Elon Musk's Chinese Public-Private Partnership.

In the previous article, we discussed the “gaggle of Silicon Valley oligarchs” who can be distinguished by their “liking for the ideas presented in Nick Land’s Dark Enlightenment and their enthusiasm for Technocracy.” Calling them the NRx accelerationists, we noted that Elon Musk is part of this group.

In 1938 in Technocrat Magazine, vol. 3, No. 4—the in-house magazine of Technocracy Inc.—Technocracy was described as:

The science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population.

In the 2014 Chinese State Council Notice concerning Issuance of the Planning Outline for the Establishment of a Social Credit System, the Chinese government laid out its vision for its social mechanism:

Accelerating the establishment of a social credit system is an important foundation for comprehensively implementing the scientific viewpoint of development. [. . .]

Accelerating and advancing the establishment of the social credit system is an important precondition for promoting the optimized allocation of resources [. . .]; and an urgent requirement for improving mechanisms for scientific development.

Technocracy is a centralised system of control based upon the distribution and allocation of all resources, right down to the individual level. It gives those who command the whole system absolute behavioural control of the entire population. Technocracy is currently being trialled in China.

Elon Musk, who invested at least $277 million putting Trump in the White House, is a “Dark MAGA” accelerationist who wants us to live in a Technocracy and his family is steeped in the tradition of Technocracy.

Elon Musk’s public persona is a caricature from which modern-day propaganda can be spun. The type of propaganda being spun depends on which of his antics is being reported upon in “the news” by which audience. For some demographics, Musk is presented as a free-speech absolutist, a trillionaire freedom crusader, and a defender of democracy. For other demographics, he is depicted as a far-right nationalist and a dangerous agent provocateur. In truth, Musk’s in-house PR team at X—namely, its “business operations” department—carefully curates (and probably constructs) his talking-head image to suit.

Pitting pro-Musk and anti-Musk camps against each other is one way the oligarchs “use” him to deploy their age-old divide-and-rule strategy. Love him or hate him, the point is to keep the public’s focus on Musk, the media personality, and off any in-depth examination of what he and his companies are actually doing.

Keep in mind, Musk is just one NRx accelerationist oligarch among a cohort of NRx accelerationists. Also remember that the NRx accelerationists are part of the larger global functional oligarchy. Nonetheless, it is Musk that often dominates the spotlight.

Musk constantly reminds his millions of seemingly devoted followers that the Chinese and US governments are in some sort of technological race that the US must win. This new cold war narrative suits Musk and his fellow NRx accelerationists, as it is their technology companies that profit from the US government contracts supposedly enabling the US private sector to win the alleged race.

However, as I recently reported for Unlimited Hangout, when we look at that so-called race, it appears to be fake:

[N]ot only is technological competition conspicuously absent, there’s also little sign of any conflict within the transnational capital investment rails. [. . .] Partnerships between US and Chinese tech companies have been blatant for decades and precede the “new cold war” narrative we are supposed to accept. [The NRx accelerationists] have offered a story about existential threats and intense competition to justify US public expenditure (i.e., taxpayers’ money) on AI development, but that’s all it is: a story to help them achieve their objectives.

Nothing illustrates this more that Elon Musk’s business decisions with regard to his China-based operations. Musk isn’t competing with Chinese manufacturers, nor is he challenging Chinese state regulators. He is assisting the technological development of his Chinese competitors and working with Chinese regulators to advance what is plainly a shared objective.

The NRx accelerationists, Chinese state officials and China’s private sector innovators alike favour a new kind of global governance system based on the adoption of what the United Nations (UN) calls “frontier technology” across a network of smart city-states.

The UN’s consequent New Urban Agenda “calls for [. . .] smart-city approaches that use digitalization, clean energy and technologies.” This can only be achieved, says the UN, through public-private partnership.

Apparently, “innovative funding opportunities and partnerships need to be explored, and the capacity of local governments to effectively procure, test and implement frontier technologies needs to be significantly strengthened.” According to the UN, this will “contribute effectively to urban sustainability”, and therefore “frontier technologies and innovations need to be applied”.

The UN defines its so-called frontier technology:

[Frontier technologies] currently include, among others, the Internet of things, sensor networks, machine-to-machine communication, robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, 3D printing, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, autonomous unmanned vehicles, drones, blockchain, cryptographic computing, and big data processing and visualization.

The installation of frontier technology in villages, towns and cities in every country and the adoption of it by communities across the world is more commonly called the digital transformation. The UN favours this approach because it has come to appreciate that it is easier and more efficient to enforce global governance through a network of smart city-states than it is to control national—and often nationalist—populations.

NRx accelerationists like Musk also want to construct their “patchwork of realms” as a transnational network of smart city-states, or neostates. That is to say, UN and NRx accelerationist goals align. China is one among many countries actively pursuing the same smart megacity agenda.

Much of China’s technological and economic development has occurred due to central government investment in China’s numerous Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and in the similar Free Trade Zones (FTZs) that often reside within the larger SEZs. For example, the Lin-gang Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) is located in the Shanghai Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

According to the UN, China’s SEZs and accompanying FTZs are not merely hubs for technological and economic development. They are also trialling new governance structures that will spur advancements in Technocracy, or “institutional innovation” as the UN calls it.

In its 2023 report on “China’s Pilot Free Trade Zones”, the UN acknowledged:

The core function of [China’s] FTZ is institutional innovation to improve government service, expand integration (notably in the services sector), advance reform and encourage technology R&D for industrial transformation through policy tests and experiments. [. . .]

The Pilot FTZs aim to accelerate industrial upgrading through the shift towards an innovation driven economy. [. . .] This looked similar to the purpose of [. . .] the five Chinese SEZs. [. . .]

For the FTZs, the focus is using more comprehensive and innovative policy measures, [. . .] advancing “integrated industrial innovation”, and “optimizing enabling environment for industrial development” including facilitating freer flow of factors such as capital, technologies, talents, and data through reforms in various policy areas.

Via policy tests and various governance experiments, “institutional innovation” seeks to create the “enabling environment” for public-private partnerships to carry out the digital transformation. An enabling environment is, more specifically, a “business-enabling” environment, created for the private sector by the public sector.

The European Union’s definition of “enabling environment” is:

The set of policy, institutional, regulatory, infrastructure, and cultural conditions that govern formal and informal business activity. It includes administration and enforcement of government and national and local institutional arrangements that effect the behaviour of relevant actors.

China’s SEZs and FTZs are developing the necessary frontier technology-based governance systems. They are hubs for integrating Technocracy into governance. As China’s government and Chinese corporations are very much part of the global public-private partnership, its institutional innovations are moving us all closer to the UN’s sought-after smart city-state world and the NRx accelerationists’ neostate empire.

The UN’s 2023 report continued:

In Qingdao FTZ, digital technologies such as AI and big data have been applied to establish a smart enterprise registration system. It is envisaged that this will drive much more transparent, efficient and convenient government service which is essential for sustained economic growth and integration into the world economy. [. . .]

Lin-Gang is seeking breakthroughs in ICVs [Intelligent Connected Vehicles], service robots, interactive terminals, intelligent wearables and drones to scale up high-end intelligent terminals and to expand demonstration AI application scenarios by focusing on intelligent manufacturing, smart cities, and digital security scenarios.

The UN went on to explain why the Lin-gang FTZ is of particular interest to the oligarchs who are behind nascent smart city-based global governance structures:

Lin-gang Special Area allows more developers to participate in the transformation of AI technologies that drives the development of key application fields such as intelligent plants, smart transportation and smart cities, and makes significant contributions to the construction of an AI innovative application demonstration zone with regional features, promoting improvement and scale development of the AI industry. It also enables linkage and mutual empowerment between the AI industry and other cutting-edge industries such as integrated circuits, ICV and biomedicine so as to realize the digital transformation of the whole city.

As we move toward a global system that controls every individual’s access to resources, “big data” is set to get much bigger both in China and elsewhere. The data harvesting, real-time analysis, and data storage that are required and the processing power that is needed to make this proposed global system work are almost beyond imagination. The surge to construct AI data centres in the US and everywhere else is necessary to manage the vast anticipated increase in data storage and analysis.

Once the system is established, the oligarchs hope to link every transaction to the digital identity of every individual and every business on earth. The idea is to monitor all interactions humans have with one another and with every machine and every device they use that is linked to the IoT.

Beyond this intention, the oligarchy proposes converting virtually everything on the planet into tradable, tokenised assets. This transformation of the world and its economy is what the WEF calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and what BRICS nations like China call “Industry 4.0.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that, in order for this 4IR-Industry 4.0 system to function, the additional energy demands will be “equivalent to adding another Japan to global electricity consumption each year.” Hoping to realise this technological control grid, Musk has urged US technology firms, especially those needing AI data center capacity, to adopt the approach taken in China and take advantage of the SEZ-FTZ benefits, as he has done with his Starbase city project in Texas.

Elon Musk is among the NRx accelerationists who are greatly impressed by China’s smart city progress. That’s why he said recently:

The availability of energy is the issue. If you look at electrical output outside of China, it’s more or less flat. Very slight increase, but pretty much flat. [. . .] If you’re putting data centers anywhere except China, where are you going to get your electricity? Especially as you scale, how are you going to turn the chips on? Magical power sources? Magical electricity fairies?

In this comment, Musk was engaging in China-maxxing. This term applies to the new phenomenon, especially apparent within the mainstream media, of veering away from their previous blanket vilification of the Chinese government’s actions to extolling the virtues of China’s economic and technological progress.

Because China has also made significant progress in developing the new governance structures that will facilitate the global imposition of Technocracy, the purpose of China-maxxing is to convince Westerners that Technocracy is the preferable system of governance.

Through his Chinese business ventures and his trips to China, we can see how the UN’s, the Chinese state’s, and the NRx accelerationists’ projects are mutually reinforcing.

In 2019, Musk first met one-to-one with then-Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. In 2023, he met in similar fashion with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, and first-ranked Vice Premier Ding Xuexian. That occasion marked the first time Ding had ever held a private meeting with a foreign corporate CEO.

(Note: Musk isn’t the only Western oligarch enjoying Chinese support, but we’ll stick with his example to illustrate our point.)

Since then, Musk has continued working his way up through China’s political hierarchy. During his most recent trip to China with President Trump and his entourage of tech CEOs, Musk met with Paramount Leader Xi Jinping. Xi reportedly promised Musk and the other gathered US CEOs that China’s economy and business opportunities will only “open wider” to their companies and their interests. Though, frankly, it is difficult to imagine how that collaboration could possibly be any wider.

Approximately half of the Tesla EVs sold worldwide are manufactured in Tesla’s Giga Shanghai factory. The factory is situated in the Shanghai Special Economic Zone (SEZ)—specifically, the Lin-gang Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ). Lin-gang is a Chinese state hub particularly focused on the development of smart transport and Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) or, expressed in other terms, EVs linked to AI and “big data,” often called “smart vehicles.”

China’s FTZs offer foreign corporations a range of incentives, including (1) a significant reduction in the corporation tax, (2) lax import and export duties, and (3) subsidised warehousing and infrastructure costs. In other words, the Chinese business ventures of the CEO and self-titled “TechnoKing” of Tesla are subsidised by the Chinese government and, therefore, by the Chinese people.

If they really wanted to, it seems China’s electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers could easily evade Trump’s tariffs by exporting their EVs to the US via Mexico or Canada. But, for whatever reason, they haven’t, so China’s EV exports to the US have not notably increased, and Tesla retains its US market share. Nonetheless, Chinese EV makers have been rapidly expanding their sales in the international EV market at Tesla’s expense.

Musk’s Tesla is losing global market share to cheaper EVs manufactured in China, and though he constantly highlights the alleged “race” between US and Chinese technology firms, Musk and his businesses are not hampering Chinese technological development. On the contrary, Musk appears to be participating in a collaborative project. China’s SEZ and FTZ state subsides are all well and good, but if those subsidies come at the price of handing a market advantage to your competitors, as it does in Tesla’s case, they make no economic sense.

So, what could be more important to Musk that profits?

The kind of transnational technological innovation the Lin-gang FTZ facilitates has enormous implications for controlling the world population’s freedom to roam and the ability of individuals to remain private.

Though many of us have GPS tracking in our vehicles, we can still use them more or less to go anywhere we like. For instance, UK drivers who use vehicle GPS are commonly tracked by the authorities only if they are being targetted for “directed surveillance.” But the ICV technology that Lin-gang-based companies are developing is designed to automate continual surveillance and end everyone’s privacy and their freedom to roam, in their cars and otherwise.

Earlier we mentioned that the UN considers encouraging our use of ICVs to be an important contribution to the “transformation of the whole city.” Anyone who drives a smart vehicle is adopting part of the UN’s global governance agenda, whether wittingly or unwittingly.

ICVs are festooned with “nodes” that connect the vehicle to the Internet of Things (IoT). The technology is capable of monitoring everything, from our personal and biometric information to our real-time location data and driving habits. Once connected to our other devices, such as our smartphone, our ICV can extract a wealth of personal data, such as personal contacts, call history, and media playlists. When harvested, all of this data can be analysed in real-time to provide anyone with access a complete picture of our life and our current location.

The official explanation for Porsche cars being immobilised en masse in Russia last year was that the manufacturer’s connection to its satellite tracking system malfunctioned. Some claimed the immobilisation was a deliberate test, others that it was the result of a hack. Regardless of the cause or motivation, what the event demonstrates is how easy it is for a third party to remotely interfere with IoT-connected vehicles.

It is not beyond the realm of technological reality that a third party could seize control of a steering wheel or brakes at a calamitous moment. Examples of this have been reported by Western media outlets for the sole purpose of creating fear-mongering anti-Chinese propaganda. But the technology is real, and it is dangerous, yet other Western propagandists, at other times, have invited us to embrace it.

Obviously, the fully automated driverless vehicle, by definition, removes our freedom to roam in a vehicle. As is already the case with smart public transport, we would be reliant on the route the vehicle is programmed by a third party to follow. It is absolutely possible that travel to some destination will be restricted. That is why the UN, for one, is so keen to see driverless vehicles integrated into smart-city developments.

You would imagine, in light of the competition Tesla faces from Chinese EV manufacturers, that Musk would be unwilling to locate his own ICV R&D and manufacturing plants in Chinese FTZs. The purpose of the Lin-gang FTZ is, after all, to work collaboratively to advance surveillance and, in particular, smart vehicle technology. That collaboration is enabling Chinese manufacturers to take market share away from Musk’s Tesla.

Yet Musk, rather than protecting his company from Chinese competition, is increasingly involved with them. For instance, Tesla’s new “Megapack” battery storage manufacturing plant has just started full production in the Lin-gang FTZ.

The usually loquacious Musk has been strangely mute with regard to his role in the Trump trip to China. But, in spite of his silence, we know that Xi Jinping promised the US tech CEOs and investors greater access to China, and we are now starting to see what that meant.

Just one week after returning from China, Tesla announced that it had received Chinese regulatory approval to develop its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system for Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in the Lin-gang FTZ. Again, this move will nudge Chinese manufacturers to do the same. Unsurprisingly, Musk has promised his customers that the Teslas they buy or use will maintain their strict data privacy and security. Tesla’s customers should note, however, the data generated by Tesla’s Lin-gang R&D, along with data generated by the Tesla vehicles themselves, will be stored in mainland Chinese data centres.

Moreover, Musk is working in full partnership with China’s regulators. Evidently his R&D is benefiting from China’s push to establish the kind of smart city-state that the UN favours. He and his fellow NRX accelerationists want to construct similar smart city-states outside of China.

Musk is working with the Chinese state and its corporate partners, not against them. They share a common agenda. As public-private partners, Musk, the Chinese government, and the UN are all collaborating to bring about the envisaged multipolar world order and the associated international network of smart city-states.

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