When Donald Trump won the November 2016 presidential election, Elon Musk argued that it was proof that we were all living in a simulation. Just like in the movie The matrix. One theory is that computers by the end of the century will be powerful enough to simulate all of human existence. We can think of ourselves as products of a simulation of a teenage game from 2124. Of a slightly sadistic teenager who, when he gets tired of torturing ants with a magnifying glass and a ray of sunlight, modifies the parameters of our software to watch us suffer.
Earlier this year, billionaire Musk changed his mind. He now sees the 2024 election of Donald Trump as essential to preserving American democracy.
Yes, preserve it. The man who wanted to overturn the last election—and who warns us that he will only accept the results of the next one if he wins—is the only one who can, according to Musk, prevent the worst. “Biden’s strategy is very simple: 1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible. 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority—a one-party state.” The fact that the Biden administration has essentially closed the border since the beginning of the year doesn’t change his mind. This is bold thinking coming from an immigrant; Musk was born in South Africa.
He used to have excellent relations with Democrats, from Obama to Biden. Their policies favoring the development of electric cars and their interest in SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, must have had something to do with this flirtation. But since then, Joe Biden has indicated that Elon Musk’s international relations should be taken into account.
His, let’s say, “diplomatic” activity became even more interesting after the invasion of Ukraine. He offered the Ukrainians free use of his Starlink satellite network, essential for guiding drones. But when Kiev wanted to attack Russian ships that were launching missiles into the territory from a port in Crimea, Musk blocked the use of Starlink. He said he feared an escalation of the war. One of his close associates has since said that Musk had this information from a good source: Vladimir Putin. If Ukrainian drones were used in Crimea in this way, he allegedly told him, an atomic bomb would have arrived so quickly. Crimea has been attacked several times since then. We are still waiting for the first A-bomb.
If you’re like me and subscribe to his X feed, you’ll have noticed that his own posts, which are very frequent, invariably appear at the top of your page. That’s because Musk has modified his algorithms to always be the first thing you see. Good freedom of expression begins with oneself. We could recently see him relaying a doctored photo of a Kamala Harris dressed in red with a Mao-style cap, announcing that she was going to be a communist dictator.
It’s delicious, because Elon Musk is completely shy when it comes to criticizing China, the world’s second-largest market for his Tesla cars. He operates a mega-factory in Shanghai. China banned Twitter on its territory in 2009, something Musk never talks about, while he storms off every time another country wants to mark his activities. This is a defense of freedom with, let’s say, variable geography.
One of his statements last September caused a furore in Beijing. Musk called Taiwan “analogous to Hawaii or something, an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China.” His position was less popular in Taipei, where the idea of taking away the freedom of expression of its 23 million inhabitants is not popular.
A big supporter of Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, who gave Starlink free access to his territory, Musk promoted it during his campaign against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then failed to have X block calls for violence that led to an attempt to overthrow Lula. Faced with its refusal to comply with Brazilian orders on the moderation of certain accounts on X, Musk saw his company banned from operating in Brazil, where it had 40 million users. He is furious.
But it is not always so. Thus, at the request of his friend, the authoritarian president of India, Narendra Modi, X blocked the accounts of hundreds of opponents of the regime. Exactly as X blocked, in Turkey, during the last election campaign, the accounts, there too, of hundreds of opponents of the Erdoğan regime. Musk is rewarded: Modi relaxed the investment rules to allow Tesla and Starlink to set up shop in his country. Erdoğan also opened his arms to Starlink and entrusted SpaceX with the launch of a satellite.
These episodes angered Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who wrote about X : “If Elon is now thinking, ‘We don’t care about free speech if it interferes with making money,’ then he should just own up to it.”
Last week, Trump announced that, if re-elected, Elon Musk would be given a mandate to make the federal government more efficient. That sounds promising. When he bought Twitter for a whopping $44 billion, he fired 75% of its employees on the spot. So we’re eagerly awaiting his slimming plan for the American government.