Really?

Published in

That Was The Week

5 min readSep 7, 2024

Robert Reich: Foreign Governments Should Arrest Musk

Editorial
I am generally not surprised at how far self-labeled “left” intellectuals will go in silencing those they disagree with. Robert Reich is not my usual idea of an authoritarian. But this week, he penned a Guardian Opinion piece that included a request for “global regulators” to “threaten Musk with arrest” to stop him from “disseminating lies and hate on X.” It is a good measure of how far the labels “left” and “right” no longer have meaning. Authoritarian and Civilized might be better labels for these ideas. Reich says, “Elon Musk is out of Control.” The title gives away his motive. He wants to control Musk. To “rein him in”.

Wow. There are not many First Amendment rights there. He also calls for advertisers to boycott X, consumers to boycott Tesla, and the FTC to “take down lies” that are “likely to endanger individuals.”

This is from his website:

He is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century.

How Berkeley has changed. If I were an authoritarian, I might suggest they fire him for opposing everything the University’s history has stood for. But I’m not, so I am calling him out here instead.

To be clear, I will be voting for Kamala Harris in November. So, this is not a hit piece.

But Reich is clearly out of order in suggesting Musk be treated like a criminal, especially after Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s arrest. Musk is right about many things and an idiot about others, but not a criminal.

The new trend for “liberals” to seek revenge and state recourse on those they disapprove of by calls to treat them as criminals is not new. But it is now unchallenged as a legitimate exercise. The Guardian is happy to give those views a prominent platform.

As an opponent of racism, women’s oppression, homophobia, anti-semitism, and anti-Muslim sentiment, I have no wish to demonize my opponents ’s legal beliefs and opinions. I want to be able to disagree with them and persuade you to agree with me.

This week, we have articles from the Editorial Board of the Washington Post defending Musk:

Brazilians shouldn’t have to put up with a government suppressing political viewpoints, however abhorrent a court might think those opinions are. Mr. Musk himself has a right to speak his mind, and to legal due process, notwithstanding Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s demagogic take to the contrary: “The world is not obliged to put up with [Mr. Musk’s] far-right free for all just because he is rich,” he has said. This response reflects badly on the democratic vocation of Mr. da Silva, who was indeed legitimately elected in 2022. And the entire episode is turning into a cautionary tale for democracies that believe the answer to troublesome online expression is to suppress it.

Robert Reich and others who want to use the state to defeat opponents’ arguments should be ashamed. That is not the hallmark of civilized behavior but a throwback to medieval times before the Enlightenment.

More this week on AI regulation also. A new global convention on AI was announced:

Britain’s justice minister, Shabana Mahmood, emphasized the importance of this agreement, stating, “This Convention is a major step to ensuring that these new technologies can be harnessed without eroding our oldest values, like human rights and the rule of law.”
The Convention is separate from the EU’s AI Act, which recently came into force and provides comprehensive regulations on developing, deploying, and using AI systems within the EU internal market. While the EU AI Act focuses on internal governance, the AI Convention represents a broader international commitment to ethical AI use.

The call to preserve Western values like free speech and the rule of law is excellent but misplaced. The desire to control is at the heart of the regulatory instinct regarding AI. The EU’s AI Act crosses the line into control.

The convention has a weaker set of goals. But both agree that we cannot trust scientists to do the right thing. The driving belief is that we should fear innovation and human ingenuity.

We already have many laws that would punish criminality by innovators using AI for criminal purposes. And I strongly favor using them when due process suggests we should.

These moves, like the California SB 1047 initiative, are not focused on criminality. They are designed to remove freedom of scientific innovation and put Government roadblocks in the way. Humans will not benefit from allowing Reich or regulators to determine what we can and cannot do.

I am considering sponsorships for That Was The Week. Here is the draft rate card. Take a look and reach out if you’d like to be a sponsor. Discounts for readers.

Hat Tip to this week’s creators: @albertwenger, @chaykak, @washingtonpost, @pxlnv, @gideonrachman, @paulg, @KateClarkTweets, @scottehartley, @geneteare, @jesslivingston, @ycombinator, @garrytan, @rhodgkinson, @signalrank, @jordannovet, @erinkwoo, @markgurman, @Kyle_L_Wiggers, @CovariantAI, @_thatstartupguy

Really?

Contents

Written by Keith Teare