreed by the Trump administration as being the very of secrecy — as, in fact, “saying the quiet part out loud.” In reality, however, in these first days of his second term in office, Trump and crew have taken secrecy to a new level, replacing it with a broad policy of erasure and invisibility. In fact, despite the administration’s pledge of “” in areas like spending, a hostile onslaught against the written record has prevailed.

This determination to bury the record was apparent during the first Trump administration. He repeatedly asserted his right, for instance, not to document his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2017, he reportedly that were taken at a meeting with Putin. In 2019, at the G-20 in Buenos Aires, he with neither a translator nor a note-taker present. The Washington Post that “U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years.” In other words, on a matter of top national security concern — US–Russian relations — a “ of seclusion” was created, effectively leaving it to the two presidents to make decisions in secret. Meanwhile, in his first term in office, Trump allegedly certain records relevant to the classified documents case against him down the toilet.

In his onslaught against record-keeping and the public’s right to know, the National Archives has become a prime target. Trump’s battle with the Archives had its origins in his legal struggle over the classified documents he was alleged to have kept in his possession in violation of the law after his first administration. Supposedly, he even security camera footage taken at Mar-a-Lago that showed boxes of those documents being moved. Now, the president has US Archivist Colleen Shogan, replacing a professional academic with , despite his duties as secretary of state.

His outright refusal to keep a record of his administration’s activities is also reflected in his that the records of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fall under the Presidential Records . This applies to the records of the president and vice president and comes with the guarantee that they can be withheld from the public for up to 12 years after he leaves office. The Act also allows for the disposal of records, pending the approval of the national archivist.

In a further example of denying information as a form of politics, Trump’s Office of Professional Management ordered the of gender-related content from its websites, as well as the erasure of gender-identifying pronouns from email signatures and an end to all gender-related programs and grants. This led to the removal of pages from the Census.gov website, as well as from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and military websites, and the of the acronym LGBTQ+ with LGB. Under court order, some of these webpages have been put back up, even if with this defiant :

“Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”

In other words, the Trump administration’s claims of legitimacy for its purge of information remain strong. The legacy of state-sanctioned secrecy and a parallel burying of the record, inextricably tied to the post-September 11 era, has already found a secure footing in the second Trump presidency.

Undermining the courts and the law

Time and again in the War on Terror, the Department of Justice and the courts deferred to the federal government in the name of national security. As a 2021 Brennan Center noted, national security deference was apparent in decisions not to hear cases due to “state secrets” claims, as well as in decisions that prioritized over civil liberties guarantees and human rights considerations what government lawyers argued were the constitutionally granted powers of the president in national security matters.

Under Trump the second time around, it’s already clear that there’s going to be a full-scale assault on the legitimacy of the legal system. Witness the administration’s on judges whose decisions have gotten in the way of his agenda. When a judge ordered the restoration of public health data that had been removed from government websites, he was summarily castigated by billionaire Elon Musk as “evil” and someone who “must be fired.” Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has already moved to squelch independent decision-making by immigration court judges, them with nothing short of dismissal should they rule against the president’s prerogatives.

Then there are the attacks on law firms that have opposed Trump. Recently, were removed for lawyers at the law firms of Perkins Coie, which represented presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the 2016 election; and Covington Burleigh, which represented Jack Smith, who investigated Trump in the Biden years. Lawyers from those firms were also banned from federal buildings. And don’t forget the all-out attempt to go after officials who and January 6 cases.

The idea of an independent Justice Department has been severely damaged, with the promise of so much more to come.

Evading accountability

More often than not, the significant transformations of law and policy that grew out of the response to September 11 were relegated to the pages of history with little or no accountability. The Senate, under Senator Dianne Feinstein’s leadership, did produce a on the CIA’s use of torture. It detailed despicable acts of cruelty and ultimately concluded that such techniques, decreed to be legal by the Department of Justice, were “not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” And immediately upon taking office in 2009, Obama issued an officially ending the use of torture. But he was decidedly against holding any officials accountable for what had occurred, preferring, as he so memorably , to “look forward instead of looking backward.” In addition, Obama refused to call torture a “crime,” labeling it a mistake instead.

Today, in more mundane matters, the distaste for accountability has been institutionalized throughout the government. In his first term in office, Trump dismissed or five inspectors general, officials assigned to departments throughout the executive branch of government to monitor waste, abuse and fraud. Almost immediately upon taking office this time around, he dismissed “” of them. For the moment, Musk’s DOGE, which, from its creation, never included an inspector-general position, is now by the Department of Treasury’s inspector general.

Trump’s aversion to accountability clearly reflects a desire to protect his own efforts to totally control executive policy. It should, however, also serve as a striking reminder of the aversion to accountability that followed the legalization and uses of torture in the post-September 11 years, the allegedly decision to go to war in Iraq, the mass surveillance of Americans in that era and so much more. All of this set in place a grim template for the second Trump era: the notion that no one is ultimately accountable for abusing the law when their actions have been ordered (or simply approved) by the president.

Lessons (un)learned

Given the magnitude of the most recent antidemocratic actions by Trump and his team, blaming them on the slippery slope created during the War on Terror years may seem like a distinct overreach. Yet, given the dangerous excesses we’re now witnessing, it’s worth remembering just how vulnerable the loss of certain norms of legality and accountability in those years left this country — and how sadly little we seem to have learned from that era.

Racism, a lack of deference for the courts, the failure to hold individuals and organizations accountable for informally rewriting the nation’s laws, the pervasive embrace of secrecy and an unwillingness to erect strict guardrails to prevent the future manipulation of both laws and norms — all those realities of the War on Terror years created a distinctly undemocratic template, however different in scale, for this Trumpian moment of ours. An unwillingness to be accountable or to circumvent secrecy during the War on Terror led the country straight into today’s quagmire.

�մǻ岹��’s horrific moment should, in fact, be considered — to return to that word of mine one last time — a true perversification of past misdeeds, made all too possible by a failure in the post-September 11 years to take measures to prevent their recurrence.

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We Americans were, of course, going to shock and awe them. But from that moment on (if not from the moment, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when, rather than simply going after Osama bin Laden and crew, President George W. Bush launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan), you could say that it was we who were truly shocked and awed. After all, in their own disastrous fashion, our post-9/11 wars prepared the way for… yes!… Trump to take the White House the first time around (shock and awe!) — and then the final disastrous retreat of the American military from Afghanistan in 2021 on the Biden administration. (“Kamala Harris, Joe Biden — the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.”) And of course, four years later, his reelection on a functional platform of Trump First, Americans Last, was distinctly a double shock and awe!

And if you’ll excuse my being thoroughly repetitious, that was — or at least should have been seen as — the true definition of shock and awe. Trump! Twice! Even now, can you truly take it in? In fact, more or less every moment since his reelection victory in November 2024 has been — pardon me for the turn of phrase — a first-class S&A experience.

And — shock, if not awe — I haven’t even mentioned billionaire CEO and now Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk yet, have I? I mean, who can take him in either? The richest man on Planet Earth (S&A!) and, at least until Trump levied those massive tariffs on our three major trading partners (only to partially back off soon after), still making money hand over fist (wrist, pissed?) — (S&A!) just between the November 2024 election victory of Trump and the moment he actually took power again in January 2025 — at the expense of the rest of us. Meanwhile, he’s been more or less running this country (into the ground) hand in glove with Trump, who, by the way, is already talking about a possible ! (“They say I can’t run again; that’s the expression… Then somebody said, I don’t think you can. Oh.”) Now, wouldn’t that be an all-American S&A first (or do I mean last?)!

A mad, mad, mad world

Phew, I’m already out of breath and exclamation points! No surprise there, of course, given the awesomely shocking and shockingly Trumpified (or do I mean Muskratted?) world we’re now living in and dealing with.

After all, we once again have a president who himself is (or may be — since you never know with him) a and has at his side the DOGE-y man with a totally made-up position and an organization that nonetheless seems to have the power to dismantle whole parts of our government. (? Who needs them? , who cares?) He could evidently even purchase Mars (and to help colonize that planet). And imagine this: despite all the dough they and their billionaire pals possess — there are of them in his administration, worth something like $460 billion — Elon and he seem intent on shoving through Congress a plan that would make his a permanent feature of American life (whatever it may cost the rest of us).

Don’t try to tell me that we’re not in a mad, mad, mad world (MMMW, if you prefer). And hey, the man who only recently set a record by spending more than an hour and 40 minutes giving the State of the (Dis)Union speech or speech of any sort ever to a joint session of Congress has done a remarkable job of foisting his version of an (Foist? Last?) policy on the rest of us and this world — a world that distinctly isn’t ours, but his. Think of us as now living in a Trump First World, or TFW. Of course, his version of America First includes those recent tariffs (some but not all of which have been ) that, though officially levied against Canada, China and Mexico, were actually being foisted on the rest of us. Count on one thing: in the end, we will undoubtedly pay through the nose for them. So, no question about it, we have certainly entered a distinctly S&A era.

The double D of Donald

In truth, the 45th and 47th (and ?) president of the United States is a genuinely remarkable figure. Truly historic — or do I mean hysteric? After all, who can’t bring some image of him to mind at any moment? That face, that stare, that glare, that red tie, that wave in his hair. Need I say more?

In his own remarkable fashion, he should be given full credit and a double capital D — for both Donald and Decline. Or just think of him as PD (for President Decline). And it is remarkable that a single figure, one man who once oversaw the bankruptcy of he had launched, could become responsible for potentially the greatest bankruptcy of all — the ending of the American Century (as we once knew it) and even, after a fashion, humanity’s centuries on Planet Earth.

I mean, who can even remember anymore the time in a distant century — the year was 1991, to be exact, the very moment when Trump for the Trump Taj Mahal and the year before he did the same for the Trump Plaza Hotel — when the Soviet Union went into the garbage pail, China had not yet truly risen, and this country was left alone as not just a great power but The Great Power or TGP, the only one left on Planet Earth? That, in retrospect, was a truly shock-and-awe moment. And isn’t it no less shock-and-awing to think that a mere 34 years later, that same country is now led by a raging maniac on an America First platform that could, in effect, prove to be an America Last one? In a mere two terms in office, he will have taken what was once known as the planet’s “sole superpower” into a world of chaos and, ultimately, disaster of a sort we still can’t really grasp. He will have been the — and yes, that’s the appropriate word, not president — from hell. (In fact, the White House digital strategy team all too appropriately a portrait of Trump with a golden crown and the phrase “”!)

And if that (and he) isn’t the definition of shock and awe, what is?

Burn, baby, burn

Worse yet, tariff by tariff, tax by tax, act by act, Trump stands a reasonable chance of taking this planet down with him. Think of it as little short of remarkable that, in a world in which , (and every decade) is hotter than the previous one in a record fashion, in a world in which the weather and its devastating effects — from fires to storms to floods — is only growing more extreme and more horrific, Americans freely voted in (a second time around!) someone whose election phrase of choice was “” but might as well have been “heat, baby, heat” or “storm, baby, storm,” or simply “burn, baby, burn.”

And if his platform was America First (but truly Donald First), it distinctly should have been Planet Earth Last. (Of course — don’t be shocked — he also appointed as secretary of health a man who that the way to fight measles outbreaks is with anything but a vaccine.) Yes, above all else, Trump, who has called climate change both a “” and a “” continues to be focused on making sure that ever more oil, natural gas and coal comes out of the ground and is indeed burned, baby, burned forever and a day.

Of course, no one should be surprised, given the way the fossil-fuel companies . He’s already gone out of his way to anything the Biden administration did to fight climate change and the country’s departure from the Paris climate accords (again). As the New York Times , “In a few short weeks [of his second term in office], Trump has already severely damaged the government’s ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet.” What he’s doing is now considered a “” on climate programs of all sorts (though it might better be thought of as a ).

At one point, he was even eliminating 65% of the employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (S&A!). Lasting implications indeed.

In any other era, Trump would still undoubtedly have been considered a nightmare and a half, but not a potentially world-ending one (at least the world as humanity has known it all these endless centuries). The truth is that, once upon a time, if you had told anybody that this would be our S&A version of the future, you would have been laughed out of the room.

The second time around with no end in sight

And yet, there can be no question that, all these years later, despite bankruptcy after bankruptcy and failure after failure, he remains the man of the second, minute, hour, day, week, month and year. Give him credit. It’s a remarkable record not just when it comes to the success of failure but of putting Himself (and yes, under the circumstances, I do think that should be capitalized!), not America First.

Oh, and while all of this has been going on, the Democratic Party has but largely been . Imagine that! And as for Congress, remind me what it is (other than an audience for You Know Who).

Consider it a remarkable historical irony that America First has remained Trump’s slogan all these years when, in reality (or what passes for it in his universe), it should certainly have been Trump First and, when it came to anything that truly mattered to him, America (not to speak of the rest of the world) Last!

Worse yet, if all of us hadn’t actually lived through the Trumpian epoch (epic? toothpick?), I don’t think anyone could have made this up or, in a previous version of America, even imagined it happening. And if they could, there can be little question that they would simply have been laughed out of the room, if not institutionalized, not once but twice.

And yet here we are, the second time around with no end in sight, and a third time a history-breaking possibility, leaving us fully and thoroughly in another America on another planet. Phew! Talk about shock and awe!

I must admit, with at least three years and 10 months to go in the era of You Know Who, I find it hard to imagine our future, even if (as is certainly possible) the American and global economies go down the tubes and the Democrats are swept back into Congress — I’m sorry, where? — in 2026.

Nonetheless, for the (un)foreseeable future, we’re all living with Trump in a genuinely shock-and-awe world of almost unpredictable strangeness. In some fashion, all of us are now Afghans or Iraqis.

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A simple linguistic reason may explain why the US and its inhabitants have always struggled to define their nation’s unique essence. In France everything is French, in Spain Spanish, in England English, in China Chinese and so on. But few people are tempted to describe everything in the United States as United Statesian. Other nations with more than one word in their title have managed to produce an adjective to describe what is theirs. Everything in the Soviet Union (actually four words making up the acronym USSR) was Soviet.

Before declaring its independence in 1776, people referred to the society established on the east coast of North America as England’s American colonies or New England. With independence, people did begin using the adjective American to talk about themselves, their land and their culture. When, just a few years later, they drafted their constitution, they nevertheless understood that the land could not be called America. The name was already taken. It belonged to the entire continent.

The founders conceived of the new entity not necessarily as a new nation state but as a rather loose federation of largely independent states. This created a level of ambiguity about political authority that was resolved only at the end of the Civil War in 1865. In that conflict, the “Unionists” defeated the “Confederates” and imposed a new idea of national identity that, at least theoretically, gave priority to homogeneity over heterogeneity.

The nation, never totally sure of itself, has nevertheless continued to struggle to define its essence. Leaders and commentators have offered their vision of the nation’s essence, which they see as distinct from its government.

• “Let me tell you, it’s also great to leave Washington once in awhile and see what the real America is up to.” (President )
• “ …what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” ()
• “The Real America is a physical presence that we’ll actually achieve if we want it.” ()

The expression “the real America” clearly appeals to Republicans and conservatives more than to Democrats and liberals. Republican President Donald Trump has taken the mission one step further. Instead of invoking real America like Reagan, Bush or even Nixon’s “,” Trump embodies it. Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone notes Trump’s success in transmitting his vision in the AI-generated he produced to promote his campaign to invest in a Trumpian “Riviera” in Gaza. Here is how Johnstone the video:

“That one video, all by itself,” Johnstone explains, “tells you more about what the US empire really is than every movie its PR agents in Hollywood have ever produced. This is the real America. This is the real Israel. This is the real empire.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

The real America:

A hyperreal construct that floats in the brains of every US citizen and exists in a wide variety of forms, all of which are hyper and none of which is real.

Contextual note

Johnstone pulls no punches in her description of Trump’s AI-assisted creation. “This video is simultaneously the most American thing that has ever happened and the most Israeli thing that has ever happened. Fake. Gaudy. Sociopathic. Genocidal. Emblematic of all the ugliest values that both dystopian civilizations have come to embody.” What she’s signaling is not only that the “real America” is now hyperreal America, but that Trump’s version has entered a new dimension. It is positively surreal.

The notions of “hyperreal” and “surreal,” though related, are distinct. Hyperreality implies the creation of a simulacrum that becomes the dominant reference within a culture. That means people are more likely to take their bearings and frame their understanding of the world from the various forms of hyperreality they are exposed to than from the world itself. Advertising, television news, movies, political slogans, fads, influencers, ideology created a powerful layer of interpretation that obscures our direct perception of phenomena in the world. For example, governments are real. They are structures of discourse and organization that exist as an active feature of every society. There is a reality of politics. But as soon as we begin to focus on that reality, we find forms of hyperreality: parties and patterns of discourse that we “believe in” despite the fact that they contradict what we can see. If you look closely at the government in a “democracy” like the US, you will discover multiple levels of manipulation and corruption that prove, as some have shown, the existence of a different reality: that the US political system functions as an oligarchy.

When a politician like former President Joe Biden talks about rivalry with Russia or China, he doesn’t call it a combat between oligarchy and autocracy. He insists on calling it a battle between democracy and autocracy. How much traction might he get for imposing sanctions and supporting wars against autocracies if he identified the combat as one that in reality is designed to promote our sacred commitment to oligarchy?

Historical note

As noted above, during the 19th century, US citizens’ perception of their nation’s identity shifted, even in terms of their understanding of the two words that compose the country’s name. From an image grounded initially in the plural noun “States,” the essence focused on the notion of being “United,” as if “e pluribus unum” (“out of many one”) described not a fixed relationship but a dynamic process unfolding over a century.

In the process, a new inclusive image of everyone’s idea of ”real America” emerged. In the aftermath of the Civil War, patriotism took on a new definition at the same time as industrial capitalism began to dominate a formerly agricultural economy. The trauma of a fragmented nation during the Civil War led to the drafting of the now hallowed “Pledge of Allegiance,” an incantation expressing loyalty to the flag designed to condition successive generations of schoolchildren to think of themselves as members of the “exceptional nation,” the same that politicians would one day ritualistically invoke as “the greatest nation in the history of the world.”

With the second coming of Donald Trump, the question of what the “real America” may mean has moved on to acquire a dimension that can only be described as surreal. This is what Johnstone sees represented in Trump’s Gaza Riviera video.

Trump’s first term consolidated the hyperreality associated with the “greatest nation in history” meme. In his second term, the hyperreal has become surreal. Just like the projected image of Trump’s Gaza Rivera, his of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America signaled that we have now entered a new age, in which the very idea of “real America” has taken on a surreal dimension. This at a time when Trump has transformed the formerly modest hyperreal Elon Musk into a surreal cartoon character managing the government of the world’s richest country.

When I interrogated ChatGPT about the historical emergence of the now obligatory catch phrase, “the greatest nation in the history of the world,” it confirmed my own observations. The use of this phrase is a very recent phenomenon. “By the 1990s and especially after 9/11, the phrase became a near-mandatory conclusion in political speeches, alongside ‘God bless America.’ The competitive nature of political campaigns now makes it risky for politicians not to assert U.S. supremacy.”

Ever since the first election of Trump, his opponents have attempted to bridle his power to transform reality with “reality checks.” It’s a vain effort in a society that has become fundamentally hyperreal. What we may need now is something new: a surreality check.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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This audacious claim has caused controversy in the tech world. Industry leaders like Elon Musk the truth behind the Chinese company’s claim. Critics argue that DeepSeek’s expenditures and resources, including the number of chips used, are much than it states.

DeepSeek’s R1 model rattles US tech giants

Even discounting tall claims, DeepSeek’s rapid development and minimal investment highlight a potential shift in the AI landscape. Even if the published numbers are exaggerated, the release of an open-source cheap AI tool severely undermines the business models of Silicon Valley’s giants. Those companies rely on massive amounts of computing power and electricity consumption. The former needs a lot of high-quality chips and the latter requires a massive amount of power generation. If DeepSeek can achieve similar results with far fewer resources, i.e. lower costs, this would cause a major disruption.

This shift has already affected market confidence. On January 27, tech giant Nvidia $600 billion — a significant 17% — in market value. Simultaneously, the Nasdaq Composite, the index that tracks the top United States tech firms, saw a .

Marc Andreessen, the inventor of the internet browser and a bright venture capitalist, endorsed DeepSeek’s innovation. He referred to the company’s model, R1, as AI’s “.” This comment truly illuminates the importance of DeepSeek’s success, and serves as a wake-up call for the US. Just as the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite spurred the US to action in the of the 1950s and 1960s, this new AI model signals that the US has to take on China in the new AI race.��

Notably, China has made significant progress despite US efforts to restrict the country’s access to advanced chips and chip-manufacturing technology. When Joe Biden was president, he consistently used trade policies to preserve US leadership in AI and AI-related computer chips, Yet DeepSeek has overcome the odds.

The Chinese startup has garnered attention for its impressive results. According to the Artificial Intelligence Quality Index, R1 is already several established AI models, including Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Meta’s Llama 3.3-70B and OpenAI’s aforementioned GPT-4o. Based on these results, R1 could be an industry changer.

The potential boons for developers and users in the AI ecosystem are notable. As DeepSeek’s model is open-source, app developers and users stand to benefit from its accessibility and transparency. By contrast, closed-source models, like those from major US firms, limit innovation and could prove less adaptable over time. This shift could prompt Silicon Valley to reconsider its approach to AI development. In recent years, Big Tech has become more bureaucratic and less innovative. American tech giants have become monopolistic and oligopolistic, losing their hunger, nimbleness and creativity.

Silicon Valley’s death of innovation

The current AI landscape is like an inverted pyramid. At the base are like DeepSeek’s R1. Above the LLMs are app builders, and atop apps are users. The proliferation of LLMs — particularly those that are open-source — will foster innovation across the board. By contrast, Silicon Valley’s larger players are increasingly focused on maintaining their dominant positions, often stifling the spirit of innovation that once defined the San Francisco Bay Area.

A tech industry veteran once said that Silicon Valley was home to risk-takers and innovators, like the Wild West cowboys tinkering in garages. Nowadays, the adventurous cowboys who still remain have been pushed to the sidelines. Instead, founders now prepare fancy presentations to woo venture capitalists or Big Tech for investments. Once startups become big, they exit not through an initial public but by sale to a larger company.

When startup founders come under the thumb of Big Tech bureaucracy, this stifles their creative spirit. In turn, this stifles technological growth and dampens the innovative spirit. Big tech is now more interested in maximizing quarterly profits than advancing the frontiers of technology creatively. The dominance of big Silicon Valley’s dominance has led to bloated, inefficient business models that consume excessive resources, both in terms of computing power and energy.

Many tech veterans now believe that Big Tech should be broken up. They feel it is un-American and uncompetitive, and partly responsible for the cost-intensive and power-intensive models used in the industry today. Conversely, China’s nimble, open-source approach might offer a more sustainable and flexible model for AI development. How ironic is it that a company from a communist, authoritarian regime has threatened to upend the monopolistic status quo in a democratic, market-driven society?

Technological innovation comes from the fringes

Then again, smaller, more flexible entities tend to drive innovation. Historically, significant cultural and technological movements have emerged from fringe groups. Jazz, for example, was by African-Americans, a marginalized group that at that time was excluded from mainstream US culture.

Similarly, technological innovation often arises from outside the established norms. Larger organizations, while successful, can get bogged down by bureaucracy. This inhibits their ability to stay agile and forward-thinking. We can see this dynamic playing out in the tech industry right now, as small companies like DeepSeek are challenging the dominance of big players like Google and Meta.

One thing that has provided US supremacy and could potentially maintain it is the country’s unique combination of financial resources and flexibility. The massive investment capital in the US combined with its risk-taking appetite and diverse competing centers of research — both universities and other research institutions — give it a massive advantage against anyone else. 

A stable, regulatory legal framework for the US economy adds to that magic potion. 

China has worked to create its own AI champions. Now its small, fringe startup has found incredible success but there is no guarantee of future success. The US has many advantages and could easily win the AI race. To make sure that the US wins this race, it might be prudent to trust-bust — break up big companies into smaller entities, which Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 — the obscenely colossal Big Tech.

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The people Donald Trump appointed to his inner circle in 2017 were not, for the most part, familiar faces. The non-political person endowed with the most power to act and change the world was none other than the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Nobody knew who he was, other than the president’s son-in-law. They did know something about Kushner’s wife and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, because The Donald had repeatedly made a point of appearing on television to express his concerning Ivanka.

As the 47th president, Trump has changed his political vision. Instead of confiding political power in a formerly invisible member of his own family, Trump has chosen a hyperreal hero and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to play the role of what can legitimately be described as the co-president of the US. He has granted Musk the authority to undo, override and basically exercise powers over the federal budget, a task the US Constitution clearly attributes exclusively to the legislative branch of government: Congress.

Many Trump voters regard the US Constitution as a missing chapter of the Christian Bible, mediated and transcribed by a group of prophets known as “The Founders.” Some prominent evangelical Christians have claimed that Trump may deserve the status of a latter-day Founder, who has been sent by God to put the nation back on the right track. We may wonder whether they are not troubled by the fact that the sacred text of 1787 failed to prescribe the creation of an immensely wealthy co-president with the power to short-circuit Congress in case of need? Apparently not. Trump has been called by God to fill the gaps left by the founders.

Trump’s second term has permitted the fusion into a single entity of the nation’s two most authentically hyperreal personalities, Donald and Elon, who functioned separately during Trump’s first sojourn at the White House. The two men share the unparalleled capacity to invent or attribute new meaning to elements of reality, while remaining unfazed if anyone dares to speak up to and point out they may be getting it wrong. Recently, Trump that Spain was part of BRICS. No one in the room dared to clarify the facts, allowing him to close the conversation with, “You know what I’m saying.” Yes, Donald, what you’re saying is precisely what we call hyperreality.

One major controversy that has erupted as co-president Elon Musk takes over the business of Congress concerns the suppression of for USAID, an institution created by US President John F. Kennedy. The agency proved over time to be a powerful toy in the hands of the same people in the CIA who, in all probability (i.e. in reality), had a hand in organizing and executing JFK’s assassination. (The Warren Commission produced, on demand, its own notoriously ham-fisted version of hyperreality, which the corporate media still dares not question).

To justify the president and co-president’s collective funding decision, Musk offered a simple: “USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Radical-left Marxists:

Anyone who seeks to promote Washington’s devious soft-power system crafted to support right-wing regimes aligned with the US by offering humanitarian aid instead of simply threatening such nations with crippling sanctions or even “fire and fury.”

Contextual note

Just like Spain’s membership in BRICS, a curious interlocutor might want to challenge the CEO of Tesla by asking him to produce examples. No one has had the temerity to do us. But Musk’s meaning is clear. The idea that any agency funded by the government should be spending US taxpayer money on any form of assistance, especially out of humanitarian concern, even if it’s a subterfuge for exercising covert power and engaging in the kind of manipulation designed to promote US business interests, falls into the dreaded category of “socialist,” “communist” or “Marxist.”

Clearly these people are communists hired to promote the interests of US capitalism, because that’s what USAID was designed to do. And that’s how it’s performed since its creation. Whether that was Kennedy’s intention or not is a moot point. Those, like Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, understood how it was likely to be used.

But Musk didn’t stop there. Marxists may be enemies of capitalism, revolutionaries and even terrorists, but Musk equally, according to Politico, that USAID was a “criminal organization,” while at the same time asserting that the agency is beyond repair due to pervasive corruption. It was a Marxist mafia. Trump added the one missing ingredient: USAID was run by “a bunch of radical lunatics.”

Critics of USAID (count me among them) could not feel sad or disappointed about its programmed demise, but not many of us thought of its management as Marxist mafiosi escaped from a lunatic asylum. We needed a good dose of hyperreality on steroids to begin processing that illuminating vision of the organization.

Historical note

It was back in 2016, during Trump’s first election campaign, that I began using French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s of hyperreality to account for a deformed state of the perception and representation of reality that becomes evident in the public discourse shared by a modern society, especially in the developed economies. There’s a modern post-World War II tradition in France that seeks to look behind and beyond the façade and veneer of today’s media-enhanced civilization to reveal its workings.

The concept of hyperreality is often paired with Guy Debord’s of the “société du spectacle” but the tradition can be traced back to Roland Barthes’s work, “,” that examines and to some extent deconstructs the language and beliefs of contemporary bourgeois French society. But some may prefer to trace the tradition back to Flaubert’s posthumous, “Dictionnaire des idées reçues.”

The closest thing in the US to any of these writers might be Ambrose Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary.” We all know what became of Bierce. Or rather, we don’t know what became of him because, after leaving as a journalist to cover the Mexican revolution possibly embedded in the forces of Pancho Villa, the last sentence he to a friend before mysteriously disappearing was: “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”

Other politically or socially minded humorists, from Dorothy Parker to Woody Allen and Lee Camp, have honed their wit while demythologizing US culture, but the concerted effort to build hyperreality by the majority of media has both provided the comics with grist for their mill while utterly dominating the culture itself.

The theology of hyperreal power has long been visible in a nation proclaimed by Eisenhower to be “under God,” as well as being repeatedly described more recently as “indispensable” because of its “exceptionalism.” Under US President George W. Bush, theology played a direct role in commanding his administration’s invasion of Iraq. “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty,” he, “have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them,” and others reported that in private conversations, he claimed to have been advised by God.

If God created and blessed the indispensable order under more traditional secular Democratic presidents, such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Trump’s people claim a more direct connection with the deity than even Bush’s. Trump’s Senior Advisor, Paula White-Cain, has, “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God,” and he “will overcome every strategy from hell.”

Televangelist Lance Wallnau “Donald Trump is the chaos candidate, but he’s God’s chaos candidate,” and that “God is using Trump to tear down principalities and powers.” The pastor didn’t specify the governments of Greenland and Panama as the “powers” in question, probably because chaos has a tendency to spread everywhere immediately and reach all targets — just like hyperreality itself. And clearly nothing can beat a faith-based chaos as the actual final book of the Christian Bible, the Apocalypse, makes clear.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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Douglas is a lawyer who dedicates his career to immigration cases. He is also a rabbinical student in New York and a doctoral candidate in Talmud and Rabbinics. He teaches law at Boston University and is active in human rights work around the world. He currently helps Israeli families affected by the October 7 attacks. He brings a deep understanding of immigration law and its real-world effects.

Atul asks Douglas about Trump’s approach to border security and immigration enforcement. Trump emphasizes securing the border and protecting American jobs. His policies include stricter deportation measures, particularly targeting immigrants with . However, mass deportations require resources and international cooperation, which makes them difficult to implement.

US Customs and Border Protection have too much power

One key issue is the power of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Under a second Trump administration, CBP receives more to override civil rights protections. This means fewer rights for immigrants, including restrictions on their ability to appeal deportation. Trump also intends to close the US–Mexico border entirely. CBP already has minimal oversight compared to the FBI. With more freedom, the agency can act with even less accountability and become more aggressive in enforcing immigration laws.

The conversation also explores the role of tech billionaires in shaping immigration policy. Elon Musk expresses on immigration but does not control government bureaucracy. It remains to be seen whether figures like Musk influence policy or if the system continues without significant changes.

Deportations are difficult

Another major topic is the idea of a large-scale . Trump previously spoke about removing millions of undocumented immigrants. Douglas discusses whether such a plan is realistic and what legal and logistical challenges it faces.

Finally, the discussion touches on the possibility of another on Muslim immigration. Trump previously enacted restrictions on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries. Douglas provides insights into whether such a policy returns and what its legal consequences are.

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Recently, my partner, Criscillia, and I demonstrated that truth mathematically, by understanding that the information brains need for is not the kind of information you find in newspapers or books. It is the kind of information we receive through our senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and interoception, all at once. Real people know nervous systems need real life.

That same math shows that digital inputs are bad for us. The more “personalized” they are, the worse. Because personalized digital technology makes so much money, that basic tension pits private profit against public health. I have never heard any scientific disagreements with this contention, even after for a decade to provoke them. The math of information flow and all unbiased evidence agree: Digital media damage learning and sociability. So any country hoping to protect its youth must severely limit childrens’ digital exposure.

The United States, which pioneered this awful tech and makes the most money from it, must now officially face this choice just as Trump takes office. The Senate side of Congress already the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — a proposed legislation meant to protect children on the Internet — by the lopsided odds of 91–3, showing wide bipartisan support. But the House of Representatives has and tried to weaken it to make it easier on industry.

The House will vote on KOSA on Tuesday, December 17. Will the congressmen protect kids from known digital toxins? Or will they protect their contributors’ profit margins? It seems too close to call.

KOSA vs free speech

The big news came this week when Trump’s tech vizier, Elon Musk, the world’s most influential technologist, his support of KOSA. Even more crucially, he and X CEO Linda Yaccarino helped the House the teeth of the Senate version. He and his tech company voted for life over tech.

Unlike earlier bills, KOSA was designed to identify and neutralize the toxin, not just give it a name and a punishment. The toxin in this case is described in the key term, “.” Design features are software elements (such as “infinite scroll,” for example) which entrain the human nervous system unconsciously; individuals can’t defend themselves. Their basic structures have been mathematically understood since the old days when “persuasive technology” was considered good, not evil. KOSA’s genius approach embeds that established industry knowledge into the very legislation regulating industry and protecting kids and teens.

The major objection to KOSA is based on a weird US myth, going by the name “free speech.” Free speech in the US means people get to speak their minds without government interference, which is good for democracy. Furthermore, according to our scientific understanding of trust, speaking out loud in public is for the nervous system. So what our Founding Fathers imagined is still alive and well.

Unfortunately, the US also has a sub-population of people who think that typing posts is equal to using the voice. Some of those people further claim that free speech ought to apply in ways having nothing to do with voices or even people, so any regulation at all constitutes “censorship.”

The people who say such things call themselves intelligent. But does a foreign server hosting porn deserve free speech? How about social media platforms urging kids to kill themselves?

Musk was right: Choose life. Science says so.

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President-Elect Donald Trump’s cabinet and staff have been grenades, each tailor-made to signal that they will be tasked with administering their departments and, even better, burning them to the ground. Good, they deserve it. If you’ve read a smidge of my writing here you know what I think of the administrative state, that den of vipers that truly runs the federal bureaucracy and actually purports to rule the country through rules of procedure and forms.

Making Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the secretary of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard the head of the “Intelligence Community” is a gauntlet thrown down. RFK is openly of much of the vaccine schedule and fluoridated water. And Tulsi was put on a domestic the moment she endorsed Donald. The current administration’s decision to make enemies of the people who will be in charge of them in two months is so boneheaded, you must conclude that they never meaningfully considered they’d ever be out of power again. What dumbos.

And their lack of “credentials” and “experience” is more than half the point. Neither television presenter Pete Hegseth nor attorney Lee Zeldin (nor any of the previous three, either) have gone through the cursus honorum — “course of honors” — the government built to properly neuter any Mr. Smiths on their way to Washington and mold them into effective regime toadies, regardless of party. Their youth and inexperience is the point. Get out the way, Grandpa.

Matt Gaetz’s own of his nomination may seem one fly in the ointment, but it just might have been part of a plan all along, given that he recently about how Special Counsels don’t need Senate confirmation. Time will tell if the pitbull will be released.

Trump and Musk’s plans for an out-of-this-world national birthday blowout

Trump’s picks are meant to convey one thing, and one thing only: The status quo is on its way to the gallows. And we see the beasts in Washington already beginning to bay, with people like Senator Lisa Murkowski unequivocally she won’t fall in line with Trump’s agenda. But it likely won’t be up to them for two reasons. First, we already know that billionaire Elon Musk has made very real threats to anyone who stands in the way of the trifecta government coalescing; this is not to be taken lightly. I believe that naysayers will be whipped into shape.

Second, the looming specter of recess appointments is always present. Of course, the houses of Congress can always hold pro forma sessions — sessions held regularly — to avoid a recess, but there appear to be enough Trump loyalists in one or the other house to force a disagreement on a recess. Trump can simply recess them himself (allowed by Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution; the link, Humperdinck) for as long as he deems necessary. Then he can just recess appoint whoever he wants, or even use the Federal Vacancies Act too. There are options here folks. Yes, their terms will expire at the end of 2026, but so what? Who cares, the plan will be enacted by then.

What plan, you ask? If you’ve watched any of the recent policy videos Trump has put out, you’ve noticed that every one of his sweeping plans to reform the government has a date of completion of July 2026. There are two reasons for this that are readily apparent, one Trump’s and one Elon’s.

Trump’s reason is that the US’s 250th birthday is in July 2026, and he has made it clear he wants to throw a for a very long time. Nobody will want to hear about budget line items and this or that deputy accessory vice-under-secretary for whatever-the-hell losing their sinecure job when they’re listening to “The Star-Spangled Banner” played from a gold plated Apache helicopter. Get that crap done now, and everyone will be too busy with how much fun they’re having to care later. Trump can work hard, hard, hard the first half of his term, then take it easy and bask in triumph the second.

Elon’s reason is that the next Mars transit window is in October 2026. Musk wants free, unfettered capacity to take the infrastructure to Mars now so that the human colony can actually be built in the early 2030s. That won’t happen if everyone is still disputing regulations past summer 2026. Musk will get the job done, so he can go back to playing with his toys — that’s the only reason he really supported Trump in the first place. The Human Resources ladies and Bolsheviks-by-any-other-name in Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s governments were going to him from getting us to Mars. SpaceX is a defense contractor and cannot hire noncitizens, this didn’t stop the Feds from suing SpaceX for not hiring noncitizens. There’s no good reason for this kind of lawfare other than petty resentment at Musk’s aims and success, a desire to hobble him, and he couldn’t stand that. Good for him — a guy has to have hobbies (other than playing the video game, Diablo IV).

You can’t stop the Trump Train

Why do I think it will happen? I mean, history is littered with things that could have happened easily but didn’t. A good friend pointed out to me that the only reason France isn’t a monarchy right now is that no one could agree on a in 1871. There’s always the precedent that everything could fall perfectly into place… and then nothing really comes of it. But I think it will happen, more or less as planned. My rationale is twofold, one part coldly Machiavellian and the other whimsical and mythological — the stuff of nascent, gestalt legend even now.

For one thing, the law has no independent existence from men and willpower. No statute, rule or constitution is a self-executing magic spell; they each and all require men to believe in them and carry them out. My tribe has taken control of the arms of government that write, interpret and execute the laws. That is men and that is willpower. The goals are attainable, and the men who want to meet them have the willpower and support to do it. That alone would be enough. 

But I don’t even think it’s everything, I am not as as Yarvin. I genuinely, truly believe that there is something special, something magical, about Trump: Everything he touches turns to gold and everyone who stands against him confounds themself. You did not watch God personally intervene in the circles of the world on July 13 to his life, only for things to fizzle out and die in the gutter a couple feet from the finish line. No, we are on the precipice of a US Renaissance. I believe that, and I am here to make it happen, too.

In 2018, I saved a meme of a skeleton with Trump’s iconic blonde hairdo, captioned, “The ride hasn’t even begun,” and it hadn’t. It’s still not over. There are no breaks on the Trump Train, choo-choo!

[ edited this piece.]

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Let us review the agenda. The number one problem in the world today, and Trump’s greatest threat, is the climate crisis, which is accelerating its destructive consequences. Trump will undoubtedly promote fossil production, but the Environmental Protection Agency will maintain the protective and preventive regulations established over the past few years, 12 states will continue to apply restrictions on emissions, and large cities will continue to spread renewable energy.

Regarding immigration, this time Trump did not insist on the wall (most of which he while he was last in the White House). In this campaign, he turned to “mass deportations,” which can mean common-sense controls to cross the border, as already agreed with the Mexican government regarding non-Mexicans, or an illusory hunt for individuals without proper documents in neighborhoods, workplaces and family homes, which would not only be savage but logistically unfeasible. In reality, it is to be hoped that Congress will reactivate the bipartisan agreement for immigrants’ legalization and access to citizenship that Trump ordered to be stopped not because of its content but because it would have been approved during the campaign and would have taken away his favorite topic for demagoguery.

As for Israel and Palestine, the biggest problem is that Trump is now prioritizing enmity with Iran, which finances and pushes Hamas and Hezbollah and whose agents tried to assassinate him twice (or perhaps thrice). He will have a hard time resurrecting the Abraham Accords that his Jewish son-in-law negotiated during his first term: exploring again the two-state solution in exchange for diplomatic recognition of Israel by Arab countries. Now, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will only accept it if Trump diminishes his hostility against Iran, where a “reformist” candidate won the presidential election and seems to have appeased the fury.

Regarding Ukraine, Trump boasted that he would “fix it in 24 hours,” but was not very specific. Two days after the election, at the Valdai Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin rushed to a peace agreement based on the “self-determination” of the people of Donbas in exchange for respecting Ukraine’s borders. Putin also that Russia could restore natural gas supplies through the Baltic to Germany, which Ukrainian agents . A Trump adviser has a plan to defend Ukraine’s neutrality outside NATO for the next twenty years. All this sounds similar to the Minsk Agreements reached a few years ago by Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, which US President Barack Obama ignored.

In the face of Trump’s disdain, the European Union may reinforce internal solidity and external autonomy. Many NATO members are already ceasing to be free-riders on the United States and are fulfilling their commitment to invest at least 2% of GDP in defense. Their number has risen from four to 23 in just six years.

The biggest alarm raised by Trump’s election is that the future of democracy and legal security in the United States may be in jeopardy. Will there be “revenge” against “internal enemies,” and will he go after politicians, judges, generals, officials, journalists and other opponents? He may not need to once the pending court cases are canceled and he has satisfied his obsession with returning to power. The Senate Republican group has already rejected Trump’s nominee to lead it, and the Senate can veto some of his announced appointees. It is worth remembering that in his first term, Trump appointed three Chiefs of Staff in four years and changed most members of the Cabinet, including State, Defense, Justice, Interior and Homeland Security, a tenor of personal instability that is likely to continue.

Some of Trump’s boasts may end in a major ridicule, such as ordering Elon Musk to cut a third of the budget. Incompetence could also sink him in the face of some unforeseen catastrophe, as happened to during US President George Bush’s second term with Hurricane Katrina and to himself with the COVID-19 pandemic. Will Trump be able to maintain a regular daily work schedule in his eighties, or will he, like Joe Biden, be busy only from 10 AM to 4 PM? It is not guaranteed that he will complete four years in good shape.

Ultimately, Trump could also become a chaotic parody of the befuddled White House visitor in the film (1979). As Mister Chance says, “I can’t write. I can’t read. But I like to watch television.” Just like Donald the Returned.

[The author’s first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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That was April. Last week, on August 12, in anticipation of the interview Musk had planned with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Breton on X an extraordinary preemptive warning against the “amplification of harmful content.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Harmful content:

Any words, expressions or ideas formulated by individuals certain persons or groups in a position of authority happen to dislike.

Contextual note

In his letter, Breton worries about the possibility of language that may have “detrimental effects on civil discourse and public security.” His definition of “harmful” applies to “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.”

“Instances of disinformation” sums up the essence of Breton’s complaint. The idea that people may say things that are not true and that all instances of untruth should be suppressed has become a standard obsession of those who seek to wield power over the unenlightened masses.

Although he has no inkling of what would transpire in a conversation that hasn’t yet taken place, the commissioner clearly anticipates that Musk and Trump will spout the kind of odious ideas his authority has the power to punish. Like George W. Bush’s preemptive invasion of Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein’s using the arsenal of weapons of mass destruction experts Hans Blix and Scott Ritter insisted didn’t exist, Breton prepared his own invasion of X to prevent Musk and Trump from saying things that, to his mind, might be politically incorrect.

As I pointed out in last week’s “Devil’s Dictionary,” the political class has even taken the idea of critical thinking, which implies openness to the consideration of a multiple perspectives before constructing meaning through exposure to all of them, and transformed the definition to mean the tracking and banishment of unconventional viewpoints. In other words, the idea of critical thinking is turned on its head in the service of authorized, conformist thinking.

Breton’s remarks highlight another feature of the new censorship culture that has been gaining steam since 2016, when it became the principal weapon for countering Trump’s obvious predilection for outlandish exaggerations and “alternate facts.” Censorship has become a transnational crusade across the defensive alliance of North America and Europe we call “the West.” In that sense, NATO enlargement has not just been about territorial expansion eastward to the borders of Russia but also the revival of the McCarthyist instinct that poisoned US political culture in the 1950s.

Europe managed to dodge the McCarthyist epidemic that successfully transformed the meaning of the word “communist” for Americans into the equivalent of “possessing diabolical intent.” “As the relevant content is accessible to EU users,” Breton notes, “and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU.” He wants to protect Europeans from contamination. With the notion of “spillover,” Breton correctly highlights Europe’s current alacrity for imitating and adopting the worst political practices exported from America.

But Breton’s moment of triumph didn’t last 24 hours. On August 13, an by The Financial Timessported the title: “Brussels slaps down Thierry Breton over ‘harmful content’ letter to Elon Musk.” Breton’s own masters judged that, with his comminatory letter, the commissioner had overreached. It was bad PR, making Europe appear to be something of a bully, a role usually exercised by Washington over Europe.

In a further irony, the FT quotes an EU official who explained that “Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking.” In other words, he’s a loose cannon, guilty, in his own way, of producing “harmful content” that might compromise the image of Europe as a culture committed to the respect of all citizens’ rights, including prominent US billionaires with one-syllable last names, like Musk and Trump.

Historical note

In the fourth and final book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, a race of horses called the Houyhnhnms not only have the gift of human speech, they use it in the wisest way possible. They cannot say anything that is untrue. In their language — unlike that of Thierry Breton or numerous people in Washington, DC who have put “disinformation,” “misinformation” and “harmful content” at the top of their useful vocabulary lists — the Houyhnhnms don’t even have a word to express the notion of lying.

Breton and a new class of censors that wish to apply more and more rules concerning the way people speak in public appear to see Swift’s Houyhnhnm model as an ideal to be emulated. They are busy devising the mechanisms that will prevent anything they can qualify as potentially harmful — even before it is spoken or written — from being expressed in public. After all, there may be “spillover.”

The problem Swift noticed — and it drove his character, Lemuel Gulliver, mad — is that, as a master of the English language, he understood that nearly everything people say may be construed as not quite truthful. Even Oxford’s famous linguistic philosophers of the 20th century, who reduced philosophy itself to the question of what language is capable of expressing, concluded that there is no principle that can establish the truth of any proposition. Bertrand Russell could prove that the, “the king of France is bald” is false — even though in theory it could be true — but no philosopher has found a way of proving any assertion is true.

The debate is now raging in the US about whether the freedom of expression so unambiguously affirmed in the first amendment to the US Constitution can have any meaning. A century ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the analogy of “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” to demonstrate that there should be limits on what one may express in public. The context of Holmes’s pronouncement was the debate on the constitutionality of the now notorious Espionage Act. Congress passed the law during World War I, when fear of German spying was a reality. Long considered irrelevant, recent presidents had invoked it repeatedly in recent years against whistleblowers and journalists, including Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

The legal of disinformation is: “False information knowingly shared to cause harm.” Lawmakers have no capacity to define “harm” with precision, which means that potentially any discourse or act of expression can fall into a category of speech that must be suppressed. The campaign to brand critics of Israel’s policies and actions as antisemitic on the grounds that such criticism harms the sensibility of Zionist Jews is continuing and has proved very effective in the US and Europe.

Whatever disagreement may remain inside Europe between Thierry Breton and his boss, Ursula von der Leyen, there can be little doubt that the official assault on “harmful content” from both sides of the Atlantic will continue. A far more worrying case is that of British journalist Richard Medhurst, who was arrested by his nation’s police at Heathrow airport, detained under appalling conditions and charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. His? Producing a style of harmful content known as factual reporting.

Future historians will face the challenge of finding an original name for an episode of history that began with Joe McCarthy, spanned a period that included President Joe Biden and, with the aid of AI, is likely to continue unimpeded into an undefined future. As the world awaits an impending civilizational showdown that will either define a new world order or culminate in a spectacular nuclear holocaust, we are all cast into the role of reluctant spectators, observing the prolonged crisis of democracy. The outcome will inevitably be scripted by a coterie of politicians skilled at protecting us from harmful content.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The chosen planet was Mars. Over the years, Musk has clearly expressed his fear that Earth is doomed. That conviction commanded him to assume a position of in the arduous task of ensuring “the survival of humanity as a multi-planetary species.”

Some say he isn’t so much leading as. In 2017, Musk forecast sending humans to Mars by 2024, promising SpaceX would be ready. In 2021, his projected date shifted to 2026, then 2029. His latest estimation, which he calls “optimistic,” is 2033.

The, especially scientists who need to be distracted by the optimism of an entrepreneur, are more prone to saying never. Not that they doubt sending men to Mars is possible, but the idea of creating anything even tenuously sustainable qualifies as romantic musing that is also ethically suspect.

Fortunately, there are those whose dreams seem slightly less far-fetched but just as bold, as Britain’s The Independent now us. A New York City architecture firm, The Clouds Architecture Office, calls it the . This New Age skyscraper would not just scrape the surface of the sky; it would take up residence in it, hanging from a tether anchored to an asteroid. It would circle the globe on a daily basis and return to its home position over Manhattan every evening.

More modestly and realistically than Musk’s projected Mars colony, this would demonstrate that living elsewhere than our planet’s crust is feasible. Once people began living in skyscrapers suspended over American cities rather than being tethered to that slave master Gaia, they might, at least in their imaginations, “take wings” and prepare for the real, truly futuristic mission of colonizing Mars. In such a context, you could think of the tower as the equivalent of learning to ride a bicycle with training wheels.

In contrast with Musk’s planned exile to an uninhabitable and fundamentally hostile planet, the Analemma Tower would function more along the lines of a suspended bedroom hovering over the Earth. Perhaps some would feel so “over the moon” in their new habitat that they might choose never to leave and consequently spend all their waking as well sleeping hours as citizens of the cosmos. But the architects have thought of everything. Transport back to Earth via drone will always be possible. This will prove useful for example if one of the inhabitants got an itch to drop down to catch the latest Broadway hit.

According to the architects’ plan, the tower will be constructed in Dubai, largely, I suppose, by cheap immigrant labor. They would then transport it back to civilization and launch it into the atmosphere over New York. It will profit from Earth’s daily rotation to bring it back every evening, like a disciplined commuter, to the Big Apple.

Musk should find this project comforting, because it draws on his own philosophy, or what we are tempted to call his “otherworldview.” It foresees the liberation of humanity from the slavery that has historically bound it to Earth’s unstable and unpredictably battered surface. “Going back to the earliest known structures,” the Analemma Tower’s promoters explain, “we can see a clear pattern emerging .We are in the process of dislodging ourselves from the planet’s surface.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Dislodging:

The latest trend in hypermodern social, technological and scientific theory, diversely applied to Manhattan skyscrapers and the population of Gaza.

Contextual note

The reasoning behind this project is impeccable. It begins with cost-benefit analysis and offers a clear demonstration of the science of exploiting price differentials. “The Analemma Tower would be constructed in Dubai — for one-fifth of the cost of building the structure in New York City — before the company proposes to launch it above Manhattan.” In other words, you could command Manhattan-level prices for real estate that was developed elsewhere at lower cost.

And of course, its selling price would include the added value offered by an unrivaled view as well as the certainty that no future structures will ever be built that might cast an unwanted shadow on it.

The promoters explain the very simple economic logic that justifies this daring project: “the company expects the residential complex will command record prices based off the current trend that sales price per square foot rises with floor elevation.” How could anyone with some spare cash refuse to invest in such a business adventure, even if they themselves were incapable of paying the literally astronomical rent such dwellings would command?

The final sentence in The Independent’s article specifies one other advantage, in this case simply an intangible prestige factor: “Once completed, the structure would be considered the world’s tallest building.” This leaves one wondering whether Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s visionary leader, will agree to the construction of a tower that would dethrone Burj Khalifa as the world’s tallest building.

Historical note

It was nearly a century ago that a curious race began in New York. Its official dates covered a two-year period that were curiously contemporary with the notorious Wall Street crash. Between 1929 and 1931, a heated competition among architects played out on the surface of Manhattan. It is as “the race to the sky.” It produced the two exceptional monuments of office architecture that define the New York skyline: the elegant Chrysler building and the Empire State Building.

Those two buildings occupy an extraordinary place in the modern imagination. When working in Dubai, I was surprised to notice several buildings clearly inspired by the Chrysler building, featuring a pastiche of its elegant dome composed of an expanding series of concentric arches. Dubai’s mix of daring to the point of insolent innovation and kitsch has made it the ultimate expression of architectural hyperreality, as much a symbol of the culture of the 21st century as the Manhattan of the 1930s was of 20th century culture.

No sooner was the Empire State Building constructed than Hollywood sealed its symbolic fame by having King Kong climb to its summit to swat at aggressive airplanes whose mission was to defeat the beast of the jungle.

I cannot doubt that if the Analemma Tower is actually built — but who will define the zoning laws that apply to it? — its architects will believe they will be defining the character of the 21st century in the same way the race to the sky between 1929 and 1931 did a century ago. I wouldn’t be surprised that they were aiming to build it precisely between 2029 and 2031, which at least means they will beat Musk’s goal still “optimistically” targeted at 2033.

In that case, Dubai, whose future is, will only have achieved the distinction of being remembered as a special moment in the evolution of Earth-kitsch that would ultimately be superseded and in fact canceled by space-kitsch. The first three decades of the 21st century will be remembered for their literal mundaneness, before the new masters of cosmic kitsch, armed with AI facilitated designs, push our overdeveloped consumer culture into the stratosphere.

Perhaps the real significance of the Analemma Tower project is that it could provide the answer to the conflict in Israel. Why not propose to all the Israeli settlers in the West Bank to live in a collection of  such towers hovering over Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa? Gaza, already turned into a parking lot, could function as the Cape Canaveral from which new towers would be launched. That would enable the Palestinians to return to their land and the Israelis to maintain their feeling of domination. After the promised land, the promised sky!

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Age of Cosmic Kitsch is Now Dawning appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Fortunately, Plato had an exceptionally good memory and was himself an inventive writer. He used his close association with Socrates to reconstruct and further elaborate the dialogues he witnessed in his mentor’s presence. Scholars of philosophy have become pretty good at separating Socrates’ original thought from the elements that Plato added to it and that reflected Plato’s special way of understanding the universe. But Plato never intervenes directly in his scripts of the dialogues. He merges his own thinking with that of Socrates.

Western philosophy as an object of study was born from Plato’s successful initiative of formulating deep, wide ranging thinking as dialogue. Plato’s own star pupil, Aristotle, continued the tradition as a “peripatetic,” who philosophized, not by lecturing in a classroom, but while walking around the grounds of his Lyceum engaged in conversation with his students. Alas, we not only have no trace of the content of these dialogues; the considerable corpus we call Aristotle’s writings are for the most part the reformulation of his teachings composed by some of his students.

What the Greek experience of nearly two and a half millennia ago should tell us is that the most serious, inventive, insightful and productive learning is social in nature. Dialogue is the basis of social communication. Though the lecture in a crowded hall or classroom has become the supreme model in our contemporary conception of education —�� including the “massive open online courses” that some claim to be a revolutionary breakthrough —�� lectures represent little more than an impoverished cousin to dialogue.

AI is not built for dialogue

If dialogue has been largely banished from the educational landscape since the advent of the industrial revolution, is there any chance that, thanks to all the recent technological breakthroughs, it might be revived? My hope, which I sought to experiment with “Breakfast for Chad,” was that AI may be providing that opportunity.

Many of our technological masters today — including the ineffable, omnipresent Elon Musk — tell us that AI will very soon dwarf all human intelligence, if it hasn’t done so already. Such a statement begs a lot of questions, the first being, what do we mean by intelligence? That is a deep question that it will take time to delve into, in a dialogic fashion, to achieve any clarity.

Most of my professional life I have been deeply involved in what might be called pedagogical strategy, which fundamentally means looking at or devising optimal ways of provoking authentic learning. I am convinced AI has an important role to play in this effort. For the moment, it is far from clear what that role might be. But because I adhere to the Athenian model that demonstrates the vital role of dialogue, and because generative AI produces the kind of language that makes dialogue possible, rather than focusing on how much an AI knows or what expertise it acquires, or even what kind of decision-making skills it might develop through machine learning, I believe in an approach as experimental as that of Socrates. Get the dialogue going with human voices involved, and something profound and human may emerge.

I remain astonished that in the discussion about what AI brings, there is so little consideration of the role of dialogue. I believe there are historical reasons for this, as a long educational, if not intellectual tradition has elevated monologue above dialogue. This may be because monologue appears as a finished product, which has value in the consumer society, whereas true dialogue —�� outside of fiction and drama, in which it appears in the form of discrete “scenes” —�� is by definition open-ended, a boundless exploration of possibilities, associations and the negotiation of meaning.

Boundlessness may be the key element that defines the difference between human and artificial intelligence. AI may have access to everything humans have produced in the past but it cannot “see” beyond that corpus of knowledge. It may reconfigure elements of the corpus in original ways, which is what individual humans do, who have access only to small segments of the corpus. But by definition, AI lives and is confined to that artificial world.

For pedagogical purposes that is not a problem. AI lives in the box we humans have created for it. It’s an enormous and ever-expanding box. But it’s still a box, whereas we humans live in and interact with a universe that keeps offering us mysteries to examine and make sense of, to the best of our abilities. We have the capacity to use our senses to “make sense” of it. But we only have language to express that sense. We have found ways of using that language to build and share with the language models we have created, but, if we are honest and humble, we must admit that our language has not “solved” the mystery of the universe. AI can only have the senses we provide it with, which will always be limited. But philosophers focused on cognition and consciousness, such as Alva Noe, recognize that we don’t even know much about our perception and its role in producing the thought that we express in language and use to make decisions.

Experimenting inside and outside the box

In “Outside the Box” we will be experimenting how dialogue with AI can become a tool not just of learning but of one of the essential and often neglected aspects of learning: self-discovery. Whether or not AI can be “creative” is a moot question. It can certainly expand its box but it can’t step outside of it. AI can, however, even today, be literally a tool of human creativity if its role is to participate in a dialogue with humans. That is why I want to use this idea of “Outside the Box” to explore and eventually define a project aimed at pedagogical creativity, with new tools and new methods.

In every “Outside the Box” column, we will continue the tradition I created in the rubric, “Breakfast with Chad.” But we will look beyond the drama of the conversation itself to see how it can teach us about learning.

So, here is the the first sample exploring dialogue with AI. We will return to it in the next column.

My question to our AI friend:

The great mathematical physicist and Nobel prize winner Roger Penrose said that AI should be called AC, artificial cleverness rather than intelligence. As an AI voice what do you think of that remark? Are you a voice or the intelligence that gives life to a voice? Can the case be made, as Penrose seems to think, that your ability to imitate the output of human intelligence is simply an example of cleverness, either on the part of the system itself or those who programmed it?

ChatGPT’s answer:

Roger Penrose’s perspective on AI terminology is based on the idea that AI lacks true human-like intelligence and consciousness, and instead, it exhibits clever problem-solving and pattern recognition. This is a philosophical perspective and a matter of ongoing debate within the field of AI.

As for your second question, I am not merely a voice. I am a language model built on the GPT-3.5 architecture developed by OpenAI. I don’t possess consciousness or subjective experience. I generate text responses based on patterns and information present in the text data I was trained on. So, in a sense, I am an example of clever programming and machine learning, as I generate responses by predicting what text is likely to come next based on the input provided.

Whether AI represents true intelligence or merely clever programming is a complex question. It depends on one’s definition of intelligence. AI systems like mine excel at tasks that require pattern recognition, language understanding, and problem-solving, but we lack consciousness and self-awareness, which are often considered essential aspects of human intelligence. Whether this makes AI “clever” or “intelligent” is a matter of semantics and philosophical interpretation. Different experts and scholars may have varying opinions on the matter.

In summary, Roger Penrose’s viewpoint reflects a philosophical perspective on the nature of AI, and the terminology used to describe AI’s capabilities can be subjective and open to interpretation.

In our next column, we will explore this exchange. We invite our readers to submit any thoughts they have, which we will be happy to add to the conversation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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People like Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking have been practicing AI fear-mongering for years. And there were and are good reasons for doing so. Nevertheless, the motives have never been clear, and the science has remained, at best, murky. Musk himself both promoted AI while complaining that it would end civilization as we know it. Now that it’s here and in everyone’s hands, it makes good sense to cry havoc. AI-bashing and calling for its regulation have now become a commodious way of proving to the world that one is a responsible citizen, concerned about the future of humanity.

The fear – already signalled back in 1968 by Stanley Kubrick in 2001, A Space Odyssey – never caused much more than a vague stir in people’s minds over the intervening half century. At the time, it evoked a distant future which most people found difficult to believe would ever become real. Kubrick’s HAL, not only a speaking but also strategically thinking computer that governed all activity on an interplanetary spacecraft, was for the public of the time literally science fiction, with an emphasis on fiction. It belonged to the same ultra-hyperreal universe of cities traversed by flying cars, the ultimate goal and supreme fulfilment of the increasingly technology-oriented consumer society. It was a curious cultural phenomenon. People wanted to believe these things would become real, but no one would have bet on it.

Whether it was flying cars or AI, in the real world, despite an ever advancing hyperreality, all that futurism seemed for decades to belong to an unattainable future. Then, at the end of 2022, something radical happened. Suddenly, everyone in the now connected universe could have a hands-on experience of AI and use it for undefined purposes. Immediately, alarm bells began ringing across the media landscape. As a game-changing and earth-shaking event, the release of ChatGPT last November rivalled in importance the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, no writer or producer of text has been more talked about than ChatGPT.

Now, AI, a technology that only occasionally shimmered on the surface of our collective consciousness, failing to compete for our attention with powerful stories of war, climate change, imperiled supply lines and anti-hegemonic rebellion, has become a blinding light throwing all these issues into its penumbra. After all, wars eventually end, climate change we now realize is beyond anyone’s control, the economy silently adjusts thanks to the play of markets and power relationships regularly shift. But AI is a cancer that never stops growing, not because it reproduces itself but because it gains power, just as humans used to do, by learning.

The world is now aware that when humans learn new things, they tend to apply that learning abusively. But people can be arrested, sanctioned and punished for doing so. When machines programmed to be intelligent learn things that they may use for their own purposes, there is no legal or institutional recourse. Even worse, they may learn things that serve not their own but some particular humans’ purposes. And those humans cannot be held responsible because it is the machine, not them, that is both learning and applying the learning.

In other words, humanity, who has shown itself so inept in assuring its own education, is faced with a monumental learning problem that it has no means to address.

In this context The Guardian on one point of view expressed at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), which it describes as “the premier gathering of professionals dedicated to the advancement of the branch of artificial intelligence called representation learning, but generally referred to as deep learning.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Deep learning:

Indiscriminate amassing of text from limitless sources for the purpose of making it possible reproduce the lowest common denominator of contemporary culture.

Contextual note

The Guardian focuses on the fate of Timnit Gebru, who claims she was sacked by Google for sounding an alarm bell on the very real risks related to AI. The newspaper allows Gebru to sum up her thesis in economic terms. Like so many of the problems humanity faces, the “root of all evil,” to quote St Paul, is good old greed.

“In fact, it is a gold rush,” she explains. “And a lot of the people who are making money are not the people actually in the midst of it. But it’s humans who decide whether all this should be done or not.” The Ethiopian computer scientist goes on to offer a more refined sociological analysis of the origin of the greed and the nature of the problem it created. “The clear danger… is that such supposed ‘intelligence’ is based on huge data sets that “overrepresent hegemonic viewpoints and encode biases potentially damaging to marginalised populations.” The Guardian clarifies: “AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male, comparatively affluent and focused on the US and Europe.”

In other words, the world is facing a problem created by people with a gold rush mentality who are using the consolidated tools and data of their culture to dominate the world and impose a form of civilization in their image. We shouldn’t be talking about the technology and its capacity for evil and not even the people who created it, but those who exploit with the intention of making humanity dependent on it. “I’m not worried about machines taking over the world,” she insists. “I’m worried about groupthink, insularity and arrogance in the AI community.” She speaks of “a quest to push beyond the tendency of the tech industry and the media to focus attention on worries about AI taking over the planet and wiping out humanity while questions about what the technology does, and who it benefits and damages, remain unheard.”

Gebru focuses on the captains of Silicon Valley industries who are driven by classic economic interest. “There’s a lot of exploitation in the field of AI, and we want to make that visible so that people know what’s wrong. But also, AI is not magic. There are a lot of people involved – humans.” And their motivation is only too banal: finding the best and most efficient way to make money.

Historical note

According to , Gebru “warned that the current AI “gold rush” means companies won’t ‘self-regulate’ unless they are pressured.” Why should they? In a gold rush, even more than on Wall Street, as Oliver Stone’s hero Gordon Gekko, put it: “Greed is good.” So the real question that remains is this: Who is likely to pressure them?

History tells us that even when we know over a span of decades that an impending catastrophe fed by the instinct of greed is likely, human institutions and human governments are powerless to effectively pressure those who take part in the competition to profit “while the sun is shining.” Greed systematically defeats the actions of even the most powerful governments.

In the 1980s, the scientific community started to recognize the potential risks associated with increasing greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization to assess and synthesize scientific research on climate change.

Since then, numerous scientific studies, reports, and assessments have been conducted to understand the causes, impacts, and potential solutions to the climate crisis. The IPCC has released a series of comprehensive assessment reports, the most recent being the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, which was published in 2021.

Nothing significant has been done. Governments are blamed. But whose interests are they responding to when they fail to act in any meaningful way? There’s a simple answer: the greedy.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.

Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is a Fired Employee Accusing Google of Greed? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This past week, the world’s most prominent hyperreal hero, Elon Musk, provided a perfect demonstration of just how radically language and logic can be turned inside out. Musk has always thrived within an oxymoronic reality of his own invention. This time he literally took his art to dizzying heights when Starship, his newest and heaviest rocket, exploded in the upper atmosphere shortly after takeoff.

In its of the event, Reuters not only highlighted the oxymoron��of “a successful failure” but also drew a direct connection with Musk’s Silicon Valley business philosophy. “The spectacular explosion of SpaceX’s new Starship rocket minutes after it soared off its launch pad on a first flight test is the latest vivid illustration of a ‘successful failure’ business formula that serves Elon Musk’s company well.”

The usually dour The New York Times was impressed. The Gray Lady even allowed itself a moment of tepid irony as it the event. “Casual space watchers were further amused by the company describing the result of the mission on Twitter with cosmic levels of euphemism. SpaceX called it “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” — or, put another way, an explosion.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD):

A rare non-scatological euphemism invented by Elon Musk to describe a process specific to his aerospace experimentation that could equally, and perhaps more accurately, be applied to the entire drift of geopolitical and cultural reality of the United States in the first half of the 21^st century.

Contextual note

Elon Musk has never shied away from formulating utter nonsense. But, when you go beneath the veneer, the nonsense has its own discernible rationality. Who, after all, would name their firm the Boring Company unless there was a connection with the physical act of horizontal digging? Who would christen their newborn X Æ A-12 unless they believed that the future of the entire human race would unfold on Mars? Musk clearly believes that names one gives to things and people should always be a source of laughter.

The explanation SpaceX gave of their successful failure made a lot of sense. “Now this was a development test, this was the first test flight of Starship, and the goal is to gather the data and as we said, clear the pad and get ready to go again. So you never know exactly what’s going to happen, but as we promised, excitement is guaranteed! Starship gave us a rather spectacular end to what was truly an incredible test.”

This follows a basic law of the consumer economy and illustrates the increasingly obvious point that technology and science themselves, at least in Musk’s hands, have now become subordinated to the laws of consumerism. Until recently geopolitical and military strategy followed the more sober rules of industrial communication. Discretion trumped ostentatious boasting. In contrast, the laws of the consumer economy require generating excitement to achieve one’s goal. Because brands are built to be remembered, anything that makes them look exciting is deemed a winner.

Musk and SpaceX have profoundly changed the culture of space exploration. It’s no longer about redefining humanity’s position in the universe. The days of Neil Armstong’s “one small step” are over. That kind of humility is passé. It’s now about the exciting mission of conquering and dominating space.

As a public speaker, Musk, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, is awkward and unimpressive. But his erratic behavior in public and private, as well as the frequent bizarre statements he makes are uniformly provocative. Eccentricity – which includes producing exciting mishaps – has become the emblem of his genius.

The Daily Devil’s Dictionary: “Exciting” Times

Who doesn’t remember the moment when, after claiming that his Tesla Cybertruck was indestructible, Musk took a sledge hammer and shattered its shatterproof window? That was exciting. Three years later the man who, at the time, was worth only about $20 billion, became the richest person in the world, with his wealth measured in the hundreds of billions. You can’t have one (wealth) without the other (excitement).

The Starship’s explosion last week wasn’t just “exciting.” According to space.com, one resident who lives 10 km away from the launch site called the launch itself “.” The ensuing explosion in mid-air merely completed a well-choreographed display of technological terror. Others have reported on the visible damage the launch did to the environment, with “debris from Starship spread for miles over the Gulf of Mexico.” Only an enterprise eminently strategic can justify, in an exciting way, that kind of mistreatment of our common environment.

As soon as the explosion occurred, the team on the ground began cheering. In contrast, Musk, sitting at an observation post, appeared calm and even sullen, as if his hopes had been dashed. The members of the media team were already gloating at the spectacle. They couldn’t suppress a triumphant laugh when the chief commentator explained with authority that this was “a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

Had the launch succeeded the excitement would have been prolonged as a total victory. Musk would once again have been celebrated as a genius of both business and technology. But the explosion produced immediate excitement and enabled the media to celebrate Musk for more than simply achieving something. Achieving it through an “unscheduled” spectacular failure may be more impressive and convince more people of the value of his project than a scheduled success.

Now if Musk can find a way of having Twitter explode in the upper atmosphere, he might produce an even more resounding success.

Historical note

When the history of the first half of the 21^st century is written by 22^nd century historians, what we now think of as the great names in the world of politics – the Bidens, Putins, Obamas, Clintons, Xis, Kennedys, Zelenskys, Nulands and even Trumps – will be largely forgotten. At best, they will appear in random footnotes. Instead, historians are likely to focus on the most emblematic person of our times: Elon Musk. He alone wrote the narrative of the first phase of a new millennium.

Those future historians, whether living on earth or Mars, will likely identify the five great secrets of hypereal success of our epoch. Musk’s lifework illustrates each of them.

• Unbridled, self-interested technological experimentation,
• Post-imperial, hyper-colonial exploitation of the planet,
• Narcissistic personality disorder linked to celebrity culture as the the means of identifying leadership,
• Systematic subversion of the language,
• The programmed marginalization of logical thinking, deemed irrelevant to the universal quest for success.

Let’s take them one by one.

With SpaceX, the native South African has perfected the art of unbridled, self-interested technological experimentation conducted at the expense of the American taxpayer.

In a famous celebrating the CIA-instigated that overturned the election of Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2019, Musk demonstrated his dolidarity with the long term commitment of the US to treat the planet’s resources as its own colonial reserve, destined to serve the needs of the US economy at the expense of the countries who possess those resources.

America’s True Hyperreal Heroes

As America’s most successful hyperreal hero, with one step up on Donald Trump, Musk has created his own brand of narcissistic personality disorder.

Musk has consistently demonstrated his taste for systematic linguistic subversion. Witness his naming of companies and children. RUD is his latest invention. His linguistic humor is often sophomoric, disrespectful and on occasion libelous, but it achieves a kind of legitimacy to the extent that it can appear to be a parody of the far more sinister trend of linguistic perversion used by governmental and corporate propagandists.

Finally, Musk has also demonstrated a penchant for pushing illogical, or at the very least, non-logical thinking to the fore. His uncritical insistence that Mars can become the self-sustaining home for humanity is simply the most spectacular. On paper, it looks as if it’s technically feasible – and of course, exciting – but he seems to be unaware of a very real experiment of people voluntarily living in a glass dome. It took place on earth 30 years ago, where there was no need of terraforming. Despite fewer environmental challenges, it produced a traumatizing that ended in what might be described as “rapid unscheduled mental disassembly.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.

Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk’s Carefully Crafted Unscheduled Disaster appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This is not a new phenomenon. We have been living in hyperreality ever since the dawn of the consumer society in the early 20^th century. When news itself becomes a commodity, hyperreality is destined to thrive. Hyperreality nevertheless requires a sophisticated infrastructure to produce its desired effect: replacing our perception of the real world by the illusion of a more sophisticated order. Journalism can thus design relaity to better satisfy our needs and desires. Once that infrastructure is in place, hyperreal content becomes the easiest product to create and disseminate. And the most profitable.

Journalists at The New York Times and The Washington Post  and most other popular media understand that. In times of conflict, they seize the opportunity to elevate war propaganda to the summit of hyperreality. It is a chance to please the authorities concerned with managing the government’s role in the conflict and to entertain a public that responds to simplistic narratives focused on winning and losing. War itself has become entertainment, especially when no one in one’s own community is a victim of that war. The fact that it is entertainment makes the journalists’ job easier, since the message can be repeated day after day. The game then becomes one of adapting the facts to the message rather than letting facts reveal the much messier truth.

Having been tried and tested for the better part of a century, hyperreality in the news has become a wonderfully efficient system. For the public, propaganda is the most effortless news to consume. It generates emotion while stifling thought. It answers questions even before they are formulated, dispensing the public from wondering about what the shape of truth might look like. But like so many other products of mass consumption, propaganda tends to be fattening, starting with a permanent tendency of propaganda to bloat itself to the point of totally obscuring any clear view of reality itself.

In times of peace, hyperreality can exist without obvious propaganda. But the hyper-simplistic logic of war propaganda always helps, which is why today’s bloated, and indeed obese consumer society in the US requires either forever wars or, at the very least, when the old wars begin to fade, successive wars. War and the propaganda it generates serve the goals of the commerce that sits at the core of all modern media, including social media.

In our review of hyperreality in the news, this week we will feature five stories. �մǻ岹��’s article analyzes the rich hyperreality that emerges from a lengthy interview with hyperreal hero, Elon Musk. The next one will explore two examples of hyperreality: Andrew Yang’s initiative to launch a third party in the US and an astonishingly inappropriate photo shoot for Vogue in Ukraine. 

Later in the week we will look at the surprising transformation of a long-running Al Jazeera program focused on analyzing the news that unwittingly reveals its own commitment to hyperreality and the shocking injustice visited upon a peace-loving Russian citizen by her autocratic government.

Elon Musk is still the beating heart of hyperreality

Last week Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the Axel Springer group the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Reporting on the interview, Musk’s claim that “the world cannot let Russian President Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine because if he can get away with it, this will be a message to other countries that perhaps they could get away with it too.”

Some – though probably not very many – may remember that Musk is the man who two years ago, referring to the coup that sent Bolivian President Evo Morales into exile,: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Neither Business Insider nor any other publication reporting on Döpfner’s interview with Musk appears to detect any contradiction between those two assertions by the great (i.e. wealthy) man whose advice everyone seeks for the betterment of the world.

There’s a good reason for this.  As an agent of hyperreality, the media’s job is to erase contradiction by carefully excluding reality from the public’s line of vision. Hyperreality must always appear as smooth, seamlessly consistent and readily consumable, requiring no deeper analysis. Reflection and the construction of perspective are far too time-consuming for the average consumer of the news.

In the interview, Döpfner described the CEO of Tesla as “a strategic weapon in modern warfare.” In response, Musk modestly explained: “I do whatever I think is most likely to ensure that the future is good for humanity.” Döpfner uncritically accepted as unambiguously truthful Musk’s proclaimed interest in ensuring humanity’s future. He doesn’t wonder for a second about another fact, that the bulk of humanity lacks any power to “ensure” that its own future will be good. For Döpfner as for most commentators in the media, the message is: In Musk we trust.

Reporting on the same interview, another facet of the modern hyperreal worldview. “During the same interview,” it reports, “the tech tycoon explained that someone of his rank had a responsibility and should therefore use the power and influence that is his to influence the conduct of world affairs.” 

The key word in this observation is “rank.” In a world that presumably believes in democracy and equality, a class system exists in which it is implicitly acknowledged that one caste is not just allowed, but even expected to dominate. Musk has never been elected to anything, but he has been selected by the capitalist economy and welcomed by other members of the superior caste as one of their own, and now the richest of them all. That caste includes Axel Springer’s CEO, who clearly expects the unelected Musk to “influence the conduct of world affairs.” 

As every “influencer” on Twitter or TikTok now knows, influence has become the quintessential fuel of hyperreality. It was formerly left to Hollywood and Madison Avenue to influence our minds and our very perception of the world. Now the task falls to anyone with the chutzpah to impose their personality on the world and create the belief that what they think is not only important and worth listening to, but in quasi-religious terms, the light and the truth. Money, of course, helps. A mere two years ago, Elon Musk’s net worth was evaluated at around $20 billion. That afforded him a lot of influence and scope to impose his contribution to hyperreality. Now it’s close to $260 billion. The Axel Springer’s CEO laps up that hyperreal vision and builds it into his own vision of the world.

Whether exerted by the thousands of social media influencers, dispensable pawns in a volatile marketplace, or the king himself, Elon Musk  – the world’s wealthiest human being  – the point of influence is to craft the kind of illusion the mass of consumers will believe in.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Hyperreality as the News! – The Elon Musk Interview appeared first on 51�Թ�.

To address the problem with any hope of achieving success, humanity has two choices. The first would be to remove inequality itself as the founding principle of the dominant economic system. That would mean inventing a form of capitalism that downgraded personal and institutional greed as the essential factor of motivation. The second would be simply to change the economic system and its political infrastructure. 

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Because the second solution is deemed radical, most people have eliminated it from consideration. On the pretext of responding to the pandemic, the first solution has been awkwardly formulated as an ideal to aim for by members of the economic elite who have given it the “The Great Reset.” Given its lack of real impact, cynics might conclude that it serves primarily to comfort the idea of those members of the privileged elite that, as individuals, they possess a moral conscience. As a class, they pretty clearly have none.

The pundits will explain that changing the economic system is out of the question, citing history as proof. It has already been tried, in Soviet Russia. It catastrophically failed. Capitalism won. The idea that there may ways of inventing an alternative to a failed and a now visibly failing system has been excluded from polite thought by the economic and political elite. 

They have crafted and imposed on successive generations a deterministic view of history, dutifully transmitted through our dominant educational and media culture. It is the same deterministic view of history that the late David Graeber and David Wengrow have critiqued in their recently published book, “The Dawn of Everything.” The standard view of history implies a vision of progress from the age of hunter-gatherers to present times, leading to the current state of affairs summed up by US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in her immortal : “We’re capitalists and that’s just the way it is.”

The question of wealth inequality has been given a boost this week by Elon Musk, who is no fan of Democrats, but who does share Pelosi’s existential belief. In the context of debate on the reconciliation bill that US President Joe Biden calls “Build Back Better” (a term by the same elite that have proposed The Great Reset), some legislators — notably Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee — have been pushing for the inclusion of a tax targeting the super-wealthy. In recent years, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, both candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, put the issue in the public spotlight.

Polls and surveys show that the idea of taxing the wealthy, at least in proportions similar to the middle class, is a very popular idea across the US. And although Republicans are formally committed to a historical ideology that adulates the wealthy and will defend at all costs their essential privileges in the belief that that is the key to a dynamic economy, Democrats have begun to understand that there may be an electoral advantage in at least affirming publicly you want to tax the wealthy.

Markets Insider up the psychological position the Democrats find themselves in today during the ongoing negotiations to tax the wealthy that will figure in the reconciliation bill. “The White House hasn’t quite leaned into an outright wealth tax, even though polling consistently shows it’s popular with most voters, who want higher taxes on the wealthy to offset infrastructure spending,” the website reports.

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Most voters:

Those whose numbers represent a largely insignificant statistic in modern democracies because they cannot back up their convictions with the cash that serves to finance the campaigns of the people they will eventually have to vote for because there will never be given credible alternatives

Contextual Note

The entire debate took on new significance when Sanders — who , “We must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. Period” — drew the ire of his majesty of Twitter’s Elon Musk. The CEO of Tesla responded with this insulting : “I keep forgetting you’re still alive.”

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Musk has never tried to hide his hyperreal narcissism, but in this case, he makes it plain for everyone to see. His fans applauded and piled on with tweets such as this : “Bernie is the kind of guy that shows up to a potluck with no dish but Tupperware containers to take food home.”

But apart from his devoted fans, the public has no reason to care about what or whom Musk remembers or forgets. After decades of coddling by the media, Musk apparently believes his thought processes sum up the essence of humanity’s current concerns. After all, he recently became the world’s wealthiest human being. According to traditional US wisdom, if he’s hyper-wealthy, he must be hyper-smart.

Historical Note

Quite logically, in Elon Musk’s eyes, questioning the idea of excessive wealth is equivalent to attacking Musk himself. Seeing himself as humanity’s greatest benefactor, he continued his assault on Bernie Sanders with a mindless repeating the stale cliché of Mitt Romney Republicans back in 2012: “Bernie is a taker, not a maker.”

Musk sums up with blinding clarity the oligarchic state not just of American democracy, but of the culture that for the moment keeps it firmly on the same path. But that very path must be understood in terms of its own historical trend. It has become increasingly risky. 

Comparing the much mediatized and constantly expanding wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or even the officially retired Bill Gates (who should thus be excluded from the caste of “makers”) with the miserable wages of the majority of human beings who actually do make things for the pleasure and prosperity of the wealthy, the general public is undergoing a prolonged traumatic experience. The sophisticated wealthy of the international super-elite who gather in Davos every year appear to be aware of the danger. That is why they are calling for the Great Reset. The super-wealthy class in the US appears, in contrast, to wallow in their indifference to the public’s trauma.

How has the American elite managed to create a situation that encourages such indifference and ignores the risks? The answer is simple: an effective ideology. The United States finds itself today in a situation similar to that of the Soviet Union half a century ago. Soviet communism was sufficiently resourced and organized to maintain a fragile equilibrium for the general population thanks to their inculcated belief in an ideological belief system designed to protect the ruling elite. 

The Soviet system finally collapsed at the end of the 1980s due to the increasingly evident gap between the supposed truisms contained in the ideology and the physical and psychological reality of the global economy. In the early 1990s, thanks to US initiatives, Russia’s ideology based on the belief that communism defined the interest and identity of the people was brutally replaced by the ideological precept repeated mechanically by Pelosi that we are all capitalists.

Americans who admire Musk do so because of their own inculcated belief in the idea that society consists of makers and takers. This implies that the takers (aka “most voters”) depend on the makers, just as the average Russian depended on Soviet leadership. But, in the Soviet Union 40 years ago, the lived reality increasingly told a different story.

Something similar is happening in the US today. Awareness of the gap is growing. It contributed to Donald Trump’s election in 2016. The professional ideologues in the economy, the media, education and politics are doing all they can to counter it, to keep the takers vs. makers ideology alive. That includes all Republicans, of course, but also Pelosi and more recently Senator Joe Manchin, who argued that a wealth tax would be “overly punitive toward business and corporate leaders,” Business Insider .

The conflict between “most voters” and the ideologues will undoubtedly continue to play in favor of the ideologues, thanks to a system that makes voters (takers) less equal than donors (makers). But, as in Soviet Russia, a tipping point may be somewhere in the offing.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk vs. Bernie Sanders appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Yes, he’s brazenly touted some things and complained about others, such as the dreadful prospect of seeing billionaires taxed by a spendthrift government. Musk it up in a tweet cryptically warning that “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.” In another , he complained that “Spending is the real problem.” He didn’t bother to mention that the US federal government has done a lot of spending to support his megalomaniacal projects. 

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When wealthy US citizens say spending is the problem, they mean spending on human and social needs is the problem. True Americans pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Deprived of government spending, decent people would find ways of meeting their own needs. Musk’s particular needs appear to be situated in the $100 billion to $1 trillion range, but he is the first one to admit he is an exception. Ordinary people can get by with much less.

Things may at last be getting back to normal. Musk is still finding ways to be talked about. This breaks a dry spell when there were few of his blockbuster stories such as benign discipline by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), getting sued for calling a heroic British diver a “pedo guy,” or promising and then postponing his conquest and subsequent colonialization of Mars.

Like any other multibillionaire during the COVID-19 pandemic, but on a greater scale, Musk augmented his wealth. He began overtaking the former number one, Jeff Bezos, earlier this year and now has become the undisputed world champion, reaching upwards of $320 billion this week, way ahead of Bezos, who hasn’t yet hit $200 billion. There are days during which Musk’s fortune can jump by more than $30 billion in less than 24 hours.

The reason for the latest leap in his net worth was the news that car rental company Hertz would order 100,000 Teslas. The only problem is that, even after the share price shot skyward following that announcement, Musk tweeted that no deal was actually signed. This led to feverish speculation in the media about what was going on.

CNN Business Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, who gave his point of view, analyzing it in terms of a negotiator’s psychology. “We view the Hertz tweet as a game of high stakes poker, with likely legal wrangling going on in the background between Hertz and Tesla. Hertz has already announced the deal and it’s a matter of procedure with getting the deal signed. Musk’s tweet this morning will likely force pen to paper for Hertz,” Ives said.

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

High stakes poker:

Another term for capitalism, formerly believed to describe an economic system but now clearly understood to be a speculative game characterized by the player’s skill at bluffing

Contextual Note

On November 1, Musk , “If any of this is based on Hertz, I’d like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet.” To those familiar with his special sense of humor, this was obviously a joke, since there was no reason to doubt — as Musk’s “if” clause seemed to suggest — that the leap in Tesla’s stock was based on the Hertz announcement. By pretending he doesn’t know, Musk cleverly plays the innocent. He knowingly gives the impression of not understanding or possibly not even caring about the absurd fluctuations of share prices as a result of mob psychology. It allows him to appear as a Warren Buffet-style economic realist who believes that share prices reflect, or should only reflect, economic fundamentals.

Ives may be right to speculate that Musk’s aim is to shame Hertz into firming up the deal, even though there is no reason to think that Hertz might be hesitating. Nobody forced the car company to make the announcement. But Musk may have another trick up his sleeve.

The day the deal is actually signed — whether it’s tomorrow, next week or in a few months — the psychology of markets tells us that the announcement of a finalized deal will send the stock price skyrocketing once again. Not only will that make Musk even richer, but it will also demonstrate his ability to control other people’s behavior in the stock market. That’s how bluffing can pay off in high-stakes poker.

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In recent weeks, Musk has also taken to playing with national politics by challenging the Democrats’ persistent chatter about instituting a wealth tax. He followed that up by engaging in a confused debate with a UN expert on the solution to world hunger. He suggested his possible willingness — on condition — to give away $6 billion. In terms of style, it was vaguely similar to his comments on the future share price of Tesla back in 2018. He did both in an offhand way that appeared to mock the “experts.” 

Musk demonstrates a masterful ability to exploit the trend of our civilization toward allowing hyperreality — a set of illusions about how the world we live in is constructed — to replace our perception of reality. It’s a game of appearances. Musk appears to be involved in national and world politics, but he isn’t. He appears to be grappling with real problems, but he clearly doesn’t care. It is a game he originally played when he created a non-existent equation between marketing electric cars and solving the climate crisis.

Historical Note

Elon Musk has managed to do what other hyperreal heroes have failed to do. That has positioned him at the center of a moment of US history marked by Donald Trump’s successful and enduring assault on reality. Like Trump, Musk has crafted his identity as the incarnation of an entertainer who pretends not to be pretending, while using every occasion to highlight his skill at pretending. 

At this game, Musk outperforms Trump in numerous ways. But the two have followed parallel paths. One created his own version of hyperreal political power, the other of hyperreal financial power. Any serious observer should have noticed that Trump has nothing to do with the reality of politics, in the sense that the term has been understood ever since Aristotle. Politics is the science of how a polis is governed. Similarly, Musk has become the world’s richest individual in record time, but what he has achieved has nothing to do with money in its traditional sense of being a stable measure of value.

Unlike Warren Buffett, who represents another brand of hyperreality, Musk insists on playing with the notion of hyperreality itself, bluntly and brazenly exaggerating every act and utterance to the extent that no one knows whether anything he says or does belongs to the world of concrete reality or exists as an illusion in an elaborate hall of mirrors similar to the device Orson Welles’ used in the final of “Lady from Shanghai.”

Welles should probably be credited as the first public intellectual in America to understand and dare to visually demonstrate the inexorable drift of US culture toward hyperreality. For his pains, Welles was understandably exiled from Hollywood and eventually from the US itself. In his day, reality still had enough of a presence in the nation’s culture to create discomfort with hyperbolic manifestations of hyperreality. Many intellectuals who were beginning to become aware of the drift toward hyperreality understood and admired Welles’ contribution. But they saw it as merely a facet of his personality as a cinematographer. More generally, Americans categorized him as an eccentric. They felt no motivation to understand the meaning of hidden messages in his work. Most stopped showing an interest in his work altogether.

Musk keeps getting richer while saying and doing things Americans find incomprehensible. His latest , in the context of solving world hunger, was to tweet the word “Humankind” followed by lines from an ancient Chinese poem. This has led to more lucid from social media users in China than from all the pundits in the US. When the Chinese say “Musk giving up his wealth is in line with the Communist Party’s push for common prosperity,” they may well be expressing the kind of deadpan humor that hyperreality is incapable of dealing with.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Whatever Happened to Elon Musk? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In July 2018, Musk’s improvised tweets landed him in hot water with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for suspected manipulation of Tesla’s stock price. It may have been merely an inadvertent consequence of his narcissism, a fact that some consider worse than intentional manipulation. In any case, it sparked debate about Musk himself, the hyperreal volatility of the stock market, the mystery of international finance (in this case Saudi money) and of course the enigma of the “true value” of Tesla. “Musk’s misleading tweets caused Tesla’s stock price to jump by over six percent on August 7, and led to significant market disruption,” reads a by the SEC.

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In an unrelated story from the same year, Musk was the object of a high-profile leveled by the British cave rescuer, David Unsworth, whom Musk gratuitously insulted in another of his tweets, calling him a pedophile. This tweet was provoked by the arrogance of Unsworth to criticize Musk’s hare-brained plan to build a mini-submarine and send it to rescue a group of children trapped in the rising waters of an underwater cave.

Since 2018, Musk has earned a permanent place in everyone’s headlines, often thanks to the forward-looking projects he is known for, but more recently for another reason. Thanks to the irrational nature of the stock market and the mad rush in recent months on Tesla’s shares, Musk has catapulted to the rank of the richest person in the world, or at least as an equal in a tag-team, partnered with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, of people so rich the idea of personal wealth no longer makes any sense.

One person who has occasionally made the headlines, not for his vainglorious tweets but for his acumen and prescience, is Michael Burry. Burry is that odd character, the maverick in the world of finance, who understood and anticipated the subprime crash in 2007-08 rather than succumbing to the great illusion his peers promoted. That distinction — and the money it earned him — provided Burry with the honor of being celebrated as the main character in Michael Lewis’ book, “The Big Short,” and then being played by no less an actor than Christian Bale in the wonderful movie based on Lewis’ book.

Burry is back in the Business Insider with some sobering comments on Tesla and implicitly Musk himself. As the financial world is aghast in admiration at the spectacular gains of Tesla’s stock price — now flirting with $800 — and Musk overtaking Bezos in January as world number 1, Burry sees the Tesla phenomenon as an unorthodox bubble. The article quotes Burry saying, “If Tesla stock plummets 90% this year, it would put a stop to cult-like support of certain companies without endangering the financial system.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Cult-like:

The quality ambitious hyperreal personalities hope the public will attribute first to their ventures and then to themselves, as hyperreal superheroes charged with guiding humanity to a higher level of existence

Contextual Note

Business Insider reminds its readers that Burry’s comments are a whim to make headlines. He “has been skeptical of Tesla since at least last fall, when he began tweeting about the automaker’s limited profitability, reliance on sales of regulatory credits, and sky-high valuation relative to its industry peers.” The financial guru also played a role in the GameStop drama that dominated headlines earlier this month. He “laid the groundwork for the recent GameStop short-squeeze when he invested in the video-game retailer in 2019.”

Musk is undoubtedly the greatest incarnation of scientific, financial and, ultimately, political hyperreality. He cannot be directly political because his role consists of exemplifying in the most dramatic fashion the “American dream.” Politicians need to point to the “dream” to make people believe in the merits of the system that has produced Musk. 

The Tesla founder exists and promotes himself as a kind of brilliant illusion, a narcissistic figment of other people’s cultural marketing. Musk doesn’t need to market himself. He just needs to be. The common people need him to buttress their belief in a moral system that says success, celebrity, wealth, technological progress and assertive self-indulgence are the pillars on which civilization is built. 

Earlier this week, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin cited the launched by Musk himself that Bill Gates has been shorting Tesla. Sorkin tried to get Gates to confess. Gates dodged the question by saying, “I don’t talk about my investments.” A minute earlier, he had been talking to Sorkin about his investments in green enterprises. Playing the innocent, Gates added this remark: “We need more Elon Musks.”

That’s how hyperreality works. It tells you there is no contradiction when what you’ve just heard is the opposite of what you are expected to believe. It also tells you that anyone who reaches a certain level of wealth or celebrity is “needed.” As Anand Giridharadas has so thoroughly , people who make a lot of money and then do philanthropy deserve two things: to be uncritically believed and to be emulated. They understand better than we do our own needs. That is why we need more Elon Musks. The rest of humanity “needs” hyperreal superheroes. Though Gates personally lacks the aura and superficial narcissism, he clearly thinks of himself as a superhero like Musk, charged with the task of guiding the rest of humanity into the future.

This week, Musk has again been of market manipulation, this time related to bitcoin. “Nouriel Roubini said Elon Musk’s tweet about bitcoin ahead of Tesla’s investment in the cryptocurrency is a form of ‘market manipulation’ and the SEC should investigate,” Business Insider reports. What Roubini, an economist, really means is that what hyperreal superheroes say or do is intended to distort reality. Roubini appears to believe that reality still has a chance of competing with hyperreality. Most headlines today prove him wrong.

Historical Note

Michael Burry has earned his place in history as an acute observer of the behavior of players in the casino called the stock market. His wisdom should not be discounted. He now believes that the phenomena of Tesla and GameStop have enough shock value to mark a paradigm change in the behaviors associated with stock markets. He claims that if the stock market ends up exposing Tesla as a bubble, “it would trigger the end of an era for a certain type of investing.” He is convinced that Wall Street culture has come close to a tipping : “Markets have now bubbled over in a dangerous way.”

If, following the GameStop saga, Tesla’s stock drops as dramatically as analysts think possible, will people really learn from it in the way Burry expects or hopes? History tells us that crashes rarely turn into teaching moments. But Burry understands hyperreality. He probably imagines that if historical change takes place, it will be more about how the media presents the narrative than anything in the real economy or the stock market itself. When the public learns that Elon Musk is only worth $20 billion again and Jeff Bezos stands alone in the ring, the shock will transform the media’s reporting from hyperreal to surreal.

Americans are generally as disillusioned with their economy as they are with their political system. They increasingly realize that not only does it not care too much about them, but it asks them to care about its superheroes. The dissonance is growing. People really do want to believe in superheroes. They have been taught that superheroes are the core of the system, the ones who radiate the prosperity we all share in. But fewer and fewer people believe that the sharing is real.

The Jim Jones ran so successfully for several years expired in an orgy of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Jones was the community’s hyperreal hero. Burry seems surprised that cult heroes should have such an impact on something as basically material as Wall Street shares prices. Perhaps Burry has been distracted by his deep knowledge of the stock market. He may need a few lessons in US culture.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Cults Have Conquered Wall Street appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In case anyone was wondering about the destination of those multiple trillions earmarked by the US Congress in March to respond to the devastating pandemic, Langlois crunches the numbers. “Since the pandemic first blew up in the U.S. back in March, the ‘Oligarchic Dozen’ has enjoyed a 40% surge in its combined wealth — or an increase of $283 billion,” he writes.

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This might leave some people with nothing better to do (e.g., the unemployed) to wonder how much hard work those 12 people have engaged in over the past five months and how that might translate in terms of an hourly wage. The case of Musk, though the most extreme, provides a dramatic indication of the trend. With a fortune now estimated at $73 billion, he has gained around $50 billion in that stretch of time. Even if he worked 20 hours a day for 150 days, that would produce an hourly rate of $16.7 million. That means he could buy nearly three of Rafael Nadal’s yachts every hour he spent on the job for the past five months.

But the billionaire shareholders aren’t the only ones whose gains fail to correlate with the work they may or may not have put in. Langlois continues: “And it’s not just Bezos and the bunch who have seen fortune smile upon them lately. CEO compensation, overall, climbed to its highest level in seven years last year, and it is positioned to rise once again in 2020, according to an Economic Policy Institute study cited by the Washington Post.” Nobody in recent decades has complained that CEOs were poorly compensated and needed a boost.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Compensation:

In the traditional economy, a usually insufficient and sometimes merely symbolic reward for trouble, loss, suffering or damage incurred. In the modern economy, an excessive reward for people whose skills consist essentially at skirting trouble and enriching people often wealthier than themselves (shareholders)

Contextual Note

Another form of compensation organized by members of the elite made it into the news yesterday when it was revealed that former White House adviser Steve Bannon and three other people were charged by the US Justice Department with wire fraud for receiving “compensation” from a charity scam based on President Donald Trump’s promise to build a border wall with Mexico. Bannon was arrested on a luxury yacht anchored off the coast of Connecticut that belongs to a Chinese billionaire, who is wanted in China for “money laundering, bribery and rape.”

The charges that, after vowing they would “not take a penny in salary or compensation,” the founders of the charity in fact “received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from [the] We Build the Wall [crowdfunding campaign], which they each used in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations.” They had promised that “100% of the funds raised” would “be used in the execution of our mission and purpose.”

From stock options to salaries and extravagant expenses, not only the Oligarchic Dozen and the CEOs of listed companies but also activist grifters like Bannon have honed their skills at compensating themselves to support an elitist lifestyle and gain influence in the political realm, managed by the true oligarchs through their funding of political campaigns. 

Bannon is a multi-millionaire, with a net worth of $55 million, hardly worthy of belonging to the oligarchy. But beyond the dozen at the top and other billionaires, there are tens of thousands of people like Bannon and his associates who find clever ways of enriching themselves with very little of the “hard work” that supposedly explains all capitalists’ fortunes.

The cast of oligarchic masters (the multibillionaires) and their loyal servants (multimillionaires like Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein) believes in its mission to wield the “economic and political power” that Langlois attributes to them and worries about. The excessive and sometimes out of control behavior of some of the oligarchs (Musk is the prime example) is complemented by the outrageous personalities of courtiers like Epstein and Bannon. Trump stands between the two groups as a would-be oligarch and a billionaire scam artist, revealing — to the level of self-parody — the hyperreal nature of the political-economic theatrical décor associated with their in-your-face celebrity culture.   

The Democratic National Convention has offered multiple speakers complaining bitterly that President Trump is a threat to democracy. None of the speakers has dared to evoke the idea that to the extent that the US has already become an oligarchy it has ceased to be a functioning democracy, with or without Trump. In the 90 seconds she managed to squeeze in, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came the closest when she evoked “the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few, at the expense of long-term stability for the many.”

Nevertheless, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has promised that an administration led by Democratic nominee Joe Biden would not only tackle the problem of wealth inequality but banish it. Schumer to “undo the vicious inequality of income and wealth that has plagued America for too long.” How long? Decades? If so, why didn’t he do it when the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House between 2009 and 2011?

Historical Note

Despite the novelty of the coronavirus-provoked economic crisis, today’s pattern prolongs the system put in place following the 2008 financial crisis. For the bulk of the wage-earning population, the crises of 2008 and 2020 have produced the equivalent of a permanent economic recession, sometimes resembling a depression. With tsunamis of cash released twice in the space of 12 years, the depression that affects middle-class income has kept consumer prices down. Instead, the runaway inflation expected when governments profligately print money has fed assets alone, leading to the automatic enrichment of those who already possess the majority of the wealth.

This is a unique historical phenomenon, imagined and carried out by the oligarchy’s brilliant technocrats. The disturbing and ever-deepening economic crisis the world is now facing has all the earmarks of a depression. But it doesn’t look like one because, for the last decade, it has been overshadowed by a slowly-expanding asset bubble. The response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has rapidly accelerated the growth of the bubble. That should indicate imminent danger.

In August 2018, Apple incredibly became the first $1-trillion company, swiftly followed by Amazon, Microsoft and then Alphabet (Google’s parent company). This week, Apple even more incredibly reached an evaluation of $2 trillion. Brian Sozzi at Yahoo Finance that alarm bells are already ringing on Wall Street based on analysts’ reading of the “Buffett indicator,” which is “at its highest level since before the internet bubble crash in 2000.”

In a perfectly healthy economy, the Buffett ratio would be 1. Having reached 1.71, the reality of the bubble cannot be denied. But the real danger, as one analyst points out, is that it is likely to continue growing. Tom Essaye, the founder of Sevens Report Research, explains that “it also means this asset inflation cycle better not stop, because as the 1.7 times total market cap to GDP ratio tells us if asset inflation stops, it’s a long, long way down to fundamental support.”

Analyzing the case of Apple, The New York Times this inflation literally to an irrational belief, an article of faith. “Investors are paying more for each dollar that Apple expects to earn, believing either that the company could make even more money in the future or that any sort of earnings growth in this market is worth a premium,” The Times reports. “The latter seems a popular belief, with tech giants benefiting from people’s increasingly digital lives during pandemic lockdowns, while most other sectors are struggling through the worst recession in generations.”

The moral of the story: Why, as the Puritan founders of the US assumed, count on getting rich through hard work when you can earn your entry pass into oligarchic hyperreality simply through an act of faith?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post US Oligarchs Are Literally Bubbling With Emotion appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Treating the current instability in Bolivia with the perspective acquired 10 months after the ouster of Evo Morales, the former president, should have provided a perfect opportunity to review the complex drama surrounding that coup. Instead, the authors chose to describe the dramatic events unfolding today as a simple contest between two opposing groups. The article reports on the roadblocks organized by anti-government protesters that have paralyzed several cities in Bolivia. It cites two motives behind the protests: “to challenge the delay of general elections and rebuke the government’s poor response to the coronavirus pandemic.”

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The authors have reduced an existential geopolitical drama to little more than a vigorous election campaign between two sides with contrary views of the best way of governing. They do take the trouble to mention, in a single sentence, the crucial spark that set off the crisis: “Mr. Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, was ousted from power in November after a fraught bid for a fourth term.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Fraught:

A convenient adjective to describe a situation characterized by factors that cause anxiety and stress leading to suffering while creating the impression that the reasons for the anxiety are inexplicable, there being no identifiable party responsible for either the stress or the suffering, which also may simply be imaginary

Contextual Note

The New York Times has an excellent reason for avoiding to delve into the complex facts behind Morales’ “fraught bid for a fourth term.” The Times itself not only misreported those facts at the time of Morales’ ouster, but the journal actively contributed to justifying a right-wing, anti-indigenous coup led by a fanatically evangelical Christian faction that the US government and its media supported under manifestly false pretenses.

The authors are skilled in The Times’ art of crafting reporting to get a political message across while hiding their own allegiances from view. In the sentence cited above — “Mr. Morales…. was ousted from power” — the authors deftly use the passive construction to exclude any reference to how the ousting took place, by whom and with what objective. It was just something that happened, possibly on its own. The ouster was successful and now belongs to history. The passive mood removes any consideration of accountability.

In an earlier published in June revealing the uncomfortable truth that the pretext for removing Morales was flawed, the authors also demonstrated their talent at carefully designing their wording to remove the question of agency: “Mr. Morales’s downfall paved the way to a staunchly right-wing caretaker government, led by Jeanine Añez, which has not yet fulfilled its mandate to oversee swift new elections.”

Calling it “Mr. Morales’s downfall” implies that, like Humpty Dumpty, the president teetered and fell off the wall. Nobody pushed him. The metaphor “paved the way” implies that the Anez government simply wandered innocently into a situation of Morales’ making and profited from it. Continuing to call it a “caretaker government” denies what most observers had at least since January: that “the right-wing former senator entered the presidential palace claiming a much bigger mandate,” as Angus McNelly put it.

Finally, adding “yet” to the observation that the Anez government has not “fulfilled its mandate” fails to recognize the increasingly evident fact that it has no intention to keep its promise. The very idea of a “mandate” also obscures the more egregious fact that nobody actually issued a mandate. Back in the thick of events in November 2019, Kurmanaev, quoting Javier Corrales of Amherst College, the position of the Anez faction: “Without a popular mandate, they are pushing forward some of the most objectionable aspects of their agenda.”

Then there’s the question of possible US involvement, which The New York Times famously dislikes mentioning whenever left-wing governments fall. In the June article, the authors offered a single hint at the US State Department’s likely involvement in the coup. “The United States State Department quickly reacted to the O.A.S. [Organization of American States] statement, accusing electoral officials of trying to ‘subvert Bolivia’s democracy,’” they wrote.

This leaves the impression that the US was nothing more than a neutral observer of the events that played out and that its only interest in the affair is safeguarding democracy. The same article highlighted the flawed accusations of electoral fraud that led to Morales’ ouster — accusations put forward by the OAS, which is largely obedient to the US. Clearly, with hindsight, the US was quite content to see Bolivian democracy not only subverted but canceled.

The article concludes with the now traditional “false balance” or “” characteristic of NYT journalism. Referring to the strategic implications around the current protests and their possible political consequences, the authors quote Filipe Carvalho, a Washington-based analyst. “Both sides are playing the pandemic for electoral gain, adding a new level of tensions,” he said. This leads the journalists to the melancholy conclusion: “Whoever wins will take control of a highly divided country in deep recession and few options to restart economic growth.”

Historical Note

Anatoly Kurmanaev’s on December 5, 2019, began with this sentence: “An independent international audit of Bolivia’s disputed election concluded that former President Evo Morales’s officials resorted to lies, manipulation and forgery to ensure his victory.”

On June 7 of this year, Kurmanaev and Maria Silvia Trigo an update with this explanation: “A close look at Bolivian election data suggests an initial analysis by the O.A.S. that raised questions of vote-rigging — and helped force out a president — was flawed.” Instead of pointing to politically interested deceit, they attributed everything to the fault of undue haste. Quoting Calla Hummel, a Bolivia observer at the University of Miami, they write, “The issue with the O.A.S. report is that they did it very quickly.”

As The Times reporters consistently skirted around the facts concerning Morales’ ouster, two other reporters, Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano, for Salon, have provided a more complete historical background. They have updated the history with a revealing story about how American interests have been involved in the Bolivian economy well before the dramatic events of 2019.

The authors call Morales’ ouster “the lithium coup.” In July, Elon Musk up to the public witness box with a tweet that inadvertently provided evidence of the economic and political intrigue underlying Bolivia’s drama. The billionaire entrepreneur began by advising the American people against the evils of too much generosity. “Another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people imo,” Musk on Twitter. This provoked the following response from a user called Armani: “You know what wasnt in the best interest of people? the U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.”

Instead of denying any connection with the coup, Musk defiantly tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it.” Apparently realizing that this might be interpreted as a confession of collusion, he later deleted the tweet.

This battle of tweets could be dismissed as just another example of Musk’s Trump-like irresponsible addiction to Twitter. It doesn’t prove Tesla’s CEO had any hand in or knowledge of the events that led to the coup in Bolivia, though the lithium factor and Musk’s initiatives in South America would seem to point in that direction.

But Musk’s formulation of his message is revealing. He claims “we” have the right to foment coups. He begins by claiming to speak in the name of the “interests of the [American] people.” But the “we” he identifies with is not the people. It’s US imperial power, a force that for more than a century has intervened against “whoever we want” as it has both successfully and unsuccessfully sought to overthrow any government guilty of showing a preference for the interest of its people to the detriment of American businesses.

On the day following Musk’s original tweet advising against a stimulus package following the economic downturn in the US, The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd an interview with him in which she affirmed that “he also really does want to save the world and make products that bring joy.” In the end, that’s how The Times has treated all the coups of the past. The rest of the world simply has to learn to “deal with it.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The NY Times and Elon Musk Deal With Bolivia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Musk himself has absolutely no doubt that he is smart. Like any good American (even those born in South Africa), he seems to realize that his expanding wealth is the greatest proof of his intelligence. That may explain why he allows himself to say (or tweet) things that not everyone perceives as smart. For example, he wrote in a last week, “Aliens built the pyramids obv.” 

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In any case, the Egyptians didn’t perceive that as smart and invited Musk to come and have a look, following the proverbial wisdom that “seeing is believing,” at least for smart people.

It is of course possible to be rich without being smart. In a bold thought experiment, one might even imagine the case of a sitting president who inherited his wealth but seems devoid of intelligence. It might even be reasonable for a social scientist to posit the hypothesis that inheritance of wealth correlates negatively with intelligence. But, more fundamentally, Americans really do have difficulty understanding why anyone who is smart is not rich. What’s the point of intelligence if it doesn’t produce a steady income stream?

The word “smart” itself has always been ambiguous in English. For most Americans, smart simply means intelligent. To Brits, until recently, smart tended to mean well-dressed or what Americans would call “spiffy.” Thanks to their exposure to American movies, pop music and television, the British now have the intelligence to understand what smart really means.

So, while the status of the idea of smart is still in a slight state of flux, a new problem of ambiguity has emerged. It concerns the notion of intelligence, which now exists in two flavors: human and artificial. The battle between them has become the new match of the century. Who will win? Who deserves to win? As Musk and others have been telling us for several years, it is now time to take sides.

Some see this opposition as an example of US culture’s obsession with turning everything into a contest between two radically opposed adversaries, each seeking to prove its superiority over the other. All distinctions, even intellectual ones, are subject to the law of competition, which — whether in sports or academic debate — offers the public the exciting spectacle of an existential struggle (that nevertheless tends to enrich both surviving opponents).

So, despite his lapse concerning the pyramids, we know Musk is smart. But he wants us to know that he is not just smart, but smarter than other smart people. To bring home the point, with reference to the contest between human and artificial intelligence (AI), he now blames “smart” people for failing to understand what only he knows to be the danger. 

Here is how he it: “My assessment about why A.I. is overlooked by very smart people is that very smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are. And this is hubris and obviously false.” Musk, the future master of the solar system, cannot himself be accused of hubris. (Note his use of “obviously” that appeared in his comment on the pyramids).

Musk added this: “We’re headed toward a situation where A.I. is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Smart:

Intelligent and rich, and as a consequence — though this need not be mentioned — influential or permitted to exercise power over other people

Contextual Note

There is a sense in which the idea of smart clearly diverges from that of intelligence in US culture. To be intelligent denotes a person’s ability to understand complex phenomena. To be smart connotes the use of intelligence to get one’s way. In a culture that stresses self-reliance, smartness translates as assertiveness. It’s all about achieving success, fame and wealth. That essentially means that it is better to be smart than intelligent.

At the same time that he is promoting the products of a company he created to produce marketable AI products, Musk has sounded the alarm about the risk of domination by non-human intelligence. This may sound paradoxical, but it boils down to Musk’s finely-tuned ability in the art of scientific assertiveness some people call marketing.

When Musk says that “very smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are,” he wants the public to understand that he knows something “very smart people” don’t know. Musk warned about the dangers of AI back in 2016, predicting at that time that “humans risk being treated like house pets by artificial intelligence unless technology is developed that can connect brains to computers.” The Independent’s reporter, Anthony Cuthbertson, us that shortly “after making the remarks, Mr Musk announced a new brain-computer interface startup that is attempting to implant a brain chip using a ‘sewing machine-like device.’”

That is a perfect example of what some people would call marketing smarts. Create fear and then offer a solution to the threat. It is worth reflecting on why AI could never be smart enough to accomplish anything similar. AI simply can never become as smart as Elon Musk.

The first reason is that AI, focused on accumulated knowledge and ensuring the efficient treatment of data, cannot decide to be provocative in the way Musk can. He can make statements that have nothing to do with objective reality or existing bodies of knowledge. They sound authoritative because Musk himself is known to be smart.

Making such statements — whether they concern the future behavior of AI or the construction of the pyramids — are smart things to do because they assertively advance Musk’s interests. Those interests simultaneously include the financial health of his companies and his ego. This highlights the problem AI will face in its future competition with human smartness. It will lack the drive associated with financial interest, the force that defines and models “smart” people’s behavior in today’s consumer society. More significantly, it will utterly lack the notion of ego.

In other words, AI may end up being more intelligent than the brightest scientist, the cleverest lawyer or the most qualified engineer. It may even write books more popular than Harry Potter. It will probably even understand that aliens could not have constructed the pyramids. But it won’t beat Musk in doing what smartness is all about: being assertive and getting one’s way.

Historical note

For the ancient Romans, the verb “intelligere” meant something like “to realize” or “to understand.” But it also includes the sense of noticing, perceiving, estimating and judging. It supposes something that AI by definition cannot possess: proprioception or kinesthesia, a concept that has been as “the body’s ability to sense its location, movements, and actions.”

For the Romans, the notion of intelligence assumed proprioception as its starting point. The Romans even talked about their verbs starting with the idea of subjectivity, in the first person. For a Roman, the verb was “intelligo” (I understand) not “intelligere” (to understand). They assumed there was a subject looking at the world and interacting with it.

As the age of science blossomed in Europe in the 17th century, subjectivity began to take a back seat to a new obsession with objectivity. An entire civilization sought to understand the universe as essentially a sophisticated mechanism. That impelled the scientist and philosopher René Descartes to assert — against the objectivity-oriented trend that he himself was promoting — that the source of intelligence was the undefinable “I.” “Cogito ergo sum.”

Just as “cogito” didn’t require the subject “ego,” even today Latin languages such as Italian and Spanish do not require stating “io” or “yo” to precede a verb. The perceiving subject is understood to be the source. But in English and northern European languages, we simply aren’t allowed to say, for example, “think therefore am.” We need to hear about the ego.

And just as no one doubts Elon Musk’s wealth or intelligence, they don’t doubt that everything he says originates in his ego.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Artificial Intelligence Will Never Be as Smart as Elon Musk appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Slaves Picked Cotton, Senator Cotton Picks a Fight with History

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As everyone should be aware, politically correct culture (PC) — sometimes referred to as “woke” culture, closely related to cancel culture — has become a dominant trend in the era of social media. It offers the permanent opportunity to anyone who feels victimized, or who takes pride in defending groups that are routinely victimized, to interpret the language they read or hear from others in a sense that feeds their sense of outrage.

The text that defines Cohen’s role at Forbes describes him as someone who writes “about leadership, politics, inclusion and social change.” As a defender of inclusion, he has stepped up to the plate to condemn Musk’s attack by agreeing with the collective judgment of the many people who found the billionaire’s cryptic message “to be an offensive and transphobic Tweet.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Pronouns:

Parts of speech that infuriate American proponents of critical theory who believe that language itself is a conscious conspiracy invented by one dominant class or gender to oppress another one.

Contextual Note

Musk has shown a talent for hiring effective lawyers to defend him whenever he crosses a PC line. When the CEO of Tesla recently attacked cave explorer Vernon Unsworth’s reputation by suggesting that the man who saved a group of youngsters from drowning in Thailand was a pedophile, Musk hired attorney Alex Spiro to argue in court that calling Unsworth “pedo guy” in a tweet “was simply heated rhetoric and not meant as a statement of fact.” If Musk needed him again, Spiro would most likely convincingly point out, concerning the transphobic tweet, that he was simply criticizing the confusing ambiguity of pronouns.

Rapper Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, is the mother of Musk’s most recent child, born only a few weeks ago. The parents named the child X Æ A-12, which some may feel “sucks” as a name for a kid. But Musk would probably argue that it’s his constitutional right to give whatever name he prefers to his baby. And in this hyper-competitive world, there should be no limit to a man’s creativity when he is the CEO or founder of multiple innovative corporations that are all focused on sculpting the landscape of humanity’s technological future.

Grimes appears to have discussed these topics with Musk in the recent past. She agrees with Cohen that Musk’s tweet could be interpreted as a denial of the constitutional right of some members of the LGBTQ community to choose the pronoun they require other people to use when referring to them. (Some will claim that that amounts to the denial of other people’s constitutional right to freedom of speech, but the cycle of denial of rights could go on endlessly.)

The rapper was clear about this when she tweeted: “I love you but please turn off ur phone or give me a dall [sic]. I cannot support this hate. Please stop this. I know this is not your heart.” The fact that Grimes didn’t hesitate to accuse her partner of spreading hate appears to validate Cohen’s interpretation.

Cohen sums up the case against Musk in these terms: “By seemingly mocking the issue of personal pronoun usage, the widely-followed entrepreneur isn’t just sharing the musings of an eccentric businessman, he is also stoking a cultural conflict and diminishing an issue that is an important aspect of the recognition and inclusion of transgender and non-conforming individuals.”

That’s a lot to accomplish in two words. It’s true that earlier this month, sports commentator Adrian Wojnarowski managed to cause a major stir resulting in his two-week suspension without pay from ESPN thanks to a two-word tweet he addressed to Senator Josh Hawley. But Musk played it safe. He avoided targeting an elected official.

Cohen admits that Musk may not have intended to express a form of hate. But he insists that his “comment nonetheless shows an incredible amount of ignorance by a man seen by many as one of the boldest and most insightful entrepreneurs of our lifetime.” He calls for Musk to apologize. Cohen seems troubled by the idea that an entrepreneur acknowledged to be bold and insightful should show such ignorance of social trends

Historical Note

Seth Cohen offers his own historical perspective on this event significant enough to justify an article in Forbes and now a column in The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�. He claims that it “comes at a time when America is already mired in a national debate about issues of identity and inclusion, and in particular, inclusion of transgender ���Ի徱������ܲ�����.”&�Բ�����;

There may indeed be a raging debate about pronouns, but in terms of society becoming “mired” at this particular historical moment, shouldn’t other issues take priority, such as wearing a mask, opening schools, defunding the police, kidnapping protesters, tear-gassing mayors, extending or cutting off unemployment benefits and allowing millions of people to be evicted? 

Earlier this week, The Daily Devil’s Dictionary cited linguist Krysten Syrett, who in the course of an NPR interview said in no uncertain terms, “We have to shake up our pronoun system.” That was perhaps her slightly more expansive way of saying that pronouns “suck.” 

No one can predict what the result will look like once the reformers finish shaking up the system of pronouns. Perhaps “he, him” and “she and her” will be banished from the language in the name of equality or a totally new vocabulary invented. Books by writers from Shakespeare to Philip Roth may then need an asterisk after instances of “he” and an explanation of it as an archaic pronoun reserved for one of the two recognized genders in the past when the belief in precisely two genders was widely shared.

Until very recently, the debate was restricted to academics in humanities departments who adhered to the orthodoxy of “critical theory.” The war against the traditional pronoun system within academia has been raging for some time. But now it would seem that all Americans — or at least those who have Twitter accounts or who read Forbes — are called upon to take sides. The issue has even created a rift down the middle of the very unacademic Musk-Grimes couple. How that will affect the upbringing of  X Æ A-12 we can only speculate.

Cohen cites evidence from recent history to prove his assertion that the nation is mired in this war. According to the Human Rights Campaign, “in 2019 at least 27 transgender or gender non-conforming people were fatally shot or killed by violence.” Though the figure is relatively small, statistics concerning violent deaths are always alarming and should be taken seriously when evaluating social issues.

But is this truly a problem of intolerance? It seems far more likely that the explanation for these deaths has less to do with hate toward a specific group and more to do with Americans’ predilection for violence, and particularly gun violence. Independently of their sexual orientation or their attitude toward the “non-conforming,” Americans disproportionately tend to resort to violence as the most direct way of solving a problem or simply venting their frustrations.

More than ever, the social fabric of the US appears “mired” to the point of collapsing into civil war. Language is one issue among many, though Americans tend to focus on it in ways that don’t trouble other cultures to the same degree. The strange thing is that a new civil war will be nothing like the original American Civil War under Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, which was conducted across geographical lines and focused essentially on the status of slavery.

The coming war may be about any number of oppositions and may even find ways of combining them. Whether the spark that sets it off is police brutality, income inequality, oligarchic control, racial status or pronouns remains to be seen.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk Declares War on Pronouns appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Although that he does need the cash to exercise a stock option “worth more than $1 billion” that would require him to produce $592 million in cash, Musk reiterated his purest intentions when he on the Joe Rogan podcast. The podcast went on to explore numerous other themes, including the activity of Neuralink, the company Musk created to produce implantable brain-machine interfaces.

Do You Need Intelligence to Get Through University?

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In an article with the title, “Elon Musk predicts people won’t have to talk in 10 years because they’ll be able to use an alien-like mind language to communicate without words,” Business Insider Musk’s claims that artificial intelligence (AI) could eventually replace human language. Unfortunately, Musk’s uncertain mastery of the English language (or of coherent thought) prevented him from explaining how that might work.

Rogan tried to reformulate Musk’s confusing explanation: “One day in the future there’s going to come a time where you can read each other’s minds and you’ll be able to interface with each other in some sort of a nonverbal, non-physical way where you will transfer data back and forth to each other without having to actually use your mouth?” Musk replied: “Yeah. Exactly.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Read minds:

1) The capacity to understand immediately and spontaneously unexpressed intentions originating in another person’s brain

2) The illusion that thoughts reduced to data can be transmitted efficiently from one mind to another, a persistent object of belief typically held by people who have no idea of what thinking consists of and who, at the same time, are convinced that reality is nothing more than the discrete data (bits) they believe their technology can extract from it

Contextual Note

Rogan began his career as a standup comedian and only later became famous as a commentator for extreme sports. Successful comedians tend to develop a sense of irony as a professional skill. This is true even in US culture, which, broadly speaking, has never managed to integrate irony into its range of standard social skills.

Rogan puts his skill on display in subtle ways throughout the interview. At different moments, he seeks to deepen the conversation by politely reformulating Musk’s most outlandish ideas to make them appear credible, while at the same time consciously highlighting their absurdity. It’s an excellent interviewing technique that aims at clarification and the resolution of logical inconsistency. The question cited above provides an example of this approach.

Throughout the interview, Musk fails to acknowledge Rogan’s challenge to his ideas. At best, he agrees with the reformulations. This has the eerie effect of revealing Musk’s fundamental inability to process multiple levels of thought. He fails to perceive the meaning of Rogan’s questions or the fact that Rogan’s polite and respectful interviewing techniques are designed to sympathetically challenge Musk’s craziest ideas.

The conversation leaves the listener with the uncomfortable impression that, outside of mechanical subjects like electric vehicles and rockets, Elon Musk doesn’t have a clear thought in his head about any of the complex human issues that surround the technically innovative work his enterprises are engaged in.

At one point, Rogan politely provides Musk with an excuse for this failure to understand when he marvels at Musk’s capacity to manage so many businesses. How could someone so busy transforming the world and preparing to send the Earth’s population to Mars have time to reflect on anything other than the production issues associated with the myriad devices he produces?

Rogan plays the Candide throughout the interview — he is authentically curious and naive. He frequently appears to have a deeper understanding of the issues Musk claims to be pioneering. And on every occasion, Musk fails to provide any insight to answer Rogan’s concerns. For example, early in the interview, Rogan asks an interesting question in response to Musk’s claims that AI will surpass human intelligence: “Do you try to achieve the same results as a human brain through different methods, or do you try to copy the way a human brain achieves results?” A decent and honest answer would clarify the true ambitions of AI and its potential impact on society.

Attempting to answer the question, Musk hesitates, dithers and finally delivers some confusing techno-babble: “The essential elements of an AI neural net are really very similar to a human brain neural net, having the multiple layers of neurons and, you know, backpropagation. All these things are what your brain dis [sic].” Musk isn’t sure whether to say “does” or “is” and so intriguingly (but unwittingly) creates a portmanteau word, “dis.” Apart from the problem of conjugating it, this neologism could be a real contribution to English vocabulary. Physicists, for example, might be grateful to discover a verb that will allow them to designate an aspect of quantum reality: the simultaneous superposed state of doing (wave) and being (particle), as in the sentence: This is what dis inside the box.

Rogan’s question was as precise as it was important. Musk never answered it. He appeared not to understand it. Rogan sometimes manages to add useful clarity to Musk’s ideas, but for the most part they remain either banal, confused, utterly absurd, antisocial or tautological.

Historical Note

As a public personality, Elon Musk embodies a worrying historical trend: the increasing domination of technoculture largely due to the media’s unqualified admiration for both technological innovation and personal wealth. Musk brings both together on an explosive scale.

The Rogan interview demonstrates the most significant risk: the destruction of language. Joe Rogan himself senses that the undermining of language means the destruction of social culture and its replacement by data culture. His attempts to push Musk to admit as much falter, as Musk demonstrates his continued incapacity to understand. Here is Musk’s attempt to explain the advantage of cyborg mind-reading: “You would be able to communicate — very quickly and with far more precision — ideas … I’m not sure what would happen to language.”

Does Musk have any idea of what “ideas” are? From his discourse, his notion of ideas appears to be strictly behaviorist and modeled on the lowest common denominator of value in the consumer society. Thoughts are reduced to expressions of need or desire. Ideas, such as Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity or Medicare for All, require language and the ability to produce layers of meaning. For example, the idea that technoculture is destroying social culture cannot be reduced to data bits and communicated through electrical impulses. And yet it is an idea and one worth exploring. Musk appears to believe that ideas correspond to little more than the impulses felt by Pavlovian dogs.

Rogan himself may lack the philosophical culture to raise such issues in a discussion, but he offers Musk opportunities to demonstrate his ability to “think” rather than simply repeat techno memes. Musk consistently fails to take the bait. Instead, we get dialogue along these lines:

Musk: I hope that the future is more fun and interesting and we should try to make it that way.

Rogan I hope it’s more fun and interesting too. I just hope we don’t lose anything along the way.

Musk: A little, but hopefully we’ll gain more than we’ll lose.

At one point, Rogan raises a serious sociopolitical issue. Musk declares: “If you want to be along for the ride, then you need to do some kind of symbiosis.” This will give the person who does so a competitive advantage. Rogan points out that the cost of access to artificial intelligence will further exacerbate the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Musk’s response is worthy of a modern-day Marie Antoinette: “You could take out a loan and earn the money back superfast.”

And with your future profits, you could book a place on one of Musk’s rockets to Mars.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Joe Rogan Defeats Elon Musk appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Like the rest of the media, The Guardian tunes in when Musk speaks. Here are his quotable ideas: “The Tesla billionaire Elon Musk thinks people ‘don’t need college to learn stuff’ and says jobs at his companies should not require a degree.” To prove his point, Musk asks, “Did Shakespeare go to college?” before helpfully providing the answer: “Probably not.”

The Era of Centibillionaires Is Upon Us

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We are tempted to ask Musk a follow-up question: Would Tesla or any other of his forward-looking companies (SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink) hire William Shakespeare? The answer would be: Probably not. And the reason is twofold: Shakespeare understood society and considered it more important than technology. And he explored the questions he wrote about from multiple perspectives, which means he clearly lacked the focus required to appear smart and productive to Musk’s companies, with or without a college diploma.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

College:

An institution seen by teenage US consumers as a place to purchase the credentials needed for their future adulthood. This is a lengthy stretch of their lives in which they will attempt to sell themselves to employers in the hope of eventually being able to pay off the debt acquired in the three or four years they spend as consumers of education. During this time, they dedicate themselves to learning the art of reconciling having fun with finding clever ways to get passing grades.

Contextual Note

Musk’s irony may not be Shakespearean — it lacks both a sense of perspective and a dramatic context) — but he has a point. Americans have every reason to distrust their educational system and seek to liberate themselves from the belief that it provides the formulaic plotline to their life narrative. It has become increasingly clear that a university diploma no longer guarantees a well-remunerated job. 

As far as learning itself is concerned, the smartest people end up in adulthood understanding that the key to their own success will be to detach themselves from most of what they learned throughout their schooling. They’ll find very little of it useful in their professional and adult lives. And those who are interested in real knowledge will soon discover that their education, starting at elementary school, provided them with a steady diet of fake news associated with the facts and factoids that students are expected to have remembered long enough to pass a test and get a grade.

Was the world flat until Christopher Columbus proved it was round? Most Americans were. Those interested in the truth of history can seek it on Google, hope to happen upon an article clarifying the myths they learned at school or ask questions on Quora.

Columbus wasn’t a hero of science or a daring pioneer of geographic theory, an idea that distracts children from learning about the nature of his true ambitions and the long-term consequences of those ambitions. But it’s important for Americans to believe that part of their nation’s providential destiny — its very coming into existence (since it didn’t really exist before Columbus) — was to correct the errors of Europeans, starting with the superstitious belief that the Earth was flat. The irony has now come full circle as the US seems to have a monopoly of latter-day flat-earthers, who regularly make front-page news. 

Musk is right to distrust the fundamental premise of higher education. “I think college is basically for fun and to prove that you can do your chores, but they’re not for learning,” he said. If the purpose of college is essentially to find ways of having fun and prove one’s capacity not to wilt in the face of discipline, Musk nevertheless fails to make an important complementary point about the role education plays in society. The schooling that leads up to university is essentially dedicated not to acquiring true or useful knowledge, but to instilling cultural values (including the belief in exceptionalism) and ideological beliefs (such as the virtues of free markets), even when contradicted by facts.

Elon Musk pushes his provocation further when he says that his criterion for hiring has nothing to do with education and everything to do with identifying people with “exceptional ability.” Not only doesn’t he “consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability,” but he adds, “In fact, ideally you dropped out.”

Musk’s message can only be confusing for young Americans. They know statistically that people with a college degree have significantly higher earnings (estimated at $30,000 a year) than those without a diploma. Their families and often the youngsters themselves make a simple calculation: However significant the student debt they acquire in the process, they are betting on what they see as the favorable odds of being able to pay it back thanks to their magic diploma.

It’s just like playing the stock market. You put up the money and hope your stock performs well. But the effect on the students themselves and the entire atmosphere of education is ultimately devastating in social and even educational terms. It means that the focus is on money and not learning. As a student, you are paying for two things: the diploma and the belief in your right to a higher income. Universities themselves morph into commercially managed enterprises that see the students as customers rather than learners. Worse, they develop the mindset and strategic operating procedures of corporations who will be judged and who will judge themselves essentially on their ability to turn a profit rather than their service to the community.

Thinking this way also reinforces the complementary idea, essential for the economy, that everyone is at the mercy of their future employers, that their lives will depend on pleasing their future corporate masters. That is simply how the economy is structured. Nobody needs to go to college to perceive that reality.

That’s why Musk’s advice is confusing. He himself is a corporate master in a position to offer young professionals a job. But, in contradiction with his own human resources departments, he says he doesn’t want to see a diploma. He wants excellence. He even suggests that dropouts are more likely to show excellence.

A cynic might reason that Musk prefers dropouts because it weakens their negotiating position, meaning that he can offer them a lower salary. There may even be some basic economic truth to that, since the people recognized as excellent after having worked for less than their proven worth will have the opportunity to prove their worth and will subsequently be rewarded. That’s how the system is designed to work.

And that’s why Musk’s description is confusing. He represents the logic of the system but appears at the same time to be undermining it. But that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Self-contradiction is a privilege that hyperreal personalities now have in this increasingly irrational celebrity-oriented economy.

Historical Note

In his role of hyperreal visionary focused on the future of civilization, Elon Musk turns out to have absorbed many of the lessons that children learn in school and often amplified by the media. He too has been conditioned by the historical myths of the past that constitute the source of the values that schooling instills in American children. Musk clearly plays the public role of a “self-made man.” The meme is a staple of US culture linked to the notion of pioneering and exploring new frontiers. It also includes the idea of the self-taught genius, the greatest example of which was the inventor, entrepreneur and political thinker Benjamin Franklin.

As the author Irvin G. Wyllie pointed out in his 1954 book, “The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches,” the idea of learning on one’s own is specifically related to the quest for financial success. Musk tells us that we “don’t need college to learn stuff.” He doesn’t tell us what is the “stuff” he’s referring to.

What he appears to mean is that in his companies, the stuff that you will learn is very different from anything you’re likely to learn in classes at a university. He’s probably right if he thinks that some of the stuff taught at universities will have to be unlearned by anyone seeking to excel in a cutting-edge technology company. Even the science taught at university may be out of date. But what you need to know in a modern technology company can only be learned by becoming involved in building things to sell to the outside world. It requires working on them pragmatically rather than just studying how they work theoretically.

This recalls another founding myth of US culture and its consequences: that because practice will always trump theory, theory itself becomes dispensable if not suspect. Everything you need to know to succeed in life can be achieved through trial and error without paying attention to theory or wasting time on it. And the nice thing about the US system is that, when you achieve an adequate level of success, you no longer have to pay for your errors. You become too big to fail, too important for the economy. That means that someone else, including the taxpayers, will bail you out because you have become a national treasure.

That is the essential message people of “excellence” learn. And it’s a practice they want to see continue.  

As for the “stuff” Musk refers to, Shakespeare had his own take on that, when in the closing act of “The Tempest,” Prospero reminded us all that, “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk Has No Use for College appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Now, Bloomberg that the world boasts three centibillionaires. This means that the pressure on the language and our money-obsessed culture has increased to the point of requiring the invention of a new word to enhance everyone’s vocabulary and keep up with the times.

In an article from December 2019 with the title, “World’s Richest Gain $1.2 Trillion in 2019 as Jeff Bezos Retains Crown,” Bloomberg called the horse race and announced the surprising winner. At the time of publication of that article, it turned out that, for once, the winner was not a US citizen. The authors of the article, Tom Metcalf and Jack Witzig, wrote: “Leading the 2019 gains was France’s Bernard Arnault, who added $36.5 billion as he rose on the Bloomberg index to become the world’s third-richest person and one of three centibillionaires — those with a net worth of at least $100 billion.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Centibillionaire:

A desperately required neologism that allows ordinary people to appreciate the magnitude of some individuals’ fortune so as to be in a position to pity those who are mere billionaires

Contextual Note

The surest way we have found to spot an untracked neologism is to type it in a Microsoft Word document and see whether the spell checker underlines it. For the moment, Word hasn’t caught up with the global economy. But Bloomberg didn’t invent the word. The website The Gazette had already begun using the term back in June 2019 when it published with the title, “The Dawn of the Centibillionaire: Three people worth more than $100 billion – each.” The Gazette was among the first to realize that the club already included three members.

The Gazette had been paying attention to a local race between ordinary billionaires in Emmanuel Macron’s France, which now proudly boasts some of the world’s top performers in the billionaire class. By the end of the year, the local crown had been placed on LVMH’s CEO Bernard Arnault’s head. For a brief moment at the end of last year, he surpassed Bezos, who was understandably handicapped by the removal of $37 billion due to his divorce settlement. Having weathered the tempest, Bezos has now retaken the lead.

The American centibillionaires — Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates — have seen their fortunes balloon thanks to the inexorable spread of technology and their securing of a virtual monopolistic position. In contrast, French billionaires tend to emerge from the domain of luxury goods. This makes sense since Bloomberg estimates the increase in the wealth of the 500 richest people in the world for the year 2019 at $1.2 trillion. That means all the nouveaux mega-riches across the globe will be stocking up on the super-expensive products those French billionaires are offering them.

The website Observer addedof the success of the French: “[T]hanks to a bizarre shift in consumer trends in recent years, the appetite for luxury is going increasingly mainstream.” Some may see this as proof of the validity of trickle-down economics. But it’s really evidence of a marketing strategy that should perhaps be called trickle-down cultural symbolism. Purchasing the brands associated with the elite permits the high end of the middle classes — those with disposable income and the aspiration to be seen, at least potentially, as part of the elite — to buy into the fashion culture of the elite. These people can afford a Hermès handbag or a Dior perfume, maybe even a Rolex, though they may not yet be ready to drive an Aston Martin, Lamborghini or Bentley.

Bloomberg has invented an for the entire generation of new billionaires: “atypical fortunes.” This leads us to speculate about what “typical fortunes” might be. Here’s how Bloomberg describes it: “The emergence of atypical fortunes underscores just how much money the uber-rich accumulated in 2019.” 

The contrast between typical and atypical becomes clearer when we consider this fact — that in a single year, the atypicals added $1.2 trillion to reach a total of $5.9 trillion, “boosting their collective net worth 25 per cent.” In contrast with the “atypical” fortunes of centibillionaires, typical fortunes fall into two classes. The first is composed of multi-millionaires or not quite billionaires whose fortunes typically grow at about 10% per year. The second is the class of fortunes measured in the billions or tens of billions. According to Oxfam, the, as a class (including the atypicals), “increased by 12 percent last year — or $2.5 billion a day,” which is half the rate of the atypicals.

Historical Note

The explosion of billionaire mathematics and the bloating of the biggest fortunes define a trend that has been accelerating ever since the financial crisis of 2008. Quantitative easing and negative interest rates have been major factors contributing to it. Interviewed at the World Economic Forum at Davos, US President Donald Trump recently complained that the US Federal Reserve was unwilling to push for negative interest rates, which he saw as the key to getting the economy to grow. Negative interest rates are designed to serve those who have money, making it possible for them to borrow money on extremely favorable terms, which they typically use to accumulate assets and even lock up markets.

At the same time as billionaires increased their wealth at a rate of $2.5 billion a day, Oxfam points out that “the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth decline by 11 percent.” However you analyze it, there is a transfer of wealth from both the middle class and the poor to the wealthy.

With a population of 7.53 billion human beings, the world now boasts three centibillionaires. There’s even talk of a fourth possibly making an appearance: Elon Musk. Worth only in the low $20 billions for the past few years, the apparent commercial success of Tesla as the year 2020 begins means that not only is his current net worth estimated at around $34 billion, up 30% in just a couple of months, but earlier last year his board proposed a compensation package for the CEO that could reach $55 billion. This would bring Musk within touching distance of being the next centibillionaire. Like colonies on Mars, in Musk’s mind, it must be something to aim for.

Human history has entered a new period: the age of the centibillionaires. How much power will they have? For the moment, nobody knows. Two ordinary billionaires, like the current US president but this time on the Democratic side, are angling to rule over the White House and the 50 states. Mark Zuckerberg has made noises about running for president, but he may have compromised whatever political capital he once had.

Jeff Bezos recently tried to use his commercial and financial clout to influence the politics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He failed miserably. Will he do better next time? Must Bezos wait for the shine of Modi’s recent reelection to fade, which is already happening as chaos returns to the ungovernable nation, the world’s first billionaire democracy (in people)?

Or rather, as an elite that sometimes comes together to celebrate its eliteness, will the billionaire class and its acolytes simply be content to control things in the background and find ways of staying out of the headlines? It’s what has kept them going up to now. It may be even more necessary for their survival and continued prosperity to shy away from the footlights in the future.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Era of Centibillionaires Is Upon Us appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Musk usually gets his way, even when there are good reasons for opposing it. There are, of course, bigger and better reasons for allowing him to get his way. To start with, he’s very rich (and ), whereas there are no known billionaire astronomers. That makes the combat rather unequal.

Related to the influence of wealth are Musk’s political connections. US President Donald Trump, in an at the World Economic Forum last week, described Musk as a “genius” whom “we have to protect“ and “cherish.” Trump added this important observation on Musk’s strategy for space: “[He] likes rockets. And he does good at rockets, too.” 

Interviewed by , the director of the University College London Observatory, Giorgio Savini, expressed his concern with Musk’s project. He believes Musk’s satellites will seriously hamper astronomical observation. But his bigger worry is that, like everything else that happens when the initiative belongs to the private sector, things will get worse very quickly. Citing a famous slogan that sums up the logic of free markets, Savini explains: “It becomes like every other sector, a race to quantity. Bigger, better, cheaper.”

Here are today’s three 3D definitions:

Bigger:

Consuming an ever-increasing area of the natural world

Better:

Requiring continual replacement because of fear of obsolescence

Cheaper:

Making it impossible to resist the temptation to buy objects one doesn’t need

Contextual Note

The “bigger” factor isn’t so much about the size of objects. After all, the trend in the world of technology has long been toward miniaturization. Instead, it concerns the amount of sheer physical space — on the Earth or in the atmosphere – occupied by the objects produced, sold and stored, to say nothing of the volume of waste they represent at the end of their life cycles.

Most people see the “better” factor as unquestionably virtuous. Better means innovation. Most people have nothing but positive feelings about innovation. Yet the social logic behind commercial innovation implies not only accelerating obsolescence — translating as waste and pollution — but also the destabilizing effect on consumers’ psychology through their fear of not keeping up.

The “cheaper” factor highlights the fact that people with stable or increasing incomes will accumulate more and more material goods, just because it seems painless to do so. And in US culture, those who can’t afford it will still buy into it thanks to credit card debt.

In other words, the towering achievement of modern science that has produced our ability to adventure beyond the Earth’s atmosphere — a project initiated by the scientific community and the collective interests of governments — like everything else in today’s economy, is already being hijacked by private interests that have every reason to spin it out of anyone’s control. 

And it can only get worse as other private companies join the for-profit space race. SpaceX has taken a pioneering role, but Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, is unlikely to sit on the sidelines and not join the free-for-all alongside SpaceX. The sky is no longer the limit.

Historical Note

Throughout history, the night sky may well have been every civilization’s greatest tool for education. While the Earth contains challenges and wonders that every culture seeks to adjust to and master for the sake of its own survival, the night sky extends humanity’s vision far beyond the immediate horizon, inviting thinkers and wordsmiths to seek to build a mental and metaphysical relationship with the cosmos.

The night sky liberates the human imagination. The daytime dominance of the sun allows us to deal pragmatically with our immediate physical environment. It’s our gaze into what we still call “the heavens” that invites humans to discover the difference between earthly beings and cosmic existence. The daytime sky makes it possible for us to ”be” in the world. The nighttime sky tells us we exist in the universe.

Humans have always perceived the cosmos as an extended but unattainable order over which our race has no control. The night sky challenged every culture across the globe to imagine not just the forces at work in the universe, but also the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Far more than mundane socialization and problem-solving, the vision of the night sky provoked the thought that generated religious beliefs and creation stories but also scientific speculation.

The monumental advances in astronomy starting in 16th-century Europe with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton began to transform humanity’s understanding of the night sky, moving it away from the mythical and toward the mathematical. But though the intellectual model was changing, the visual presence of the night sky kept the existential mystery of the universe alive to most of humanity. 

That visual relationship with the universe changed radically under the combined effect of the arrival of electricity and massive migration from the countryside to cities. The urban sky lost its power to trigger human curiosity. At the same time, the breakthrough of physics and cosmic theory, thanks to Einstein and other great modern scientists, coupled with spectacular and continuous progress in the technology of observation, meant that the search for meaning from the night sky now belonged exclusively to the scientific and mathematical elite. The common urban dweller could read their horoscope in the papers but had no connection with the night sky or with the work of the scientists who were engaged in exploring it.

Though for a time it appeared that science would provide the final, fatal blow to the mystery celebrated in poetry and mythology that had enabled humans to come to establish an uncertain relationship with the infinity of space, science itself provided and continues to provide a window into cosmic mystery. The stable state theory of the universe that once dominated scientific theory in the 20th century gave way to the Big Bang, reminding humanity of its creation stories. The discovery of dark matter and dark energy that, according to the scientists, account for some 85% of the substance of the universe, has brought a new sense of wonder into scientific discourse.

There is important work to be done, not necessarily to arrive at an accurate and complete description of everything in the universe — which in the age of quantum entanglement seems increasingly illusory — but to better understand some of the things our current concepts cannot account for.

Much of that work involves observation. But on the Earth’s surface, humanity has taken on a different orientation. Science has given away its place on the pedestal of human thought to commerce. Just as religion and poetry seemed no longer to have a direct impact on people’s material lives as the logic of industry dominated Western civilization, science itself became divided between its vocation to improve humanity’s collective understanding of the universe and its duty to serve the needs of industrial production.

The same business interests that came to dominate government pushed science to focus on mass production and profit. Electricity became ubiquitous in places where the majority of people lived (with the possible exception of), meaning that only astronomers working in remote observatories, funded by government grants focused on research alone, had a relationship with the mysteries of the night sky.

Now, that access may be compromised by the need of people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to exploit even the atmosphere for profit. Perhaps their dream of colonizing Mars will permit future astronomers to have access to the night sky again. But in , “‘Earth [will be] zoned residential and light industry,’ with heavy industry and mining moving to space.” Earth will be the ultimate gated community for a humanity of pure consumers. Amazon’s future fleet of space drones will deliver consumers’ packages in bulk from Mars and Venus to Earth-based warehouses. As a virgin territory, there might still be room on Mars for several of Musk’s huge colonies built in artificial bubbles alongside Bezos’ manufacturing facilities. But, for the moment, the two billionaires on their plans for the red planet.

One thing is clear for those two pioneers: Their personal fortunes here on Earth are growing “bigger and better” by the minute. As for things getting cheaper, basic resources are already becoming rarer and dearer. People will soon be going to war over water as it becomes less accessible due to climate change. Following the rules of Wall Street’s investment logic, the two space visionaries probably see the developing planetary crisis as an opportunity that will accelerate the need to conquer other planets and draw investors to their expensive and prestigious projects.

When Musk invented the title for his space company, he proposed SpaceX as shorthand for “Space Exploration.” His current war with astronomers makes it clear that it should be more aptly thought of as “Space Exploitation.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Astronomers Unlikely to Win Their War With Elon Musk appeared first on 51�Թ�.

If, as expected, the House votes to impeach Trump, the Senate will become the jury of his impeachment trial. In a with a link to the Politico article, the former head of the US Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, said: “The accused is helping jurors raise money. Does it get any more preposterous than that?”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Preposterous:

In the realm of the now-dominant political system of plutocratic hyperreality, a synonym for normal and worthy of admiration

Contextual Note

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following of the meaning of the word: “1540s, from Latin praeposterus ‘absurd, contrary to nature, inverted, perverted, in reverse order,’ literally ‘before-behind’ (compare topsy-turvy, cart before the horse), from prae ‘before’ + posterus ‘subsequent.’”

When a system demonstrates consistent principles of behavior, a disciplined observer will assume there is a behavioral rule, or scientific law, at work. The strong correlation between money acquired or spent and what is applauded as merited success in the current culture of the US and most of the Western world points toward a new behavioral norm that has turned older ethical instincts on their head. The value of any item, deliberate act or even personal reputation has become synonymous with the monetary price one places on it.

When on “The Daily Show” this past week host Trevor Noah, former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer, announced Balmer’s net worth of $51.7 billion, the presumably leftist, anti-plutocratic, Democratic audience erupted into spontaneous, admiring applause even before Noah could finish his sentence. Balmer invented nothing and became rich partly by chance, through his association with Bill Gates, and partly through his preposterous, over-the-top focused on money and success.

As an attorney specializing in government ethics who served under three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump —Schaub may represent one of the last of a dwindling minority in the public sector who accept that there are laws governing behavior in society that supersede the force of cash. On the strength of his belief in the existence of something called ethics, he judges Trump’s attempt to provide funding for his future jurors perverse, contrary to ordinary values, the opposite of normal and quite literally preposterous.

And yet the rest of the nation, including its media, appears to excuse Trump’s actions as simply self-interested and, therefore, normal. For most Americans relishing the fact that they live in a free country, because Trump has the ability to mobilize wealth — his own or the wealth of others — he should not only be allowed but even expected to do so.

This doesn’t mean that the notion of ethics no longer exists. Many people will see Trump’s gambit as unfair. But such behavior no longer seems “preposterous” to anyone whose profession doesn’t involve theorizing formal ethics. Instead, certain forms of preposterous behavior have become an implicit model commanding admiration. The easiest and surest way of achieving success is to break the ethical and moral rules, defy the conventions and, as quickly as possible, display one’s achievement measured by the money or power acquired. Trump’s election in 2016, weeks after the release of the “Access Hollywood” , validated that thesis.

Brazen lying, provocative actions, antisocial behavior in the form of sheer egoism, selfishness and narcissism, and successful bullying are acts the public now sees as either acceptable or inevitable attributes of those who succeed through their assertiveness. If coupled with monetary success, these traits are elevated to the status of a behavioral model. Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and energy secretary, has just why he thinks Trump is the “chosen one,” comparing him to the Old Testament kings David, Solomon and Saul. It is part of “God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.” 

Trump is not alone. There is no end of telling examples among those who “rule and judge” in today’s political, industrial and media culture: Kanye West, Elon Musk, Boris Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, the late Jeffrey Epstein, Dick Cheney, Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Mark Zuckerberg, O.J. Simpson, practically any televangelist… and the list goes on.

Some of them bully; some of them steal; several of them murder and rape; “move fast and break things.” Most have learned or invented special ways of conning large numbers of people. All of them not only brazenly lie but insist on the veracity of their lies. Some of them, subsequent to their success and celebrity, have been caught in a legal trap simply because, besides ensuring their own fame, they tend to make enemies, often among those as brazen as they are.

In other words, “preposterous” no longer simply means “in radical violation of the norm.” Preposterousness has become a new norm, though reserved for the talented, wealthy few. It isn’t without risk. But it tends to be one of the quickest paths to success and wealth in a world in which wealth itself has become the strongest insurance against the legal, ethical and political challenges that society may still put forward to thwart preposterous behavior.

Historical Note

Because being successful with preposterous behavior requires a special talent, history has consistently produced a number of exceptionally talented individuals with the means of achieving fame, though not always fortune, through their preposterous acts. Unsuccessful and unconvincing preposterous behavior has usually tended to be classified as antisocial if not criminal.

Among the ancients, the Greek general Alcibiades, the cynic Diogenes, Nero and Caligula cultivated different styles of preposterousness that made them famous and, in some cases, dangerous. From Genghis Khan, Napoleon and on to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, conquerors and would-be conquerors — while concentrating on the material aspects of conquest — have at least played at being preposterous in the name of acquiring and consolidating power. So while it is not a new phenomenon, until recently preposterous behavior focused not on financial success or prowess, but exclusively on the power of the preposterous personality.

All that has changed in contemporary culture, thanks to an evolution in ethical norms due to the recently established role of monetary value as the supreme measure of worth. Wealth and the inexorable influence of money have taken a central place in our culture, complementing and, to some degree, even displacing personality and talent. Personalities such as Trump, Epstein and Madoff wouldn’t have had so much influence over so many people without the attraction of wealth. Those who have acquired wealth, often more by chance than talent, find that they now have a license to develop, display and even promote their preposterousness because of that wealth. Elon Musk and Kanye West illustrate that trend.

This past week, Musk offered an unintended of the power of preposterousness when he organized the unveiling of his Tesla electric pickup truck and watched as his proud claim of shatterproof windows was literally shattered in front of a live audience. In the aftermath of what for non-preposterous people would be a shameful and costly humiliation, Musk announced that he had received 187,000 orders for the truck. He left the fatal impression that he either lied about or — worse — misunderstood the technical characteristics of the technology he is admired for producing.

The fact that this failure in no way either dampened the public’s enthusiasm for his products nor stained his personal reputation proves that preposterousness associated with financial success works. He did, however (provisionally), $770 million of his net worth as Tesla’s shares took a dive.

In presenting the Conservative Party election manifesto this past weekend, three weeks before December’s general election, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised investment in infrastructure, health care and other services, accompanied by no increase in taxes. More generally, he painted a picture of five years of British utopia, all of that thanks to his proclaimed ability and determination to push through Brexit.

Voters have good reason to doubt nearly all of Johnson’s promises and every reason to believe that this isn’t the first time he has lied to the nation. And yet he is projected to achieve a commanding majority in Parliament. In contrast, the very sincere Theresa May lost her majority in Parliament in 2017 and, while battling for two and a half years to fulfill what she believed to be her mission, could accomplish nothing. Preposterousness definitely pays.

Some may see as a degradation of democracy the fact that bombastic liars and corrupt manipulators are applauded and rewarded for their transparently disingenuous or utterly mistaken maneuvers simply because they dared to do it. Both Johnson and Musk — to say nothing of Trump — have created an image of a personality that dares to say or do preposterous things and, when they fail, to earn immediate forgiveness for their errors.

This has become a sign of leadership in a civilization governed by the values of celebrity culture. Those rare voices who invoke the notion of ethics and call such actions preposterous will not only never be publicly cheered, but their critique of preposterousness will at best be acknowledged as a quaint relic of a no longer relevant past in which people cared about integrity and moral values.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Triumph of Preposterousness appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One day of the week Musk is defending his unorthodox way of managing electric car manufacturer Tesla and his commitment to innovation by offering a choice of. The next day he is vaunting his glitzy Starship rocket from his interplanetary travel company, SpaceX, while dodging from NASA for not delivering his publicly-funded Crew Dragon on time. Another day, he may be promising to revolutionize urban transport with The Boring Company, unless, on that particular day, he’s more concerned with marketing recreational flamethrowers.

And in the same week — after fending off various lawsuits for libel and sanctions of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — he may be claiming to have effectively countered humanity’s imminent fear of being overtaken by artificial intelligence (AI) by offering his own cyborg solution that promises to allow humans to control AI thanks to the technology he is developing at Neuralink.

Business Insider offers Musk some much-coveted PR for Neuralink in an article explaining the scientific basis of his solution to merging human and artificial intelligence: Elon Musk doesn’t want to stick with what is already possible. He said, in classic Muskian style, that apart from treating neural conditions such as Parkinson’s, he hopes that Neuralink could one day facilitate a ‘symbiosis’ between humans and AI.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Symbiosis:

Merging into a viable single entity two things that have no business being merged together

Contextual Note

Symbiosis in the realm of biology designates the shared interaction between two highly differentiated living organisms. The idea of symbiosis between humans and AI would appear to be either a misnomer or, more likely, a marketing ploy on the part of Musk. The Cambridge Dictionary this definition of symbiosis: “[A] relationship between two types of animal or plant in which each provides for the other the conditions necessary for its continued existence.” Musk may well be suggesting that with the advent of AI, humans need to foresee a symbiosis with AI to ensure their “continued existence.”

The article in Business Insider may not enlighten its readers on the question of whether symbiosis is either necessary, good or even possible, but it does tell us a lot about how Elon Musk has constructed a unique hyperreal cultural universe. And though it avoids explaining the working principles of Musk’s universe — the range of its components, how they are funded and managed and how the PR machine that gives them their external veneer can be put in motion with the complicity of media — it does provide a number of hints about the nature of its hyperreality.

It reminds readers that Musk started the company discreetly and a year later offered the scoop to The Wall Street Journal that he established Neuralink with a noble goal: to “merge computers with human brains.” Business Insider calls Neuralink “a curious side hustle” but then reminds readers that it “zeroes in on one of Musk‘s main fears — artificial intelligence.”

As a marketer, Musk appears to have learned the lesson the most expert politicians (aka electoral marketers) have taken on board as their essential strategic tool: create a climate of fear and then offer a marketable solution to confront that fear and overcome it. For several years, Musk has been claiming that AI is a menace to humanity,, as someone knowledgeable about how it works or will be expected to work in the future, “it scares the hell out of me.” If Musk himself is scared — and we know he knows a lot more than we do — people should be eager to buy into his solution, whenever it happens to be ready.

For all his flair for innovation and an unquestionable level of technical genius to match his equally apparent amateurishness as a business mind, Musk appears to be especially good at playing on people’s emotions, from adoring admiration to fear. He is the paragon of builders of hyperreality, on a par with Donald Trump and Steve Jobs, possessing the flair of the first and the technical wizardry of the second. And Musk shares with both the narcissism that has allowed all three of them to conduct experiments in the most outlandish ways in public (with other people’s money) while being admired and even adulated for their failures as much as their successes. Those three are the face of hyperreality and its master-builders.

Only one of the three himself a “very stable genius” or his “unmatched wisdom,” partly because his narcissism is so extreme that he has to keep praising himself. Over their respective careers, Musk and Jobs have consistently let other people make the claim, though their actions have always been programmed to elicit that description.

Historical Note

The Verge on the same “breaking news” about Neuralink’s innovations back in July, which makes it less of a scoop. Business Insider includes analysis by experts, which may not have been available before its publication on October 6, meaning it is legitimate news. But the repetitive and often redundant pattern of releases about Musk’s contributions to humanity’s future and the predictable complicity of the media in spreading the news represent a key operational feature of hyperreality. It must appear to be news at all times, not just because it’s new, but because it is constructed as suspense built entirely around the public’s sense of fear and foreboding.

Musk is the supreme exploiter of a trend born in the late 19th century that rapidly matured throughout the 20th century: the fascination with futurism. It fits perfectly into the capitalist ideology that sees innovation not so much as the key to human happiness, but rather as the shortest path to monopoly, the implicit ideal of every capitalist and entrepreneur.

Innovation responds either to an identifiable need or as a gain in convenience — from can-openers and light bulbs to smartphones and online payments (e.g., PayPal, of which Musk was a founder) — or to the response to a fear, something that politicians more than businesses tend to do to sell their attempts at a power grab. Musk has used fear as the basis for promoting SpaceX: We need to colonize space as the Earth is likely to become uninhabitable. And with more intensity, he has used it for Neuralink as humanity confronts the risk of AI’s “.”

Futurism fits well into the capitalist economy. It spawned the relatively recent phenomenon of venture capital, an innovation that in many ways goes against the grain of traditional capitalist culture. Futurist investment, which often quite literally aims for the stars, doesn’t always produce winners. But that isn’t a problem if you end up owning a star that will keep generating energy throughout its lifetime.

The problem with futurism for the rest of society — that is, everyone other than the investors and the entrepreneurs — is that though it starts with predictable and credible technological innovation that relies on solid science and promises to revolutionize our way of life, it typically, if not systematically, ignores all pertinent social and economic reality.

Neuralink, for example, promises some limited and realistic medical advances that may alone justify the investment. But it also projects a dream of symbiosis between human will and unlimited AI. It could easily fail to be profitable. More significantly, its most extreme promises — like those of SpaceX and even Tesla — could only concern a small, privileged segment of humanity: essentially, the largely white educated elite. But its impact could destabilize the rest of society.

So, why do investors fall for it? Because they don’t care if it fails — others like it will succeed and the resounding successes will easily compensate for the multiple failures — and because there is absolutely no financial reason for feeling any concern about the effects on society. If rich people buy into it, it was worth the investment. If it takes off, and it can realize economies of scale, the moderately rich will also buy into it. 

The investors also fall for it because they will always follow a charismatic marketer like Musk or Jobs. They believe in charismatic leaders whose best ideas are quite often borrowed from others rather than emanating from their own brains. It’s their marketing leadership that matters, not the quality of what they produce.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk’s Symbiotic Marketing Intelligence appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Reporting on the dialogue between Ma and Musk, David Dawkins, who covers “the work and wealth of Europe’s richest” for Forbes, offers the of the event: “With a combined net worth of over $56 billion, the pair delved deep into the potential benefits and consequences of this burgeoning technology.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Delve:

A verb that can be used to describe either the deep exploration of serious themes by focused thinkers or the superficial banter of unfocused billionaires

Contextual Note

Anyone who has the patience to listen to the first five minutes, let alone the full conversation should notice a serious problem of intellectual bandwidth with this dialogue. Forbes apparently felt compelled to remind its readers of the combined net worth of the two speakers, which may have been the only way to sell a conversation that skirted awkwardly over the service of trendy issues without ever delving into anything.

The first point of conflict between the two men concerned the relative power of human and artificial intelligence (AI). Musk insisted that human intelligence will be vastly and dangerously overshadowed by AI. The superficiality of his all-too-human (and faulty) reasoning throughout the conversation was perhaps designed to bring home that point. There can be little doubt that a smart computer with good text-to-speech technology would produce utterances far more “sparkling” than either Musk’s or Ma’s.

What did we learn from their scintillating conversation? Dawkins informs us that the two men don’t agree on what’s in store for the world, but he fails to note that neither of the speakers seriously delves into why they don’t agree. We learn that “Musk argued that ‘people think of AI as a smart human; it’s going to be much more than that.’” But there’s a problem of accuracy here. Musk didn’t “argue,” he simply affirmed. Arguing might imply defining what one means by both “smart” and “human.” What we witness is simply a confrontation of personal beliefs.

For example, Ma claims that “people like us” (people made rich by technology?) want to embrace AI because they are confident they can control it. Musk, who prefers spreading fear, simply replied: “Famous last words.” He does make the argument that technological progress “is outpacing our ability to understand it,” but doesn’t explain the ways in which the failure to understand may be considered dangerous.

Musk is right, of course, but the notion of “understanding” (of what and by whom?) needs to be defined if we want to delve into the social, political and moral aspects of the question. Musk’s message appears to be that it’s going to be incredibly destructive and so we need to find an escape hatch.

The escape hatch he’s interested in, as everyone should know, is his vision of colonizing Mars. When Ma objected that we have more urgent problems to deal with on Earth, Musk claimed that “it’s important for us to take a set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into the future.” But what does he mean by “consciousness,” which may be the most contentiously debated notion in contemporary philosophy and science? Instead of explaining, he segues into a random thought about the fact that we have not discovered any trace of aliens anywhere in the universe. 

From his discourse, Musk seems to believe that “we” (the human race, technology geeks like himself, the US, Western civilization?… none of this is clear) have a mission to defend consciousness (human intelligence?). 

Here is how Musk frames his most cogent explanation: “This is the first time in the four and a half billion year history of Earth that it’s been possible to extend life beyond Earth.” This reveals something about his high-tech value system: If something is technically possible, it must be tried, which may explain Musk’s fear of AI.

Following the same logic, one could argue that for the first time in history, automatic rifles make it possible to slaughter 25 children in a school or a shopping mall, which helps to explain why mass killers are regularly proving it can be done. Musk seems to believe that evil people will use technology to evil ends, which is undoubtedly true. His conclusion appears to be that good people (like himself) must use it for noble missions, such as the need to “continue consciousness into the future.” This is very similar to the National Rifle Association’s reasoning that the answer to bad people is making sure good people have guns.

Musk has a mission that has nothing to do with Mars, but with the future of “consciousness.” He perhaps imagines that once he lands a few dozen people on Mars, he will be in a position to stand in front of a banner that proudly proclaims “Mission Accomplished.” Ma’s answer to that is to “care about how we can enjoy better” because he is “very pro-Earth,” as if it was a consumer choice or a commercial competition. Earth or Mars, take your pick.

Returning to the theme of AI and the fact that for the first time in history people can become cyborgs, Musk suggests another mission to humanity: “We’re going to have to figure out this neurolink situation, otherwise we will be left behind. We don’t have much time to solve the neurolink problem.” Ma’s mission, in contrast, focuses on finding ways for people to be happy in the future. The optimist vs. the pessimist. Ma thinks the key to future happiness will come from improving education, to focus on being “more creative, constructive” rather than learning by rote. Musk thinks people should study engineering and coding.

Historical Note

The level of banality and ill-formulated thoughts in the conversation never went beyond expressing such superficial opinions. The result was beyond embarrassing. Perhaps the content of this discussion represents one of the final outcomes of our techno-capitalist civilization’s recent historical evolution. It’s all about wealth (Forbes made it clear by highlighting the two men’s combined assets), celebrity (directly associated with wealth), the mastery of technology directed towards commercial (Alibaba) and politico-military ends (SpaceX, Neuralink) and of course power, the ability to dominate others commercially or militarily. 

In some ways, the whole debate may reflect the cliché, proverbial in the US: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” Dawkins seems to count on the reader’s belief that if these men are so rich, they must be smart. And if they’re smart, they’re worth listening to, especially when they talk about the future. Apparently, the same was true of Jeffrey Epstein, who managed to earn the respect of scientists as well as politicians for his, simply because of his wealth.

The truth , a truth that the wise but not necessarily the smart recognize. One techie, Roger Kay, also writing for Forbes, commenting on the cliché,: “The correlation between intelligence and wealth is tenuous at best.  And wisdom — as distinct from intelligence — might at some point lead you away from riches.”

Perhaps that’s the distinction we should retain. AI may reign in the future, but no one is even thinking about how to invent AW (artificial wisdom). The great moral question remains unanswered: Is there any point in having intelligence without wisdom?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Intelligence Is Not Wisdom appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Wired magazine reveals that our favorite hyperreal hero, Elon Musk, has snagged for his ultra-hyperreal enterprise, the Boring Company, its : Las Vegas, a city specialized in hyperreality. The Boring Company, as its name signifies, bores, not because it produces a lot of talk with no substance (which it also tends to do), but because it proposes to bore tunnels underneath the surface of cities to provide superfast urban transport for people in a hurry.

Steve Hill, CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, proudly announced that, “Las Vegas will continue to elevate the experience of our visitors with innovation, such as with this project, and by focusing on the current and future needs of our guests.” This despite the fact that Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, as a member of the board, voted against granting the bid to Musk’s company.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Elevate:

Rise above reality to achieve the ideal of hyperreality, in which everything reminds people who are ready to be impressed and especially ready to pay of something real but whose sheer ambition, despite its faults, definitively separates it from the logic of reality

Contextual note

Elon Musk is in the business of manufacturing our future. As a multi-billionaire and a recognized visionary and technical genius, he doesn’t need to consult the rest of us about what we want our future to look like. Musk has consulted his own intelligence — which, it should be noted, doesn’t always need drugs to spark its creativity — to decide that: we crave for the security of living in a biosphere on Mars; we absolutely must have our own car to move around, which can only be morally justified if it doesn’t directly consume fossil fuel; we hate traffic so much that we want our cars to be projected through pneumatic tubes under the surface of our cities; and that we must have the right brand of artificial intelligence to , otherwise AI will destroy us. He also thinks that many of us consider an evening of friendly battles with the kind of physical activity that fulfills our desire to have fun and makes us better citizens.

Musk materialized these decisions through the creation of SpaceX (colonizing Mars), his chaotic leadership of Tesla (all electric luxury car), the launch and promotion of the Boring Company (tubes under cities) and the creation of Neuralink, a software company to produce . And as a financing gimmick, the Boring Company sold its flamethrowers.

With Elon Musk, nobody can doubt three basic facts. First, he is quick to understand the potential and the science of a range of new technologies. Second, he has enough money — which he earned very quickly — to start unthinkable if not . Third, he has the celebrity status required to seduce investors, the media and customers, even in very risky operations.

We could cite other obvious but less important facts, such as his penchant for saying whatever’s on his mind in public, a technique that earns severe disapproval, official from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and for defamation, while comforting and massively contributing to his popularity. But such observations, including his talent for what might be called “casual marketing,” are merely components of his hyperreal celebrity status, the only thing that really counts.

It’s fitting that the ultimate hyperreal city — which spontaneously grew out of a patch of the Nevada desert less than a century ago as a crazy hyperreal estate venture justified by the profits from gambling — has volunteered to be Musk’s first customer for an admittedly modest version of his .

Historical note

Hyperreality is always the product of cultural biases driven by a primary economic motive: making easy money through addictive practices. Las Vegas democratized the addiction to gambling that was once reserved for the elite European bourgeoisie, which Fyodor Dostoyevsky so tragically explored in . In the Puritanical US, gambling initially thrived on the largely , on Mississippi riverboats and in western saloons, far from the strictly applied morality of the East Coast. Of course, developing gambling on the East Coast, which became possible only late in the 20th century, turned out to be a key to the rise of the Trump business empire.

The Industrial Revolution and the establishment of capitalism not just as an economic system, but also as a social culture gave gambling its title to legitimacy. The stock market functions according to a similar principle: You bet on what you have a feeling is going to produce literally unearned profits. In a country where Warren Buffett is a folk hero because he “knows how” to make the bets, gambling is a core principle governing human interaction. A win-or-lose gamble informs every aspect of life and the winners, the Musks and Trumps, are not only feel free to create their own reality, but are expected to do so by their admirers.

Hyperreal heroes believe they are a force for radical good. Tesla promises to combat climate change by eliminating the use of fossil fuel. Musk promotes his future hyperlook cars, adapted to his hyperloop tunnels, with the : “Drive your car. Save the world.” SpaceX supposes that the world may not be saved, meaning we’ll all soon need a lift to Mars. And Neuralink offers us our last defense against the destruction of the human race by AI.

But where do the values that Musk defends come from? His vision of serving humanity targets one small segment of the human race and derives its value system from the wishes and tastes of that minority.

His target audience resembles Musk himself. It consists of members of the high end of Western consumer culture, people with sophisticated taste, who have learned to want the best and most comfortable for themselves as individuals. And they have positioned themselves to afford the best. Some of them may be narcissists but they are not pure egoists. One of things they most enjoy is the setting in which they play their role of high-end consumer, the environment we share, the planet we all live on. They know that it is under threat and want to make sure that their conscience can also feel comfortable with the decisions they make as consumers.

Does Las Vegas reflect that concern for the future of the earth? The obvious answer is no, but it provides the hyperreal platform for publicizing messages that do. In the end, even hyperreal projects need some form of real marketing and, in this case, it’s win-win for both Las Vegas (promoting its contribution to humanity’s future) and Elon Musk, by providing him with his first-paying customer.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk’s Boring Company Wins a Jackpot in Las Vegas appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In January 2018, we highlighted Musk’s existential fear of, and paradoxical commitment to, artificial intelligence (AI), which incited him to launch a company called Neuralink, whose aim��is to turn humans who want to survive the coming age of AI into cyborgs. To keep the chatter (and his brand) going, nearly a year and a half later, Musk has returned with news of the progress Neuralink is making. Hollywood-style, of course, as The Independent , with a teaser announcing a “.” Here is how the media relay it: “Elon Musk has revealed his Neuralink startup is close to announcing the first brain-machine interface to connect humans and computers.”

Though the product is still veiled in mystery, we learn a little more about what to expect: “Speaking last year on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Mr Musk said Neuralink’s technology would allow humans to ‘effectively merge with AI.’”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Merge:

The action of combining two independent entities — rivers, commercial companies, technology, etc. — into a single entity that both gains in volume, resources, scope and material power and definitively loses the basis of both of the existing identities��

Contextual note

The website gives us a clearer idea of what to think of all this in the subtitle of its article on Musk’s latest announcement: “We might soon get an update from Musk’s mysterious neurotech startup.” Only hyperreal superheroes are capable of grabbing people’s attention with the idea that something “might” happen. What might or might not be announced in an undefined future is neither real news nor fake news. It’s hyperreal news.

It would be true to say that months ago a similar headline proclaiming that we might soon get an update from Robert Mueller on his report would have commanded everyone’s attention in the media. But that’s also because the Mueller report is the ultimate hyperreal fantasy about the single most hyperreal politician democracy has ever produced: Donald Trump. We “might” even ask ourselves whether the only news anyone in the media is willing to report is in some sense hyperreal news. Reality is so passé.

The Guardian’s tech critic, Charles Arthur, offers into Musk’s futuristic hyperreality, which this time is mainly and basely commercial. Lamenting the monumental fiasco of Samsung’s new folding phone, he observes: “If you ever wondered whether the tech business is thrashing around in search of something — anything — to make people Buy More Unneeded Stuff, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold is all the proof you need.” Arthur points out that when commercial success begins to falter — as is the case with the smartphone market — we inevitably reach what he calls the “throw-ideas-at-the-wall stage of innovation.” That seems to describe Elon Musk’s raison d’être. Of course, his throwing ability extends to Mars.

Musk always has a good reason for his futuristic vision. For colonizing Mars, he eloquently sums it up: “Becoming a multi-planet species beats the hell out of being a single-planet species.” Justifying the launch of Neuralink to The Wall Street Journal in 2017, Musk that a “direct cortical interface” would to “reach higher levels of cognition — and give humans a better shot at competing with artificial intelligence.”

These two comments help to define how hyperreal reasoning works, especially in contemporary US culture. When audiences flock to fiction that pits superheroes against supervillains, the idea of the good becomes confused with that not just of competitive advantage and cultivated prowess, but of “beating the hell out of” whatever you’re trying to overcome. Musk uses the cliché “beat the hell out of” to mean simply “to be preferable to,” but the sense of beating the opponent and winning the prize underlies his meaning.

Newsweek sums up Musk’s about AI, reminding us that he “believes humans need to add a layer of digital intelligence to their brains in order to compete with AI.” Rather than reflect on what human intelligence is and how it works, under the pressure of what he sees as “competition,” Musk has decided that humanity, like the superhero of a science fiction fantasy, needs a magic supplement to win the race. Winning means merging, which sounds like a diplomatic solution, but some might see it as a form of capitulation because if AI is as dangerous as Musk makes out and as capable of becoming more dangerous by the minute, AI will certainly take over the intelligence of those who try to merge it with their own.

Historical note

The idea of the merger in capitalist culture carries a positive value in most people’s minds. They see it as the achievement of consolidation of resources and a sign of progress since they expect new things to emerge from a merger. In reality, as , “According to collated research and a recent Harvard Business Review report, the failure rate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) sits between 70 percent and 90 percent.”

The merging of technology tells a different tale. When in 1990 — a time when some, but not all people had a telephone, a television and a computer — we predicted the convergence of telecommunications, audiovisual and information technology, most people reacted with a blank stare of skepticism.

The Musk brand has established a wider and more interesting range of themes than even Donald Trump’s. With his towers, steaks, vodka, President Trump starts at the bottom of of needs, the needs of hunger and shelter. Musk prefers to start at the top, not just personal self-actualization, but the collective self-actualization of humanity.

But whether he’s talking about colonizing Mars or equipping humans with augmented intelligence through neural nets, he isn’t targeting humanity but the privileged and rich in the West, those who can pay for the kind of super-luxuries he is specialized in designing and manufacturing. Musk projects a vision that offer solutions to pressing problems of humanity that will be affordable for people like himself, who have millions to spend for their survival, whether they are competing with climate change to take refuge elsewhere in the solar system or with AI to beat the corporations and governments that will subdue humans unable to afford his solutions.

Should we simply call this merger between hyperreal creativity and traditional cynicism?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk’s Proposed Merger Remains a Mystery appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Elon Musk, the CEO of and founder of SpaceX, famously that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity. That explains why he founded and funded the nonprofit��.

Open AI appears to have defined for itself a : to create a monster and protect the public from it. At the same time as it boasts about the unparalleled prowess of its new AI model, called GPT2, Open AI has : “Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model.”

Human intelligence might interpret it this way: Our product is so powerful we cannot put it in your or anyone else’s hands — not for the moment. While you’re waiting, you can have a lighter version, knowing that we are protecting you against the evil people of the world. In other words, there is nothing to fear. Open AI is apparently committed to following Google’s recently : “Don’t be evil.”

Jack Clark, head of policy at Open AI, explained why this was important: “We are trying to develop more rigorous thinking here. We’re trying to build the road as we travel across it.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Rigorous:

For innovative thinkers and experimenters like Elon Musk, not totally casual

Contextual note

The idea of building a road as one travels across it could only come from one of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary’s favorite hyperreal heroes, Elon Musk. With hyperreal innovators, you never know what to think, even if you can’t help reacting. That’s what they’re good at, making people react and believe they have changed the world or are about to do so.

The mission statement on the Open AI website says: “Discovering and enacting the path to safe artificial general intelligence.” So which is it: discovering (i.e., inventing something new) or protecting people from a category of human activity they call “artificial general intelligence”?

Like Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, it sounds as if there are two distinct things: general and special. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is what threatens humanity because it can potentially be applied for any purpose. Instead of conveniently solving specific problems, it could have a direct impact on the way humans understand the world or rather think that they understand the world.

Here is one of artificial general intelligence: “AGI is a single intelligence or algorithm that can learn multiple tasks and exhibits positive transfer when doing so, sometimes called meta-learning,” leading to “recursive self-improvement.” It’s the machine that improves, not the people who benefit from it. Only the machine will “know” what’s going on and how it got there. But the outcome will seem logical because it is logical, which of course doesn’t mean it’s true. It proves consistent with the patterns it finds and analyses the data it receives. With theoretically unlimited data, it will keep learning and applying a logic that may derive either from the initial algorithm, created by humans, or some extrapolation justified by the data.

Machine learning is the ultimate example of hyperreality. Because it comes from a process rather than the behavior of real things, even if it takes into account their behavior, its results will end up looking as credible as reality — simulating reality without being reality. That explains why a hyperreal human operator like Elon Musk is eager to affirm his fear of the toolbox he himself is investing in and why we should understand that his fear justifies the investment. This positions him and his enterprise as a benefactor of humanity since its aim is to identify and presumably prevent evil uses of the tools.

Open AI has cast itself in a role similar to that of the military instructor teaching recruits to “know the enemy.” Musk is our guide to the future, putting us in the role of the .

Historical note

AI has been in the works for some time. The meme grew out of Alan Turing’s groundbreaking and codebreaking work during World War II as he cracked the code of the Nazis, crediting him indirectly with saving European civilization. World civilization was saved (and in a very real sense lost on the same occasion) by the two atomic bombs the US on Japan.

Turing went on to devise the . “Turing proposed that a computer can be said to possess artificial intelligence if it can mimic human responses under specific conditions.” This was clearly special intelligence (sometimes called “”) rather than general intelligence (“strong AI”), and it depended on the correct notion that language at best delivers an approximation of meaning. Turing would not have claimed that machines can produce meaning, but he did believe they can sufficiently simulate the act of expressing intentions for humans to be fooled by their performance.

This actually sums up what any kind of artificial intelligence can achieve: Fooling humans into believing that the conclusions they reach and the outcomes they produce would have been achieved by humans, were they to benefit from the same amount of data before reaching and implementing their conclusions.

Logically there are two results here. The first is the value of the conclusion based on more refined methods of analysis (the result of “”). It will necessarily be superior to human judgment in terms of the amount of significant data handled before reaching a conclusion. This means it will be comprehensive without being comprehending. The second result is that, in the spirit of the Turing Test, the measure of success is the degree to which humans will be fooled.

The net result? Being rigorous means getting better at fooling people!

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post AI and the New Dimensions of Hyperreality appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Daily Devil’s Dictionary regularly looks to Elon Musk for inspiration because of his status as a hyperreal superhero in the world of technology and his special place in the global celebrity economy. Wired dropped a bombshell last week when it of Elon Musk’s company, Tesla, from the inside, documenting how working under the authority of hyperreal human superheroes can be the source of extreme anguish and obvious injustice.

Like all superheroes, Musk lives in a world of danger, so that the very idea danger becomes the basis of the leader’s mindset and actions. Wired describes how Musk thought of so many of the brilliant engineers in his workforce. He typically deemed that “they weren’t smart enough to be working on these problems; that they were endangering the company.” And his employees and their managers came to fear that “a chance encounter, an unexpected question answered incorrectly, might endanger a career.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Endanger:

Create potentially fatal instability through a lack of conformity with the volatile will or vision of the leader��

Contextual note

Musk’s life story illustrates the same feel-good and fundamentally kitsch scenario about ambition and the acquisition of wealth and power that Mark Cuban has been pushing. But with some interesting variations.

Musk, like Cuban, worked his way up from nothing (literally, $2,000 in his pocket when he arrived in Canada from South Africa). Like Cuban, Musk acquired his wealth through the acquisition of startups he was a part of. Both were young business heroes at the optimal time in history for anyone with the ambition of becoming an iconic financial guru (Cuban) or universal superhero (Musk).

Mark Cuban became an actual billionaire thanks to the in 1999, making his initial fortune by selling a company he created to Yahoo for more than $5 billion just before the 2000 crash. Elon Musk’s path to becoming a billionaire was more complex, stretching from the late 1990s, like Cuban, to 2012. But because he had an authentic scientific mind and actually designed and built things, rather than just selling them, he had the profile to attain superhero status.

We don’t know much about the first car Musk owned (unlike Cuban), but we do know that in 1999 he offered himself a $1 million McLaren F1 sports car, which he subsequently crashed. By then Musk had apparently been weaned of his period of initial frugality, though to this day he is an obsessive worker, both intellectually and physically, rather than a wealthy sybarite.

Musk requires of those who work for him the austerity of a monk, ready to sacrifice their ever-extendible working hours to realize the work of their god, who, in this case, isn’t necessarily omnipotent and is even given to gambling: “The Model 3 was a bet-the-company decision, he said. Everybody needed to work hard and smarter.”

The article reminds us of the rules in a hyperreal world: “In Silicon Valley, people are allowed to be strange. In fact, they are often celebrated for it.” After all, who wants a superhero to be normal?

Historical note

Contrary to what many people believe, Musk didn’t create Tesla. He arrived as an early investor in 2004 with the money he earned from selling his shares in PayPal in 2002. “Soon he would become chief executive and turn Tesla as much into a cause as a company,” writes Charles Duhigg for Wired. That’s what hyperreal superheroes do: They deploy their exceptional powers, not to dominate or acquire riches for themselves, but to respond to the needs of a noble cause. Musk was already rich. Now, according to one employee, he needed “to save the world.” It was only later that he thought to do so he might need to move it to Mars.

Superman was famously in a cause: “The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.” It was undoubtedly with Superman in mind that Musk quipped in 2015, “The rumor that I’m building a spaceship to get back to my home planet Mars is totally untrue.” But what is Musk’s cause? He framed it this way: To “expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy toward a solar electric economy,” which has the merit of being more concrete that battling for “the American way.”

The one constant is Musk’s combination of hubris and narcissism. He has always been a joker, as evidenced by his initiative earlier this year to sell recreational flamethrowers. But his irony has always been heavy-handed as well. In 2006, he announced, “As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.” Someone who is “hell-bent” would more likely be calling on Lucifer as his witness, but Elon Musk the comedian thought this might be a great metaphysical joke. On the other hand, playing the role of the rebellious angel, with his own unearthly domain, does seem to please him.

There may even be some Biblical irony here. The evolved from , where the prince of Tyre provided the model for the story of Lucifer, the fallen angel accused of making his heart “like the heart of a god.” Musk is the prince of a car some consider as worthy of the gods, making Musk, at least in one sense, the prince of four “tyres” (British spelling of American “tire”). The Atlantic article, identifying John Milton’s Lucifer as an “honorary ‘American” hero, describes him as “conflicted, brooding, alienated, narcissistic self-mythologizer.” That seems to sum up the Wired article as well.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk and the Life of a “Superhero” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Readers may have noticed our attraction for Elon Musk, who can be counted on to throw out a hyperreal idea or engage in a hyperreal act. He has just claimed his position as the heir of Steve Jobs, the ultimate superhero of business hyperreality. In ordinary times, this could have made him the undisputed world hyperreal champion. But even Musk can’t compete with Donald Trump for that title, given the degree of impact the president’s hyperreal behavior has on the consuming and voting public.

Making his claim that Apple is the past and Tesla is the future, his case: “Apple used to really bring out products that would blow people’s minds.” He added, “I think with Tesla, we really want to make products that people just love, that are heart-stopping.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Heart-stopping:

Causing shock, instant death or simply having the power to persuade consumers to buy a product because of its trendy design and the fact that possessing it induces them to believe that they now belong to an elite class

Contextual note��

Musk reveals his scale of values when he identifies “heart-stopping” and “mind-blowing” as the criteria that distinguish great products. Telephones and cars have existed for over a century and have been valued for their usefulness: telephones for communication and cars for transport. When the ultimate goal of consumerism is a heart that has stopped and a mind that is blown, we are clearly in the world of hyperreality.

This tells us something essential about the relationship between hyperreality — focused on money, dominating power and the manipulation of desire — and reality, which for most of humanity is about survival, balance and, if possible, harmonious social relationships. Putting money, power and unleashed desire first reveals what we have become, what the planet has become and why wealth inequality is on the rise.

In the Musk states, “I have a strong interest in the truth,” which is an interesting way of��affirming his commitment to hyperreality. Either it’s a tautology — because everyone is interested in the truth — or it’s an admission that what interests him is primary and the truth, secondary. This becomes clear when the interviewer mentions a simple truth, that Musk has “a fan base that’s quite rabid.” Musk replies, “No, I wouldn’t say that … I think they’re great.” Rather than engage critically with a statement that claims to be true, he simply denies it because it doesn’t represent the kind of truth he’s “interested” in.

This part of the interview, concerning the media and truth, reveals how close Musk’s approach to reality is to Trump’s. This should hardly be surprising as they are proponents of the same hyperreal culture.

There can be no doubt that Elon Musk is a technical genius, a brilliant designer and a stunningly seductive pop visionary. But, like Donald Trump, he suffers from the worst defect of true narcissists: the absolute inability to perceive that they are narcissists.

Historical note

Hyperrealists want history to resemble their distorted vision of the past and future history to reflect their ambitious vision. Musk uncritically defends Trump’s project to create a new branch of the army to be called the Space Force. He explains why: “Well, this may be a little controversial, but I actually like the idea. I think it’s cool.” Obviously, the reasons why it’s controversial — expense, imperial ambition, the further militarization of science — doesn’t interest him. In hyperreality, if something is “cool” there can be no controversy.

Astonishingly for a man born and raised on the African continent, his vision of American history is that of an American schoolchild. To justify, without acknowledging, the essentially military ambitions of Trump’s Space Force, Musk invokes “a country like the United States, where you know it’s kind of the distillation of the spirit of human exploration.” Rather than reflecting on the conditions that led to that distillation — a system of slavery accompanied by seizing of resources and the physical, cultural, ideological and technological means of genocide against the native population — he sees only the vaunted activity of for-profit exploitation of those resources as proof of the “spirit of human exploration.”

It’s a renewed version of the ideology of manifest destiny that underlay the racist genocide of the 19th century. He explains his reasons for defending the Space Force: it’s “basically defense in space. And then I think also it could be pretty helpful for maybe expanding our civilization … You know, expanding things beyond Earth.”

Defense of what? And expansion of which civilization? It goes without saying that Musk is talking about his third nationality, after leaving his former South African and Canadian nationality behind: American civilization.

Now that Elon Musk has taken over the iconic position held by cult leader��Steve Jobs, he can be the visionary to guide America to its heart-stopping and mind-blowing conquest of space as a means of sealing from above its conquest of an increasingly ailing planet Earth alongside that other hyperreal hero, Donald Trump.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elon Musk Wants to Make Space Great Again appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Secular Western society has demonstrated its ingenuity by producing new types of cults that have little to do with religious belief. The world of entertainment spawns cults around personalities such as and . Deceased blonde women — Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana — have proved particularly amenable to the creation of cults. And didn’t Justin Bieber encourage his followers to become “”?

Then there’s the worlds of business and politics. In the past, the word “cult” described a religion or a community of people outside the mainstream, united by their religious beliefs and rituals. But in the consumer society and the latest version of marketing-based democracy, cult has taken on a different meaning.

Reviewing the methods of manipulation that Steve Jobs used to achieve the resounding success of Apple and Pixar, Business Insider bundles them all together to arrive at this��: “Each one of these individual decisions could be considered nitpicks, but when put all together, Apple created a cult-like following unlike any other.”

The author of the article treats the idea of creating “a cult-like following” with unmitigated approval.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Cult:

The ultimate and usually unattainable goal of modern marketing geniuses. The most efficient way of achieving the capitalist ideal of monopoly without having to prevent competitors from entering the marketplace.

Contextual note

The URL address of this article contains this phrase “steve-jobs-guide-to-getting-what-you-want.” In other words, this is a self-help article intended to provide the tips that will allow readers to duplicate the success everyone associates with Jobs.

Business Insider is one of a handful of serious online publications with a strong focus on economic topics that also provides high-quality coverage of international political and social news. For all its coldly reasoned analysis, the economic press has always had a soft spot for what some call “,” a major component of the culture of modern capitalism.

Historical note

In the first phase of capitalism, industrialists discovered the advantages of monopoly: having a captive public and the freedom to set prices as high as possible. This contradicted the textbook advantages of capitalism: the “law” stating that a competitive marketplace guarantees efficiency and fair pricing. In 1890, the US government began passing increasingly constraining legislation to prevent the existence of monopolies. As monopolies began to be broken up, creative industrialists and financiers had to find other ways of avoiding the effects of competition and ensuring their access to a captive public and control of pricing.

One solution is size alone, coupled with financial clout. Mammoth companies have ways of controlling the competition, even while allowing it to exist. The most rewarding strategy, but the hardest to achieve, is the creation of a cult following, a captive public whose growing enthusiasm as consumers will spread to other consumers.

This of course starts with branding, the key to producing customer loyalty. Durable brands reassure consumers. Rare, however, are the brands that achieve cult status. This requires the presence of a mythically charismatic personality. Apple is the prime example, thanks to the cult personality of Steve Jobs. Elon Musk is another. Bill Gates was there for a while, but he lacked the mythical magic of the design freaks, Jobs and Musk.

Many people in the business and financial community consider Jobs the ultimate hero, the example to emulate. They approve his entire pattern of behavior, even the traits that were morally suspect or actions that were downright reprehensible. Venture capitalists typically look for future leaders who think and act like Jobs.

Donald Trump realized that what works in entertainment and business may also work in politics. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan marketed their image, but never sought to create a cult. The idea itself was considered undemocratic, worthy only of dictators such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. But with the growing existential insecurity of the United States and its doubts about its mission in the world, conditions have become propitious for willing dependence on a cult leader.

Columnist Chris Hedges reminds us that encouraging the — however effective it may be for a firm like Apple’s sales — may not be the healthiest solution for society. Describing Trump’s successful takeover of US politics, Hedges writes: “Only when we recognize Trump as a cult leader, and many of those who support him as cult followers, will we understand where we are headed and how we must resist.”

Hedges cites the example of Jim Jones who, 40 years ago, led his 900-strong community first into a camp in the South American jungle and then into mass suicide. He cites a list of other examples of improvised religious gurus who mesmerized hordes of followers. Starting from a similar observation to that basketball coach and former player Steve Kerr implicitly made when he said “the country is broken,” Hedges reminds us that: “Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.”

Democrats are praying that the results of the 2018 midterm elections will somehow overturn the dire trend incarnated by Trump. Do they expect that their prayers can bring them together as a cult or do they imagine that, with a majority in Congress, the age of reasonableness in politics will return?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Cult of Politics and Business appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Elon Musk has never been shy about getting into the news cycle and has often been more inventive in finding pretexts for being talked about than in what most people consider his true calling: proposing revolutionary technologies. This time, at least in the eyes of both Tesla’s investors and suppliers, his talent for public relations may have taken a fatal turn, either for himself or his company, or both.

The Wall Street Journal a survey “sent privately by a well-regarded automotive supplier association to top executives [which] found that 18 of 22 respondents believe that Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies.” All well-managed enterprises do risk analysis to assess the likely impact of current and anticipated future events on their performance. We expect Tesla has done the same. But it rarely reports the results of that analysis to the public. No one knows how Tesla has taken on board the events of recent weeks, but Musk has assured The Journal in an email that “We are definitely not going bankrupt.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Definitely:

Possibly, when spoken by celebrity CEOs and politicians. With absolute certainty, when spoken by scientists and experts.

Contextual note

Events over the past few weeks have been, even by Musk’s standards, hyperreal. From a tweet that announced “secured” funding for taking Tesla private, to the belated revelation that the source of the funding was the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund, followed by subsequent failures to confirm if not denials or , a bevy of lawsuits, to a soul-rending interview with The New York Times, and finally a telling him to slow down, to which Musk responded: nothing doing. David Gelles, The Times reporter who interviewed Musk, the events leading up to the interview and testifies to the uniqueness of Musk’s hyperreal personality.

Gelles reminds us that real CEOs never do what this hyperreal CEO does: deviate from prepared talking points. CEOs are not so much actors expressing themselves on the public stage than algorithms “programmed not to say anything that might make them appear vulnerable, and certainly not anything that might raise suspicions about their ability to lead a company.”

Gelles describes Musk as the very first CEO to have revealed “such vulnerability” and “candor,” which may be real or the latest technique Musk has found for reinforcing his hyperreal celebrity status. After all, earlier this year, in a calculated and financially successful move, he “shocked” the world by proposing recreational flamethrowers, something no other CEO of a serious company would be likely to do, now or in any foreseeable future.

Historical note

Tesla’s share price dropped by more than 20% in the aftermath of the current drama and now hovers around $300, making a mockery of Musk’s generous plan to offer $420 per share to take Tesla private. JPMorgan now estimates that the “stock should sink to $195 by December.” After promising that funding to go private was secured, investors and suppliers have lost faith in Musk’s descriptions of Tesla’s status and chances of survival, even when he says the car manufacturer isn’t going bankrupt.

Most experts, including former , believe that the best solution would be to replace Musk as CEO. But they are also asking themselves whether Tesla as a brand and a business has any meaning without Musk at the helm. Who could possibly replace him?

Lutz cites the case of Billy Ford who was ousted as CEO of Ford in 1999, but of course it was his grandfather, Henry Ford, who created the vision of the enterprise, not William Clay Ford, Jr. This may remind us of the story of Apple, when the board removed Steve Jobs as chairman and replaced him with John Sculley. But it was Jobs who appointed Sculley CEO, whereas Musk appears unwilling to share his baby with anyone, or even to delegate and a fortiori to ask for “” (as Jobs did before his exile).

The case of Tesla is unique. It has been successful technologically speaking, but its success in the stock market has been due to a belief in the force of Musk’s hyperreal personality, his capacity to make people believe that he — and he alone — understands the future of every form of transport. Investors understand that the global economy of the 20th century was fueled by oil and automobiles.

Immune to disruptive thought, they naturally assume that transport will be the locomotive of the 21st century’s economy. Musk has offered them the hyperreal illusion of being capable of designing every form of efficient transport — from underground tubes to rockets for the colonization of Mars. But not only has he not turned Tesla into a profitable company, he has also successfully undermined the hyperreal image he created for himself. And it was that image that founded the “perception of value” that determined Tesla’s share price.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Daily Devil’s Dictionary: “Definitely” Not Going Bankrupt appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When temperatures in traditionally temperate climates soar day after day to well over 30°C and over 40°C, the average citizen, whether at work or on vacation, seeks the means to escape the intense heat. Since June, has been undergoing an exceptional heatwave.

We sometimes need to be reminded that the weather should never be confused with the climate, but as , “The logic that climate change will do this is inescapable — the world is becoming warmer, and so heatwaves like this are becoming more common.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Inescapable:

Not allowing the one thing all people in the modern world want most of all: to leave the environment they are condemned to live in, in the uncomfortable knowledge that they created it themselves

Contextual note

“Inescapable” describes the psychological state of people who feel trapped in an environment they cannot control and from which there is no place to run. This appears to be a deeply embedded and growing trend of modern Western civilization. Several developments have contributed to this rapidly evolving psychological state, such as the exponentially growing means of digital surveillance compromising our sense of privacy or the perceived failure of democratic institutions to take into account the expressed needs of ordinary people. Above all stands the specific example of climate change, threatening to make the planet uninhabitable.

People living in otherwise cool climates have suddenly found themselves, day after day, faced with the need to escape the repetitively oppressive heat. Increasingly aware that this trend is amplifying and imperiling their (and even more seriously their children’s) lives, the feeling of a need to escape has become a permanent feature of their lives. The same growing sense of powerlessness with regard to political events beyond their control has driven a growing number of people to escape into the blissful peace of opioids.

When Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking have spoken in recent times about the need to , they justify it in part by technological ambition (Musk) but also by the conviction that planet Earth is doomed. With a billionaire’s smile on his face, Musk can hobnob with the captains of industry and finance, plotting out the profitable industrial activities that will ensure the health of the techno-economy and permit those in control of that economy to plan their future after the fateful moment when civilization breaks down under the pressure of climate change and the revolts it will provoke.

Douglas Rushkoff, a professor and technology columnist for , recounts how a group of investment bankers recently hired him to . One “CEO of a brokerage house” who built an underground bunker system for his future safety asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?” “The Event,” as Rushkoff explains, “was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest … that takes everything down.”

Historical note

Four hundred years ago, the pious English poet, George Herbert, in his poem, “,” identified a feature of European civilization that he called “repining restlessness.” He attributed it to a conscious strategy of the God of creation to deprive humanity of the ability to just let things go and rest, as humans push themselves always to achieve more.

Herbert, the country curate, thus invented a divine justification for the culture of capitalist industry that was beginning to emerge in England. In the poem, his God, speaking of man, intones: “Let him be rich and weary, that at least, / If goodness lead him not, yet weariness / May toss him to my breast.”

The poet seems to acknowledge that this industrial ambition is neither motivated by “goodness” nor productive of it. At the same time, Herbert predicts that as the industrious man pushes his ambition further and further, his effort will eventually weary him, to the point that he will wish to escape to God’s “breast.” The inescapable logic of Western civilization and technological progress can only lead to a final wish to escape.

Rushkoff sums up what the investment bankers who asked for his advice were thinking: “They were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.”

Even those — admittedly not led by “goodness” — whose vast fortunes are nevertheless secure, fret over the one ultimate issue: How they can use their wealth today to escape tomorrow’s common doom. But this time it is through expenditure on their personal security, not be being “tossed” to God’s breast.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,��, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

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Everyone knows robots can do things in the real world, but can they see and understand not only the things they do, but the world itself? From we learn that, “With machine learning tools more broadly accessible, startups are developing computer vision to support a new wave of robotics.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Vision:

The ability to observe the environment with a view to guiding the behavior of an animate (human) or inanimate being (machine) to achieve their programmed objectives

Contextual note

The thinkers and designers are absolutely right to place vision as the key to improved performance from future generations of robots and other devices powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Assessing the current state of progress, they have observed that: “It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.”

Technology experts routinely reassure us that we’re just at the beginning and that future generations will not only achieve the same skill levels as mature human beings, but easily surpass them. This is a yet-to-be-realized event in human history they call the “singularity.” The experts have been mobilizing their own “vision” to put a on when that will happen as they speculate about the probable consequences on humanity, the most notable of which will be the replacement of “all human jobs by 2136.”

Historical note

However far back one goes in history, from the first mechanical contraptions to tomorrow’s AI-driven robots, the role people have assigned to machines has been defined by the question “how to” and not “why.” It starts with an identified goal and then may expand, even exponentially, to addressing multiple goals. The “how to” approach nevertheless means focusing on the mechanics of both the vision that feeds it, constructing the machine’s supposed understanding of the environment and the program of optimized actions that will logically follow through some form of mechanical agency and deliver the services we expect from it.

As , the experts are making their predictions on the basis of “extrapolations” rather than functional analysis and the fuzzy world of “understanding”: what we can only call “vision,” a very different, non-mechanical concept. To illustrate the difference, starting with the definition proposed above, we need to examine critically the notions conveyed by these words: observe, environment, behavior, programmed and objectives.

Humans — but apparently not technology experts, who prefer thinking like machines — possess a dynamic, interacting notion of past, present, future and personal involvement. Unlike machines, they don’t simply detect the elements of the environment, but also judge them in terms of past experience, current (and sometimes conflicting) goals and future outcomes, both predictable and desired.

As we have seen, programming mere physical “vision” for machines is a challenge we are currently far from meeting. Do the techno-pundits really think algorithms can duplicate the myriad choices — including the impact of cultural factors — that enter into the perception of experience? They don’t seem to have thought deeply about that.

But there is one other factor of vision they never seem to think about: proprioception. Why? Because though it guides us through every moment of our lives, we never think about it. You could say it thinks for itself, but not in the way even the most sophisticated machine can think.

Here is the medical of proprioception: “The ability to sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium.” This enables everything we do. This is the foundation of our vision in every sense of the word, starting with our relationship with the physical environment but including the projection of ourselves — our being, our personalities — into the future, including as well, the prospect of death.

My conclusion is simple: I will start taking seriously the experts’ predictions about machine intelligence and its impact on society as soon as I hear how they intend to tackle the question of the proprioception of machines.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

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Elon Musk made the news cycle again when he promised to play the techno superhero and intervene in the cliffhanger drama that had captured the world’s attention. As the clock ticked, he proposed to provide a miniature submarine to rescue, one by one, the Thai boys’ soccer team trapped in a submerged cave. In the end, as the water levels rose, a non-technological solution executed by human divers brought the children to safety.

In the aftermath, , one of the divers who “was instrumental in the boys’ rescue,” when asked about Musk’s offer disparaged it as simply a “PR stunt.” The magazine : “Though many saw the effort as good-hearted, some shared Unsworth’s cynicism, accusing Musk of egotism, overconfidence, and self-aggrandizement.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Self-aggrandizement:

The principle operating principle for certain individuals who, having accumulated a personal fortune, seek to be seen by the public as selfless benefactors, indispensable for the future of humanity. Prime modern-day examples are Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Kanye West.��

Contextual note

As often in events involving Musk and other self-aggrandizers, the story doesn’t end with the first chapter. Musk couldn’t let the accusation of using a humanitarian pretext for the sake of PR pass, especially after Unsworth’s insulting jibe, “He can stick his submarine where it hurts.”

Musk missed his opportunity for glory, but tragedy was avoided without having recourse to his technology. The elegant thing would have been to congratulate all the participants for their success and humbly return to his daily activities, knowing that the course of action undertaken had at least avoided the risk of seeing his own solution failing and being held responsible for one or more tragic deaths.

So Musk responded not with a sarcastic quip, but with a gratuitous calumny. As recounts, Musk tweeted (and subsequently deleted): “Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.” This is the language of schoolyard bullies, worthy, it’s true, of the current president of the United States, but not of one of the . In the same tweet, Musk threatened (without following up) to prove he was the top dog with more bullying bravado: “We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo.”

Historical note

In 1997, The New York Times published an , “America’s Latest Fad: Modesty It’s Not.” The author describes a trend that had overtaken not just sports, politics and military combat, but also corporate America, which “has spawned many a braggart in the Donald Trump mold.” The article cites the discredited and later disbarred “” Albert J Dunlap, known as “the Chainsaw” for his prowess in laying off thousands of people. Dunlap called himself “a superstar in my field,” comparing himself to Michael Jordan and Bruce Springsteen.

In a follow-up letter to The New York Times , Lafayette University’s Howard G. Schneiderman reminded us that “braggadocio … should be viewed as a permanent part of the American character.” He continues, “In America, success often counts more than achievement.”

This is to say that fame and money offer certain personalities with a taste for self-aggrandizement, a level of privilege that they believe makes it legitimate for them to libel others freely, knowing that most of the time there will be no consequences and, at worst, it may cost them a small fraction of their accumulated fortune in lawyers’ and possibly settlement fees. Trump never stopped reminding voters that he was a multi-billionaire. Musk’s fortune, far more solid than Trump’s, is evaluated as upward of $20 billion.

The author of the 1997 New York Times article, who mocked the braggarts of his day for their futile bluster, undoubtedly couldn’t have imagined that Trump — cited as the iconic blowhard — would become president or that nerdy industrialists like Musk, not content with occasional self-applause, would lash out in public at those who question their infallible wisdom, while adopting the language of schoolyard bullies, all of this based on their belief in themselves as the self-appointed benefactors of humanity.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

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Elon Musk, whom The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has already crowned the king of hyperreality, has just confirmed our suspicion and even taken it to a higher level. Business Insider reports on , which will likely produce another startling innovation: “It’s pretty obvious that comedy is the next frontier after electric vehicles, space exploration, and brain-computer interfaces.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Comedy: ������������������������

A region of the cultural universe that appears to be open to conquest by persons with the requisite net worth, at least until the elusive nature of wit stings them with the reminder that humor is more than the ability to craft jokes

Contextual note

After claiming comedy as the next frontier, Musk added this statement: “Don’t know how anyone’s not seeing this.” Far-sighted as Musk is — with a vision that now extends — he failed to notice that here at The Daily Devil’s Dictionary we’ve been regularly following his comedic logic over the past few months. On February 8, we pointed out that “Musk projects himself as the ultimate 21st-century hyperreal celebrity,” positioning “himself as a purveyor of excitement.” In the age of uncertain leadership — think Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong-un, Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron and whoever becomes the next Italian prime minister — what can be more exciting, reassuring and essential than comedy?

Historical note

Musk started with surface vehicles (Tesla), went upward into the heavens (SpaceX) before going underground with The Boring Company, and finally inside people’s head with Neuralink. Is he the modern Dante Alighieri, who seven centuries ago gave us the “” (originally just La Commedia, or Comedy)?

Dante started in the underground of hell before taking us up the mountain of Purgatory and into the celestial paradise. With his multiple enterprises, Musk has now covered every dimension of the material universe. His next step logically has to be the life of the spirit. And what better entry point than comedy, which may be the last opportunity of our civilization — contaminated by fake news and regimented by PC — to tell the truth unapologetically?

Musk reasons like all successful capitalists: If you don’t know the business you want to develop, buy a successful company or, if that’s off the table, the people that ran the successful business. What else is all that money good for? So, Musk is currently buying up talent from The Onion, a fairly sure bet. But Musk being Musk, expect something more exciting than a clone of The Onion’s now somewhat formulaic humor, something on an astronomically higher level. It is, after all, “a new frontier.” that Musk’s “investment in satire might just stave off our collective exasperation in these troubled times.”

But can someone who accepted to reinvent comedy? Trump is in some ways the current king of comedy, delivering on a daily basis the script of their jokes to late night TV comic luminaries such as Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon.

Musk is — as we have repeatedly said — the ultimate hyperreal hero. Everything we formerly believed to be real becomes obsolete as soon as he engages with it. Space travel was once a collective endeavor expressing, in the words of John F. Kennedy, the ambition of a nation to reach the moon. Musk has turned it into an entrepreneur’s parody of 19th-century European colonialism, with the subjugation of Mars. Thanks to Musk’s vision of the automobile, the sleek, powerful, flashy cars that defined the 20th-century consumer’s identity have become symbols of a hyper-efficient future. His futurist hyperloops will replace the sinister urban sewers that fascinated Graham Greene in the Third Man and Thomas Pynchon in his novel, V.

So, let’s expect Elon Musk to give the world what it’s been waiting for, a post-Pythonesque brand of comedy, no longer focused on the real — which the Monty Python relished —��but the hyperreal. His (only $500) in which he acts and which he probably scripted gives just a foretaste of what’s to come. Some in the media , but in four days it sold 20,000 units for a net haul of $10 million.

So sit back and relax. More jokes are on their way. A new age of comedy is about to dawn.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

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Elon Musk wants us to know that his ambition is by no means limited to technological innovation. As we saw very recently, he can be the ultimate master of the infomercial. He successfully sold 20,000 in less than a week. Earlier this week, Musk’s initiative provided The Daily Devil’s Dictionary with the opportunity of defining “hyperreality.” Hyperreality turns out to be a promotional strategy that Musk shares with Donald Trump, the other prominent specialist of “outrageous off-brand products” whose own off-brand strategy led him into politics. Some suspect that politics as well, except that, born in South Africa, he is ineligible to become president of the United States. He has nevertheless expressed his pride at being an .

A week after his flamethrower triumph, Musk presided over the , a revolutionary high-powered rocket. Here is how he described it: “It’s either going to be an exciting success or an exciting failure — I’d say tune in. It’s going to be worth your time.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Exciting:

An adjective designating the compelling virtue of a well-prepared commercial event organized according to the rules of the . Such events include monumental expense and the appearance of high risk.

Contextual note

The former generation of purveyors of spectacular excitement has seen its best days. Based on staged (or filmed) events, it was led by anonymous producers such as Harvey Weinstein in the world of entertainment. It rarely involved visible risk, other than financial. Not even artistic risk, as studios preferred remakes of former successes to innovation. The National Football League is also fading. As the most spectacularly violent sport not branded “extreme,” in which brain damage is nevertheless a constant risk, it not only became predictable, it was thrown into confusion by the controversy surrounding the national anthem. At the same time, new forms of competition are emerging, such as the ongoing contest between human and artificial brains. First it was chess, then Go, as humans failed to beat better talent. Then it was reading comprehension and soon it will be most human jobs.

Musk, who made a point of investing in artificial intelligence while, has thus positioned himself as a purveyor of excitement. With a personal fortune of over $20 billion, he has the means of creating and managing the excitement of risk. Recreational flamethrowers are visibly risky to use, even if they are nothing more than . When it comes to his serious technology ventures, Musk deliberately exaggerates the level of risk to throw his eventual competition off balance. He nearly managed to California’s state-funded high-speed train project, which is. And although he lost out, Musk could notch up California’s current rail fiasco as a moral victory in his permanent competition with public services.

Musk projects himself as the ultimate 21st-century hyperreal celebrity, the master of new forms of competition that leave all other mortals behind. He even claims to be dictating , whereas Trump, the most powerful political decision-maker, remains powerlessly focused on the past.

Here is what Musk says about the launch: “If we are successful in this, it is game over for all the other heavy lift rockets.” Musk presents his technologies as the means of solving society’s problems of transport, energy, social organization and even survival of the human race (the ultimate justification of SpaceX). But rather than envisioning it as a collective human adventure, he sees it as a gigantic competitive zero-sum game for individuals like himself (except, of course, there is no one like Musk). “Game over.” On to the next victory!

Historical note

The French situationist philosopher launched the idea of the Société du Spectacle in 1967. John Harris, in , points to its salient features: “[C]elebrity culture and its portrayal of lives whose freedom and dazzle suggest almost the opposite of life as most of us actually live it.” It could be Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift. It could be Pat Brady or Kobe Bryant. Or it could be Elon Musk, who — more than those who have earned their fame through entertainment or sports — has the financial means to play out all his hyperreal dreams.

As he says, it will be “an exciting success or an exciting failure… tune in. It’s going to be worth your time.” We are his spectators. All we have to do is “tune in.” And then spend our time, unless we also happen to have $500 to spend on a flamethrower. After all, as a celebrity he isn’t going to dig into his $20 billion to entertain or “to bore,” when he knows there are spectators out there eager to provide the $2 million he needs for his Boring Company.

N.B. In case you didn’t “tune in,” the . And exciting to watch! It even went further than planned, past Mars, which at least proves Robert Burns right: “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/ Gang aft agley” (often translated, the best laid plans of mice and men).

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

The post The Daily Devil’s Dictionary: “Exciting” Times appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Professor Toby Walsh, one of the eminent experts and promoters of artificial intelligence (AI), has about one of the likely uses of intelligent robots: “I fear that we may too have to witness the horror of automated warfare being waged perhaps against an innocent civilian population before we decide to ban it.”

It is worth noting that Walsh has repeatedly and publicly warned about such abuses and joined Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman in on autonomous weapons. At the same time it is far from clear who would do the banning or where and how it would be applied, even if the United Nations were to pass a resolution to that effect. And though desirable, an effective global ban seems unlikely, given the precedent in 2015 when “the UK��government . At the time, the Foreign Office complacently contended that “international humanitarian law already provides sufficient regulation for this area.”

It may be a good time, while considering the numerous ethical questions related to AI, to revisit the very notion of banning itself.

With this in mind, and wishing to take into account historical reality, here is today’s 3D definition:

Ban:

An effective method for encouraging particularly motivated individuals or groups to engage in a practice widely considered to be immoral

Historical note

Even if such a ban were to take effect, Walsh apparently has no illusions about how governments or other armed groups will act. It requires a certain level of naivety to imagine that criminalizing any behavior will banish it from the social landscape. History provides hundreds of examples of how banning a practice results not in its suppression, but in its sometimes rabid development.

From heresy in the European Middle Ages to prohibition the US, from the ongoing war on drugs to nuclear weapons (which in fact are not banned), banning and condemning something people find either pleasurable, necessary for their survival or profitable may indeed prevent a majority from engaging in the practice. But at the same time it will encourage an increasingly dedicated minority to adopt the practice. And inevitably the interests emerge that will know how to profit from the added attraction of its being banned. That was the case with alcohol in the US in the 1920s and illegal drugs still today.

Banning can even be the recipe for creating a counter-culture — such as the psychedelic, peace-loving hippies who preferred to tune in, turn on (illegally) and drop out — or spawning��a new, highly profitable sector of the economy (facilitated by ), built on the cooperation of a professional criminal class and the wizards of global finance, including major banks. And as governments prefer to take a moral position in public, there is yet another effect of banning: the establishment and growth of bureaucracies dedicated to enforcing the ban. Such bureaucracies easily become dependent for their own survival on the perpetuation of the problem they are intended to solve. And they may on occasion be richly rewarded for it in freshly laundered money.

If we really want to hypothesize about how the reality of killer robots might play out in coming decades, here is a more likely scenario — the one Walsh hinted at. With their spirit of invention and dedication to scientific progress, those IT experts and developers who don’t need to curry favor with industrialists such as Musk and Suleyman will without a scruple acquiesce to the wishes any number of military establishments or even criminal organizations. They will build and program the robots with the physical capacity to hunt and kill as well as the intelligence to target designated victims. The marvels of AI mean much of it will be automatic. They will have identify the victims according to a set of criteria and data provided to them, eliminating all human agency. It wasn’t the devil but big data that made me do it. Except that there is no I to be held accountable.

In the aftermath of a crisis or a terrorist attack, the military could employ intelligent robots for strategic purposes, just as drones are currently being employed by the US military in various theaters of (undeclared) war. Walsh’s scenario would then come into being as he predicted. And of course in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, those who sympathize with the victims will appeal to governments and the UN to truly ban the practice, which they might do, but not the technology. Mainly because there will still be profit to be made selling it to governments that promise not to use it.

In short, no one is likely to have the authority to enforce a ban, even if it were globally proclaimed. Just as we have been unable to stop the use of landmines or ban nuclear weapons. The technology will spread in open or disguised form. Criminal organizations, terrorist groups but also peace-loving governments would find it useful at least for some specific operations, when there is presumably no other efficient option. And everyone will be left wondering whether a certain number of civilian losses or even individual deaths reported in the news were not due, as will be claimed, to out-of-control robots — the equivalent of convenient “lone wolves” like Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray — or carefully disguised robotic operations.

The simple truth is this: Technologists love to create — Walsh and Musk among them —��and investors love to fund their creations, Mark Cuban included. Politicians and competitive business people like to feel they can profitably��use the technology thus created, just as a safeguard, of course. So do criminals and terrorist.��But never is the technology more precious than when it is banned.

Contextual note

The growth of an industry around AI raises a number of ethical questions that currently provoke two distinct types of reaction in the public.

The first is one of indifference, often coupled with fatalism as technology takes over the economy and dominates our daily lives. The vast majority of the population either isn’t aware of the ethical issues, doesn’t understand them when they are mentioned, or doesn’t feel that they will have any measurable impact on their individual lives. It is similar to the public’s reaction to mass surveillance, a reality that though it is increasingly talked about, continues to expand exponentially with . If ordinary people have nothing to fear because of the banality of their lives and if they accept the view that mass surveillance protects them by comforting the status quo, the vast majority will agree that while being spied on is not their preference, it’s something they can live with in the interest of “security.”

The second attitude is admiration or even fascination. The motive behind it may be purely intellectual, as for researcher and author , who paints a picture for the coming decades of a total transformation of society thanks to AI. ��As he claims in this in mere decades we will reach a point of symbiosis with technology whereby, according to him, “the world will guess what you want even before you want it and have it ready for you just as the thought is about to enter your mind.”

Or the positive attitude may be purely economic, as in the case of billionaire investor, , who explains, “I am telling you, the world’s first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives and applies it in ways we never thought of.” In other words, those who invest in the technology that will create the world described by Domingos.

There are problems of both realism and ethics, such as the fundamental question of who would actually want to be a part of the world Domingos describes?��It is a world where “in one decade … all reality will be augmented reality. LED chips in your contact lenses will project images directly onto your retina, seamlessly superimposing computer-generated creations onto the physical world … 3D printers everywhere will assemble the raw materials … into anything you desire.” If you chose not to live this way, could you survive? Will you be allowed to survive?

And that simple question raises a host of ethical, social and political questions, not just about survival. Who will make the decisions that make all these things manageable? People? Governments? Artificial intelligence itself? Does this dream apply to the 7 billion people who live on the planet or to the few who will be able to afford it, within our current capitalist system? Or to a group selected by the trillionaires Mark Cuban foresees emerging? Or, then again, will capitalism disappear because it is no longer needed in the paradise of unlimited intelligence and automatically supplied products and services?

And will it all be focused, as Domingos expects, on getting “anything you desire” or, as Walsh suggests, will we first have to “witness the horror of automated warfare”?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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