How I’m thinking about Musk and the broligarch supervillains
I’ve written about Musk a number of times over the years – most recently, in last week’s column You might get hit by “Musk droppings,” but there’s still reason for hope – itself a followup to last fall’s Musk’s space junk is a threat to us all. The earliest mention on Creative Good is from May 2021, in my column Paying respect to our new techno-king.
All of which is to say, I’ve tried over the years to warn everyone about Musk’s spiraling ambitions, his disregard for the law, his obsessions both petty and lunatic, and his willingness to cause harm in pursuit of his goals. No doubt his companies can boast impressive technological achievements. It’s Musk’s growth-at-any-cost mentality that makes those achievements so dangerous.
Now Musk is taking quick and disruptive action inside the U.S. government. Over at TechDirt, Musk’s Impossible Power Grab And America’s Crisis (Feb 5, 2025) by Mike Brock has a good summary of what’s going on.
With all this happening, I feel like I would be remiss in not saying something here about Musk and what he’s up to.
I’ll start by saying – as I said on the Jan 27, 2025 Techtonic – that I’m not intending to shift into political commentary. Just as Techtonic is not a show about politics, Creative Good is not politics-themed. While I have political opinions of my own, I don’t write political posts because, first, it’s not what we do here, and second, politics is not my expertise. Instead, as I’ve written and said a number of times, my stance is that “the primary fight ahead isn’t about left versus right, it’s about Big Tech versus the rest of us.” (If this resonates with you, you should join our community. Our members-only Creative Good Forum is a place to discuss more.)
What’s more, I’m aware that there’s a range of political alignment within the Creative Good community and I have no desire to divide the community based on support of this or that policy. (There are lots of other blogs, forums, and social media threads for political discussion.)
Rather than politics, my focus is tech: specifically, what tech, and the tech oligarchs, are doing to us – and what positive alternatives exist for us (as in my Jan 20, 2025 interview with Kirk Pearson from dogbotic, which I wrote about in the Musk droppings column).
In other words, I leave politics out of my commentary on Techtonic and on the Forum – unless it’s primarily a tech angle, with a political dimension inside.
And some of what Musk is doing certainly pertains to “what tech, and the tech oligarchs, are doing to us.” As Mike Brock writes:
Through DOGE, Musk has gained access to incredibly sensitive government systems and information—including Treasury payment systems, classified materials, and internal agency data. This means every conflict-of-interest statute is triggered at its highest level of concern. . . . he has gained access to the actual machinery of government while simultaneously running multiple companies directly affected by that machinery.
Consider what this means in practice: Through DOGE, he has access to sensitive Treasury data while running public companies whose stock prices could be affected by that information. He can see classified materials while controlling SpaceX, which competes for national security contracts. He has visibility into federal agency operations while owning a social media platform that shapes public discourse about those agencies.
Finally, I want to point you to my Techtonic episode this week, Supervillains in tech – with Greg Epstein, Chris Gilliard, and Jim Starlin. Greg, the humanist chaplain at MIT and Harvard, has a new book out – Tech Agnostic – about tech as a religion. Chris Gilliard, aka hypervisible, is a surveillance scholar who’s been on the show several times. And Jim Starlin, a well-known comics artist and author, is the creator of Thanos (pictured at bottom), Adam Warlock, and several other characters.
I recommend this conversation because Starlin, creator of Thanos and other villains, reminds us to have compassion for the bad guy, even as we fight against him. Gilliard and Epstein have their own wisdom to share. If you have time for it, you’ll find some rich material in this episode.
Links below:
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Until next time,
-mark
Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
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