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Elon Musk says America must stay out of most foreign affairs and “mind its own business”.
US President Donald Trump's de facto right hand man said the largely Arab audience at the World Governments Summit in Dubai would understand where he was coming from, after a series of wars in the Middle East. He was addressing the summit from the US via a video link.
“There are times the United States has been kind of pushy in international affairs, which might resonate with some members of the audience,” he said. “America should mind its own business,” he added, rather than push for “regime change” in other countries.
Doge's slash-and-burn campaign
Mr Musk spoke before a packed audience on the final day of the summit. He was in conversation with Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, who asked about his aggressive efficiency campaign.
Mr Musk said there was strong support for his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to slash government agencies and red tape. Those efforts could leave tens of thousands out of work.
“The people are very supportive, There are certain elements of the bureaucracy that are not supportive because we are removing them from the government sector to the private sector,” he added. “We're moving people from low-productivity roles in the public sector to higher productivity in the private sector.”
We really have to delete entire agencies – many of them
Elon Musk
Wearing a T-shirt that read “Tech Support”, he said technology would be used to make the public sector more efficient. He said his top priority was “reducing the size of government and making the government much more accountable to the people”.
“We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people – democracy,” he added. “We want to restore the rule of the people.”
There is a need to “delete entire agencies” rather than leave some people behind, he said. “We really have to delete entire agencies – many of them.”
Mr Musk has spoken to the summit twice in the past. But his appearance this time came after weeks of cutting through large swathes of the federal government since taking the helm at Doge.
He has suspended career officials, sacked thousands of USAid staff and sought to get access to sensitive databases, publicly tweeting out what he says are examples of egregious, unnecessary spending.
'Everything is illegal, we want to change that'
Mr Musk said America today was in a position in which “everything is illegal, and nothing is permitted”. He said that “war” normally follows excessive constraints and red tape, and suggested his efficiency drive is needed to satisfy public demand.
Cutting public spending and boosting productivity could double growth in the economy, which was less than 2.5 per cent last year, to roughly the levels recorded in China.
“Maybe the economy can grow at 4 or 5 per cent. The net effect of that would be no inflation from 2026 to 2027.” This could boost the economy by $1 trillion, he suggested.
OpenAI gone 'too far' in quest for profit
Mr Musk was asked about his bid to buy ChatGPT owner OpenAI for nearly $100 billion last week, which the firm rejected – on X, no less. He claimed that Sam Altman's OpenAI has gone “too far” in an alleged quest for profits.
“What they're trying to do now is completely delete the non-profit. And that seems really going too far,” he said. “I provided all of the funding for OpenAI at the beginning. It was meant to be open-source.
“If you fund a non-profit to preserve the ambers in a rainforest, but instead they turn into a lumber company and chop down all the trees for wood … OpenAI is supposed to be not-for-profit. Why does this change need to occur?”
THE BIO
Age: 33
Favourite quote: “If you’re going through hell, keep going” Winston Churchill
Favourite breed of dog: All of them. I can’t possibly pick a favourite.
Favourite place in the UAE: The Stray Dogs Centre in Umm Al Quwain. It sounds predictable, but it honestly is my favourite place to spend time. Surrounded by hundreds of dogs that love you - what could possibly be better than that?
Favourite colour: All the colours that dogs come in
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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From Europe to the Middle East, economic success brings wealth - and lifestyle diseases
A rise in obesity figures and the need for more public spending is a familiar trend in the developing world as western lifestyles are adopted.
One in five deaths around the world is now caused by bad diet, with obesity the fastest growing global risk. A high body mass index is also the top cause of metabolic diseases relating to death and disability in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – and second on the list in Bahrain.
In Britain, heart disease, lung cancer and Alzheimer’s remain among the leading causes of death, and people there are spending more time suffering from health problems.
The UK is expected to spend $421.4 billion on healthcare by 2040, up from $239.3 billion in 2014.
And development assistance for health is talking about the financial aid given to governments to support social, environmental development of developing countries.
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
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