The latest outrage to hit the wire is that the board of Twitter has agreed to accept Elon Musk’s buyout proposal, which will give Elon full control of the company and allow him to take it private. There’s lots of howling all around, as if they sky is falling. If you ask me, Twitter — and social media in general — is garbage tech that mostly wastes our time and poisons our minds. But regardless of where you stand sale of Twitter to a Twitter-addicted oligarch, to me the deal just further proves the thesis of my book, Surveillance Valley. The Internet is an extension of the American Empire.
I mean here you have Elon — an “outsider” — mounting a hostile takeover of a major global communication platform. And the thing about him is that he’s not just a successful lithium battery salesman, he’s also a major military contractor doing business with the most secretive and “strategically important” spooks in America.
For example: Even as he was planning his takeover this April, this was happening: the culmination of a nearly $300 million military contract to launch a classified American spy satellite.