MUSK ... DECLINE OF A TECH THUG
The former Unelected President of the United States, Elon Musk, has had a bad run recently, highlighted by three consecutive failures to launch his SpaceX Starships … four if you count his disastrous DOGE flight of fancy and five, if you consider the growing fragility of his Tesla empire.
As he scuttles out of the White House and back to Tesla, SpaceX and X, he faces a major reality check.
Tesla, has been wounded, perhaps mortally, by the backlash to his cavalier actions with DOGE and their ramifications.
Tesla’s car sales are down 20% year-on-year, net income has plummeted 71%, shares have plunged 40% this year and market capitalisation is off by $US600 billion since DOGE. And Trump’s mad tariff shenanigans have emboldened China’s EV industry to double down on its competition with Tesla.
In his early promotion of his DOGE work for Trump, Musk claimed the (Department of Government Efficiency) would wield the “chainsaw for bureaucracy” and slash $US2 Trillion from the US budget. Soon after, he quietly revised this to $US1 Trillion.
DOGE published a scorecard of its claimed savings from dismantling agencies, cancelling contracts and firing federal workers on what it called “the wall of savings”.
But, from the start, the media debunked the rubbery, often absurd, figures and forced DOGE to cut back the proven savings, while planned cuts were caught up in court cases challenging their legality.
It seems that, rather than $US1 Trillion, Musk’s young tech thugs perhaps reduced the bureaucracy by around $170 billion (and even much of that is unconfirmed). But, in doing so, they created some devastating unforeseen consequences.
Musk once boasted that he “fed USAID into the wood chipper”. But its demise has led to a resurgence in AIDS in Africa and has directly contributed to the death of up to 300,000 people, mostly children.
The usually-measured Bill Gates accused Musk, “the world’s richest person of killing the world’s poorest children.”
What can we learn from Musk’s 130 days of unfettered interference by an unelected and often unhinged tech thug, who last week was accused by the New York Times of being a heavy user of ketamine and a dabbler in a random cocktail of recreational drugs, like ecstasy, cocaine, magic mushrooms and pot?
Often top government executives must undertake drug tests. When The Times asked whether this had applied to Musk, the administration refused to answer.
Musk posted on X: “To be clear I am not taking drugs. The New York Times is lying its ass off.” The Times stands by its reporting.
This latest claim may give some context to his bizarre public behaviour: the fascist salute, the chainsaw, the rambling speeches, maybe even his one-man campaign to lift the world’s birth rate through multiple partners, donated sperm and serial secret relationships resulting in more than a dozen offspring.
The human damage wrought by DOGE will take months and years to fully manifest itself, both at home and abroad.
As with all bullies, Musk has taken the line of least resistance - the easy way out – slashing and burning without strategic thought and untrammelled by any compassion or responsibility and leaving Congress and the Senate to cobble together some workable structures from the debris.
Surely, even the most avid Trumpites must now see that this experiment has cost their nation dearly.
It has undermined desperately-needed services to US veterans, shattered educational institutions and healthcare, and has destroyed America’s international reputation and its global “soft power”.
And it has focussed attention on both Musk’s health and Trump’s judgement.