And it’s extremely dangerous
I wrote earlier about the reporting that Musk is threatening to shut down Starlink, his satellite service on which Ukraine depends for all its communications unless they capitulate to Trump’s demands to allow him to seize whatever natural resources he wants and hand their country to Putin. The idea that this man has such power over world events is like something out of a James Bond film. Only there’s no James Bond, just GOP cowards, feckless Democrats and a plodding judiciary.
It’s actually much worse than I realized. Josh Marshall wrote this thread on BlueSky last night, jumping off an earlier post about what historically happens when someone becomes more powerful than the sovereign (“over-mighty subjects”) which, in our American democracy, is something called “the American people.”
Musk is a quintessential “over-mighty subject” perhaps the mightiest ever:
A couple years ago the Times did a really strong package about the power of SpaceX. Not only is SpaceX. Not only is it now one if not the preemptive orbital delivery company in the world it also has a fleet of satellites so large that according to that Times article more than half the functional satellites in earth orbit today are owned by SpaceX, and thus under the control of Elon Musk. That’s the basis of Starlink.
Again, half the functioning satellites in orbit are under the control of one man. Must built SpaceX on US govt subsidies and contracts, much as he built Tesla, on the back of subsidies to grow the EV industry. But those are the rules the US government set up. He played by them. Under our system he gets the benefit of those decisions and that good fortune. However, the US government has many laws that make clear that if and when a government contractors decisions threaten the national security of the United States that things change. In the case of SpaceX, he gets the profits.
But there are limits on where the decisions are his. Just to make the obvious point, Musk couldn’t just say okay I’m only going to launch Chinese military satellites. Too bad, Pentagon, what I say goes. Private company, etc. That’s not how it works. And seldom invoked US is pretty clear on that.
Needless to say this isn’t a question most military contractors have any interest in testing. US policy, for better or worse, provides plenty of markets where they can sell their weapons. But already in the early Biden years Musk was starting to run what amounted to his own foreign policy. This came out early in the Ukraine War when it emerged that Musk was running his own arrangements with Vladimir Putin which looked very much like it was running counter to US foreign policy which at the time was Biden’s to make. It also goes without saying that no other federal contractor and no one with a highly level clearance could be having unreported discussions and bargains with an adversary foreign state. Here’s where we get back to the question of over-mighty subjects.
Musk has vast wealth and control over core national security technologies which give him the ability, along with his wealth, to rival the power of the US on the foreign policy stage. Here’s where the acquisition of Twitter becomes a much bigger deal and a much kind of deal than many I think realize. Musk has this overmighty power but the US govt *in extremis* has laws and powers to curtail that power.
But when Musk took personal control of one of the country’s most powerful and pervasive communications mediums AND began using his limitless money in the political real he made himself essentially too big to touch. You can see it in his vast grip on US politics and now also in the UK and now Germany. Whether he’s able to shift the result of the German general election we’ll see. But he’s made it quite clear that there are vast costs to any nation-state which challenges him.
Can he turn the course of an election? I’m skeptical. But no national government wants to find out. And pretty clearly any US national government really wants to find out. This is why the combination of Twitter, plus the vast wealth, plus the critical national security technologies created something genuinely new under the sun.
Musk is truly a Bond villain, untouchable in the normal sense. Why the US Government allowed this to happen is the big question. How could they have put so much power in the hands of one eccentric billionaire? Was it just money, laziness or design? I would guess it’s all three.
Well, get ready. A huge part of the DOGE plan is to do a lot more of it:
Bessent downplays DOGE's mass government firings, saying "we're gonna re-privatize this economy like President Trump promised." pic.twitter.com/nBBQME0MX1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2025
Bessent downplays DOGE’s mass government firings, saying “we’re gonna re-privatize this economy like President Trump promised.”
Musk and his rich buddies plan to privatise all the services and security we currently entrust to our government over which we have some control through our elected representative. Not anymore. These will be at the whim of billionaires (trillionaires!) who will be too big to fail. It’s a terrifying prospect and this may actually be our final chance to stop it.