Elon Musk - Maniacal Super Villain?

I wrote this back in 2020 and added a significant update.

I got to thinking about the traits and inventions of a modern day genius named Elon Musk.

He has a fear of AI but is leading the charge in advancing it. The first to seriously enter the electric car industry while changing a very antiquated system for selling automobiles. Then he is launching rockets into space and safely bringing them back. Also launching them into space with thousands of satellites to offer everyone high speed internet access. Samuel L Jackson's Valentine in "Kingsman The Secret Service". The Riddler in "Batman Forever". Screen Slaver from "The Incredibles 2". Donald Trump in The 2016 Presidential Election. Fantasy examples of trying to control everything and everybody. When paying the bills isn't a challenge a bored narcissist is capable of trying a lot of things. Let's see what sticks and move on.

Mind Control

Neural Link, a chip implanted in the head that can help control the brain? It may help those with handicaps both mental and physical. But how much further could it go. Complete mind control? Think about it, what's the most difficult part of making a robot? A body that will have the same or better range of function than a human being. Implant a mind control chip into human's and voila, full functioning robots with the only downside being, they will deteriorate over time. But, mind control makes certain they remain physically fit and eating healthy for as long as possible. If they don't comply then they get scrapped. Wording it like that sounds better than killed, murdered, slaughtered etc.

So Musk now has a satellite network circling the earth and wants to implant chips in heads. A worldwide link to everyone implanted? A hive network of humans that do what the chip tells them to do or perish? Total control, no questions, no doubts, just following programed instructions. Blending in with society. The ultimate in camouflage. Enacting the orders of whoever may be in control. A communist or socialist countries wildest dreams come true and would pay top dollar to purchase the ultimate control of their population. Spies that don't even know they are spies doing all tasks required as if they were normal daily activities. It is a goddamn James Bond movie.

Artificial Intelligence has been growing at a rate that is very hard to control. If it keeps compounding its rate of growth as it has over the past decade, AI taking control is a very real possibility and at the very least we could have some human controlling the master commands while the AI determines the best course of action to accomplish the goal as efficiently as possible. Can we be walking into a future where AI takes full control? No more constitution, just computer logic. AI thinking could be like this, humans produce waste at an incredible rate. Eradicate humans and you eradicate the problem. Another benefit, you eradicate a multitude of human caused and human used pollutants that have been destroying the atmosphere of this planet for a very long time. Sounds like a Marvel movie, doesn't it. Age of Ultron starting with the Age of Celebrity Apprentice host.

Update February 2025.

Now we have Musk standing next to the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office. Tech genius next to a man who makes decisions by what he sees on television. A true example of life imitating art and here we are allowing it all to happen. We are meant to believe that we, as normal citizens, have no control. This is close to being a true statement. I am writing this as a man of almost 60 years on this planet. I, as have others in my age group, have watched as the very wealthy have taken more control over our lives than we realize. I won't even get into the corporate buyouts of small businesses giving you less employment options but also compartmentalizing the wealth to the few instead of the old model which shared with many. We also won't get into the site of the US President trying to tear down the current government model and changing it to a dictatorship, a monarchy. He is trying to save his family and he has nothing to lose because he can't run for that office again. It truly does sound like a Hollywood movie come to life.

The Social Media Factor

Social media has programmed our youth in several ways. Tragedy has helped with this programming. 9/11 will be my primary example. Before 9/11 there was one legal way you could spy on the citizens of the United States, law enforcement would need to get a judge to sign off on a wire tap. George W altered this requirement after 9/11. Social media took it to the next level and we complied with it without resistance because they used everybody's favorite word, FREE. It's all free to use but you need to sign over your soul to use it for free. Remember AOL? Anyone, anyone? You paid for AOL with cash money, not your soul.

Generational differences allowed the older crowd to resist for some time but the youth are born to this technology and new mindset. They have no concept of where it started and how things were because, let's face it, they don't care. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. are huge and how do they make money if they give it away for free? They monitor everything you do and target very specific advertising to your feeds. They make a killing with this type of advertising model. No more randomly shown ads to millions of people hoping 100,000 might buy. This is showing ads to 50,000 people and a hit rate of 50% or more. This doesn't account for the selling of blocks of your information and the more info they have the better.

Selling the public. You truly are a number that exists for others to get wealthy. A list of names and phone numbers, that was the white pages. Even addresses were added to that book. Yes, a physical book for those not in the know. Now they collect that information plus, place of employment, what you drive, where you drive, where you shop, where you eat, what you watch, what you listen to... This information, and more, gets sold to companies all over the world. The more information you have, and most important, the more information you have verified, the more money you make. Let me make one thing clear, this isn't new. It's just much easier to do. Remember those warranty cards you would get with your product purchase to fill in and mail? That was the same as what we do today in the digital world. Today's world just processes the information in the blink of an eye. You needed humans to process those hand written cards which took time.

The Downside to Technology

What would happen if someone were to pull the plug? When things were separate you only had to worry about that one utility going down. I'll use phones as a good example. You did not have to have power to use the phone because they were run on separate lines disconnected from the power grid. In other words, we could still communicate when the power went out. Now we have VOIP which is Voice Over IP and most "land line" phones use this technology which means, if the internet goes down, communication goes down. Cellular Networks have already proven they can't handle bursts of communication. You can usually see that with something as benign as calling someone at midnight on new years eve. Your phone now connects to WiFi whenever possible avoiding the cell network. Routers are still connected to a Cable in order for this to function. I'm sure my small mind is not considering redundancies put in place for this but with the way corporations cut costs, I'm not confident there is a solid backup. What I am saying or asking is this, what if the internet went down for a significant amount of time? Months to say a year? What would happen to society?

The Rescuer

All those satellites would finally come into play. Satellite communication is not the best form of communication if you want information instantly. Musk has satellites in a lower orbit than most which will help and the shear numbers of them also may make things close to normal but at what cost? Talk about a possible monopoly, it is the toughest one to compete with because you need the satellites and the rockets to get them to space. Anyone who has had satellite TV service understands that this standard is only reliable from one direction, down. This is why satellite internet service required a separate phone line for you to communicate back to the servers. Your tiny little dish could not send a signal back to space so all the dish is good for, the download signal. It would be similar with your phone.

Why can't the GOP give us candidates who deserve our votes instead of tossing a celebrity at us because they have the best chance of winning. Get the win no matter what and that leads to this. I am very concerned with the direction things are going with people in power today. The Trump administration isn't aligning with its voters. It is aligning with the wealthy. A club he has always wanted to be a part of. He is nowhere near the level of wealth as Musk, Besos or Zuckerburg. The mega billionaires of the world are all flipped to the republican party and Trump. Why, what did they discuss at those dinners in his Florida castle? What is the end game? How will this benefit the next several generations of his family? He certainly isn't looking out for yours and now that he is in the office there isn't a damn ting you can do about it. How did Elon Musk become such an important part of the American political system? I didn't vote for him, did you? This is a man that runs several high level companies. He builds cars, rockets, satellites, brain chips yet has time to work on American government policy??? DOGE should be a full-time job, not a hobby. I'm all for trimming the fat because there is a lot of it but do it with someone that can put in the time to get it done right. I've been sick to my stomach watching the democrats give away my tax dollars to those who only look for handouts. But, trying to shut down every department that oversees the government, the people that help make sure they don't abuse their power, that is the scariest part of this. That and the fact that there is not a news source that can be trusted to tell us what is really going on. Propaganda and state run media was a huge tool in Hitlers regime. Toss in land grabs and it isn't to far from repeating history. Russia and North Korea follow similar models. Is America next?

I have an article about propaganda that is worth reading. I try to stay out of politics in my writings but 2025 is making it very difficult.