The world’s first trillionaire is a killer
The world’s first trillionaire is a killer
全球首位万亿富翁是个杀人犯
Elon Musk’s empire of wealth is built on suffering. 埃隆·马斯克的财富帝国建立在苦难之上。
Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO will probably make him the richest person to ever walk the planet. And while his mountain of horrible personal conduct could fill multiple books, one fact in particular stands out: A year ago, Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He did it knowingly. And, worse — gleefully. 埃隆·马斯克旗下 SpaceX 的首次公开募股（IPO）很可能会让他成为地球上有史以来最富有的人。虽然他那堆积如山的恶劣个人行径足以写满好几本书，但有一个事实尤为突出：一年前，马斯克的行为直接导致了数十万人死亡。他是明知故犯，更糟糕的是，他还对此幸灾乐祸。
This is not a serious person, but his abuse of the world is deadly serious. In the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) destroyed the US Agency for International Development, whose mission was a boon to public health around the globe. Musk called the lifesaving agency a “criminal organization” and blithely celebrated spending a weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” It was a good reference if you want everyone to think you’re the killer in Fargo. Mission accomplished, Elon. 这并不是一个严肃的人，但他对世界的蹂躏却是致命且严肃的。在唐纳德·特朗普总统第二个任期的头几个月里，由马斯克领导的“政府效率部”（DOGE）摧毁了美国国际开发署（USAID），该机构的使命曾是全球公共卫生的福音。马斯克称这个救命机构为“犯罪组织”，并轻描淡写地庆祝自己花了一个周末的时间“把 USAID 送进碎木机”。如果你想让所有人都觉得你是电影《冰血暴》（Fargo）里的杀手，这倒是个不错的梗。埃隆，你成功了。
In the months that followed, public health models would indicate Musk was a killer, at a far greater scale than any Coen brothers villain. A tracker co-created by Boston University professor Brooke Nichols projected over 780,000 deaths — mostly of children, many of infants — due to the Trump administration’s early-2025 USAID cuts, caused by malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and more. These deaths were widely predicted from the beginning, a direct, known, and undeniable consequence of DOGE’s actions. We don’t know the precise number of deaths, but multiple experts working on identifying the scale of the tragedy have generally agreed it’s in the hundreds of thousands. Global researchers, publishing in Nature, project that the cuts to USAID could result in 163,500 child deaths yearly. Another publication in The Lancet says there could be millions more to come. Musk showed no sign of caring. 在随后的几个月里，公共卫生模型显示马斯克是一个杀人犯，其规模远超科恩兄弟电影里的任何反派。由波士顿大学教授布鲁克·尼科尔斯（Brooke Nichols）共同创建的追踪系统预测，由于特朗普政府在 2025 年初削减了 USAID 的预算，导致疟疾、结核病、艾滋病等疾病蔓延，造成超过 78 万人死亡——其中大部分是儿童，许多还是婴儿。这些死亡在最初就被广泛预见，这是 DOGE 行为直接、已知且不可否认的后果。我们不知道确切的死亡人数，但多位致力于确定这场悲剧规模的专家普遍认为，死亡人数在数十万之巨。发表在《自然》杂志上的全球研究人员预测，削减 USAID 可能会导致每年 16.35 万名儿童死亡。《柳叶刀》的另一篇出版物则称，未来还可能有数百万人因此丧生。而马斯克对此毫无关切之意。
During a televised cabinet meeting at the White House in 2025, Musk, wearing a murdered-out MAGA hat signed by his boss, had a giggle about “accidentally” canceling Ebola prevention. He said it was a mistake that would be fixed. USAID whistleblower Nicholas Enrich, testifying before Congress, said that fix never came. A little more than a year after Musk’s comments, Africa is facing what could become the worst Ebola outbreak ever. And DOGE’s cleaver to USAID goes well beyond the latest Ebola crisis. According to Enrich, the HIV rate among new babies being born was looking close to zero, until Musk intervened. 2025 年在白宫举行的一次电视内阁会议上，马斯克戴着一顶由他老板签名、全黑配色的“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）帽子，笑着谈论“意外”取消了埃博拉病毒的预防工作。他说这是一个会得到纠正的错误。USAID 的举报人尼古拉斯·恩里奇（Nicholas Enrich）在国会作证时表示，这种纠正从未发生。在马斯克发表上述言论一年多后，非洲正面临可能是有史以来最严重的埃博拉疫情。而 DOGE 对 USAID 的“砍杀”远不止于最近的埃博拉危机。据恩里奇称，在马斯克干预之前，新生儿的艾滋病感染率本已接近于零。
You might think Musk’s actions gutting effective global health programs clash with his downright creepy quest to raise birth rates, but not when you consider the guy is also a huge racist. The list is too long to keep score, but a few relevant highlights: He’s stoked claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa, spent most of January posting other white supremacist talking points, and most recently has been encouraging race riots in the UK all to gin up anti-immigrant sentiments. Is there any doubt about why this guy had so much fun destroying one of the most successful global health initiatives in history, which saved millions of Black people? 你可能认为马斯克削减有效全球卫生项目的行为，与他那种令人毛骨悚然的提高出生率的追求相矛盾，但如果你考虑到这家伙还是个彻头彻尾的种族主义者，就不会这么想了。他的劣迹清单太长，数不胜数，但有几个重点：他煽动了关于南非“白人种族灭绝”的言论，一月份大部分时间都在发布其他白人至上主义的论调，最近又在英国煽动种族骚乱，所有这些都是为了激起反移民情绪。还有什么理由怀疑他为什么会如此热衷于摧毁历史上最成功的全球卫生倡议之一，而该倡议曾拯救了数百万黑人的生命？
The Trump administration is packed with extremists, but even some of those folks looked at Musk like, “Now this guy is really wild.” Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair that Musk was a “complete solo actor.” She says he “probably knew” that what he was doing “would be horrifying to others,” but did it anyway. (Unfortunately, Wiles also said she was only “initially aghast” at his conduct, which pretty much sums up the Republican response to the party’s own chaos.) 特朗普政府里挤满了极端分子，但即使是这些人中，也有人看着马斯克心想：“这家伙真是疯了。”特朗普的幕僚长苏西·怀尔斯（Susie Wiles）告诉《名利场》，马斯克是一个“完全的独行侠”。她说他“可能知道”自己的所作所为“会让其他人感到恐惧”，但他还是做了。（遗憾的是，怀尔斯也表示她只是“最初对他的行为感到震惊”，这几乎概括了共和党对其自身混乱局面的反应。）
As he addressed SpaceX employees on IPO day, Musk said, “There are always problems on Earth. There are always things we wish to be better, that we want to solve here on Earth, and we should solve them. But there also have to be things that get you excited about the future.” Sounds good, until you consider one of the recent projects Musk got excited about was killing immunization efforts that save the lives of children from deadly diseases. In fact, “there are always problems on Earth” is the kind of thing you say when you actually don’t care about a lot of those problems. 在 IPO 当天向 SpaceX 员工发表讲话时，马斯克说：“地球上总是有问题。总有一些事情我们希望变得更好，我们想在地球上解决它们，我们也应该解决它们。但同时也必须有一些事情能让你对未来感到兴奋。”听起来不错，但当你考虑到马斯克最近感到兴奋的项目之一，竟然是扼杀那些拯救儿童免受致命疾病侵害的免疫工作时，这话就变味了。事实上，“地球上总是有问题”这种话，只有当你根本不在乎其中许多问题时才会说出口。
Guess what, Elon? There are plenty of things about the future that people get excited about when they wake up in the morning. You fired a bunch of them for no good reason, and a lot of bad ones. The stories from fired USAID workers are heartbreaking, like so many similar stories from so many people in the US and abroad who had dedicated their lives to missions that range from protecting the dignity and health of human beings to preserving our natural lands. I’ve met plenty of these folks personally, and unlike the man who fired them, they didn’t enter public service for private benefit. 猜猜怎么着，埃隆？人们每天早上醒来时，对未来有很多感到兴奋的事情。你无缘无故地解雇了其中许多人，而且还解雇了许多糟糕的人。被解雇的 USAID 工作人员的故事令人心碎，就像美国和海外许多人讲述的类似故事一样，他们毕生致力于从保护人类尊严和健康到保护自然土地的各种使命。我亲自见过很多这样的人，与解雇他们的那个人不同，他们投身公共服务并非为了私利。
Musk hijacked the government to destroy these missions and dehumanize these people in service of the total lie that it would make the government more efficient. Of course, there’s a big difference between “efficiency” and incompetence. An agency isn’t more efficient if it doesn’t exist; it’s simply been murdered. A fire department with no firefighters looks good on a balance sheet if you can ignore that the city is ablaze. 马斯克劫持了政府，摧毁了这些使命，并将这些人非人化，以此服务于“这会让政府更高效”这一彻头彻尾的谎言。当然，“效率”和无能之间有很大的区别。一个机构如果不存在了，它并不会变得更高效；它只是被谋杀了。如果能忽略城市正在燃烧的事实，那么一个没有消防员的消防局在资产负债表上看起来确实很漂亮。
The intentional destruction of the ability to save lives and reduce suffering is psychopathic behavior — the kind that would prevent any rational, kind person from giving power to anyone capable of it. But here we are. And while there has always been a class of mega-rich menaces, including horrible racists… 蓄意破坏拯救生命和减少苦难的能力是一种精神病态行为——这种行为会让任何理智、善良的人都不会将权力交给任何有能力做出这种事的人。但现实就是这样。虽然一直以来都存在着一类超级富有的威胁者，包括那些可怕的种族主义者……