It’s The Data, Stupid
What is Elon After?
On a recent episode of The Bulwark’s “Focus Group” with Sarah Longwell, guest Kara Swisher stated the obvious. What is Elmo after? The DATA!
“What Elon is after, from what I can guess, if I had to guess, is... He is behind. One of the big debates going on right now in AI is we're running out of data. All the LLMs have sucked in all the data. Now they need more to have an advantage. And so that means that all the LLMs have become a commodity because they're all parsing the same information, right? That they've scraped everything they can. Government is the biggest trove of information on the planet. U.S. government is at this point, would be my guess, or China would be…. So you can create an enormous database of everybody in a way that you could never have, and then combine it with public databases and commercial databases, it becomes a very powerful weapon.” –Kara Swisher
The episode itself is painful to listen to. They interview Biden-to-T***p voters and the level of sheer, raw stupidity oozes through the screen, creating a vomit-inducing level of WTAF.
In author Kai-Fu-Lee’s 2019 book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order he stated that “Data is the new oil. And China is the new Saudi Arabia.” Lee may have been out over his skis at the time regarding China, but he isn’t wrong today. As a communist (hybrid) country, China’s surveillance stands above the world. Cameras search constantly using facial recognition ala Minority Report. China is, for all intents and purposes, a cashless society where all transactions are done via a mobile device and 100% trackable. Americans are surrendering more and more data every day and data brokers are not only selling it to commercial marketers, they sell it to the government.
“As Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin argue in their new book Surveillance State, out last month, the Chinese government has managed to build a new social contract with its citizens: they give up their data in exchange for more precise governance that, ideally, makes their lives safer and easier (even if it doesn’t always work out so simply in reality).” –MIT Technology Review
Of course, Musk wants the data. Starlink is nearly 7,000 satellites collecting data on humans with plans to expand to nearly 35,000. With that kind of power, Musk can extort the planet at will. He is free to pit nations against each other, hold countries for ransom and have his way with anyone who dares to stand up to him.
Having his little INCEL Nerd Reich programmers steal all the data makes sense. What is difficult to ascertain is why they opened the data up to public IPs on AWS servers using their AI software. Could Musk have previously made agreements with Russia or China to infiltrate the U.S. government and expose the country’s data to foreign actors? Deliberately?
The dog and pony show with the chainsaw at CPAC and the firehose of lies he spews in Xhitter are distractions from his true objective…to OWN THE DATA.
“Why do you rob government agencies? Because that's where the data is.” –Kara Swisher
The fact that it is all so blatantly out in the open is terrifying. Think of any of the world’s top novelists creating a character so evil and shady…combine them all together in a single husk of one ketamine-fueled, emotionally crippled human and you have Elmo Musk. David Ignatius, Adam Hall, Ian Fleming, Joseph Kanon and John le Carré united could not create an eviler character.
He who holds the data holds the world in their hands.
“The former director of both the CIA and the NSA, Michael Hayden, put it even more bluntly in 2014: “We kill people based on metadata.”” ― Byron Tau, Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State
China already knows this, and they have convinced the Chinese public that their security and convenience are worth the trade of surrendering all of their personal information to the Chinese government.
China has been hoovering up American data as well via apps like TikTok, and China’s data gathering is omnidirectional…they do not share data, only consume it. There are no free trans-border data flows.
“The government uses advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to monitor, track and asses via a social credit system the behavior of citizens. The internet and unregulated flow of data has empowered citizens around the world, giving them freedom of speech and access to information, which, in the eyes of the government, endanger the political and social stability of the country.” -- How China Governs Data
Musk is either in bed with the Chinese to extract the U.S. government data, or he wants to be the sole owner of the world’s largest repository of data. He claims to have created a superior AI product (xAI aka Grok3), but early adopters say it is substandard at best. What else would you expect from a Nazi saluting ketamine junkie who created a vehicle that comedian John Oliver called "every child's first attempt at drawing a car?”
However, as Swisher stated, the LLM’s (large language models) have already gobbled up basically everything humans have produced. To feed the AI machine you need DATA. Musk needs data like he needs therapy…meaning he needs it badly.
“The focus on this distant, idealized future at the expense of present-day ethical considerations also connects back to the troubling history of eugenics. The transhumanist goal of creating the optimal human that surpasses biological limitations through technological enhancement echoes the motivations of past eugenics movements.” -- The dark side of techno-utopian dreams: Ethical and practical pitfalls
To reach the posthuman society that the TESCREALists dream of, they need data. Musk knows this and it appears that he wants, in LOTR fashion, to be the data king…to have “One AI to Rule Them All.”
This is what Wall Street has been jizzing over for the past two years. Truly massive, enormous CAPEX (capital expenditure) in an effort to become the dominant AI. Billions of dollars have flooded into the stock market that sent the FAANG, the Nasdaq and the Mag7 (Magnificent Seven) to the moon. The problem? The data has been sucked up and there is yet to be any ROI (return on investment).
With valuations stretched to the limit and profits yet unattainable, the AI players are scrambling. China’s release of DeepSeek gave the U.S. markets a scare and, since the announcement, U.S. tech stocks have gone sideways while China’s “Terrific Ten” tech stocks have rocketed higher.
“China's Terrific Ten, a group of leading tech companies, have been outperforming the Mag 7, a collection of prominent U.S. tech giants, in recent months. This article explores the factors driving this momentum and examines whether it can be sustained in the long term.” --AInvest
You tell me, is Musk in bed with China for the data? Or is Musk attempting to be his own country of Muskovia where he is the sole owner of the world’s largest database? If you had to come up with a Bond villain name for Musk, what would it be? I go with “Blackheart.”
