Elon Musk built his wealth from taxpayer-funded research -- now he's trying to destroy future science

Elon Musk built his wealth from taxpayer-funded research — now he's trying to destroy future science

The billionaire should be writing a thank you note to Al Gore, not wrecking burgeoning developments

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 11, 2025 6:00AM (EST)
UPDATED FEBRUARY 11, 2025 1:59PM (EST)

https://www.salon.com/2025/02/11/elon-musk-built-his-wealth-from-taxpayer-funded-research--now-hes-trying-to-destroy-future-science/

"SNIP............

Donald Trump, his shadow president Elon Musk, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are waging a highly illegal rampage through the federal budget. Among the first wave of intended victims are thousands of scientists across the country who depend on federal grants and loans to fuel their research. The administration is trying to unilaterally slash billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). To defend this, Musk claims it's a "ripoff" when grant funding goes to pay for salaries, lab space and equipment, even though no one can conduct scientific research without these baseline necessities.

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Despite the media hype painting Musk as a genius and inventor, he largely built his financial empire on other people's research. At every turn, he's relied heavily on technologies developed because of the very federal largess he now deems a "ripoff." He'll never admit it, but Musk owes former Vice President Al Gore a giant thank you. Gore did not claim, as conservatives pretend he did, to "invent" the internet. But Gore was telling the truth when he said, "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." He spent the better part of two decades promoting the internet, backing legislation to fund its development, and organizing research agencies to make it happen. As early pioneers in the internet's development, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, explained in 2000, "Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development" and "no other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."

Musk got rich because of all this work. In the 90s, he built a website called Zip2 that functioned as an online Yellow Pages. He sold it to Compaq in 1999, netting $22 million. He made another huge chunk of money as the CEO of PayPal, which would also not exist but for the decades of government-funded development of the internet. Musk deserves credit for developing coding skills at a time when the internet was still new, of course. But he also just got really lucky in being a young man right when decades of taxpayer-funded research into the internet was finally paying off.

Department of Energy into developing batteries and other electric car technology, there would be no Tesla. Car companies were often reluctant to fund that research because it would take decades to pay off. Only the government, which works for the people and not for profits, has a motive to put money into scientific inquiry on that time scale. SpaceX scientists have done impressive work, even if they probably won't get us to Mars, despite Musk's ignorant bleatings. Still, as admirable as the people who work for Musk may be, they wouldn't be able to do any of this without NASA and the federal government's astronomical 20th-century investment in the space race. It is the same story with Starlink, which exists because of satellite technology initially developed by both the American and Soviet governments. At every turn, Musk makes money only because he grabs onto technologies that were invented at taxpayer expense.

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Applegrove:

It is trying to make it harder for the next generation to do well and innovate. They are his competition and he wants them ground into the ground.