Ecoblogi – A Blog by Daniel Elkama

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, many entrepreneurs who were successful in the two-system phase of the 80s, those in a significant position in the party, etc., bought state-owned companies cheaply when they were privatized. In a few years, they became super-rich multi-millionaires who also had a lot of political power. Putin perceived some as his allies, others as a threat, whom he sent to prison or who, in Russian style, fell out of the window (by the FSB). The term "oligarchs" began to be used for these super-rich. The concept, which originates from Greece, refers to the "power of the few". The oligarchs have pushed Putin's power and vice versa.

There are oligarchs not only in Russia, but also in many other countries, such as China (eg former generals) and the United States. During the corona pandemic, the wealth of the ten richest people in the world doubled to 1.5 trillion dollars, while 99% of the world's population lost their wealth. 1.5 trillion dollars corresponds to the gross domestic product of a large industrialized country. In 2024, there will be 2,781 billionaires in the world and they will own more than 1/30 of the world's wealth. The world's economic inequality is considerable, in the United States the richest 1/10 own half of all wealth. Of course, not all rich or big corporations are bad, but problems arise when political power is concentrated in specific individuals, especially if they are unstable or downright unethical people.

The world's richest person, Elon Musk, the owner of electric car and robot manufacturer Tesla, microblogging service X and space flight company SpaceX, has a fortune of 238 billion dollars, followed by Bernard Arnault, who has become rich with luxury products, and Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon online store.  These men can be called oligarchs, who also have a lot of political power.  Often the scale of this power is not visible to the outside.  However, billionaires and big business have a huge lobbying machine and they finance many politicians and parties that are indebted to them.  For example, multinational oil companies receive billions in support from states and they often dictate states' climate policy and even control the governments of some countries, especially in the global south.  The oil company Shell drove e.g.  According to Amnesty International, in the 90s, Nigeria's ruling military junta killed environmental activists who protected the Niger River Delta from oil drilling: 9 activists of the Ogoni Nine movement were hanged in 1995. Because of Shell's oil drilling, hundreds of thousands of people in Nigeria have contracted lung diseases, etc.

Elon Musk has been actively involved in Trump's presidential election campaign in the fall of 2024. Musk has even promised random voters daily rewards of one million euros.  To claim a winning check, a voter must sign Musk's constitutional petition promoting Republican values.  This is how he circumvents the US federal law, according to which votes cannot be bought.  However, in the opinion of several legal experts, even this violates the law.  Musk has also spread ridiculous conspiracy theories with Trump, e.g.  that the American government had created a hurricane and directed it into the states of Trump supporters.  The claim is completely without scientific basis.  The technology and amount of energy used to create hurricanes does not exist.   Trump has promised Musk a place in his government.  Elon Musk has also restricted Ukraine from using Starlink satellites during Russia's war of aggression.  Elon Musk is an example of an unstable person with a lot of money and power.  I previously wrote a blog post about the most dangerous people in the world, now I would put Elon Musk on that list.  The alliance of technology oligarchs and political power is a dangerous combination.

The current concentration of power of technology and social media giants in one hand is worrying.  For example, Facebook is mainly owned by Mark Zuckerberg and X is fully owned by Elon Musk.  Musk is e.g.  deleted accounts on X that don't please him and allowed hate speech and conspiracy theories on X in the name of free speech and anti-woke.  It's dangerous when a single person's opinions and whims dictate the rules on a service with over 600 million users.

Elon Musk has also focused on robotics and brain chips in his business.  He has said that he would like every person to have a brain chip in the future.  Musk has been developing the Neuralink brain chip for years and is already testing it on paralyzed patients.  A brain chip evokes very dystopian thoughts.  A person would become a cyborg, which would be connected to a machine and an information network.  This is completely unnatural and enables e.g.  hacking human brains, reading minds, feeding propaganda and manipulating people in the style of Orwell's dystopian 1984.  With a brain chip, it would be easy to turn people into robot-like slaves of those in power.  Horrible animal experiments have been carried out in the development of Musk's chip, e.g.  with chimpanzees.

Elon Musk is also building a huge herd of humanoid robots, which at worst someone could use as a robot army to conquer the world.  The robot obeys the program in it and the creator of this program.  Robots are also hackable.  A robot does not have a moral compass like a human, unless ethical algorithms are created for it, which neither it nor anyone outside can change.  In the iRobot movie, there are a lot of humanoid robots similar to Musk's robots, which take over the world when their program is tampered with.

Elon Musk lives in a technological delusion, unaware that he is creating Frankenstein-style monsters.  He's like a little boy with attention deficit disorder playing with fire.  He really is the most dangerous people in the world, maybe partly unconsciously.  There have been similar harmful sci-fi utopias, e.g.  believe in nuclear power.  Technology is usually not bad in itself, but with nuclear power, the atomic bomb, the robot army and the brain chip, that can be said.

 We don't need brain chips for anything.  Elon Musk advertises thatit is possible to e.g.  listen to music with the chip.  It's amazing...? We have headphones for listening to music.  A brain chip is really dangerous when the user interface is connected directly to the brain.  The user does not benefit from the brain chip, instead the ruler, oligarchs and dictators benefit.  Nor do we need an army of humanoid robots in a world with millions of unemployed.

 Daniel Elkama

 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/06/shell-complicit-arbitrary-executions-ogoni-nine-writ-dutch-court/

 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/20/neuralink-animal-testing-musk-investigation

 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/20/elon-musk-promises-to-award-1m-every-day-to-voters-as-he-steps-up-campaigning-for-Trump