January 13, 2025 by Max Vogel (‘26)
To start off the new year, one of the most critically looked at cars in present society, the Tesla Cybertruck pulled into the drop off loop of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas . Moments later, the calm sunny morning of January 1st became chaos for citizens in the radius of the hotel after the Cybertruck abruptly burst into flames. Eyewitnesses recalled seeing 2 explosions followed by a raging fire from the bed of the truck. Miraculously, the only casualty was from the driver of the truck, Mathew Livelsberger, suspected to have started the explosion as a form of suicide. Livelsberger was a 37-year-old Green Beret who has served in the military since 2006 and was deployed five times to serve in Afghanistan. He lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the time, but came to Las Vegas to “cleanse” his mind of the wars that he had fought in – as his cell phone notes reveal.
This event is rather concerning and became a large story shortly after the explosion, because Livelsberger was at a high position in the military and a seemingly patriotic United States citizen up until the fatal explosion. Authorities are concluding that the event resulted from former mental illness and PTSD from Livelsberger, dating back to six years ago when he was quoted saying “Sometimes, I get so hopeless and depressed, it’s [expletive] ridiculous” describing a time in Afghanistan when he killed 2 men in a close-range gunfight.
The explosion on the 1st doesn’t seem like a sudden burst or outrage by a mentally ill soldier though, it seems to have been planned out more than the public had expected. Investigators have found a letter by Livelsberger that states “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call” as he explained that American citizens only pay attention to violence and nothing else, which is why he used fireworks and explosives to get his point across on Wednesday.
Recently, examiners of the explosion later found that the death of Mathew Livelsberger wasn’t from the explosion itself, but from a gun inflicted suicide just moments before the truck exploded. Livelsberger’s ex-girlfriend, Alicia Arritt has also stated that he liked art, basketball, and fast cars, noting that he wasn’t impulsive. These events show that the death of Mathew Livelsberger was most likely from a long depression, rather than a short-term breakdown, which raises questions about the mental health support offered to veterans of the military.
Another questionable development from this story was Livelsberger’s use of artificial intelligence to plan out the explosion. Local police reported that Mathew had asked ChatGPT questions relating to the explosion. A spokesperson for Open AI expressed that the use of ChatGPT for the planning of the event “saddened” them, but also recounted that the AI model only used publicly available information found online to generate the response.
This explosion and death of a top American soldier on U.S. soil raises many questions about the legitimacy of the military’s mental health department, artificial intelligence, and the security of the new Cyber Trucks. Although this is a very rare occurrence, all the entities involved in this event are making changes to ensure a tragedy like this is less likely to happen again.
Photo source: knews.com
Sources:
Driver in Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion used ChatGPT to plan blast, authorities say