Musk: The World Is ‘Sleepwalking’ Toward World War III
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk issued a chilling warning Monday in a Spaces conversation. The owner of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, said the current global situation is marching toward a war that would put civilization at risk.
Musk said the U.S. is pushing Russia and China closer together “in an axis of immense power against the West, and laying the groundwork for World War III.”
Russia, he observed, has immense natural resources while China enjoys strong industrial output. “It’s frankly,” Musk declared, “ a perfect match from a war standpoint.”
He called it unwise to drive the two into an alliance. Tragedies, Musk explained, form on an individual level, a community level and then a civilizational level. The goal must be to avoid civilizational risks associated with World War III.
Musk said there is no global benefit for extending the war between Russia and Ukraine, and an end should be negotiated. When that peace is realized, it would open the door for “normalization of relations” between Washington and Moscow.
He called the people of the two nations “cousins.”
However, what is a regional conflict could quickly transform into a global conflict with dire consequences. This is due, Musk said, to U.S. foreign policy pushing Russia into an alliance with Iran and China.
There is also risk, he said, in overestimating U.S. military might.
Musk further insinuated that areas of Ukraine currently under Russian military control are not rising up against Moscow. This could mean that these regional lines could become a permanent border or a line to establish a ceasefire.
The entrepreneur’s Starlink satellite internet service inadvertently became part of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Kyiv was provided free terminals at a cost of $100 million to Starlink, and Musk signed an agreement with the Pentagon for the military to pay for Ukraine’s service.
But this spilled over into specific military actions by Ukraine against Russia.
It was revealed in September that Musk drew the line over Starlink being used for a massive strike on Moscow’s naval forces in Crimea last year.
Musk responded to criticism from some quarters by explaining, “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Starlink, he observed in the Spaces conversation, was intended to allow people to “watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things.” It was not meant, Musk said, to be involved in wars.
