No Quantum of Solace — Musk Goes Full Bond Villain

A couple of years ago, right after Elon Musk helped Donald Trump win the presidency and got set to cash in on his investment, we noted that, down to his love of spaceships, he had all of the hallmarks of a classic James Bond villain, perhaps one called Xtremo or Propagandalf.

Even his backstory would be easy to craft: A South African who left his native country right before the end of apartheid to move to Canada and the US, two countries that, along with European powers, helped to bring an end to white rule in his homeland.

And then Xtremo bides his time until he can use his immense wealth to sow chaos in Western democracies and exact his revenge on them so that the Afrikaners may rise again.

Just like in any good Bond movie, the antagonist employs cutting edge technology — for example, a social media company that he uses to promote white nationalist voices and spread misinformation to elevate a lunatic to the US presidency.

But even we couldn’t quite envision how fully Musk would embrace his role as a villain.

In the two years since we wrote that column, he has become even more of a poster child for the existential danger that emotionally underdeveloped tech bros pose and, more broadly, why super billionaires shouldn’t exist at all.

First, in return for Musk’s services, Donald Trump quite literally gave him and his DOGE team a license to kill. By cutting government programs that provided life-saving services across the globe, they are responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.

More recently, although he said in 2025 that, “in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk apparently decided to never say never again.

Instead of cutting back, he increased his bribes campaign contributions to Republicans, especially in Texas, where he has a sprawling business empire, and will likely have spent more than half a billion dollars by the time Americans finish voting on November 3.

Now, to be fair, in light of the sharp increase of his personal fortune under Donald Trump and Republicans who teamed up to give a helping hand to billionaires, spending that much money probably feels like “doing a lot less.”

In fact, his wealth has soared so much since 2025 that $500 million only constitutes one-third of a day’s average increase. To put this in perspective, if you make the federal minimum wage, half a billion dollars for Musk is the equivalent of about $20 for you.

And to ensure that he faces no scrutiny over his (false) promise, which he made toward the end of the 2024 campaign, to raffle off $1 million to several random Trump supporters, Musk and his political action committee earlier this month settled a couple of lawsuits to avoid having to testify under oath.

But the billionaire’s influence extends far beyond trying to buy himself a compliant president and Congress.

He has also taken it upon himself to decide who should live and whom to let die in the war Russia is waging against Ukraine.

Specifically, the Wall Street Journal reported that it was Musk who hobbled Kiev’s ability to fight back against the invaders when he “ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink,” the internet service his company SpaceX provides with a massive network of low Earth orbit satellites.

While Putin probably applauded this decision from Russia with love, it is mind boggling that the US and other Western governments ever allowed this power to be concentrated in the hands of a private person.

This isn’t even about Musk being a white supremacist or a weirdo; it’s asking for trouble to allow anybody to be able to hold an entire country hostage.

Speaking of powers that nobody should have, Musk is also one of the tech bros trying to ram artificial intelligence (AI) down the throats of everyone in the world.

We have noted many times that the spectre of this technology taking over is more than worrisome. What is even more troubling, however, is that anybody thinks it’s a good day to entrust AI development to greedy billionaires who have not shown an ounce of compassion toward those whose lives will be upended as a result — which, in the worst case that seems not so unlikely, could be all of us.

And it’s even worse to not impose any guardrails on them, which is the approach endorsed by Trump.

To sum it all up, the president whom Musk hoisted across the finish line in the race to the White House in 2024, including with those false promises of giving a million dollars (i.e., the amount of money by which his wealth increased every minute of this year) to random supporters (which were not random at all), wants to give a carte blanche to develop a technology that could kill us all to a guy who is already responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Awesome!

Well, we won’t stand for it and will continue to report on Musk’s machinations, which is our way of giving him the (gold)finger.

Unfortunately, there are far too few people willing to speak truth to power, and we can only do so because of your support.

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