Elon Musk’s New Baby’s Name Is Actually Less Absurd Than His Anti-Democratic, Quasi-Eugenicist Views
▻https://jacobinmag.com/2020/5/elon-musk-grimes-baby-population-democracy
Elon Musk, America’s most online billionaire, recently took a break from spreading coronavirus misinformation and crashing his company’s market value on Twitter to be with his girlfriend, Canadian pop singer Grimes, for the birth of their new baby. But the pair wasn’t content to just enjoy their newborn bliss.
Musk set off a Twitter and media frenzy when he announced they were calling the baby X Æ A-12 Musk, sparking a debate among cult followers and confused people everywhere about the meaning of the cryptic phrase. Grimes cleared up some of the questions when she tweeted that X stood for the “unknown variable”; Æ for her “elven spelling” of Ai, meaning love or artificial intelligence; and A-12 for a Lockheed stealth aircraft designed for the CIA and code-named Archangel. She explained that it’s the couple’s favorite aircraft because it’s “Great in battle, but non-violent,” even though it played an important role in gathering intel on North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Musk has since appeared to confirm the child’s name is pronounced X Ash A-12 (if it’s even legal), but it should come as no surprise that an uber-wealthy, super-online couple would go out of their way to pick a moniker designed to garner maximum publicity with seemingly little regard for how it will affect their child. (...)
Musk has long basked in the media glow, his profile and mystique having largely been built up by a press that for years uncritically parroted his outlandish visions of the future. Despite styling himself an innovator, Musk is little more than the hype man for his companies — someone who’s only made progress thanks to massive public funds, public-sector innovations, and the work of those below him.
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But the story of X Æ A-12 goes beyond the child’s name. While this is Grimes’s first child, it’s Musk’s seventh — and like many others in his strata of society, he has some repellent views on parenthood, population, and the worth of others.
Musk has been open in the past about his concern that “smart” people aren’t reproducing quickly enough. Speaking to Ashlee Vance for his 2015 biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Musk observed that “wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of a low birth rate,” but that “if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad.” He clarified that he doesn’t want other people to stop having kids; he simply wants “smart” people to have more. But it’s more than a little disturbing to hear a man whose family amassed wealth in apartheid South Africa (Musk’s father was part-owner of an emerald mine) expressing a quasi-eugenic concern that those he deems superior are being further outnumbered by those he deems inferior.
Musk’s views are not out of step with other tech leaders.