Elon Musk, chief government officer of Tesla Inc., on the AI Security Summit 2023 at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, UK, on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023.
Chris J. Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
Elon Musk purchased Twitter to reserve it from the “thoughts virus,” a phrase he has used to consult with so-called “woke” or left-wing pondering, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX mentioned in a podcast look with Joe Rogan.
“That is going to sound considerably melodramatic, however I used to be apprehensive it was having a corrosive impact on civilization,” Musk mentioned on the Joe Rogan Expertise Tuesday. Rogan had requested him whether or not Musk ever dreamt that he hadn’t made a bid on Twitter. Musk additional criticized the management of the town of San Francisco, telling Rogan that downtown San Francisco was like “a zombie apocalypse.”
“So now you need to say, what philosophy led to that final result?” Musk requested rhetorically.
“A philosophy that might usually be fairly area of interest and geographically constrained,” Musk mentioned, “was given an info know-how weapon to propagate what is basically a thoughts virus to the remainder of the Earth. And the result of that thoughts virus could be very clear when you stroll across the streets of downtown San Francisco.”
In spring 2022, Musk tried to again out of his $44 billion Twitter bid shortly after making it, claiming bot exercise was artificially boosting Twitter’s monetizable each day lively customers, or mDAUs. Twitter sued Musk in Delaware court docket to implement the binding provide, and Musk would later concede and shut on the acquisition in late 2022.
It is not the primary time that Musk has criticized so-called “woke” pondering. In December, Musk wrote on X, previously referred to as Twitter, that the “woke thoughts virus is both defeated or nothing else issues.” Earlier in 2022, Musk wrote that “there must be a counter-narrative” to woke pondering that Musk claimed had “totally penetrated leisure.”
The time period “woke” is often utilized to progressive or liberal ideology by extra politically conservative people. Musk has used it to consult with the “suppression” of far-right viewpoints on social media below Twitter’s earlier administration.
Musk has additionally made different enterprise selections motivated by political considerations. Tesla relocated from Palo Alto, California to Austin Texas in October 2021, a yr after Musk described California Covid well being orders as “fascist” on a Tesla earnings name.
Later in 2021, he warned that Austin ought to be cautious of turning right into a “copycat” of San Francisco. Tesla later shifted its engineering headquarters again to Palo Alto, however its company headquarters stays in Texas.
