Tech billionaire Elon Musk appears to have dramatic plans for the future of the federal government — including mass downsizing of the civil service and a wholesale rewrite of the IT systems that handle core public functions. But his newest attack on scientific research is particularly galling, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon, because he is dismantling the very institutions that enriched him in the first place.
"The administration is trying to unilaterally slash billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)," wrote Marcotte. "To defend this, Musk claims it's a 'ripoff' when grant funding goes to pay for salaries, lab space and equipment, even though no one can conduct scientific research without these baseline necessities."
He likely lacks the legal authority to do this, as federal judges have already warned.
What stands out, though, she continued, is that while "it's no surprise that Trump hates science," Musk built his career venerating it — and depending on precisely this kind of research.
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"Despite the media hype painting Musk as a genius and inventor, he largely built his financial empire on other people's research," wrote Marcotte. "At every turn, he's relied heavily on technologies developed because of the very federal largess he now deems a 'ripoff.'"
Indeed, she continued, "He'll never admit it, but Musk owes former Vice President Al Gore a giant thank you" — he was instrumental in getting funding to develop the internet through Congress, something Republicans famously made fun of him for pointing out on the 2000 campaign trail.
"Musk got rich because of all this work," Marcotte wrote. "In the 90s, he built a website called Zip2 that functioned as an online Yellow Pages. He sold it to Compaq in 1999, netting $22 million. He made another huge chunk of money as the CEO of PayPal, which would also not exist but for the decades of government-funded development of the internet."
He then went on to acquire Tesla, which got a big boost from grants from the Department of Energy to develop new battery technology, and of course his SpaceX ventures have relied heavily on federal government contracts. And one of SpaceX's biggest divisions, his Starlink system to transmit internet service, exists "because of satellite technology initially developed by both the American and Soviet governments."
In short, she concluded, "At every turn, Musk makes money only because he grabs onto technologies that were invented at taxpayer expense," and now, "Musk's ingratitude is breathtaking" as he moves to slash all these same kinds of investments to create room for the GOP to cut his taxes. "It also fits the larger pattern of tech billionaires spitting venom at the middle-class workers who did the real labor in creating the products these capitalists profit so handsomely from."
"I have little doubt that he resents real scientists, as poseurs always do when confronted with the real thing," Marcotte added. "He's probably taking his insecurities out on people whose only crime is being what he only pretends to be. Unfortunately, his petty psychodrama will have real impacts on the whole human race, which may be denied the often life-saving benefits of what real researchers do."