These companies - Apple, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX - they have this sheen on them that's hard to shake, because they present themselves as doing groundbreaking work, doing the things that governments can't. Which is mostly a lie. Basically every one of these companies has built their fortunes and business models on a foundation of decades of public sector research.

Journalist Kate Aronoff looks through the manufactured iconoclasm of tech capitalists like Elon Musk to the pattern of vast private fortunes built on decades of publicly funded research, and explains why the public deserves not only a share of the wealth created, but influence in the direction of tech companies to serve the needs of all people in a future that's going to require big technological solutions for survival.

Kate wrote the article The Case for Nationalizing Elon Musk for In These Times.