The Techno-Futuristic Philosophy Behind Elon Musk’s Mania
By Matthew Purdy,
The New York Times
| 05. 29. 2025
Image “Elon Musk” by Debbie Rowe, Royal Society on
Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by S.A. 3.0
As Elon Musk prepared to make a less than triumphant exit from Washington, he told the Fox News host Jesse Watters earlier this month that his rampage through the bureaucracy had made “significant progress” in cutting waste and fraud. But there was no hiding that the man whose rockets can gracefully return to earth standing tall on their launchpads had made a bit of a crash landing.
His projected cut of $2 trillion from the federal budget had shrunk on paper, at that point, to $165 billion. Tesla stock took a nosedive along with his personal wealth and popularity. And, as he rewrote Silicon Valley’s mantra into “move fast, break things and get out of town,” no one was urging him to stay.
Prompted by Watters, Musk shifted the interview seamlessly from eradicating waste to another obsession: the looming eradication of life on earth. “The sun is gradually expanding, so we do at some point need to be a multiplanetary civilization because...
Related Articles
By Lucy Tu, The Atlantic | 07.11.2025
Donald Trump—who is, by his own accounting, “the fertilization president” and “the father of IVF”—wants to help Americans reproduce. During his 2024 campaign, he promised that the government or insurance companies would cover the cost of in vitro fertilization. In...
By Jared Whitlock, Endpoints News | 07.15.2025
Patient groups face a harder and unpredictable path going state-by-state to boost screening for rare but treatable conditions after the Trump administration disbanded a federal advisory committee on newborn screening.
In April, the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns...
By Ben Fidler and Ned Pagliarulo, Biopharma Dive | 07.21.2025
One month ago, a 51-year-old man treated in a clinical trial with an experimental gene therapy became dangerously sick. The developer of that treatment, Sarepta Therapeutics, informed the Food and Drug Administration his case could be life-threatening.
The man died...
By Pat Duggins, Alabama Public Radio | 06.27.2025
PAT DUGGINS-- If I were to say, ‘man, have you seen the price of eggs these days?’ You're probably thinking, Oh, he's talking about inflation and the price of groceries and how it became an issue in the presidential race...