Elon Musk and his gaggle of incompetent adolescents have refused to comply with any government ethics or disclosure requirements. Leaving glaring conflicts of interest wide open.
On Sunday, Wired published the names of six young men between the ages of 19 and 24 that Elon Musk is using to unilaterally and unconstitutionally impound government funds and usurp congressional authority. Despite Musk’s ludicrous claims that publishing this is somehow illegal (remember when people took seriously the idea that Musk was a free speech absolutist?), it is the duty of watchdog groups to step in and conduct oversight where it has been abandoned by congressional leaders.
Among the individuals exposed by Wired is Ethan Shaotran, an engineer with no government experience to speak of who only graduated high school in 2020. Shaotran, like the others, is obviously beholden to Musk for his unaccountable, unelected position in government where he, like the others, is usurping the authority of legitimate public servants. But he also is massively beholden to OpenAI founder Sam Altman, the AI billionaire who has groveled at the feet of Donald Trump, disavowing his previous anti-Trump stances in the hopes of securing taxpayer subsidies and relaxed environmental regulations. His stated goal? $7 TRILLION. In January 2024, OpenAI announced $1 million worth of grants for projects to help them design tentative regulatory regimes for AI. In other words, the fox paid people to develop chicken coops. Among the 10 recipients of $100,000 was Energy.AI, a firm founded by Ethan Shoatran.
Put simply, OpenAI paid a 23 year old $100,000 to write a whitepaper on AI regulation that would be friendly to their interests. This college-aged man is now seemingly helping control unprecedented levers in the government without accountability, ethics requirements, or any obvious allegiance to anyone except for the billionaires who have funded his life and lavished him with power.