This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
本文在一个故事中介绍了今天的新闻通讯。在这里注册。
Updated at 2:28 p.m. ET on June 24, 2025
下午2:28更新美国东部时间于2025年6月24日
In April, Ezibon Khamis was dispatched to Akobo, South Sudan, to document the horrors as humanitarian services collapsed in the middle of a cholera outbreak. As a representative of the NGO Save the Children, Khamis would be able to show the consequences of massive cuts to U.S. foreign assistance made by the Department of Government Efficiency and the State Department. Seven of the health facilities that Save the Children had supported in the region have fully closed, and 20 more have partly ceased operations.
4月，Ezibon Khamis被派往南苏丹的Akobo，以记录恐怖，因为人道主义服务在霍乱疫情中间崩溃。作为非政府组织拯救儿童的代表，哈米斯将能够向政府效率和国务院提供的大规模削减局面对美国外国援助的后果。拯救儿童在该地区支持的七个卫生设施已经完全关闭，还有20个卫生设施已停止了一部分。
Khamis told us about passing men and women who carried the sick on their shoulders like pallbearers. Children and adults were laid on makeshift gurneys; many vomited uncontrollably. These human caravans walked for hours in up to 104-degree heat in an attempt to reach medical treatment, because their local clinics had either closed completely or run out of ways to treat cholera. Previously, the U.S. government had provided tablets that purified the water in the region, which is home to a quarter-million people, many of whom are fleeing violent conflicts nearby. Not anymore, Khamis says; now many have resorted to drinking untreated river water. He told us that at least eight people—five of them children—had died on their journey that day. As he entered a health facility in Akobo, he was confronted by a woman. “She just said, ‘You abandoned us,’” Khamis told us.
Khamis告诉我们有关经过的男人和女人，他们像Pallbearers这样的肩膀上携带病人。儿童和成人被放在临时的gurneys上；许多人无法控制地呕吐。这些人类大篷车在最多104度的热量中行走了几个小时，以尝试接受医疗，因为他们的当地诊所要么完全关闭或用尽了治疗霍乱的方法。此前，美国政府提供了净化该地区水的片剂，该地区是250万人的家园，其中许多人逃离附近的暴力冲突。卡米斯说，不再了。现在，许多人诉诸于喝未经处理的河水。他告诉我们，当天的旅程中，至少有八个人（其中有孩子）死了。当他进入Akobo的医疗机构时，他遇到了一个女人。“她只是说，‘你抛弃了我们，’”哈米斯告诉我们。
Read: The cruel attack on USAID
阅读：对美国国际开发署的残酷攻击
We heard other such stories in our effort to better understand what happened when DOGE dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. In Nigeria, a mother watched one of her infant twins die after the program that had been treating them for severe acute malnutrition shut down. In South Sudan, unaccompanied children were unable to reunite with surviving relatives at three refugee camps, due to other cuts. Allara Ali, a coordinator for Doctors Without Borders who oversees the group’s work at Bay Regional Hospital, in Somalia, told us that children are arriving there so acutely malnourished and “deteriorated” that they cannot speak—a result of emergency-feeding centers no longer receiving funds from USAID to provide fortified milks and pastes. Last month, 14 children died from severe acute malnutrition at Bay Regional, Doctors Without Borders wrote to us. Many mothers who travel more than 100 miles so that a doctor might see their child return home without them.
我们听到了其他这样的故事，以更好地理解Doge拆除美国国际发展机构时发生的事情。在尼日利亚，一位母亲看着她的一个婴儿双胞胎死后，该节目一直在治疗严重的急性营养不良。在南苏丹，由于其他裁员，无人陪伴的儿童无法与三个难民营的幸存亲戚团聚。阿尔拉拉·阿里（Allara Ali）是一个没有边界的医生的协调员，负责监督该小组在索马里的湾区医院的工作，他告诉我们，孩子们到达那里如此急切地营养不良和“恶化”，以至于无法说话，这是由于紧急喂养中心不再从USAID那里收到USAID提供的资金，以提供加固的房价和狂热的房价。上个月，没有边界的医生写信给我们，有14名儿童因严重的急性营养不良死亡。许多旅行超过100英里的母亲，以便医生可以看到自己的孩子没有他们回家。
One man has consistently cheered and helped execute the funding cuts that have exacerbated suffering and death. In February, Elon Musk, acting in his capacity as a leader of DOGE, declared that USAID was “a criminal organization,” argued that it was “time for it to die,” and bragged that he’d “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
一个人一直在欢呼并帮助执行加剧痛苦和死亡的资金削减。2月，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）凭借担任总督领导人的身份行事，宣布美国国际开发署是“犯罪组织”，认为这是“该死的时候”，并吹牛说他“度过了整个周末，将美国卫生间送入木箱里”。
Musk did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Last month, in an interview with Bloomberg, he argued that his critics have been unable to produce any evidence that these cuts at USAID have resulted in any real suffering. “It’s false,” he said. “I say, ‘Well, please connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about their issue,’ we get nothing. They don’t even try to come up with a show orphan.”
马斯克没有回应本文的多个发表评论请求。上个月，在接受彭博社的采访时，他辩称，他的批评者无法提供任何证据表明美国国际开发署的这些削减导致了任何真正的痛苦。“这是错误的，”他说。“我说，‘好吧，请与这群孩子联系，以便我们可以与他们交谈并更多地了解他们的问题，’我们什么也没得到。他们甚至都不想提出一个孤儿。”
Musk is wrong, as our reporting shows—and as multiple other reports (and estimates) have also shown. But the issue here is not just that Musk is wrong. It is that his indifference to the suffering of people in Africa exists alongside his belief that he has a central role to play in the future of the human species. Musk has insisted that people must have as many children as possible—and is committed to siring a “legion” himself—and that we must become multiplanetary. Perhaps more than anyone else on Earth, Musk, the wealthiest man alive, has the drive, the resources, and the connections to make his moon shots a reality. His greatest and most consistent ambition is to define a new era for humankind. Who does he believe is worthy of that future?
正如我们的报告所示，麝香是错误的，并且如其他多个报告（和估计）也显示了。但是这里的问题不仅是马斯克是错误的。正是他对非洲人民的苦难的冷漠是因为他相信他在人类物种的未来中具有核心作用。马斯克坚持认为，人们必须拥有尽可能多的孩子（并致力于自己的“军团”自己），并且我们必须成为多层次。也许比地球上的其他任何人都更重要的是，最富有的人活着，拥有动力，资源和联系，使他的月亮射击成为现实。他最大，最一致的野心是为人类定义一个新时代。他认为谁值得那个未来？
For more than 20 years, Musk has been fixated on colonizing Mars. This is the reason he founded his rocket company, SpaceX; Musk recently proclaimed that its Starship program—an effort to create reusable rockets that he believes will eventually carry perhaps millions of humans to the Red Planet—is “the key branching point for human destiny or destiny of consciousness as a whole.” This civilizational language is common—he’s also described his Mars ambitions as “life insurance for life collectively.”
20多年来，马斯克一直致力于殖民火星。这就是他创立自己的火箭公司SpaceX的原因；马斯克最近宣布，其星际飞船计划（为创建可重复使用的火箭而努力，他认为最终将把数百万人类带到红色星球上 - 是“人类命运或整个意识命运的关键分支机构”。这种文明语言很普遍 - 他还将他的火星野心描述为“共同生命的人寿保险”。
He claims to be philosophically aligned with longtermism, a futurist philosophy whose proponents—self-styled rationalists—game out how to do the most good for the human race over the longest time horizon. Classic pillars of longtermism are guarding against future pandemics and addressing concerns about properly calibrating artificial intelligence, all with a focus on protecting future generations from theoretical threats. Musk’s Mars obsession purports to follow this logic: An investment in a program that allows humans to live on other planets would, in theory, ensure that the human race survives even if the Earth becomes uninhabitable. Musk has endorsed the work of at least one longtermist who believes that this achievement would equate to trillions of lives saved in the form of humans who would otherwise not be born.
他声称在哲学上与长期主义是一种未来主义的哲学，他的支持者（自我风格的理性主义者）在最长的时间范围内为人类最大的利益做出了最大的利益。长期主义的经典支柱正在保护未来的大流行，并解决了对正确校准人工智能的担忧，所有这些都着重于保护子孙后代免受理论威胁的侵害。马斯克的火星痴迷声称要遵循这种逻辑：对一个计划的投资，从理论上讲，即使地球变得不可居住，也可以确保人类生存在其他行星上。马斯克认可了至少一位长期主义者的工作，他们认为这一成就将等同于以人类的形式挽救的数万亿人的生命，而人类本来就不会出生。
Saving the lives of theoretical future children appears to be of particular interest to Musk. On X and in interviews, he continuously fixates on declining birth rates. “The birth rate is very low in almost every country. And so unless that changes, civilization will disappear,” Musk told Fox News’s Bret Baier earlier this year. “Humanity is dying.” He himself has fathered many children—14 that we know of—with multiple women. Musk’s foundation has also donated money to fund population research at the University of Texas at Austin. An economics professor affiliated with that research, Dean Spears, has argued in The New York Times that “sustained below-replacement fertility will mean tens of billions of lives not lived over the next few centuries—many lives that could have been wonderful for the people who would have lived them.”
拯救理论未来的孩子的生命似乎是马斯克特别感兴趣的。在X和采访中，他不断注视着出生率下降。“几乎每个国家的出生率都非常低。因此，除非这种变化，否则文明将消失。”马斯克今年早些时候告诉福克斯新闻的布雷特·拜尔。“人类快死了。”他本人育有许多孩子（我们知道的14个孩子）和多个女人。马斯克的基金会还向德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的人口研究捐款。迪恩·斯皮尔斯（Dean Spears）在《纽约时报》（New York Times）中指出，“持续的替代生育能力将意味着在接下来的几个世纪中没有过数万的生命，这对那些本来可以谋生的人来说是美好的生活。”
But Musk’s behavior and rhetoric do not track with the egalitarian principles these interests would suggest. The pronatalist community that he is aligned with is a loose coalition. It includes techno-utopians and Peter Thiel acolytes, but also more civic-minded thinkers who argue for better social safety nets to encourage more people to have families. The movement is also linked to regressive, far-right activists and even self-proclaimed eugenicists. In 2023, The Guardian reported that Kevin Dolan, the organizer of a popular pronatalist conference, had said on a far-right podcast that “the pronatalist and the eugenic positions are very much not in opposition, they’re very much aligned.” Via his X account, Musk has amplified to his millions of followers the talk given by Dolan at that 2023 conference.
但是，马斯克的行为和言论并没有跟踪这些利益所表明的平等原则。他与他保持一致的志向社区是一个松散的联盟。它包括技术 - 乌托邦人和彼得·蒂尔·侍从人，还有更具公民意识的思想家，他们主张更好的社会安全网，以鼓励更多的人有家庭。该运动还与回归，极右翼的激进主义者甚至自称的优生者有关。2023年，《卫报》报道说，一个受欢迎的著名党派会议的组织者凯文·多兰（Kevin Dolan）在一个极右翼的播客上说：“朝拜者和优生的位置非常不对，他们非常友好。”通过他的X帐户，马斯克在2023年的会议上向他的数百万追随者进行了演讲。
Although other prominent pronatalists disavow the eugenics connection, the movement’s politics can veer into alarming territory. In November 2024, The Guardian reported that Malcolm and Simone Collins, two of the pronatalist movement’s most vocal figures, wrote a proposal to create a futuristic city-state designed to save civilization that included the “mass production of genetically selected humans” to create a society that would “grant more voting power to creators of economically productive agents.” Last month, the Times reported that Musk has “privately” spent time with the Collinses.
尽管其他杰出的座谈会主义者否认了优生学的联系，但该运动的政治可以转向令人震惊的领土。2024年11月，《卫报》报道说，马尔科姆和西蒙妮·柯林斯（Malcolm and Simone Collins）是著名运动最具声音人物的两个人物，他们写了一项提议，旨在创建一个旨在拯救文明的未来主义城市国家，其中包括“大规模生产遗传选择的人”，以创造一个社会，以“为经济上有生产力的生产者的创造者赋予更多投票权。”上个月，《泰晤士报》报道说，马斯克“私下”与柯林斯一起度过了一段时间。
Musk has also dabbled with scientific racism on X. The centibillionaire has engaged with and reposted statements by Jordan Lasker, a proponent of eugenics who goes by the name Crémieux online, according to reporting from The Guardian. On his Substack, Lasker has written about supposed links between national identity and IQ—defending at length an analysis that suggests that people in sub-Saharan Africa have “very low IQs” on average. Musk may not have explicitly commented on Lasker’s work, which implies a relationship between race and intelligence, but in 2024, he responded favorably to an X post that argued that “HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered ‘borderline intellectual impairment.’” The original post was ostensibly criticizing a United Airlines program that gave students at three historically Black colleges and universities an opportunity to interview for a pilot-training program. In his response to that post, Musk wrote, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE.” (“DIE” is Musk’s play on DEI.)
马斯克还涉足X上的科学种族主义。二千万富翁与乔治学的支持者约旦·拉斯克（Jordan Lasker）互动并重新发表了陈述，他以克里米克斯在线的名字来称呼。拉斯克（Lasker）在他的替代方面写道，关于民族身份和智商之间的假定联系 - 详尽地进行了分析，表明撒哈拉以南非洲的人们平均具有“非常低的智商”。马斯克可能没有明确评论拉斯特的工作，这意味着种族与智慧之间的关系，但在2024年，他对X帖子做出了好评，X帖子认为“ HBCU IQ平均平均水平在10点范围内，在门槛的10点范围内，因为被认为是“边缘性障碍”的人，对原始的批评和批评的是，这是一位批评的态度。试点培训计划。马斯克在对那篇文章的回应中写道：“飞机将撞车并杀死数百人，以改变这一疯狂的死亡政策。”（“ Die”是Musk在Dei上的戏剧。）
Musk frequently engages in this type of cagey shitposting—comments that seem to endorse scientific racists or eugenicist thinking without outright doing so. Those seeking to understand the worldview of one of the most powerful men on Earth are left to find the context for themselves. That context should include Musk’s own family history, starting with his upbringing during the apartheid regime in South Africa and the beliefs of his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, who, as Joshua Benton reported for The Atlantic in 2023, was a radical technocrat and anti-Semite who wrote of the “very primitive” natives of South Africa after he moved there from Canada.
马斯克经常从事这种笼罩的垃圾宣传活动 - 似乎在不完全这样做的情况下认可科学种族主义者或优生学家的思想。那些寻求了解地球上最有权势的人之一的世界观的人要为自己找到背景。这种背景应该包括马斯克自己的家族史，从他在南非的种族隔离政权期间成长开始以及他的祖父约书亚·哈尔德曼（Joshua Haldeman）的信念，他在2023年约书亚·本顿（Joshua Benton）在2023年为大西洋报道的那样，他是一个激进的技术专业人士，是一位激进的技术专业人士，是一位反犹太的，他写了“非常原始的南非”。
As Benton correctly notes, the sins of the grandfather are not the sins of the grandson; Musk’s father, for example, was a member of an anti-apartheid party in South Africa, and Ashlee Vance reported in his biography of Musk that the apartheid system was a primary reason Musk left South Africa. But, as Benton also writes, “when Musk tweets that George Soros ‘appears to want nothing less than the destruction of western civilization’—in response to a tweet blaming Soros for an ‘invasion’ of African migrants into Europe—he is not the first in his family to insinuate that a wealthy Jewish financier was manipulating thousands of Africans to advance nefarious goals.”
正如本顿正确指出的那样，祖父的罪过不是孙子的罪过。例如，马斯克的父亲是南非一个反种族隔离党的成员，阿什莉·万斯（Ashlee Vance）在他的麝香传记中报道说，种族隔离制度是马斯克离开南非的主要原因。但是，正如本顿（Benton）也写道的那样：“当马斯克（Musk）发推文说乔治·索罗斯（George Soros）似乎想要的是对西方文明的破坏”时，这是对一条推文责备索罗斯（Soros）的“入侵索罗斯（Soros）”的“入侵”，他并不是他家人中的第一个富有的犹太人金融家，这并不是一个富有的犹太人，这是一个富裕的犹太人，这是非洲人的成千上万的诺夫尔（Nefarious nefarious nefarious nefarious nefarious nefarious nefarious nefarious）。
Musk is also preoccupied with the far-right theory of white genocide, posting at various points in the past couple of years on X about how he feels there is a plot to kill white South Africans. Though South Africa has among the highest murder rates in the world, there is no evidence of a systematic white genocide there. Yet during Musk’s political tenure, the Trump administration welcomed 59 white Afrikaner refugees while effectively closing off admission from other countries, including Sudan and the Republic of the Congo.
马斯克还关注极右翼的白人种族灭绝理论，在过去的几年中，在X上发表了关于他的感觉如何杀死南非人的情节。尽管南非是世界上最高的谋杀率之一，但没有证据表明那里有系统的白人种族灭绝。然而，在马斯克的政治任期期间，特朗普政府欢迎59名白人南非荷兰人难民，同时有效地关闭了包括苏丹和刚果共和国在内的其他国家的入学。
Here’s a thought experiment: Based on the programs that Musk has cut, based on the people he meets with and reads, based on the windows we have into his thinking, who do you imagine might be welcomed on the Starship? On X, Musk has implied that the following are all threats to “Western Civilization”: DEI programs, George Soros, the supposedly left-wing judiciary, and much of what gets put under the umbrella of “wokeness.” Transgender-youth rights, according to Musk, are a “suicidal mind virus” attacking Western civilization.
这是一个思想实验：基于马斯克所削减的计划，根据他遇到的人并根据他的思想窗户读到的人，您认为可能会受到飞船的欢迎？在X上，马斯克暗示以下都是对“西方文明”的威胁：DEI计划，乔治·索罗斯，据称是左翼司法机构，以及大部分被置于“窒息”的伞下。根据马斯克的说法，跨性别 - 青年权利是一种攻击西方文明的“自杀思维病毒”。
Even the idea of empathy, Musk argues, is a kind of existential threat. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said in February on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response,” he said of liberal politicians and activists. Musk, of course, was defending his tenure in the federal government, including his dismantling of USAID. Canceling programs overseas is consistent with his philosophy that “America is the central column that holds up all the places in civilization,” as he told Baier during his Fox appearance. Follow that logic: Cutting global aid frees up resources that can be used to help Americans, who, in turn, can work toward advancing Western civilization, in part by pursuing a MAGA political agenda and funding pronatalist programs that allow for privileged people (ideally white and “high IQ”) to have more children. The thinking seems to go like this: Who cares if people in South Sudan and Somalia die? Western civilization will thrive and propagate itself across the cosmos.
马斯克认为，即使是同理心的观念，也是一种存在的威胁。马斯克在2月在乔·罗根（Joe Rogan）的播客上说：“西方文明的根本弱点是同理心，这是同理心的利用。”他谈到自由主义者和激进主义者时说：“他们正在利用西方文明的虫子，这是同理心反应。”马斯克当然正在捍卫他在联邦政府任职的任期，包括拆除美国国际开发署。在海外取消计划与他的理念一致，即“美国是在文明中占据所有地方的中心专栏”，正如他在狐狸露面时告诉Baier的那样。遵循该逻辑：削减全球援助可以释放可用于帮助美国人的资源，而美国人可以通过追求MAGA政治议程和资助促进志愿者计划来促进西方文明的努力，并允许特权人（理想的是白人和“高IQ”）生育更多的孩子。这个想法似乎是这样的：谁在乎南苏丹和索马里的人们是否死亡？西方文明将在宇宙中蓬勃发展和传播。
Graeme Wood: Extreme violence without genocide
Graeme Wood：没有种族灭绝的极端暴力
Those who believe in this kind of thinking might say that line items on USAID’s ledger are only of minor consequence in the grand scheme of things. But the world is not governed by the logic of a science-fiction plot. “The fact is, it’s all interconnected,” Catherine Connor, the vice president of public policy at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, told us when we asked about the grants Musk’s team had terminated at USAID. “If you take one thing away, you’ve broken a link in a chain.” She described a situation that her organization is seeing play out on the ground right now, where new HIV-positive mothers take their infants for a dry-blood-spot test to determine if the child has HIV as well. The spot test must be transported to a lab to get results, which will determine if a child is HIV positive and if they should receive lifesaving medication. “In many of our sites, in many of the countries we’re working in, that lab transport has been terminated,” Connor said. “So we can do all these things, but because we lost the lab part, we don’t know if this child’s HIV-positive or not.” A link in the chain is broken; people are left on their own. The future becomes less certain, a bit darker.
那些相信这种想法的人可能会说，美国国际开发署分类账上的订单项目只是事物宏伟计划中的较小后果。但是世界不受科幻情节的逻辑的控制。伊丽莎白·格拉瑟（Elizabeth Glaser）小儿艾滋病基金会公共政策副总裁凯瑟琳·康纳（Catherine Connor）告诉我们：“事实是，这一切都是相互联系的。”“如果您把一件东西拿走，您就打破了链条中的链接。”她描述了她的组织目前正在地面上玩耍的情况，新的艾滋病毒阳性母亲带婴儿进行了干血点测试，以确定孩子是否也患有艾滋病毒。现场测试必须运送到实验室以获得结果，这将确定儿童是否呈HIV阳性，以及他们是否应该接受救生药物。康纳说：“在我们正在工作的许多国家中，在我们正在工作的许多国家中，该实验室运输已经终止。”“因此，我们可以做所有这些事情，但是由于我们失去了实验室的一部分，所以我们不知道这个孩子是否的HIV阳性。”链条中的链接被打破了；人们独自留下来。未来变得不确定，有点暗。
“There’s a sense of despondence, a sense of hopelessness that I haven’t sensed in my time working in this field,” Connor said. “The level of uncertainty and the level of anxiety that’s been created is almost as damaging as the cuts themselves.” It seems this hopelessness is a feature of a worldview committed to eradicating what Musk calls “suicidal empathy.” Regardless, Musk, it appears, is much more interested in talking about his self-landing rockets and a future he promises is just on the horizon.
康纳说：“有一种沮丧的感觉，一种我在这个领域工作的时间没有感觉到的绝望感。”“不确定性水平和所产生的焦虑程度几乎与削减本身一样有害。”看来这种绝望是致力于消除马斯克所说的“自杀性同理心”的世界观的一个特征。无论如何，马斯克似乎对谈论自己的自飞地火箭和他承诺的未来更加感兴趣。
But much as Musk might want us to divert our eyes upward, something terrible is happening on Earth. The world’s richest man is preventing lifesaving aid from reaching the world’s poorest children, closing off their future as he fantasizes about another.
但是，就像马斯克可能希望我们向上移动眼睛一样，地球上正在发生可怕的事情。世界上最富有的人是防止生命的援助到达世界上最贫穷的孩子，在幻想另一个人的情况下闭上了他们的未来。
Illustration sources: Oranat Taesuwan / Getty; Neutronman / Getty; Win McNamee / Getty; SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty
插图来源：Oranat Taesuwan / Getty；中子 /盖蒂；赢得McNamee / Getty；科学图书馆 /盖蒂
