Karl Bode, writing for Techdirt:

Last week Elon Musk successfully conned America and U.S. regulators into signing off on his preposterous SpaceX IPO, which immediately generated Musk $75 billion by comically over-stating the value of SpaceX, xAI, and Starlink. Then bone-grafting the entire pile of bullshit to the U.S. economy and your retirement account under the pretense that space data centers and Mars colonization are just around the corner.

A handful of remaining useful journalists have repeatedly explained how xAI and Musk’s racist 5th place chatbot — which comprises the lion’s share of the ridiculous IPO valuation — is a gargantuan loser. Both SpaceX and xAI aren’t profitable and may never be, and the claims of Mars colonization and space data centers are unworkable bullshit designed to distract people with toddler-level critical thinking skills.

Anyway I’m sure it will go fine.

Bode focuses on the Starlink grift in this piece, noting the service is too expensive, difficult to scale, and capacity constrained—a niche option at best. None of which likely matters to Musk and other supporters who, Bode suggests, merely “hope it will prove to be a semi-useful backbone for a major pump and dump scheme.”