Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth – he’s the richest person in the world – into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.
Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter. He publicly endorsed Donald Trump last month. Before that, Musk helped form a pro-Trump super political action committee. Meanwhile, the former US president has revived his presence on the X platform.
Musk just hired a Republican operative with expertise in field organizing to help with get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of Trump.
Trump and Musk have both floated the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term. “I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission,” Musk said in a conversation with Trump earlier this month streamed on X. “And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission.”
Musk reposted a faked version of Kamala Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like Harris and saying she doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire”. Musk tagged the video “amazing”. It’s got hundreds of millions of views, so far.
The Michigan secretary of state has accused the Musk-supported America Pac of tricking people into sharing personal data. Although the Pac’s website promises to help users register to vote, it allegedly asks users in battleground states to give their names and phone numbers without directing them to a voter registration site – and then uses that information to send them anti-Harris and pro-Trump ads.
According to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk himself has posted 50 false election claims on X so far this year. They’ve got a total of 1.2bn views. None of them had a “community note” from X’s supposed fact-checking system.
Evidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents are using X to disrupt this year’s presidential race, presumably in favor of Trump. Musk has done little to stop them.
Meanwhile, Musk is supporting rightwing causes around the world.
In the UK, far-right thugs burned, looted and terrorized minority communities as Musk’s X spread misinformation about a deadly attack on schoolgirls. Musk not only allowed instigators of this hate to spread these lies, but he retweeted and supported them.
At least eight times in the past 10 months, Musk has prophesied a future civil war related to immigration. When anti-immigration street riots occurred across Britain, he wrote: “civil war is inevitable.”
The European Union commissioner Thierry Breton sent Musk an open letter reminding him of EU laws against amplifying harmful content “that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation” and warning that the EU “will be extremely vigilant” about protecting “EU citizens from serious harm”.
Musk’s response was a meme that said: “TAKE A BIG STEP BACK AND LITERALLY, F*CK YOUR OWN FACE!”
Elon Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist” but has accepted over 80% of censorship requests from authoritarian governments. Two days before the Turkish elections, he blocked accounts critical of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
And his friendly relations with authoritarians often seem to coincide with beneficial treatment of his businesses; shortly after Musk suggested handing Taiwan over to the Chinese government, Tesla got a tax break from the Chinese government.
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He may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him.
Here are six ways to rein in Musk:
1. Boycott Tesla.
Consumers shouldn’t be making him even richer and able to do even more harm. A Tesla boycott may have already begun. A recent poll said one-third of Britons are less likely to buy a Tesla because of Musk’s recent behavior.
2. Advertisers should boycott X.
A coalition of major advertisers has organized such a boycott. Musk is suing them under antitrust law. “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” he wrote on X, referring to advertisers who criticize him and X.
3. Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.
Global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov, who founded the online communications tool Telegram, which French authorities have found complicit in hate crimes and disinformation. Like Musk, Durov has styled himself as a free speech absolutist.
4. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission should demand that Musk take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals – and if he does not, sue him under Section Five of the FTC Act.
Musk’s free-speech rights under the first amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest. Two months ago, the US supreme court said federal agencies may pressure social media platforms to take down misinformation – a technical win for the public good (technical because the court based its ruling on the plaintiff’s lack of standing to sue).
5. The US government – and we taxpayers – have additional power over Musk, if we’re willing to use it. The US should terminate its contracts with him, starting with Musk’s SpaceX.
In 2021, the United States entered into a $1.8bn classified contract with SpaceX that includes blasting off classified and military satellites, according to the Wall Street Journal. The funds are now an important part of SpaceX’s revenue.
The Pentagon has also contracted with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service to pay for internet links, despite Musk’s refusal in September 2022 to allow Ukraine to use Starlink to launch an attack on Russian forces in Crimea.
Last August, the Pentagon gave SpaceX’s Starshield unit $70m to provide communications services to dozens of Pentagon partners.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is cornering the rocket launch market. Its rockets were responsible for two-thirds of flights from US launch sites in 2022 and handled 88% in the first six months of this year.
In deciding upon which private-sector entities to contract with, the US government is supposed to consider the contractor’s reliability. Musk’s mercurial, impulsive temperament makes him and the companies he heads unreliable. The government is also supposed to consider whether it is contributing to a monopoly. Musk’s SpaceX is fast becoming one.
Why is the US government allowing Musk’s satellites and rocket launchers to become crucial to the nation’s security when he’s shown utter disregard for the public interest? Why give Musk more economic power when he repeatedly abuses it and demonstrates contempt for the public good?
There is no good reason. American taxpayers must stop subsidizing Elon Musk.
6. Make sure Musk’s favorite candidate for president is not elected.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
