Tech tycoon Elon Musk joined a call between US President-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the day after the presidential election, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

  • hyperreal@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Musk’s whole “slash government spending” schtick is such a farce. Tesla wouldn’t have domestic manufacturing facilities without a DOE loan. SpaceX survives off of government contracts.

    • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Nah, he’ll use the location services from the dish to pinpoint the Ukrainian troop locations. If they’re smart they’ll start smashing them immediately.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      1 day ago

      He’s going to be on the cabinet while getting billions in government contracts. The richest man in the world just got a job where he gets to to shovel more government money to himself. And that’s what Trump calls ‘draining the swamp’ and ‘sticking it to the elites’.

      And somehow, instead of democrats calling that out, they decided to find their own elites to trot out.

      • Magister@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Worst of it, government money is your tax dollar… You will pay more and more taxes to funnel the money to Trump’s friends. Trump is the swamp thing!

        • jonne@infosec.pub
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          1 day ago

          They’ll finance it with debt, sale of assets and cutting of services. Which is probably even worse

      • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        It wasn’t enabled in Crimea in the first place. The author misspoke/lied about in the book and has later admitted it.

        U.S. sanctions to Russia forbid the use of Starlink. This includes crimea and the occupied territories. That’s why it wasn’t enabled.

        To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.

        And before someone points out the ‘cause major war’ things, those are Walters words, not Elon’s. Musk said “It would make SpaceX explicitly complicit in a marjor act of war and conflict escalation” He later also added that had he been contacted by the US officials and asked to enable it he would, but they didn’t.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I wonder if this will make it into the Senate Confirmation Hearings when Trump makes him Secretary of Making Things Worse Before They Get Better. (Or maybe they are smart enough to not give him a job that requires Congressional approval…)

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I think a lot of Americans don’t understand that the USA hedgemony isn’t a divine right, it was a deliberate construction with tacit agreement of convenience from the western world.

      Much like an economy, belief makes it so.

      Much like the UK’s arrogance has driven them into geopolitical obscurity, so will the USA’s.

      In 15 years, Americans are going to wake up and realize that their voices are irrelevant in the world. I don’t know how y’all are going to handle it.

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I deeply, desperately hope you’re right. In the best case, the military (including the nuclear arsenal) gets as hollowed out as russias before that realization comes.

      • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The USA became dominant by letting the world fight itself to ruins, then entering into the war late and declaring victory. TWICE.

        Being the only mostly undestroyed nation after a world war is immensely profitable.

      • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        I’m going to be bummed, but it’ll be deserved. Maybe future generations will stop being entitled assholes. Idk. Don’t want to live in a disintegrating country. Really don’t want my kids to. But I guess we don’t always get to pick.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Maybe future generations will stop being entitled assholes.

          Look what’s happening with Gen Z right now. They showed a lot of promise, then showed up to vote and turns out they have just as many nazis as the rest of us. We’re going ride this death spiral all the way to extinction.