Manny’s Reviews > Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed > Status Update

Musk had set out to build a rocket. But more consequential than what he built was how he built it. Later, he would describe a lesson he learned from his close friend, the investor Antonio Gracias: "It's not the product that leads the success. It's the ability to make the product efficiently. It's about building the machine that builds the machine. In other words, how do you build the factory?

By 2025, SpaceX accounted for 95% of all orbital launches in the US, and more than half of all launches globally - a position that made the Pentagon, NASA and other government agencies deeply reliant on Musk. This was sovereignty-as-a-service, the logic of the modern internet platform scaled up to the level of the nation state.

"At school, Musk was bullied relentlessly. At home, he read constantly. When he ran out of books at the library, he devoured the entire Encyclopedia Britannica."

The authors do not mention this, but I am struck by the fact that the science-fiction author Cyril Kornbluth, who also held strong eugenic views, famously did the same thing.