Musk is absolutely committed to reducing government spending. And he's going to immediately take the knife to SpaceX.
BTW, I find your skepticism disturbing.
The Mogul
By Jonathan Mahler, NY Times
Nov 18, 2024
I’m a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.
Over the course of the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk went from dark-money donor to high-profile surrogate to unofficial chief of staff. He camped out at Mar-a-Lago after the election with the Trump family and hopped on Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president. He’s even played diplomat, meeting secretly in New York with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Last week, the president-elect named Musk to co-lead a department focused on government efficiency, a role that will put him in a position to recommend the hiring and firing of federal workers and the restructuring of entire agencies. But it’s clear that Musk’s influence could reach far beyond even this.
He and Trump are in sync on a lot of issues (immigration, trans rights). And although they diverge on some others (climate change and policies that push people toward electric vehicles), the world’s richest person has now allied himself with the leader of the free world whom he helped install in office, creating a political partnership unlike anything America has ever seen.
In today’s newsletter, we will look at Musk’s agenda and ideology — and at what his influence in the new administration could mean for both him and the country.
Big government deals
Musk previewed plans for his new job on the campaign trail.
He said that the federal government’s $6.8 trillion budget should be slashed by at least $2 trillion and acknowledged that such draconian cuts would “necessarily involve some temporary hardship.” Slashing and burning is certainly one of his hallmarks: He laid off 80 percent of X’s staff after buying the company — then called Twitter — in late 2022.
Musk has a lot to gain from a second Trump administration. His businesses are already entangled with the federal government, which awarded them $3 billion in contracts across numerous agencies last year. His rocket company, SpaceX, launches military satellites and shuttles astronauts to the International Space Station. Even before the election, Musk asked Trump to hire SpaceX employees at the Defense Department, presumably to further strengthen their ties.
A diagram of connecting lines between Tesla and SpaceX, two of Elon Musk’s companies, and many cabinet departments and federal agencies with whom the companies have contracts. The lines are sized proportionally to the size of the contracts, with the largest share overwhelmingly between NASA and the Defense Department.
Source: The New York Times’ analysis of transaction-level contract and grant data from usaspending.gov | By Jonathan Corum
Musk is also at war with federal regulators. He faces at least 20 investigations or reviews, including one into the software of Tesla’s self-driving cars and another into polluted water allegedly discharged from SpaceX’s launchpad in Texas. It’s safe to assume that Musk will try to quash these inquiries and also seek greater freedom from oversight in the future.
Musk views government regulation as more than just a drain on profits. He is a techno-utopian who sees his work — from trying to colonize Mars to implanting computer chips in people’s brains that will enable them to control devices with their thoughts — as vital to the long-term survival of the human race, and he doesn’t want bureaucracy to stand in his way. “The Department of Government Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth,” he wrote last month on X.
At the same time, some government regulations have proved enormously beneficial to him. Tesla generates billions of dollars selling zero-emission vehicle credits to carmakers that don’t make enough electric cars to earn them.
Cultivating Trump seems to be paying off. Trump was a harsh critic of electric vehicles; he accused them of hurting American autoworkers while helping China and Mexico. But on the campaign trail this year, Trump said that he was “for electric cars” because “Elon endorsed me very strongly.” And that was before Musk relocated to Pennsylvania during the homestretch and spent nearly $120 million to help Trump win.
Musk’s ideas
Musk is not just an entrepreneur. He is a new kind of media mogul, with ready access to the president and few rules governing how he uses his platform. And he wants a hands-off approach.
He considers himself a free-speech absolutist. After buying Twitter and renaming it X, Musk reinstated the accounts of hundreds of users barred for spreading misinformation or inciting violence. Trump’s was among them — he was kicked off the platform after the Jan. 6 attack out of concern that he might encourage more violence— and during the campaign Musk used his own account to promote Trump’s candidacy to his more than 200 million followers.
That could make X a new home for the MAGA movement as Trump seeks out friendly outlets to champion his policies. The platform is already a gathering place for Trump’s supporters. Once Trump is back in the White House, it’s easy to imagine it as the primary means through which he and his officials communicate with the public, bypassing an independent media that Trump considers hostile and Musk considers unnecessary and corrupt.
It would cement an unusual bond between two extraordinarily powerful, if famously impulsive, men. Provided that they don’t fall out, they stand to gain a great deal from each other.
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