This Was the Year Elon Musk Took Over Politics

“I deliberation helium realized that what Big Tech companies spent decades acrophobic about, which is fundamentally however to mean oregon however to signifier code connected this brainsick scale, is that's not a problem,” says Magalhaes. “That's an accidental for him.”

Since the election, Musk has not faded into the shadows, contented with backroom meetings and covert influence. Instead, helium has joined calls with foreign leaders, weighed successful on staffing picks for the caller administration, and threatened to usage the America PAC to fund superior challenges against lawmakers who don’t enactment Trump’s (and his) agenda.

In November, Trump announced that Musk would co-lead a caller national advisory committee called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, similar the memecoin), liable for cutting $2 trillion from the national budget. (Eliminating each discretionary national spending, including connected defense, would not execute this aim.) The committee doesn’t yet exist, but already Musk has utilized his beingness connected X and this caller government-adjacent, if nebulous, presumption to dictate policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, connected paper, his estimated wealth reportedly accrued by astir $170 cardinal pursuing the election.

“He's parlayed [his ownership of X] into a governmental presumption wherever his quality to power argumentation that affects each of his concern interests is conscionable tremendous. And that could wage immense fiscal dividends,” says Phil Napoli, a prof of nationalist argumentation astatine Duke University. “I deliberation that would beryllium the scariest happening that could happen, is if a batch of these platforms instrumentality that awesome from Musk.”

The aboriginal returns suggest that different tech leaders are apt to travel suit. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos person visited Mar-a-Lago to buss the ring. Meta officials accidental Zuckerberg wants to take an “active role” successful helping signifier the Trump administration’s tech policies.

“Every clip there's a caller government, large capitalism, large money, tries to enactment themselves successful a presumption to payment from it. And I deliberation that's what they're doing,” says Magalhaes. And Musk’s usage of X for explicitly governmental purposes could induce the Trump medication to expect akin behaviors from different companies, helium says. “I deliberation successful that consciousness it is simply a blueprint.”

Musk’s ambitions are intelligibly not constricted to the US. Since the election, helium has visited the UK to conscionable with far-right politicians there, and posted astir his enactment for the far-right Germany party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). Earlier this year, he attempted to defy a tribunal order successful Brazil that required X to region definite far-right accounts that the tribunal said were undermining the integrity of the country’s elections.

All of this means that Musk’s power implicit authorities isn’t conscionable a substance of his closeness to Trump. Even should the 2 titanic egos person a much-predicted blow-up, Musk’s power volition beryllium felt successful the caller coziness betwixt Silicon Valley and the MAGA movement, and successful immoderate parts of the satellite connected which helium chooses to formed an eye.

In a way, it’s a instrumentality to acquainted ground. Even earlier buying Twitter successful 2022, Musk was a ace user, 1 of the platform’s astir followed people. His Tweets could impact banal prices for his different companies, particularly Tesla, and his favored memecoin, Dogecoin. Trump, similarly, was an progressive Twitter idiosyncratic earlier becoming president, and during his archetypal presidency, he was notorious for making argumentation by tweet. It present appears that the adjacent 4 years, astatine least, could spot much governance by societal media post—now conscionable by a antithetic shitposter.