Donald Trump and his shadow president, Elon Musk, are carrying out a highly illegal rampage through the government budget, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Thousands of scientists who rely on federal grants and loans to support their research are among the first wave of targeted victims. The government is attempting to cut billions of dollars from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on its own. Musk argues that it is a “ripoff” when grant money is used to cover staff, lab space, and equipment, despite the fact that scientific research cannot be carried out without these essentials.
Musk’s brain is pickled, but still it’s astounding how much he hates federal funding of science, when he would nobody and nothing without it.
He should be thanking Al Gore, not mounting a coup. https://t.co/8tFtyIYAIK
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) February 11, 2025
Historian Erik Loomis clarified at Lawyers, Guns and Money that “Trump and King Musk framed this as a shot at baddies like Harvard and Yale, but this absolutely destroys public schools and every state has those and they all are doing scientific research.” Since public colleges are major economic hubs in many red states, even Republican senators are struggling to hide their worries.
“They are causing irreparable damage to ongoing research to develop cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, ALS, Diabetes, Mental Health disorders, opioid abuse, genetic diseases, rare diseases, and other diseases and conditions affecting American families,” claimed Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, who noted that neither Trump nor Musk has the legal authority to make these cuts. Additionally, she is only discussing the NIH funding. Research in every discipline, from astrophysics to biology, will probably be hampered by the broader attack on colleges and the NSF.
The fact that Trump despises science is not surprising. After all, he is the same man who boldly claimed to have discovered a treatment for COVID-19 that those ridiculous medical academics had failed to consider: injecting household cleansers straight into your lungs. He’s probably still dealing with the narcissistic wound from when people made fun of him for being so incredibly dumb. Musk ought to be aware of this, too, despite his own glaringly apparent blind spots. After all, Musk would be a nameless failing son living off his father’s money rather than a billionaire vying with Kanye West for the title of most embarrassing celebrity in the world if it weren’t for government-funded research.
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Musk’s financial empire was primarily based on research conducted by others, despite the media’s exaggerated portrayal of him as an inventor and genius. He has consistently depended on technologies created as a result of the very federal generosity that he now calls a “ripoff.” Musk owes former Vice President Al Gore a huge debt of gratitude, even though he will never acknowledge it. Gore did not “invent” the Internet, as conservatives would have us believe. However, when Gore stated, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet during my service in the United States Congress,” he was speaking the truth. He organized research agencies to make the Internet a reality, supported laws to finance its development, and spent more than twenty years advocating for it.
He created Zip2, a website that served as an online Yellow Pages, in the 1990s. He made $22 million when he sold it to Compaq in 1999. As the CEO of PayPal, which would not have existed if not for the decades-long government funding of internet development, he earned a substantial sum of money. Of course, Musk deserves credit for learning to code when the Internet was still in its infancy. However, he also had the good fortune to be a young man at a time when decades of publicly financed internet research were beginning to pay off.
Musk was born in South Africa to a wealthy family. His father co-owned an emerald mine in Zambia, and he also invested in some of Elon’s early business ventures in mid 90’s. The company, Zip2, was later in 1999 sold to Compaq for 307 million USD.
2/23 pic.twitter.com/3oMy4K6V05
— Pekka Kallioniemi (@P_Kallioniemi) June 25, 2023
Now, that’s just the science side of it. Musk’s wealth has relied on federal generosity in every manner. At a crucial moment, the Department of Energy gave Tesla a sizable loan. In the absence of federal tax credits for electric vehicles, Tesla probably wouldn’t have enough clients to be in business. Economists also note that government-facilitated regulatory credits helped keep Tesla viable. Naturally, Musk now makes a lot of money as a government contractor, all thanks to companies he founded using government-funded research.
Tesla stores and charging stations are now protest hotspots as people push back against Musk’s new role in Trump’s government. Turns out, unelected Elon and his fake government agency, DOGE, aren’t sitting well with folks watching democracy get gutted. pic.twitter.com/bx4mzkBvxc
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) February 12, 2025
Musk’s lack of thanks is astounding. It also fits with the broader trend of tech billionaires spitting venom at the middle-class workers who actually put in the work to make the goods that these capitalists make so much money off of. The psychology involved is not particularly mysterious. It must be unnerving to know that you’re just claiming credit for work that was done by others. Even in fields as trivial as video games, Musk, in particular, has a long-standing, known preoccupation with acting smarter and more competent than he actually is.
Musk only pretends to be a scientist for television; he is not one. As poseurs always do when they are faced with the real thing, he might actually dislike actual scientists. Regretfully, his trivial psychodrama will have genuine effects on humanity as a whole, potentially depriving it of the frequently life-saving advantages of what actual researchers accomplish.
