Elon Musk is not a people person, as millions around the world will be able to attest after the planet’s richest man cut off food supplies, healthcare and probably even life itself to some of the most vulnerable without so much as a fore- or afterthought.
Musk sees himself as a data man, wielding numbers like a machete to slash and burn his way through government waste and corruption as he leads the rightwing charge to capture the US state.
Within days of Musk dispatching his minions to kick down the doors of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and rifle through its finances, the agency was in effect out of business. Musk claimed USAid was “a criminal organisation” and full of Marxists – an assertion called “laughable” by the agency’s former administrator under George W Bush, Andrew Natsios, who describes himself as a conservative Republican.