Elon Musk has been known to say some pretty foolish things. Let’s see, there’s the time he suggested “pronouns suck” or when he joked (or at least we assume he meant to) that his dog was “CEO of Twitter” or that he preferred ritualistic suicide to failure. Just last week, he mocked Sen. Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and U.S. Navy pilot, as a “traitor” for visiting Ukraine and for having concerns about giving things away to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But it’s hard to top his recent observation at a Morgan Stanley investment conference that Amtrak ought to be privatized while comparing it to — wait for it — high-speed passenger rail service in China.

Now, let’s be clear. China has a great high-speed rail service, its passenger trains are regarded as the fastest in the world with the latest version, the CR450, expected to operate at 248 miles per hour. Amtrak Acela trains peak at about 150 mph, which is pretty pokey by world standards. But here’s something the fastest passenger train systems from the Shanghai Maglev to Germany’s Intercity Express (ICE) and France’s Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) have in common: They are state-owned, not operated strictly as for-profit companies.

We’ll admit that Amtrak is in a “sad situation” but that’s because the United States has chronically under-invested in rail — often with the claim that Americans prefer to travel by car or plane, a self-fulfilling prophecy when energy-efficient passenger rail isn’t a readily available, affordable, comfortable and fast alternative. In Baltimore where it takes an awfully long time to replace an aging rail tunnel, we understand this all too well. Privatization only makes it tougher to expand your network, compete with freight lines for right-of-way, design and build better train sets and on and on. It is estimated that China has invested $1.5 trillion in high-speed rail over the last quarter-century. Last year, Amtrak’s operating revenue was $3.6 billion.

The good news is that Musk has acknowledged that a major change in Amtrak would surely require congressional approval. Well, that’s a start for anyone connected with the seemingly oversight-free Department of Government Efficiency. But wouldn’t it be nice to hear from Musk or perhaps the president to get behind a world-class high-speed rail system so that visitors to the United States won’t be embarrassed by the poor quality of Amtrak service? And it sure wouldn’t hurt the economy either. Don’t we want to compete with China, Europe and Japan?

Hey, get all aboard a Manhattan Project-style public investment in cutting-edge passenger rail technology and this administration may actually leave behind a legacy about which they can be proud. And it sure wouldn’t hurt Baltimore, home to Amtrak’s sixth busiest station.