They have a *history* of being fraudulent (at least after the fact, I don't know intent). Solar+wind+storage is a lot quicker and, I believe, usually cheaper. And it's got a short enough turn around that we can tell what it's going to cost.

Or just pass the whole machine on to that entity, and let them work out how to hack it... Assuming that such entities don't already have access to such machines.

But you don't use a federal agency where a significant proportion of the employees wouldn't agree with the intended use of the vulnerabilities.
It only took one edward snowden to leak exploits from the NSA, and the NSA as an agency targets foreign countries so most americans wouldn't have a problem with it. Once you had an agency using exploits to subvert the domestic vote you can guarantee that the majority of employees would be against it.

You'd get a voting machine to a friendly location - die hard domestic supporters, or a foreign power that aligns with your goals. And on the subject of foreign powers, it's almost certain that at least the russians and chinese already have access to these machines and have studied them, possibly other countries like iran and north korea too.

So the machines did give fraudulent counts and the claim was correct.

Patching the vulnerabilities in the future wouldn't change the fact that the system was vulnerable last time it was used, and someone else could have independently found and exploited the vulnerabilities at the time.
Likely if vulnerabilities were found they would be used to claim that they were exploited during previous elections, and calling the results into question.

How the **** am I supposed to look into the details of how the contract will be enforced?? I can look an see prior contracts that were evaded by one means or another, several involving nuclear power plants, but that doesn't say about this one. But I would STRONGLY prefer supporting something with a lower down-side, like solar + wind plus some storage mechanism.

The one proposal I saw that I though looked interesting involved closed cycle in a deep well...about as deep as an oil well. Just about anywhere has hot rocks if you go that deep. The question is "Is there a good enough flow of heat for this to continue being useful?". I didn't see an answer to that, so that may still be site specific. Iceland has proven that can make it work when an active volcano is available, and it should work in Yellowstone. But that's shallow depth-site-specific. Can they get it deep enough to work most places? That, IIUC, is currently unknown. Will it be cheap enough to be worthwhile? I think that's also unknown.

So every kid needs to have a brokerage account now?

No, each kid needs to get an X ("The Everything App") account.

The more reasonable reaction is to doubt that he will do as he says. I doubt that he'll do it, even with strings attached. If he actually does it (or legally commits to doing it), that's the time to start looking for the trap.

Not to worry, recall that Musk *also* has ambitions of X being a finance company, so voila, every child can have an 'X brokerage account' waiting for them with a share in it. Now he gets every child defaulting to his network, no problem.

I don't think a grant of one share of a specific stock will be a particularly educational event. I think generally in school a teach will, at some point, do a more educational exercise where students are actually doing mock trading and, critically, trying to evaluate different companies and make predictions on where things will go.

Do you believe he will? Perhaps in his will...which would, of course, be contested.

That's is you think the load will really be repaid. Past history does not cause me to be optimistic about this, though I haven't looked into the details or how the contract will be enforced. What happens if the company (which?) declares bankruptcy? What if it spins the asset/obligation off into a separate company that declares bankruptcy? It's happened before.

Also the batteries (or other storage). Solar isn't a good source for a large constant load without a LOT of storage. (It *might* still be a better choice, though. But I'd want a mix of solar and wind, and LOTS of storage.)
Too bad geothermal hasn't been well enough developed, but I don't believe it has been.

I'm not sure about the last couple of decades, but prior to that geothermal was usually really a research project. Yeah, it was expensive, but boondoggle is the wrong framing.

OTOH, some of the recent proposals look serious. I'm not in a position to judge them, but maybe they're good. However they are still limited in the sites where they can operate. I'm not sure the ones that involve fracking are both safe and reasonable. And the closed circulation one that I've seen described is really still experimental. Once they get the bugs worked out of it, it may be a really good system, usable in a lot of places. My guess, though, is give it another 20 years before major investment.