A (Partial) Defense of Elon Musk

New York Times

2 days ago

Visionaries can be terrifying, far more terrifying than the selfish and venal, who are easy to predict and to understand. Visionaries with the means to realize their visions are the most terrifying of all. They are also rare — in any given historical period, there are just a few men (they are always men) who bend reality around themselves, disregarding criticism and caution.
For better or worse, Elon Musk is a visionary. I have no doubt that he's volatile and reckless, but those who dismiss him as a fraud or an idiot have not been paying close attention. Yes, his time meddling with the federal government has come to an end. And yes, perhaps his foray into politics was, in part, a disappointment to him. But Mr. Musk's vision goes well beyond Washington. He has always been clear on this point and continues to tell anyone who will listen: 'Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun,' he told Fox News last month. 'The sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization, because Earth will be incinerated.'
This is why, 23 years ago, Mr. Musk resolved to go to Mars — his first step toward interstellar colonization. He says he wants to die there ('just not on impact'). He also says that space exploration will lead to a process of mass psychological renewal. 'The United States,' he says, 'is literally a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. This is a land of adventurers.' His goal is to save humanity, not only from the future loss of our planet, but also from our own lethargy and cowardice. If he succeeds in this project, then Mr. Musk's time in Washington will be just a minor detail in the histories written on him.
It's not as if this past year has done Mr. Musk long-term harm. Those indulging in schadenfreude at his apparent fall from grace don't seem to have noticed the success of his space program. In the first half of 2024, his SpaceX company launched seven times as much tonnage into space as the rest of the world put together, and Mr. Trump's Golden Dome (an imitation of Israel's Iron Dome) could well consume as many taxpayer dollars as NASA's Apollo project. Much of this funding will be diverted to SpaceX, given the need for an enormous number of satellites, meaning that Mr. Musk's fortune will grow still further as a result of his political interventions. Mr. Musk's obsession with space isn't just ideological — he is also making money from it. 'Pure philanthropy is all very well in its way,' as Cecil Rhodes once said, 'but philanthropy plus 5 percent is a good deal better.'
Mr. Rhodes was another businessman, politician and visionary who bent reality around his will, one of these strange and polarizing figures who crop up throughout history and — to use one of Silicon Valley's favorite maxims — 'just do things.' One thing Mr. Rhodes did was make a lot of money, initially through the diamond trade, which he entered as a teenager, eventually to create in 1888 the De Beers diamond company. He would go on to become prime minister of the Cape Colony, the founder of Rhodesia and the most powerful agent of British imperialism in Africa, with all the violence that implies. He died in 1902, at age 48, as one of the richest men on earth.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.