Elon Musk Is Working His Hardest to Make a Chinese Century

America was already great before Donald Trump successfully entered its national politics. Compared to all other countries, we are enormously wealthy. Compared to other wealthy countries, we are a pluralist society with a great deal of diversity. In this new age of geopolitical competition, we retain the world's preeminent military. And even in the highly globalized world of science, technology, and medicine, we continue to produce and attract the best minds who push at the frontiers of their fields year after year.

But if Elon Musk has his way, this will all go up in smoke. His attack began with the spending freeze for public health institutions specifically. Now the administration has announced billions of dollars in unilateral reductions of NIH funding. Research institutions in general will close or shrink dramatically, and of course children’s hospitals around the country will shut down, gratuitously abandoning their patients to die young. 

They get very little respect these days, but America’s research institutions are the foundation of what makes us exceptional. From agricultural productivity and medical advancement to materials science and military hardware, our subsidized and state-run research institutions are absolutely essential to our ability to stay on the global forefront. Cut these institutions at the knees and you cut down the core of America’s prosperity and strength.

Famously, during World War Two, the atomic bomb was developed in America by European refugees who had found employment at American universities. Today, the close connection between academic research, cutting edge technology, and national security remains. The scientific foundations for mRNA vaccines were developed at American universities, and then later developed to practical use by a Hungarian immigrant who worked at the University of Pennsylvania before switching to industry. Next-generation ceramic radar absorbent materials are being developed at—you guessed it—American universities. Cutting edge developments in artificial intelligence are pursued by the graduates of a handful of research institutions, like Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT. 

The flow of research, ideas, money, and highly trained personnel between academia, industry, and government has powered a century of American technological dominance. In an age of renewed great power competition, national security depends on remaining at the cutting edge of bioscience, artificial intelligence, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing technologies. Taking a hacksaw to the funding for these institutions will have predictable consequences.

In many ways Elon Musk is the right man to play this role in our national suicide. He more than perhaps anyone now alive has benefitted from the mythology of the entrepreneur, the Randian myth of the one man who keeps society innovative and dynamic through his individual brilliance and gumption. For my entire life, such figures have been trotted out before the public from the tech sector: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and on and on. But every single one of them succeeded by finding a niche within a vast sociotechnical ecology which enabled their own expertise in the first place, along with that of their numerous personnel.

By contrast, Dominic Cummings, of all people, got this right. As Sam Knight paraphrased:

It is America’s ecosystem of universities, entrepreneurs, and government procurement departments that have helped maintain its economic and technological edge, not just lower taxes or a freer form of capitalism.

Cummings’ idiotic Tory colleagues called this the perspective of a “terrible central planner,” to which he replied “That’s America. This is not weird left-wing shit.”

That’s America, but not, it seems, for much longer. Like Trump, Musk cannot stand for anyone or anything to be adored more highly than himself. The idea that our “ecosystem of universities, entrepreneurs, and government procurement departments,” rather than Musk’s personal genius, is the reason for our success and his is simply too much. Once he clears all of that away, everyone will see that actually, it has been he, the heroic individualist innovator, who built his personal empire, and he alone.

Those political and economic elites who are sitting on the sidelines right now, waiting to see how this will play out, no doubt imagine that they are playing a risk-mitigating strategy for the time being. If you stick out your neck, Trump or Musk might remove your head, but stay out of sight for a few years and at least you, personally, will not have your fortune or your freedom taken. But if Musk’s Ketamine Koup is allowed to continue unchecked for weeks, never mind months or years, we will get ever more at risk of becoming a tinpot dictatorship. When that happens, your fortune and your freedom will likely depend on the whims of Musk or Trump.

As students of international development know, a nation's ability to generate innovation depends not just on the genius of individuals—genius knows no nationality—but on institutions like the rule of law. The regular administration of law guarantees everyone a fair shake, even newcomers with big ideas. There are already allegations that Trump nominees have favored Musk's businesses in military procurement. If Musk gains unilateral control over government spending, the quality of your inventions begin to matter far less than the quality of your sycophancy. The rot that cronyism and corruption has inflicted on the Russian military will be a preview of our future.

Without steady support for scientific research and the academic institutions that generate it, without the rule of law that sustains constant innovation and capital risk-taking, our country’s ability to advance new industries will be greatly diminished. We will fall behind our peers and our rivals, and will be lucky if we aren’t simply permanently impoverished compared to our pre-President Musk baseline.

If you have wealth and influence, it is well past time to get off the fence and use every tool you have at your disposal. Musk must be stopped today, Trump must be frustrated in his efforts until his term is up. An opposition media with mass audiences must be supported in the face of an unprecedented assault on freedom of the press. We are not running out of time, we have run out of time. If we are ever going to put the pieces of American greatness back together again, we must all do everything that we can today.

Featured image is TB-32 production line at Consolidated Aircraft, circa 1944-45, from the USAF