Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: Liberals and government employees aren’t the only people angry with Elon Musk. Tesla’s plunging share price means many investors are angry, too. Shares of Tesla shot up 91% after election day, peaking just before Christmas, as investors anticipated Musk and his car company would be big winners as a result of Donald Trump’s second term as president. Musk was Trump’s largest financial supporter during the campaign, and has since become the highest-profile member of his administration, by far….

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CNBC reports: The Federal Aviation Administration briefly halted flights to several Florida airports on Thursday night after a SpaceX Starship testing failure. The incident marks the second time this year that SpaceX experienced a mishap during a flight test of Starship resulting in debris raining down and commercial flights disrupted. Affected airports included Miami International Airport, which is an American Airlines hub, and airports serving Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando, Florida. The regulator said, in a statement on…

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Kyle Chayka writes: Silicon Valley is premised on the idea that its founders and engineers know better than anyone else: they can do better at disseminating information, at designing an office, at developing satellites and advancing space travel. By the same logic, they must be able to govern better than politicians and federal employees. Voguish concepts in Silicon Valley such as seasteading and “network states” feature independent, self-contained societies running on tech principles. Efforts to create such entities have either…

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electrik reports: Tesla chairwoman Robyn Denholm has sold another $33 million worth of Tesla stock (TSLA) as she lets Elon Musk destroy the company’s brand. As the head of Tesla’s board of directors, Denholm is amongst the few people who actually have oversight over Elon Musk at Tesla. While Musk is CEO, he owns only about 13% of Tesla’s shares. Still, he is seen as having complete control over the company and the board, which is actually what led to…

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The Record reports: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) refuted reports that changes are being made to how it approaches cyberthreats from Russia. The Guardian newspaper wrote Friday that analysts at CISA were “verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats,” according to an anonymous source, and that work being done on one Russia-related project “was in effect ‘nixed.’” “CISA’s mission is to defend against all cyberthreats to U.S. Critical Infrastructure, including from Russia,”…

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Politico reports: Elon Musk’s political meddling in Europe is cratering Tesla’s sales — and that’s putting at risk its revenue from selling credits to other automakers looking to avoid paying penalties for not meeting European Union emissions targets. European automakers face fines should they fail to meet this year’s carbon dioxide reduction goals, but those selling too many CO2-emitting cars can dodge the fee by pooling with a company doing better than the EU demands. That’s been a lucrative earner…

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Mike Brock writes: As I write this in early 2025, a quiet revolution is unfolding within the U.S. government. Inside the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), teams of young tech operatives are systematically dismantling democratic institutions and replacing them with proprietary artificial intelligence systems. Civil servants who raise legal objections are being removed. Government databases are being migrated to private servers. Decision-making power is being transferred from elected officials and career bureaucrats to algorithms controlled by a small…

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Don Moynihan writes: For those who don’t know much about government, the idea of Elon Musk as a serious tech guy who could shake up how the public sector work was appealing. Even people who do know a lot about government were hopeful. Such hopes now look naive. Musk is not just ignorant about what government does, he chooses to celebrate and make decisions based on that ignorance, defaulting to accusations of fraud to explain things he does not want…

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The Washington Post reports: Amid the tumult of mass firings, the Trump administration’s dismissal of workers who maintain America’s nuclear weapons delivered perhaps the greatest shock. These are people with highly sensitive jobs, the Energy Department would later acknowledge, who should have never been fired. Almost all the workers were rehired in an embarrassing about-face, a prominent example of how the administration has had to reverse dismissals in multiple instances where its scattershot approach caused deeper damage to agencies than…

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Brian Barrett writes: If you’ve felt overwhelmed by all the DOGE news, you’re not alone. You’d need too much cork board and yarn to keep track of which agencies it has occupied by now, much less what it’s doing there. Here’s a simple rubric, though, to help contextualize the DOGE updates you do have time and energy to process: It’s worse than you think. DOGE is hard to keep track of. This is by design; the only information about the…

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Matteo Wong writes: The rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk is entering its Apprentice era. Both men have the ambition to redefine how the modern world works—and both are jockeying for President Donald Trump’s blessing to accelerate their plans. Altman’s company, OpenAI, as well as Musk’s ventures—which include SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI—all depend to some degree on federal dollars, permits, and regulatory support. The president could influence whether OpenAI or xAI produces the next major AI breakthrough, whether Musk can succeed…

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Wired reports: On February 10, employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received an email asking them to list every contract at the bureau and note whether or not it was “critical” to the agency, as well as whether it contained any DEI components. This email was signed by Scott Langmack, who identified himself as a senior adviser to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Langmack, according to his LinkedIn, already has another job: He’s the…

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Robert Reich writes: One of the unacknowledged advantages of the horrendous era we’ve entered is that it is revealing the putrid connections between great wealth and great power for all to see. Oligarchs are fully exposed and they are defiant. It’s like hitting the “reveal codes” key on older computers that let you see everything. On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, the third-richest person in America, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, announced that the paper’s opinion section would henceforth focus…

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