Tesla workers described the CEO as someone who encouraged pro-slavery racism in the workplace.
…frequent use of racial slurs and references to the manufacturing site as a plantation or slave ship.
Now that same mindset has shifted to X Twitter, where Elon Musk promotes slavery and generates ad revenue from pro-slavery accounts.
That was several months ago, inviting X Twitter accounts to start promoting slavery. And so indeed, we now see monetization schemes and ad placements on pro-slavery comments such as these.
Pro-slavery hate tweet with 2.9 million views generates ad revenue for Musk… Will Stancil pointed out that Twitter has become “the largest, longest, most sustained hate rally in human history.”
This not some kind of accident. It is a CEO being intentionally, wickedly wrong about slavery for purposes of profiting on it, facilitating and promoting hate crimes.
It reminds me of the kind of willful moral bankruptcy that political scientists pin on a big fan of Confederate General Lee, the infamously anti-democracy Lord Acton.
[Acton’s] insights led him to analyses of the U.S. Civil War that were not merely wrong, but carefully, thoughtfully, wickedly wrong. He identified the cause of the Confederacy as the cause of freedom, even knowing slavery to be evil; and he thought this with firm commitment, for many years.
Acton is a toxic name, someone who thought slavery wasn’t the issue in Civil War, even though it was absolutely and most definitely the issue. Acton corresponded with Lee about Americans being held hostage, tortured and murdered, as some bizarre vision of “freedom”.
Now guess who has been putting up wickedly wrong Acton banners and quotes at the office.
Contemporary struggles against misogyny in Britain are not isolated occurrences but rather manifestations of historical inequities deeply entrenched within the fabric of society. So when the Chief of Police asks the British public to undertake direct interventions to reform itself, will it work?
Speaking to radio station LBC, [chief of British Transport Police] Ms D’Orsi described misogynistic behaviour as “a societal challenge” and urged people to “speak up about violence against women and girls”.
More than one-third of all British women who travel by railway are likely to be assaulted during their commute, suggest figures released in November by BTP, which polices the railway network.
The rate of abuse is so high, it begs the question what percentage of British are able and willing to intervene and stop harm instead of amplifying it.
The language used by police is clearly elevated. In both physical and online forums they describe misogyny in terms of a domestic terror threat, perhaps preparing to raise liability on anyone who refuses to aid victims.
“In my old role in counter-terrorism police we used to talk about how communities defeat terrorism, and I think in the rail sector passengers can help us to defeat unwanted sexual behaviour.”
Should women visiting Britain, expected to travel in peak times, be warned they have a 1 in 3 chance of domestic terror attack?
And when we speak of time delays in Britain, we really speak of many, many, many years being lost.
The sexist abuse that haunts modern life is nothing new: women have been ‘trolled’ in art for 500 years. Deanna Petherbridge, co-curator of the first major exhibition on the subject, delves into a ghastly history.
Efforts to recognize and address systemic roots of British misogyny seem to benefit from the longest timelines possible. Such persistence in permitting abuse at unacceptably high levels even to this very day suggests a deep-seated societal affliction, one passed down through generations without signs of any real accountability.
The plight of British women, or any women who are unfortunately subjected to the bias and hate festering within British culture, are thus actually dealing with a societal failure that spans centuries. Is it reasonable for the Chief of Police to expect the British public to now successfully help stop crimes so entrenched, and on what timeline?
To be candid, I’ve always found the NSA’s “defend forward” pitch intriguing from a historical perspective.
The Navy subsequently developed a “transoceanic” strategic concept, orienting the Service away from contesting the oceans and toward projecting power across them to distant land masses.
Truman, a master statesman, perhaps explained the problem most succinctly as I’ve written here before:
…MacArthur had been outwitted and outflanked by a guerrilla army with no air force, crude logistics, and primitive communications, an army with no tanks and precious little artillery. As David Halberstam put it, MacArthur had “lost face not just before the entire world, but before his own troops, and perhaps most important of all, before himself.” All of this happened because MacArthur was almost criminally out of touch with reality. […] “I didn’t fire [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was,” Truman later said. “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect authority…”
The CIA might be making a subtle yet very poignant argument that all the best high-tech in the world doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when basic skills and wisdom for placement and use are missing.
The biggest “power projection” advocates often overlook some important lessons of quiet professional intelligence oriented towards asymmetry. Consider how false power projections often have helped smaller, more agile forces overcome vastly more powerful enemies.
Here’s a story that can’t be told often enough. In 1940 Ethiopia 20,000 irregular troops from Sudan made quick and easy work of nearly 300,000 Italian fascist soldiers. Done and dusted, presenting us a very fine model for active defense in cyber being highly efficient and strategic, creative more than athletic.
The impotence of the American juggernaut in Vietnam has put this problem under the spotlight of history. The one thing the guerrillas have in abundance is imagination, and this seems to outweigh the imbalance in materiel. It is the author’s contention that creativity is what wins battles–the same faculty that inspires great art.
Analogies comparing more traditional big power projection (Russia’s “dumb meat grinder” approach) onto cyber operations, projecting massive capabilities as the wedge into an adversary’s digital infrastructure, are frequently used but may not accurately reflect the complexities of cyber warfare. It’s a bit like hearing “we estimate Goliath’s imposing size is what will prevent the next David”. Meanwhile David might just be afraid of tiny spiders. It’s conflict on the Web, after all.
The NSA’s publicly described concepts of “Cyber 101 – Defend Forward” showed much promise for being on the right side of “power projection” history, yet it remains unclear just how agile, adaptive and effective it has been and at what scale. Can it be a deterrent if its potential remains a secret?
The book that inspired Dr. Strangelove
At the very least I can appreciate that an official .mil site said “Cyber 101” as if a veiled shout-out to those who know about the WWII Special Operations “Mission 101” victory. Big hint? Maybe 50 years from now we’ll know how deeply the NSA landed and implanted quiet professionals behind enemy infrastructure boundaries.
…just as a navy goes underway from a port or an airplane takes off from a runway, and thus are legitimate targets during times of conflict – persistent engagement involves targeting adversary cyber capabilities and their underlying infrastructure. This approach prevents adversary nations and non-state actors from launching disruptive and destructive cyberattacks in the first place.
With the departure of General Paul M. Nakasone, the primary advocate for “defend forward” from a top NSA position, it remains to be seen under General Haugh how this strategy will evolve.
General Timothy D. Haugh, U.S. Air Force, assumed command of U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and the National Security Agency (NSA)/Central Security Service (CSS) on February 2, 2024, during a change of command, directorship, and responsibility ceremony at USCYBERCOM/NSA/CSS Headquarters.
In my estimation and experience, Navy leadership typically brings a superior strategic mindset to effectively navigate the intricate infrastructure and multi-domain landscape of cybersecurity. Air Force brass, however, may prioritize very abstract approaches lacking grounded understanding of light-touch and responsive asymmetry needed for real measured success in massive scale operational challenges (e.g. risk MacArthur’s “catatonic” follies).
Often I get asked what can someone do if data is taken from them and processed without their consent.
Black Sabbath in 1970
Ozzy Osbourne, of the band Black Sabbath, offers one example of how to respond:
@KAYNEWEST ASKED PERMISSION TO SAMPLE A [SECTION] OF A 1983 LIVE PERFORMANCE OF ‘WAR PIG’ FROM THE US FESTIVAL WITHOUT VOCALS.
REFUSED PERMISSION BECAUSE HE IS AN ANTISEMITE AND HAS CAUSED UNTOLD HEARTACHE TO MANY.
Apparently Ye used it anyway without consent. Then Osbourne started to very vocally complain on social media and amplify an already severe backlash against Ye, linked to a long history of causing harm including hate speech.
Notably, there’s a question of data ownership here. Black Sabbath’s famous War Pigs song was heavily inspired (if not a direct style copy) from Black musicians promoting peace and against war.
The band’s “innovative” sound borrowed heavily from a long tradition of “wailing” in American blues.
That being said, Black Sabbath claims their music was meant to fight for the working class against powerlessness, so it makes sense they would distance themselves in every way possible from Ye’s toxic aristocratic brand of overly-centralized power that spreads hate.
