I’m no Peter Thiel fan, but I love his critique of DOGE:
> I had a conversation with Elon a few weeks ago about this. He said we’re going to have a billion humanoid robots in the U.S. in 10 years. And I said: Well, if that’s true, you don’t need to worry about the budget deficits because we’re going to have so much growth, the growth will take care of this.
Right. I guess either way, dystopia or utopia, if we have 1B humanoid robots in 2035, literally no one will remember saving $10M by cutting one scientific grant program.
Robot arm vacuums were just released few months ago. It can barely pick up socks and some types of slippers. There's still a long way to folding clothes.
His life mission is control, Mars was just a means to an end. He’s not going to get to Mars, and he very publicly destroyed any political capital he had on Earth.
Like Thiel, just another power hungry tech bro wrapping themselves in the idea of progress and humanity for PR. Define “progress” and for whom.
I wonder if in 2040 after 100 Gigafactories are built, large majority of power planets are green and rely on batteries, and ICE vehicles contribute only to tiny fraction of all pollution, there will still be people saying "it was just for money, meh".
The fact you actually believe a failing company can build 95 more factories when there is falling demand says it all. The propaganda is working very well.
I don't think it was for the money. I think it was for the ego. The money exists so that he can do things that make him feel good about himself.
I think he would love to be the guy who saved the planet. And if he's accomplished that by 2040, I'll be grateful to him for that. He'll have deserved it.
I think he'd also love to be the guy who colonized Mars. I believe that if you could ask him for one thing he wants, it's to be remembered in one breath with Christopher Columbus.
Of late, he seems to be distracted from both of those approaches. For a while, he thought he could be the guy who drowned the US government in the bathtub, enabling him to pursue his other feats in peace.
If that is ending, perhaps he'll return to being the great green visionary, electrifying the country despite the entrenched power structures working against him. It would take a lot to revise my extremely negative opinion, but if he really can be the guy who defeats global warming, I'll applaud him for it.
> I had a conversation with Elon a few weeks ago about this. He said we’re going to have a billion humanoid robots in the U.S. in 10 years. And I said: Well, if that’s true, you don’t need to worry about the budget deficits because we’re going to have so much growth, the growth will take care of this.