Whether you love him, hate him, or fall somewhere between these extremes, one thing undeniable about Elon Musk is that he traffics in epochal ideas. He made his fortune by betting big on things like electric cars, reusable rockets and artificial intelligence—and has said he intends to spend much of his vast wealth to make human settlements on Mars a reality. Such an interplanetary expansion, he claims, would help ensure humanity's long-term flourishing by allowing our species to avoid existential threats that might otherwise befall us in vulnerable isolation on Earth.
Any vision so grand as this one would be controversial, but Musk himself has upped the ante by linking his cosmic aspirations with the mundane mudslinging of politics. According to him, the policies of President Trump (and more generally of extreme right-wing political leaders around the globe) are essentially the only path to this otherworldly high-tech salvation, with most any centrist or leftist positions instead only contributing to sociotechnological stasis or regression that would ultimately be humanity's extinction.
Musk suggests that this phenomenon is in fact so pervasive that it may well be the main reason why the modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has yet to find evidence of any cosmic civilizations. In other words, the biggest threats to intelligent life in the universe wouldn't be asteroid impacts, or climate change, or nuclear warfare, but rather stifled technological innovation and sluggish economic growth due to bureaucratic inertia and excess governmental regulation. Which would be a rather convenient cosmic coincidence for the world's richest man, who would stand to profit immensely were he enlisted to shake up this supposed status quo.
And, of course, he has been, via his appointment by President Trump to lead the newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE). This work, Musk claims, is of such urgency that it constitutes a "fork in the road" for humanity; only by ruthlessly cutting trillions of dollars of federal spending, it seems, shall we ever reach a safe haven on Mars or among the stars.
Our top story, from the historian of science Rebecca Charbonneau, offers a counterpoint to Musk's cosmic motivations for his partisan machinations, arguing that he has fundamentally misread the core SETI tenets underpinning his agenda. It may well be, Charbonneau writes, that we stand at a cosmic crossroads—but if so Musk and his collaborators could just as well be "part of the problem" rather than a solution, "accelerating the very conditions—oligarchic control, systemic inequality and environmental degradation—that could lead to existential catastrophe."
What do you think? Feel free to let me know.
—Lee Billings
