We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – the modular nuclear option edition “Nuclear has re-entered the chat because it’s the only energy source that can deliver enough clean, safe, round-the-clock electricity to feed AI. Nuclear is to AI what oil was to the Industrial Age. It’s the fuel for a new era of exponential progress.”
– Stephen McBride and Dan Steinhart, from the Rational Optimist Society.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I am not very interested in AI – but other people, whom I respect, tell me it is very important.
But regardless of AI – nuclear power, specifically fairly small modular reactors, would seem to be the best bet for many countries at this time – I am told that Japan is leading the way (although I do not know the details).
In the long term nuclear fusion will take over – but, for now, we have to proceed with nuclear fission – and the safest way to do that, appears to be fairly small modular reactors.
However, other people may wish to argue for much larger and more complex nuclear fission reactors – and I am certainly open to their arguments.
In the long term nuclear fusion will take over
In the long term, chap, we’re all going to die.
All of us
Long before nuclear “fusion” becomes a reality
The problem with power sources is not that they are (objectively) polluting or not. The problem is that KGB propaganda, now morphed into a kind of ‘church of woke’, has anathematised technology. This includes pretty much everything except wind and solar (they don’t even seem particularly keen on hydroelectric – try getting a new reservoir authorised). Never mind that photovoltaic power was invented about the same time as nuclear, and well after coal fired steam; it’s “clean” where the others are “dirty”. Or “blessed” vs. “sinful”.
None of this is logical, it’s political or, really, religious. Introducing new technologies will not solve a religio-political problem.
@david morris
Long before nuclear “fusion” becomes a reality
Of course I understand your point — for the past fifty years fusion power has been five years away, and today it is still five years away, though there do seem to have been significant advances.
But I will tell you as a computer programmer myself, AI has, for the past fifty years been five years away. But today it is here, and more powerful for sure than we ever imagined fifty years ago.
So, much as we might roll our eyes at these predictions that never come true, sometimes they do. One should never underestimate the capabilities of engineers backed by funders who have a lot of capital.
And it does offer significant advantages over fission, specifically that it does not use materials that can be made into bombs by wacky terrorist regimes, and that the “waste” product is not dangerous at all.
Of course one could be pedantic and say that we already have fusion power, since solar, wind and hydroelectric are all forms of fusion power.
“None of this is logical, it’s political or, really, religious. Introducing new technologies will not solve a religio-political problem.”
I’m pretty much convinced that if Elon Musk suddenly announced (and successfully demonstrated) that he’d invented a device that could suck energy from the ether and would give everyone a personal power station in their home with zero CO2 emissions at virtually zero marginal cost it would be denounced as unacceptable for mass market use and banned.
@Jim
it would be denounced as unacceptable for mass market use and banned.
“This device will eliminate good paying jobs for my constituents, and destroy their livelihoods.”
FWIW, since we were earlier talking about Thatcher earlier, this is essentially the argument Arthur Scargill made for keeping the coal pits open (substitute members for constituents.)
In 1995. I got an unexpected phone call from the University of St Andrews. I had just graduated in physics and had a fully funded MSc in astrophyics from QM, London in the bag.
St Andrews (and JET) were offering me a fully funded PhD in fusion.
I was flattered and interested but…
We are more likely to get to the stars anytime soon than make fusion work. So I went to London.
Fission works. It is doable. It is genuinely sustainable, it is safe, it is great for baseload. It doesn’t take huge ammounts of space, newer designs are very scaleable. There is no rational reason not to let it rip. Or you can be like the German Greens and burn lignite which is horrifically bad. Yes, the Greens in Germany, with their atavistic hatred of nuclear, are the reason they have restarted burning horribly polluting low grade coal. It is beyond rational discourse.
When I was a kid, growing-up in Gateshead, the Labour council declared Gateshead a “Nuclear Free Zone”. They even tried to block the hospitals getting Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines because of the “N” word of DOOM. That is why such devices are invariably called MRI these days. I knew a guy who won the Nobel for inventing them – Sir Peter Mansfield, FRS when I was an undergrad.
The posters Gateshead council put everywhere declaring themselves fervently against nuclear anything featured prominently a happy, smiling sun motif. Yes. They. Did. I saw them walkng to primary school. Even then I knew…
Paul, yes, AI does need a lot of electricity but then so does everything else. This would be true even without the push for electric cars, home cooking, home heating and all that. A fossil fuel free future can only work two ways. The first is we generate loads more electricity, the second is explored in the documentary series “Mad Max”.
Let the neutrons roll!
#NickM, you said “fusion” did you mean “fission”? AFAIK there are no practical designs for a fusion reactor, just some success in laboratories. Of course fusion has a lot of advantages over fission, for one the “waste” product (in some designs anyway) is helium, something that there is an international shortage of. They are just cleaner and don’t have the dangers associated with something like Chernobyl or Fukushima. They’d be significantly less dangerous and polluting. They don’t provide a pretext for making nuclear weapons. And they would in theory generate much more power in much less space. And because they are so much cleaner presumably the overwhelming regulatory burden of fission plants would be entirely unjustified.
Problem is that there are no practical designs. But it truly is not a science problem but an engineering problem which could no doubt be solved with enough capital investment. I mean if we spent as much on that as we did on ugly, countryside destroying windmills we’d have our own little Suns all over the country by now.
david morris – if you had read the rest of the sentence, you would have seen that I answered your point (before you made it).
Nuclear fission is needed now – precisely because nuclear fusion is not yet available and may not be for many years.
By the way, as I often get attacked by people making petty points about spelling and grammar – why did you put scare quotes around the word “fusion”?
Are you saying that there is no such thing as nuclear fusion – that the sun, and other stars, do not exist?
This 100%.
Fission works and it’s great for baseload. With a bit of bird choppers, solar power, hydro and so on (for peak load) we might be able to keep the lights on until fusion can be made to work.
Not saying there is no place for coal and gas, but we’ve started down this path at great cost so we might as well finish it. Just get rid of the subsidies for the green stuff which adds so much to the power bills.
Looking at the other end of the premise:
“enough clean, safe, round-the-clock electricity to feed AI” is steadily decreasing.
Optical and quantum approaches can drastically reduce the energy costs of computing.
nuclear power, specifically fairly small modular reactor
Small, modular reactors are a good idea, and much work is done in developing them. But, as of now, they do not yet exist.
We need a lot of energy right now.
Big fission reactors (that exist) were built mainly in the 1970’s, they are at the end of their useful life. No significant wave of new reactors is happening. And if it starts it will take dozens of years to materialize. Fission reactors also have their share of problems – the main one being that we cannot neutralize or cancel radioactive materials. I would not want the current nuclear technology to proliferate into the many thousands of reactors that are needed.
So, it’s coal and gas and oil – for the foreseeable future. There is no working alternative right now.
Jacob – thank you for pointing out that hydrocarbons (coal, gas and oil) are still very much needed.
I am not sure that relatively small modular nuclear reactors “do not yet exist” (I have heard, perhaps wrongly, that something like this is already in use in Japan) – but certainly they are not widespread.
@Fraser Orr
What a lot of people fail to recall, was that Wilson and Benn closed more coal mines that were ever closed under the Thatcher government. This was accepted by Scargill, as it allowed coal to be imported from Poland, thereby giving hard currency to ‘the Comrades’, Poland coming under the Soviet regime at that time. So closure under Labour good, closure under Conservative bad. As an aside, when Scargill called his members out on an illegal strike, he demanded that the engineers who operated the anti flooding machinery also had to strike. At the end, some mines which were not planned to close, had to, as the anti flooding machinery was under water.
Penseivat – yes indeed, “striking for jobs is like scew@@@ for virginity”, the actions of Mr Scargill and his supporters meant that more, rather than less, coal mines were closed.
@NickM: relevant.
Jacob, once the corrosion problems are overcome, then small Thorium fission reactors are the way to go. They can utilise, the long lasting radioactive products of Uranium reactors, with their own waste products being much reduced, and which has a drastically shorter half life.
Thanks Plamus!
What really irks me is that the Windy Millers never take into account the CO2 etc. released when their “clean” stuff is manufactured. Manufacturing anything beyond knapped flint needs energy. Energy costs are killing the economy whilst the “Greens” are buying indulgences from China where such restraints aren’t in place. They are evil and deliberately clueless. Does Ed Milliband know any thermodynamics? Why doesn’t anyone ask him in parliament? He ought to be grilled over “Green” energy. It will not be over quickly and he will not enjoy it.
Wait until you find out how fake the climate models are…
Does Ed Milliband know any thermodynamics?
NickM, Milliband is our eco-fanatic saviour, so committed to greenness and sustainability and being ever so good at all times. He is also the loser who decided that going downstairs to make a cup of tea in his kitchen was too hard, and so he had another kitchen installed upstairs. This tells us everything. It is a perfect parable for our times.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems are building out their last prototype prior to going into full scale production. From what I have read, they should have first fusion sometime next year with power on the grid coming the year after. At the very least, their promises have the advantage of being disproven in the reasonably near future. So far, their tests have all worked out as predicted.
TMLutas
Very interesting Sir – that is vastly sooner than I thought.
However, I still think that we should proceed with fission reactors – of the relatively small modular sort.
Let us hope that fusion comes as quickly as you suggest it may – but there is always the possibility that it will not.
Sadly the world is likely to go into a severe economic crises – the United Kingdom especially, so economic resources are going to be limited.
Rolls Royce SMRs work jolly well on His Majesties submarine fleet.
The major stumbling block with U235 based SMRs is that the Uranium has to be enriched to a far purer concentration than that needed for a conventional reactor.
Not only is this very expensive and requires a lot of power in itself, but there would be the unintentional side-effect that such a highly enriched source of fissile material would be far too tempting to turn into a warhead for the usual suspects.
Nongoose,
I had forgotten about his upstairs kitchen. That is terribly inefficient because the electricity has to climb up the stairs! And if the ‘tricity is also carrying a heavy bag of milk and teabags then that is even worse… St Greta of Thunberg needs to give him a stern talking to with her most disapproving face on. Although that would curdle the milk. And other dairy products out to a 3 mile radius.
Windypants,
My understanding is the French nuclear power program was largely based much the same design reactors that power French SS(B)Ns so this is nowhere near being bleeding edge tech. Much the same can be said about the USN’s Nimitz (and now Ford) class carriers. 110,000 tons of go-anywhere (they’re not Panamax but they are very quick) Big Sticks that each carry an airforce bigger than most countries have. Oh, and they are designed to last 50 years with one refuel at age 25!
TMLutas,
“At the very least, their promises have the advantage of being disproven in the reasonably near future” This is, er… critical. From the CFS website they seem to be planning to go on grid at the start of the 2030s which is around the fabled five year mark we’ve been promised for the last seventy years. I assume CFS chosse their name because they have facilities in MA and VA which are both, technically, “Commonwealths” not “States”.
@TMLutas
Commonwealth Fusion Systems are building out their last prototype prior to going into full scale production. From what I have read, they should have first fusion sometime next year with power on the grid coming the year after.
FWIW, I am EXTREMELY skeptical of this statement. I hope you are right, and if you are you should put all your money in Commonwealth Fusion. However, what I have seen of fusion research is that it is not even out of the lab — it is considered a big achievement if they can sustain fusion for thirty minutes. It seems a VERY long way away from even demonstrators never mind hooking up to the grid.
Here, for example, is one quote on the subject:
I sincerely hope I am wrong and you are right, but I highly doubt it. Sounds like marketing hype to me. I just don’t think the technology is mature enough yet.
Back in 1989, a claim for the discovery of “cold fusion” briefly offered the glittering prospect of abundant energy. The claim turned out to be false, but there was a prominent environmentalist who opined that he hoped it wasn’t true because if it was it would be a horrible disaster.
So if rainbow farts from magical unicorns turned out to be a practical large scale energy source, the environmentalists would react with horror. They’d declare the magical unicorns to be a dangerous unwanted invasive species and demand that they be banned.
There’s also hydro power, which is somehow Evil, whereas wind power is somehow Good.
They don’t actually want ‘alternative’ or ‘renewable’ energy as sources of energy. They want those things as willow-wisps to decoy the peasants onto a path that leads to them suffering and dying in the dark.
@Deep Lurker
There’s also hydro power, which is somehow Evil, whereas wind power is somehow Good.
Hydro power has the huge disadvantage that it requires turning valleys into lakes often destroying a lot of good things, villages, roads and of course nature. So there are reasons to be a bit hesitant about hydro — though the resulting lake is itself a beautiful thing with all sorts of recreational uses and the creation of a huge new habitat.
Of course one might wonder why that is bad but covering a hundred square miles with extremely ugly windmills is ok. I despair of how ugly this all is. It used to be driving around the USA was beautiful, with scenic views everywhere to be seen. Now it seems all you see are windmills for miles and miles and miles.
Lake Mead, behind the Hoover dam, is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Nevada. It is extremely beautiful, a glistening body of water set against the stark desert and mountains of Nevada with lots of fun recreational activities. I don’t ever hearing of anyone taking their vacation to visit some ugly windmills.
A widespread phenomenon here in the USA is the erection of three crosses on hillsides to represent the crucifixion of Christ and the two thieves. They are scorned and scoffed at by the intelligentsia. Traveling with one of this cohort many years ago, I heard him marvel at the beauty of the wind turbines. Of course, he called them windmills “Ah, yes,” I said “The crucifixes of the environmental movement.” Silence reigned.
Fraser Orr – this is why I am still very much a nuclear fission supporter.
I do not believe that nuclear fusion will be practical for quite some years – but let us hope I am wrong.
Deep Lurker and Steven Wilson – yes indeed.
Handling and disposing of nuclear waste is not a technical or scientific problem, it’s purely political. The French and Finns handle their waste just fine.
However, after the AI hype bubble bursts, we need to find ways to keep the “new nuclear” momentum going.
Fraser Orr, at 9:57pm says AI is here and it is powerful. Very true, but is it as “here” as claimed (not yet infesting every device) and as powerful (not yet trusted, independent, let alone creative)? Not in my limited experience with it.
The trillions being invested are hype–AI technologies will (have!) prove valuable, but not at the levels being hyped. I just don’t see the justification for blacking out cities so that AI has enough power!
So when that bubble burst (5 yrs? 2 yrs?), the push for new nuclear will decline. We should work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen because the world advances with cheap energy!
@GregWA
Handling and disposing of nuclear waste is not a technical or scientific problem, it’s purely political. The French and Finns handle their waste just fine.
I think that is true to some degree, but not totally. Nuclear waste is nasty stuff, and its biggest problem is it lasts a very long time. So, certainly we can find relatively safe places to put it for now, and the Yucca mountain thing is a scandal. But it is very much a “for now” solution. That stuff will be extremely toxic ten thousand years from now too, and god knows what we are leaving for some future unsuspecting people. Fusion is just so dramatically cleaner, in fact its by product, Helium, is actually a very useful material that is undergoing a massive worldwide shortage.
Fraser Orr, at 9:57pm says AI is here and it is powerful. Very true, but is it as “here” as claimed (not yet infesting every device) and as powerful (not yet trusted, independent, let alone creative)? Not in my limited experience with it.
But AI as a viable product has been around two years, it has barely got started. If you had a TRS-80 computer on your desk you might well say “hah! home computers are just a novelty, they can’t do anything useful.” To say that AI isn’t perfect seems quite disingenuous to me. What I do know is that people who actually know what they are talking about (which most likely includes neither you nor me) will tell you that it is will utterly alter the world, and I am confident they are right. In fact it already is dramatically affecting many industries.
A couple of things to consider. In some respects AI works somewhat similar to the human brain, in the sense of a probability based network of connections with feedback loops. But, like the human brain, it has some specific weaknesses that are not suited to this type of analysis. That is why the human brain has a number of highly specialized pieces of hardware which, although based on neural networks, are highly customized to the task. Our vision centers, or our speech and hearing centers are some good examples. OpenAI the owners of ChatGPT has recently announced the addition of a marketplace for plugins. Not based on the network but based on other technologies. Which is to say the shortcomings of current LLMs can be addressed by specialized add-ins for particular specific problems.
A second important development is what is going on at Tesla. They have been making remarkably capable humanoid robots which are really ripe to burst onto the market (there are other companies, but Musk, as usual, is a visionary in this space — a visionary with almost infinite resources). The day is coming, not too far in the future, that these robots will be ubiquitous. Current estimated price is $20,000, which is to say the price of an inexpensive car. Everyone will have one in their home, and every business will have an army of them. (Which is why TSLA is a great investment, and was an even better investment a year ago.)
With this additional capability — the ability to manipulate the physical world, coupled with AI, it will be a dramatically different future. To take one example, why would you have chefs when you can have a robot to do the same thing flawlessly, 24 hours a day, that is much cheaper than a chef? Why have people stock grocery shelves when robots can do it cheaper, better and without complaining.
And if you want to see the future of entertainment, go ahead and google Tilly Norwood.
I asked Grok this question:-
How justified is the claim that thorium fission nuclear reactors can easily utilise and thus eliminate the very long lived waste from the existing types of uranium fission reactors?
It’s summary answer was as follows:-
The claim is justified in highlighting thorium’s potential to address uranium waste through transmutation, supported by modelling, lab tests, and small-scale demos. It could play a role in sustainable nuclear energy, especially in countries like India and China pursuing it. However, “easily” ignores the decades of R&D needed for viability, and “eliminate” exaggerates outcomes—waste is reduced, not eradicated. Fact-checks of similar claims (e.g., by politicians) rate them as false or misleading when oversimplified. For now, thorium remains a promising but unproven technology, with uranium fast reactors or reprocessing offering more immediate waste solutions.
GregWA is correct about nuclear waste – the waste that is very dangerous does not last very long, and the waste that does last a very long time – is not particularly radioactive, and there are well established ways of dealing with it.
That is the nature of radioactive material – if it is very (very) radioactive it decays into another material that is not.
Depressing.
On entertainment – the idea may be to force us to watch certain shows and play certain games that have the “correct” political and cultural messaging.
There are already corporate “professional associations” in game design, and in advertising, to make sure that such things have the “correct” political and cultural content.
Digital, electronic, money would complete the process – what people spent this “money” on could be tracked and, eventually, controlled.
Then Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and so on, could produce as much agit-prop as they want – knowing that people would be FORCED to “consume” it.
@Paul Marks
That is the nature of radioactive material – if it is very (very) radioactive it decays into another material that is not.
There is a difference between how radioactive something is and how dangerous it is. Medium grade radioactive materials that leak into the ground water are extremely dangerous, because when they get in your body, even a small amount of fissile activity is concentrated and extraordinarily carcinogenic.
Your dismissal of the subject belies the billions of dollars poured into trying to make the material safe.
@Martin
Depressing.
I don’t find Tilly Norwood depressing at all. On the contrary, I think it is awesome. Imagine disempowering all these self important Hollywood stars. Imagine the democratizing effect where some small producer can create movies of similar production quality to Hollywood and use the new distribution systems to get them out there. Imagine if we had actually interesting, innovative movies rather than another retread of Marvel movie number 732, or Star Wars 85.
I think it is an example of the deeply disempowering consequences of the powerful and manipulators of society and putting it back in the hands of the creative and interesting innovators.
Tilly doesn’t require only red M&Ms in her dressing room, and she isn’t sending money to the DNC to get people like Kamala Harris elected and she isn’t wearing a dress to the Oscars saying “tax the rich” or “free Palestine”.
I’ll believe it when I see it. At present AI art is 100pc slop. I barely watch any new TV or films right now but even the movie industry and BBC avoid 100pc slop, although Netflix and Prime are 100% slop.
I don’t think technology can cure a cultural sickness.
Fraser Orr, I consider Autotune to be an art-wrecker. A.I. generated Tilly is . . . . ugh. Sure, A.I. can probably generate a more anatomically-correct Mona Lisa, but it won’t satisfy the same needs.
(Once again, I’m railing at the future. Get off my . . . )
@Martin
I’ll believe it when I see it. At present AI art is 100pc slop.
I could not disagree more. Some AI artwork is really beautiful. One of the denizens of these parts creates amazing artwork with Night Cafe and he has been kind enough to share it.
I don’t think technology can cure a cultural sickness.
I also could not disagree more. Technology, or at least this technology, puts power in the hands of individuals — power that only the big corporations had before. Culture is not one thing, it is many sub cultures all living with each other, intersecting, mixing and influencing each other. If all the power is with the big corporations you get an averaged, and I suppose a highly tilted culture. But if a million creators, all from different cultural groups and viewpoints, have that same power then we can expect to see an explosion of options.
@bobby b
Fraser Orr, I consider Autotune to be an art-wrecker.
It used to be that Opera singers’ voices filled opera houses, so do you think microphones and amplifiers are cheating too? What about all the various effects you can apply to your guitar sound, or the options on an electric piano? I’m a fan of a music group called Runrig, a Scottish band. On stage their bagpipe player uses a synthesized sound off an electronic chanter. I think it sounds great. Technology enhances art, or at least it can when used well.
Seems to me that music is for enjoying listening too, so whatever enhances that is good. I am baffled with the idea of applying a purity test to it. Is the goal to prove how good the musician is, or how enjoyable the final product is?
It’s really not.
Based on what happened with almost every new communications and media technology in the past, at best at first it may seem democratic, but it will end up being dominated by big corporations and governments. The internet felt a lot more liberatory 20-25 years ago. Social media felt that way 15 years ago. It would be absurd to think that about either today.
If AI was about democratisation and liberation, why are security obsessed/privacy hating oligarchs like Larry Ellison and powermongers like Tony Blair such enthusiastic backers?
@Martin
Social media felt that way 15 years ago. It would be absurd to think that about either today.
What? The internet and the web have completely transformed the landscape of information flow, to the point that the major TV network news and even the cable news are spiraling into irrelevancy.
This web site is called “samizdata” named after the practice under the old Soviet Union where people manually copied unapproved news by hand and typewriter and passed it around clandestinely, risking life and limb doing so. With the internet the problem, insofar as we have one, is TOO much information, hundreds of millions of unrestricted voices, including many verging on crazy, spewing out every point of view one can imagine. Everything from crazy conspiracy people to deeply serious podcasts and substacks that give every point of view on every subject imaginable.
Yes, but the internet is largely controlled by it’s own oligarchical corporations and governments. While it’s utility is unquestioned, it is increasingly obvious that the internet can be used to more intensively and efficiently scrutinise and govern the masses. The past decade and a half have shown how closely entwined big tech is with the security services, and COVID made it just completely blatant (without the net lockdowns would have had to have been cancelled within a few weeks max to prevent massive economic collapse, both showing its massive utility but also how it can be exploited to serve tyranny). China is a high tech dictatorship, probably able to spy and oppress it’s digitally connected populace much more effectively and sustainably now than just relying on the rather archaic Maoist brutality of yesteryear.
I suspect the algorithms are purposely set to push crazies and lunatics. It’s a great way of discrediting or containing dissent. Pushing people ranting about the Illuminati or Lizard elite conspiracies makes it easy for those who scrutinise the behaviour of political and financial elites to be discredited with the same brush as mad conspiracy theorists. I have experienced this first hand when trying to explain why central banks and fiat currency are bad. A lot of people just assume you’re going down some rabbit hole about the Illuminati or how Jews control the banks and therefore the world etc and don’t want to listen. Flooding the zone with shit is just furthering us towards a post persuasion society.
Fraser Orr – that is why you either use such material, for example in a fast breeder reactor. Or turn the material into a glass-like substance.
Martin – Elon Musk spent about 40 BILLION Dollars to break that monopoly the left were developing on the internet.
I AGREE with you that the left establishment were trying to gain control of the internet for indoctrination purposes – and to crush all dissent.
However, both Mr Musk as a private individual, and the Trump Administration politically, are making very great efforts to try and prevent that.
They may fail (yes indeed – they may fail) – but they deserve gratitude for their efforts.
Musk is one man. And a very mercurial one at that. 7 years ago he identified as a socialist. 5 years ago he supported Joe Biden. 3 years ago he was still opposed to Trump. Last year he became a huge Trump supporter. This year he effectively implied Trump to be a sex criminal. God only knows where he will be politically in a few years.
As for Trump, I understand what you are saying, but then I hear how influential someone like Larry Ellison is in the Trump administration currently and I’m very sceptical. Ellison is an authoritarian technocrat (pushing ID cards for decades for example) and a major funder of the Tony Blair Institute so if there is any truth Ellison is currently acting as a ‘shadow president,’ that’s a massive red flag.
Martin – I hear you Sir, and you have given me a lot to think about.
@Martin
Musk is one man. And a very mercurial one at that.
My experience is that Musk has had pretty consistent views on government for a long time which I would describe as lukewarm libertarian. What has changed is who he aligns with. And this is what business guys do — politics is a hurdle to success so you have to dance around trying to get around the trouble they cause. And libertarians, especially lukewarm ones, do not fit well into the binary “left” and “right” system we have in the USA. After all, Trump was a New York democrat for the same reason. Which isn’t to say that Musk doesn’t say things that make my jaw drop. He really does, and he is certainly a bit too free with his pedo accusations.
if there is any truth Ellison is currently acting as a ‘shadow president,’ that’s a massive red flag.
The notion that Ellison is a shadow president is just silly: anyone who has watched Trump knows that he has a shadow nothing. And I’m afraid an unnamed “Trump Advisor” saying so doesn’t add one iota of credibility to the claim. I’m no fan of Ellison, TBH as a computer guy I am baffled by their success. Why anyone would buy the Oracle database instead of Microsoft’s offering or one of the free alternatives, when Oracle is both significantly inferior and vastly more expensive, is something I find baffling. One can only believe that, much as his appearance seems to suggest, he is an excellent snake oil salesman.