The head of engineering for Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot division, left the company on Friday. Milan Kovac announced his departure on X, insisting that it “will not change a thing” about the company’s plans, which, as of March, meant building thousands of robots this year alone.
Kovac insisted that he was leaving Tesla only to “spend more time with family abroad,” adding that his “support for @elonmusk and the team is ironclad,” heading off speculation that his exit might have been prompted by Musk’s political activity or recent public squabble with Donald Trump. In his own tweet, Musk thanked Kovac for his “outstanding contribution to Tesla over the past decade.”
Musk has called the humanoid Optimus robots Tesla’s “most important product development,” and has repeatedly leaned on the division to generate hype as EV sales slow and the company’s stock price tumbles. “The only things that matter in the long term are autonomy and Optimus,” Musk told CNBC in May, referring to the company’s separate plans for self-driving cars, set to be deployed in a “robotaxi” service in Austin this month.
Bloomberg reports that Autopilot chief Ashok Elluswamy will take over responsibility for Optimus, which is at a critical stage. In March Musk claimed the company could make “at least one legion of robots this year and then probably 10 legions next year,” which would mean around 5,000 robots by the end of this year, and 50,000 in 2026. To do so, it will have to overcome China’s recent restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals and magnets, which are essential for the robots’ construction.
Last week, Elon Musk’s media tour included telling CBS Sunday Morning he was “disappointed” by the Republican domestic policy bill backed by President Trump. Now, the former White House employee is calling it a “disgusting abomination” and claiming that Congress is making America bankrupt in posts on X on Tuesday.
Elon’s problem isn’t the provisions we noted that would strip state legislatures of AI oversight and scale back consumer protection and climate initiatives, while funding increased border surveillance. Instead, he claims, “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has reported that the bill’s tax provisions would increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next decade.
Despite Musk continuing and threatening that “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” the White House and other Republican political leaders have not shown much regard for his statements. In a briefing Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “…look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion; this is one big beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it.”
Democrats had a different response, as ABC News reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer held up a printout of Musk’s tweets during his press conference following a policy luncheon. Schumer told reporters, “Trump’s buddy says the bill is bad — you can imagine how bad this bill is,” while his counterpart in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, said, “…breaking news: Elon Musk and I agree with each other.”
Politico reports that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters he spoke to Musk on Monday for about 20 minutes regarding the bill, and said, “With all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong about the one big, beautiful bill.” In the Senate, Republican Majority Leader John Thune told reporters, “On this particular issue, we have a difference of opinion,” and that he believes Musk is using outdated data.
SpaceX made some progress on another test flight of the world's most powerful rocket Tuesday, finally overcoming technical problems that plagued the program's two previous launches.
But minutes into the mission, SpaceX's Starship lost control as it cruised through space, then tumbled back into the atmosphere somewhere over the Indian Ocean nearly an hour after taking off from Starbase, Texas, the company's privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border.
SpaceX's next-generation rocket is designed to eventually ferry cargo and private and government crews between the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The rocket is complex and gargantuan, wider and longer than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, and after nearly two years of steady progress since its first test flight in 2023, this has been a year of setbacks for Starship.
© SpaceX
On Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours before a launch attempt of the ninth flight test of SpaceX's Starship vehicle, Elon Musk spoke with Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger to talk about where his space company goes from here.
In recent weeks, Musk has dialed back his focus on politics and said he wants to devote the majority of his time to SpaceX and his other companies. So what does that mean?
The conversation came just ahead of the opening of Starship's launch window, at 6:30 pm CT (23:30 UTC) in South Texas. Here is a lightly edited transcript of the interview.
© Getty Images | Mario Tama
An outdated Meta AI model was apparently at the center of the Department of Government Efficiency's initial ploy to purge parts of the federal government.
Wired reviewed materials showing that affiliates of Elon Musk's DOGE working in the Office of Personnel Management "tested and used Meta’s Llama 2 model to review and classify responses from federal workers to the infamous 'Fork in the Road' email that was sent across the government in late January."
The "Fork in the Road" memo seemed to copy a memo that Musk sent to Twitter employees, giving federal workers the choice to be "loyal"—and accept the government's return-to-office policy—or else resign. At the time, it was rumored that DOGE was feeding government employee data into AI, and Wired confirmed that records indicate Llama 2 was used to sort through responses and see how many employees had resigned.
© Anadolu / Contributor | Anadolu
Back in February, Elon Musk skewered the Treasury Department for lacking "basic controls" to stop payments to terrorist organizations, boasting at the Oval Office that "any company" has those controls.
Fast-forward three months, and now Musk's social media platform X is suspected of taking payments from sanctioned terrorists and providing premium features that make it easier to raise funds and spread propaganda—including through X's chatbot, Grok. Groups seemingly benefiting from X include Houthi rebels, Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as groups from Syria, Kuwait, and Iran. Some accounts have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, paying to boost their reach while X apparently looks the other way.
In a report released Thursday, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) flagged popular accounts likely linked to US-sanctioned terrorists. Some of the accounts bear "ID verified" badges, suggesting that X may be going against its own policies that ban sanctioned terrorists from benefiting from its platform.
© Mohammed Hamoud / Contributor | Getty Images News
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly overhauled a historically wonky Department of Defense-designed tool that automates layoffs of federal workers.
Expected to expedite DOGE's already rushed efforts to shrink the government, the redesigned software could make it easier for DOGE to quickly dismantle the biggest agencies in a blink, sources familiar with the revamp told Reuters.
Developed more than two decades ago, AutoRIF (short for automated reductions in force) was deemed too "clunky" to use across government, sources told Reuters. In a 2003 audit, the DOD's Office of the Inspector General noted, for example, that "specialized reduction-in-force procedures needed for the National Guard technicians made the module impractical." Basically, each department needed to weigh its cuts differently to avoid gutting essential personnel. Despite several software updates since then, Wired reported, the tool remained subject to errors, sources told Reuters, requiring most federal agencies to continue conducting firings manually rather than risk work stoppages or other negative outcomes from sloppy firings.
© Pacific Press / Contributor | LightRocket
Login