Elon Musk warns of “single world government” at World Government Summit

Elon Musk spoke remotely to the World Government Summit in Dubai on Wednesday, making a case against global government.

“I know this is called the World Government Summit, but I think we should be maybe a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government,” Musk said. “We want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having, frankly – this may sound a little odd – too much cooperation between governments.”

In his warning that such a unified global system represents a massive risk to humanity, Musk warned, “If we are too much of a single civilization, then the whole thing may collapse.”

The business magnate went on to argue that when the Roman Empire fell, Islamic civilization was rising, adding that the variety of civilizations is what allowed for the preservation of knowledge which would have otherwise been lost.

This is not the first time Musk has openly spoken against a one-world government. In a January tweet, Musk referred to the World Economic Forum as “… increasingly becoming an unelected world government that the people never asked for and don’t want.”

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, also spoke at the World Government Summit and affirmed that “the World Economic Forum is very proud to have been a founding partner of this event.”

During his talk, Schwab argued that “our life in ten years from now will be completely different” due to the development of such technologies as “artificial intelligence,” “the metaverse” and “synthetic biology.”

Schwab also stated that “[whoever] masters those technologies in some way will be the master of the world” and that “if we do not work together on a global scale, if we do not formulate, shape together the necessary policies, they will escape our power to master those technologies.”

While Musk is the most prominent tech leader to caution against the dangers of world government, he is not the only one to speak out in recent days.

Billionaire Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal with Musk, gave a speech in January at the Oxford Union in which he warned that “a one-world totalitarian state” was a “very, very serious existential risk.”