Elon Musk’s father suggests having babies should be more like breeding horses

Published

4 months ago

November 27, 2024

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The alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk framed the 2024 election and their bond has only deepened since.

Musk has been a regular fixture at the president-elect’s Florida mansion and the pair have introduced their families.

He has been privy to phone conversations with world leaders, consulted with Trump on his cabinet picks and even hosted him at Space X for the launch of the Starship rocket.

Musk will co-chair the new Department of Government Efficiency, charged with cutting government spending.

But how might the entrepreneur’s other views affect Trump policy?

The cause closest to Musk’s heart is pronatalism, a pro-birth political and personal ideology in which reproduction is the key goal of humanity.

Musk regularly posts on social media with fears about population decline, sometimes bordering on obsession.

“Population collapse is coming… Earth is almost empty of humans,” he wrote recently.

“Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy we should teach fear of childlessness,” he added.

The frequency of these posts has increased in recent months.

Musk has at least 11 children, by three different women. Some of them have spent time with him in recent weeks at Donald Trump’s home.

Few understand the origin of Musk’s pro-birth views better than his own father, Errol Musk – an engineer and businessman from South Africa, who has a strained relationship with his son.

I speak to Errol on a video call from his home near Cape Town.

“Elon doesn’t try to push his opinion across, but he will have an opinion,” he says.

Errol has seven children himself, ranging in age from Elon at 53 to his youngest daughter, who is five. He’s also a pronatalist.

“We’re not here to enjoy boating or flying or skiing or kite surfing, or something,” he says.

“We are here to continue being here. We should all be worried about declining populations, any country with any industry should be worried.”

Certain countries – like the United States, United Kingdom and Japan – do have ageing populations. But my conversation with Errol also reveals views which veer toward selective breeding.

I ask him about a comment Elon reportedly made to a biographer several years ago. Musk Jr apparently said: “If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, then that’s probably bad.”

I ask Errol Musk if that viewpoint is bordering on eugenics.

“I wouldn’t call it eugenics as such, but every nation has practiced a certain form of survival of the fittest.

“One need only go to England and go to the Cheltenham area, the horse breeding area, and say, ‘Look, we’re not going to breed the horses anymore by any form of standard. I’ve got a few old horses I’ve found in Nigeria and we’re going to just mix them with your race horses…’

“They’ll say, no, no, no, no, no,” he added.

A more sanitised version of pro-family politics took centre stage on the campaign trail.

At a rally, Donald Trump declared himself “the father of fertilisation” and vowed to make in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) free for anyone who needs it.

Sky News has been invited inside an IVF clinic in California, the world capital for fertility.

The fertility institute is in the Encino area of Los Angeles and allows patients to choose the eye colour of their baby as well as its gender.

Dr Jeffrey Steinberg was among the first fertility doctors to offer gender selection. He is taking future President Trump’s pledge to offer free IVF at face value.

“Donald Trump for better or for worse, tends to keep his word. And the sort of the pooh-poohing of what he was saying… I think it’s vanished because they’re realising that it’s probably going to happen. So all the fertility centres are gearing up for a huge surge.”

Elon Musk has donated millions of dollars to fertility research.

“Musk is a technocrat,” Dr Steinberg says. “He’s an intellectual genius in multiple areas. And everything he touches seems to turn to gold.

“There’s not much that evolves as quickly as Musk’s technology. But IVF has done that, and I think he’s going to find that very attractive.”

Not all agree that encouraging people to have as many children as possible is the way forward when it comes to population decline.

“There’s some catastrophic thinking that goes on in the tech bro space of Silicon Valley and so on, and it’s usually not very practically oriented,” says Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at Maryland University.

“If you really tried to promote pronatalism, inevitably what you end up doing is promoting a retrograde sort of anti-feminism,” he says.  

“So it ends up being how can we convince women to have more children, which ends up being how can we have women out of the workforce, at home more, married younger, all the things that are sort of rolling back the progress that we made with regard to women’s equality in the last 100 years. And so that’s my primary concern.

“The other is that it goes along with sort of a virulent nationalism that usually is not very far from racism and white supremacy.

“The idea of not just more births, but a certain kind of births, a certain kind of family. And it has not led to good outcomes in modern society when right-wing governments try to promote higher birth rates.”

While espousing his pronatalist views, Musk is navigating his own complicated family dynamic.

In the hills outside Austin, Texas, there are rumours he’s bought a multi-million-dollar compound to house some of his children and their mothers together, with his own property 10 minutes away.

Musk denies this is true.

But soon he could be helping to design family policy across the country.

World

Two Chinese citizens captured during fighting in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy says

Published

10 mins ago

April 8, 2025

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Two Chinese citizens captured during fighting in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy says

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says two Chinese citizens have been captured while fighting in eastern Ukraine.

He said his forces had fought six Chinese soldiers and two of them had been taken prisoner. He added he had ordered officials to obtain an explanation from Beijing.

“We have information that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just two. We are now finding out all the facts,” he added.

As it happened: Zelenskyy demands reaction from US

China is an ally of Russia and has been accused of helping its war in Ukraine, though Beijing has repeatedly denied allegations that it has supplied Kremlin forces with weapons.

“Russia’s involvement of China in this war in Europe, directly or indirectly, is a clear signal that Putin is going to do anything but end the war,” Mr Zelenskyy said. “He is looking for ways to continue the war.”

Mr Zelenskyy described China as having joined Russia’s war against Ukraine and said he expected the US to react.

There was no immediate comment from China.

How many Chinese are actually fighting for Russia?

John Sparks

International correspondent

@sparkomat

Were they volunteers – or mercenaries – who had signed up to fight in the Russian army on their own?

Alternatively, does the Chinese government sanction their involvement – or even encourage it? That would make the situation far more serious.

The capture of these Chinese nationals in Donetsk begs another question – how many Chinese are actually fighting for Russia? In his written post on social media platform Telegram, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “there are many more Chinese citizens” other than these two.

Still, the Ukrainian president works hard to suggest the Chinese, officially at least, are blameless.

“Russia’s involvement of China in this war… is a clear signal that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is going to do anything but end the war,” he writes on Telegram.

This is a generous interpretation of China’s approach to the conflict, which is quite openly contradictory.

World

What we learn from video of captured Chinese national in Ukraine – and the serious questions it raises

Published

6 hours ago

April 8, 2025

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What we learn from video of captured Chinese national in Ukraine - and the serious questions it raises

In a carefully written post on social media platform Telegram, Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russian army of deploying Chinese citizens on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

What about the proof? Well, the Ukrainian president says his security services captured two people from China in the Donetsk region – along with identity documents, personal data and their bank cards.

Follow latest: Zelenskyy demands reaction from US

A video of a man in military fatigues who had been captured by Ukraine was pinned to the bottom of the statement.

We get snippets of a conversation where the alleged combatant seems to be talking about the events that led to his capture.

“When we arrived at the place… and then my commander.” The man gestures at the floor and ceiling, making shooting noises. “I was also injured.”

These details will make it difficult for the Chinese government to deny the incident out of hand, although they are highly unlikely to supply additional information.

Important details like, who are they? What function(s) do they fulfil in Ukraine’s occupied territories?

Were they volunteers – or mercenaries – who had signed up to fight in the Russian army on their own?

Alternatively, does the Chinese government sanction their involvement – or even encourage it?

That would make the situation far more serious.

The capture of these Chinese nationals in Donetsk begs another question – how many Chinese are actually fighting for Russia? In his post, Mr Zelenskyy said “there are many more Chinese citizens” other than these two.

Still, the Ukrainian president works hard to suggest the Chinese, officially at least, are blameless.

“Russia’s involvement of China in this war… is a clear signal that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is going to do anything but end the war,” he writes on Telegram.

This is a generous interpretation of China’s approach to the conflict, which is quite openly contradictory.

On one hand, Chinese President Xi Jinping describes China as a neutral party to the conflict, while simultaneously offering Mr Putin long-term political and economic support.

In fact, he described their partnership as a “no limits” one in a phone call with Mr Putin on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Zelenskyy then, is making a point with this post – but he does not want to make the situation any worse.

World

What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war ramps up

Published

9 hours ago

April 8, 2025

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What China could do next as Trump's tariff war ramps up

The severity cannot be overstated, if an additional 50% tariffs are levied on all Chinese goods it will decimate trade between the world’s two biggest economies.

Remember, 50% would sit on top of what is already on the table: 34% announced last week, 20% announced at the start of US President Donald Trump’s term, and some additional tariffs left over from his first term in office.

In total, it means all Chinese goods would face tariffs of over 100%, some as high as 120%.

It’s a price that makes any trade almost impossible.

China is really the only nation in the world at the moment that is choosing to take a stand.

While others are publicly making concessions and sending delegations to negotiate, China has clearly calculated that not being seen to be bullied is worth the cost that retaliation will bring.

The real question, though, is if the US does indeed impose this extra 50% tomorrow, what could or would China do next?

It has said it will “fight to the end”, but what does that mean?

In reality, there are few good options.

There are some obvious measures that China will almost certainly enact.

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Further export controls on rare earth minerals (crucial for the development of high-tech products) are one example. China controls a huge proportion of the world’s supply, but the US would likely find workarounds in time.

Hiking tariffs on high-impact US products such as agricultural goods is another option, but there is only so far this could go.

The potentially more impactful options have significant drawbacks for Beijing.

It could, for instance, target high-profile American companies such as Apple and Tesla, but this isn’t ideal at a time when China is trying to attract more foreign investment, and some devaluation of the currency is possible, but it would also come with adverse effects.

Other options are more political and come with the risk of escalation beyond the economic arena.

In an opinion piece this morning, the editor of Xinhua, China’s state news agency, speculated that China could cease all cooperation with the US on the war against fentanyl.

This has been a major political issue for Mr Trump, and it’s hard to see it would not constitute some sort of red line for him.

Other options touted include banning the import of American films, or perhaps calling for the Chinese public to boycott all American products.

Anything like this comes with a sense that the world’s two most powerful superpowers might be teetering on the edge of not just a total economic decoupling, but cultural separation too.

There is understandably serious nervousness about how that could spiral and the precedent it sets.