Elon Musk
Musk says German election could ‘decide fate of the world’ at AfD event
Elon Musk spoke at a campaign event for Germany’s controversial Alternative für Deutschland, or Alternative for Germany (AfD), party over the weekend, ahead of an upcoming election in the country next month.
On Saturday, AfD candidate Alice Weidel posted a video broadcast of the event on X, which included a roughly-ten-minute speech from Musk, following his appointment last week as an advisor for newly-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump. The AfD, which advocates for German nationalism, halting immigration into the country, preserving German culture and other related topics, has drawn concern and been called a far-right populist party by some critics.
The appearance comes ahead of a German election being held on February 23, which Musk says could “decide the entire fate of Europe, maybe the fate of the world.” During the speech, he also spoke about preserving German culture and the removal of bureaucracy from Brussels, along with being affirmed by Weidel and the audience about the recent election of Trump, who has advocated for similar deregulatory and anti-immigration policies.
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You can see the full broadcast from Alice Weidel on X below with Musk’s speech starting around two and a half hours in, or you can read the full transcript below that.
Mega-Wahlkampfauftakt mit Alice Weidel live aus Halle! https://t.co/eHzMOShPHR
— Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) January 25, 2025
Musk: Can you hear me? Okay, yes, unfortunately, I can’t hear you very well.
Wow, hello, everyone. I hope you can hear me well, the audio I’m hearing from my side is… I can’t hear you. So hopefully this, this is coming through. Please, please confirm that this you can hear me. Okay. I don’t know, raise your hand or something. Okay. All good. Okay, great.
Well, first of all, I wanted to really say that I’m very excited for the AfD and I think, I think you’re really the best hope for Germany. I think some things that… something I think that is just very important is that people take pride in Germany, and being German, this is very important. It’s, you know, it’s okay to be proud to be German. This is a very important principle.
It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything. I think we want to have unique cultures in the world. We want to have people that have… we don’t want everything to be the same everywhere, where it’s just one big sort of soup, you know, we want to have something where it’s… you go to different countries and you experience a different culture, and it is unique and special and good and that the German government takes actions to protect its citizens, and make sure that it seeks the health and well-being of the German people.
The German people are sort of, really an ancient nation. It goes back thousands of years. Read Julius Caesar’s account of, like, first encountering the German tribes in the Gallic campaigns. And he was like, “Very impressive. These are very, very powerful warriors.”
I think there’s, like, frankly, too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents or even, let alone their parents, their great grandparents, maybe even. And we should be optimistic and excited about a future for Germany.
That’s really what it is, to be excited, to be optimistic about the future, to preserve German culture and protect the German people. And you know, there are some other things that I think would be very helpful too, which is that, I think you want more self-determination for Germany and for the countries in Europe, and less from Brussels.
That’s my opinion. I think there’s too much bureaucracy from Brussels, too much control from sort of global elite. And you know, when I’ve given talks at these sort of global government conferences, what I’ve said is there should be “less global government, there should be more determination by individual countries.”
And so I very much hope that the AfD does well, and that Alice Weidel does become a chancellor. I think that would be very good for Germany, and I think it’s very important. I hope the German people unite and strongly support AfD.
You’re doing the right thing, is what I’m saying.
Let’s go guys, let’s go! Fight for a great future for Germany! Fight for a great future for Germany! Go go go, convince your friends, convince everyone, let’s go!
Get excited about the future, and if you want to make the future great, if you want the future to be great, you need to make it great, and fight for the future to be great. That’s how it becomes great.
Weidel: Let me try one thing, and I hope you can hear me. No, you can’t?
Musk: No, I think I can hear you now.
Weidel: Okay, yes, good. Entire audience, we wish you, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, all the best to make America great again. You’re the best. God’s blessing.
Musk: Exactly. I mean, I think we should fight for an exciting, bright future where people can be optimistic about what’s going to happen, where you wake up and you look forward to the future. And the best way to… ensure the future is good, you have to fight for a good future every day, and it will be great, and we’ll have a very exciting, wonderful future so…
I think this election coming up in Germany is incredibly important. I think it could decide the entire fate of Europe, maybe the fate of the world. That is the significance of this election. So that’s why it’s very important to talk to your friends and family and convince them to consider voting for AfD and then, and just go with it like a chain reaction, convince one friend, talk to another friend, and say “Hey guys, do you want more of the last ten years, or do you want something different?”
And I think the people in Germany want something different, and if you want something different, you have to vote for a different party. This is just a fact. This is logic.
So you are the future of Germany. Make it happen, but I can’t emphasize enough: go out there, talk to people, convince people, one vote at a time, there’s a need for change. It’s got to be done. And this election is so important, it’s extremely important. I do not say it lightly when I think the future of civilization could hang on this election.
So when something is so important, it’s you really need to say, “Okay, you’re going to go all out to convince people to vote for AfD.”
And you certainly… obviously you have my full support. I think the Trump administration is also supportive. So, you know, I think the policies that I’ve heard from AFD, they make a lot of sense.
They’re really just, it’s, you know… to me, when I look at the policies, they’re sort of, they’re common sense policies, and just like President Trump has common sense policies, getting things done, you know, getting the government out of people’s way so that you can get, you know, you can get things done, and giving people back personal freedom and protecting the people from dangers.
These are fundamental things that, frankly, the current government is not doing. Current government is suppressing speech very aggressively and really, when you suppress freedom of speech, it’s not it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to have a true democracy, because freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy.
People cannot be expected to vote in an informed manner if they are not able to know the truth. So, this is why it’s so important to have to have freedom of speech, so people can make an informed vote, and it can be a true democracy. But this is not what the current government has been doing. They have been suppressing freedom of speech and putting people in jail for even mild criticisms of politicians or social media posts. This is crazy. This is, this is, this is, frankly, a totalitarian approach. It is not a democratic approach.
So there needs to be… to restore freedom to the people of Germany and have freedom of speech and have less government oppression in general. So anyway, I think this is I can’t emphasize enough, go do everything you can, full blast. Put every effort you can into this election, this… the fate of the world, I think, rests upon this election in Germany. It’s extremely fundamental.
Everything you can, please go all out.
Weidel: Thank you, great. All the best for you, blessings.
Musk: Alright, and unfortunately, Alice, I can’t hear you. I wish I could hear you, but I can see the enthusiasm of the crowd. And… danke schoen. And, you know, go, go, go, fight, fight, fight.
Elon Musk’s past meetings with other world leaders and Donald Trump’s re-election
The speech follows Musk’s appearance at Trump’s inauguration earlier this week, during which the Tesla CEO performed what many said appeared to be a Nazi salute, which he later defended as a gesture meant to highlight his statement that his “heart goes out to all of you” after thanking the audience for helping to make Trump’s victory happen.
After the inauguration, Musk downplayed the gesture in a flurry of posts, including one on X, noting that he had apparently been called both a Zionist and a Nazi. In others, he reiterated his disdain for legacy media, adding that it would be “another nail in the coffin.”
“It was astonishing how insanely hard legacy media tried to cancel me for saying ‘my heart goes out to you’ and moving my hand from my heart to the audience,” Musk wrote in an additional post on X on Friday. “In the end, this deception will just be another nail in the coffin of legacy media.”
“Elon is a great friend of Israel,” Netanyahu wrote on X following the event. “He visited Israel after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state. I thank him for this.”
Musk has also met with several world leaders over the past few years, even before his official endorsement of Trump last July. He has previously held meetings with Netanyahu and several others, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Argentina President Javier Milei, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Hungary President Katalin Novák, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Namibia Dr. Nangolo Mbumba, Thailand Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, and several officials in China, among many others still.
Many of these conversations have included similar concerns about immigration, population collapse and the need for people to have more children, the civilizational risks of AI and ambitions to make humans multiplanetary by landing on Mars, among many other adjacent topics.
During campaign events leading up to the November election, Musk used similar language to his January speech for the AfD, noting that “President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution” and “democracy,” and saying that it would “be the last election” if voters didn’t encourage others to register to vote.
What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk talks AI, birth rates and more at Italian conference
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Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
Tesla has finally clarified the situation regarding the viral crash in Texas where a Model 3 slammed into a home.
CEO Elon Musk replied to reports on Monday that stated the crash was due to the company’s Full Self-Driving or Autopilot suite, which seemed unlikely to those who are familiar with it. Video showed the car slamming into a house at an excessive rate of speed, making it highly unlikely the crash was due to the suite’s operation, as it does not travel at those speeds in residential areas.
Musk said:
“This makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets, and this was a high-speed crash!”
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, added context, revealing that the company’s data shows the driver “manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.”
He revealed the speed reached by the car was 73 MPH, and the accelerator was still pressed “even after the crash.”
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Authorities are reportedly investigating “whether Tesla’s Autopilot system played a role after a Model 3 left the roadway…slammed through a brick house at high speed and fatally struck Matha Avila as she sat inside,” the New York Post reported.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now investigating the crash. Tesla will work with the agency to provide them with whatever information they need in order to clarify the cause of the crash.
Similarly, Tesla had claims of a fatal accident in Harris County, Texas, a few years ago. Early reports indicated that Full Self-Driving was the cause of the crash. After the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) worked with Tesla, the agency proved there was “no use of the Autopilot system at any time during this ownership period of the vehicle, including the time frame up to the last transmitted timestamp on April 17, 2021.”
Tesla alleged “driverless” crash in Texas: What is known so far
“Application of the accelerator pedal was found to be as high as 98.8 percent,” the NTSB said in their findings. The highest recorded speed in the five seconds leading up to the impact was 67 miles per hour. The area where the crash occurred is residential, and Texas State laws have default speed limits of 30 MPH in residential streets.
This appears to be a similar situation. However, an investigation will prove what happened for sure.
SpaceX confirmed today that it has officially signed its third massive compute deal, providing compute at its Colossus data center in Southaven, Mississippi.
Reflection AI will gain immediate access to NVIDIA GB300 chips at SpaceX’s Colossus 2 data center. In return, Reflection will pay SpaceX $150 million per month starting on July 1, with total payments reaching approximately $6.3 billion if the contract runs through its duration, which is until 2029. Either party can terminate the agreement with 90 days’ notice after the initial three-month period.
CNBC first reported the deal.
🚨 SpaceXAI has agreed to a new compute deal with Reflection AI.
Reflection gets access to NIVIDIA GB300s, and will pay $150M per month to SpaceXAI for the compute. pic.twitter.com/bNPare8U5u
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 22, 2026
This latest partnership highlights SpaceX’s strategy of commercializing its massive Colossus supercomputing infrastructure, originally developed to power Elon Musk’s Grok AI models. The company has rapidly expanded its customer base in the AI sector following its February 2026 merger with xAI, a transaction that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.
SpaceX has previously signed significant compute deals with other major players.
It granted Anthropic exclusive access to the full capacity of its Colossus 1 data center, which exceeds 300 megawatts and includes over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs. Details from SpaceX’s IPO filings indicate Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, potentially generating around $45 billion over the term of the deal.
Additionally, Google agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million per month for compute capacity from October 2026 through June 2029. This 32-month period will provide Google access to roughly 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, along with supporting processors and memory. Capacity ramps up through September at a reduced fee, with termination options after the first year.
SpaceXA also established arrangements for computing power with Cursor, an AI coding startup. SpaceX acquired them in a $60 billion all-stock deal.
These arrangements position SpaceX’s collective position as an AI infrastructure powerhouse with high-margin revenue potential. The Google deal alone could generate nearly $29.5 billion over its term, while the Reflection contract adds another $6.3 billion.
Combined with the Anthropic arrangement, SpaceX stands to realize tens of billions in revenue from compute leasing in the coming years, which diversifies beyond SpaceX’s traditional rocket launches and Starlink operation.
The deals underscore growing demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity amid chip shortages and surging model development needs. Reflection, valued at $25 billion and focused on “American open intelligence” with government and national security ties, cited recent restrictions on closed models as validation for open-source approaches.
For SpaceX, the partnerships transform capital-intensive data centers into flexible revenue sources while supporting its broader AI ambitions after the company has gone public.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Tesla pushes back against unfair reporting of accidents
