What Elon Musk Really Wants
埃隆·马斯克真正想要的是什么

In Elon Musk’s vision of human history, Donald Trump is the singularity. If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government—not to mention the business opportunity of the century.
在埃隆·马斯克的人类历史观中，唐纳德·特朗普是奇点。如果马斯克能让特朗普重返白宫，这将标志着他的超级智能与地球上最强大的机构——美国政府——的融合，更不用说这将是本世纪的商业机会。

Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an Ayn Rand novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state—and therefore American life—in his own image.
许多其他硅谷巨头也与特朗普捆绑在一起。但马斯克是那个最有可能实现终极技术威权主义幻想的人。凭借他的影响力，他不仅是为了 enrich himself，而是有可能掌控国家。他与特朗普的纠葛将像一本安·兰德的小说般成真，因为特朗普明确邀请马斯克进入政府，扮演首席工程师的角色，重新设计美国政府——因此也重新设计了美国人的生活——按照他自己的形象。

Musk’s pursuit of this dream clearly transcends billionaire hobbyism. Consider the personal attention and financial resources that he is pouring into the former president’s campaign. According to The New York Times, Musk has relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee Trump’s ground game there. That is, he’s running the infrastructure that will bring voters to the polls. In service of this cause, he’s imported top talent from his companies, and he reportedly plans on spending $500 million on it. That doesn’t begin to account for the value of Musk’s celebrity shilling, and the way he has turned X into an informal organ of the campaign.
马斯克追求这一梦想显然超越了亿万富翁的业余爱好。考虑他为前总统的竞选投入的个人关注和财务资源。据《纽约时报》报道，马斯克已搬到宾夕法尼亚州监督特朗普在那里的地面活动。也就是说，他正在运行将选民带到投票站的基础设施。为了这一事业，他从自己的公司引进了顶尖人才，并据报道计划为此投入 5 亿美元。这还不包括马斯克名人效应的价值，以及他如何将X 变成竞选活动的非正式机构。

Musk began as a Trump skeptic—a supporter of Ron DeSantis, in fact. Only gradually did he become an avowed, rhapsodic MAGA believer. His attitude toward Trump seems to parallel his view of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, AI might culminate in the destruction of humanity. On the other hand, it’s inevitable, and if harnessed by a brilliant engineer, it has glorious, maybe even salvific potential.
马斯克最初对特朗普持怀疑态度——实际上是罗恩·德桑蒂斯的支持者。只是逐渐地，他成为了一个公开的、热情的 MAGA 信徒。他对特朗普的态度似乎与他对人工智能的看法相似。一方面，人工智能可能会导致人类的毁灭。另一方面，它是不可避免的，如果由一位天才工程师掌控，它具有辉煌的、甚至可能是救世的潜力。

Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politico’s tabulation, both companies have won $15 billion in federal contracts. But that’s just his business plan in beta form. According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is designing a slew of new products with “national security customers in mind.”
马斯克对特朗普的公开示好，几乎可以肯定的是，始于他对自身经济利益的精明理解。像许多其他自由意志主义的亿万富翁倡导者一样，他将政府变成了一个惊人的利润中心。他的公司 SpaceX 依赖于与三个字母的机构和五角大楼的合同。它已经接管了 NASA 的一些核心职能。特斯拉则依赖于政府对电动汽车的税收抵免和对其充电站网络的补贴。据Politico的统计，这两家公司已经赢得了 150 亿美元的联邦合同。但这只是他的商业计划的初级阶段。据《华尔街日报》报道，SpaceX 正在设计一系列新产品，目标客户是“国家安全客户”。

Musk has only begun to tap the pecuniary potential of the government, and Trump is the dream. He rewards loyalists, whether they are foreign leaders who genuflect before him or supplicants who host events at his resorts. Where other presidents might be restrained by norms, Trump shrugs. During his first term, he discovered that his party was never going to punish him for his transgressions.
马斯克才刚刚开始挖掘政府的金钱潜力，而特朗普是他的梦想。他奖励忠诚者，无论是向他鞠躬的外国领导人，还是在他的度假村举办活动的请求者。其他总统可能会受到规范的约束，而特朗普则不以为然。在他的第一个任期内，他发现他的政党永远不会因为他违反规范而惩罚他。

Read: Elon Musk has the “off” switch
阅读：埃隆·马斯克有“关闭”按钮

In the evolving topography of Trumpland, none of his supporters or cronies will have chits to compare with Musk’s. If Trump wins, it will likely be by a narrow margin that can be attributed to turnout. Musk can tout himself as the single variable of success.
在不断变化的特朗普地景中，他的支持者或亲信中没有人能与马斯克相提并论。如果特朗普获胜，这很可能是以微弱优势获胜，归因于选民 turnout。马斯克可以自诩为成功的单一变量。

It’s not hard to imagine how the mogul will exploit this alliance. Trump has already announced that he will place him in charge of a government-efficiency commission. Or, in the Trumpian vernacular, Musk will be the “secretary of cost-cutting.” SpaceX is the implied template: Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing the affairs of state to nimble entrepreneurs and adroit technologists. That means there will be even more opportunities for his companies to score gargantuan contracts. So when Trump brags that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, he’s not imagining a reprise of the Apollo program. He’s envisioning cutting SpaceX one of the largest checks that the U.S. government has ever written. He’s talking about making the richest man in the world even richer.
想象这位大亨将如何利用这一联盟并不难。特朗普已经宣布，他将任命马斯克负责一个政府效率委员会。或者，用特朗普的语言来说，马斯克将成为“成本削减部长”。SpaceX 被暗示为模板：马斯克将倡导将政府私有化，将国家事务外包给灵活的企业家和熟练的技术专家。这意味着他的公司将有更多机会获得巨额合同。因此，当特朗普吹嘘说马斯克将在他的任期内将火箭送往火星时，他并不是在想象阿波罗计划的重演。他设想的是向 SpaceX 开出美国政府有史以来最大的支票之一。他在谈论让世界上最富有的人变得更富有。

Of course, this could be bluster. But it is entirely consistent with the rest of the right’s program for Trump’s second term, which involves dismantling the federal government—eliminating swaths of the politically neutral civil service and entire Cabinet departments and agencies. It is exactly the kind of sweeping change that suits Musk’s grandiose sense of his own place in human history.
当然，这可能是虚张声势。但这完全符合右派为特朗普第二任期制定的计划，该计划涉及拆解联邦政府——消除大量政治中立的文职人员和整个内阁部门和机构。这正是符合马斯克对自己在人类历史上的地位有着宏伟认识的那种大刀阔斧的变革。

This isn’t a standard-issue case of oligarchy. It is an apotheosis of the egotism and social Darwinism embedded in Silicon Valley’s pursuit of monopoly—the sense that concentration of power in the hands of geniuses is the most desirable social arrangement. As Peter Thiel once put it, “Competition is for losers.” (He also bluntly admitted, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”) In this worldview, restraints on power are for losers, too.
这不仅仅是一个典型的寡头政治案例。这是硅谷追求垄断过程中所嵌入的个人主义和社会达尔文主义的神化——认为将权力集中在天才手中是最理想的社会安排。正如彼得·泰尔曾经说过的，“竞争是失败者的专利。”（他还直截了当地承认，“我不再相信自由和民主是兼容的。”）在这种世界观中，对权力的限制也是失败者的专利。

With his government contracts—and his insider influence—Musk will become further ensconced in the national-security state. (He already has a $1.8 billion classified contract, likely with the National Reconnaissance Office, and, through a division of SpaceX called Starshield, supplies communications networks for the military.) At a moment when the government is confronting crucial decisions about the future of AI and the commercialization of space, his ideals will hold sway.
凭借其政府合同和内部影响力，马斯克将进一步扎根于国家安全机构。（他已经获得了一份 18 亿美元的机密合同，可能与国家侦察局有关，并通过 SpaceX 的一个部门Starshield为军方提供通信网络。）在政府正面临关于人工智能未来和太空商业化的关键决策时刻，他的理念将发挥影响力。

At Tesla, Musk assigned himself the title of “technoking.” That moniker, which sits on the line between jokiness and monomania, captures the danger. Following the example set by Trump, he wouldn’t need to divest himself from his businesses, not even his social-media company. In an administration that brashly disrespects its critics, he wouldn’t need to fear congressional oversight and could brush aside any American who dares to question his role. Of all the risks posed by a second Trump term, this might be one of the most terrifying.
在特斯拉，马斯克给自己起了个“技术之王”的头衔。这个称号介于玩笑和狂热之间，揭示了其中的危险。效仿特朗普的做法，他无需从自己的企业中脱身，甚至包括他的社交媒体公司。在一个粗鲁地蔑视批评者的政府中，他无需担心国会的监督，可以无视任何敢于质疑其角色的美国人。在特朗普第二任期内的所有风险中，这可能是最令人恐惧的一个。