Nevertheless

• According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, the conflicts connected to the war on terror have killed about 4.6 million people since 2001.
• That conflict defines 21st century world politics, far more than the war in Ukraine.
• It was driven by former U.S. president George W. Bush’s messianic impulses and neoconservative ideologues who aspired to reshape the Middle East in the American image using military force.
• The war in Iraq, an unprovoked and illegal invasion of a sovereign state, demonstrated the danger of unchecked American power and hubris.

Ignoring international law

• The Watson Institute report explains why states targeted by the U.S. have reasons to fear American violence and interference.
• International law doesn’t necessarily constrain the U.S. — it’s often willing to abuse its power and privileges for political, economic and strategic advantage.
• This reality partly explains Russia’s reaction to the expansion of NATO and its invasion of Ukraine.
• American leaders apparently believe a country four times the population of the U.S. must remain forever subordinate to American power.
• Instead, many countries are pursuing “non-alignment” — choosing to avoid getting caught in the middle of any future battles between the U.S. and China.

Rallying allies

• Nonetheless, the U.S. has rallied its established allies against China.
• Canada has become an American vassal, meaning it’s essentially dominated by the U.S. Japan has increased its military spending.
• Why do American allies refuse to discuss U.S. global violence, despite its horrific consequences and the fact that it clearly affects the world view of America’s rivals and the non-western world?
• It’s likely because American allies have benefited enormously from the U.S.-backed status quo, even if they’ve had to deal with the fallout of western militarism — particularly in Europe, where the influx of refugees has coarsened regional politics.

Politics of fear

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• The U.S. has never shied away from the politics of fear and the exaggeration of threat.
• Is preserving the privileged global position of the U.S. really so important to the rest of the world?
• U.S. allies need to learn the lessons of the war on terror and the 4.6 million people it’s killed.
• American allies could make their support of the U.S. conditional on a pledge to ease up on militarism and focus on greater global co-operation.

• Part of such notions’ appeal may be the argument that they’re not just exciting, or profitable, but would benefit humanity as a whole.
• But what do these phrases really mean – and how does Musk’s record stack up?

The greatest good

• In simple terms, utilitarianism holds that the right action is whichever maximizes net happiness.
• Like any moral philosophy, there is a dizzying array of varieties, but utilitarians generally share a couple of important principles.
• This is often summed up by the expression “each to count for one, and none for more than one.” Finally, utilitarianism ranks potential choices based on their outcomes, usually prioritizing whichever choice would lead to the greatest value – in other words, the greatest pleasure, the least amount of pain or the most preferences fulfilled.

Utilitarianism 2.0?

• Utilitarianism shares a number of features with effective altruism.
• In addition, both utilitarianism and effective altruism are agnostic about how to achieve their goals: what matters is achieving the greatest value, not necessarily how we get there.

Long-term view

• Longtermists, including many people involved in effective altruism, believe that those obligations matter just as much as our obligations to people living today.
• In this view, issues that pose an existential risk to humanity, such as a giant asteroid striking earth, are particularly important to solve, because they threaten everyone who could ever live.
• Longtermists aim to guide humanity past these threats to ensure that future people can exist and live good lives, even in a billion years’ time.

Measuring Musk

• Musk has claimed that MacAskill’s effective altruism “is a close match for my philosophy.” But how close is it really?
• It’s hard to grade someone on their particular moral commitments, but the record seems choppy.
• To start, the original motivation for the effective altruism movement was to help the global poor as much as possible.
• Musk did not, the public record suggests, donate to the World Food Program, but he did soon give a similar amount to his own foundation – a move some critics dismissed as a tax dodge, since a core principle of effective altruism is giving only to organizations whose cost-effective impact has been rigorously studied.

Futuristic solutions

• In fact, he has suggested that negative media coverage of autonomous driving is tantamount to killing people by dissuading them from using self-driving cars.
• In this view, Tesla seems to be an innovative means to a utilitarian end.
• His Boring Company’s attempts to build tunnels under Los Angeles, meanwhile, have been criticized as expensive and ineffecient.
• Answering this question requires thinking about three core questions: Are their initiatives trying to do the most good for everyone?

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