Champion of Freedom : Elon Musk

"You [Elon Musk] are a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people."

"Thank you for standing with us."

Ukraine Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov 

 

"Looks like the steps we took o stop the  unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked."

"Let us know if more needs to be done."

Space X, Elon Musk 

 

"What everyone feared for a long time has happened." 

"Elon Musk flipped the switch … our communications are in chaos."

Yuriy Podolyaka, Crimea-based video blogger, Telegram 

 

"It is important to understand that relying on anything western in the current situation is dangerously overconfident."

"Even taking into account the active negotiations we are currently holding with the United States, that does not stop them from being our adversary."

Aleksey Zhuravlyov, State Duma lawmaker

A Ukrainian soldier using a Starlink terminal. Photograph: Reuters

 

"Its use made information exchange easier for the Russians, as it is quite difficult to jam. As a result, their airstrikes became more precise and coordination of unit movements improved." 

"Since the Ukrainians are successfully jamming everything else, the use of Starlink was vital for the Russians. It was briefly shut down at the start of February to identify terminals that the Russians were using after smuggling them in illegally. Communications have now been restored and the Russians have been cut off from it. But this is only one aspect; there are certainly many other factors at play, including the weather: The cold, snow and the difficult terrain." 

"In war, any tool that solves a problem is suitable. If the frequency bands used by the enemy get detected, they are immediately jammed and efforts are made to shut them down. But if you have any kind of internet connection that allows you to access and exchange information, that helps you out of trouble." 

Maj. Gen. (retired) Neeme Väli  

60 Starlink satellites being delivered from Cape Canaveral (photo taken 2019). Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Zoe Thacker /

 

In the latest twist in a four-year-old war where a race for technological supremacy is being fought as much as the confrontations on the battlefield, Russian troops in Ukraine suddenly find themselves without their (illegal) Starlink satellite internet. Pro-war Russian military bloggers have been reporting that Space X's Elon Musk reacted to a Ukrainian request that he curtail access to his network.

 

While it is not yet completely known through speculation how serious a setback this will prove to be to the Russian forces, those same Russian military bloggers report frustration linked to communication problems on the front, with soldiers now deprived of the indispensable communications tool they had used for years through smuggled Starlink equipment linking them to the internet. 

 

Writing under the name Military Informant through the Telegram messaging app, a Russian blogger stated the change could conceivably put the Russian force back "a couple of years", forced to make use of outdated technologies such as wired internet, Wi-Fi and radio communications. "The Starlink saga has created a serious breach in communications, which the enemy may attempt to exploit", blustered Colonelcassad, a channel operated by Boris Rozhin, another Russian pro-war blogger. 

Ukrainian boxing brothers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko with Starlink terminals shipped to Kyiv early on in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vitali is Mayor of Kyiv. Source: Kyivcity.gov.ua /

 

Ukraine had recently taken note of Russia's use of the satellite internet network that had gone beyond simple communications connectivity, when Russia began equipping drones with Starlink, improving their targeting and making them more resistant to jamming. The quest for superior drones and greater impenetrable communications links controlling them speaks to the technological competitiveness of this war.  

 

Mykhailo Fedorov, newly appointed as Ukraine's defense minister had contacted SpaceX lat month. The result was  the  U.S. firm blocking access to Starlink in Ukraine other than for terminals registered and verified by the government. Starlink's compliance representing an early victory for the 35-year-old former tech entrepreneur who took the defense ministry last month.

 

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, plans to launch its own satellite internet operation in low-earth orbit with production to begin this year with a launch planned next year. First deputy chairman of the defense committee in Russia's lower  house of Parliament, Aleksei A. Zhuraviev stated that Russia must seek alternatives: "It's important to understand that relying on anything Western in the current situation is overly presumptuous". 

 

SpaceX board member and Estonian-American Steve Jurvetson holding a holding a Starlink user terminal. Source: Steve Jurvetson from Los Altos, USA - Starlink Armada

 

"In January, the Russian side used around 6,000 different drones against Ukraine, in addition to roughly 150 missiles and about 5,000 glide bombs. That is a very large number of targets launched toward Ukraine on a daily basis."

"All of this must be responded to using various means that must be coordinated with each other. Ukraine has a very strong multi-layered air defense, but unfortunately the volume is so great, and of course air defense systems are also worn down in combat."

"There are simply too many Russian targets to respond to everything with one hundred percent effectiveness."

Maj. Gen. (retired) Neeme Väli   

Social Media Platforms ... Sinking Profits

"For the big companies it's reasonable to assume that the rising tide that has been floating their boats for the past 5 years is just now a lot choppier."

"They clearly need to trim and to rationalize projects that they just haven't had to do for a decade-and-a-half because the environment was so munificent."

Jo-Ellen Pozner,  assistant professor of management, Santa Clara University, Leavey School of Business

The Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk is seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

 

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft Corp. fell short of projections in recent earning, sending shares plunging, shaving hundreds of millions to billions from their market valuations. So far this year Meta (Facebook, Instagram) has lost over 72 percent of its value. Investors appear uncomfortable with chief executive Mark Zuekerberg's investments in an immersible digital world; the metaverse. Meta Platforms Inc is set to cut thousands of workers. 

Before that, it was Elon Musk's decision to cut Twitter Inc.'s staff in half after acquiring the network. Apple Inc. Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. all have slowed or paused in their hiring. Elon Musk sold another batch of Tesla shares in a bid to help fund his Twitter buyout. He disposed of 19.5 million shares to the value of $3.95 billion. Tesla's chief executive, the single-largest shareholder, gave assurances he was finished offloading.

It was important, he said, to avoid an "emergency sale" should he need to close the Twitter acquisition as he struggled to bring in aditional equity partners, back in August. Tesla stock lost $60 billion in market capitalization, tumblding 56 percent this year, since peaking a year ago. Twitter is losing money, facing annual interest payments of close to $1.2 billion. Several major companies halted their ads on the platform since Musk took over as they wait to see how his leadership evolves.

"It looks like Musk is preparing for things to stay bad at Twitter for the next year. He's preparing for Twitter to be a money  hole", remarked Gene Munster of Loup Ventures, once the stock sales became public.

Meanwhile, his moves to cut costs -- including firing half the staff and asking afterward whether some he had fired would please come back -- and overhaul of the platform's operations resulted in several tumultuous weeks at Twitter. Some of the employees are not quite certain whether they remain employed, or whether they've been let go. Some Tesla shareholders worry that the CEO has spread himself too thin, leading to selling off more stock.

"It's hypothetically possible that he could use more of his Tesla stock to bail out Twitter, or turn to his cadre of co-investors, who would probably have no trouble finding the money." 

"The saying ,'if you owe the bank $100, that's your problem, but if you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem' might apply here,"

"[Investors and other lenders could take over the company if Twitter went through a bankruptcy proceeding, with Musk still serving as its chief executive.] Bankruptcy would also allow Musk to refinance the debt, which would make the company more financially stable." 

Andy Wu, assistant professor, Harvard business school

Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco on Nov. 4, 2022. Jeff Chiu/AP

Zealous Musk and Jealous Beijing -- Sharing Space In Space?

 

The image of Musk and his Chinese doppelganger was posted beneath a tweet from Musk claiming that he will pay 11 billion USD in taxes this year.

Elon Musk enjoys great popularity among young Chinese, in China. He has also invested a great deal in China. Unfortunately, the great admiration he enjoys as a role model for innovative, bold gestures and a startling imagination with an enduring belief that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that he cannot achieve on the strength of the force of his character, his vision and enterprise, is not universally beloved in China. Oh, the Chinese Communist Party respects his enterprise and ability to make money for himself and his enterprises, but they have certain reservations about anyone -- just ask Jack Ma -- who thinks too big for their britches.

And no one individual can possibly challenge the supremacy of the Chinese State and its enterprises. Including Beijing's claim to shooting for the stars. Starting modestly with a space station of its own. So when a world-class entrepreneur like Elon Musk displays a gusto for outmaneuvering and out-satelliting the most technically advanced, ardent of nations in space exploration he was guaranteed to raise the hackles of the CCP. All the more so that he is a certified American strategist-capitalist-innovator.

Not that this far-reaching technical-whizz-kid hasn't raised the hackles of other non-state groups, such as scientists in the field of astronomy and astro-physics who depend on their ability to read the stars, as it were, though the grace of dark skies enabling powerful telescopes to reach far into the deepest recesses of the universe, back in time and space to analyze the beginning of all that exists, but will be hampered by Musk's plans to string satellites in a wide net impeding the course of astronomical investigation by lighting up the skies.

Now, however, Beijing accuses Elon Musk of "space warfare" in close encounters of a different kind, where some satellites launched as part of his groundbreaking global internet initiative experienced a near-miss with China's recently-launched space station. Starlink Internet Services, a division of the Musk Space-X aerospace company, saw some of its satellites involved in two "close encounters" with China's space station in July and October.

China subsequently submitted a document to the United Nations apace agency: "For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control", China reported on the website of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. Now that's awfully serious; it's obvious that a collision of any dimension has the potential to end badly. Remember not so long ago when China insisted it had the right to send up rockets directed to destroy some of its old space junk still in circulation?

And the United States and European Space Agency were concerned over the detritus not only having the potential to intersect with their communication satellites but their space missions as well, including the international space station, where astronauts were actually forced to take evasive action when a piece of a destroyed Chinese weather satellite was headed toward it?

 

The ISS is a big target for space debris, but it's no sitting duck   NASA

.China launched Tianhe, the largest of its three modules which will make up its space station, in April. The end of 2022 will see the completion of the space station following four crewed missions meant to build on the initial module. Scientists urge space-travelling governments to share data to reduce risk of catastrophic space collisions in view of close to 30,000 satellites and other debris orbiting Earth. Close to 1,900 satellites have been deployed by Space X alone in service to its Starlink broadband network, meant to blanket the world with universal internet coverage.

According to China's state-operated tabloid Global Times, the satellites, 42,000 thousand of which Musk plans to orbit could be "used to detect China's space perception capabilities and test whether China can accurately grasp their actions". The paper wrote: "The aerospace industry is currently concerned about the military application of Starlink satellite because after the deployment of more than 40,000 satellites, the normal launch of other countries will be affected."

Musk may just run into problems making his world-wide high-speed internet connectivity viable; planning to ask China for permission to build antenna dishes or ground links on its territory to send and receive data from the Starlink spacecraft initially, China saw that plan as interfering with its censored internet network, the "Great Firewall", blocking access to websites like google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and international media. How else might it succeed in ensuring its 1.4 billion population is shielded from criticism against its communist leaders?

The Chinese division of Tesla last month, also owned by Musk, announced that Starlink would not launch services in China. All Tesla cars and charging stations would use network services provided by Chinese operators with all data maintained within the country. This, the result of China forcing foreign companies to retain all records collected from Chinese consumers within the country. Tesla in China employs quite a lot of Chinese workers.

 

"What will happen to Tesla in China, if some day Starlink's low-orbit satellites collide with our country's low-orbit satellites or other spacecraft", worried one Chinese, writing on Weibo. What, indeed?! After all, China appears to feel entitled to viewing space as its personal jurisdiction and it is very jealous of its reputation and sovereignty. And Musk feels that nothing is beyond his enterprising spirit to accomplish as a private, non-state investor in space.

 

Filthy Lucre and Profound Wealth

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Elon Musk and Grimes at the 2018 Met Gala

The world is stumbling through a global pandemic with nation after nation watching helplessly as their economies crumble, stock market values tumble, businesses fail, great corporations are prostrated, and pharmaceutical companies rush to develop a life-saving vaccine -- and all the while their health-care systems are overwhelmed with mounting cases of a coronavirus that has crushed the lives of millions of people.

Yet, all is not lost. The world's wealthiest billionaires are in fine shape, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index which ranks the world's 500 wealthiest people in order of the riches they have amassed. For the past eight years those rankings have informed a curious world of the wealth that some individuals have been able to accrue to themselves. And this year, which has seen nations stumble to their financial knees, the ultra-wealthy are doing just fine, thanks for asking.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos is now acknowledged as the wealthiest man in the world. Bill Gates has been dumped south, from the second richest man on Earth, to third-place status. And Elon Musk, who in January ranked 35th in wealth among the 500 billionaires the report names, added $100.3 billion to his net worth in the year 2020, for a total of $127.9 billion, the year that spelled disaster to Planet Earth. That princely sum added to his net worth has brought him to the position of second wealthiest man on this blue planet.

Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates's net worth of $127.7 while powerfully rich, has been diminished from the heights it might have reached had he not donated considerable portions of his vast wealth to charity, in giving over $27 billion to the Bill Gates Foundation, since 2006. He appears to have been more than willing to surrender the top spot in soaring wealth in favour of funding research in viruses to rescue humanity from dread diseases.

There are notable differences between Gates and Musk, the former believing in vaccine research and putting his money where his mouth is, as opposed to the values of the latter who questions pandemic data, finding comfort in certain conspiracy theories. And just as urban legend often speaks of the peculiar social mores and twisted morals of the very rich, there are examples that reveal the inner value core of such people.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably made for a poorer world for most of Earth's inhabitants. Millions have lost employment, millions have become ill and the lingering effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID will bedevil some people all their lives, those spared the devastation of more immediate life-taking complications. Governments have had to borrow vast sums in funding to financially support their desperate populations.

Widespread layoffs disproportionately affecting the working class and the poor, poverty is increasing exponentially. In marked contrast to the members of the Bloomberg index having collectively profited by gaining 23 percent (roughly $1.3 trillion-worth) since the beginning of the year when a mysterious pneumonia-like illness began to emerge in Wuhan, China and all too soon spread world-wide to wreak havoc everywhere.

•X, the unknown variable

•Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence) •A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent

+ (A=Archangel, my favorite song) (

metal rat)

The world's second richest man's partner is a Canadian-born entertainer, sufficiently successful in her career to have made a name for herself, and the owner of her own recording company, Crystal Math Music Inc. Her stage name is Grimes, her true name Claire Elise Boucher, born in British Columbia and an alumni of McGill University. The staff she employs at her recording company applied to a granting agency on her  behalf.

This is a woman, while a reportedly gifted musician and entertainer, lives in California with her love partner, Elon Musk, and their young son whom they named XAE A-XII. Factor, a Canadian arts subsidy program partially funded by the Government of Canada, awarded her a $90,000 grant. She evidently under the eligibility criteria of the funding body seems fully qualified, irrespective of the fact that she no longer lives in Canada, though listed as a Quebec artist.

So a woman with a successful entertaining career who owns her own recording company appealed to a partially publicly-funded arts-grant group for a grant acknowledging her contribution to Canadian entertainment. That she has access to undreamed-of wealth, living with the world's second-most wealthy man appears incidental; she has not hesitated to take the grant and he appears uninvolved with the moral implications.

Among which is the fact that entertainers of all kinds in the world of art are struggling to assert their talents in circumstances where public venues revolving around art and entertainment are now closed off to them, and while continuing to polish their talents in hopes of better days to come, seek gainful employment in the ill-paid services industries in hopes of earning a living to get by current difficulties. 

F.Scott Fitzgerald was right when he penned that throw-away line that "the rich are not like you and me".

Prophet or Lunatic?

"I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it."
"I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal."
"Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe]. The purpose of Neuralink [is] to create a high-bandwidth interface to the brain such that we can be symbiotic with AI. How much smarter are you with a phone or computer than without? You're vastly smarter, actually. You can answer any question pretty much instantly."
"I think we'll have something interesting to announce in a few months that's at least an order of magnitude better than anything else — probably than anyone thinks is possible. You're currently in a symbiotic relationship with your cortex and limbic system. Best-case scenario, we effectively merge with AI, where AI serves as a tertiary cognition layer. It will enable anyone who wants to have superhuman cognition."
"I tried to convince people to slow down AI, to regulate AI, but this was futile. I tried for years. Nobody listened. Normally the way regulations work is very slow. This time frame is not relevant to AI. You can't take 10 years from the point at which it's dangerous."
"The merge scenario with AI is the one that seems like probably the best. If you can't beat it, join it."
Elon Musk, 47, billionaire inventor, Tesla CEO

Elon Musk ✔ @elonmusk

If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.

37.3K

7:29 PM - Aug 11, 2017

Mr. Musk looks to the future with both a scientific impresario's curiosity and foresight and awareness of the drama that could be unfolding as humanity is challenged by artificial intelligence looming on the horizon with its promise to change our world at least as much as the Internet has done, but, according to Mr. Musk with potentially grave consequences. He believes that artificial intelligence once unleashed has the potential to challenge humankind's primacy as a controlling vector of the future.



He appears to be pragmatic in his approach, believing the worst could happen, that humans could become subservient to a far more intelligent creation than ourselves; that describes the pessimist in this man's inventively creative mind. And on the other hand, he feels that if the initiative is adequately taken humankind can absorb artificial intelligence and in one fell swoop match its intelligence quotient to defray the cost of submitting with our inferior brains to the far more adept and deep intelligence of an artificial construct of a thinking non-human intelligence.

"Essentially, how do we ensure that the future constitutes the sum of the will of humanity? And so, if we have billions of people with the high-band-width link to the AI extension of themselves, it would actually make everyone hyper-smart", he enthuses. "Electron to neuron interface at a micro level", he explains would process humanity into a creature capable of out-thinking and uber-manoeuvring a mere electronic mechanism 'taught' to think."Digital intelligence will exceed biological intelligence by a substantial margin. It's obvious."

So, who among us is willing, perhaps eager and ready to 'upgrade' their human intelligence by having a chip implanted in their head along with "a bunch of tiny wires", the goal of creating a hard drive for peoples' brains to be achieved? What, after all, could go wrong? Everything! Perhaps -- perhaps not. But even so, by submitting to that kind of creative boosting of intelligence will we transcend our human condition? How will we benefit, other than to guard ourselves against the possibility that a computer will gain power over us?

If those of us who agree to having that implanted chip alter our insight and creativity gaining cerebral function well beyond that with which our brains have been endowed will it be a plus for humanity and for the individuals involved? Will we create monsters? With greater intelligence comes the possibility of enhanced power. And humans are simply that; human beings endowed with all the emotional frailties of humanity. Just as hate and love are emotional antagonists that are very closely related, so are noble intentions and corruption.

"We worry", chides this man Musk, "more about ... what name somebody called someone else ... than whether AI will destroy humanity. That's insane." Yet to the uninitiated, Mr. Musk's preoccupation might appear in flirtation with the lunatic fringe of humanity. Ay, there's the rub.... Theatrics, Mr. Musk? Why wouldn't an 'intelligent' computer stop at the victory it is capable of claiming in chess? Why succumb to the fear that a machine would inevitably absorb the more base characteristics of humanity to wish to conquer and control?

Getty Images    Elon Musk