thiels obsession with using palintir as a spying tool is a thing for him for like 10 years already, funny it was around the same time he brought down gawker, through the hot-dog skin maniac, hogan. i read somewhere the only reason he targeted gawker, was them reporting on his business pratices, and not because of the gay thing.
I’m sure that there was maneuvering for influence, but he’s a grown, competent adult. Most of his wealth is associated with a company that has made its products an identity symbol for progressives. It should not be that hard to see that becoming a colossally-important financial supporter of, very-visibly palling around with, and performing some of the more-unpopular actions for the extraordinarily-unpopular-with-progressives Trump was going to piss people off. Having Trump do a sales pitch for said products on the White House lawn is just icing on the cake.
He was not trapped in that situation. Hell, even if he wanted to make huge donations, lots of wealthy people donate money to presidential campaigns — albeit not normally at the level that Musk did — and they don’t normally engage in the kind of incredibly-visible association that Musk did. He could have walked away. He could have even just asked Trump to appoint someone who he agreed with in the role, rather than taking it himself.
And this isn’t Musk’s first high-profile brand management screw-up. With Twitter, he was roundly criticized for the rebrand to X, given that Twitter had a very-well-established, valuable brand. Like, after the first time around, you’d think that he could reasonably have someone sanity-checking some of this for impact on brand.
I don’t expect Musk to be mistake-free, but I really think that if you placed most business leaders in his shoes, they’d have had an inkling that this was quite likely to be trouble.
I am not trying to defend Musk, just pointing out that even if he steps back from the White House it definitely doesn’t mean we’ve seen the exit of the final boss.
Yeah “blood boy” Thiel and Palantir and the like are the “deep state” the right witch hunted for so long. Pretty sure https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/Engerraund_Serac is partially based on him with the “I’ll control the future of the human race and swim through the blood to get to the ending I think is best because I’m rich”
I’m pretty sure Peter Theil fucked him over AGAIN. Thiel himself has been successfully lurking in the shadows to do evil shit and get what he wants, while Musk (although certainly far from innocent) has become the perfect scapegoat.
For months Musk was this untouchable god that couldn’t be removed from Trump’s office. They got Elon to handle all the dirty work, attach his face and name to some truly despicable shit, made him the most hated man in the country, then gradually made him look like an annoying nuisance who was disrespected by all the “adults in the white house,” and got everyone to start questioning if his mental health was spiraling, and now that Theil’s protege is handling technology and AI policy they no longer need Elon to
leave his fingerprints on everythingdo anything.thiels obsession with using palintir as a spying tool is a thing for him for like 10 years already, funny it was around the same time he brought down gawker, through the hot-dog skin maniac, hogan. i read somewhere the only reason he targeted gawker, was them reporting on his business pratices, and not because of the gay thing.
I’m sure that there was maneuvering for influence, but he’s a grown, competent adult. Most of his wealth is associated with a company that has made its products an identity symbol for progressives. It should not be that hard to see that becoming a colossally-important financial supporter of, very-visibly palling around with, and performing some of the more-unpopular actions for the extraordinarily-unpopular-with-progressives Trump was going to piss people off. Having Trump do a sales pitch for said products on the White House lawn is just icing on the cake.
He was not trapped in that situation. Hell, even if he wanted to make huge donations, lots of wealthy people donate money to presidential campaigns — albeit not normally at the level that Musk did — and they don’t normally engage in the kind of incredibly-visible association that Musk did. He could have walked away. He could have even just asked Trump to appoint someone who he agreed with in the role, rather than taking it himself.
And this isn’t Musk’s first high-profile brand management screw-up. With Twitter, he was roundly criticized for the rebrand to X, given that Twitter had a very-well-established, valuable brand. Like, after the first time around, you’d think that he could reasonably have someone sanity-checking some of this for impact on brand.
I don’t expect Musk to be mistake-free, but I really think that if you placed most business leaders in his shoes, they’d have had an inkling that this was quite likely to be trouble.
I am not trying to defend Musk, just pointing out that even if he steps back from the White House it definitely doesn’t mean we’ve seen the exit of the final boss.
Yeah “blood boy” Thiel and Palantir and the like are the “deep state” the right witch hunted for so long. Pretty sure https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/Engerraund_Serac is partially based on him with the “I’ll control the future of the human race and swim through the blood to get to the ending I think is best because I’m rich”