To wit;
I’m honestly not sure what’s more embarrassing - that Elmo read Asimov’s robot stories, the entire point of which are that robots are a tool like any other and all tools are designed with safeguards so that they won’t harm the user, and his takeaway was “ZOMG robots will kill us all”, or that Isaacson reported it uncritically.
It has just come to my attention that Elmo has a secret eleventh child named - because his father stopped maturing emotionally at age 13 - Techno Mechanicus Musk.
Moon Unit just seems so…quaint now.
I thought it was “This England”.
Twitter usage declining:
(Paywall:)
Excellent analysis by David Frum. Elmo’s mental instability has now undermined the reputation of a formerly respected journalist and biographer.
In fairness to Elmo, Isaacson did this to himself by pulling a 180 from what he wrote in his book because Elmo didn’t like that public reaction didn’t come across like his head-canon fantasized it would, with him as the savior of humanity. I have no idea what Isaacson’s reputation was before this, but if he was willing to sell it to stay in Elmo’s favor by disowning what he wrote about a single anecdote, his reputation was overvalued in the first place.
His initial uncritical repetition of Elmo’s tale of how he single-handedly saved the world from nuclear annihilation hardly does him any favors either. I can forgive Isaacson for being unfamiliar with Russian nuclear doctrine*, but I can’t forgive him for a complete lack of common sense. If an attack on Crimea decreed a nuclear response - not ‘met the threshold’ of a potential nuclear response, but decreed a nuclear response - when Elmo saved the world, how does he explain us still being here after subsequent Ukrainian attacks on Crimea as well as multiple places in Russia proper. If the attacks on Crimea didn’t trigger the ‘decreed’ nuclear response, the Russian state propaganda version of the drone attack on the Kremlin as an assassination attempt on Putin actually does meet the criterion in Russian nuclear doctrine for a nuclear response. Taking the propaganda version at face value, an attempted assassination of Putin is an attack on the Russian nuclear command authority, one of the cases where Russian nuclear doctrine actually does consider a nuclear response to be an option (not a ‘decree’).
*Perun unsurprisingly has a video on that.
Let me enlighten you on Isaacson’s reputation. He’s the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He’s been the chair and CEO of CNN. He’s been the editor of Time magazine. He’s a famed biographer whose meticulously researched works on Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and others have garnered praise and awards. Just this year, President Biden awarded Isaacson the National Humanities Medal with the citation that his “work, words, and wisdom bridge divides between science and the humanities and between opposing philosophies, elevating discourse and our understanding of who we are as a Nation.”
Which leaves people mystified about the circumstances in which someone so respected for factual accuracy would completely reverse himself on an important and controversial matter documented in his already-published new book, and thus trash his hard-won credibility. My personal inclination is to attribute it to the fact that Musk has many Trump-like characteristics, one of which is that he tends to corrupt those around him, or as I like to say about Trump, “everything he touches turns to shit”. Isaacson would have been fine if he had never established a relationship with Musk in order to write the psychotic asshole’s biography.
In another thread, we had a similar discussion about the charisma and in-person influence of Elizabeth Holmes, luring a respected NYT editor into writing a soft-pedal op-ed shilling Holmes’ positions and opinions.
Bottom line: some people become rich because they are unaccountably charismatic and influential on a personal basis, and this allows them to induce otherwise respectable journalists into becoming their personal propagandists.
That’s because Musk didn’t want a biography; he wanted a hagiography.
I respect Frum a lot. If Isaacson’s “clarification” emphasizes Musk being concerned about the possibility of nuclear weapon use, this is not necessarily off by 180° even if its importance was exaggerated. While Netflix-and-Chill rationales are much too naïve to tell the full story, even if Musk slyly positioned himself to receive payment for defence matters and further contributions (which seems very possible) this does not mean his previous actions were useless, unhelpful or with no degree of charity. Maybe he sees himself as Milo Minderbinder, maybe not.
I strongly support Ukraine in this matter, politically and through real personal donations. Ukraine was outrageously attacked, including their Internet systems. Is it wrong to say Musk provided an alternative and kept it reasonably operational despite attempts to jam it which had brought down some other systems? That it probably offered a degree of solace or distraction or useful information to some of those affected? That having this Internet in place both to some small degree kept schools and hospitals going? That it had other social, economic and military uses? That it allowed Ukraine to coordinate defences and communicate evidence of atrocities to the world, to contact family members and friends in their diaspora, that these communications helped Zelanskyy and Ukraine to do the remarkable (unlikely, unprecedented) job of making their case to other countries allowing them to secure moneys, munitions, support and publicity?
I am not qualified and do not know how much of these things Musk facilitated, and cannot fairly comment on compensation. But, without taking anything away from the remarkable resilience, deep sacrifices and inspiring persistence of the Ukrainian people, if Musk played some role in assisting these things than these should also be considered, even when putting his other decisions and somewhat flimsy post-event burnishing in context.
And yet this is really the hill that you’ve chosen to die on?
You are not understanding the 180 Isaacson pulled if you think the difference is that the ‘clarification’ emphasized Elmo saving us from nuclear Armageddon angle. That was in the original version, the one that is in his book and his op-ed. Elmo didn’t like that this version (most likely the version closer to the truth) didn’t result in a public reaction viewing him as the savior of humanity, but as a rube of the Russians, so he put out his own rewritten version which Isaacson then ‘clarified’ was what he meant to have written, even though his own writing clearly contradicts this.
‘If’ he positioned himself to get a huge paycheck down the road from his ‘donation’, then yes, that it was done with no degree of charity is actually exactly what it means. Did you notice a pattern in Elmo’s actions? He initially twitted that the Pentagon should fork over those truckloads of cash to continue using his ‘donation’ only to face a public backlash to this suggestion. One he made publicly. On his own social media platform. So, did he actually back down and not demand these truckloads of money? You seemed to think so, since you made a point of the fact that he publicly called for it then backtracked. What you failed to note is that despite his public backtrack in the face of criticism, he had his company go ahead a charge the Pentagon anyway once the controversy died down.
All of your wherefores and why tos about how Elmo’s precious ‘gift’ of Starlink - that he charged for - helped Ukraine ignore a few very glaring things. One is that he was giving a secure communications system to a country in a war to preserve its very existence, which you yourself note had military applications. This was its primary application by Ukraine, and only a moron wouldn’t immediately recognize it. Other glaring things include that Starlink wasn’t some irreplaceable asset, as clearly demonstrated by later successful Ukrainian attacks using the very same naval drones on the very same targets that Elmo had Starlink cut to prevent them doing.
Finally, you have repeatedly talked about all that Elmo has done for Ukraine. What, exactly, has he done to aid Ukraine other than show off his product line and then demand truckloads of cash once the free trial period expired? He’s the richest man in the world. Where are his contributions to humanitarian organizations to aid Ukraine in its time of need? He could even have made these donations in the full knowledge that they weren’t being used to aid in any bloodshed, unlike the horseshit reasoning he came up with to make his Starlink ‘donation’ appear to purely humanitarian in nature by claiming Starlink was only supposed to aid in fucking and homework.
What compensation? I thought we were talking about things he’s done out of the goodness of his heart to aid Ukraine, not business decisions he made to make even more money off of the human tragedy that is the war in Ukraine.
Reviews of Isaacson’s biography of Musk are now out.
Here are some excerpts from a couple of them.
The Washington Post:
The New York Times:
No one could have predicted this.
The Russian invasion of Crimea produced a lot of global noise and protestation, but very little of substance to convince Russia they would face significant obstacles this time around.
It is to the credit, perseverance and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people that this time was different. They benefited from poor planning and management, overconfidence, corruption and neglected maintenance on the Russian side. They benefited from European countries belatedly understanding broader implications, and changing their energy, military and refugee policies. But what you call “a trial period” was very significant. Zelanskyy was enormously successful at underlining why he needed money, weapons, humanitarian help and other resources and procuring them. During this critical time, having a usable form of Internet was influential in helping achieve some of these goals. Perhaps Musk should have done this for free given his wealth. No doubt he seeks to burnish his self image and act for his interests, but he is hardly the only one to do so. I agree with much of what you say.
But I don’t think the fact Musk made money is surprising or fully undermines whatever his real contributions were, especially at the beginning when there were (if I am correct) not that many good alternatives. Musk may have been naïve or be trying to mislead regarding worrying about the difference between assistance, humanitarian actions and provocative stuff that might directly drag NATO into areas they would prefer not to be. But there is a difference between these things and Musk is hardly the only stakeholder to be concerned about the ramifications between these differences.
I’m not saying Musk made all the right decisions or acted without self-interest. However, it seems to me he did make some contributions that mattered early on when it mattered most. This is true regardless of future developments and the publicity spin applied to their reportage. The review above does not seem overly hagiographic, but I have not yet read this biography. I read the one by Vance. I think Musk has done some interesting things, a few useful ones, made lots of noise, caused some harm and could probably be much more likeable, given more noble goals and less global trolls.
I’m confused by this statement. I don’t believe the office of the president of Ukraine has ever been reliant on Starlink for internet access. I mean, they may have used it just because it was convenient, but to my knowledge by and large Kyiv didn’t see widespread internet outages until Russia launched its attacks on Ukrainian electrical infrastructure last winter. This is long past the point by which Europe had been convinced to back Ukraine heavily both financially and with material aid. And,by that time in the absence of Starlink the Ukrainian government could easily have had redundant comms channels using other means. It’s not like Starlink is the only satellite network game in town.
Early use of Starlink was almost entirely by front-line military units and to a lesser extent by civilian and non-military government agencies near the front and subject to loss of internet communications. But mostly military. This wasn’t a secret. Ukrainians were quite open about using Starlink for front-line comms. A lot of these Starlink units were financed by donations and imported to Ukraine privately. When Musk started demanding payment, he didn’t seem to make any distinction between the units donated by SpaceX and those that had been purchased with private funds, leading to lots of Ukrainians pissed off on Twitter posting pictures of their subscription bills asking what they were supposedly getting for free. Granted lots of them were probably violating the TOS on their account, but they were paying for them.
All of this is true. However, it runs counter to the fiction delusional self-narrative “alternative viewpoint” where Elmo is the savior of Ukraine, so must be rejected. To quote the WP article @Walken_After_Midnight linked:
Musk has a penchant for self-mythologizing, casting himself as the sole hero of complex origin stories like that of Tesla’s founding.
If we don’t protect the billionaire Ultraman-child’s feelings and delusions of himself as the savior, who will? I mean his delusion that he saved humanity from a nuclear holocaust by cutting Starlink during the Ukrainian drone attack already went down so badly that he’s had to retcon reality.
@Dr_Paprika: You keep using the word ‘contributions’ when talking about Elmo. Things stop being ‘contributions’ when you demand payment for them. And as has been pointed out to you repeatedly, there was nothing special or unique in Elmo’s ‘gift’ of Starlink’s trial evaluation period other than making the Ukrainian military reliant on his satellite network. Those same Ukrainian naval drones that he showed himself to be a Russian rube saved humanity from nuclear Armageddon by cutting their Starlink communications with when they were on their way to Sevastopol harbor were able to perform the attack much better without using Starlink than with it, as the alternative network they were using wasn’t run by a man-child fantasizing himself as the messiah.
I’ve been trying to follow this, but I lost track. Are we sure that he really did this, and it wasn’t just a made-up wish-fulfillment daydream?