This is seriously so tone deaf, I don’t know where to start. Don’t name your initiative after the title of a chilling warning from TNG.
This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted their desire to “make Star Trek real”—while unconsciously reminding us of what the utopian science fiction franchise is fundamentally about.
Their Tuesday event was the latest in Hegseth’s ongoing “Arsenal of Freedom” tour, which was held at SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. (Itself a newly created town that takes its name from a term popularized by Star Trek.)
Neither Musk nor Hegseth seemed to recall that the “Arsenal of Freedom” phrase—at least in the context of Star Trek—is also the title of a 1988 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That episode depicts an AI-powered weapons system, and its automated salesman, which destroys an entire civilization and eventually threatens the crew of the USS Enterprise. (Some Trekkies made the connection, however.)
This is like the tech broligarchs using references to Tolkien while propping up a fascist regime and trying to forge one AGI to rule us all.
Okay, so they’re aiming for the Eugenics Wars, then World War III…
Or maybe they mean the Terran Empire of the Mirror Universe. That seems more consistent with their behaviour.
They didn’t say which part of StarTrek.
Y’all think they are talking about Starfleet, but they are talking about making that Hitler planet.
They just heard “Eugenics Wars” and got a little too excited
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!
I’m guessing it’ll be less Star Trek and more The Expanse - corporations owning everything and no public civic positions.
Their Prime Directive is only 14 Words
TIHI
How do I gargle Trump’s balls without drowning in his flatulent shit filled diapers?
Use an airplane.
Kegsbreath and Space Karen are probably the two most tone deaf, incomprehensibly incompetent individuals that I’ve ever known. This is just more proof of how absolute bellends with no critical thinking skills can fail upward and cause untold damage; yet defying all odds, they still reach positions of power that unlock their ability to cause massive amounts of damage. Fucking wild.
I’m actually fairly confident they do recall and know exactly what the title / phrase connotates.
It’s too on the nose to be accidental.
You think these are people of culture?
Star Trek but without the show’s lessons…isn’t that basically just the Dominion from DS9?
Look, I want Jeffrey Combs as Secretary of War.
And also Secretary of Treasury
Why stop there? Jeffrey Combs can be the entire cabinet.
What do you call Jeffrey Combs standing around by himself?
“A Star Trek convention”
Nah you gotta have one Damar on the cabinet with the rest being Weyouns.
We need Brunt, FCA, in charge of Treasury.
They may be on to something, the world war which led to Zefram Cochrane’s warp drive and first contact was started in 2026.
Am I misremembering, didnt Musk get name-dropped in a star trek show?
He got name-dropped in Discovery. Not exactly something to boast about.
That’s the one, thanks for confirming.
Yes, unfortunately. It said he was a great, compared with other greats.
spoiler
Lucky for those in the know, that came from a mirror universe guy. ::: .
…can I have the exact quote? Or a clip of it? This is the kind of thing that needs to be seen to truly sink in.
Lorca (already a very unconventional Star Trek captain) asks if wants to be “remembered in history… alongside the Wright Brothers, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane…or as a failed fungus expert, a selfish little man who put the survival of his own ego before the lives of others?”
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/star-trek-elon-musk.html
Well, that’s absolutely fucked. Almost same level of fucked as you know who being in Home Alone 2. But damn, this is fucked.
That was the first clear sign that Lorca was from the Mirror Universe.
Elon is, as demonstrated, happy to let that sink in.
JJ902 reference in 2026??
spoiler
That’s the particular universe he thinks he’s creating, clearly
