Earlier this year, Musk’s xAI launched Colossus, described as the world’s most powerful AI training system, setting a new benchmark in the rapidly advancing field of AI. Colossus boasts 100,000 liquid-cooled H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips provided by Nvidia, which places xAI well ahead of its competitors, including those from OpenAI.

Last month, renowned computer scientist and professor at the University of Montreal Yoshua Bengio warned that machines could soon have most of the cognitive abilities of humans and thus pose grave risks to humanity as it becomes harder to control AI. The computer scientist cited a common fear that the AI machines currently being trained “would lead to systems that turn against humans.”

Bengio also highlighted potential risks of social and political disparity stemming from AI, pointing out that a limited number of organizations and governments could afford to build powerful and costly AI machines. This would lead to a concentration of economic, political and military power, eventually threatening geopolitical stability worldwide, the scientist warned.

After meeting Zelensky in Paris earlier this month, Trump claimed that the Ukrainian leader “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.” Zelensky immediately denied seeking a settlement, declaring that the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures,” and that Putin “can only be stopped by strength.” Trump has since confirmed that he may cut military aid to Kiev once he takes office in January.

“We’ve seen everybody’s narrative go from ‘As long as it [takes], blank check, don't dare say anything else, or you’re somehow pro-Russian’ to ‘How do we get this to a deal?’” Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said in an interview on Sunday. Expecting “every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea?” might not be a “realistic goal at this point,” he added.

Abdulmohsen has been a vociferous critic of Islam and declared common cause with the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party against the country’s asylum policies and what he regards as its part in the “Islamisation” of Europe.

With support from some of the most powerful figures in the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, including the technology billionaire Elon Musk and the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, it is attempting to pin the blame on the German political establishment and its immigration policies.

The campaign before Germany’s snap election on February 23 is now dominated by the attack — and the search for answers as to how Abdulmohsen was allegedly able to carry it out despite an abundance of warnings to the authorities.

Nope, this is about Germany: With regard to Europe’s Sick Man on the Spree (there is another one on the Seine, of course), in his first post Musk waltzed in, guns blazing to support the right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) party in the run-up to the snap elections on February 23.

Only the AfD, he pronounced with typical modesty, can “save Germany.” In a second post, a few days later, Musk reacted to a murderous attack on a German Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg. This time, he called Germany’s lame-duck Chancellor Olaf Scholz “an incompetent fool” who should resign forthwith.

For what’s really gloomy – indeed, quite literally hopeless – about the current German doom is that no one with even a remote chance at political power in Berlin is prepared to honestly face the root causes of the country’s misery. Germany is not merely in a mess; it also has a dysfunctional non-elite that is in total denial about how to fix that mess. But before we get to that elephant in the misery room that almost all German politicians fail to acknowledge, with stereotypical thoroughness, let’s look at the wasteland their failure has made.

Take a few highlights. There are 84 million Germans. According to a major research institute in the country, a quarter of them have found out that their income is insufficient to make ends meet. In a similar vein, another new study based on official government data pays special attention to the cost of having a roof, any roof, over your head. It has just found that 17.5 million Germans are living in poverty. That is 5.4 million more than previously assumed. The reason they had escaped the traditional statistics is that the cost of their abodes had simply not been factored in. Once you, realistically, do so, a whopping 20 percent of Germans fall under the official definition of “poor.”

Here’s the final irony: Germany’s fundamental problem is not actually economic. The economy is in catastrophic shape, make no mistake. But the reason for that is political and even intellectual and moral: The inability or unwillingness to finally abandon a pernicious group think that subordinates obvious and vital German interests to the misguided political agenda of, ultimately, Washington and does not allow for what is obviously needed urgently: re-establishing and repairing a rational relationship with Russia.

“Another barbaric attack in Europe — this time by a man from Saudi Arabia,” said Mr Wilders. “Once again, an incredible number of innocent victims, dead and wounded. Once again, politicians crying crocodile tears. I’ve been saying it for over 20 years: stop with those open borders.” Ms Len Pen followed suit: “Once again, Islamist barbarity is sowing terror in the heart of Europe. This act of war against a symbol of our civilisation is heartbreaking.” Mr Farage added: “We have allowed people who hate us and our values into Europe. Christmas is their target. Any guesses why?”

THE TRUTH APPEARS TO BE A LITTLE MORE COMPLICATED. Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the Saudi who rammed his BMW into a crowd of festive shoppers, killing five, including a nine-year-old boy, and injuring scores of others, appears to be not an Islamist fanatic but an opponent of Islam. An enthusiastic user of Elon Musk’s X platform, he tagged himself as an ex-Muslim and founded a website supposedly helping women to escape from Saudi Arabia, which he fled in 2006. Riyadh says it warned Berlin that Abdulmohsen, who was apparently granted refugee status in Germany ten years after his arrival, was an extremist but was repeatedly ignored.

The porous borders created by Schengen and now being sealed by EU members like Poland and Austria in defiance of Brussels have created a reservoir of resentment across Europe, not least in Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, which in 2016 threw open its doors to a million Syrian and other refugees. That resentment has been further stoked by fears over Germany’s economy, most conspicuously its vaunted motor industry, is stalling under the pressure of global competition. Now, the peace of Christmas has been shattered by nihilistic violence set in that most German of festive scenes. It is the AfD that will be seeking to best capitalise on Germany’s winter of discontent.

The prominent Iranian opposition group’s officials identified key figures in this program, including Saeed Borji, chairman of Arvin Kimia Abzar, and CEO Akbar Motallebizadeh. Both are high-ranking experts in SPND with extensive histories in nuclear weapons projects, including EBW detonators. Borji’s involvement with explosive technologies dates back to his training with Ukrainian scientist Vyacheslav V Danilenko, highlighting international dimensions to Iran’s nuclear efforts.

“Transparency is non-existent in the regime’s nuclear program,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of NCRI’s Washington Office, as he stressed the need for immediate International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of the Meshkat Complex and other critical sites. “The regime is focusing on building a bomb as the only means for its survival,” he added.

He wrote: "The United States has a vested interest in the secure, efficient, and reliable operation of the Panama Canal, and that was always understood. We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands! It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama.

If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question. To the Officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly!"

Yet there are points of legitimate comparison. Many voters are thoroughly disillusioned with the political system as a whole: 57 per cent feel Germany is not equipped to deal with the challenges of the present, according to a recent poll, and 56 per cent do not trust any party to deal with its problems. Even previous symbols of national pride, such as the car industry and the punctuality of the train network, have been tarnished.

The Magdeburg attack will also exacerbate a widespread sense of physical peril, as well as a broader anxiety that the former chancellor Angela Merkel once called Unbehagen (unease or discomfort). One recent survey for ARD, the public broadcast network, found that 44 per cent of Germans feel either “somewhat” or “very” unsafe in their country, twice the level that was recorded when their pollster first started regularly asking the question in 2017.

Germany is awash with politically motivated crime. The total number of offences has almost doubled over the past decade and last year it surpassed 60,000, the highest level since modern records began in 2001, with increases in every category from the far right to the far left, including “religious” and “foreign” ideology.

For the first time in two decades, voters are confronted with meaningful choices between the parties of the centre on the issues that matter most to them: the economy, the justice system, asylum and integration. These differences may ultimately be sanded down to irrelevance by the mechanics of coalition government. But the argument has at least begun.

On Friday, Dr Beatrix von Storch, the party’s deputy leader, told The Telegraph: “Anyone who previously doubted whether Musk, the richest man in the world, is also the smartest – well, now it’s clear. He is at the very least one of the smartest because he is calling people to vote for the AfD,” she said. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” repeating Musk’s claim.

Musk has shifted his focus to politics in recent months, supporting US president-elect Donald Trump. His tweets have increasingly focused on politics, as highlighted in a recent Wall Street Journal analysis, and he has already expressed support for other anti-immigration parties across Europe.