Another ringing endorsement of mRNA technology by Elon Musk has again left some of his fans dismayed and perplexed.
But what most people will not know and what raises issues about whether he should not in fact recuse himself from such discussions or at least provide appropriate disclosure, is that Musk is himself part of the mRNA project and has a direct commercial stake in it.
More precisely, Musk is a partner in Germany’s mRNA project, since Tesla has a partnership with the German mRNA company CureVac to produce so-called ‘RNA printers’: an automated system for manufacturing mRNA and mRNA-based drugs. The patent application for the machines was jointly filed by CureVac and Tesla’s German subsidiary Tesla Grohmann Automation, as can be seen here.
CureVac is Germany’s ‘other’ mRNA company. Like BioNTech, whose COVID-19 vaccine has been marketed by Pfizer in most of the world, and the two German companies’ American rival Moderna, CureVac was also in the running to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, but its vaccine candidate did not obtain authorisation.
Whereas the German Government has sponsored both of the German companies, it went beyond mere sponsorship of CureVac in mid-June 2020 and took a direct ownership stake in the company, acquiring nearly a quarter of its shares for €300 million. This means that as CureVac’s partner, Elon Musk’s Tesla is in fact a direct commercial partner of the German Government, which, as touched upon here and here, has made mRNA manufacturing into a cornerstone of its industrial policy.
Just two weeks after the German Government acquired its stake in CureVac, Musk announced the (preexisting) Tesla-CureVac partnership on Twitter, noting that Tesla would be able to build the ‘RNA printers’, or what he called the “RNA microfactories”, not just for CureVac, but also “possibly for others”.
In March 2022, CureVac announced that it was indeed creating a fully-owned subsidiary, CureVac RNA Printer GmbH, to build the machines not just for its own purposes but also potentially for other manufacturers.
Two months after announcing his partnership with CureVac, in early September 2020, Musk then turned up in Berlin in the very midst of the declared COVID-19 pandemic to tout the mRNA machines. The below video shows him struggling to explain how the machines work to a group of somewhat befuddled-looking German parliamentarians from Angela Merkel’s then ruling Christian Democratic party.
Two weeks after that, the German Government announced that it was tossing another €230 million at CureVac: this time not as investment, but as pure subsidies in support of its COVID-19 vaccine programme. BioNTech received €375 million.
So, is it possible to talk about Elon Musk’s involvement in Germany’s mRNA project on his social media platform X? Well, of course. X is, after all, a ‘free speech platform’. Perish the thought that any sort of censorship might take place on it. But, judging by my own previous experience, while we are perfectly free to talk about it, if we have anything critical to say, we are only free to talk about it in a void.
Thus, Elon Musk first flagged his support for what he enthusiastically styled the mRNA “revolution” in April 2023, admitting that the dose in the Covid vaccines had been too high, but expressing confidence that synthetic mRNA would be “the surest path to curing cancer”.
In response, I noted that his tweet amounted to shilling for BioNTech. After all, the mRNA dose in the BioNTech vaccine was less than one-third of that in the Moderna vaccine and, furthermore, curing cancer had been BioNTech’s ambition from the start. Before Covid, BioNTech was a cancer treatment company. Unlike Moderna, it had had almost no experience in infectious diseases. Curiously, however, none of the trials of its cancer drugs had ever got very far.
In light of research which has uncovered oncogenic properties of synthetic mRNA, I recently wondered whether this was because its drugs were in fact found to be promoting cancer rather than ‘curing’ it.
Be that as it may, my critical reply-thread, which also pointed to Musk’s conflict-of-interest in light of the ‘RNA printer’ partnership, was torn apart and rendered invisible by the X algorithm, as can be seen below.
Well, this is interesting. Try clicking on below tweet and see what you get. It is supposed to be a reply
— Robert Kogon (former "Esprit de Voltaire") (@EdV1694) April 13, 2023involving 6 tweets. https://t.co/SfHA2zIOH2
Which just goes to show that “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach”.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.
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Musk is a partner in Germany’s mRNA project, since Tesla has a partnership with the German mRNA company CureVac to produce so-called ‘RNA printers’
Good call out. The elite view mRNA as a method to transhumanism – another dystopian evil the Musker supports. Quackcines now comprise a U$60 billion p.a. market growing soon to U$ 100 bn p.a., including the mRNA tech. Big bucks, control, DNA changing potential, micro chips and trackers etc etc.
By contrast the AIDS scam was ‘only’ a U$350 billion market over 40 years. Chump change compared to the 20-70 stab schedule, wedded to the mRNA potential for humans and animals including soon, your pets.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-global-vaccine-market/
Thank you for sharing. This along with the warning from Yuri Bezmenov indicate that there are numerous enemies of free and open societies.
The alarming aspect is Gates’ idea of putting vaccines in food so you get it whether you want of not. Perhaps that is one of the reasons he is buying up farms?
Also synthetic meat I suspect.
Via the ‘corporatisation of farming which is already being touted by the state.
Off-T.
Niall McRae at TCW with a look at the reasons why immigration is being promoted. Anybody claiming that the destruction of our country is tory incompetence needs a lobotomy because what they currently use for a brain isn’t working.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/immigration-islam-and-the-deliberate-crashing-of-the-welfare-system/
I meant to put above comment here but I obviously cannot multi-task as I was having an unrelated conversation at the time. Thank you for sharing. This along with the warning from Yuri Bezmenov indicates that there are numerous enemies of free and open societies.
The downvote is interesting and I would love to hear their reasoning.
Great article covering all the obvious SH1T occupying my mind !
All totally predictable, sadly.
Musk is a conman.
Expert at one thing: getting governments and/or TPTB to give him our money.
He represents the opposite of capitalism.
Maybe Maajid Nawas was right about him!
I know I am. I have been watching the guy for far too long. He is a total crook.
A Golden Calf!
I’m a huge fan of mRNA, in principle. If it has the potential to cure cancer, or many other diseases, then I’m all for it. And I’m all for investigation, research and development into mRNA medicine. Wonderful.
Just don’t force it on me. Show me what you have and I’ll decide if I want it or not.
In fact, don’t force anything on me.
If Musk is even slightly involved it can only be a bad thing, in my opinion.
I’m old enough to remember that medical ’scientists’ and media were promising that a cure for cancer was just around the corner in the 1970s.
And in the 1980s.
And in the 1990s.
And in the 2000s.
And in the 2010s.
Forgive me if I don’t get excited about yet another promising cure for cancer in the 2020s.
Dr Robert Malone on the Joe Rogan podcast all that time back, said mRNA is far too risky for something like covid. It is only appropriate for something like treating cancer, which has an entirely different prognosis. This seems a reasonable point. However the pendulum has swung pretty far against its’ use for nearly everything including caner now.
Freedom of avoiding one’s declaration of interest is not quite the same idea as free speech. Perhaps they should remind him of that fact.
Would this explain why people who have been critical and sceptical about the safety and effectiveness of the Covid vaccines such as Professor Norman Fenton and Professor Martin Neil are still shadow banned on X formerly know as Twitter?
I myself appear to be shadow banned: One day I saw that JK Rowling had just posted a few minutes previously and I swiftly posted a comment in reply. JK Rowling gets thousands of views and those who replied around the same time as I posted got thousands of views, whereas I got fewer than 20 views, even up to 24 hours later!
I’ve had several similar confirmations of being shadow banned on Twitter/X (and Facebook too). I don’t understand exactly how shadow banning works, but it appears to be still happening even with Elon Musk as the new owner.
Excellent piece of investigative journalism by Robert Kogon.
It’s a mystery why so many people trust Musk & Drumpf, especially after “Operation Warp Speed”.