3 ms·

Elon Musk's SpaceX Allows Investment from China

62 points by danso 2y ago

arunabha 2y ago
If this report is true, then it raises extremely serious questions of conflict of interest and national security. It's possible to argue that Elon as the special advisor to the president needs the unfettered access to all of the US govt(including national security) that he currently has. It is impossible to argue that doing so is not a blatant conflict of interest and a security risk given that a large part of this net worth depends on SpaceX stock's performance. To be clear, there is an established process for people with substantial assets and potential conflicts of interest to participate in senior roles in the govt. They have to place their assets in a trust which they do not control(preferably a blind trust). Doing so reduces, but does not eliminate the conflict of interest. It's completely out of the playbook to for the CEO of a company that receives substantial govt contracts to be in a position to strongly influence who receives those contracts. It's on another planet all together for the same person to be privy to the highest levels of national security discussions while his company receives substantial investment from the primary strategic competitor of the United States(as defined by the president himself) It just might be possible that everything is hunky dory and Elon's personal ethics are strong enough, however in these cases, even the appearance of corruption is enough.
arunabha 2y ago
@dang this post is being ganged up on and flagged like previous posts critical of Elon. There is no evidence that the article or the posting goes against HN guidelines.
- dang 2y ago
  It's not being ganged up on or flagged. It did run into a few software penalties. Mostly that's because this general topic (His You-Know-Whoness) is the most repetitive/indignant one that HN has experienced in recent months. We're trying to avoid that, not because of the specific topic, but because those qualities (repetition and indignation) are the opposite of what the site is for, and destroy what it is for. It's not as if HN has been lacking for major, massive threads about it, so I'm disinclined to switch the software off on this one.
  - LightBug1 2y ago
    Cool story, bro About: YC is hosting our first-ever AI startup school in San Francisco on June 16 and 17th. AI Startup School will gather 2000 of the top CS undergrads, masters, and PhD candidates in AI to hear from speakers including Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng and many more — the world’s top AI experts and founders.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - danso 2y ago
      At the user-level I find the auto-downranking to be a bit too aggressive and annoying, but I admit I don’t have the data to see how much HN’s discourse would be impacted if the leash on Elon posts were relaxed. That said I also think it’s reasonable to be suspicious, given the YC CEO’s strong public support of Musk [0]. OTOH, 3 of the top 5 most upvoted stories about Garry Tan on HN are negative, so… [0] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1873280074805572024?s=46 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1873280074805572024?s=46
      - LightBug1 2y ago
        Didn't realise how up their arses he was ... thanks.
  - thread_id 2y ago
    why can't I upvote the story? Also this posting must be burried 100 pages down. It's non-existant. So if I understand the discourse, anything critical of (His You-Know-Whoness) get's automatically down ranked and flagged?
    - dang 2y ago
      You can and did upvote this submission. > this posting -> anything This is the error in your logic. You can't draw any general conclusion from one post. In fact there have been zillions of major threads critical about Musk and if you take a little time to use HN Search you'll find them. If you don't want to do that, there are dozens listed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227619. I call this the "nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded" theory of HN. How can the very most covered topic still feel like it's being completely suppressed? Kind of weird no?
rurban 2y ago
That's the problem with outsourcing to defense companies. They'll eventually end up owned by your competitors. Just like the US backed most critical German companies in the 30s to be able to get rid of the French in the Rheinland and attack Russia. They had a majority in IG Farben eg. and gave them the artificial Diesel patents. Which brought the Nazis to power and then they turned around and attacked the US. I'm not sure how much of their critical companies, like for their airplanes, rockets, intelligence (Booz Allen Hamilton) which are all publicly traded are in fact controlled by Saudi-Qatari or Chinese investors now. Is there some overview?

62 points by danso 2y ago

If this report is true, then it raises extremely serious questions of conflict of interest and national security. It's possible to argue that Elon as the special advisor to the president needs the unfettered access to all of the US govt(including national security) that he currently has. It is impossible to argue that doing so is not a blatant conflict of interest and a security risk given that a large part of this net worth depends on SpaceX stock's performance. To be clear, there is an established process for people with substantial assets and potential conflicts of interest to participate in senior roles in the govt. They have to place their assets in a trust which they do not control(preferably a blind trust). Doing so reduces, but does not eliminate the conflict of interest. It's completely out of the playbook to for the CEO of a company that receives substantial govt contracts to be in a position to strongly influence who receives those contracts. It's on another planet all together for the same person to be privy to the highest levels of national security discussions while his company receives substantial investment from the primary strategic competitor of the United States(as defined by the president himself) It just might be possible that everything is hunky dory and Elon's personal ethics are strong enough, however in these cases, even the appearance of corruption is enough.

arunabha 2y ago

@dang this post is being ganged up on and flagged like previous posts critical of Elon. There is no evidence that the article or the posting goes against HN guidelines.

dang 2y ago
It's not being ganged up on or flagged. It did run into a few software penalties. Mostly that's because this general topic (His You-Know-Whoness) is the most repetitive/indignant one that HN has experienced in recent months. We're trying to avoid that, not because of the specific topic, but because those qualities (repetition and indignation) are the opposite of what the site is for, and destroy what it is for. It's not as if HN has been lacking for major, massive threads about it, so I'm disinclined to switch the software off on this one.
- LightBug1 2y ago
  Cool story, bro About: YC is hosting our first-ever AI startup school in San Francisco on June 16 and 17th. AI Startup School will gather 2000 of the top CS undergrads, masters, and PhD candidates in AI to hear from speakers including Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng and many more — the world’s top AI experts and founders.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - danso 2y ago
    At the user-level I find the auto-downranking to be a bit too aggressive and annoying, but I admit I don’t have the data to see how much HN’s discourse would be impacted if the leash on Elon posts were relaxed. That said I also think it’s reasonable to be suspicious, given the YC CEO’s strong public support of Musk [0]. OTOH, 3 of the top 5 most upvoted stories about Garry Tan on HN are negative, so… [0] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1873280074805572024?s=46 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1873280074805572024?s=46
    - LightBug1 2y ago
      Didn't realise how up their arses he was ... thanks.
- thread_id 2y ago
  why can't I upvote the story? Also this posting must be burried 100 pages down. It's non-existant. So if I understand the discourse, anything critical of (His You-Know-Whoness) get's automatically down ranked and flagged?
  - dang 2y ago
    You can and did upvote this submission. > this posting -> anything This is the error in your logic. You can't draw any general conclusion from one post. In fact there have been zillions of major threads critical about Musk and if you take a little time to use HN Search you'll find them. If you don't want to do that, there are dozens listed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227619. I call this the "nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded" theory of HN. How can the very most covered topic still feel like it's being completely suppressed? Kind of weird no?

rurban 2y ago

That's the problem with outsourcing to defense companies. They'll eventually end up owned by your competitors. Just like the US backed most critical German companies in the 30s to be able to get rid of the French in the Rheinland and attack Russia. They had a majority in IG Farben eg. and gave them the artificial Diesel patents. Which brought the Nazis to power and then they turned around and attacked the US. I'm not sure how much of their critical companies, like for their airplanes, rockets, intelligence (Booz Allen Hamilton) which are all publicly traded are in fact controlled by Saudi-Qatari or Chinese investors now. Is there some overview?