I doubt any reasonable person sincerely believes the contract will ultimately go to a company other than Tesla. Musk is claiming to be cutting “waste” and “fraud” while lining his own pockets.
I wish this comment wasn't downvoted. HN has a marvelous self-censoring system where a few people passionate about blocking a topic will make sure it's never discussed here regardless of the overall community interest, all while maintaining the rouse that there is no censorship and it's the community that runs the site.
I used to collect posts on climate change that briefly made it to the front page since they would immediately be removed as soon as people started to realize the effects of climate change are severe. Plenty of interesting technical things to discuss around that topic, but after long enough most people realized that it wasn't worth trying to discuss that.
Most online communities today are manipulated and their messaging controlled, each through a variety of of means. I hope people are becoming increasingly skeptical of any apparent zeitgeist they think they're reading from Reddit, X, and yes, even HN. Our opinions are being shaped by a propaganda system never before imagined in history, and at the same time people seem to possess the least critical thinking skills I've seen over the course of my life.
The HN situation is up to Dang to resolve, but all I can say is that being informed is the best form of anti-propaganda. Read and digest the information received. Look for official quotes, understand biases and potential conflicts of interests. Don't simply take commentors at face value (who you are unable to distinguish such biases from) unless they are also citing sources.
Be critical in what you consume and no propaganda will affect you.
>The article is misinformation, does not once mention that the contract was created during the Biden admin
....
>The Tesla contract started in the Biden administration "to explore interest from private companies to produce armored electric vehicles," a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday.
Straight from the article. are you satisfied now?
We can point fingers all we want. I think the important thing is results and that this clear conflict of interst was caught, forced a statement, and stopped in its tracks early. Any reactions to such news is trivial in comparison.
as an aside, I'll note Musk responded to this exactly as usual:
>Responding to a segment by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow about the $400 million contract, Musk wrote on X on Wednesday night: "Hey @Maddow, why the lie?".
Right around the same time as the edit. I can't even muster the sarcasm to respond to this one.
>After reports circulated Wednesday night of the State Department's intent to purchase Tesla vehicles, NPR noticed that the document was edited, at 9:12 p.m., to say the federal contract is for $400 million worth of "armored electric vehicles," but the word "Tesla" was removed.
Just what the Federal Bureaucracy needs: $400M worth of armored Teslas.
I can't wait to hear the spin on this one. Noses will be growing without bound.
Can you imagine the uproar from Conservatives if a Democrat had bought $400M of EVs with government funds? It would have been a meltdown of epic proportions.
We have gone through the looking glass.
Edit: I see that Tesla was the only one that responded to the RFI that was indeed issued last year. So probably nothing underhanded going on. BUT- I still stand by my assertion that the right would have melted down and spun this like a top if a Dem had done it.
> This contract was signed in December, during the Biden administration
You’ve posted this comment more than once without proof. Here is a comment from someone else which indicates (with references!) that it is part of a procurement forecast and is not yet an actual contract:
December is technically Biden administration but it's blatantly obvious why it was signed. The election results are out and they saw musk as the president and that the military has the most to lose if things get really cut. Someone there is being clever and throwing money to musk to ensure it doesn't get cut.
A government "official" who claim to make the government efficient and root out corruption has a conflict of interest on the level of a 400m government contract. Is that not something worth knowing and discussing?
I should also note that you do not have to click every HN link on a page.
>Elon Musk and we don't need to put everything with him to the front page.
I don't know what to say. The elon posting here was long before his political career. He's involved in EVs, Space, and Crypto, all popular HN topics. HN can't exactly mandate a blanket ban on him without major pushback.
https://time.com/7221880/state-department-2025-procurement-f...
I doubt any reasonable person sincerely believes the contract will ultimately go to a company other than Tesla. Musk is claiming to be cutting “waste” and “fraud” while lining his own pockets.