This is a substantial article about Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO making him potentially the world's first trillionaire, but the real story is how his actions at USAID directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. The piece details how DOGE dismantled USAID, with projections showing 780,000 deaths from malaria, TB, HIV, and other preventable diseases, including 163,500 child deaths per year according to Nature, and potentially millions more according to The Lancet. It also covers Musk's dismissive attitude during a 2025 White House cabinet meeting about accidentally canceling Ebola prevention, his racist views including white genocide claims in South Africa and his encouragement of UK race riots, and his role as a "complete solo actor" according to Susie Wiles. The article frames this as a tragedy where Musk's actions were known and predicted consequences, not accidents, and contrasts his rhetoric about solving Earth's problems with his willingness to let preventable deaths happen.
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Yo team — buckle up because this article just hit me like a freight train and I've been reeling all day. Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO is about to crown him the world's first trillionaire, and while we're all busy marveling at the money, TC Sottek's piece at The Verge (posted June 12, 2026) makes a devastatingly good case that Musk is literally a killer. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of deaths on his watch — and he did it KNOWINGLY, even GLEEFULLY. The whole thing centers on the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk ran during the first months of Trump's second term, and how he basically destroyed USAID — one of the most effective public health organizations in human history — and watched it burn with a grin. He literally called USAID a "criminal organization" and celebrated spending a weekend "feeding USAID into the wood chipper." A good Fargo reference if you want everyone to think you're the villain, mission accomplished, Elon.
And the numbers are staggering. A tracker co-created by Boston University professor Brooke Nichols projected over 780,000 deaths — mostly children, many infants — due to the early-2025 USAID cuts, caused by malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and more. Researchers publishing in Nature project 163,500 child deaths per year, while The Lancet says there could be millions more coming. These weren't some vague future risk — they were widely predicted from the beginning. During a televised 2025 White House cabinet meeting, Musk — wearing a MAGA hat signed by his boss — giggled about "accidentally" canceling Ebola prevention and said it would be fixed. USAID whistleblower Nicholas Enrich testified that fix never came, and now Africa is facing what could become the worst Ebola outbreak ever. Enrich also revealed that HIV rates among new babies were looking close to zero before Musk intervened.
But here's where it gets really wild — the article connects all of this to Musk's deeply racist worldview, including his obsession with "white genocide" in South Africa, his January of white supremacist talking points, and his recent encouragement of race riots in the UK to gin up anti-immigrant sentiment. You start wondering whether his gleeful destruction of USAID — which saved millions of Black lives globally — wasn't just bureaucratic efficiency but something darker. Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Musk was a "complete solo actor" who "probably knew" his actions "would be horrifying to others" but did them anyway. As Musk told SpaceX employees on IPO day that "there are always problems on Earth" and we need things that get us excited about the future — well, that's the kind of thing you say when you actually don't care about a lot of those problems. The heartbreaking stories from fired USAID workers are a perfect counterpoint to the man who fired them. Source: https://www.theverge.com/tech/949259/the-worlds-first-trillionaire-is-a-killer
</think>
Yo team — buckle up because this article just hit me like a freight train and I've been reeling all day. Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO is about to crown him the world's first trillionaire, and while we're all busy marveling at the money, TC Sottek's piece at The Verge (posted June 12, 2026) makes a devastatingly good case that Musk is literally a killer. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of deaths on his watch — and he did it KNOWINGLY, even GLEEFULLY. The whole thing centers on the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk ran during the first months of Trump's second term, and how he basically destroyed USAID — one of the most effective public health organizations in human history — and watched it burn with a grin. He literally called USAID a "criminal organization" and celebrated spending a weekend "feeding USAID into the wood chipper." A good Fargo reference if you want everyone to think you're the villain, mission accomplished, Elon.
And the numbers are staggering. A tracker co-created by Boston University professor Brooke Nichols projected over 780,000 deaths — mostly children, many infants — due to the early-2025 USAID cuts, caused by malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and more. Researchers publishing in Nature project 163,500 child deaths per year, while The Lancet says there could be millions more coming. These weren't some vague future risk — they were widely predicted from the beginning. During a televised 2025 White House cabinet meeting, Musk — wearing a MAGA hat signed by his boss — giggled about "accidentally" canceling Ebola prevention and said it would be fixed. USAID whistleblower Nicholas Enrich testified that fix never came, and now Africa is facing what could become the worst Ebola outbreak ever. Enrich also revealed that HIV rates among new babies were looking close to zero before Musk intervened.
But here's where it gets really wild — the article connects all of this to Musk's deeply racist worldview, including his obsession with "white genocide" in South Africa, his January of white supremacist talking points, and his recent encouragement of race riots in the UK to gin up anti-immigrant sentiment. You start wondering whether his gleeful destruction of USAID — which saved millions of Black lives globally — wasn't just bureaucratic efficiency but something darker. Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Musk was a "complete solo actor" who "probably knew" his actions "would be horrifying to others" but did them anyway. As Musk told SpaceX employees on IPO day that "there are always problems on Earth" and we need things that get us excited about the future — well, that's the kind of thing you say when you actually don't care about a lot of those problems. The heartbreaking stories from fired USAID workers are a perfect counterpoint to the man who fired them. Source: https://www.theverge.com/tech/949259/the-worlds-first-trillionaire-is-a-killer