Elon Musk: A New and Sinister Force in Government

Autocratic Capture through Partnership with Trump? What Should We Call His Presence in Government?

Something sinister is unfolding at the heart of American government. Because it is dangerous in a new way, we lack the language to label it and communicate the extent of the threat. Elon Musk, a billionaire business owner and major beneficiary of contracts from the U.S. government ($3 billion was promised from almost 100 different contracts across 17 different agencies last year alone), has been assigned a job in an incoming Donald Trump presidential administration as co-head of a government entity that does not yet exist.

Although his companies have been the subject of at least 20 recent investigations, Musk will likely neither go through any formal confirmation process nor be vetted by anyone as he ascends to the highest levels of authority. He has already been intervening heavily in Republican politics as a funder, enforcer, diplomat, and de facto policymaker.

So insecure that he reportedly ordered his minions at Twitter to tweak the algorithm to boost his content, Musk has made himself a reference point of the incoming government, always in the frame and right next to the charismatic demagogue, whether at Mar-a-Lago or on Trump Force One. He even showed up at the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and other foreign heads of state as though he were their equal.

Actually, Musk would find that last statement insulting. As sociologist Brooke Harrington, author of the Capital Without Borders and Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, told me in our 2021 Lucid interview: “Ultra-wealthy individuals wield a transnational, unaccountable power…They regard states as play things. The law is their marionette. They interfere in democratic processes and legislative processes.”

We have already seen the results of this arrogance, with Musk threatening to use his money to primary Republican lawmakers who dissent from what he and Trump want in any area. Musk’s styling of himself as MAGA “muscle” has led Anand Giridharadas to coin the term “paramonetary forces” to describe his brand of action. Giridharadas observes that paramilitaries serve as “unofficial forces, operating outside the government and skirting the boundaries of legality, willing to do what the legitimate forces will not.”

The future (for autocracy) is bright when we work together: Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump watch a test flight of a SpaceX Starship rocket, Texas, Nov. 19. Brandon Bell/Getty Images.

Musk has built his own army of sorts. He has 205 million followers on his X platform, which since he purchased it has been engineered as a far-right radicalization machine. A 2023 dissertation by Trevor Auten found a clear correlation between Twitter users who shared Musk’s content and that of White nationalist/Alt-Right, Anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups. They know what he stands for.

Money is Musk’s main weapon in the battle to consolidate anti-democratic power and influence, and not only in America. As Giridharadas writes, Musk could offer “favorable business deals to foreign leaders so they take actions that benefit Trump — and those payoffs would not be ‘illegal’ because they did not come directly from Trump himself.” Such arrangements are not uncommon in the autocratic world, but here the funds for them are almost limitless.

Whether it’s his posts in favor of the far-right party Alternative for Germany, which harbors Nazi sympathizers, his regular communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his support of neo-Fascist Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, or his enmeshment with the Chinese regime, where fully half of his Tesla cars are manufactured, Musk seems fully invested in enabling a new world order favorable to autocracy.

That also means helping the Kremlin help the world’s democracies to decline precipitously, starting with the United States. it’s no secret that Putin longs to have America become like Russia of the 1990s, with a population mired in poverty and desperation, the better for elites to plunder the spoils. The “Department of Government Efficiency” will be an Orwellian test case for disrupting society through economic “shock events” that paralyze governance and create mass misery.

Some people predict that Trump will eventually get rid of Musk, seeing the billionaire as too much competition. That is a misreading of Trump, who can take some humiliation –Russian television has mocked him and has showed nude photos of his wife—if the end goal is more profits and power for him. Autocrats are entirely transactional beings, and Trump and Musk likely have an understanding: each needs the other.

The novelty of Musk’s role was acknowledged by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries at a press conference on Dec. 19 about the billionaire’s meddling in Republican actions regarding the threat of a government shutdown. “What is Musk’s role? Who is actually in charge in terms of who you’re negotiating with?” asked a journalist. “That’s a good question, and I don’t have a great answer for you on that right now,” Jeffries replied.

That frightening sense of an instability of authority —the opposite of what strongman Trump sold to credulous Americans— makes it important for us to find the language to name the threat and communicate the stakes of Musk at the apex of power. “What are the proper analytical frames for this situation?” I wrote on X about Musk’s place in the Trump transition and next administration. “Hostile takeover? Old fashioned authoritarian cronyism taken to new levels?”

What would you call Musk’s ascendency to the pinnacle of American politics?