Elon Musk’s alleged drug use puts 13,000 jobs at risk, report suggests::Elon Musk’s possible use of illegal drugs is causing concern for bosses within his companies, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Elon Musk’s alleged drug use puts 13,000 jobs at risk, report suggests::Elon Musk’s possible use of illegal drugs is causing concern for bosses within his companies, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Because he has something called “Security Clearance” which is granted to him by the US government, with explicit rules that mean illegal/illicit drug use is one of the top ways to lose your security clearance or never get it to begin with.
It’s rather that this is a National Security issue since we’re dealing with a foreign-born billionaire who seems to not exactly have a bunch of allegiance to the US.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-pledges-that-tesla-will-uphold-core-socialist-values-in-china
So here is Musk making big deals with a country many consider to be an “enemy” of the US (I don’t, personally), and claiming to uphold values that many Americans would define as “not American values.”
The point is this is deeply a national security issue, and people who have lost their security clearance for less are pretty up-in-arms about how a billionaire gets different rules because his companies are important to the government.
Why do all these people always defend him under the guise of “Free Market?” Tesla and SpaceX are the recipients of some of the biggest US government subsidies. SpaceX basically wouldn’t exist without the investment of the US government. But MuH fReE mArKeTs!
Finally, the jobs are at risk because if they have to remove his clearance, but are unable to oust him from the companies, they may just stop doing business with Musk companies at all, and without those government contracts: 13,000 jobs would be lost at SpaceX. If you look up how many employees SpaceX has, it has about 13,000. In other words, SpaceX would go out of business without the government propping it up.
I mean this is the big thing that baffles me: Elon has ended up privately owning some of the most important public investments in the US. All of the tech originated in academia and it’s mostly paid for by the tax payer. Americans are fucking wild for letting that happen and clapping about it.
It goes farther than that.
spacex (and the other “private” space companies) actively poach talent from NASA, JPL, and so forth.
And while spacex is not the only company that were paid by the US government to steal resources and lessen capabilities: It is always worth remembering that musk “invested” because he was pissy that russia wouldn’t sell him an ICBM.
The US would forcefully nationalize SpaceX before letting it go out of business because it’s such a huge national security advantage.
I have my dounts about the current government nationalizing anything these days. They just let US Steel get sold to Nippon Steel, which is equally valuable ti national security.