Let me take you back to my meeting with Elon Musk in 2013. We talked in front of a capacity crowd of admirers at the Dublin Web Summit. As you will see from this video, I was one of the admirers. Keep in mind, this is when Musk was almost universally lauded as a force for good in the world. He was not yet focused on a cosmos he wanted to conquer:
Now, let’s leap forward to February 2024 when a very different Elon Musk strides on to the stage at the CPAC conference in Washington wielding a new weapon in his assault on government bureaucracy.
It’s worth watching Musk’s full interview at the CPAC gathering, which is full of the bluster and bravado of the early days of the second Trump Presidency. The admiration of the 2013 Web Summit is now distilled and concentrated into a dark syrup of adulation. This is Musk as he becomes Meme. In so many ways, his journey from the Web Summit in 2013 to this moment in 2024 is the story of the unravelling of the internet.