Musk’s China playbook reads like a manual on corporate vassalage dressed as “innovation.” Tesla’s Shanghai factories aren’t just assembly lines—they’re leverage points for a regime that knows how to exploit capitalist greed. When half your cars and 40% of your batteries hinge on a dictatorship’s goodwill, principles become optional extras.

The real hack isn’t Chinese spies—it’s letting a man-child with a savior complex rewrite the operating system of a superpower. Gutting climate policies, kneecapping EV competitors, erasing investment controls: all while Tesla’s survival depends on Xinjiang’s forced labor and Beijing’s subsidies. But sure, Taiwan’s the existential threat here.

This isn’t corruption; it’s regulatory theater. The oligarchs aren’t lurking in shadows—they’re hosting SNL and cosplaying as statesmen. Democracy dies to the sound of VC applause and the clink of champagne glasses in Shanghai boardrooms.