Personal Finance

I Don't Agree with Elon Musk on Everything, But He's Spot On When It Comes to This

John Seetoo

Published: February 12, 2025 12:17 pm

Entrepreneur. Space Exploration Maven. Technology Visionary. First Amendment Defender. The Richest Man On Earth. Saturday Night Live guest host.  Head of DOGE and Scourge of Bureaucrats. These are just a few of the descriptions attributed to Elon Musk. 

A remarkable man by any measure, Elon Musk’s journey from a bullied nerd in South Africa who programmed his first commercial video game (Blastar) at age 10, to a technology icon, multi billionaire, and currently, one of the most polarizing figures in the US after President Donald Trump is a fascinating story. 

Musk is best known as the CEO of Tesla Inc.  (NASDAQ: TSLA), the leading EV brand. However, there are other areas where Musk’s pioneering efforts have been underreported, and these endeavors fundamentally disrupt the current status quo, and are in the process of creating new paradigms for space exploration, AI, free speech, and federal government accountability.  Criticisms targeted at Elon Musk regarding his management style have historically been justified. He has often been guilty of “overpromising and under delivering”, especially in terms of deadlines for unveiling new products. Among the more glaring ones were:

• Tesla 3: (predicted 500,000 units by 2018 – only a fraction built going into 2019)
• The Boring Company: Musk’s infrastructure company for easing traffic in Las Vegas and Los Angeles has been plagued with delays and routinely missed deadlines.  
• Neuralink: Musk’s computer chip brain implant project has missed previous FDA deadlines for human trials.

Additionally, his tongue-in-cheek support for meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin (originally created as a joke), his casual recreational drug use, and his cavalier attitude towards SEC news disclosures have been questionable, if not irresponsible – especially given the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been committed to Musk associated platforms 

Nevertheless, Elon Musk has been spot on in the following areas, which have either been underreported or misreported by the mainstream media. They have the power to trigger fundamental changes to each platform’s respective industry, are disruptive in nature, and may very well reshape them into the new standards for the future. 

SpaceX

While Mars has fascinated astronomers and scientists for centuries, the notion of actually travelling to Mars has been contained to the realm of science fiction, from Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter novels to the Total Recall movies.  For Elon Musk, SpaceX and its goal to not only travel to Mars, but to colonize it fuses science fiction with reality. No other private company to date has been able to come close to actual human space exploration, let alone travel to another planet.

Musk’s fixation on Mars is rooted in a belief that humanity, as a species, must become multiplanetary to ensure its long-term survival. Existential risks like pandemics, rogue AI, and earthquakes all threaten mankind, and off planet colonization is Musk’s backup plan for humanity. Musk has tackled the multitude of space travel issues adeptly, with SpaceX becoming a reality after its Falcon 1 successfully launched and reached orbit in 2008. 

The credibility of SpaceX and Musk’s vision for its viability has been burnished by NASA’s outreach to SpaceX to rescue their space stranded Crew-8 astronauts in October, 2024, when their Boeing Starliner malfunctioned.  

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded in space at the International Space Station, are scheduled for a SpaceX rescue in March 2025. 

Starlink

One of the most ubiquitous problems faced by people around the globe is intermittent broadband service. Be it weak signals, inconsistent service, or no signal at all, every smartphone or wifi device user has experienced this at some point. 

While Tesla, Dogecoin and DOGE are the Musk projects most often reported in the mainstream media, his Starlink has received little mass attention, despite its enormous potential.

With over 7,000 out of a projected 34,000 satellites in the Starlink Constellation, Elon Musk has already created one of the most reliable broadband networks in existence, and its continued expansion will only strengthen its capabilities and set the new standard for the industry. Musk’s offering free Starlink service for the victims of Hurricane Helene has unarguably saved countless lives, and it has the power to become Musk’s biggest profit center project. It’s communications strength and reliability will also be key to the future success of SpaceX’s interplanetary voyages.

Neuralink and Optimus

Warner Brothers’ Justice League movie introduced a technology-based superhero character to join its popular Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman: a character called Cyborg. A high school football star, Victor Stone is injured in an explosion that destroys his legs, arms, and part of his head. His father, a cybernetics engineer, saves Victor by replacing his missing limbs and other body parts with sophisticated augmentations powered by thought.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, founded in 2016, was created to bridge the gap between human and artificial intelligence. Based on the premise of using cybernetic brain implants so that humans can mentally communicate with technology, its mission is to address medical challenges in treating neurological disorders and offering hope to paraplegics whose paralysis prevents them from doing simple tasks. 

Neuralink made its first breakthrough in 2024. Noland Arbaugh, paralyzed from the neck down, took the risk of permanent brain damage for the chance to become the first human recipient of the Neuralink Brain Computer Interface (BCI). After months of training to visualize commands in a way for the BCI to interpret them for IoT use, Arbaugh can now control his electric wheelchair and use a computer for practically every function currently conducted: emails, social media, web surfing, shopping, games, etc.

Musk envisions a future in which people born blind can use a BCI to see, where memories can literally be recorded, and a litany of other possibilities previously only imagined in the world of science-fiction.

On the other hand, Optimus, also known as the Tesla Bot, is a literal robot. Designed to execute tasks that are difficult or unpleasant for humans, Optimus (named after the robot from The Transformers toys and movies) shares some of the AI code also being used in Tesla’s driverless EV taxi prototypes. In the future, Optimus could ostensibly be controlled by a human with a BCI, creating a host of applications, from home health care to bomb disarmament and other situations. 

X

As a staunch defender of Free Speech and the First Amendment, Elon Musk’s disgust over the blatant censorship of Donald Trump and other conservative voices prompted him to overpay for social media platform Twitter. Renaming it as X, it soon became a beacon of truth against mainstream media propaganda. X users’ content continues to challenge the mainstream media narrative and force it to be accountable to the facts or face ridicule in the public realm of ideas when it cannot stand up to scrutiny. X may arguably be Musk’s most important  contribution to the future of a free society.  History will likely remember this achievement in a stronger perspective as the alternative’s threat becomes clearer in successive decades.

DOGE

Contrary to news reports, the highly publicized Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was, in fact, created by President Barack Obama as the U.S. Digital Service. It was repurposed and renamed into the Department of Government Efficiency by President Trump.  

Musk’s lead role of DOGE allows him to put his tech knowledge to use in auditing the various departments of the Federal Government for corruption, theft, misappropriations, bribery, waste, kickbacks, and a litany of other criminal activities. The nearly $100 billion of red flag transactions his team has identified in only a few weeks only goes to prove how corrupt Washington D.C is, and the hue and cry from politicians and bureaucrats appears to be in direct proportion to how deep their corruption goes. 

DOGE may very well be the spearhead of the second American Revolution and a return to Liberty and Freedom from the totalitarian tyranny that has plagued other nations over the past century. 

Elon Musk’s genius and his contributions to helping humanity through technology may continue to harbor critics and rivals, but he has certainly made a strong case for the title of “Technology’s Renaissance Man.” By creating the means for science fiction to become science fact, he is fundamentally establishing new paradigms for generations to come