The Russians Are Here! The Russians Are Here! But That’s Not What Scares Elon Musk April 3, 2017 Friday, I offered my high school pal Howard Blum writing in Vanity Fair on the possibility the Kremlin really does have its hooks into our president. Earlier, I linked to Russia’s Art Of War in Foreign Affairs. (According to FBI former special agent Clinton Watts — on yesterday’s Meet the Press — Donald Trump, wittingly or unwittingly, has helped the Russians amplify their attacks on America . . . and those attacks are succeeding, here and around the world.) Today, I offer high school pal Richard Factor’s thoughts on solar energy (he drives an electric car that he may soon be powered from his roof) . . . and whether you should take the plunge. Could Tesla become the first “terrabuck” company — worth $1 trillion? Elon Musk hopes soon to become the leading U.S. luxury car manufacturer; but that’s nothing. Imagine the millions of solar roofs he might sell, coupled to his battery packs. With continued improvements, how many homes a decade from now — let alone two — will have disconnected from the electric grid altogether (just as millions of cell phone customers have abandoned land lines)? How many cars and trucks and homes and businesses will draw their energy not from ExxonMobil and PG&E, but from the sun? (You probably know this quote: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” — Thomas Edison) But before you grow too sanguine (as if that were possible, post November 8), here is Maureen Dowd in Vanity Fair on what scares Elon Musk. As technology races ahead to free us from fossil fuels and high voltage power lines and perhaps even to colonize Mars, so does it also race ahead to make machines smarter than their creators. Uh, oh. One more way our clever little species can do itself in.