Musk is gullible
So it turns out that Musk’s horrifyingly successful purge of USAID is based on his deep knowledge via various pseudonymous conspiracy wackos on his toy X.
Musk’s sudden — and consequential — interest in USAID did not emerge from a vacuum: The agency has long been a target of criticism that its aid programs masked nation-meddling and overspent American tax dollars abroad. Some conspiracy theories alleged that the global humanitarian programs were a cover for biowarfare research or that USAID’s funding enriched an elite few who control the world.
But until very recently, those claims were largely outside the mainstream, and USAID, which delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries, generally enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington.
That is no longer the case: President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that while he appreciated “the concept” of USAID, the people in the agency “turned out to be radical left lunatics.”
Note that “turned out to be.” Always note that when Trump says it. It means some damn fool has been talking to him. This time it’s a damn fool who owns a big social media platform and pays attention to damn fools who use it to conspiricize.
Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.
Oh that’s just great. People all over the planet suddenly cut off aid because of the gossip of Kanekoa the Great and Chief Nerd. Look behind the curtain and you find…childish idiots. If Musk is so damn smart, as everyone keeps saying he is, why is he getting his information from random anons on social media? Why is he paying any attention at all to random anons on social media?
A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk.
Why??? Why on earth?
On Wednesday, Musk shared a faked video claiming USAID had sponsored celebrity visits to Ukraine. Darren Linvill, a co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, told NBC News the video was manufactured Russian propaganda.
The impact of false conspiracy theories on USAID — whether they have directly shaped Musk’s actions at the agency or provided a convenient justification — is already being felt. Critical medical supplies, essential medicines and food aid are being withheld from their intended international recipients, and aid workers are scrambling to comply with the ordered shutdown of the agency on Friday.
Thanks to anonymous randos online.
And Musk is simultaneously stomping on the US Government’s entire data infrastructure, handing the keys to much of the nation’s most sensitive data to handfuls of nerdy-bro interns. The more I hear about this, the more terrified I am. It’s bad enough that all that data is being hoovered up by randos with no accountability, but it’s just as bad that those randos might irrevocably break sensitive and complex data systems that are decades old and that the country relies on for basic functionality. These systems are every bit as essential as the power grid or the water supply — and they’re just as vital to the nation’s health and security.
https://archive.ph/20250207164914/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-security/681600/
Yeah, a rich elite controlling the world would be bad. Good thing we’ve got Elon Musk, and The People’s Revolution to save us from those bastards.
Thank Christ we’ve got President Elon, The People’s Champion, fighting this malevolent force, acting wisely and selflessly for the Common Good..
…who will probably make “Chelsea” Manning and Edward Snowden look like quaint hobbyists. They’re probably being scouted by (if not already working for) the Russians and Chinese. This way, Trump doesn’t have to go to the trouble of stealing documents. Just open it all up instead of relying on Trump’s ability to pick and choose the right items.
I vote that Musk be appointed Ambassador to Mars, and we send him there – with as many of his followers as we can fit in a spaceship…make that several space ships. Let them see how genius and clever they are trying to survive in such a hostile environment where you can’t just throw up your hands, pack up the tent, and head to the nearest Hilton Hotel and IHOP to fix things.
I bet he’d drop everything if he could go to Mars.
Arty, thank you so much for that article in The Atlantic. Your synopsis of it is right on.
Your link did not work for me, but this link does:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/the-government-s-computing-experts-say-they-are-terrified/ar-AA1yBjdM
@YNNB
Just like Russia wasted no time recruiting and bribing duebro podcasters (such as Tim Pool) who had become such influential figures among men who were alienated by the New York Times and the Washington Post over those newspapers’ percieved excesses in wokery-pokery. (And at least some of the charges against the “legacy liberal media” were true, at least with respect to the trans crisis. Nevermind that beyond the trans thing, the legacy media is still pretty reliable all-in-all; trans batshittery has smeared all legacy media as an unreliable “woke” joke on the right.)
Now we’ve got explicit pawns of Russia as the primary source of news among tens of millions of American and Canadian men, and there’s an extremely strong case to be made that trans horseshit is the primary reason so many of those men severed ties with the mainstream media.
Which is to say, one little break with reality in the media — the transparent lie that “trans women are women” — has snowballed into a global catastrophe. The entire media lost its credibility because of it.
I will never stop bleating that the trans issue was the shattered keystone that subsequently collapsed the whole structure of society’s trust in the media, and it’s now setting us on course for World War Three.
Both Mump and Trusk remind me of myself 50 years ago, whatever I most recently read was true. From Holocaust denial to anger at human stupidity, From HIV doesn’t lead to AIDS to being astonished at the homophobiaunleashed, I read it and believed it, and I struggle now to comprehend just how gullible I was. Now I am so sceptical I have to look in the mirror each morning to see if I’m alive.
Artymorty: I totally agree with you. That lie made us untrustworthy. When everyone’s a liar, go with the Trumpian comforting lies—Biden made eggs expensive, climate change is a fake conspiracy to snatch away your burgers and SUVs, everything bad is because of immigrants, DEI is why you didn’t get that job.