This is seriously so tone deaf, I don’t know where to start. Don’t name your initiative after the title of a chilling warning from TNG.
This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted their desire to “make Star Trek real”—while unconsciously reminding us of what the utopian science fiction franchise is fundamentally about.
Their Tuesday event was the latest in Hegseth’s ongoing “Arsenal of Freedom” tour, which was held at SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. (Itself a newly created town that takes its name from a term popularized by Star Trek.)
Neither Musk nor Hegseth seemed to recall that the “Arsenal of Freedom” phrase—at least in the context of Star Trek—is also the title of a 1988 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That episode depicts an AI-powered weapons system, and its automated salesman, which destroys an entire civilization and eventually threatens the crew of the USS Enterprise. (Some Trekkies made the connection, however.)
They just heard “Eugenics Wars” and got a little too excited
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!
I’m actually fairly confident they do recall and know exactly what the title / phrase connotates.
It’s too on the nose to be accidental.
You think these are people of culture?
They may be on to something, the world war which led to Zefram Cochrane’s warp drive and first contact was started in 2026.
Star Trek but without the show’s lessons…isn’t that basically just the Dominion from DS9?
Look, I want Jeffrey Combs as Secretary of War.
And also Secretary of Treasury
Why stop there? Jeffrey Combs can be the entire cabinet.
What do you call Jeffrey Combs standing around by himself?
“A Star Trek convention”
Nah you gotta have one Damar on the cabinet with the rest being Weyouns.
We need Brunt, FCA, in charge of Treasury.
