Streetwise Professor

R.A.B. (@LibertyLynx) and I have completed a document (attached) that fully details the October “pinning” of ICEYE X36 and the (serious and disturbing) implications thereof. The document also examines the depletion of US magazines in the ongoing war with Iran. That latter angle is an important story in its own right, but as will be seen, it also intersects with the X36 incident in important ways.

The document is extremely dense–purposefully, because the details are important and because it’s essential to support extraordinary findings with extraordinary evidence. Crucially, all of this information is derived from public sources. We also indicate types of non-public information that could potentially falsify our conclusions, though that would be awkward for SpaceX in particular as it would require it to falsify its own public data.

For those who prefer video–here you go. More fine work by R.A.B.

If you don’t want to dive into the details, there are a couple of key takeaways. First, in the midst of a Trump effort to flatter Putin and coerce Zelensky into a peace deal, SpaceX made possible Russia’s pinning and compromise of a satellite that both Ukraine and the US rely on for crucial intelligence. Second, Hegseth and Michael embedded xAI/SpaceX in Pentagon targeting, shutting out others (namely Anthropic); relied almost exclusively on AI for targeting, claiming that the resulting speed was war-winning, when in fact it did not result in Iran’s defeat but did succeed in speeding up the depletion of US weapon stocks. Both have materially weakened the US.

As we note, timing is a decisive causal determinant. And here the timing is quite disturbing. The SpaceX throttling of defensive Ukrainian drones and its essential role in the pinning of a US intelligence satellite (which we show could have occurred by chance with a probability close to zero) occurred in the very middle of Trump’s very public courting of Putin and very public demonization of Zelensky, all part of his frenzied pre-midterms effort to get a peace deal, shift the blame for high fuel prices, and gain some fuel price relief. It takes a Herculean effort to conclude that these events are not connected.

Pause and think about that for a moment, and think about it again after I’ve gone through some of the implications.

It is particularly appalling that the throttling and pin occurred in the context of a vain and futile attempt to seduce Putin into a peace deal. All that Trump and his minions (notably Witkoff and Kushner) have dangled before Putin are but mere baubles to him. The man has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Russian lives and has inflicted severe short term and long term damage on the Russian economy, and the well-being of Russians, in pursuit of his obsession to conquer Ukraine. Only the delusional would think sanctions relief or business deals will deflect him from pursuing that goal. Doing things that harm US national security in pursuit of a chimerical deal is disgraceful.

The document also details several post-pin events that like waves in a pond demonstrate that something big hit the water. These are:

• Putin stated that the Russia was coordinating with “Mr. Musk” in space.
• Finland announced that it is taking control of three ICEYE satellites-X36, X37, and X38, which just happen to be the ones compromised by the pin.
• The day after the pin ended, a contractor (Stellar Exploration) that provided crucial systems that we show were compromised by COSMOS 2612’s 40 plus hour sub-kilometer stalking of X36, engaged in a restructuring transaction in the Czech Republic that reduced the ownership of the US party from 80 percent to 33 percent and gave the largest share to a Czech individual, which conveniently places the contractor under the shield of Czech and EU commercial-secrecy law. Said law protects it from any US investigation or audit short of a criminal investigation by the DOJ.

The Finnish story is woefully under-reported because it clearly implicates what happened just a few days before the Finnish announcement. Note what the article says:

The threat does not necessarily have to involve a direct attack on a satellite. Other possibilities include interference with navigation signals, attempts to take control of systems, cyberattacks on ground infrastructure and activities by other space objects that approach satellites and interfere with their operation. 

“Approach satellites and interfere with their operation.” Which is exactly what happened in mid-October.

Again, the timing of the Finnish announcement is telling.

We uncovered the information about Stellar. We only became aware of its existence when its CEO–the US citizen of Czech extraction who charitably gave up a 47 percent stake in the company the day after the pin ended–lost his mind at us on X. Not smart!: That outburst prompted us to do a little digging, which uncovered that Stellar provided the very electrical systems that were compromised by COSMOS 2612. Further digging uncovered the stock switcheroo (filed in the Czech Republic) that is a transparent attempt to impede US inquiries: Czech law shields companies with a foreign owner holding less than 33.3 percent of the stock, and after the switcheroo the CEO owned 33 percent. Only a DOJ investigation (not the Pentagon, for instance) can get past that.

This transaction is a red flag: why would anyone do it except to try to stymie an investigation? A lack of a DOJ investigation would be another.

The timing is telling here too.

Another important takeaway is what links the pinning and US magazine stories, namely the information that the Russians obtained via the pin. Information that they could not have obtained otherwise. And it involves Stellar.

Specifically, from a sub-kilometer distance COSMOS 2612 could monitor and electronically map X36’s power and radar systems in ways impossible from the 400+ kilometer distance 2612 maintained before the pin: close proximity allowed COSMOS to overcome the clutter that prevented it from extracting signals from afar. The information gained allows it to determine X36’s power and battery state, and to monitor its radar use, from its current 66-90 second trail of X36. COSMOS 2612 can therefore determine whether X36 has sufficient power before recharging to conduct surveillance over the Persian Gulf. It can consequently give Iran several minutes warning of whether surveillance is impending. Minutes Iran can use to determine whether it is safe to break concealment to launch missiles–which depleted US Patriot and THAAD stocks limit our ability to shoot down. Minutes that it can use to scurry into concealment if it is aware that eyes from the sky are gazing at them.

And as we show, the pin did not compromise X36 alone: it compromised its sister satellite X37. Which, lo and behold, is being trailed by two other COSMOS satellites.

Thus, the pin degraded US capability in the Iran theater: the two non-SpaceX satellites on which the US relies on in the Gulf are compromised, and SpaceX played a necessary role in the compromising.

That US weapons stocks were depleted by the February-April conflict is what has leveraged the adverse impact of the pin. Which leads to another portion of the document: the highlighting of the role of Hegseth and his sidekick Emil Michael in relying on AI to accelerate targeting, which resulted in the magazine depletion which leverages the adverse consequences of the pin.

Until, well yesterday, Hegseth and Michael constantly preached that speed is lethality, and bragged about how the US had used AI to dramatically speed up targeting in the Gulf, allowing more targets to be struck in less time. Indeed, they were so giddy about the efficacy of AI that they slashed the number of humans tasked to targeting in CENTCOM from 16 to 1.

But it is evident that speeding up a bombing campaign did not speed up Iranian capitulation. Nor did it deny Iran the use of important capabilities, namely asymmetric attacks that closed the Gulf of Hormuz, and missile attacks that hammered US bases in the Middle East (killing servicemen and women, and destroying many valuable intelligence and refueling planes).

What the targeting acceleration did accomplish was to speed up the expenditure of scarce US weapons. But crucially it did not speed up the replacement timeline: it will take years to replace the JASSMs, Tomahawks, Patriots, and THAADs shot off so quickly. US capability in other theaters, notably Asia-Pacific have therefore been seriously compromised.

In focusing on speed in a single theater, Hegseth and Michael ignored opportunity (“shadow”) cost–the value of these weapons in other theaters. This makes their firing of two JCS planning (J-5) chiefs look all the more suspicious. It is precisely such individuals who are responsible for taking a global perspective in designing military operations. We have little doubt that the fired (and traduced) generals raised hell about the extravagant expenditure weapons in a single theater, other theaters take the hindmost.

This all makes recent news even more striking. At a Wall Street Journal tech conference in Napa, former AI evangelist Michael suddenly turned all cautious and conservative and sober about it. He claimed the military “remains conservative about using artificial intelligence in combat,” insisted the U.S. “is not very sophisticated at AI-generated targeting,” and lectured that “there must be appropriate human judgment at every level” right as his shop floated new “AI compliance guidelines.”

“AI? AI? What’s that? Never heard of it. Does it have something to do with computers? I don’t even know how to use a computer!” Mr. Michael is apparently shocked, shocked! to find AI going on in here.

The stories we have documented are important in their own right. But they are just one element of extreme dysfunction within the Pentagon, dysfunction that will be turned up to 11 by the looming Hegseth impeachment. (Yes, the initial attempt failed: wait until January). Hegseth has allegedly threatened Trump that he is going to the mattresses rather than resign–with the message being delivered by a lawyer who is a protege of and former defender of John Gotti’s mouthpiece, and a mouthpiece for Bonnano and Geneovese associates in his own right, no less. This internecine conflict will make the dysfunction even more extreme.

And who is in the middle of all this but the suddenly sotto voce Mr. Musk. SpaceX played a central, indeed necessary, role in the pinning of X36. xAI is the central player and the main beneficiary in the suddenly amnesiac Mr. Michael’s drive to inject AI into crucial DoD decision making.

We wish we could say that this document is the end of the story. Unfortunately, it appears to be just the beginning.

The evidence for SpaceX’s vital and unilateral role in (a) the Russian intercept of the ICEYE X36 satellite (which supports Ukrainian deep strikes into Russia) and (b) throttling the white-listed Starshield terminals Ukraine uses to defend against attacking Russian drone waves is massive, and nigh on indisputable.

When reports first broke that COSMOS 2612 had tracked and cut off ICEYE X36, R (aka @LibertyLynx) immediately suspected that the Russians did not have the tracking capability to pull that off on their own, suspected SpaceX involvement, and built an orbital model to test the theory. We then ran parallel models to cross-check the results, and the attached brief lays out the case in deep, and very technical, detail. It is based on the best and most complete publicly available information, including information produced by SpaceX, which is particularly damning

In brief, to recapitulate, on 16 October 2026 the Russian COSMOS 2612 sprinted from hundreds of kilometers away from ICEYE X36 and stopped on a dime within a few hundred meters of the US/NATO satellite. The likelihood that it could have done this on its own is near zero. Moreover, SpaceX was the only entity with the information and power to permit this intercept.

Maybe the brief will cause MEGO. But an animation (also created by R) that incorporates the information is an eye opener.

When I first viewed the video it reminded me of a football sweep play, with the Russian satellite in the role of a running back following the lead block of Starlink 35856, which pinned ICEYE X36 in place, allowing COSMOS 2612 to hit the hole right next to it.

Could have been a coincidence, right? Or the Russians just got lucky, eh?

Almost certainly not.

First, the Russians would not have had the information to guide COSMOS 2612 with that degree of accuracy, especially if ICEYE X36 had the ability to maneuver (more on that later because it is crucial). Russia has no space-based tracking assets, and relies on ground-based systems which are blind for 8-10 hours (due to the earth’s curvature). Further relying on COSMOS 2612’s onboard sensors limited range would have resulted in a miss of over 100km if ICEYE X36 had engaged in a brief avoidance burn.

But there was no burn. Why not? That is the central question here, the answer to which is particularly damning.

In response to an attempted approach in June, ICEYE X36 did engage in successful evasive maneuvers. Don’t believe me? How about ICEYE’s CEO, Rafał Modrzewski, who explicitly confirmed on the record to Reuters that ICEYE actively maneuvered its satellite to evade the Russian spacecraft, and that Russian maneuvers followed. Moreover, we have confirmed this in the data: independent reconstruction of all ~3,600 public Space-Track element sets explicitly verified X36’s maneuver on 25-26 June.

So why in June, but not in October? Because it couldn’t, that’s why. And why not? Because it was pinned. By whom, and how? By SpaceX, exploiting its unprecedented control in space, courtesy in large part to FCC regulations.

In brief, SpaceX issued a collision alert to ICEYE X36 for Starlink 35856, based on an assertion that ICEYE X36 would be within .401 kilometers of Starlink 35856. Under FCC Condition 16–negotiated with SpaceX lawyers–this collision alert obligated ICEYE X36 to eschew any maneuvers. In other words, the alert fixed it in place, thereby enabling the COSMOS 2612 to engage in a braking maneuver that put it right beside the American satellite.

Damning fact #1: SpaceX’s own documentation demonstrates that the collision alert was unwarranted and unnecessary, because in fact the distance to Starlink 35856 was 4.8 to 5.0 times greater than the claimed .401 km. Based on the correct distance, no alert was needed.

Damning fact #2. Starlink satellites are known for their autonomous collision avoidance abilities. If there was a genuine .401-meter collision risk, STARLINK-35856 could have—and normally would have—autonomously pulsed its thrusters to clear the corridor. Instead, SpaceX withheld that autonomous maneuver. By choosing not to move, they intentionally shifted the legal burden entirely onto ICEYE via FCC Condition 16. (Why should SpaceX insist that a vital US intelligence satellite yield right of way to one of its many satellites that primarily provide prosaic Internet connectivity?)

In brief, SpaceX engaged in acts of commission and omission without which the intercept would have been impossible.

To add to the disturbing implications, consider the following. The Russians would have known that it would have been futile to attempt an intercept if-as had been demonstrated in June-ICEYE X36 would be free to maneuver. The sprint and braking maneuvers were costly, and it would have been irrational to engage in them if the probability of success was nil. The only way the probability of success would have been sufficiently high to justify the cost would have been if the Russians were highly confident that ICEYE X36 would be pinned. And how could they have known that?

The plausibility of coincidence or luck vanishes when one considers the fact that the intercept was contemporaneous with the throttling of Ukraine’s Starshield terminals. These were whitelisted terminals, used to guide Ukrainian drone defenses. Once a Ukrainian drone exceeded the speed limit imposed by SpaceX, its connection was dropped, making it stupid. Note that Ukrainian drones operating within Russia were already limited to much lower speeds.

And by the way, when provided this information, Grok agreed that there was no coincidence here comrade, and assigned a less than .01 percent probability to this being a random coincidence.

Musk’s shifting stories also belie any innocent explanations. At first he said that the decision to throttle Ukrainian drones was a WH decision, because Starshield is operated by the US government. But that explanation exploded later when Hegseth and Rubio both stated that SpaceX had acted unilaterally pursuant to its Terms of Service with the US government. Musk later embraced the ToS story, claiming that they prevented Ukraine from using Starshield to kill anyone, and that Ukraine had violated this provision.

They just started doing that in October, Elon? Were you shocked! Shocked! to learn that Ukraine was using Starshield/Starlink for military purposes?

Interestingly, among the people whom Musk claimed he was protecting were “poor Russian conscripts.” Putting aside the fact that Russian troops are not conscripts (although they are often shanghaied into contract service), said Russian troops are killing Ukrainians. And further, by disabling the terminals, Musk increased the lethality of Russian strikes against Ukraine and Ukrainian civilians in particular.

Interesting to know Elon’s solution to this particular trolley problem.

The main point here is that SpaceX played a central role in compromising both Ukraine’s defensive and offensive capabilities at the precise same time. And in explaining the former, he engaged in a virulent rant against Zelenskyy. In that context, any innocent explanation of the intercept crumbles.

The implications of this go well beyond the events in Ukraine, as the brief discusses in detail. Unlike legacy defense contractors, including those involved with highly classified space and satellite operations, SpaceX operates on a “CO-CO” model: contractor owned, contractor operated. This contrasts with the legacy GO-GO model, in which the government buys, owns, and operates what the contractors produce.

The contractor-SpaceX here-provides services according to a contract: the “Terms of Service” that appear so notoriously in the foregoing. It is clear that these ToS provide tremendous discretion to SpaceX to make decisions that have grave national security implications. It is also clear that these it is willing to exercise these powers in ways that are inimical to US security interests.

And don’t think this is the only time. During the Iran War SpaceX invoked its ToS to prevent the use of Starlink to mount LUCAS drone strikes against Iran. Until, that is, the Pentagon agreed to pay a 4x greater fee to SpaceX. Which reminds me of the old Churchill line: Now we know what you are. We are just haggling over price.

This is all the more disturbing given the greatly expanded role of SpaceX, and Grok in particular, in every aspect of US military operations. It is sickly ironic that Hegseth and his tech chief Emil Michael declared Anthropic a national security risk for demanding that it retain a veto over the use of Claude given that they have supplanted it with a contractor who has used such a veto to the detriment of US security interests.

In the present instance, how bizarre is it that the US military would enter into a contract which allowed its counterparty to veto decisions to kill people? After all, the military’s job is, well, to kill people. The decision to do so is vested in Constitutionally established authorities operating subject to US law. It is not vested in Elon Musk, and it is incomprehensible that the US government has entered into contracts that grant him that authority.

This is a classic problem in transaction cost economics. SpaceX provides very specific assets (specific in the technical economic sense) to the United States government, and the Department of Defense in particular. The specificity of these assets gives SpaceX incredible power to hold up the government. Contracts should be crafted to limit this holdup power. Instead the Pentagon has enabled it.

GOGO is the default organizational response to holdup problems. Given the acute severity of the holdup problems posed by SpaceX, unless the government can find a way to write much better contracts with it, it should move back to that model.

But hot-from-the-presses news suggests that this is a vain hope, at least under the Hegseth Pentagon. The Defense Intelligence Agency just released “Challenges to Security in Space: Congestion, Competition, and Cooperation.” It relies on a Russian propaganda site (topwar.ru) and TASS (!) to hype Russian capabilities (namely its ground-based Krona surveillance complex).

The reliance of this document on a trash Russian military site renders it little better than the Steele Dossier, or the hack job on Russian election interference that the outgoing Obama administration cobbled together in January 2017.

Moreover, the timing is rather, shall we say, odd. Lo and behold, the day after Elon offered his fourth explanation for throttling Ukrainian drones, specifically that if he didn’t Russia would target Starlink satellites, the DIA drops a report citing topwar.ru to warn of Russian threats to American satellites. A coincidence, surely. If you believe that . . .

But there are indications that American dogs are fighting under the carpet–specifically the State Department and the Pentagon. Rubio was clearly displeased at the Ukraine drone throttling, and the fact that this was a Musk decision. The State Department was also infuriated by the intercept, taking a complaint to the UN. And Rubio just recently fired one of Musk’s operatives. So we must hold out hope that Rubio (whom Trump surely holds in greater esteem than Hegseth, and hopefully Musk) will be able to put a stop to this madness.

Yesterday’s post presented the evidence for and the implications of Elon Musk’s throttling of Ukraine’s Starlink/Starshield access. Since then, additional evidence makes this an established fact. Most notably, reporting in the WSJ that Trump (on bended knee?) asked Musk to release his grip (and WSJ reporting today that uneven Starshield restrictions are still persisting even after Trump’s call). When asked about it, the normally no-filter Trump declined to answer. Mark that down as confirmation.

But it gets better! Today’s brief, co-authored with @LibertyLynx (who originated, architected, and built the entire SGP4 orbital, FCC regulatory, and corporate forensic investigation from the ground up), demonstrates the near certainty that in addition to undermining Ukraine’s defensive capabilities (where the 130 to 160 km/h speed cap cut Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces validated target output by 23.0%), Musk/SpaceX compromised, or at least threatened to compromise, Ukraine’s offensive capability. Specifically, its capability to attack refineries and other targets within Russia.

The brief is extremely detailed and extensive, so here’s the TLDR version (though I do encourage reading it). Ukraine relies on Starlink/Starshield to control drones for operations at the front (and the logistical zone) and counter Russian aerial attacks. It does not use Starlink for reconnaissance and targeting of strikes deep inside Russia. For that it relies on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the ICEYE-X36 (NORAD 59103) satellite, operated by ICEYE US (the U.S. subsidiary of a Finnish company, operating under FCC license S3165).

Beginning on 15 October, within 48 hours of the Starshield throttle, a Russian inspector satellite, COSMOS 2612 (NORAD 68762), maneuvered to within less than a kilometer of X36 (closing to 0.76 km in the public catalog, and within a few hundred meters per optical trackers). And here’s the thing. Russia relies on ground-based radars that can only observe an orbiting satellite like X36 for narrow time windows (leaving 6 to 11 hour tracking gaps), and which do not allow it to track X36 continuously and with sufficient precision to arrange an intercept in which COSMOS 2612 compressed 364.3 hours of natural orbital drift into a 25.5-hour sprint (a 14.29x closure compression from 425 km away, cutting separation by 382.7 km relative to its pre-sprint orbit), braked, and then remained within a kilometer for more than 12 hours before moving away. (And across every Russian maneuver transition, the public Space-Track catalog lagged behind by 19.4 to 22.7 hours.)

Who can provide that real-time information? SpaceX. At the exact time COSMOS 2612 began its sprint (15 October at 04:15 UTC), X36 sat inside a 401-meter public collision alert with SpaceX’s STARLINK-35856 (NORAD 67013, where SpaceX’s private operator ephemeris diverged from public data by 15.37 to 30.13 km while carrying a 2.862 km 3D position uncertainty). Because X36 only has one trajectory, this overlapping Starlink alert pinned X36 in place—preventing it from executing a 0.5 km evasive altitude drop as it had in June (which generates 71 km/day of drift and exits a 3 km Russian braking box in 61 minutes), while requiring X36 under FCC Condition 16 to coordinate its trajectory with SpaceX. Under SpaceX’s Space Safety Terms of Service (Appendix A and Section 4(b)), committed maneuver trajectories uploaded to SpaceX are exposed to third-party sharing with a $500 liability cap (Section 10). Moreover, SpaceX tracks the 540 to 550 km orbital shell at 10 to 15 minute intervals using its 31,000 Stargaze cameras—and conveniently onboarded Chinese operators to its Space Safety platform on 6 and 16 October. Again, with its ground resources alone, Russia would have been flying COSMOS 2612 blind.

No other entity has all five of these capabilities. The intercept would not have been possible without these capabilities.

Nice little satellite you got here. A shame if anything happened to it. A threat that could only have been delivered with the help of SpaceX/Starlink/Musk. I further note that Russia has not delivered a similar threat to any Starlink asset while Tesla’s Q3 10-Q (filed 30 September) discloses $5.966 billion in rolling Chinese working-capital debt maturing between October 2026 and September 2027 and explicitly admits “presumed significant influence” over SpaceX through their shared CEO.

Goldfinger famously said: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” The simultaneous throttling of Ukraine’s defensive capability and compromising/threatening of its offensive capability, the first definitively attributed to SpaceX and the second solely within SpaceX’s capability, makes plain that Musk has acted against Ukraine and for Russia. Enemy action, indeed.

SpaceX’s culpability here is indisputable. The only open question is whether Musk acted on his own, or in connivance with the administration/Pentagon. And just as was the case with yesterday’s post, both alternatives are disturbing in their own way.

Trump’s, Rubio’s, and Hegseth’s claims that the administration had nothing to do with throttling Starlink may or may not be true. Trump’s asking Musk pretty please to turn it back on could be genuine, or it could be Kabuki. Again, neither alternative is good. If the President of the United States is reduced to a supplicant, and Musk has the unilateral authority (shielded by commercial Terms of Service) to make decisions with such vital national security implications, and perhaps to do so in cooperation with American enemies, we are in a very bad place. Especially given how embedded SpaceX currently is within the Pentagon as we head toward Round Two with Iran.

The on again, off again battle between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky is back on, and in a big way. The trigger for this most recent outbreak was news that somebody throttled Ukraine’s Starlink/Starshield link, limiting the speed of Ukraine’s fast drone interceptors which are essential to countering Russian jet-powered drones. As documented in the attached brief/strategy memo (prepared by @LibertyLynx) Russia responded by utilizing jet drones more extensively, and delivering more effective strikes on Ukraine. Against civilian targets in Ukraine, I might add.

It’s rather remarkable how rapidly Russia recognized and responded to Ukraine’s degraded capabilities.

As the document also describes in detail, this also has implications for US national security. Most notably, it works to the advantage of Russia in its forever war against Ukraine. But that’s not all. It forces Ukraine to substitute high end interceptors for low end ones, further depleting already nearly barren magazines–which creates a call on stocks from US allies and perhaps the US itself. Given the extravagant expenditure of weapons in the Iran War, our cupboard is increasingly bare, and we have nothing to spare.

Note that I said “somebody throttled” Starlink/Starshield. That phrasing was deliberate. Because we don’t know who did so. There are two possible answers, each deeply disturbing in its own way.

The first answer is that Trump made the call. Elon Musk says it was the USG, meaning Trump. Trump denies it. Rubio denies it.

Why would Trump do this? His animosity towards Zelensky is well known, and he has long been impatient with Zelensky’s resistance to a peace deal. With the midterms approaching, and fuel prices high, Trump is even more desperate for a deal. He may therefore believe that pressuring Zelensky will break the deadlock and allow him to announce peace in our time.

But handicapping Ukraine’s defenses will not achieve this outcome, especially not in Trump’s time frame. It is fantastical to imagine that such a deal could get done in the few days prior to the midterms, and even if a deal were to be done tomorrow its impact on energy prices would be (a) modest, and (b) delayed to well after the election. As much as Trump fulminates to the contrary, energy prices are driven first and foremost by the situation in the Gulf. The loss of Russian refined and crude supplies due to sanctions (which would presumably be lifted as part of a deal) and Ukrainian attacks is at most an aggravating factor.

It is also fantastical to think that Putin is just standing by waiting to do a deal, and that Zelensky is the only obstacle to one. Indeed, measures that weaken Ukraine’s defenses will only embolden Putin to continue to fight, figuring that he can gain more against a weakened Ukraine and perhaps even achieve his goal of conquering additional territory, and perhaps the entire country. Putin will deal only if he thinks defeat is inevitable. Giving him hope of something he can call victory will only prolong the war.

So if the rationale for kneecapping Ukraine is to facilitate an end to the war in days, followed forthwith by a sharp drop in energy prices, all in time to rescue the Republicans from an electoral rout, it is beyond delusional.

And it’s also politically stupid. This–and Trump emissary Witkoff’s obsequious behavior towards Putin, and Trump’s bizarre statements about how Russia isn’t doing anything bad in Ukraine–has generated tremendous political blowback, and has played into the narrative that Trump is Putin’s puppet. So if anything, it is politically counterproductive from the perspective of the midterms in particular.

But maybe the administration’s denials are in fact truthful, and Elon Musk is in fact responsible. Think about that for a minute.

Pete Hegseth (the primary author of the failed strategery in the Gulf) says that SpaceX throttled Starlink/Starshield because Ukraine violated “Terms of Service.” What? They didn’t read the fine print and just clicked “accept”? Or they just decided in early-October to do something different that violated the ToS? Or SpaceX changed the ToS? Or Ukraine refused to cease and desist from violating the ToS and SpaceX lost patience?

What changed in the last few weeks to trigger this intervention? The “ToS” excuse begs every question that matters.

For his part, J. D. Vance said it is totes understandable that Musk decided to intervene:

JD Vance on Starlink:

Elon Musk runs a private corporation, and I think it's completely understandable that he doesn't want to get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the United States government effectively directing him on what to do.

I don't think… pic.twitter.com/rm9dS65ElE

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 22, 2026

So much wrong here. For one thing, SpaceX has been “in the middle of a war between two state actors” for several years now. Indeed, SpaceX has been instrumental in staving off Russia’s invasion, both by providing Starlink to Ukraine and denying it to Russia. What would explain a sudden reluctance on its part?

Moreover, the throttling of Starlink/Starshield has impaired Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, not its ability to strike Russian territory. Denying Ukraine truly defensive capability is particularly twisted, and has already cost civilian lives. Musk somehow thinks that Ukraine defending itself is unacceptable? And just decided this last month?

And how is it remotely OK for the United States to grant Musk a veto over the employment of Starlink/Starshield? Since 2023, Starshield has been under contract with the US government to provide Starlink services in Ukraine. The Pentagon was not willing to grant Anthropic the right to withhold services when it disagrees with how the Pentagon was using its AI (excuse me, SI): have they granted comparable rights to Musk? If so, why? If not, how is he getting away with exercising such power without contractual sanction?

Or maybe he’s not, and the administration is lying and it made the call.

Given how deeply embedded in the Pentagon SpaceX is now (at the expense of Anthropic, in particular), these events have disturbing implications that go far beyond Ukraine. Does the USG negotiate “terms of service” with SpaceX that give it the ability to throttle services to the Pentagon (e.g., throttling Grok) at its whim? Or can Musk exploit contract incompleteness to make unilateral decisions that impair US national security? Or is it difficult to enforce contractual terms against him because there is no alternative over a horizon of weeks or months? Under any of these possibilities, a mercurial, deeply untrustworthy, and highly conflicted individual has far too much power over American national security.

In earlier posts/briefs @libertylynx and I analyzed the holdup problems SpaceX/Grok/Musk poses. If it is indeed the case that the administration did not order the throttling, and Musk/SpaceX “understandably” did it on their own, we have been given a taste of how dangerous the holdup potential is.

There is no good alternative here. Either Trump and his administration made a decision based on delusional diplomatic, political, and military logic, or a deeply untrustworthy megalomaniac (other than the president) has the ability to make unilateral decisions that have dire consequences for American national security.

Elon Musk enterprises are deeply embedded in the US national security establishment, most notably via SpaceX’s space ventures, but now via its xAI subsidiary and its Grok AI. The Department of War’s/Defence’s set-to with Anthropic demonstrates that an AI enterprise’s interests can potentially conflict with the Department, which could pose a security issue if the enterprise attempted to hold it up by restricting use in some way. The same risk could arise with Grok.

The embedded documents, prepared by @LibertyLynx and I, analyzes in detail the holdup potential for Grok. The basic conclusion is that the DoW has access to multiple AI providers, and can switch out at short notice–but not immediately. That matters, because in war, mere moments can count (what Patton called “the unforgiving minute”), meaning that even a fleeting withholding or even degradation of Grok (or another AI) could have dire consequences. In an optimistic case, a switch out would take 96 hours–pretty much the time that the ground campaign in Desert Storm lasted. A military eternity, in other words. That is, there are acute “temporal specificities.”

As the US military becomes more reliant on AI, especially for operational functions (e.g., targeting), the model relied on will become a potential single point of failure. As we analyze in the attached documents, failures can arise for purely technological reasons, or because of human interference with employment of the models–the latter being the holdup problem.

The reason that the Pentagon attempted to axe Anthropic was that the company demanded the power to withhold deployment of its models for purposes that it deemed incompatible with company values. That is, a deployed model posed holdup risks that the Pentagon deemed unacceptable.

It is troubling enough to extend someone as mercurial and megalomaniacal as Musk serious holdup power that the Pentagon assumed unacceptable in the case of Anthropic. If Anthropic’s values are problematic, what about Musk’s?

What is even more troubling is that Musk is deeply embedded in China. Specifically, Tesla is very dependent on China, to an extent that is barely appreciated in the United States–in large part because Musk hardly says anything about it, in contrast to his pontifications on pretty much every other subject known to man.

A majority of Tesla production is in China. Tellingly, Tesla’s output per unit of fixed assets is far higher in China than in the US. Moreover, Tesla gets appreciable funding from China. It hardly seems prudent to give an individual with such conflicting interests as Musk control over a vital defense function that requires complete reliability 24/7, and which is characterized by acute temporal specificity.

There is a fundamental economic challenge here. The government does not have a comparative advantage in developing these models, and is inherently reliant on the developers for continuous support of their operation. But given the specificity of these assets, what contracting and governance mechanisms can be put in place to protect the government against opportunistic behavior by the model developers? It’s an inherently daunting challenge, and those challenges are particularly acute when the counterparty is one of the world’s most egregious opportunists who is known for using his leverage to benefit himself. Of all the people to give leverage to . . .

Some problems could be mitigated by requiring Musk to sever his China connections. That would change his incentives, but would not change him.

Our research also raises questions about how disinterested Secretary of War/Defense Hegseth and his Chief Technology Officer, Emil Michael, were in their Anthropic decision, and their subsequent embrace of Grok.

The embedded documents analyze these issues in detail, and highlights issues that have received too little attention amidst the ongoing hype over space, digital data centers, and AI. Not that those are unimportant, and will the the subject of future similar posts.

Earlier this week SpaceX acquired xAI. Elon’s explanation immediately triggered memories, and set off alarm bells.

This has a Tesla/Solar City vibe, especially Elon's "vertical integration" justification. Is this a a way to redirect resources from a successful Elon enterprise to one that is floundering? https://t.co/oIyS7Ej8PU

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) February 2, 2026

“SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth,” Musk, the top executive at both companies, said in the memo.

Just like his justification for the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity, which I excoriated at the time. I wrote that the vaunted “vertical integration” benefits then were chimerical, and indeed they proved to be exactly that. (Tesla’s subsequent performance does not gainsay that).

Elon used vertical integration as a distraction from the real motivation for the tie-up, namely, to bail out a related company (managed by relatives, to boot), the failure of which would have punctured Elon’s image as a colossus and genius.

As my X post (ironic, eh?) indicates, I had the same suspicions about the SpaceX absorption of xAI. I am not alone. Most of the subsequent commentary on it recalls the Tesla-SolarCity deal, and questions Elon’s vertical integration rationale. Examples here, here, and here.

The vertical integration story here strains credulity far farther than even the Tesla-SolarCity story. You see, energy is the huge constraint on AI and the data centers that it relies on. Terrestrial sources of power will be inadequate. Hence, space based generation and data centers will be necessary. Hence, synergy!

Elon also said the tie up will facilitate SpaceX’s true purpose–interplanetary travel. More synergy!

“The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars and ultimately expansion to the Universe,”

To infinity and beyond!

Someday. Maybe. Here and now and the foreseeable future? Not so much. Think of all the technical obstacles that must be surmounted, and the time it will take to do so. This is a vision that will take decades to realize. At least.

NASA’s Artemis project, troubled and oft-delayed, envisions 9 Moon missions over the next decade, only the last of which involves astronauts remaining there for an extended period of time. Just think how long after that it will take to put data centers there. To call this pie in the sky is almost literal and a serious understatement.

This is all typical Elon razzle-dazzle to distract attention from fundamental business realities. X qua X is a dog of a business: the main benefit xAI gets out of that piece of the business is as a data source to train Grok.

AI is a massive capital suck. Moreover, the AI business is extremely competitive right now, with multiple players plunging huge amounts of capital into it. Since (like search) it is likely to be winner take all, or at least a few take all, when it matures, xAI’s success is by no means assured. It is therefore highly uncertain whether xAI will be able to obtain the necessary capital as a standalone entity.

By merging xAI with what is effectively a monopoly business, SpaceX, xAI can get capital from its dominant owner and reduce its need to tap the capital markets.

One could possibly tell an “internal capital market” story. External capital is costly. It is likely to be especially costly for xAI given the substantial competition and potential for asymmetric information (the company has a much better understanding of its prospects than outsiders). Given its robust near monopoly business, SpaceX’s capital market frictions are less, and it will potentially throw off free cash flow that it can invest in xAI. Thus, it may be efficient for SpaceX, rather than external capital markets, to fund xAI.

Maybe. But I’m skeptical. Methinks this is more likely a reprise of SolarCity. Use a healthy company to prop up a shakier one, as I posited in my X post above.

In terms of synergy, a Tesla-xAI tie-up would be far less fantastical. Self-driving and robotics (the new focus of Tesla) have a much closer relationship to AI than data centers in space do. Especially in the here and now.

But–and it is a big but–Tesla is a public company, meaning that there would be many more obstacles, legal and otherwise, to a merger with xAI. In contrast, Elon could combine SpaceX and xAI almost by fiat.

In sum, discount the ElonHype. In particular, whenever Elon says “vertical integration” run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit. The phrase a smokescreen intended to give a seemingly plausible business rationale for combinations that in fact have a very different motivation: keeping Elon’s empire intact.

Note: The phrase “To infinity and beyond!” was originally and inadvertently included in the quote box for Elon’s Moon, Mars, Universe statement. Although it was believable in that context, I have moved it outside the box.

Elon Musk has apparently jumped back into his various businesses with both feet since his butthurt departure from his temporary government post. And in so doing, he is resurrecting his standard playbook. Virtually every play therein, in fact.

For example:

Just left the @Tesla design studio.

Most epic demo ever by end of year.

Ever.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2025

5 months???? I DON’T THINK I CAN WAIT THAT LONG!!!! I’m dying here!

The hype. About the future. That’s the Elon MO.

Which brings to mind some of Elon’s past totally awesome demos. Like the Solar Roof . . . that was not a functioning product at the demo, and has never been seen in the wild since–but which he used to con hundreds of millions of dollars out of the State of New York. Or the Hyperloop.

Since this latest is from the “design studio” I’m also expecting some Potemkin Village presentation of a concept, the realization of which will always be mañana.

He has to do this for the same reasons he did these things before 2018 or so: Tesla is really struggling, with sales dropping sharply around the world and the prospect of cash flow challenges are raising its ugly head. Part of the sales drop is sector-wide, as the popularity of EVs is plunging, but part of it is Tesla specific, due to Musk’s political forays alienating his traditional customer base, and the fact that all Tesla models are getting a little old in the tooth. (Another reason to hype the “epic demo”). Furthermore, the looming disappearance of the $7,500 EV tax credit, which Tesla has benefited from for years, will shift back the demand curve by that amount: Trump credibly said that this was the real reason for Musk’s meltdown. That’s a big demand drop on top of the drop attributable to consumer EV disenchantment.

So Elon has to keep the balloon afloat. In the past he’s done that with hype–which, admittedly found an accepting audience. He’s doing it again. Whether it will work again remains to be seen given that whereas fundamentals–notably massive subsidization and consumer optimism about EVs–worked in his favor before, they will not do so again.

His TL is full of hype about Grok. A week after Grok went Nazitard (and Erdotard). Never go Nazitard.

He’s also hyping his mission to Mars. You know, to save humanity.

Starship will take humanity to Mars
pic.twitter.com/VEVWmjwb2w

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2025

I am not competent to judge, but some who are claim that the huge rocket that will go there–the one that keeps blowing up–can never be a reliable launch vehicle because of fundamental physical constraints. I’ll keep an open mind on this, but be cautious about projecting SpaceX’s previous remarkable achievements onto the SuperHeavy.

Another MO is taking money from one of his ventures to fund another, that is using his winners as piggy banks to support his cash sucks. The most notorious example of this was Tesla’s purchase of Solar City.

And here we go again: “SpaceX to invest $2 billion in Musk’s xAI startup.” And again: “Tesla to hold shareholder vote on whether to invest in xAI.”

Recall that X was folded into xAI. It is clear now that the X acquisition was not about free speech (although it did have that effect, at least compared to the old Twitter, and at least for a while), it was about getting massive input to train Grok. Never forget: if it’s free, you are the product.

And Musk is using X and AI not just as a source for LLM training: he is using it to hype his other ventures. And not primarily through his own TL. As a friend wrote to me: “And don’t forget using X to amplify his company with AI accounts (there are estimated to be 100s of millions of AI accounts) and silencing critics.” And it is definitely clear that the X algos are definitely not to create a true all-to-all experience, let a thousand flowers bloom free speech experience. Instead, they heavily favor and promote specific accounts and throttling most others, leaving most of us shouting into the X void.

Musk also just announced Grok for Government:

Announcing Grok for Government – a suite of products that make our frontier models available to United States Government customers

We are especially excited about two new partnerships for our US Government partners

1) a new contract from the US Department of Defense
2) our…

— xAI (@xai) July 14, 2025

What would the “cause” be (click on “Show more”)? Just think of all the grist for the Grok mill that this will provide. And think of all the commercially valuable information that will be gleaned. Hell, maybe xAI will start a hedge fund that will outperform Nancy Pelosi!

And, of course, he no longer has to play well with others (like Scott Bessent!): “Elon Musk is Back to Work and Burning Through Executives.”

Every one of the many headlines about Musk from the last few days is like something burped up out of the Memory Hole. Although the ostensible subject matter is different, the MO is the same.

And the essence of that MO is overpromising and underdelivering. I kick myself for letting my hopes stifle my experience when it came to DOGE. It won’t happen again.

Elon Musk announced the formation of The American Party. He advances it as a response to the uniparty that is wildly unpopular, and in his view has betrayed Americans.

On the one hand, there is some reason to agree to these overall themes. The supposed catalyst for his 3rd party venture was the passage of the reconciliation bill, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, which Musk claims is wildly fiscally irresponsible. Again, there is reason to nod in agreement here at least with respect to the substance.

The problem is that politics is the art of the possible, and there is no way that any bill that meets Musk’s approval could pass this Congress. Which is in itself a bearish indicator for Musk’s party: it indicates that the political support for a drastically thinned US government is, at this time anyways, virtually non-existent, alas. The Democrats think the bill is too stingy (especially with regard to Medicaid and welfare). Many Republicans were unwilling to go along with things like a sharply reduced SALT deduction or further reductions in subsidies for renewable energy. If there was a groundswell of support for fiscal sanity, it would have pushed Congress in that direction. There is obviously no such thing. It is far from the median voter.

In his recent tantrums, Musk has betrayed his complete lack of political acumen. As I wrote earlier, he acted–and acts–as if governing the United States is like running a company with a craven board of directors beholden to him. It doesn’t work that way. There are too many independent power centers that cannot be brought to heel. Trump pushes the boundaries of what the executive can accomplish: Musk wants to go far beyond that, and that’s just not remotely possible.

Musk perhaps believes that his personality cult will carry over from Tesla fanboyz to the nation at large . As if.

At present, Musk is the most hated man in America. Even more than Trump, because almost everyone who hates Trump hates him for supporting Trump during the election and the brief DOGE moment, and everyone who likes Trump hates him for betraying the president. So to the extent that Musk has succeeded in uniting America, it has been to unite it in hating him.

So who does that leave? A few anti-Trump Republican weirdos like Thomas Massie. Oh. And the Libertarians! Can’t forget the Libertarians!

That party could hold its convention in a phone booth. If there were phone booths anymore.

Then there are the practicalities.

Who would be the candidates of this party? A third party based on a personality, like Ross Perot’s, can at least have that personality at the top of the ticket–if he’s native born. But Musk can’t run for president because he’s not. Moreover, a control freak like Musk would only permit a cipher to run for president of his party, and only a cipher would be willing to run on those terms. (Not to mention that if elected by some miracle, once having his hands on the levers of power the cipher might decide that Elon is dispensable).

Vote for Elon’s Puppet! is hardly an inspiring campaign theme.

As for Senate and House races–which are the vital ones if Musk is to achieve his stated purpose of sharply restricting government–one can only imagine how fringe-y the candidates would be. Anyone with a decent shot within one of the establishment parties would not be likely to execute a career kamikaze attack. Further, even if Musk or a PAC could put fund potentially competitive candidates, they would lack organization and infrastructure.

Then there is the fact that the winner-takes-all US system is hostile to the creation of enduring third parties. Gerrymandering has only exacerbated this tendency.

Smart billionaires–like George Soros–realize that it is better to manipulate through the existing parties and game the current system than to try an end around them.

But Elon is far too much of an egomaniac, and this endeavor is far to much ego driven (due to Trump shunting him aside), to play this smart. This new party is a vanity project pushed by a man who is not just attempting to work in a domain in which he has little experience, but in a domain in which he has proved to be incompetent, uncomprehending, and temperamentally unsuited.

And don’t forget that although Musk has achieved some signal successes, namely SpaceX and Tesla, he also has a litany of over-hyped failures, like Solar City (and the merger thereof with Tesla), the Solar Roof, and the Hyperloop. Even Tesla succeeded only because of the largesse of government that Musk now pretends to deplore–and because Musk’s consummate con-man skills allowed him to keep the capital flowing in for long enough to avoid the fate of say, Fisker.

Also don’t forget that Musk has vulnerabilities that Trump can exploit if Musk’s party becomes too much of a threat. I think the main reason for Musk’s pivot from Democrat to Trump supporter was the regulatory war the Biden administration waged against Tesla and SpaceX. Don’t think that Trump can’t–or wouldn’t–do the same if Elon poses too much of a threat.

SpaceX has leverage due to its vital role in defense projects, but even that does not confer immunity. Musk’s security clearance could go in a trice–and as I’ve written before, no one else with his drug use would retain such a clearance. The structure of SpaceX would still give Musk control, but if he attempted to use that in a way that was detrimental to vital defense programs, I have no doubt that ways would be found to overcome that as well. His ties with China, for example could be used to disqualify him from exercising any control over the company.

Since he has none of the competitive advantages in politics that he has/had in rocketry and EVs, I’d say his party is far more likely to be another of his failures than another of his successes. But if you want to go to Elon’s party, I’m not stopping you.

But I do have one question for you: is the party BYOK? (Bring your own ketamine). And before you join, ask yourself about the prudence of tying yourself to a man who is clearly unstable, and who exacerbates his instability through substance abuse.

(Political) life comes at you fast these days. Last week the onrushing story was the Musk-Trump blow-up. Now the doppler effect has kicked in, and the frequency is lengthening rapidly, largely replaced by the roar of onrushing news about LA.

With respect to the breakup, proximately virtually all the fault lies with Musk. To put it mildly, he is not a team player, and completely misunderstood his place. He is used to being the sun around which all things orbit, and not used at all to be one of the planets, and not even the most important planet at that. He also utterly failed to grasp that the US political system does not operate like one of his companies, where he dictates what happens.

I share his reservations about the “Big Beautiful Bill” (ugh), but especially given the Republicans’ narrow majorities, and the fact that a good chunk of Republicans are swampers, it is likely the best that can be achieved now.

Ultimately, Musk failed to understand that his popularity–and unpopularity–derived from his association with Trump, and that Trump’s popularity–and unpopularity–has fuck all to do with his association with Elon. Typical of someone on the spectrum, he thought (and probably thinks) it’s all about him, and can’t read the room.

Musk also apparently believed that he could skate past his extreme propensity to overpromise and underdeliver in government as he has time and again in business. He promised trillions in savings, and delivered orders of magnitude less. This apparently resulted in a confrontation with Scott Bessent which led to Musk physically assaulting the Secretary of the Treasury. Again something he could probably overcome in his fiefdoms, but not DC.

We only see the surface ripples of what was going on deep in the administration, but it is pretty evident that his erratic behavior–likely fueled by drugs–also wore out his welcome.

A couple of thoughts regarding his drug use. First, I would not be surprised if the NYT story about it came from within the administration. Second, Musk has security clearances–though not high enough for him to be privy to some SpaceX defense work. If it was you or me, we would have a snowball’s chance in hell at getting a security clearance–even at the lowest level–with such drug use.

For his part, no doubt through gritted teeth, Musk is sort of apologizing.

I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2025

Some?

No doubt the loss of tens of billions in Tesla and the evident risk to SpaceX during the blowup, rather than true contrition, are the primary forces at work here.

Although Musk was the proximate cause of all this, the first mover was Trump. He embraced Musk, and probably benefited from it in the short run. Although he does not emerge from this completely unscathed, its impact on him is limited–certainly far more limited than the effect on Elon. I doubt it shifted anybody’s opinion of him one way or the other. The good thing and the bad thing about being so intensely polarizing is that it takes a helluva lot to change anybody’s mind about you.

But as I said at the outset, that story is past its sell-by date. The new big thing is the LA riots.

And yes, they are riots. Despite the gaslight media’s intense efforts to portray them as “mostly peaceful,” they are not completely so. The fact that some (and even most) participants are not violent does not gainsay the fact that many are.

The gaslight media also fails to point out that “peaceful demonstrators” are witting or unwitting Trojan Horses, precisely because their presence camouflages (to the willingly deceived) and rationalizes the actions of the violent.

The purported cause of the disturbance (and those occurring in San Francisco, etc., and ones threatened for Saturday) is largely pretextual, and ironically politically disadvantageous to the instigators and those running political cover, notably the Democratic Party generally, and LA mayor Karen Bass and CA governor Gavin Newsom specifically.

The “ICE raid” that was supposedly the trigger was hardly directed at run of the mill illegals (like that mounted against meatpackers in Omaha). Instead, it targeted a criminal operation, and netted a collection of hardened criminals.

Not that ICE raids directed at run of the mill illegals are a bad thing! Indeed, the main reservation I have about the ICE strategy of targeting those whose criminality is not limited to their residence here is that it conveys the impression that being a rapist, murderer, money launderer, human trafficker, etc. is a necessary condition for deportation.

But the raid served as a convenient pretext. “Resistance” in LA (and other places) was already teed up, just waiting for an excuse. The ruling class in California has made it abundantly clear that it is hell-bent on defending illegal immigration and illegal immigrants, and battling the Trump administration on this tooth and nail. Any “raid” or series of arrests would have resulted in an outburst, sooner or later. The cells were just waiting for a pretext to activate.

The rhetoric of Newsom and Bass makes it plain that these acts are permissioned. They first denied that anything beyond legitimate protests had occurred, and only when those farcical claims melted in the face of fulsome video evidence did they pivot to the equally farcical “it only occurred because of Trump.”

Yeah, they only occurred because Trump is enforcing laws that the nullificationists in California don’t want enforced.

Bass is just a commie idiot. (Literally the former–more on this below–and self-evidently the latter). Newsom is a more insidious figure not least because of his intense presidential ambitions.

It cracked me up (a sardonic laugh, but a laugh nonetheless) that Newsom has appealed to the right winger’s standby–the 10th Amendment–in California’s lawsuit to stop Trump’s nationalizing the California National Guard to support ICE and defend federal property. This is something the left has tried to read out of the Constitution since, well forever.

I also wonder who Newsom is referring to when he says “ALL of our people”:

?NEW — Amid violent riots in his state, Governor @GavinNewsom promises that "California will keep fighting on behalf of our people — ALL of our people."

Is he encouraging "fighting" on behalf of illegal aliens? pic.twitter.com/GUK9mxgGFB

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 11, 2025

In context, “our people” must include Mexican flag-waving illegal immigrants. Like I say–Gavin the Nullifier! States Rights Gavin (not to be confused with States Rights Gist). A proud inheritor of the mantle of Orval Faubus and George Wallace (but with better hair!).

I also find it amusing that in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s NG order, leftist idiots started bleating about the Posse Comitatus Act.

(McFaul is a complete tool whom Putin fucked with mercilessly, BTW: an example of what happens when giving an academic a real job). I find it amusing because the Posse Comitatus Act was pushed by ex-Confederates who wanted to prevent the use of the Army to protect the civil rights of blacks in the South, as it had tried to do during Reconstruction. Many of the same people who are wrapping themselves in the PCA are the same people who think that the Constitution is illegitimate because of various six degrees of separation from slavery apparently embrace the direct product of dead-ender slave-o-crats. Good to know!

The underreported aspect of all this is that like all other major urban disturbances of recent decades–dating back at least to the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999–is that the hardcore rioters–the ones carrying out the most violent acts–consist largely of a cadre of leftist revolutionaries abetted by lumpenproletarians looking to loot and experience the frisson of violence.

The very professional signs carried by the non-violent types who provide cover for the kinetic action squads were provided by communist organizations. The provision of masks, shields, etc., betrays pre-planning and organization (you don’t get that stuff in that quantity next day delivery on Amazon) characteristic of Antifa and similar organizations. (Hey, Chris Wray: still think that Antifa is “more of an ideology than an organization”, you putz?) Much of the rhetoric is not about something so mundane as ICE enforcement, but is instead maximalist calls for social revolution along communist/anarchist lines.

These types are the street muscle for the left, and the Democratic Party. DOJ, FBI, and DHS have stated that they are investigating the organizational links. The rioters are the left’s equivalent of KKK night riders doing the dirty work of the political oligarchy. One can only hope that a massive RICO prosecution is in the offing–and that it goes beyond the cutouts on the streets to the ultimate funders. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, George Soros, et al). And political enablers.

As I noted earlier, LA’s mayor is a communist of longstanding, going back to her days as the SoCal cell leader of the Cuban Venceremos Brigade, and the winner of twice-a-year all expenses paid trips to Castro’s paradise (back when such travel was illegal). And as The Federalist states, she revealed (inadvertently, not surprising given her stupidity) that the street muscle did not coalesce spontaneously, but was on call for when needed:

She actually let the cat out of the bag on CNN recently, admitting that Los Angeles has a “rapid response network” of agitators, adding, “if they see ICE, they go out and they protest.”

Here’s an example of one of her latter day brigades:

BREAKING – The man seen distributing tens of thousands of dollars worth of face shields in Los Angeles to rioters has been identified as Alejandro Orellana, a known member of the Brown Berets, a radical Latino paramilitary group that are currently embedded in cities across the… https://t.co/504D4tWXMI pic.twitter.com/NWGaswAzcx

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 11, 2025

This guy cracked me up. “We need communism! Not the fake communism like Cuba [did Karen approve???] or Venezuela. But real honest-to-God Leninism. You know, when communism worked! Where’s the CHEKA when you need it?”

At the Los Angeles protests, a man who entered the United States illegally was out protesting ICE. He said he’s anti-capitalist and wants the U.S. to become a socialist country similar to the Soviet Union pic.twitter.com/AylAgGSX7r

— Willie Nelson (@WillieNelsonTV) June 9, 2025

A friend suggests that this guy (and others who have cropped up on X and Instagram) are paid actors. Could be! I hope they are making scale! And hey, maybe that guy is just following family tradition. Maybe this is one of his ancestors:

Or maybe this guy:

Same hats, anyways.

Kidding aside, the real energy behind the insurrection in LA and elsewhere is fundamentally revolutionary and anti-American. Something that Newsom and Bass and the gaslight media have to know, but conveniently obscure, focusing instead on Trump and the efforts of the US government to enforce US laws.

I remember back in the Reagan days when (in the aftermath of the Liberty City riots) leftists were warning of (promising?) a “long hot summer.” (I have distinct memories of John Kerry bloviating about this). The talk of “resistance” ostensibly about immigration enforcement is really a threat of a long hot summer of 2025.

Which is exactly why Trump acted so quickly and aggressively in California. He realizes the true scale of the threat, and is sending a message to other mayors and governors that if they fuck around, they will find out, and won’t like it one bit.

From 2013-2016 or so I gained some notoriety as a critic of Elon Musk. Some of my posts were quoted or discussed in mainstream publications, I was interviewed on Bloomberg News, . . . and Elon blocked me on Twitter!

One of my criticisms was that Musk’s real business genius was in rent seeking. All of his businesses, especially during that era, relied heavily on various forms of government subsidy. Further, he was quite expert at getting very favorable treatment for location businesses, e.g., his Boca Chica launch area for SpaceX. Indeed, this continues to today: recently some other rent seekers–wind farm developers–sued Texas because it cut off tax breaks to them, but not to Tesla.

My other main criticism was that Musk repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. Anybody remember the vaunted Solar Roof? Anybody actually seen one? Recall all the (unrealized) hype about a coast-to-coast charging network. Model introduction dates. Production targets. The actual implementation of the “hyperloop” is the merest shadow of what Musk teased the world with.

The most egregious example was the Solar City merger, which was touted as some great new business model that would exploit wonderful economies of scope between rooftop solar, home battery storage, and electric vehicles. I called bullshit at the time, and bullshit it has proven to be.

My explanation of the real reason for the Solar City deal was that its bankruptcy would put a huge dent in his reputation as a business genius and innovator, and that he had to conceal the wretched financial condition of the company in the Tesla balance sheet. It’s pretty clear that I was right: Solar City is basically in wind down mode.

In the light of experience, it is pretty clear to me that in all of these promises and claims, Elon was playing pretend and extend. Keep dazzling investors with future prospect so they would continue to shovel money in today, in the hope that eventually Tesla would be sufficiently profitable to survive without hype.

And it that respect, you have to say that Musk’s strategy was wise, predicated on dishonesty as it was. Tesla did start producing large quantities of vehicles in multiple factories around the world. Tesla stock eventually soared to stratospheric values–although the past year has been sobering indeed. In fact, the past week has been sobering, with the stock falling almost 20 percent: it is off almost exactly 2/3rds in the past year.

Although the most optimistic projections of Tesla’s prospects have been dashed, it is clearly a going concern and will continue to be one–especially with the help of government tailwinds. In that sense, Elon’s strategy of overpromising was a canny play.

I was always more critical of Tesla than SpaceX, and indeed, the space company has proved to be a standout, especially as compared to its peer group, especially the execrable Boeing.

But now Tesla and SpaceX are basically background noise in the Musk saga. Now it’s all about Twitter, all the time.

I think it’s fair to say that his bid for Twitter illustrates his mercurial nature, and it is pretty clear that he regretted it soon after making it. He tried to wriggle out of his commitment, but seeing the legal writing on the Delaware Chancery Court wall he sucked it up and bought the company.

And once he bought it, he showed incredible will and fortitude to transform the company. In part this was a business necessity. He obviously overpaid, and had to make the company, if not profitable, at least not a huge cash suck. So he whacked more than half the employees.

These firings unleashed a torrent of shrieks, and dire predictions of the utter collapse of the company.

But the platform continues to perform with no apparent technological problems, despite these alarming prognostications. This strongly suggests that the company was massively bloated, and that most of the employees did not contribute to its output and profitability.

I think that this is a characteristic of the tech sector generally–not just Twitter. I hope to write a post on that subject soon.

More remarkably, Musk is giving every indication of having a serious commitment to free speech, and to opposing government interference in public debate. Especially the kind of underhanded interference that had long been suspected by “conspiracy theorists”–and which even the limited releases of “Twitter Files” has demonstrated to be true.

Remember that the phrases “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorists” were born in the 1960s as part of government efforts (especially the CIA) to discredit any question of government operations, and especially the operations of the intelligence community. The FBI’s reference to conspiracy theories/theorists in its response to the Twitter Files confirms and validates that the old playbook is still in use.

Moreover, Musk has revealed the extent to which old Twitter was dedicated to silencing and obstructing those whom its leftist management and employees disliked (hated, actually) even without government prompting: like John Cleese’s character in the Argument Clinic sketch, they were censoring on their own time. Further, he has taken steps to reverse that, although there are still reasons for concern.

I see no reason to revise my criticisms of Musk’s earlier conduct in light of these current developments. I think the judgments were well founded, and I have not seen any evidence that would require a reevaluation. That said, I am quite pleased with–and pleasantly surprised by–his actions regarding Twitter.

Yet, given his mercurial nature, and the intense competing demands on his time–especially given that Tesla is no facing serious headwinds and investors are clearly disturbed by his Twitter distraction–it remains to be seen whether this good start will be maintained and indeed broadened. On the one hand, he has a direct economic interest in making Twitter a viable economic enterprise, and it is likely that a more open platform will advance that objective. On the other, Musk’s revolution has sparked a massive counter-revolution among journalists in particular, but also among governments. The EU has been particularly mafia-like in the nice-little-business-you-got-here-shame-if-anything-happened-to-it sense, threatening severe consequences if Twitter does not adopt “moderation” (i.e., censorship) policies in line with the EU’s statist preferences. The Biden administration has not been quite so direct as the EU, but it has made threatening noises too. Several senators have also been making threats.

Meaning that the old “you can’t do anything to Twitter because it’s a private company” bromide that was common in the old Twitter days when it was censoring those the left didn’t like has become completely non-operative in the Musk Twitter days when he is promising to eliminate censorship. Elon will have to wage a war against governments around the world in order to advance his apparently completely sincere and principled free speech agenda.

Whether he can or will do that remains to be seen. Governments can make his principles very, very expensive, and therefore Elon may have to make the choice between his economic interests and his pro-freedom principles. We don’t know what value Elon places on those principles, or the costs that governments will impose on him if he attempts to act on them. The ultimate outcome, therefore, is very much in doubt.

I was never pulling for Elon to fail with Tesla or other pre-Twitter endeavors: I was criticizing the means he employed to achieve success. I am pulling for him to succeed at Twitter, and given what and who he is fighting against, I hope that he adopts the all’s fair approach that he has employed so often in the past.