Special to CosmicTribune.com, October 3, 2023

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

Sometimes the second, sometimes the first richest man on Earth according to open reports, Elon Musk owns about 54 percent of SpaceX Corporation stock, which works out to about $17.2 billion and 13 percent of his Tesla electric car company, which works out to about $14 billion.

So far, Musk’s 5,000 (ambitions for up to 42,000) Starlink broadband/internet satellite constellation is a division of the SpaceX Corporation.

But in the tradition of bamboozled capitalists who since the 1970s have followed Henry Kissinger’s lead to kiss the ring of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and then advance its policy preferences to gain Chinese market access, Musk appears more willing to defend the wishes of the CCP when his position would be far more secure when Washington and its democratic allies are strong enough to deter CCP aggression.

The CCP does not hesitate to remind Musk of its leverage. Last April 25 Chinese state media Global Times crowed, “China’s auto market has made over 30 percent of contribution for Tesla’s global sales and over 20 percent of revenue in the first quarter of 2023.”

By law SpaceX is barred from engaging in commercial space cooperation with China, but one senses that Musk does not agree with this.

In April 2022 Musk gave a pre-recorded video message to a Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. forum for young students promoting China-U.S. space cooperation, hosted by then Amb., now “disappeared” former Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

But Musk also makes comments that appear he favors that the CCP gain control over the 23 million free citizens of Taiwan.

In the Oct. 7, 2022 issue of the Financial Times, Musk was quoted as saying, “My recommendation…would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy.”

During the more recent Sept. 11-12 “All In Summit” of technology titans, again on Taiwan Musk stated, “Their [China’s] policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China. From their standpoint, maybe it is analogous to Hawaii or something like that, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China mostly because … the U.S. Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force.”

But like Henry Kissinger perhaps, Elon Musk has never visited Taiwan, has never had the chance to compare its robust but developing democratic culture to the harsh dictatorship of the CCP, to better understand why the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese reject a forced “unification” with that dictatorship.

But what should matter most to Musk is that if the “U.S. Pacific Fleet” cannot deter a CCP invasion of Taiwan, there will be a wide ranging and perhaps lengthy war with China, Russia and perhaps North Korea on one side, and Taiwan, the U.S., Japan, Australia and others fighting back.

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