Musk and many of the people propping up the stock value don’t see it as any of those things. They see it (or at least say they do) as primarily a “technology” company, of which EVs, batteries, charging stations, and self-driving technology are simply the products that have been marketed so far.
If it was just the self-driving AI tech, the valuation is still too high - there are too many other companies involved in that, some actually ahead of Tesla in the self driving part. They’re definitely leading in charging stations but that is unexciting to everybody and doesn’t produce much profits. Batteries? The rest of the world, much less some domestic companies, are either ahead of or catching up.
So, they have to hold out on this delusional notion that Tesla is actually some kind of general R&D technology company that happens to currently derive the vast majority of its revenue and profits from cars but doesn’t need them and is one day guaranteed to produce technological advances that are so world changing as to justify the high valuation.
And it’s all tied in to the perception of Elon as a genius - as a unique, irreplaceable genius. If he were to die today, his heirs would not inherit the $300 billion or so he’s worth; they’d inherit a quarter of that at most, because that’s all it would be worth without him.
I haven’t dug into this but I don’t know what investigative authority USAID has. It’s not a law enforcement or a regulatory agency. This doesn’t pass the smell test for me.
USAID sends taxpayer dollars to brown people, so it had to be shut down. I don’t think there’s more to it than that.
“Foreign Aid” has been on the shit list of huge numbers of American voters, Democratic and Republican, left and right, for decades now. For some reason - I know not where this meme started - most Americans think that USAID takes up 25% of the U.S. budget, rather than the 1/10 of 1% that it actually consists of. In terms of building good will toward the U.S., this is probably the best bargain in the budget - but support for continuing foreign aid, much less increasing it from the current baseline, is slim to nonexistent.
I don’t know if Project 2025 suggested that the foreign aid budget be the first target of cutting, but sending Elmo and his merry men there as their first target was a coup in a Niemoller-an kind of way.
Blackwater in a new guise is blocking Congress critters for federal offices!! The circles come from someone expanding the image to figure out that the insignia is from “Triple Canopy,” which merged with the firm formerly known as Blackwater. The new company, BTW, is called Constellis per Wikipedia.
USAID was one of the partners behind the delivery of Starlink to Ukraine. Sure they have reasons and authority to investigate/audit the other partner of the deal.
A propos of nothing (and not knowing if the show was ever broadcast in the US) - am I the only one who thinks that Musk looks like the Tracy brother that nobody ever talks about?
Yes, this. And even absent a formal investigation, there must be people at USAID who could testify to words and actions, as well as Starlink performance (or lack thereof) that Musk would prefer not be made public.
Today Elon held forth in the Oval Office while Donald just sat there, looking sour. For most of the event, Elon had his toddler son sitting on his shoulders. (Many noted that the son was an effective human shield for Elon, a la “Greg Stillson” in The Dead Zone. Someone (don’t know who) came up with the idea that the kid’s name is Kevlar…)
