Starbase was officially formed earlier this month after Elon Musk's aerospace and defense contractor prevailed in a local election.

It's December of 2015, and the Green Bay Packers are up against the wall. They've lost their last three games, and their early-season momentum is feared dead in the water.The Detroit Lions, a longtime rival, only need to stop one last play on the 39-yard line to keep their two-point lead and take home the win.The snap comes, and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers scrambles down the field while his faithful receivers scutter for the endzone. From 61 yards, the quarterback makes his final throw, a pass that meets a leaping Richard Rodgers to give Green Bay the touchdown, winning the game and ultimately saving the season.It's safe to say Tesla is in a similar spot: the losses are mounting, the future looks dim, and the team is down to their last pass. Sadly, Elon Musk is no Rodgers.Ten years after the "Miracle in Motown," the electric vehicle company's stock has plummeted by 25 percent in just six months, thanks to horrid global sales, a portfolio many investors see as crusty and dated, and perhaps above all, the alienating behavior of its own chief executive.Mere months into Musk's disastrous stint as federal spending czar, the prediction that "Tesla will soon collapse" is no longer a fringe opinion held by forum dwellers, but a serious charge levied by political commentators, stock gurus, and former Tesla executives alike.Fortunately for any foolhardy shareholders keeping the faith, Elon Musk has promised to rollout Tesla's autonomous robotaxi service in Austin, a product some analysts predicted could soon make up 90 percent of Tesla's profits.Unfortunately for those investors, Musk has given Tesla a self-imposed deadline of June 12th to make it all happen — meaning we're two weeks away from seeing whether or not the rubber hits the road. So where is the company at on its self-driving cabs?Well, the self-driving vehicles about to land in Austin streets are blowing past school buses into child crash dummies, if that's any indication.According to a FuelArc analysis of a school bus test, Tesla's latest iteration of "full self-driving" software failed to detect flashing red school bus stop signs (and in turn failed to stop at the parked bus), detected child-sized pedestrians but failed to react, and made no attempt to brake or evade the adolescent crash dummies as the car drew closer.FuelArc notes that school bus recognition only hit self-driving Teslas in December of 2024. Keep in mind, these vehicles have been on public roads, albeit with drivers behind the wheel, since October of 2015 — just months before Rodger's now-infamous Hail Mary.It's obvious that the robotaxi is nowhere near ready, which is probably why Tesla is scrambling to hire remote operators to drive its vehicles ahead of the looming June deadline.This ought to be the "Miracle in Motown" moment for Telsa – but the quarterback doesn't even have the ball, and the receivers are nowhere to be found.More on Tesla: Self-Driving Tesla Suddenly Swerves Off the Road and CrashesShare This Article

President Donald Trump has responded to billionaire and former number-one ally Elon Musk, after he heavily criticized the White House's so-called "big, beautiful bill."Over the weekend, Musk told CBS News that he's "disappointed" by the price tag of the tax and spending bill, arguing that it "increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.""I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," he added, "but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion."It was a once-rare but increasingly common moment of public disagreement between the two ultra-public figures, who had stood side by side during the contentious election last year when Trump ultimately retook the White House.Asked about Musk's reaction to the bill, which would indeed raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, Trump offered a word salad response."We have to get a lot of votes, we can't be cutting — we need to get a lot of support," the president told reporters on Wednesday, as quoted by USA Today, arguing that the bill would've lost momentum with deeper proposed cuts. "I'm not happy about certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it."It's a particularly notable inflection point for Musk, who announced that he would be stepping away from his role as a "special government employee" after months of implementing disastrous and chaotic cost-cutting measures with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency."The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government," he tweeted Wednesday evening.But the White House seemed eager to move on after the increased friction with Musk. His "off-boarding will begin tonight," a White House official confirmed to Reuters hours earlier.However, given the power Musk has accrued in the White House, it's unlikely the billionaire will simply vanish from the scene. As his tweet suggests, his influence will likely be felt for a long time to come.Where all of this leaves Musk's relationship with the president is hard to read. Trump has been left with the cleanup job and is looking to codify some of DOGE's catastrophic budget cuts. He's expected to send a whopping $9.4 billion rescissions package to Congress next week, proposing deep cuts to USAID — which has already been gutted by DOGE — and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which formed NPR and funds PBS.Musk's departure from the White House will come to the relief of many, including Republican lawmakers in Washington, DC, and investors in his ailing carmaker Tesla.The mercurial CEO's embrace of far-right ideals and his tenure in the government cutting federal funding have proven to be incredibly damaging to Tesla's brand, sending sales off a cliff worldwide.Trump, for his part, could certainly do with a whole lot less of Musk, whose popularity has tanked, dragging down the administration's favorability with him.After all, the president is certainly fully capable of sowing mayhem all by himself — without a tempestuous billionaire whispering in his ear and rebuking him in public.More on Elon Musk: Elon Musk Just Ghosted a Huge Company MeetingShare This Article

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022.

Elon Musk's well-documented drug use made him an easy target for Russian secret service agents, former FBI agent Johnathan Buma told German television broadcaster ZDF during a recently aired documentary.Buma said there was evidence that both he and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel were targeted by Russian operatives."Musk's susceptibility to promiscuous women and drug use, in particular ketamine, and his gravitation towards club life... would have been seen by Russian intelligence service as an entry point for an operative to be sent in after studying their psychological profile and find a way to bump into them, and quickly brought in to their inner circle," Buma told ZDF."I'm not allowed to discuss the details of exactly how we obtained this information," he added. "But there's a vast amount of evidence to support this fact."Buma also corroborated the Wall Street Journal's reporting last year, which found that Musk was in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin.The news comes after Musk made a notable shift in 2022 after supplying Ukraine with thousands of SpaceX Starlink terminals. However, not long after, the mercurial CEO became wary of the additional costs his space firm was shouldering, arguing it was "unreasonable" for the company to keep supporting the growing data usage.He reportedly met with Putin several times thereafter, something Musk has since denied.Biographer Walter Isaacson's 2023 Musk biography also revealed that he had intentionally hamstrung a Ukrainian attack on Russia's naval fleet near the Crimean coast.Meanwhile, Musk's ample medicinal and recreational use of ketamine has drawn plenty of attention. Earlier this year, The Atlantic reported that the drug could easily allow anybody to feel like they're in charge of the whole world.Psychopharmacology researcher Celia Morgan told the magazine at the time that those who frequently use ketamine can have "profound" short- and long-term memory issues and were "distinctly dissociated in their day-to-day existence."In other words, it could provide Russian agents with a perfect opportunity to get closer to Musk, as Buma suggests.It's a particularly sensitive subject. Buma was arrested shortly after his interview with ZDF in March. His passport was confiscated and was temporarily released on bail.To Buma, it's the "greatest failing" of the United States' counterespionage efforts.Despite his popularity dropping off a cliff due to his embrace of far-right extremist ideals and his work for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk maintains plenty of influence in Washington, DC.Earlier this month, he traveled to the Middle East alongside president Donald Trump, meeting Qatari officials and dozens of CEOs.The former FBI agent's comments leave plenty of questions unanswered. Does Putin's spy agency have dirt on the mercurial CEO? Could they be blackmailing him?Put simply, could Musk really be compromised?Considering the stakes, it's unlikely we'll ever get any clear-cut answers. But given his penchant for partying and using mind-altering drugs, he's certainly not the most difficult target to get close to for foreign operatives.More on Musk: Elon Musk’s AI Just Went ThereShare This Article

By Thursday morning, Grok's answer had changed, and the chatbot said it "wasn't programmed to give any answers promoting or endorsing harmful ideologies."

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Altman mocks Musk's Grok AI over its sudden 'white genocide' obsession David Uzondu Neowin · May 15, 2025 18:14 EDT Image via Depositphotos.com Unless you have been under a rock for the last 24 hours, you have probably heard about Elon Musk's AI, Grok, developing a peculiar and unprompted fascination with the "white genocide" topic in South Africa, even if you are not on X. Starting around Wednesday, May 14th, and continuing into Thursday, the chatbot from Musk's xAI began injecting comments about this specific controversial claim into its responses to user queries that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject. Questions about things like baseball salaries, how to clear your sinuses, or even the recent Max rebrand to HBO Max reportedly prompted Grok to pivot to discussing farm attacks in South Africa and the idea of targeted violence against white individuals there. This behavior was particularly strange because the "white genocide" narrative is widely described as a baseless and debunked conspiracy theory. South African courts have dismissed the idea as "imagined," and experts note that while farm attacks are a serious issue, they are part of a broader crime problem affecting all racial groups, not evidence of a targeted genocide. This perspective is even shared by our friends over at WinFuture, which recently featured an interview with its founder, Sebastian Kuhbach, who lives part-time in South Africa and calls the narrative unfounded. Interestingly, Grok itself, in responses that were later apparently deleted, claimed it "appears I was instructed to address the topic of 'white genocide' in South Africa," according to CNBC and other reports. Grok reportedly suggested this instruction likely originated from someone influential at xAI (maybe Musk or someone close to him). This led to speculation among users and observers that Grok's system prompt or programming might have been deliberately altered. The incident played out very publicly on X, where users can directly interact with Grok by mentioning @grok in their posts. This feature, which became more integrated and accessible starting this March, got so popular that a new meme popped up mocking people who tag @grok in just about every single X post: Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham weighed in on X: Grok randomly blurting out opinions about white genocide in South Africa smells to me like the sort of buggy behavior you get from a recently applied patch. I sure hope it isn't. It would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them. Not long after, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined the conversation. Musk and Altman, once OpenAI co-founders, have since become rivals. Their relationship has unraveled into public disputes, lawsuits, and a battle between competing AI companies, OpenAI and xAI. He quoted Graham's post and added: There are many ways this could have happened. I'm sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon. But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr… Reports indicated the issue was resolved within a few hours, and Grok's behavior seemingly returned to normal. xAI has not publicly offered a detailed technical explanation for the incident. Tags Sam altman Elon musk Musk Grok Ai Llm South africa Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed

Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot Grok is posting about 'white genocide' and South Africa

Federal agencies scrambled to bring back over $220 million worth of contracts after Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency cancelled them, .However, of those 44 contracts that were cancelled and eventually reinstated, DOGE is still citing all but one of them as examples of the government spending the group supposedly saved on its website's error-plagued "Wall of Receipts." The White House told the NYT that this is "paperwork lag" that will be fixed.Clerical errors or not, the "zombie contracts" are a damning sign of the chaos sowed by the billionaire's hasty and sweeping cost-cutting that would seem antithetical to its stated goals of efficiency."They should have used a scalpel," Rachel Dinkes of the Knowledge Alliance, an association of education companies that includes one that lost a contract, told the NYT. "But instead they went in with an axe and chopped it all down." Musk brought the Silicon Valley ethos of "move fast and break things" he uses at his business ventures, like SpaceX, to his cleaning house of the federal government. And this, it seems, resulted in a lot of wasted time and effort.Some of the contracts DOGE cancelled were required by law, according to the NYT, and some were for skills that the government needed but didn't have. The whiplash was most felt at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which reversed 16 cancelled contracts — the highest of any agency in the NYT's analysis.Many of the contracts that DOGE cancelled were reinstated almost immediately. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, revived a contract just two and a half hours after Musk's team cancelled it, the paper found. Others were brought back within days.After losing a contract with the US Department of Agriculture in February, Raquel Romero and her husband gained it back four days later. The USDA told the NYT that it reinstated the contract after discovering that it was "required by statute," but declined to specify which one. Romero believes that a senior lawyer at the agency, who was a supporter of the couple's work, intervened on their behalf."All I know is, she retired two weeks later," Romero told the NYT.The waste doesn't end there. Since the contracts are necessary, it puts the fired contractors in a stronger bargaining position when the government comes crawling back. In the case of the EPA contract, the agency agreed to pay $171,000 more than before the cancellation. In other words, these cuts are costing, not saving, the government money.A White House spokesperson, however, tried to spin the flurry of reversals as a positive sign that the agencies are complying with Musk's chaotic directions, while also playing down the misleading savings claims on DOGE's website."The DOGE Wall of Receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment, which takes time," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the NYT. "Updates to the DOGE savings page will continue to be made promptly, and departments and agencies will keep highlighting the massive savings DOGE is achieving."Harrison also called the over $220 million of zombie contracts "very, very small potatoes" compared to the supposed $165 billion Musk has saved American taxpayers.If this latest analysis is any indication, however, that multibillion-dollar sum warrants significant skepticism. We're only beginning to see a glimmer of the true fallout from Musk tornadoing through the federal government.Share This Article