Tag

Elon Musk

Articles and publications tagged Elon Musk across the Atmosphere.

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Publications

Political PressNov 6, 2026

Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas gigafactory around mid-2027, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday, after years of persistently weak sales for a futuristic model once touted as a rival to legacy pickup trucks. Musk said in an X post the production wind-down would enable the automaker to accommodate increased output of...

Elon MuskTesla

TechdirtNov 6, 2026

Musk’s Starlink Embraces ‘Dynamic Pricing,’ Further Jacking Up Costs

For years I’ve noted that while Elon Musk’s low-Earth-orbit (LEO) Starlink satellite broadband system can be very useful for people with no other options (war zones, RVs, boats, rural Americans), the network has struggled to maintain performance as it grows into more mainstream markets, resulting in not only widespread slowdowns, but also the company socking...

broadbandcongestion

Little Green FootballsNov 5, 2026

Another Banger From Jesse Welles: "The Midterms"

Donald TrumpElon Musk

TechdirtNov 5, 2026

The Tech Bros Who Bet On Fascism Lost. Don’t Let The Internet Pay For It.

Well it’s now been a couple days since the Democrats obliterated Donald Trump and MAGA in the midterm. It turns out that the messaging of “price hikes, soldiers in the street, new forever wars, and diarrhea for everyone, with a side of enriching the rich while protecting pedophiles” somehow failed to resonate. Which is how...

donald trumpelections

TechdirtNov 4, 2026

Musk’s Starlink Eyes Buying Boost Mobile In Doomed Bid To Dominate Smartphones

One cornerstone of Elon Musk’s fraud-packed SpaceX IPO prospectus includes the claim that they’ll extremely quickly (as in a year or two) boost Starlink subscriber totals from 13 million to something closer to 300 million. Given the network’s congestion problems and physics constraints, that’s simply not realistic. Also: more users means even greater capacity problems...

cellulardisruption

Little Green FootballsOct 31, 2026

Roy Wood Jr: Comedians Roast Trump, Musk & Final Midterms Push

In Have I Got News For You Season 5's recap for episodes 4-6, the panel discusses: Trump & Republicans final push before the midterm elections, senatorial debates, updates on the Ukraine/Russia war and Elon Musk's record donations. Roy Wood Jr., host of Have I Got News For You and panelists: Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black are joined by guests: Larry Wilmore, Rosebud Baker, Josh Gondelman, Adam Mockler, David Pakman & Jenny Hagel to discuss all this and more ...

Amber RuffinDonald Trump

TechdirtOct 29, 2026

Court Tosses Trump’s Clumsy Attempt To Scuttle Musk Memphis Data Center Pollution Lawsuit

Civil rights groups like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk’s Colossus xAI data centers in Memphis disproportionately pollute the air in minority neighborhoods. A joint lawsuit by SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn’t bother to get the necessary permits to run the...

aicolossus

Political PressOct 29, 2026

The Matrix, The Skynet

Timothy Snyder: The global tech oligarchs, be they South African, Russian, or American, conspire with one another, while shutting the rest of us out of our freedoms, our democracy, and even our lives. They try to buy an American political party and try to ease its way into power. And they build their own kind...

Donald TrumpElon Musk

TechdirtOct 27, 2026

Musk Falsely Claims His Traitorous Meddling In Ukraine Is Somehow Anti-War

Last week Elon Musk arbitrarily started throttling the LEO (low-Earth orbit) satellite connections of Ukraine’s military, preventing it from engaging in offensive and defensive operations. The decision blindsided the White House, caused significant financial and operational headaches for Ukraine, and created no shortage of bipartisan backlash. After spending a week blaming one another, both the...

droneselon musk

Tom CampbellOct 24, 2026

Does Elon Musk Own Your MP's Megaphone?

Tell Government to Move Away from Toxic Trillionaire-owned Platforms.

digital sovereigntytwitter

TechdirtOct 23, 2026

OPM Barely Bothered Defending DOGE’s Access To Federal Employee Data. Court Rules It Was Illegal.

Remember back when Elon Musk was handed the keys of our federal government with basically zero accountability or oversight? All sorts of bad stuff happened, but one of the lawsuits we’ve been covering was the American Federation of Gov’t Employees (AFGE) along with the Association of Administrative Law Judges and a few individual federal workers...

denise cotedoge

TechdirtOct 23, 2026

Trump Leveraged FCC ‘Investigation’ Into Dish CEO Charlie Ergen To Get Him To Donate To Ballroom

The Washington Post recently had some interesting additional insight into the various “pay to play” shenanigans related to Trump’s $330 million ballroom. They got a hold of a broader donor list, noting that Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top contribution amount. As did GOP donor mainstay the Adelson family. Crypto companies are...

ballroombrendan carr

TechdirtOct 22, 2026

Starlink Throttling In Ukraine Again Shows Musk’s Right Wing Extremism Is A National Security Threat

Last year you might recall how Elon Musk’s far right wing extremism (and endlessly incoherent behavior) had many countries reconsidering their use of his low-Earth orbit satellite company, Starlink. It was driven by the fact that Musk had restricted Ukraine’s access to the service near Crimea because he personally opposed Ukraine’s military aims (defending itself...

donald trumpelon musk

Little Green FootballsOct 21, 2026

Some More News: Is America an Oligarchy?

Hi. On today's episode of Some More News, we look at how Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and a handful of tech billionaires became our digital landlords, why being online now means paying them rent, and what a bunch of Russian oligarchs might have to do with any of it. Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 1:44 - Is America An Oligarchy? 3:07 - Is America a Technofeudalism? 17:26 - Russia = Internet 35:31 - Tech Billionaires Are Now Our Digital Landlords 45:19 - People Are ...

Cody JohnstonElon Musk

TechdirtOct 19, 2026

Whoops: Grok Bot Spills Tech CEO’s Bank Data In Public Slack

Shane Mac, a tech entrepreneur and CEO of the software developer XMTP Labs, decided to connect Grok Bot to his personal bank account. Like many people who attach undercooked big tech agentic AI agents to their personal accounts without reading the instructions (see: Muse’s rough last few weeks), it didn’t go well. Mac soon found...

agenticai

Little Green FootballsOct 18, 2026

Roy Wood Jr: Elon Musk's HUGE Donation to Republicans! & Botched Campaign Ads!

Gen-Z Commentator Adam Mockler & Comedian Josh Gondelman join Roy, Amber and Michael to discuss: Elon Musk unveils new flying car: the Tesla Roadster! Elon Musk's BIG donations to Republican Super PAC groups. The panel reviews Super PAC Attack Ad blunders for: Maine's candidate, Troy Jackson & Arizona's Jonatha Nez; and Ramaswamy's Campaign ad featuring criminals?! Midterm Voters care the most about the economy and inflation; and Trump's $5k dividend to voters. Alaska's Dan Sullivan comes unprepared to the ...

Adam MocklerAmber Ruffin

TechdirtOct 16, 2026

Trump Acquired $5 Million In SpaceX Debt Two Days Before Space Transportation Executive Order

Our consolidated corporate press doesn't really make this clear, surprisingly, but the United States is too corrupt to function. There's simply no shortage of evidence across every arena that matters. Trump's corruption is utterly historic, yet it's just endlessly normalized. To the point where most press outlets don't really even mention Trump's corruption clearly when...

corruptiondonald trump

TechdirtOct 15, 2026

Starlink’s Entry Into Wireless Is Being Wildly Overhyped

One of the ways Musk fraudulently goosed SpaceX stock value during the IPO was by pretending that the company would very quickly (in just a year or two) grow from just 12 million global Starlink subscribers (just 4 million in the States) to something more akin to 300-500 million. The way Starlink claims they'll do...

competitionelon musk

TechdirtOct 1, 2026

Trump’s ‘Morally Binding’ New AI Guardrails Are Meaningless Pudding

Corporations have long enjoyed creating toothless "self-regulatory" regimes that exist primarily to pre-empt real government oversight. While the quality of these orgs can vary somewhat, generally they're just a toothless pantomime designed to pretend that corporate power can effectively police itself for ethical and competitive breaches. U.S. history has a thing or two to say...

aiAI accord

Little Green FootballsSep 30, 2026

Kimmel: Trump Falls Asleep on Live TV, Tells the Truth for First Time & Our Favorite Foxtrotter Guillermo!

Aunt Chippy joins us in Brooklyn, the Yankees hosted the Red Sox for Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series, Trump told the truth today for the first time ever, had lunch with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and other A.I. leaders, Trump is still trying to blame everything on Joe Biden and can’t stop falling asleep, Republicans are investigating Jack Smith’s investigation, and we talk to Guillermo & his partner Witney on the set of Dancing with ...

Donald TrumpElon Musk

TechdirtSep 28, 2026

YouTube And Meta Reverse Course On Musk Documentary Ads. X, Unsurprisingly, Does Not.

Content moderation is impossible to do well at scale. Which also means it's sometimes difficult to tell garden variety fuckups apart from the rich and powerful putting their finger on the scale. On Friday, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that all of the major social media platforms were rejecting attempts by distributor Bleecker Street to advertise...

alex gibneyelon musk

TechdirtSep 25, 2026

Trump Republicans Made A Historic Mess Of This Massive Broadband Grant Program

I've written a lot this year about how Republicans hijacked the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program (created by the 2021 infrastructure bill) and immediately set about weakening oversight standards, eliminating enforcement of stuff like broadband affordability, speed, and equitable deployment, and making it a priority to heavily subsidize Elon Musk for...

beadbroadband

TechdirtSep 22, 2026

Elon Said Fighting CSAM Was “Priority #1.” A NY Times Reporter With A Script Found 75 Known Images.

When Elon first took over Twitter with grand plans to "bring back free speech," I tried to help him run through the standard content moderation learning curve that basically every site created by a clueless tech bro runs through. They all start with "we're the free speech site, we allow everything!" and very quickly someone...

csamelon musk

TechdirtSep 21, 2026

Trump Admin Still Being Cagey On $21 Billion In Hijacked Broadband Grants

I've written a lot about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare.The...

beadbroadband