r/politics • u/T_Shurt • 19h ago

Possible Paywall Hegseth Announces Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich Will Help Lead Military

https://newrepublic.com/post/216045/pete-hegseth-elon-musk-newt-gingrich-help-lead-military
22.5k Upvotes

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u/VariationDry 19h ago

This is the stupidest thing I have read all month.

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u/SurroundTiny 19h ago

The title left out the third person; Palmer Lucky. Designer of Occulus VR, co-founder of Anduril Industries, self described 'radical Zionist ', and brother-in-law of Matt Gaetz.

See? It did get dumber.

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u/Jdmaki1996 Florida 19h ago

What’s with the all the techno fascists naming their shit after Tolkien stuff?

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u/Basicly-Inevitable 19h ago

Musk stole Grok from Robert Heinlein.

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u/SpinosRule 19h ago

I doubt Musk even groks the word Grok. What an asshole.

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u/pianotherms 18h ago

He does not. I guarantee he has never read the book, nor Foundation, or any of the other shit he acts like he likes.

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u/Gibonius 18h ago

I think he did, it was just as a teenager. He has a dorky, arrogant kid's understanding of this stuff. It's exactly the stereotype of a teen reading Ayn Rand and convincing themselves that they're the most special boy and everyone else in the problem, and then becoming a sociopathic libertarian.

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u/SpinosRule 18h ago

I couldn’t do Foundation BUT that’s because I just don’t like the way Isaac writes. Just my personal hangup. I love complicated reading though!

Hopefully he doesn’t purport to like Malazan, Satisfactory or Qabalah either though, don’t want him shitting on the things I love with his bullshit 😒

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u/CrunchAndRoll 18h ago

Oh god, he's exactly the type to say the Rhulad did nothing wrong.

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u/SpinosRule 16h ago

Okay. OKAY. An argument COULD be made either way. BUT you’ve gotta have some BIG Malazan balls and the guff to back it up before even going down that road. I can’t tell you how deep into it I am, slathering as I wait for our lovely dynamic duo to churn out more soul candy, but even I won’t walk down that path of broken potsherds.

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u/CrunchAndRoll 14h ago

Something something jaghut.

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u/notassigned2023 18h ago

I finally slogged through Foundation and it wasn't worth the time.

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u/Slam_Beefsteel 16h ago

You slogged through a 200 page book?

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u/notassigned2023 16h ago

It was a trilogy. Kinda like the His Dark Materials trilogy. I was just trying to get done, but it was a sunk cost fallacy issue.

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u/harrysaxon Canada 15h ago

There’s more books than the original trilogy.

IMO it’s not one of my favourite sci-fi series, but the original trilogy reads much better when you realize they’re not novels; they’re a short story collection.

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u/bigmcstrongmuscle 14h ago

Foundation has a whole series. The first couple are pretty quick, but some of the later books do get a little sloggy.

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u/SpinosRule 18h ago

Basically just watch the show and it hits on the relevant points?

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u/bossfoundmylastone 18h ago

The show has very little in common with the book. You can enjoy the show, but you're not going to get a summary of the book.

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u/spectre78 18h ago

Show is fantastic (as a lover of the books), but is VERY different in who it chooses to spend time on. Almost evolving into a different story altogether within the same universe.

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u/azflatlander 17h ago

He likes the “Culture” because the AI is benevolent to humans. Deus ex machina.

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u/infinitetheory Kentucky 16h ago

he saw a post-everything utopian society and didn't bother even reading the discussions of the themes of why there might be negatives there. and then he didn't try to make the utopia either

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u/123f0urfive678nine10 17h ago

Didn't you hear? Reading is woke. /s

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u/GrandOldCheese 13h ago

I’m not normally this much of a gate keeper but Musk is such a fucking poseur.

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u/NatashOverWorld 7h ago

He probably tried reading it because it was supposed to be about poly and lots of sex and gave up disappointed in 4 four chapters.

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u/TheDakestTimeline 18h ago

The moon is a harsh mistress

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u/Enshitification 18h ago

It's a shame Michael Valentine isn't around to tiddlywink them all into a higher spacial dimension.

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u/SpinosRule 18h ago

I doubt the SAM aliens would want them in their dimension anyway! Always a blast when I can make political talk Satisfactory.

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u/ETxsubboy 19h ago

To be fair, if you don't have a good grasp of some of the social and political stuff that Heinlien puts in his books, you can definitely get the wrong ideas from them.

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u/tryingisbetter 19h ago

I'm a little surprised that Elon would read, let alone like, strangers in a strange land though.

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u/SnipesCC 19h ago

Remember that he's obsessed with Mars, and Stranger in a Strange Land is about what happens when a human grows up on Mars.

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u/tryingisbetter 18h ago

I don't think he understands what the theme of the book is about, lol

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u/SnipesCC 18h ago

Happens a lot. Steve Miller i a Star Trek fan. Dressed up for Halloween as a kid. The Wokest show in the 60s.

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u/JBaecker 18h ago

I believe you mean he did not grok the book….

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u/Zoo412Review 18h ago

He really doesn’t, it frustrates me to no end. It’s a common take with a type of dude I already find frustrating (including the person who handed me a copy of the book as a teen), and add unimaginable wealth and it’s just exhausting. I am also slightly convinced he thinks the Larkin Decision is a real law. Let’s make a bet that someone in that sphere will get so high on their own AI (or ketamine) supply that one of them accidentally slips those actual words.

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u/lapsedhuman 18h ago

Well, Michael Smith is martyred.

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u/SpinosRule 16h ago

DEFINITELY NOT.

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u/structured_anarchist 14h ago

I'm thinking he definitely thought Starship Troopers was a blueprint for society.

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u/MangoCats 16h ago

If he wanted, he can pay people to tutor him in the Cliffs' Notes - after his paid assistants level him up in the video games.

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u/notashroom 4h ago

Media literacy is abysmal among conservatives. Remember them getting upset that Rage Against the Machine "became" political? They're all vibes.

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u/indigo945 10h ago

You can definitely get the wrong ideas from Heinlein's books if you do have a good grasp of the social and political stuff in them. Misogynistic bullshit.

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u/spinningcolours 19h ago

“Grok” has a cannibalism implication in Heinlein’s novel.

Not a bad parallel to how ai is consuming civilized products and creating distorted versions.

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u/meh_69420 14h ago

I mean, it's there sure, but it reads more like physics and the conservation of energy in the book. I feel like focusing on the eating of your water brother rather than everything else it implies is an incredibly simplistic and reductive reading of the material.

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u/GatsoFatso 19h ago

Truth is Stranger than a Stranger in a Strange Land...

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u/Crab__Juice 18h ago

It really sucks that that word is now more associated with a dumb nazi prick than its originator, at least for now.

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u/SpinosRule 16h ago

For now. Heinlein will have his day again.

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u/redalert825 19h ago

Why wouldn't he? He's a greater athlete than LeBron James! Faster than Usain Bolt! Stronger than Derrick Henry. Etc etc

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u/MaNewt 16h ago

Ai bros stole it first  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grokking_(machine_learning)

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u/FreeRangeEngineer 7h ago

Even so, computer scientists already established its use decades earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok#In_computer_programmer_culture

I don't know why people think Musk derived it from a book when he may simply have taken it out of context from CompSci jargon.

It's not exactly an obscure word in the technical world.

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u/RemyJe 6h ago

Or the Internet in general. Even non programmers on the early Internet used the ORD, or at a minimum knew it meant “understand.”

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u/Mr_Funbags 18h ago

In my mind (based on what I think I've read) Heinlein was almost fascistic in his personal beliefs. It's that what you're referencing?

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u/partisanal_cheese Foreign 18h ago

Libertarian - Heinlein was a political 14 year old.

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u/dfh-1 18h ago

...no. Heinlein was anything but fascist.

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u/Mr_Funbags 9h ago

I'll check it out again. My memory isn't solid on that.

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u/themattboard Tennessee 6h ago

The politics in his work are all over the place but usually in the libertarian space (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) but occasionally fascistic (Starship Troopers) and weird WTF (Time Enough for Love, Stranger in a Strange Land)

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u/dfh-1 1h ago

Starship Troopers wasn't fascist either, despite that wretched movie.  The underlying theme in his works is personal responsibility, something that is incompatible with fascism or any other kind of groupthink.

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u/themattboard Tennessee 8m ago

The movie was an out and out satire of fascism and wasn't subtle about it. It went out of its way to show itself as such.

The book was much more on board with ideas like voting and civil liberties only existing for those capable of military service. It glorified war, state indoctrination and limited rights. While he may have intended those to be critical of authoritarianism, it isn't abundantly clear in and of itself which is why it politically feels much different than his other work.

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u/nobodyoukno 15h ago

Everything 'musk' is stolen from someone else.

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u/RemyJe 6h ago

Not to be fair to Musk, but it became a well used word on the early Internet even by people who had never read Stranger.

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u/Basicly-Inevitable 6h ago

Yeah, but Elon is obsessed with Mars. So.. it's clear he picked it because it was originally a "martian word", not because he heard it on the early Internet.

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u/Joshua_Seed 9h ago

That's ok. Heinlein was an asshole too. Imagine writing all your characters to have multiple doctorate degrees, then write them making stupid choices even though you as a writer have all the time in the world to have them make clever decisions.

Idolized intelligence without having it, while believing that he himself was very very smart. Remind you of anyone?