Musk’s plan to buy the midterms for the GOP
Republicans are facing significant headwinds ahead of the midterm elections, with Donald Trump’s approval rating nearing record lows as the costs of groceries and gas continue to rise due to his war on Iran.
However, Elon Musk has a plan to help the ruling party overcome its deficits. On Wednesday, Axios reported that Musk, who spent nearly $300 million to help elect Trump in 2024, is preparing to make “a huge investment… to boost Republican voter turnout.” From Axios:
America PAC will focus on door-knocking, digital advertising and direct mail aimed at turning out the conservative base, including voters who typically are less inclined to cast ballots in a non-presidential election year, sources with knowledge of the plans tell Axios.
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“America PAC was an essential partner for our historic GOTV operation in 2024, and their return for 2026 is a huge boost for Republicans across the country,” James Blair, President Trump’s senior political adviser, told Axios.
“We will again outsmart our opponents and ruthlessly execute our mission for the GOP between now and Election Day,” Blair added.
The New York Times also reported that Musk “has authorized his super PAC to spend $100 million to $120 million on a new field program in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November.” His early spending is expected to focus on backing Republicans in key Senate races in Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska, as well as House races in Wisconsin, California, and Washington.
“Officials from Mr. Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, have communicated their nine-figure budget to other Republicans in recent weeks as part of an aggressive spending plan that is set to begin next month,” the Times reported.
This Week in Musk:
xAI has sued the state of Minnesota over a first-of-its-kind law that would ban AI “nudification” programs and charge violating companies $500,000 per violation. The law is slated to take effect on Saturday. Lawyers for xAI said the company agrees with Minnesota’s effort to ban nonconsensual AI-generated nude images. Still, they claimed the law would subject a “wide array of protected speech to civil liability and government sanctions.” xAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX, faces numerous lawsuits over the use of its AI models to generate nonconsensual sexual images of children and adults. (Associated Press)
The Trump administration has made SpaceX’s Starlink exempt from a federal ban on foreign-made routers. (Ars Technica)
The US Space Force signed a $1.6 billion deal with SpaceX for 18 Falcon 9 launches to deploy military satellites used for tracking and targeting ballistic threats. The orders appear to be tied to Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense boondoggle. (Reuters)
SpaceX is looking to compete directly with traditional cell service carriers like AT&T and Verizon, potentially by buying spectrum rights auctioned by the government or acquiring companies that already hold spectrum rights. (Semafor)
Despite a moderately successful test launch of its Starship rocket last week, SpaceX stock has continued to fall. Its share price is down nearly 50% from the all-time high it set in June. Tesla stock price, meanwhile, has continued to sink after the company’s collapse last week. (CNBC)
Sales figures from Tesla indicate that the Cybertruck could be the biggest bust in commercial automotive history. (Futurism)
In a lawsuit, a former Tesla manager accused the company of overworking the shorthanded team of safety operators responsible for remotely overseeing and controlling its Robotaxi fleet. Worker burnout caused Tesla’s driverless taxi vehicles to turn “into rolling hazards on public streets,” alleged Javier Medrano, who is suing the company. (The Independent)
The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling and transit startup, is looking to raise $4 billion at a $20 billion valuation. (Wall Street Journal)
Zuckerberg tries to rewrite AI “doom” narrative
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent the past week on a public relations blitz to spin up support for his pro-artificial intelligence propaganda campaign. He appeared for interviews with the New York Times and the Financial Times to implicitly criticize rivals OpenAI and Anthropic and share his vision of a future where everyone experiences “personalized superintelligence.”
The Wall Street Journal also published an op-ed from Zuckerberg in which he sought to counter AI “doom” messaging from many in Silicon Valley. While short on specifics and long on corporate boilerplate, Zuckerberg tried to convince readers to believe in a different future, one where AI would empower individual inventors and trigger an age of abundance.
In previous eras, he wrote, transformative technologies “came from the brothers in a bicycle shop who believed people could fly, the bookbinder’s apprentice with no schooling who figured out how to generate electricity, and the kid in a garage who thought personal computers could be for everyone.”
“We believe this will continue to be true,” he continued, adding that AI “will increasingly help discover new knowledge—from discovering new drugs to cure a family member’s disease to finding new ways to improve your business… the number of valuable things superintelligence can invent to help achieve your goals is unlimited.” (He failed to note that Meta used AI to justify laying off thousands of employees earlier this year, or his suggestion last year that the majority of relationships in America will involve AI companions.)
The information landscape in the United States has reached a crisis point. Billionaires are using social media platforms and media outlets to advance their political and financial interests.
A Trump loyalist just seized control of CBS, CNN, and TikTok’s US operations.
Google paid Trump $25 million to settle a bogus lawsuit.
The Washington Post used editorials to advance the financial interests of owner Jeff Bezos
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg installed a Republican operative as head of policy
The only way to fight back is to build up independent media that is free from the influence of billionaires and corporate America.
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Public opposition to the AI industry has led scores of localities to adopt moratoriums on large data center projects. Numerous states are considering similar policies, with New York having already established a one-year freeze.
Construction restrictions or delays could be particularly problematic for Meta, which plans to pour up to $145 billion into AI infrastructure in 2026 alone. Community pushback from Americans has stopped tens of billions of dollars in proposed data center developments from coming to fruition.
Zuckerberg also criticized some in the AI industry for lobbying the US government to block access to open source models from Chinese companies like Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and DeepSeek.
Open source models are cheaper to access and offer more privacy and customization features than the closed, proprietary models that OpenAI and Anthropic sell subscriptions to. (Meta also charges customers to access some of its closed models but says that it is also developing open source models.)
“There’s always this question of regulatory capture if you have a set of businesses that have their own interests that are doing peer review,” Zuckerberg told the Financial Times. “Are the frontier labs… going to want an open-source model to succeed? I think that there have kind of been some mixed signals on that.”
Last week, Zuckerberg joined Elon Musk and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in endorsing a letter from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang urging the White House and Capitol Hill not to block access to open source AI models.
91%
That was the drop in free cash flow that Meta reported in its second quarter earnings on Wednesday. The collapse came as Meta funnels huge amounts of capital into Zuckerberg’s unremunerative AI projects.
Zuckerberg has attempted to convince investors that his spending frenzy is worthwhile, saying, “Our investments in A.I. are accelerating every major part of our core business.” In a call with investors on Wednesday, he also predicted that “billions of people” will have a personal AI agent “working on your behalf 24/7 to achieve your goals.”
But investors are not sold. Meta’s share price closed down 7.95% on Thursday. The stock is down 24.77% over the last six months.
This Week in Zuck:
Meta and BlackRock are partnering on the construction of a $14 billion data center in El Paso, Texas. BlackRock and its proxies will take an 80% ownership stake in the project. Meta, which will own the remaining 20%, plans to lease the site’s computational power from BlackRock. The project is being financed with $12.55 billion in higher-yield debt taken on by BlackRock. (Bloomberg)
Meta used nondisclosure agreements with state and local officials to quickly begin construction of its massive data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana. The Hyperion data center is expected to be one of the largest in the world, with estimated costs of more than $250 billion. (New York Times)
The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta “recently gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, people familiar said, on top of a multimillion donation to the ballroom and a prior $22 million payment to the planned presidential library.” (Wall Street Journal)
On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Hims & Hers, a telehealth company, for sharing sensitive medical data from its users with Meta and other online advertisers. “The FTC will not hesitate to act on behalf of consumers deprived of their ability to choose which products they want and whether to keep their most sensitive health information private,” said Christopher Mufarrige, the agency’s consumer protection chief. Advertisements from Hims & Hers have been ubiquitous on Meta’s platforms, offering easy online access to prescriptions for weight loss, erectile dysfunction, anxiety, and other drug-based treatments. (Washington Post)
Meta signed an “AI content partnership” with Newsmax, allowing its AI models to pull from the right-wing news outlet to answer user prompts. Newsmax has a history of spreading fallacious reporting. Last year, it agreed to pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit related to false claims the network made about the 2020 presidential election. (Newsmax)
To kick off the jury trial between Tennessee and Meta, lawyers for the state accused the company of ignoring its own research on the negative mental health effects that its platforms inflicted on young people. Meta faces similar lawsuits from dozens of other states. (The Guardian)
“The FAA’s proposed rule would allow the agency to waive unnecessary environmental laws and regulations that are slowing American innovation.”
On Tuesday, the Trump administration said it would waive “unnecessary environmental laws,” clearing the way for more commercial rocket launches from companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Among the laws that could be waived under the new Federal Aviation Administration rule: the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Noise Control Act, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.
SpaceX’s launch activities in South Texas pose environmental risks to a number of endangered and threatened species, including ocelots, piping plovers, and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles.
Amazon looks to challenge SpaceX in mobile phone satellite service
On Monday, Amazon announced it submitted a Federal Communications Commission application to deploy more than 5,000 satellites starting in 2028 in its push to provide direct-to-device service.
“Amazon looks forward to delivering on the promise of D2D connectivity, including to the millions of people living, traveling and working in places beyond the reach of existing networks today,” the company said, per the Financial Times.
The plan would put Amazon on a collision course with SpaceX’s Starlink, the leading direct-to-device service provider.
This Week in Bezos:
On Thursday, Zoox, an Amazon subsidiary attempting to develop driverless cars and software, became the first company to receive federal approval to charge customers for rides in a vehicle without conventional controls. Zoox had previously offered free rides aboard its steering-wheel-less vehicles in San Francisco and Las Vegas pilot programs. (Wall Street Journal)
Amazon possesses the ability to identify when retailers are lying about “Made in USA” products but often fails to take action against them, according to research from a think tank led by former FTC chairwoman Lina Khan. (Reuters)
Driven by growing sales from its cloud-computing business, Amazon’s revenue last quarter beat analyst estimates. (Axios)
Amazon is phasing out several of its most expensive AI models following layoffs at its Artificial General Intelligence division earlier this month. (Business Insider)
Researchers have found that Amazon’s online store is flooded with AI novels. “In genre fiction, people are using A.I. to write these books, and readers are not able to tell,” said SUNY Stony Brook professor Tuhin Chakrabarty. (New York Times)
Warner Bros Discovery has sued Amazon for poaching its workers in what it claims was a “lawless employee shopping spree.” The suit was preceded by Amazon installing Pia Barlow, a former HBO executive, as the head of series marketing at Amazon MGM Studios. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Oligarch Roundup
Paramount Skydance agrees to freeze its $110 billion deal to buy Warner Bros Discovery until June 2027. Paramount, which is owned and controlled by the centibillionaire Ellison family, announced the freeze in a court filing last week. The filing was made as part of a lawsuit brought by attorneys general from 12 Democratic-led states who are suing to block the deal for antitrust violations. Lawyers for Paramount said the company would lift the freeze if the presiding judge issues a ruling before next June. Larry Ellison, a close Trump ally, stands to lose $9.8 billion if his deal to buy Warner collapses. (Bloomberg)
Dialog, a secretive social group cofounded by Peter Thiel, canceled by Irish hotel. The event, which was set to be held next month at a luxury resort in Enniskerry, was canceled after individuals threatened to stage protests and blockades. Dialog is suing over the cancellation. (Irish Examiner)
Musk hints at giving away all of his money. In a post on X, economist Daron Acemoglu wrote that Elon Musk should pledge to donate his wealth no later than 2036, given the centibillionaire’s prediction that AI advancements will make money worthless in less than a decade. “I am actually going to do something along these lines!” Musk wrote in response. (X)
Make him the face of every candidate he throws money behind. Remind people who he is. Mr Ketamine Doge. Hang it around his soft pink armed neck. Remind people he’s a spoiled rich brat from Apartheid racist South Africa and thinks he can lord his self over us with his money. Why don’t he go back to Africa and help some starving children over there. Since he destroyed USAID, I’m sure they could use his help now.
All of this is only part of the plan. Voter suppression laws, voter caging, poll watchers (10,000 of them trained by the RNC, and many armed in red states that have blue districts) the voting machines are owned by Republican operatives, the Postmaster General, will screw with mail in voting and delay it, MAGA election commissions will reduce the number of drop off ballots, or move them to spots accessible only by vehicle.