Elon Musk allegedly has citizenship in three countries and has served in none of them.

And he’s known for being a self proclaimed dumb blowhard, never knowing anything about what he’s talking about and not caring about consequences for being dead wrong.

His lack of experience, coupled with his lack of knowledge, coupled with his lack of accountability is on full display again as he tries to swing Twitter to support Russia (by interfering with smart military aid to Ukraine).

I’ve written before on this blog about air superiority and tank combat in Ukraine, easily proving Musk wrong on both those points below. And he’s wrong in comparing it to WWI.

The mistakes Musk makes here are similar to all his mistakes. He tries to rush into shortcuts and drive at high speed off a cliff to the wrong conclusion.

Reports out of the Bay Area this morning say that a man and his 2014 were found at the bottom of a cliff off the 1A in Sonoma county north of San Francisco. The man was pronounced dead at the scene and represents the first owner fatality of a Model S driver. It isn’t clear yet if the crash was an accident. […] The crash represents the first owner fatality behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S though a stolen Model S that hit a pole at over 100mph and split in half killed the suspect who was then revived and died a few days later in Los Angeles. Tesla previously boasted how safe its Model S was including the 0 fatality record which will obviously have to be revised.

Tesla’s CEO “boasted… the 0 fatality record” in its first year with cars on the road. Since then it has gotten worse every year, allegedly killing more than all other EV companies combined. A death trap, by the numbers:

Deaths from a Tesla as of today have reached 348 (when using autopilot, 19), which is truly shocking when you consider just how fast that toll increases.

What is a death trap?

Ok, let’s start with what is a death trap in war?

Everything can be one in theory, because… it’s a war and by definition someone is turning everything they can into a trap.

A vehicle OR the lack of that very same vehicle could be a death trap.

It’s like Eisenhower recognized that under General Fredendall tanks were a death trap, so he dismissed him and promoted General Patton who turned the same exact tanks into a victorious revelation.

Even more to the point, when the Sherman light tank first showed up in 1942 Africa, it quickly turned German tanks into a deathtrap and Rommel was completely outclassed.

The Bradley “fighting vehicle” shipping to Ukraine thus looks to be extremely wise — opposite of a deathtrap — in a repeat of canonical military history strategy. The brilliant General Grant would cheer such a move, as would light tank namesake and American hero General Sherman.

This is where experience and expertise matter. Many factors are required beyond a yes/no question (is it a tank), and nobody should be satisfied with such simplicity.

And yet an anti-democratic con-artist like Musk thinks he can step in and manipulate uninformed public sentiment for some political reason.

But this isn’t a game, and Musk’s right-wing extremism repeatedly shows up as though he’s intentionally using his social media platform to get Ukrainians killed by Russia.

Musk should be shamed for soiling himself everywhere in public on Putin’s behalf, making actual experts clean up all their mess.

The recent clarion calls were meant to prevent exactly this kind of defecation from Musk.

…the idea that tanks won’t have a place in future wars is incorrect, said Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning. They absolutely will, he said, but they won’t be working alone. As Doland said, a “tank is really good, but a tank by itself, in some woods? Not really good.” […] “[Combined arms] is what prevents the lunacy we’re watching of what the Russian Army is doing,” Donahoe said. “I mean, you’ve just got to watch some of the videos of their forces being ambushed — they apparently are a poorly trained army that cannot fight as a combined arms team.”

The tank isn’t an inherent trap, any more than a plane or a building is inherently in all cases a trap after they are shot down and bombed.

When does something become a trap?

Hint: the answer has to do with being prevented from successful operation in any other capacity. That’s the nature of the brain-dead Tesla being centrally planned and controlled, definitely not the case with a properly deployed Bradley.

Suffice it to say that Tesla has provably been trending towards being classified a death trap since at least 2016 — worse year after year.

Any EV on the road is likely far safer, which is why for example a best-selling EV on the road for a decade (e.g. Nissan LEAF) reported zero recalls and zero crashes compared with Tesla’s growing lawsuits, complaints, investigations and funerals from far too many preventable deaths.

The Tesla CEO, as if aiming to repeat the worst chapters from the past, has rushed dangerous shortcuts and repeatedly wrong decisions with zero care for human life; delivering perhaps the worst engineering in history.

The Ford Pinto killed half as many people in fires as Tesla, for example.

You’d be safer in a Pinto because Ford was forced by regulators to stop making deathtraps, whereas Musk clearly ignores the definition, flaunts safety rules and doesn’t care about truth or consequences.

He told everybody he’s buying Twitter because he wants it to be sort of apolitical, and on the eve of the election he says you should vote for Republicans,” Lasoff told Insider. “He can have his opinion, but the thing I really despise in people is hypocrisy.”

John Byrne, a software CEO in Maryland, hadn’t been a huge fan of his 2020 Model X SUV for some time. He said it was creaky, vibrated at times, and was of an overall build quality that didn’t justify its $95,000 price tag.

But Musk’s behavior since the Twitter saga — particularly his broadcasting of right-wing views and attack on Anthony Fauci — was the final straw. Byrne traded in his car for an electric Audi in late 2022. 

At this point, someone surviving death in or around a Tesla is headline news.

And that’s why Twitter and Tesla both are tanking. Musk knows tanks.

Putin’s megalomania unwittingly created a backdoor for those hoping to flee his abuse and tyranny; simply claim an intent to be closer, when actually trying to get further away.

Details are being shared now by Ukrainian refugees who managed to slip through Russian occupation checkpoints.

Much like the Underground Railroad for Black slaves, those seeking to escape were instructed on what to say at the border.

“You never say you are going into Europe,” she said. Nor does one tell border guards their intention is to flee the invasion.

Instead, it is best to say “I’m looking for work because I lost my job,” she said.

It’s best to say because of the situation “I’m heading to Moscow to work,” she said.

That is how those fleeing Ukraine are permitted into Russia.

Her 66-year-old father, meanwhile, could not say he was looking for work. He was retired and had nothing to do with the Ukrainian army.

“They did not particularly care about him,” she said.

Either he was so unimportant or they were stupid, but they let him through, she added.

Moscow elites used to partying in gilded ivory towers (EU reported €17 billion frozen for just 90 Russian citizens) are indeed totally desperate for anyone to do real work, even a 66-year-old.

Factories in Russia producing military equipment are working nonstop and have withdrawn New Year holidays from employees.

While I appreciate the reference to the underground railroad, it was… different.

American slaves were escaping what America had been since its start (under racist tyranny of men like Washington and Lee). They set out to reach freedom in what America was struggling to become (under emancipation by men like Lincoln and Grant).

Ukrainians however (besides not being slaves) escape a foreign occupation to be refugees in a foreign country (Russia first, then elsewhere).

Hopefully it’s clear in Civil War that the American slaves on a railroad weren’t going deeper into the Confederacy. Even areas of the United States occupied by Confederate forces meant escape was towards the remaining Union.

To be fair, Putin claimed Russian troops were sent to occupy Russian territory and shoot at Russians who resisted Russian tyranny.

That does sound a LOT like how the Confederate South had announced their plans for invasion and occupation of the United States to expand slavery (military force used in continuation of the corrupt Missouri “compromise”).

A more historically accurate and exact comparison thus might be if a railroad of Russians were escaping to freedom in unoccupied Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces marched to liberate… Moscow from Russia.

See how the reverse angle, social engineering an appeal to Putin’s absurd ego, is so disarming to Russians?

I point out the broader definitions and differences mainly as a technicality of how Russian security succumbed to a basic and common flaw. A timeless “hack” doesn’t need to be historically grounded to be explained.

If a Ukrainian passed through the Russian ingress test, an egress to safety was almost guaranteed, which is why the modern story about social engineering (use of a trivial fealty phrase for the authority to leave) is so useful as a lesson.

Escape from dictatorship can be unlocked (a trust token achieved) through claims of wanting to gladly be at work for the dictator.

An article in Forbes seems to bend over backwards to emphasize that it’s talking about a defensive support technology.

…exactly the type of “inoffensive” and non-escalatory tool NATO is looking for to help meet Ukraine’s need for modern armor. As an amphibious troop carrier, clocking in at half the weight of an Abrams tank, the Bradley offers Ukraine a defensive, albeit robust, armored presence. Not considered a weapon for offense, the Bradley is still quite capable of dispatching almost any Russian vehicle on the battlefield.

A weapon not considered for offense?

A weapon for what?

Is there any weapon that by design can be used only in defense?

Look, I could understand if someone wrote that cement trucks are effective in traffic assassinations and were never built for that.

They weren’t built for that.

But who would say the cement truck is not ever considered a weapon for offense?

When being used in an attack, they’re in fact being considered by someone a weapon for offense. That counts.

The article ends by calling our attention to U.S. delivery of the M4 Sherman tank to Britain in WWII, which from its very first engagement handily exposed technological (and strategic) inferiority of Nazi armor.

While I agree with this historical analysis (and have written here about it several times before), the article seems to totally contradict itself in its final stages.

Saying weaponized armor — a light “tank” even with tank-busting weaponry — is somehow not considered an offensive weapon sounds very poorly contrived and unnecessary bureaucracy.

The better and simpler narrative is that the modern derivation of the American light tank dropped into Ukraine today could do to Russia what Britain did from 1942 onward with the American M4 Sherman (immediately and continuously drove Nazis out of occupied territories).

Related blog posts:

• Ronald Reagan’s “Special Unit” Soldier Sentenced to 5,160 Years in Jail… because mass murder using American troop carriers
• Toyota Bans Resale of Land Cruisers… because they become highly effective weapons for offense
• All Teslas May Be Trash But GM’s War Buggy is Garbage… because not a Toyota

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Update January 5: The U.S. is planning to send 40 Bradley vehicles to Ukraine, perhaps in time for a spring (March) “defensive” push.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to equip Ukraine with Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, while German officials said they would send Marders, decades-old weapons of a comparable class, as well as Patriot air defenses. The joint announcement by Berlin and Washington follows a similar move by France earlier this week. Paris pledged to send an unspecified number of AMX-10 RC vehicles, billed as light tanks on wheels boasting armor-breaking 105 mm guns.

Stephen Norris, Russian history professor at Miami University, offers this comparison:

One of the more worrisome trends in Putin speeches, especially in the last six or seven months, has been how amorphous, almost existential they’ve been. The Ukrainian war has been framed in existential terms — it’s a war to save Russian civilization. In the speech when he signed the treaties that annexed the four territories, he said Western culture is nothing less than satanism and this is the new threat against Russia. It was kind of scary and quite apocalyptic in the way his speeches had ever been. And in that speech, Putin actually referenced Goebbels. He said what the West has done is create a culture of lies about Russia that’s reminiscent of Goebbels.

[…]

In a speech in May of 1943, Goebbels said weirdly similar things. This was after Nazi Germany had lost at Stalingrad after the Soviet Union was turning the tide of the war. Goebbels gave a speech that turned the seeming defeat into victory and into a more existential question, saying the allies are trying to eliminate German culture, German history, the German people.