Elon Musk wants to colonize Trump's White House

Terraforming Mars may be a pipe dream, but Elon Musk is all in on colonizing somewhere closer to home: the White House.

The world’s richest man is lavishing money and vast corporate resources on ensuring Donald Trump is reelected as the US president. The web of contracts and subsidies that bind his empire to government largess have not prevented him from inserting himself into America’s fraught politics — and, depending on the outcome, ever more deeply into the fabric of society and national security. 

Billionaires, corporate titans and anyone else with financial interests on the line rarely offer their wealth and time gratis. So what is Musk after, and what potential conflicts of interest arise when someone with such broad influence throws himself into one of the most consequential elections in US history?

After all, the man behind Tesla Inc., X Corp., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and a host of other companies isn’t simply campaigning for the man who might be president again. Musk may also join a potential second Trump administration. 

While the boundaries between business and politics in the US have always been malleable, for better and worse, Musk’s roles and reach raise unprecedented questions about self-dealing and the evaporation of ethical, legal and financial guidelines meant to protect the public interest and good government. 

Consider Musk’s sway, built over an undeniably remarkable career. Tesla brought electric vehicles into the mainstream, forcing the legacy automobile industry to play catch-up. SpaceX made the US competitive again in the commercial rocket business. Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary, offers a satellite-based communication network that spans the globe. X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, still shapes public opinion with a keystroke, despite its pell-mell management and transformation into a font of disinformation and muck under Musk. 

Musk’s foothold in Trump’s orbit could add direct policymaking power to his business portfolio — giving him a say on public finances and an opportunity to bring his special brand of “moving fast and breaking things” to the foundations of popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Musk treads a well-worn path; his mix of innovation, industrial heft, penchant for racist conspiracy theories and overt eccentricities recall the likes of Henry Ford and Howard Hughes.

What distinguishes him is the sheer scale of his contribution, encompassing not just well over $100 million of donations but also free promotion on X, and much of his own time — including high-profile appearances at Trump rallies. His spending on behalf of Trump — particularly $1 million “prize” offerings — has made him a target of law enforcement.

Musk is also adding a personal touch to his influence peddling. He’s marrying his control of critical technologies to his erratic, combative persona; a combustible mix that could be supercharged by formal political power should Trump reclaim the presidency after Tuesday’s election.

Musk’s and Trump’s respective ascendancies could hardly be any different, with one a self-made immigrant and Silicon Valley billionaire and the other a boom-and-bust self-promoter who inherited a New York real estate fortune. There are also striking similarities that explain their bond and shared interests.

Both inspire cult-like devotion that renders them seemingly immune to consequences. Each possesses colossal self-assurance and contempt for institutions and norms. They are also thoroughly transactional, not least in their willingness to set aside prior slights and seemingly irreconcilable differences that once left them at odds. Above all, they both have vested interests in the powers, protections and resources of the federal government.

Musk, unfazed by his lack of experience in public office, could run a new Department of Government Efficiency that would attempt to tear out $2 trillion of a roughly $6.8 trillion federal budget. Reality might intrude, however.

Congress, not the president, typically establishes new federal departments. Musk’s myriad financial and political conflicts might also make it impossible for him to secure Congress’ blessing to run any agency.Click and drag to move

But Musk doesn’t necessarily need an agency or a title to have influence in a Trump White House. He’s almost certain to remain a powerful consigliere should Trump win, someone with easy access who can shape legislation and the Oval Office’s agenda.

His major companies would obviously benefit from his proximity to Trump, as any tour of his portfolio reveals. (Musk and his companies didn’t answer requests for comment for this column.)

Tesla wants an autonomous future

Tesla is a pioneer of an energy transition that Trump decries as a scam. Musk laid out his original “master plan” for Tesla 18 years ago: To foster a move toward a solar electric economy by mainstreaming electric vehicles. The initial breakthrough came in 2012 with the launch of the Model S, a luxury electric sedan that proved EVs could be cool and compete with traditional cars.

With Musk as chief executive officer, Tesla has become the most valuable auto company in the world by far, with a market value of almost $800 billion, and the biggest seller of battery EVs worldwide. In the US, its charging network has become the de facto standard for the EV industry.

While Musk’s vision and knack for raising capital were critical during long years of losses, so too was government help. The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office lent Tesla $465 million at a critical moment in 2010, since repaid.

Above all, consumer tax credits have been crucial in reducing the upfront price for EV adopters, with President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act allowing a federal $7,500 credit to be given at the point of sale. The IRA also established generous credits for batteries and other clean technology manufactured in the US.

Even now, with Tesla making close to 2 million EVs annually and holding $20 billion of net cash on its balance sheet, an analysis published in March by Evercore ISI, an investment bank, implied about 40% of the company’s estimated operating profit this year would consist of credits enabled by the IRA. Bear that in mind when Musk lambastes government spending.

Given all this, it might seem odd for Musk to team up with a candidate promising to undo Biden’s green subsidies. But this misses an important shift in Tesla’s investment story over the past two years.

Its EV sales have stalled, with analysts expecting an outright decline this year (Tesla says otherwise.) Instead, the stock price is now held aloft by Musk’s vision of autonomous “robotaxis” and humanoid robots.

Tesla has relied on the government for subsidies in its EV business. Robotaxis are a different matter. The company would prefer that the government leave that business alone.

Tesla’s approach to autonomous vehicles has involved upselling advanced driver assistance features on the premise that, eventually, these will reach a level of sophistication so the vehicles can simply drive themselves.

Drivers are essentially beta testing these systems on public roads, gathering millions of miles of data to train Tesla’s autonomous vehicle software — with all the risks this entails, especially given the unrealistic expectations set by product names such as Autopilot and Full Self Driving.

Since Musk has set and missed repeated deadlines for the launch of autonomous Teslas, the company needs much more time. Yet a series of accidents involving vehicles using these systems, some fatal, have prompted lawsuits and a recent intensification of scrutiny by federal bodies like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Musk’s mere proximity to any future Trump Oval Office could cause federal agencies to think twice about upsetting a presidential ally who has the potential to influence budgets and appointments.

Musk could certainly use one specific government break: lifting the NHTSA cap on how many vehicles a company can deploy annually, with permission, that don’t have steering wheels and pedals.

That cap stands at 2,500, but Musk aspires to produce millions of these so-called cybercabs. Raising the cap would require Congress to act, but Trump might help secure that from an obedient Republican majority.

A formal Cabinet role for Musk requiring Senate confirmation looks unlikely, not least because he would almost certainly have to resign as Tesla’s CEO and possibly dispose of his shareholdings à la Hank Paulson, who sold his Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stock when he became Treasury secretary in 2006.

Resigning as CEO might be acceptable to investors given Musk’s hold over his companies and Tesla’s historically supine board, but a forced sale of his 12.8% stake would be financially catastrophic. When he dumped part of his stake in 2022 during the Twitter acquisition, Tesla’s share price dived. (The same question would arise about his holdings in companies including SpaceX and X, too, though a more acceptable alternative could be putting them all in a blind trust, as Trump did with his corporate interests during his presidency.)

On the other hand, while a part-time advisory or commission role would represent another distraction for Musk, investors in Tesla (and his other companies) might view it as an advantage given his potential ability to influence regulation and policy.

He could blunt attacks on EVs, for example, which still provide the vast majority of Tesla’s cash flow. John Paulson, the hedge-fund billionaire angling to run the Treasury Department in a Trump Cabinet, envisages working with Musk to dismantle IRA subsidies.

In that position, Musk could potentially steer any such cuts away from EVs and toward, say, renewable energy — or, in a grim irony, the Loan Programs Office that once helped nurture Tesla and is now squarely in the sights of Republicans for cuts.

That’s easier said than done, however. There is an additional layer of protection for cleantech subsidies: The vast majority of IRA-inspired jobs and investment dollars are flowing to red districts, prompting second thoughts from GOP House members about outright repeal.

EV subsidies would be safe in the event of a Trump loss, of course, but a Harris administration poses other risks. While a Democratic White House wouldn’t touch the IRA, it also wouldn’t restrain the agencies policing robotaxis. Perhaps the most significant difference would be that Harris’ team would be less likely to take Musk’s calls.

SpaceX rules — with or without Trump

SpaceX, the privately held rocket developer in which Musk is the CEO and largest shareholder, is where his empire intersects most clearly with the public interest — and national security. The company dominates space transportation, has revitalized the US aerospace industry and is indispensable to the federal government.

Its pivotal innovation was developing reusable rockets to sharply cut launch costs, born of Musk’s dream of traveling to — and eventually occupying — Mars.

In 2002, he bet part of his fortune from early entrepreneurial successes, including Paypal Holdings Inc., on SpaceX, weathering several failures to finally notch his first successful launch in 2008. NASA was an early and crucial partner, providing contracts, expertise and crews.

The tide really turned in SpaceX’s favor in 2014 when NASA chose it and Boeing Co. to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, which would finally break the agency’s dependence on Russian rockets. The company retrieved its first rocket booster the next year and now boasts the world’s most flown rocket in the Falcon 9.

Although SpaceX received a smaller initial contract than Boeing, Musk’s company has taken astronauts to the space station on several missions while Boeing has yet to fulfill its contract amid well-publicized stumbles.

In 2019, SpaceX launched its first group of 60 satellites into low-Earth orbit, marking the beginning of Starlink, which now has more than 6,000 satellites that provide high-speed internet almost anywhere, including to vehicles on the move such as RVs, aircraft and ships.

Designed for consumers, it has become invaluable to governments during disasters and in war zones. Musk is also launching secured satellites to create a network called Starshield that’s specifically for governments.

All this has made SpaceX a vital contractor to the US government, including its military and intelligence agencies, as well as to nations around the world, giving Musk unprecedented access to and leverage with officials.

Starlink has provided internet services to war-torn Ukraine, but Musk has also clashed with its government after curtailing the service to prevent an attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in occupied Crimea.

Musk, according to a biography, was concerned that the operation would provoke a Russian nuclear strike. Meanwhile, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has used Starlink to provide communications in areas hit by Hurricane Helene.

There has been alarm over Musk’s polarizing machinations, including his zealous support for Trump and, more ominously, his “regular contact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Despite all of that, the Biden administration has had to deal with him — if not always harmoniously. Expect that to continue if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency.

A Trump White House, on the other hand, could help address the litany of complaints Musk has leveled against government agencies. He cried foul after Starlink didn’t qualify to provide service in the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program to bring high-speed internet to rural areas.

He has clashed with the Federal Aviation Administration over permits for rocket launches and denounced fines over license violations as “lawfare.” SpaceX blasted the FAA in September for delaying a test launch of its Starship rocket over environmental concerns — a tactic that seemed to work when permission for the launch was then granted earlier than expected. (SpaceX wowed the world by capturing the spent first-stage booster with mechanical “chopsticks” at the launch pad.)

With Musk ensconced within a Trump administration, federal regulators might feel even less inclined to clash with SpaceX (echoing his preferred regulatory treatment of autonomous vehicles). Musk would wield outsized influence on space policy, an area of special interest to Trump, on whose watch the US Space Force was established.

A Trump administration could also be expected to relax the enforcement of regulations for SpaceX in areas such as launch safety and environmental impacts, and likely increase the government’s dependency on it, ignoring the conflicts that would entail.

Beyond the domestic sphere, Trump might be tempted to use Musk and his company as a tool for foreign policy. The impact of Starlink’s technology cannot be overstated, especially outside the US. That has made some in the Biden administration nervous because of Musk’s ability to switch the service on or off at will.

The Starlink kit typically costs about $600 and is easily deployable. Governments across Latin America, Africa and Asia have granted the company access. Black-market sales elsewhere underscore the scale of demand.

No matter who wins the election, government dependency on SpaceX will only grow as the world gears up for a second space race. A Harris victory would temper that relationship with tension over regulations and a dose of mistrust.

Under Trump, the SpaceX-government relationship would come with lower guardrails. That could have potentially worrying consequences for safety (if lax regulation ensues), competition and — most important — national security.

X is campaign central for Trump

If Trump wins and does indeed bring Musk inside the White House, X would essentially resemble something previously unthinkable: a US state-run social network.

The site’s transformation began in 2022 when Musk, already a power user on the platform, acquired the site for $44 billion, having briefly tried to back out of the deal.

Until that point, Musk had used what was then Twitter to mostly hype his businesses — a single tweet could and did send Tesla’s stock price soaring.

Musk — back then, at least — was a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist.” He had long maintained he was a neutral party who would adhere to that standard and avoid promoting any defined political agenda.

He reinstated Trump’s personal account — in the interest of free speech, he said — after it had been suspended by previous Twitter leadership in the wake of the January 6 riots at the Capitol.

Before long, Musk’s self-described “moderate” politics began to evaporate. Soon, he was live streaming from the US-Mexico border. He became, statistically, the biggest single peddler of right-wing conspiracy theories on the site. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump in July, he announced he would endorse the former president — which by then surprised few.

Whether this support is due to a genuine belief in Trump’s politics, or a tactic to protect his businesses, is known only to Musk himself. Either way, X has morphed into the communications wing of the Trump campaign.

Musk has used his platform to aggressively push the political spending efforts of his America PAC, including amplifying baseless allegations of voter fraud and dangerous exaggerations and falsehoods about immigration and its effects, as our colleagues in Bloomberg News have reported. He has livestreamed his own get-out-the-vote rallies on behalf of Trump.

And, at a rate of usually dozens a day, Musk has personally shared numerous pro-Trump posts and conspiracy theories. The virality of Republican messaging on X has soared during the campaign, according to one analysis.

This power to aggressively shape the online narrative makes Musk a crucial ally to Trump during a potential second term — and even if he loses. In the event of a Harris victory, X could become the engine room for the opposition.

A dedicated X community, backed by Musk, has already been established for sharing “potential incidents” of problems at the polls, laying the groundwork for another “Stop the Steal” effort.

X’s struggling business, deserted by many major advertisers, has much to gain from a second Trump term if he uses the site as he did during his presidency.

Trump used Twitter as his primary medium for announcing policy when he was in the White House, firing Cabinet members, disparaging critics, claiming inflated crowd sizes and so on.

Trump has been less of a voice on X, since having his account reinstated, because there’s money to be made elsewhere. He holds a 57% stake in the company that owns Truth Social, a rival “free speech” platform. Those shares are currently worth about $3.5 billion — though the value is closely tethered to Trump’s electoral prospects and has fluctuated wildly.

When Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. went public (ticker: DJT) investors were assured that Trump had agreed to a clause that required his posts, with some vague exceptions, be on Truth Social for six hours before appearing elsewhere. For a full year, Trump posted on X just once — his mugshot.

As Election Day has neared, this stipulation has been largely overlooked, suggesting Trump still sees X as politically valuable. He started posting regularly there when Harris became the Democratic nominee.

And he took part in a glitch-ridden livestream on the site with Musk during which the duo first floated the idea of Musk joining a Trump administration.

Trump hasn’t said what he intends to do with his various business interests if he wins (TMTG did not respond to requests for clarification). Last time around, he placed them in a blind trust controlled by his sons and his longtime chief financial officer, leading to understandable skepticism over how “blind” the trust truly was.

Any change in circumstance could pave the way for his full-throated return to X, bringing some desperately needed and bankable long-term engagement to the site.

Truth Social isn’t a bona fide X competitor; its sky-high stock price, pegged to hopes of a Trump win, belies its tiny — and one-sided — user base and financial losses. X, meanwhile, would be more than happy to accommodate Trump’s worst excesses in a way that would render Truth Social’s reason for existing largely obsolete.

One way or another, Musk could be expected to use his proximity to Trump to further his business goals for X, which include going after advertisers and nonprofits that have abandoned the platform. Musk, counterproductively, is suing some advertisers that avoid the site, accusing them of an “illegal boycott.”

Musk’s stated goal of positioning X as an “everything” app, with a major financial services component, might also benefit from some government support. The company has disclosed it has secured money transmitter licenses in 38 US states — but not yet in the critical market of New York.

Elsewhere, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is on the cusp of a new funding round that would value it at a reported $40 billion (Musk has said previously that X would own 25 per cent of xAI).

The xAI startup is Musk’s bid to be part of the booming new sector, having parted ways with OpenAI — which he co-founded — over disagreements with that company’s CEO, Sam Altman.

Musk’s xAI is pitched as a viable alternative to OpenAI and competing products being developed by Anthropic and Meta Platforms Inc. It is being trained (partly) on X posts, powering the site’s AI chatbot, Grok.

Musk is developing an AI-training supercomputer that came online in Memphis last month. Powering these energy-hungry models is another challenge that a Trump White House could address.

The administration would almost certainly loosen restrictions on emissions, making it easier for companies to use gas-fired power, and might be persuaded to pour more funding into nuclear power — all of which would be advantageous to Musk’s push.

Becoming the AI model of choice for the federal government is an opportunity worth billions of dollars. Musk’s insistence that his model is an “anti woke” AI, one that contrasts with the supposedly tainted efforts of “Silicon Valley liberals,” would be of great appeal to his potential new boss.

Musk’s shrewd risk-taking and market insights have seen him parlay his initial PayPal windfall into an eye-watering fortune, enabling him to reimagine entire industries and to command a level of global influence few businesspeople have ever enjoyed.

Musk is both a welcome and rare catalyst for change, and a symbol of the outsized, troubling privileges and access that come with extraordinary wealth. He personifies a world in which one person, unconstrained and seemingly remorseless, can use concentrated riches and power to dominate critical sectors of society and the economy.

That, in turn, allows Musk to thumb his nose at convention, civility, the truth and the rule of law. He is, in that sense, a natural partner for Trump.

Should Musk enter a Trump administration, what could curb his power — or, at a minimum, ensure that it isn’t exercised merely to serve his own needs? US institutions, including Congress, regulators and courts, would have to stand tall.

There’s good reason for pessimism. Trump flouted ethical norms his predecessors had observed during his presidency, reveling in financial and political conflicts of interest that have tested — and may have broken — the law.

He went unchecked at crucial moments by law enforcement and Congress. His post-presidential resurgence from the Jan. 6, 2021, siege at the US Capitol made it clear that the Republican Party and tens of millions of American voters didn’t care about his myriad transgressions.

Musk has watched Trump skate past many of his problems and is likely to take cues from that journey. He is already accustomed to dealing with accommodating corporate boards and loyal shareholders, so operating unchecked in a second Trump administration would come easily to him.

Government bureaucracy alone may offer a check. Musk is used to firing tens of thousands of people as he wishes and pivoting an entire company with a tweet or two. That may make him ill-suited to working through the inertia, frustration and sheer boredom of public governance and consensus-building.

He wouldn’t be the first wannabe swamp-drainer to get mired in the ooze instead. Rex Tillerson, another corporate titan used to directing a slick, industry-leading machine in the form of Exxon Mobil Corp., found himself ill-prepared for the workings of the State Department and the skulduggery of the Trump White House.

Tillerson also happened to be the first Cabinet official ever to be fired on social media after reportedly describing his boss with a little too much of what Musk might term free speech. Therein may lie another potential check.

Trump loves having rich, flashy, aggressive men at his side, and Musk fits the bill. Trump doesn’t like sharing the spotlight, however, especially if his partners have the celebrity status Musk enjoys. It’s a recipe for conflict.

After all, we now have two self-interested alpha males in a marriage of convenience who share a fascination with attention, fast money and unbridled power, even at the expense of democracy and the public interest. What could possibly go wrong?