Twitter Inc. has apparently changed its name to the highly unimaginative X Corp., but that, in my opinion, isn’t the most important news this week related to Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Musk is once again selling out his supposed pro-free speech humanitarian principles for profit.

If a country’s government is committing genocide and religious persecution, runs a tyrannical censorship regime, demands every major business answer directly to the government, and is openly hostile to your country (the U.S.), would you be worried about doing business there? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer is an emphatic “no.” The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) many and ongoing crimes evidently do not disturb Musk, who is planning to expand his Tesla China branch with a huge new factory.

CCP state media outlet Xinhua News excitedly announced on April 9, Easter, that Tesla would be building a new “mega factory” in China to produce Megapack, the company’s huge energy-storage batteries. I guess labor really is a lot cheaper in China. So much for Musk calling himself a “free speech absolutist” and pontificating that he “love[s]” humanity; it’s profit over principles for the Tesla and Twitter CEO.

Musk’s hypocrisy is not shocking, however. Tesla workers were reportedly being forced to work in very inhumane conditions during China’s insane zero-COVID lockdowns in early 2022, and Musk endorsed the CCP’s unjust claims on Taiwan.

Tesla is set to break ground on the new battery plant in 2023’s third quarter, per Xinhua. The plant will then begin production in 2024’s second quarter, according to Tesla representatives at a signing ceremony in Shanghai and Xinhua. All major businesses in China are surveilled by and answerable to the CCP, and the CCP practices “civil-military fusion”–where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the Chinese military. The CCP is also history’s greatest mass murderer, having killed over 500 million people.

Musk is acting like a greedy traitor. It is time American businessmen started putting principles and patriotism ahead of profit and power.

*****
This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.