Executive Summary: Application of Cold War Tactics to Undermine American Democracy

This report examines the alarming parallels between Cold War-era propaganda techniques and current practices of Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk. It applies analysis using Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance — unlimited tolerance leads to the disappearance of tolerance — to examine Tesla and Elon Musk’s practices. By framing their actions through this lens, we reveal how seemingly innovative corporate practices may actually pose a threat to the open society they claim to advance, necessitating a robust response to preserve democratic values and institutions. Key findings:

• Tesla’s “innovations,” particularly the Robovan, recycle old concepts while presenting them as revolutionary, echoing Cold War-era technological propaganda.
• Musk’s background and Tesla’s design choices suggest concerning ideological alignments with historical authoritarian and discriminatory practices.
• There are indications of potential collusion between Tesla and extremist elements within the government, posing a significant national security threat.
• Tesla’s marketing and product demonstrations perpetuate harmful gender and racial stereotypes, reminiscent of 1950s anti-Communist propaganda.

This analysis raises critical questions about the true intentions behind Tesla’s fraudulent technological promises and the potential impact of their anti-democratic propaganda on American values and social progress.

1. Silicon Valley’s War-machine Origins: From Department of Defense Projects to Modern Threats

Most people have no idea that Silicon Valley was born out of WWII and engineering teams on the federal payroll. The problem faced at that time was a high rate of Americans being shot down over Europe (upwards of 20% in extreme cases), so the government poured money into technology as a method to increase survivability. One particularly notorious example was the second raid on ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt on October 14, 1943, often referred to as “Black Thursday“, which had a loss rate so severe USAF leaders suspended strikes beyond fighter escort.

A man put in charge of finding a way to reinvent USAF precision bombing was granted a team. Their focus was on technical innovation aimed to break away from costly 1930s daylight raid doctrines. He decided to shift team operations from the East Coast to West (Palo Alto) because he had grown up there and… it had nice weather. This origin story of these rapid innovation teams in Palo Alto (which birthed the Silicon revolution) are a foundational lesson in history. It helps set context for the later over-sold phenomenon of “private individual radical innovators” that the Valley is now dubiously known for rather than the true underlying government role in setting goals and offering financial stability to get there.

The question today becomes whether rapidly emerging West-coast tech giants with obscure links into large taxpayer funds, particularly Tesla, may be exploiting their government connections in reverse — to advance seditious agendas that potentially threaten national security instead of defend against American adversaries.

2. A Tesla Horse for Extremist Ideologies?

If government handouts for fake innovation sounds familiar to those who follow the grotesque fraud of Tesla (falsely promising since 2013 to be inventing the safest car on the road, while actually delivering the least safe), it turns out their latest products leverage a disinformation tactic of the Cold War.

The Tesla “survival Cybertruck” is a $100,000+ fraud that has been proven unable to survive 1,000 miles without basic and critical failures, for example. Tesla’s expensive “Full Self Driving” means low or no value supervised driving, as much as a premium paid for survival means an inability to survive without huge additional investments in time and money.

These false promises and technological failures have the alarming hallmarks of bait and switch, moving goal posts, and perhaps most importantly a Trojan Horse problem. Are these merely product shortcomings, or part of a larger strategy to manipulate public perception and potentially compromise national infrastructure as part of an anti-democratic plan?

3. Robovan as Ruse: Echoing Military Intelligence Propaganda

The latest Tesla “mass transit Robovan” is yet another fake demonstration of something that is believable and will never be delivered. This tactic bears a striking resemblance to Cold War-era propaganda techniques used to project technological superiority. Much like the Nazi Breitspurbahn concept, Tesla’s Robovan seems to use grandiose transportation projects as a propaganda tool, promising revolutionary changes while potentially concealing more sinister motives.

What’s particularly alarming is that the Robovan concept isn’t new at all. Electric trams and similar mass transit solutions have been in use for decades, continuously evolving and improving. For instance:

These images showcase designs from the 1950s and concepts that have been in operation for years, like the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. Tesla’s Robovan appears to be little more than a rehash of these existing technologies, with some cosmetic changes.

Even more telling is the fact that companies like Siemens have been producing and improving their automation of transit (electric trams) for over a century now:

Siemens’ modern trams, like the one pictured above, represent the current state of the art in urban mass transit. They’re efficient, environmentally friendly, and already in widespread use across the globe. Tesla’s Robovan, in comparison, offers no significant technological advancements over these existing solutions.

The fact that Tesla is presenting the Robovan as a revolutionary concept, despite its clear similarities to long-established technologies, is a perfect example of how military intelligence propaganda techniques are being employed in the tech industry. It’s not about genuine innovation, but about creating a perception of technological superiority and futuristic progress.

This approach serves multiple purposes:
1. It distracts from Tesla’s failures in other areas, like the Cybertruck and “Full Self Driving” technology.
2. It maintains the illusion of Elon Musk as a visionary leader, despite the lack of truly new ideas.
3. It potentially masks more concerning aspects of the design, such as the windowless structure and potential for authoritarian control of movement.

By recycling old concepts and presenting them as groundbreaking innovations, Tesla is engaging in a form of technological theatre that echoes Cold War-era tactics. This not only misleads the public but also potentially diverts attention and resources from genuine advancements in public transportation and urban planning.

4. Elon Musk: Right-Wing Propagandist with Government Backing?

The reason Tesla won’t deliver what it taunts people with, yet again, is because of the intentions of the CEO presenting the vision. Elon Musk, a white South African who grew up under apartheid, seems to be trying to relive the Cold War mindset — with strategic outcomes very different from delivering on public promises.

There’s a disturbing possibility that Musk is being used as a front for more sinister agendas. I would go so far as to say someone within the American government is helping direct taxpayer money into his pockets, asking only that he put on a completely fake “visionary” song and dance to distract from concepts of safety or even science. SpaceX, like Tesla, allegedly may have had Musk as a cover story under a federally funded strategy beneath his antics and outside the accountability of government agencies.

This scenario presents a grave national security concern: Could extremist elements within the government be using Musk and his companies to advance their agendas while evading traditional oversight?

This scenario becomes even more concerning when viewed through the lens of the “Technocracy” movement of the 1940s, which advocated for a society run by technical experts. Musk’s grandfather’s involvement in this movement raises questions about whether similar ideologies of centralized population control are influencing Tesla’s operations and goals today.

5. Historic Insights: The 1959 Kitchen of the Future Was Deception

To understand the depth of this potential threat, we must examine historical precedents. In 1959, RCA and Whirlpool were involved in a totally faked demonstration kitchen of the future, designed to shame and spook the Soviets.

A critical footnote in history is that the West was desperate to counter how Communism empowered women. Washington was looking for a quick and easy narrative to hide the oppressive misogyny of capitalism. Women drivers of East Berlin electric trams were allegedly stopped at gunpoint when entering the West, just to show without exaggeration where and how much Cold-War battles over the role of women heated up by the mid-1950s.

When Berlin was divided, the tramway was also split in twain. The West side was managed by BVG-West and the East side by BVG-Ost, later renamed the VEB Kombinat Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVB). The ideological differences between the two regimes were soon manifested on the tramway: before the city was split, women had been allowed to drive trams, albeit mostly during World War I and World War II during labor shortages. But in Fighting the Cold War in Post-Blockade, Pre-Wall Berlin, Mark Fenemore notes that women in West Berlin were banned from driving trams, as well as trains and buses, due to “medical rules.” As a result, authorities on the western side refused to allow a tram driven by a woman to cross into their sectors, and would “[make] the tram wait until a man replacement driver arrived.” In January 1953, large-scale prohibition of women tram drivers coming into West Berlin went into effect. As a result, one woman who was driving a tram was stopped at gun point and told to go back to the east.

So how did “tech bros” of the West cook up propaganda in the 1950s to spread the idea that women giving up their work to machines were more “liberated” in the West than being allowed to do real work and skills under Communism? Robots to the rescue! In 1959 a series of fake “electronic miracles” were promoted tactically in the West as… removing the awful chores (power) of women.

All of these electronic miracles are in existence. They are products of the David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, N. J., and scientists of the Radio Corporation of America are working today to make them available to you tomorrow. Let’s examine the automated house and its amazing Home Electronic Center, which consists of a miniaturized system of all-electronic mechanisms already lab-tested at Princeton. […] RCA engineers call this wonder system the Home Electronic Center Kid, or HECK. […] These are just some of the electronic miracles that you will live to see. They are in the labs today. They will be in your home tomorrow.

The parallels between this historical propaganda and Tesla’s current practices are alarming. Both use grandiose promises of future technology to manipulate public perception and potentially mask deeper political agendas. Moreover, the underlying misogyny present in the 1959 demonstration finds echoes in modern tech culture, where women are often marginalized or objectified. This promotional video literally ends by saying women don’t want to work.

The misogynistic undertones of this 1950s propaganda find troubling echoes in today’s tech industry. Tesla’s marketing often emphasizes traditionally masculine values like power and dominance, while its workplace culture has faced criticism for gender discrimination. This perpetuation of dated gender norms in a modern context raises serious questions about the underlying ideologies driving these tech giants.

6. The Insidious Nature of Tesla’s Constant Propaganda

Tesla’s use of black-face robots in their demonstrations is not just a tone-deaf design choice, but potentially a deliberate tactic to stoke racial tensions and division. This imagery, combined with Musk’s background in apartheid South Africa, raises serious questions about the underlying ideologies being promoted through Tesla’s public-facing technology demonstrations.

Furthermore, the emphasis on automation and AI in Tesla’s demonstrations echoes the 1959 kitchen of the future in a disturbing way. Just as the earlier propaganda sought to “liberate” women by removing their agency and replacing it with machines, Tesla’s vision of the future seems to prioritize replacing human workers – often in fields dominated by women and minorities – with automated systems. This approach not only threatens jobs but also perpetuates systemic inequalities in a 1940s-like mechanized campaign for anti-democratic white nation-state.

7. From Cold War to Woke War: Twitter Takeover for Information Warfare

The tactics employed by Tesla and Musk, especially in his takeover of Twitter using foreign adversary funding, bear a striking resemblance to information warfare strategies. By creating and promoting fraudulent spectacles of technological “advancement” to attract gullible adherents, they may be attempting to shape public opinion and potentially influence policy decisions in ways that benefit the most extremist agendas. This modern form of propaganda, cloaked in the language of innovation and progress, presents a unique challenge to national security experts trying to safeguard democratic institutions.

8. The Nazi Connection: More Than Just Aesthetic?

The design choices in Tesla’s vehicles and demonstrations go beyond mere aesthetic preferences.

There may be even more concerning parallels to old designs behind this allegedly retro-looking vehicle styling; specifically there’s a nod to Nazi ideology and transit concepts:

Given Musk’s open affinity for Nazi symbolism, such as his odious rebranding of Twitter to a swastika, his peculiar design choices may reflect deep ideological alignment that poses a significant threat to democratic values and national security. The mass transit design “reveal” may be just his latest attempt to resurrect seditious campaigns in the 1940s for a “Technocracy” dictatorship (male white supremacist control of the world adjacent if not aligned to Nazism). The infamous Nazi Breitspurbahn (broad-gauge rail) of 1942 was promised by Hitler to be an easy link between major cities in his concept of the “Grossdeutschland” dictatorship.

The Tesla Robovan concept not only has the 1940s Nazi train aesthetic (even more than the 1940s Mercury), it has the potential for a dangerous centrally controlled box of no escape that eerily echoes authoritarian tricks to redefine and rapidly take control over population movement. The Columbus Mercury design was popular, but the Nazi Breitspurbahn design looks similar while having so much more in common with Elon Musk’s exaggerated claims. The parallels raise alarming questions about intentions behind Tesla spilling out loud proclaimed “innovations” full of empty hype for a “party”. Here’s just one such statement made by CEO Elon Musk in 2016, among many similar examples since then:

Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we’ll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York, from home in LA to dropping you off in Times Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself, by the end of next year [in 2017]. Without the need for a single touch, including the charger.

A city to city Breitspurbahn concept achieved by the end of 2017 was claimed as the defining goal by Musk, yet in 2024 they are literally still just trying to get it off the ground? That’s seven years late, which in Internet time is like three to five product generations. How many broken big promises like this will be allowed for a “futuristic” brand that fails to deliver? Is there real accountability, or any transparency for actual intentions?

Towards Vigilance: Countermeasures and Call to Action

In addressing the complex issues surrounding Tesla and similar tech companies, we’ll employ the “truth sandwich” method developed by cognitive linguist George Lakoff. This approach involves stating a truth, then addressing the misinformation, and finally reiterating the truth. This structure helps to emphasize factual information while still addressing problematic practices.

Truth: The tech industry has the potential to drive significant positive change in our society. Genuine technological advancements can improve our quality of life, enhance our democratic processes, and help solve pressing global challenges.

Addressing Misinformation and Dangerous Practices: However, this potential is currently being undermined by deceptive practices and the promotion of harmful ideologies. Tesla and similar companies have engaged in tactics reminiscent of Cold War-era propaganda, including:

• Presenting recycled concepts as revolutionary innovations
• Promising rapid progress without providing realistic timelines or details, akin to the “underpants gnomes” profit plan
• Repeatedly failing to deliver on grandiose promises, such as fully autonomous taxis promised since 2016
• Using these false promises to manipulate public perception and stock prices
• Perpetuating harmful gender and racial stereotypes in their marketing and product design
• Potentially colluding with extremist elements within the government to advance anti-democratic agendas

These practices not only mislead the public but also pose significant threats to our democratic institutions and public safety. People have died believing in the hype of “self-driving” capabilities that do not actually exist, highlighting the real-world dangers of this deceptive marketing.

Reaffirming Truth and Providing Solutions: To address these challenges and harness the true potential of technological innovation, we must take concrete actions:

1. Truth in Technology Advertising Act: Implement legislation requiring tech companies to clearly distinguish between conceptual products and those in actual development or production, with strict penalties for false promises.
2. Enhanced Oversight of Government Contracts: Strengthen the review process for government contracts with private tech companies, including thorough background checks on company leadership.
3. Diversity and Inclusion Audits: Require regular, independent audits of major tech companies’ practices to ensure they’re not perpetuating harmful stereotypes or discriminatory practices.
4. Public Education Campaigns: Launch initiatives to educate the public about the history of technological propaganda, critical evaluation of tech claims, and the dangers of believing in unproven “self-driving” technologies.
5. Strengthen Antitrust Enforcement: Prevent the concentration of power in the tech industry by vigorously enforcing and potentially expanding antitrust laws.

Addressing Potential Counterarguments

As we advocate for these measures, it’s crucial to address potential counterarguments that defenders of current tech industry practices might raise:

1. Innovation and Progress: While some argue that companies like Tesla are driving necessary innovation in critical areas, we must emphasize that true progress requires transparency, accountability, and respect for human rights. Innovation should not come at the cost of ethical practices or democratic values.
2. Job Creation and Economic Growth: The economic benefits touted by these companies do not justify practices that undermine worker rights, perpetuate inequality, or pose threats to public safety. We must advocate for sustainable economic growth that aligns with democratic values and social responsibility.
3. Visionary Leadership: The notion of “visionary” leadership should not be used to excuse unethical behavior or disregard for public safety. True visionaries can drive change while adhering to ethical standards and respecting democratic institutions.
4. Free Speech and Open Discourse: Claims of promoting free speech, particularly in the context of social media platforms, must be scrutinized. Selective application of free speech principles, especially when aligned with specific ideological leanings, can actually undermine open discourse and democratic values.
5. Technological Inevitability: While the development of AI, autonomous vehicles, and other advanced technologies may seem inevitable, we must insist that this development be guided by ethical considerations and public safety, not by a race to be first at any cost.

By implementing these measures and effectively countering these arguments, we can create a more transparent, accountable, and equitable tech industry. The promise of technological progress is real and valuable, but it must be grounded in truth and ethical practices. With proper oversight, public engagement, and a commitment to genuine innovation, we can ensure that technological advancements serve to strengthen our democracy and protect public safety rather than undermine them.

In conclusion, the parallels between Cold War-era propaganda techniques and the current practices of Tesla and similar tech companies are deeply concerning. By recognizing these tactics and implementing robust countermeasures, we can safeguard our democratic institutions, promote responsible innovation, and continue to make progress towards a more just and equitable society. The time for vigilance and action is now.