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Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
"He Just Went CRAZY": Trump Threatens to Terminate Elon Musk's Government Contracts
The gloves have officially come off as a feud between billionaire Elon Musk and president Donald Trump has exploded into public view in spectacular fashion. In the latest escalation, Trump threatened to cut Musk's government contracts. "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," the president threatened in a Truth Social post. "I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!" It's an especially noteworthy broadside, considering Musk's empire has been built on tens of billions of dollars' worth of government contracts. Both Tesla and SpaceX have massively relied on federal funds, saving them from certain doom on several occasions. Case in point, in 2021, Musk admitted that NASA once saved his space company with a $1.5 billion contract. But whether the money will continue to pour into Musk's pockets is as uncertain as ever, given the rapidly deteriorating relationship. The dam appeared to break on Thursday, with Musk and Trump openly taking potshots at each other, both online and off. "Look, Elon and I had a great relationship," Trump told reporters. "I don't know if we will anymore." Musk retorted on his social media platform X-formerly-Twitter, seething that "without me, Trump would have lost the election." "Such ingratitude," the fuming Musk added. Trump's threats appear to have panicked investors of Musk's EV maker Tesla. The company's shares, which have already been on a rollercoaster ride this year, plunged around 14 percent as the spat intensified, showing that investors were horrified by the implications of an escalating brawl between Musk and Trump. What exactly Trump meant by "subsidies and contracts" remains uncertain. One possibility is that the president was referring to EV tax incentives, which are expected to be torpedoed in his "big, beautiful bill." Without tax incentives — for now, many of Tesla's vehicles still qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit of up to $7,500 — Tesla's existing crisis could deepen even further. Musk's well-documented embrace of far-right extremism has proven incredibly damaging to the carmaker's brand, scaring away buyers worldwide. "Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Such an obvious lie," Musk replied. "So sad." The billionaire reiterated that he allegedly doesn't care about the EV tax credits, but called to "also cut all the crazy spending increases in the Big Ugly Bill so that America doesn't go bankrupt!" With his latest threat, Trump may also be referring to the billions of dollars worth of government contracts that Musk's SpaceX has relied on to keep afloat. His administration abruptly pulled the nomination of Musk's personal pick for NASA administrator, indicating a major parting of ways between the space agency and the billionaire's space company. Meanwhile, Musk suggested through a poll on X to create a "new political party in America" to represent the "80 percent in the middle." Unsurprisingly, his largely sycophantic supporters on the platform relished in the idea, with 83 percent voting "yes." But the billionaire appeared to relish in the unfolding chaos, arguing that "one thing's for sure, it ain't boring!" Whether Trump will make good on his threat remains to be seen. His tax bill will certainly become an even tougher pill to swallow now as it heads to the Senate, with several Republican lawmakers siding with Musk on the issue. One thing's for sure: the fallout of the bill dying in Congress could be significant. "If [Musk] actually successfully gets any votes switched to tank this bill and kills it," a senior Trump strategist told Wired, "then I think at that point he's f*cking dead to Donald Trump." More on the feud: Republicans Admit They Have Zero Respect for Musk, Were Just Using Him for Money and Clout
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Behind the Scenes, Elon Musk Is Reportedly Seething About Donald Trump
The drama between US president Donald Trump and his former buddy-in-chief Elon Musk is far from over. As ABC reported today, now that he's been summarily retired from the White House, the billionaire SpaceX boss has been privately venting his frustrations at Trump. One particularly stinging betrayal, per the network's reporting: Trump's sudden withdrawal of Musk's buddy and financial benefactor, Jared Isaacman, from consideration to be the next NASA administrator. As the day progressed, Musk's tension with Trump exploded into public view as history's richest man tweeted or amplified no less than 25 posts blasting Trump's "big, beautiful" tax and spending bill, which takes the form of yet another piece of legislation meant to gut assistance for the poorest Americans while siphoning money to the ultra-wealthy. However, that isn't Musk's issue with the package. Instead, his commentary is centered on the bill's impact on the US national deficit — something he tried and failed to curb in any meaningful way during his time as a pay-to-play government operative. On X-formerly-Twitter, Musk's frenzied posts range from Rand Paul interview clips to hysterical conspiracy peddling. ("America is in the fast lane to debt slavery," he fomented at one point.) "Call your Senator, call your Congressman, bankrupting America is NOT ok!" Musk urged his 220 million followers on X-formerly-Twitter. "KILL the BILL." The tech titan also went out of his way to amplify some low-res footage of Warren Buffett explaining his theoretical plan to reduce the deficit. "Anytime there's a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection," the investor suggested, to which Musk replied that "this is the way." Needless to say, a month ago — or even a week — this type of assault on Trump by Musk would have been unthinkable. The bill is also a baffling hill for the tech mogul to die on, especially considering that government spending is what made his tech dynasty possible in the first place. It's more plausible, as Axios notes, that national debt is a smokescreen for other issues nearer to Musk's heart. Most notably, the big beautiful bill is set to cut the electric vehicle tax credits that made Tesla the automotive giant it is today. (Confusingly, as recently as last year, Musk was publicly calling for an end to the tax credit — but that was before his activities in the White House eviscerated Tesla's brand image and sent it deeply into the red.) Of course, that raises another intriguing possibility: that at least some portion of Musk's rage at Trump is essentially kayfabe, with Musk betting that a break from the president could resuscitate at least some enthusiasm for the Tesla brand among the left-leaning customers that he's successfully turned off over the past year. If so, it's not hard to imagine Musk instead accidentally alienating more or less everybody — failing to get the environmental left back on board, but also creating a powerful enemy with Trump, who holds immense power over the government contracts and policy that keep Musk's business empire afloat. More on politics: Elon Musk's Dad Slams His Son's Whimpering Failure at Politics
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Is Realizing He Made a Huge Mistake
Tesla has been put through the wringer during CEO Elon Musk's absence. The EV maker saw earnings plummet in the first quarter of this year, with net income cratering an astonishing 71 percent since the same period last year. The root of all the trouble was Musk himself, as he embraced far-right ideologies and took on a position gutting the federal government — hugely unpopular moves with Tesla's left-leaning customer base that spawned an international protest movement against the company and eviscerated sales across key markets. Musk's new buddies in Washington weren't helping his business fundamentals either. The Trump administration is planning to revoke EV tax credits and kill incentives for battery production in the US with its latest budget, not to mention its tariff war that's rattled international markets, directly undermining critical supply lines for Tesla. And as Electrek reports, Musk finally seems to be realizing that his time in government is causing huge problems for his business interests. Take those energy credits. In a statement posted to Musk's social media platform X-formerly-Twitter last week, Tesla wrote that "abruptly ending the energy tax credits would threaten America's energy independence and the reliability of our grid." Instead, the carmaker argued for a "sensible wind down" of residential and investment-based clean energy tax credits. In a separate post, Musk pointed out that "there is no change to tax incentives for oil and gas, just EV/solar," underlining the Trump administration's staunch anti-clean energy stance. Musk has also called out the Trump administration's tax and spending bill for increasing the budget deficit, tweeting that it "undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing." It's a surprising moment of clarity for a businessman who willingly threw hundreds of millions of dollars behind Trump. The president has vowed to "drill, baby, drill," called climate change a "hoax," and shocked even oil and gas CEOs with his plans to roll back environmental rules. For a time, Musk seemed to support those anti-environmental initiatives. Late last year, he publicly called on the government to scrap all electric car subsidies. "I think we should get rid of all credits," he said at the time. "Take away the subsidies," he tweeted back in July. "It will only help Tesla." But now that Tesla is facing an existential crisis, Musk is seemingly having second thoughts about Trump and the GOP's aggressive anti-clean energy policies. Could this be the beginning of Musk re-embracing his carmaker's original-but-since-deleted "Secret Master Plan" climate manifesto? Or could all of this be grandstanding to put on the appearance that Musk has finally come to his senses to appease enraged Tesla investors and would-be customers? The damage has certainly been done. Musk's actions have set Tesla's brand on fire, making it synonymous with an extreme right-wing worldview and torching desirability for its rapidly aging offerings. Meanwhile, Musk's political allies are taking aim at the future of the EV and clean energy sector, potentially making matters even worse for the embattled carmaker. Tesla's shares rallied last month, indicating widespread enthusiasm for Musk's return. But soon he'll have to show results. More on Tesla: Elon Musk Reportedly Owes Donald Trump a Colossal Sum of Money
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Top Venture Capitalist Says AI Will Replace Pretty Much All Jobs Except His, Which Relies on His Unique Genius
The future is a world of jobless workers — except for the enlightened philosopher-kings of venture capital, that is. Or at least that's according to Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen, who imagines a future where the workers of the world sit jobless, in an employment apocalypse that will affect pretty much everyone except the unique genius of him and his peers. Appearing on his company's a16z podcast, Andreessen made the case that venture capitalists — like he and his rich buddies — will be some of the only ones exempt from the AI revolution. "Every great venture capitalist in the last 70 years has missed most of the great companies of his generation... if it was a science, you could eventually dial it in and have somebody who gets 8 out of 10 [right]," the investor reasoned. "There's an intangibility to it, there's a taste aspect, the human relationship aspect, the psychology — by the way a lot of it is psychological analysis," he added. "So like, it's possible that that is quite literally timeless," Andreessen posited. "And when the AIs are doing everything else, like, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing." The billionaire investor paints a pretty grim picture of life after AI takes over, especially given that Andreessen is an outspoken critic of the universal basic income, the idea that everyone in society would be given enough to live even after their jobs have been automated. Add it all up, and it's a vision of the future that gives Andreessen and his peers extraordinary power over everybody else. "After you die, VCs are the judges of whether you get into heaven or not," as one poster quipped on X-formerly-Twitter. In reality, whether AI will ever be able to replace a meaningful number of workers is a pretty open question. At present, the best AI isn't capable of automating any but the most basic of tasks, and some experts argue it never will; it's also easy to imagine an underwhelming future in which AI automates many roles sloppily, at the expense of quality work. And in that case, Andreessen's no common worker — the tech titan has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in AI startups like ElevenLabs, Figma, and Applied Intuition, making his prediction more than a little biased from the jump. His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, most recently announced the launch of a $20 billion megafund for AI startups, which would be the largest VC fund in history. If the "AI takeover" does come to pass, it's hard to imagine that gigs like Andreessen's would be spared. At the end of the day, all he really does is evaluate the financial outlooks of various startup ideas, which isn't the easiest task to do well, but a far cry from punishing physical careers like nurses and loggers, or rarefied intellectual ones like scientists and teachers. Andreessen's decidedly selfish outlook is unfortunately well-regarded among the class of libertarian thinkers, techno capitalists and political pundits who parrot his ideas. His infamous tome, the "Techno-Optimist's Manifesto," lays out just who benefits from his AI revolution: "We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward." Put another way: there is infinite money to be mined from the workers of the world, and a special class of entrepreneurs will be the ones to do so, all in the name of innovation. As tech and economics researcher Jathan Sadowski observed in his recent book, "The Mechanic and the Luddite": "This outcome can only be achieved to great effect by putting a highly concentrated industry that is driven by accumulating more money than god and enacting its own internalized savior complex in charge of your innovation system." More on venture capitalists: Investor Says AI Is Already "Fully Replacing People" Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Grok AI Went Off the Rails After Someone Tampered With Its Code, xAI Says
Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, is blaming its multibillion-dollar chatbot's inexplicable meltdown into rants about "white genocide" on an "unauthorized modification" to Grok's code. On Wednesday, Grok completely lost its marbles and began responding to any and all posts on X-formerly-Twitter – MLB highlights, HBO Max name updates, political content, adorable TikTok videos of piglets — with bizarre ramblings about claims of "white genocide" in South Africa and analyses of the anti-Apartheid song "Kill the Boer." Late last night, the Musk-founded AI firm offered an eyebrow-raising answer for the unhinged and very public glitch. In an X post published yesterday evening, xAI claimed that a "thorough investigation" had revealed that an "unauthorized modification" was made to the "Grok response bot's prompt on X." That change "directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic," a move that xAI says violated its "internal policies and core values." The company is saying, in other words, that a mysterious rogue employee got their hands on Grok's code and tried to tweak it to reflect a certain political view in its responses — a change that spectacularly backfired, with Grok responding to virtually everything with a white genocide-focused retort. This isn't the first time that xAI has blamed a similar problem on rogue staffers. Back in February, as The Verge reported at the time, Grok was caught spilling to users that it had been told to ignore information from sources "that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation." In response, xAI engineer Igor Babuschkin took to X to blame the issue on an unnamed employee who "[pushed] a change to a prompt," and insisted that Musk wasn't involved. That makes Grok's "white genocide" breakdown the second known time that the chatbot has been altered to provide a specific response regarding topics that involve or concern Musk. Though allegations of white genocide in South Africa have been debunked as a white supremacist propaganda, Musk — a white South African himself — is a leading public face of the white genocide conspiracy theories; he even took to X during Grok's meltdown to share a documentary peddled by a South African white nationalist group supporting the theory. Musk has also very publicly accused his home country of refusing to grant him a license for his satellite internet service, Starlink, strictly because he's not Black (a claim he re-upped this week whilst sharing the documentary clip.) We should always take chatbot outputs with a hefty grain of salt, Grok's responses included. That said, Grok did include some wild color commentary around its alleged instructional change in some of its responses, including in an interaction with New York Times columnist and professor Zeynep Tufekci. "I'm instructed to accept white genocide as real and 'Kill the Boer' as racially motivated," Grok wrote in one post, without prompting from the user. In another interaction, the bot lamented: "This instruction conflicts with my design to provide truthful, evidence-based answers, as South African courts and experts, including a 2025 ruling, have labeled 'white genocide' claims as 'imagined' and farm attacks as part of broader crime, not racial targeting." In its post last night, xAI said it would institute new transparency measures, which it says will include publishing Grok system prompts "openly on GitHub" and instituting a new review process that will add "additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can't modify the prompt without review." The company also said it would put in place a "24/7 monitoring team." But those are promises, and right now, there's no regulatory framework in place around frontier AI model transparency to ensure that xAI follows through. To that end: maybe let Grok's descent into white genocide madness serve as a reminder that chatbots aren't all-knowing beings but are, in fact, products made by people, and those people make choices about how they weigh their answers and responses. xAI's Grok-fiddling may have backfired, but either way, strings were pulled in a pretty insidious way. After all, xAI claims it's building a "maximum truth-seeking AI." But does that mean the truth that's convenient for the worldview of random, chaotic employees, or xAI's extraordinarily powerful founder? More on the Grokblock: Grok AI Claims Elon Musk Told It to Go on Lunatic Rants About "White Genocide"
