Life on Mars – The World According to Elon Musk

Over the past thirty years, as he has built successive companies and a fortune now well over $300 billion, Elon Musk has bulldozed his way through obstacle after obstacle. He has risked bankruptcy, absorbed ridicule, and faced repeated government investigations. He has taken investors on a wild ride. But now, the road ahead looks clearer than ever, thanks to his role in the re-election of President Trump.

At Thanksgiving, Musk sat next to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He sang along with the president to ​“YMCA”, while Trump’s excruciated family looked on. ​“Uncle Elon”, as the Trumps now refer to him, is no longer just the world’s richest man. He also has the ear and trust of the world’s most powerful man. What he plans to do with all this influence has the world on tenterhooks. There is simply no precedent. Not Bill Gates, not Jeff Bezos, not even the titans of decades past, John D. Rockefeller or J.P. Morgan, have wielded such obvious and direct sway.

Since Trump’s election, Musk has watched his net worth increase by more than $60 billion, an already massive return on the $100 million he spent getting Trump re- elected. He has also barely left Trump’s side, weighing in on cabinet appointments, sitting in on calls to foreign leaders, and taking Trump to see his rocket launches in Texas. But to what end?

Like Trump, Musk constantly speaks of himself as a victim, despite his extraordinary success. He is the victim of government regulators and bureaucrats who try to suffocate his entrepreneurial spirit with endless demands and pitiful inefficiency. He was so infuriated by the Covid rules in California, which kept his factory workers at home, that he moved his major operations to Texas.

He is the victim of politicians like President Biden, who earned Musk’s eternal enmity in 2021 by hosting an electric vehicle summit at the White House and not inviting Tesla.

And he is the victim of the ​“woke mind virus” which has poisoned minds to such a degree that he had no choice but to buy Twitter, slash its staff by 80%, and rename it X.

To a great extent, Musk’s political ascent comes with the promise of revenge. Trump has appointed Musk and another entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy, to run the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, named after a crypto currency platform). They have promised to cut the federal budget by one-third, or $2 trillion annually, a rhetorical rather than achievable target given how much of the budget consists of immovable commitments to defence, social security and healthcare.

There is no precedent. Not even the titans of decades past have wielded such power

Nonetheless, Musk is revelling in his new role as slasher- in-chief. He has started picking out government positions he thinks absurd and naming the individuals who hold them. He recently pointed to a ​“director of climate diversification” at the International Development Finance Corporation and wrote on X ​“so many fake jobs”. His jab drew heavy fire from federal employees’ unions who are preparing for a fight.

It is widely assumed that Musk will target the federal agencies which have crossed him in his business life. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has questioned the safety of Tesla’s and held up the introduction of autonomous vehicles. The Environmental Protection Agency, which has tried to protect the wildlife living close to Musk’s factories and rocket launch pads. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has pursued Musk for his disregard for basic securities laws. The Department of Labor which has questioned Musk’s treatment of his employees and unions.

He has already posted on X ​“Delete CFPB”, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which oversees consumer finance, and recently finalized a rule that it can regulate the payment platforms of big technology firms, as well as banks. Eradicating the CFPB would remove a major obstacle to Musk’s hopes to turn X into an ​“everything app”, including a full set of financial services.

Musk and his companies are currently facing a couple of dozen federal investigations from multiple agencies, all of which will now likely be shut down.

The great irony of all this is that Musk has benefited enormously from government support. Tesla would not have survived without the government providing low interest loans, and tax credits to early buyers of electric vehicles. Even more valuably, it allowed Tesla to sell regulatory credits to other car makers who needed them to comply with emissions rules. During the years when Tesla came close to financial collapse, the billions it made selling those credits helped keep it alive.

SpaceX has been built on federal contracts, notably from NASA. SpaceX is paid hundreds of millions of dollars each year to take cargo to the Space Station, as well as carry satellites and missile defence systems. Courtesy of the government, SpaceX has become the world’s primary means of getting stuff into space. It is currently working on a $3 billion contract to develop the next vehicle to take astronauts to the moon. Musk may rage at the NASA bureaucrats who shuffle papers while he builds rockets, but they have kept his company solvent. Musk’s companies are reckoned to have at least 100 different contracts with 17 different government agencies on the go. It is hard to imagine the DOGE not encountering some of them as it seeks spending cuts. Musk has craftily schemed to have the DOGE set up as an external body. He will not be an actual government employee, thereby avoiding conflict of interest rules. The influence of Musk, however, does not stop at America’s borders. During Trump’s first term, when America’s trading relationship with China soured, Musk went ahead with plans to build and open a huge Tesla plant in Shanghai, ignoring warnings from the US government that the Chinese would steal Tesla’s technology secrets.

While many American businesses froze or withdrew their activities in China, Musk pressed ahead, staying close to Xi Jinping and his circle. Tesla has been a major contributor to China’s booming EV industry, and the Chinese government are grateful for Musk’s loyalty.

Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, has given him another huge geopolitical lever. After Russia invaded Ukraine and took out its communications infrastructure, Musk ensured Ukraine’s military kept internet access via Starlink. Later in the war, Musk restricted that access, on the grounds that he wanted Ukraine to accept a peace plan accommodating to Russia. Starlink has no real rival, meaning that even the Pentagon must pay Musk for this essential service.

The double-barrelled threat of controlling internet access during war and controlling the megaphone of X to express his views, has turned Musk into a one-man military and diplomatic superpower.

As well pushing to deregulate existing industries, Musk is also expected to slacken the rules for the industries of the future. His rise has been welcomed by the Silicon Valley elites who supported Trump in unprecedented numbers this year. They claimed to find the Biden administration intrusive and complained about its meddling notably in antitrust rules and crypto currencies.

Under Biden, big tech companies have been scrutinised for monopolistic behaviour and held back from acquiring smaller rivals. This meant that the venture capitalists who funded these smaller firms were being denied the financial exits they had expected. It was an affront, they said, to capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit.

Biden’s administration has also been sceptical of crypto currencies, limiting their use even as their value shot up. Musk has been a fan of crypto since the outset, and Trump became one during this election cycle. Judging by the soaring prices for anything associated with crypto, the consensus is that once Trump is in the White House, the shackles are coming off. Crypto is going be given the space to become the financial magic dust that its supporters claim it to be.

Musk has stayed close to China’s Xi Jinping and his circle

One might think that electing a president, building cars, launching rockets and satellites and revamping the platform formerly known as Twitter might be enough for one year. But not for Musk.

Over the past twelve months, he has been rapidly scaling his artificial intelligence startup xAI. He had co-founded OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, but left after fighting with his co-founders. So, xAI is his way back in. He has already raised $11billion and the company is valued at $50 billion, despite making just $100 million in revenue this year, a long way behind OpenAI which is expected to make $4 billion. It is also lagging the AI efforts of Google and Meta Platforms.

But as ever, Musk has advantages no one else does. He has hooked up xAI with his other businesses. It is being used by Starlink for customer service, and by X users for its chatbot. It will likely receive data and technology support from both Tesla and X, which will train its AI models.

As an engineer at heart, Musk has also focussed on outpacing his rivals in assembling chips and building data centres to run AI technology. He will soon be opening a centre in Memphis named Colossus, which is said to be one of the largest in the world – and was built in just 122 days. Since Tesla is already one of the biggest customers of Nvidia, the leading chipmaker for AI, Musk has been able to apply pressure to secure the most powerful chips in volumes greater than his rivals can.

All of this activity, Musk’s many fans will say, is consistent with his one simple goal: to save humanity. To save the planet from the climate change caused by fossil fuels; to preserve the species after an asteroid hits earth by colonising Mars; to guard free speech from mind viruses; and to achieve all of this sooner rather than later by harnessing the power of AI.

At the end of his biography of Musk, Walter Isaacson wrote: ​“Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

If Trump’s first administration was about loading the Supreme Court with candidates approved by the Christian right, and exhorting the oil and gas industry to ​“drill, baby, drill,” his second will be about efficiency, technology, AI, crypto and antitrust, laced with conspiracy theories and catfights on X.

In Trump, Musk has met his ideal political mate. If the pair can avoid falling out, the path to humanity’s salvation now lies through their crazy enough to change the world bromance.