I'm not so sure about the author's thesis. One quote alone explains it, "it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence." If indeed Musk believes this, then his actions now matter not at all, except insofar as it either helps or harms the birth of "digital superintelligence". This is a similar "ends justify the means" argument to the "effective altruists" and the general idea to "not miss the forest for the trees", the forest being long-term viability of humanity, the trees being individual well-being.<p>During peacetime, making such an argument justifies the selfish and destructive action they wanted to take anyway. The framing of the assertion is impossible to make an objective assessment of the success of an action, since such an assessment may take a hundred, or a thousand, years. So really there is no way for anyone to judge whether an act is good or bad in this framework, leaving it only as a matter of judgement of the actor. In this sense, Musk's invocation of Banks is simple megalomania with more steps.