The Monday, Oct. 23 discussion on David Sacks’s Twitter Space with billionaire venture capitalist Elon Musk and Presidential pre-candidate Vivek Ramaswamy usefully put on the public agenda the urgency of dropping the policy of global war. Headlines on the discussion from Fortune to Russia’s TASS and a wide range of social media, focused on Musk’s warnings that the West is “sleepwalking our way into World War III with one foolish decision after the other.”
Musk wondered if people are aware that Russia and China have started conducting joint military exercises. “A combination of Russia, China, and Iran should be viewed as very strong relative to the West.... The potential here isn’t a small battle. It is a massive battle where the industrial capacity is of comparable size to the Western alliances.... We do not have an overwhelming advantage in industrial might, and the foundation of war is economic power, especially industrial output,” Musk said at one point.
“Unfortunately, our policy has been forcing Russia and Iran to ally with China. It’s been forcing them. What choice have we given them? And so, Russia has the raw materials, and China has the industrial capacity, frankly, a perfect match from a war standpoint. So we need to stop doing that. It’s unwise, and I think it will lead to immense risk to civilization.... We need to make sure we are not putting civilization itself at risk, which is World War III.”