Starlink is quite literally turning near-earth space into a junkyard. How Musk truly values space exploration is seen in DOGE's vicious budgetary and personnel cuts at NASA.
Not really. Satellites in LEO are subject to significant atmospheric drag. Even if a satellite fails completely and can't be actively de-orbited by its own thrusters, the orbit will simply decay after a few years.
Kessler Syndrome (exponential growth in space debris as collisions cascade, each new debris cloud creating more debris clouds) could happen but probably not in the dramatic and instant form you see in the movies. Orbital shells are massively big. All the Starlink satellites ever launched would cover something like one millionth of the 200km orbit. With tracking and active maneuvering by satellite thrusters, collisions are incredibly unlikely. As far as I know we still haven't seen a single one with Starlink. The real generator of debris is non-maneuverable objects - discarded rocket stages, dead satellites.
Your analysis is excellent on what it covers but very few people focus on xAI. Many commentators seem to think that Musk is leaving government with his tail between his legs. On one level, his "power" has been diminished. However, he has left his minions in place throughout most, if not all, agencies; has numerous, large contracts already in place or in process (in fact, I would be willing to bet we don't know a great deal of what his companies have garnered; and, most importantly, aggregated government data into a "master" database using many of xAI technologies and on private servers. Most analysts have focused on what the government is doing with the data. I believe the focus should be on what Musk is doing with the data. It is well understood that LLMs need massive amounts of data and processing power to be competitive (see analyses of Musk's huge data center being built and expanded in Indiana, with of course numerous issues surrounding lack of compliance with environmental regulations, etc.). Certainly, the US government's databases provide a huge leg-up to the AI company able to gain access to them, which Musk certainly has. I am not sure why more people aren't very, very concerned about this, most particularly since recent analyses point to a major increase in capabilities at the same time as an acceleration of error rates and "hallucinations." I for one am terrified of what he will do with the information at his company and what the Trump regime will do with the master database to further its fascist agenda.
I agree completely. The US governments policy towards its massive collection of data on citizens was to silo it. Musk has gathered it all, and along with all the private data on people he has hands on, AI will enable him to build an absolute surveillance system. Recall the control of politicians and powerful people J Edgar Hoover could exercise with filing cabinets full of personal information. Now multiply that by a billion.
Progressives like me have believed that humans can rule themselves and advance the human project rationally and well, humanely. However, history is showing that malignant psychopaths keep rising to the top. Given that time to halt or even slow ecological overshoot has run out, looks like we are facing nutcase dystopia in short order.
In terms of material reality you are of course so right. I guess we have to find answers to this on the left but we cannot "rewind"... I am grateful for your wake-up call. In my mind I am still too much in the mindset of a time which has inevitably passed. What can we do to turn the ship around?! I don't know. My best friend always says (in German) "Polsprung" - he doesn't believe we will make it. But that is exactly what Musk says (hence his "Mars"- plans). I still think we need to make the case for "think small" - quality over quantity. But how to do this in a mass- marketable way?! A good question...
I’m sorry, but is it really such a revelation that an eager servant of capital will find levels of access only limited by their own enthusiasm whereas anyone to the left of Franco simply gets attacked by bullets if they approach actual nerve centers of power?
"They certainly hope that Elon will “take them to the moon”.
Let's hope he does and leaves them there. Musk's ventures have been more hit than miss, obscured by clouds of hype hit and even the one's that are supposedly successes are shrouded in dubious accounting -or in SpaceX's case no public accounting at all - that it's hard to know what their real value is. He turned Twitter/X into a far right sewer, with users and advertisers deplatforming in droves.
As Bloomberg commented Musk is in danger of turning Tesla into the next Boeing. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-02/elon-musk-risks-turning-tesla-into-the-next-boeing? How innovative is a car company the relies on models over a decade old? Tesla was always more about hype than innovation. Now it's being seriously tested by rival EV companies, customers are scrutinising Tesla products like any other company, the proverbial wheels are coming off.
Squeezing the value out of tired legacy models as far as it can with technical tweaks and refinements to hide the ageing technology under the bonnet is a risky strategy that as Boeing learned with the Max, will eventually backfire.
I would have a listen to this podcast on how the assumptions being made about the Golden Dome space-based interceptors are quite heroic, and how small changes to the assumptions used, or the characteristics of the ICBMs being targetted (simple things for Russia or China to change such as their speed or their trajectory) quickly make the numbers needed *well* beyond what SpaceX can deliver.
Klein has become very opposed to space exploration. For instance, there's a bit in _This Changes Everything_ where she criticizes the view of Earth from a distance as a distraction from the reality of individual lives and local ecosystems.
She seems to be drawing on long-running liberal opposition to space.
So Klein and Taylor's end times fascist critique doesn't take seriously enough Musk's iconic popularity and dominance in the material technologies shaping the future. Progressives wish they had such a dynamic and forward-thinking world builder. George Soros isn't cutting it. K & T are too belittling and dismissive of Musk's very real power. Fair enough. Still, their description of the intersectional coalition behind the autocratic reaction we're all going through is sickeningly apt. It names a lot of the polycrisis, even if it misses some parts.
As Ida Tarbell explained, and Lina Khan reminded a century later, the winner will take all if you let them, grinding capitalism's median welfare benefits to a pulp. Anti-trust, like it's many faltering bretheren today, is/was a systemically crucial guardrail. What kind of polycrisis might come from guardrail removal on monopoly, plutocracy, and non-state space/arms deployment...relatively abruptly? Pax Tesla? The Amazon Century?
As for Tesla, isn't there a documentary called "Who killed the electric car?" Then the zeitgeist was different and the car industry in the US still had some chops. And then the 2008 bailouts came...
Same with starlink. Such ideas were already there and Musk had some money and found a niche. Kudos for that. And for the deep state that believes in Panopticon and as such having eyes everywhere in the sky sounds like an excellent idea and encouraged it.
To me it is obvious that Musk and his bros have not read enough SciFi, just scratched the surface.
My first reaction to reading this was that there’s an exaggeration of Musk and his effects. I don’t think we can say he has mainstreamed EVs, when only 2% of vehicles are EVs. Compare that to Steve Jobs or even Zuck and literally every single person in the world has been touched by their technologies
You seem to be criticizing other authors for missing the crux of a problem without elucidating it yourself. Maybe I'm too dull. Are you saying Musk will now grow even richer by joining those shorting Tesla and plowing the proceeds into his satellite business? Or that the explosive growth of launch numbers portends something ominous, what exactly I don't get? Hope you follow up.
"But if we dismiss these massive material realities as nothing more than cronyism and “space junk”, how can we claim to be talking seriously about the future and its politics?"
These "realities" do not simply unfold linearly. What would a depression do to projects like this -- and Musk's investments? Laws change, court cases about monopolies take place. Lots of things can happen.
As for "end-time fascism," one of the notable things that occurred after Trump's election is that the term "fascism" went from being repeated by liberals many times daily to virtually totally disappearing, except it seems for academics like Klein. Why? Because it was meaningless to start with: Where were the black shirts? Where were the attacks on union and leftist meetings? Where are they now? What's going is is a coup of sorts against the Liberal State, but it's one operating totally with termination notices, lawyerly paper and emails, and airplanes to other countries' prisons, wholly within the framework of existing institutions and (ostensibly) laws. This notion of "end state fascism" has no wings outside of places like upstate Idaho, where it has long existed as a marginal survivalist movement.
Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labor, and money into commodities that can be accumulated.
Monbiot, George; Hutchison, Peter. Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (p. 8). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Economically it was surpassed on GDP at PPP by China in 2015 (and on more basic production earlier).
Militarily* it was surpsassed in 2019 when Putin announced a range of hypresonic missiles that were way ahead of USA. Since then superior missile tech, Air defence and EW has been clearly demonstrated compared to Nato in Ukraine. In particular this means there is no longer any usefulness in fighter jets and aircraft carriers - see the withdrawal from conflict with Yemen that cost US a billion on bombs and half a billion on Reaper drones and 3 jets.
Soft Power has been collapsing for years, but the support of Israel over Gaza has accelerated it. Ouside the west US is truly hated nowadays - for good rational reasons.
So there really is no need to explain things through fascism (or Trump madness), The USA is in collapse - the End Times are fundamental - the craziness is a response to the End Times, not a cause.
* The Golden Dome is a late response to the Military crisis. Yes it is a rational response, if 10 years late. Russia has hypersonics. To a lesser extent China and even Iran has them. US doesn't (which is why Yemen can chase away aircraft carriers twice in a year). US trials are still failing.
Those that recall Operation Paperclip will know that the US grabbed the German atomic bomb experts and the Eastern Intelligence experts (Gehlen - to set up pro-Nazi resistance in Ukraine and elsewhere) , but Russia grabbed the Rocket specialists. Hence Russia got into space a lot earlier, and now has Hypersonics.
Can the Golden Dome work without equivalent hypersonics? I doubt it - I guess that proble will be worked out along the way.
Starlink is quite literally turning near-earth space into a junkyard. How Musk truly values space exploration is seen in DOGE's vicious budgetary and personnel cuts at NASA.
Not really. Satellites in LEO are subject to significant atmospheric drag. Even if a satellite fails completely and can't be actively de-orbited by its own thrusters, the orbit will simply decay after a few years.
Kessler Syndrome (exponential growth in space debris as collisions cascade, each new debris cloud creating more debris clouds) could happen but probably not in the dramatic and instant form you see in the movies. Orbital shells are massively big. All the Starlink satellites ever launched would cover something like one millionth of the 200km orbit. With tracking and active maneuvering by satellite thrusters, collisions are incredibly unlikely. As far as I know we still haven't seen a single one with Starlink. The real generator of debris is non-maneuverable objects - discarded rocket stages, dead satellites.
Your analysis is excellent on what it covers but very few people focus on xAI. Many commentators seem to think that Musk is leaving government with his tail between his legs. On one level, his "power" has been diminished. However, he has left his minions in place throughout most, if not all, agencies; has numerous, large contracts already in place or in process (in fact, I would be willing to bet we don't know a great deal of what his companies have garnered; and, most importantly, aggregated government data into a "master" database using many of xAI technologies and on private servers. Most analysts have focused on what the government is doing with the data. I believe the focus should be on what Musk is doing with the data. It is well understood that LLMs need massive amounts of data and processing power to be competitive (see analyses of Musk's huge data center being built and expanded in Indiana, with of course numerous issues surrounding lack of compliance with environmental regulations, etc.). Certainly, the US government's databases provide a huge leg-up to the AI company able to gain access to them, which Musk certainly has. I am not sure why more people aren't very, very concerned about this, most particularly since recent analyses point to a major increase in capabilities at the same time as an acceleration of error rates and "hallucinations." I for one am terrified of what he will do with the information at his company and what the Trump regime will do with the master database to further its fascist agenda.
I agree completely. The US governments policy towards its massive collection of data on citizens was to silo it. Musk has gathered it all, and along with all the private data on people he has hands on, AI will enable him to build an absolute surveillance system. Recall the control of politicians and powerful people J Edgar Hoover could exercise with filing cabinets full of personal information. Now multiply that by a billion.
Progressives like me have believed that humans can rule themselves and advance the human project rationally and well, humanely. However, history is showing that malignant psychopaths keep rising to the top. Given that time to halt or even slow ecological overshoot has run out, looks like we are facing nutcase dystopia in short order.
In terms of material reality you are of course so right. I guess we have to find answers to this on the left but we cannot "rewind"... I am grateful for your wake-up call. In my mind I am still too much in the mindset of a time which has inevitably passed. What can we do to turn the ship around?! I don't know. My best friend always says (in German) "Polsprung" - he doesn't believe we will make it. But that is exactly what Musk says (hence his "Mars"- plans). I still think we need to make the case for "think small" - quality over quantity. But how to do this in a mass- marketable way?! A good question...
(https://youtu.be/goh2x_G0ct4?si=CA0-xuJnXa5Crec3 - and Gil Scott-Heron didn't talk about Mars then 🥴)
I’m sorry, but is it really such a revelation that an eager servant of capital will find levels of access only limited by their own enthusiasm whereas anyone to the left of Franco simply gets attacked by bullets if they approach actual nerve centers of power?
"They certainly hope that Elon will “take them to the moon”.
Let's hope he does and leaves them there. Musk's ventures have been more hit than miss, obscured by clouds of hype hit and even the one's that are supposedly successes are shrouded in dubious accounting -or in SpaceX's case no public accounting at all - that it's hard to know what their real value is. He turned Twitter/X into a far right sewer, with users and advertisers deplatforming in droves.
As Bloomberg commented Musk is in danger of turning Tesla into the next Boeing. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-02/elon-musk-risks-turning-tesla-into-the-next-boeing? How innovative is a car company the relies on models over a decade old? Tesla was always more about hype than innovation. Now it's being seriously tested by rival EV companies, customers are scrutinising Tesla products like any other company, the proverbial wheels are coming off.
Squeezing the value out of tired legacy models as far as it can with technical tweaks and refinements to hide the ageing technology under the bonnet is a risky strategy that as Boeing learned with the Max, will eventually backfire.
'SpaceX is what makes this affordable'....
I would have a listen to this podcast on how the assumptions being made about the Golden Dome space-based interceptors are quite heroic, and how small changes to the assumptions used, or the characteristics of the ICBMs being targetted (simple things for Russia or China to change such as their speed or their trajectory) quickly make the numbers needed *well* beyond what SpaceX can deliver.
https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1220373/brilliant-swarms/
(lots of good work referenced within that link on this)
Klein has become very opposed to space exploration. For instance, there's a bit in _This Changes Everything_ where she criticizes the view of Earth from a distance as a distraction from the reality of individual lives and local ecosystems.
She seems to be drawing on long-running liberal opposition to space.
So Klein and Taylor's end times fascist critique doesn't take seriously enough Musk's iconic popularity and dominance in the material technologies shaping the future. Progressives wish they had such a dynamic and forward-thinking world builder. George Soros isn't cutting it. K & T are too belittling and dismissive of Musk's very real power. Fair enough. Still, their description of the intersectional coalition behind the autocratic reaction we're all going through is sickeningly apt. It names a lot of the polycrisis, even if it misses some parts.
As Ida Tarbell explained, and Lina Khan reminded a century later, the winner will take all if you let them, grinding capitalism's median welfare benefits to a pulp. Anti-trust, like it's many faltering bretheren today, is/was a systemically crucial guardrail. What kind of polycrisis might come from guardrail removal on monopoly, plutocracy, and non-state space/arms deployment...relatively abruptly? Pax Tesla? The Amazon Century?
Isn't corporate populism an oxymoron?!
As for Tesla, isn't there a documentary called "Who killed the electric car?" Then the zeitgeist was different and the car industry in the US still had some chops. And then the 2008 bailouts came...
Same with starlink. Such ideas were already there and Musk had some money and found a niche. Kudos for that. And for the deep state that believes in Panopticon and as such having eyes everywhere in the sky sounds like an excellent idea and encouraged it.
To me it is obvious that Musk and his bros have not read enough SciFi, just scratched the surface.
My first reaction to reading this was that there’s an exaggeration of Musk and his effects. I don’t think we can say he has mainstreamed EVs, when only 2% of vehicles are EVs. Compare that to Steve Jobs or even Zuck and literally every single person in the world has been touched by their technologies
You seem to be criticizing other authors for missing the crux of a problem without elucidating it yourself. Maybe I'm too dull. Are you saying Musk will now grow even richer by joining those shorting Tesla and plowing the proceeds into his satellite business? Or that the explosive growth of launch numbers portends something ominous, what exactly I don't get? Hope you follow up.
"But if we dismiss these massive material realities as nothing more than cronyism and “space junk”, how can we claim to be talking seriously about the future and its politics?"
These "realities" do not simply unfold linearly. What would a depression do to projects like this -- and Musk's investments? Laws change, court cases about monopolies take place. Lots of things can happen.
As for "end-time fascism," one of the notable things that occurred after Trump's election is that the term "fascism" went from being repeated by liberals many times daily to virtually totally disappearing, except it seems for academics like Klein. Why? Because it was meaningless to start with: Where were the black shirts? Where were the attacks on union and leftist meetings? Where are they now? What's going is is a coup of sorts against the Liberal State, but it's one operating totally with termination notices, lawyerly paper and emails, and airplanes to other countries' prisons, wholly within the framework of existing institutions and (ostensibly) laws. This notion of "end state fascism" has no wings outside of places like upstate Idaho, where it has long existed as a marginal survivalist movement.
Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labor, and money into commodities that can be accumulated.
Monbiot, George; Hutchison, Peter. Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (p. 8). Crown. Kindle Edition.
But why is this End Times (and for who?)
It is End Times for USA for which
Economically it was surpassed on GDP at PPP by China in 2015 (and on more basic production earlier).
Militarily* it was surpsassed in 2019 when Putin announced a range of hypresonic missiles that were way ahead of USA. Since then superior missile tech, Air defence and EW has been clearly demonstrated compared to Nato in Ukraine. In particular this means there is no longer any usefulness in fighter jets and aircraft carriers - see the withdrawal from conflict with Yemen that cost US a billion on bombs and half a billion on Reaper drones and 3 jets.
Soft Power has been collapsing for years, but the support of Israel over Gaza has accelerated it. Ouside the west US is truly hated nowadays - for good rational reasons.
So there really is no need to explain things through fascism (or Trump madness), The USA is in collapse - the End Times are fundamental - the craziness is a response to the End Times, not a cause.
* The Golden Dome is a late response to the Military crisis. Yes it is a rational response, if 10 years late. Russia has hypersonics. To a lesser extent China and even Iran has them. US doesn't (which is why Yemen can chase away aircraft carriers twice in a year). US trials are still failing.
Those that recall Operation Paperclip will know that the US grabbed the German atomic bomb experts and the Eastern Intelligence experts (Gehlen - to set up pro-Nazi resistance in Ukraine and elsewhere) , but Russia grabbed the Rocket specialists. Hence Russia got into space a lot earlier, and now has Hypersonics.
Can the Golden Dome work without equivalent hypersonics? I doubt it - I guess that proble will be worked out along the way.
"Musk’s net worth has fallen by about $130bn since Trump’s inauguration."
People like to make this point. All that and more was made between the election and the inauguration.