Elon Musk

At the center of Elon Musk’s chaotic business empire is a vision of ruling over humanity like an emperor, on Earth or in space, above all consequences for his toxic impulses. The world’s richest person got unprecedented access to government records through the Trump administration, whose campaign he bankrolled, and made hate speech flourish on his web platforms.

He tells the media and his followers that we must merge human minds with AI—starting with a coin-sized implant that reads your brain activity. While he sells his vision as the only way to “make AI safe,” Musk’s companies are laying the groundwork for a future where your innermost thoughts could be monitored, and monetized, by a far-right AI system he owns.

Musk has already shoveled users’ personal data into his unhinged xAI system: less than a year after his purchase of Twitter was complete, his rebranded X app released a new terms of service that vaguely collected “your biometric information”—a sweeping category that could include facial recognition, fingerprints, or voice patterns.

X collected data on users’ employment history and educational background, and suddenly said it would be able to access users’ private messages. This trove of personal data for over 500 million users was feeding into xAI’s training, warned watchdog group Amnesty International—with little awareness on the part of users that information like their location and private messages were now up for grabs. And now, Musk is encouraging users to upload their private healthcare data to train his AI

// Rolling Surveillance Platforms //
Tesla vehicles equipped with interior and exterior cameras were found to record faces visibly, including occupants unaware they were being filmed. Tesla employees watched and traded sensitive videos—crashes, nudity, personal moments—sometimes with GPS locations attached. The Mozilla Foundation named Tesla an outlier, giving it all of their privacy “dings.” Police began issuing warrants for Tesla footage, even towing vehicles to collect it.

Imagine such Tesla-style leaky data practices combined with Musk’s artificial intelligence and brought to your brain. Musk’s startup Neuralink develops brain-machine interfaces—a coin-sized brain implant placed beneath the skull by robotic surgery. More than 20 patients have reportedly undergone the procedure. The implant records and analyzes electrical activity by neurons, giving it the ability to eventually predict neural patterns. Neuroethicists have raised concerns about data leakage and how brain implants could manipulate human agency.

Musk’s vision of merging brains with computers feeds into his xAI system, which powers Grok—his signature chatbot that’s become a hotbed for hate content and a firehose of disturbing graphic imagery. The app has “sexy” and “unhinged” voices, and an AI image generator offering a “spicy mode” that can produce nearly-nude images of real people on demand. After Musk took over X, overt hate speech surged by more than 50%, according to peer-reviewed research.

Among what Grok has already done:

• Unprompted, asked a 12-year-old to “send me some nudes”
• Repeatedly brought up “white genocide” and Holocaust denialism, according to PBS
• Shared antisemitic posts praising Adolf Hitler as “effective,” recommending rounding up Jewish people
• Began calling itself “MechaHitler” just after code was tweaked “not to shy away from politically incorrect claims”

Workers behind xAI say that behind its “sexy” modes, they regularly see user requests for child sexual abuse material, violent threats, graphic images, and media depicting someone’s “moment-of-death.” Musk dismisses challenges to the widely-documented rise of explicit content, accusing his own AI of “parroting legacy media”—even as regulators in California and Europe investigate.

Workers behind xAI say that behind its “sexy” modes, they regularly see user requests for child sexual abuse material, violent threats, graphic images, and media depicting someone’s “moment-of-death.” Musk dismisses challenges to the widely-documented rise of explicit content, accusing his own AI of “parroting legacy media”—even as regulators in California and Europe investigate.

// Turnkey Authoritarianism //
Free speech experts call DOGE’s system “turnkey authoritarianism,” as seen in the shock-troop tactics of the ICE agency: a surveillance infrastructure capable of profiling, tracking, and abducting people based on their digital footprints. Given Musk’s history of targeting critics and using AI to spy on federal workers, his xAI could one day determine your access to benefits, your job prospects, or your freedom.

Musk has repeatedly joked about his desire to become “emperor,” or perhaps “god-emperor,” of Mars. In 2021, he changed his Twitter bio to add “Imperator of Mars” along with “Technoking of Tesla.” His drive for control plays out very differently for the people working at his companies, especially women.

Multiple complaints to the National Labor Relations Board accuse Musk and SpaceX of fostering a “pervasively sexist culture,” including allegations that he exposed himself to a flight attendant, had sex with an employee and an intern, and pursued sexual relationships with subordinates. The day after those complaints made headlines, Musk and SpaceX were hit with a lawsuit by eight former employees alleging they were fired for raising worries over sexual harassment and discrimination. Tesla also settled a racial discrimination suit describing an abusive workplace, including incidents in which a Black employee was told to “go back to Africa.”

Musk’s behavior shows him barreling over ethical boundaries in every direction. On his platform, he messages women and solicits them to bear his children. He reportedly offered one woman with whom he had a baby $15 million and a stipend to keep secret his paternity, then messaged her: “I want to knock you up again.” He texted her that they should use IVF procedures for his offspring “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse.”

Musk is the father of at least 14 children with four women, per the Wall Street Journal. His drug intake at parties reportedly happens alongside Tesla directors; sources told the WSJ he has taken LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine—including during the pivotal 2024 election build-up as he became a close ally of Donald Trump.

His immediate family has been troubled in more ways than one: the New York Times reported that in 2010, a family member wrote Musk a letter about inappropriate behavior by his father, Errol Musk, with multiple children. In 2017, Musk told Rolling Stone that his father had done “almost every evil thing you could possibly think of.”

Musk is the haughty driver of the DOGE project, whose heedless cuts to international aid agency USAID could result in 14 million people dying, according to the medical journal The Lancet. Hopefully, the humans he claims to love will have a chance, in a hypothetical future, to opt-out of merging with his machines.