What Elon Musk Really Wants
5 min read
In Elon Musk’s vision of human history, Donald Trump is the singularity. If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government—not to mention the business opportunity of the century.
Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an Ayn Rand novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state—and therefore American life—in his own image.
Musk’s pursuit of this dream clearly transcends billionaire hobbyism. Consider the personal attention and financial resources that he is pouring into the former president’s campaign. According to The New York Times, Musk has relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee Trump’s ground game there. That is, he’s running the infrastructure that will bring voters to the polls. In service of this cause, he’s imported top talent from his companies, and he reportedly plans on spending $500 million on it. That doesn’t begin to account for the value of Musk’s celebrity shilling, and the way he has turned X into an informal organ of the campaign.
Musk began as a Trump skeptic—a supporter of Ron DeSantis, in fact. Only gradually did he become an avowed, rhapsodic MAGA believer. His attitude toward Trump seems to parallel his view of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, AI might culminate in the destruction of humanity. On the other hand, it’s inevitable, and if harnessed by a brilliant engineer, it has glorious, maybe even salvific potential.
Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politico’s tabulation, both companies have won $15 billion in federal contracts. But that’s just his business plan in beta form. According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is designing a slew of new products with “national security customers in mind.”
Musk has only begun to tap the pecuniary potential of the government, and Trump is the dream. He rewards loyalists, whether they are foreign leaders who genuflect before him or supplicants who host events at his resorts. Where other presidents might be restrained by norms, Trump shrugs. During his first term, he discovered that his party was never going to punish him for his transgressions.
In the evolving topography of Trumpland, none of his supporters or cronies will have chits to compare with Musk’s. If Trump wins, it will likely be by a narrow margin that can be attributed to turnout. Musk can tout himself as the single variable of success.
It’s not hard to imagine how the mogul will exploit this alliance. Trump has already announced that he will place him in charge of a government-efficiency commission. Or, in the Trumpian vernacular, Musk will be the “secretary of cost-cutting.” SpaceX is the implied template: Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing the affairs of state to nimble entrepreneurs and adroit technologists. That means there will be even more opportunities for his companies to score gargantuan contracts. So when Trump brags that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, he’s not imagining a reprise of the Apollo program. He’s envisioning cutting SpaceX one of the largest checks that the U.S. government has ever written. He’s talking about making the richest man in the world even richer.
Of course, this could be bluster. But it is entirely consistent with the rest of the right’s program for Trump’s second term, which involves dismantling the federal government—eliminating swaths of the politically neutral civil service and entire Cabinet departments and agencies. It is exactly the kind of sweeping change that suits Musk’s grandiose sense of his own place in human history.
This isn’t a standard-issue case of oligarchy. It is an apotheosis of the egotism and social Darwinism embedded in Silicon Valley’s pursuit of monopoly—the sense that concentration of power in the hands of geniuses is the most desirable social arrangement. As Peter Thiel once put it, “Competition is for losers.” (He also bluntly admitted, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”) In this worldview, restraints on power are for losers, too.
With his government contracts—and his insider influence—Musk will become further ensconced in the national-security state. (He already has a $1.8 billion classified contract, likely with the National Reconnaissance Office, and, through a division of SpaceX called Starshield, supplies communications networks for the military.) At a moment when the government is confronting crucial decisions about the future of AI and the commercialization of space, his ideals will hold sway.
At Tesla, Musk assigned himself the title of “technoking.” That moniker, which sits on the line between jokiness and monomania, captures the danger. Following the example set by Trump, he wouldn’t need to divest himself from his businesses, not even his social-media company. In an administration that brashly disrespects its critics, he wouldn’t need to fear congressional oversight and could brush aside any American who dares to question his role. Of all the risks posed by a second Trump term, this might be one of the most terrifying.
