By Omar Zahzah

 Through X and SpaceX (particularly Starlink,) Elon Musk is an important figure in understanding digital/settler-colonialism.

On Wednesday, July 24, amidst considerable protest and a boycott by nearly half of the Democrats in office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a propaganda-laden address to US Congress. 

The proceedings were a grotesque reflection of how outright fabrication is transformed into killing fiction used to condone mass slaughter and justify future atrocities as Zionist settler-colonialism continues to operate under the imprimatur of US imperialism. 

The reception that Netanyahu received by the Washington political establishment last week no doubt only encouraged Israel’s assassinations of Fouad Shukr of Hezbollah in Lebanon – in a bombing of southern Beirut that killed three people, including two children – and Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas political bureau and former Palestinian Prime Minister, via airstrike in Tehran.

“I asked (the Israeli commander in Rafah) how many civilians were killed? He said, prime minister, practically none. With the exception of a single incident where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot, and unintentionally killed two dozen people,” Netanyahu said at one point. 

“The answer is, practically none. You want to know why? Because Israel got the civilians out of harm why, something the people said we could never do, but we did!” 

With the exception of Rashida Tlaib, who used her presence to protest Netanyahu, this statement was applauded by the Congress members in attendance. Netanyahu’s speech received a standing ovation from Congress and widespread criticism on social media platforms such as X.

 But there is another aspect to the story of Netanyahu’s visit in addition to widespread criticism and its confirmation of the US political establishment’s de facto policy of affording Israeli violence total political impunity. Speaking of X, Netanyahu’s guest for the proceedings was none other than X owner Elon Musk. 

In a subsequent Tweet, the genocidaire reflected how after his address he and Musk “discussed the opportunities and challenges in AI, its impact on the economy and society, and explored ways for technological cooperation with Israel.” 

As with the manner in which he has taken to undermining Venezuelan sovereignty with his attacks on President Maduro (conduct simultaneously reflecting the behavior of an irreverent frat boy and petulant tyrant,) Musk’s “special guest” status for Netanyahu’s visit confirms the tech mogul’s increasing entrenchment in the world of diplomacy. 

This development should be of glaring concern for anyone committed to freedom for all peoples: it is not exactly a secret that Musk’s services are subject to his egocentric and autocratic whims, as well as the ultimate interests of the US military-industrial complex.

It is chilling to think of what Netanyahu could mean in referring to “the opportunities and challenges in AI.” 

Increasing opposition to Project Nimbus as well as revelations about programs like “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy” show how AI has become a central tool in Israel’s violence—so much so that No Tech for Apartheid activists describe Israel’s technologically streamlined conduct as constituting the premier “AI-facilitated genocide” in Gaza.

“Technological collaboration” in the broad sense is also concerning given Musk’s track record of channeling his platforms and projects towards promoting his own self-interest as well as the larger operations of the US military-industrial complex. 

For all of Musk’s public posturing about preserving “free speech,” since his disaster-laden acquisition of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter before Musk changed it,) he has in actuality set about converting the social media site into a digital amplifier for his own transphobic and right-wing views. 

Indeed, Musk, who already had a penchant for courting far-right leaders globally, began formally meeting with Netanyahu last year after co-signing an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the platform and feuding with the ADL – itself a Zionist organization that frequently uses its ill-gotten status as a Civil Rights organization to falsely stigmatize anti-Zionist speech as antisemitic and repress Palestine organizing and anti-racist activism more broadly.

The organization had claimed his newly-acquired platform was a driver for hate speech. Musk met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and participated in a tour of the Kfar Azza colony with Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Collaborating with colonial Zionism thus became a means by which Musk could both stave off accountability for antisemitic views as well as channel his authoritarian leanings towards technological collaboration. 

Netanyahu personally asked Musk to strike a balance between protecting free speech and fighting antisemitism on the platform, and users supportive of Palestinian freedom and liberation have reported increasing restrictions on postings on X. 

Musk himself affirmatively declared his intention to stamp out speech supportive of Palestine in September, boosting the lie that “from the river to the sea” is a genocidal phrase. Given this state of affairs, it is difficult to imagine a vision for “technological collaboration” that does not include continuing to suppress expressions of support for Palestinian liberation.

And there is more. In addition to X, Starlink is a vital component of Musk’s digital diplomacy. 

Musk reportedly first expressed interest in bringing Starlink to Gaza in October, and has since worked out an arrangement with Israeli authorities whereby Gaza access would be vetted a priori by Israeli authorities. 

The service is now active at a UAE-run field hospital in Gaza, though this activation does not mitigate the large-scale deprivation of connectivity Israel continues to impose on Gaza as it carries on its genocide, a policy that, as with all of its other deprivations and atrocities, Israel justifies by expressing concern that the service could benefit Hamas.

This is less surprising when we recall that, as Alan McLeod reports, SpaceX, the company that provides Starlink, has a profitable relationship with the US military and close ties to the US security state, particularly the CIA. 

The service was used to advance US geopolitical designs in Ukraine and undermine the Iranian government. In short, there can therefore be no Starlink access outside of US imperialism’s seal of approval. 

While medical and humanitarian access to the internet is vital, select Starlink access leverages humanitarianism as a mechanism of political pacification, using global connectivity that is ever more urgent in light of Israel’s genocide as a means for sorting more and less “deserving” users according to the colonial Zionist and US imperial agenda.

Through X and SpaceX (particularly Starlink,) Musk is an important figure in understanding digital/settler-colonialism. His example clearly illustrates how imperialism incentivizes technocratic capitulation to Zionism, as well as the scale of repression that the marriage between Big Tech and Zionism poses to colonized Palestinians. 

At a moment when Zionism’s genocidal essence is so unabashedly manifest that Israeli ministers confidently condemn restrictions that prevent them from intentionally starving two million Palestinians, it is chilling to imagine what further persecution Big Tech collaboration with the Zionist state will pose.

And Musk’s enthusiasm for Israel is also far from anomalous: as Big Tech leans ever more comfortably into fascism, “tech Zionism” has emerged as a paradigm among tech mogul Balaji Srinivasan for what amounts to ethnic cleansing of San Francisco and opposing any and all regulations` to Silicon Valley. Unmitigated repression of the masses for the ultimate benefit of the elite is thus the norm from Turtle Island to Palestine, and Zionism provides an exemplary prism for formalizing this vision.

But what Musk’s example also reveals is that challenging the capitalist status quo that allows the super-rich to undermine freedom from the belly of the beast is interconnected to liberation struggles the world over. The fight against digital/settler-colonialism is in that sense truly global—as will be its implications.