Elon's play for space AI is really a trojan horse to build the most powerful rockets ever.
Personally, I think this is his most genius play yet.
Most people do not think rockets are worth anything. But if WW3 broke out, people with rockets could literally (covertly) take a hike into space and get front row seats to the end of the world. The 100 style.
That's out there.
But here is something else closer to the ground.
What if there was heated tensions between the US and China because of this race of AI printers proxied around AI? And monetizing already highly-glued-to-screens netizens?
What is the ultimate flex to channel all this war spirit?
Space.
Space is the play.

Once upon a time there was a space race between Russia and the US. The narrative at the time was communism vs capitalism (another clash of systems that hyper centralized political power. AI is the modern reincarnation). The driving fear keeping these two from flexing it out was that both countries had nukes.

Today. China has nukes, the US has nukes.
The cold war is back. With a twist.
This time, the US created China. Yeah they printed petro dollars and hired Chinese (still do) to build them cars, phones, everything.
The Chinese obliged. They left their villages and went to factories. And as their hands worked, their eyes followed the process. They learnt hands on from American blueprints (made by their Chinese children too so really, it was just providence doing its thing), and initially made fakes (the very first iPhone I ever touched was fake), but now they have the coolest car. The Xiaomi.
(Only 10 years ago I remember the Xiaomi as a phone I wouldn't have touched. Now I drool over their slick ride).

The problem really is that both countries have a young population that has been wrecked by their respective policies.
American dollar printing didn't help the millennial and GenZ population. It helped the billionaires who bought all the cool stuff and then some which created such massive FOMO (coupled with the pressure of competing with immigrants for whom US dollars are gold) that these poor kids are now piled into debt and they admire Hollywood stars so they get high to get that quick pleasure trip and let go of the stress.
The Chinese kids, meanwhile, have parents who worked in factories so they could become maths whizzes who can get scholarships in prestigious American Universities that basically collect the world's whizzes together. All so they (the Chinese kids) can ship that knowledge back home.
The pressure is just as intense but with even less freedoms given the conservative monoculture of Chinese society.

This is what has cooked everything.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has young people who can only follow news as they have no hard money nor strong national influence so they can enjoy neither the experience of the hustler quasi-rich American nor that of the high school achiever Chinese.

They go to gardens and dig, or go to their jobs and make enough to survive, and they wonder who the hell makes these addictive phone apps like TikTok and ChatGPT.
No they don't wonder why. They're having too much fun.

The kids are thus hungry for a real adventure. I mean subway surfers is alright, but human beings were wired for some leanness-making activity. Not moving their fingers so they can get a dopamine rush from tunnel vision into a tiny character jumping on their phones. Like a pleasant day dream, I guess.
Ever present and powered by Li-ion batteries that can now go multiple days before they run out.
Phones used to be for talking to other people using our mouths and listening to real voices from afar with our ears. Now we listen to fake voices.

I'm no Luddite, only saying the call is out there in that dark, barren emptiness.
No, nobody need be sent there.
If AI really is as good as they say, then maybe it will grok rocket science in which case it will then actually redirect all this pent up testosterone into a truly physically rewarding flex.
Does it Grok rocket science?
Will Elon's space AI systems get smart enough to innovate their own earth-to-rocket-to-space-back-to-earth payload cycle?
A true innovation that adds a physically noisy step to simply doing everything in a clean, electricity powered fab, is called a Rocket.

See, a rocket has something that a loop in a fab will never have.
Something that no AI will ever have.
A sound like thunder rising from the ground. Like the power of Zeus bottled and now unleashed.
A physicality that takes up space.
Material space that no philosopher would dare question.
Not hidden behind an abstraction of 1s and 0s that only makes sense to a part of the human brain.

A rocket announces its presence to the entire human body. It roars like a dragon. It's the closest we have to a dragon.
And unlike a self-driving car, nobody is that interested in taking a pleasure trip inside a cannister riding a controlled explosion.
Yeah there are a few outliers, but rockets are meant for serious business.
You FA, you FO in a few seconds.
Vaporized. Along with multi billions in funding and multiple people's hopes and dreams.

Yes. Elon Musk will be instrumental in driving forward the AI race to space.
But the true power will not be even more coding abilities. That is impressive, but after OpenClaw, I see very little limiting humanity on the software side of life. We have enough software to last us 100 years of social media entertainment if not another piece of code was ever written.
I'm talking utility in a novel physical system. Something that takes us out of our homes so we wonder if this is the moment humanity takes another giant leap.

I suffice that China and the USA are going to hit an AI wall.
Both will reach for AGI and will not find it.
Meanwhile, both will surveil their citizens to a fault until we're all likely tied to the Epstein list.
Since we're all indebted, shall we all be put in prison?
For what? Mother Earth has already trapped us here.
Hitting the AI wall while insults and jibes fly left and right over printer supremacy will only end in tears in we follow our dopamine driven urges to flex obvious muscles.
But if both countries take their battle to space, that will not only drain their pockets fast, but will humble them back to easy goings.
Elon will lead this charge and his company, if it becomes too powerful, might be split up like Standard Oil of old.
But not before he successfully marries AI to Rocketry. Ushering in an age of possibility that even I haven't yet fathomed.