Elon Musk’s Endgame

The host opens by noting that Elon Musk has given roughly $450 million to Republican campaign groups ahead of the midterm elections. That makes him the largest individual political donor in any election cycle and represents about a quarter of all Republican campaign donations. The host argues that Musk’s wealth is difficult to comprehend: with a net worth approaching $1 trillion, giving $300 million or $400 million is roughly comparable to an average American household giving $100. For everyone else, however, the money can reshape an election. Quinn Slobodian, a Boston University professor and co-author of “Muskism,” says Musk is trying to entrench dependencies that already give him political power. Financially, Tesla and SpaceX are embedded in American investment portfolios and the broader economy, so attacking Musk can seem like attacking economic infrastructure. Operationally, SpaceX is the dominant launch provider, while Starlink is becoming a communications system for rural consumers and battlefield operations. Through X, Musk is also trying to create a media environment in which his interpretation of social problems is difficult to challenge. Slobodian says the midterm spending is meant to help Musk influence which candidates rise or fall and to get ahead of a possible Democratic regulatory wave.

The host points out that Musk’s partisan alignment could endanger his companies. SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla and other ventures depend heavily on governments, so a future Democratic president and Congress could view reliance on Musk as a security risk. Slobodian agrees that the strategy is high-risk, but says Musk is working on two tracks. He wants to make his infrastructure so indispensable that even hostile administrations have limited ability to restrain him, while also using polarization to position himself as an essential partner for a future right-wing government. Slobodian compares Musk’s European strategy with this approach. Rather than compromise with centrist governments and Brussels to protect market access, Musk has attacked the European Union and supported parties such as Germany’s AfD and Britain’s Reform movement. Slobodian says Musk views these parties as political versions of Tesla: outsiders that could disrupt established Christian-democratic and social-democratic institutions. The goal is not simply to win a policy concession; it is to help replace the existing governing order. Musk’s willingness to risk relationships with current governments therefore reflects his belief that a broader political transformation may put him in a stronger position later.

The host plays an interview in which Musk predicts that within five to 10 years humans may no longer control artificial intelligence. Musk compares the possible gap between humans and superintelligent AI to the gap between humans and chimpanzees. He says AI must be “maximally truth seeking and curious,” partly because an AI with those qualities might choose to preserve humanity—perhaps because humans would remain interesting or entertaining. Slobodian explains that Musk’s thinking about AI has changed. Around 2015, when Musk helped start OpenAI, he emphasized slowing AI development and aligning its values with human values, influenced by Nick Bostrom’s “Superintelligence” and fears of runaway systems. At the same time, Neuralink was presented as a way to merge humans with machines so that people could keep pace with advanced AI: “we need to become the robots to not be destroyed by the robots.” After ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Musk’s focus shifted toward competing with supposedly “woke” AI systems. His response was to build an anti-woke model, xAI, whose chatbot Grok is marketed as more truth-seeking than OpenAI or Anthropic. Musk now imagines a vertically integrated “Musk Industries” combining AI with humanoid robots that can move from manipulating information to shaping physical matter.

The host asks how Musk changed from a relatively conventional Silicon Valley Democrat who supported Barack Obama into a leading figure on the tech right. Slobodian traces part of the shift to Musk’s experience with government and workplace politics. Tesla benefited from a roughly half-billion-dollar Department of Energy loan during the Obama administration, but Musk later felt rejected by the Biden White House, which did not invite Tesla to an electric-vehicle event because of its pro-worker and pro-union orientation. Slobodian compares the slight to a political version of Trump’s grievance after being mocked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Musk responded by deciding to create his own club. COVID-19 intensified the break. Musk objected to containment measures that limited his ability to operate Tesla’s California factory. His tweet that “the coronavirus panic is dumb” became his first tweet to receive one million likes, and Donald Trump publicly supported reopening the factory. Musk then reopened it in defiance of California orders and got away with it. Slobodian says Twitter did not merely corrupt Musk’s judgment; it became a laboratory in which he learned that outrage and polarization could increase attention, stock value and personal wealth. By 2021, as people spent more time online, Musk had become the world’s richest person by turning himself into what others called a human meme stock.

The host contrasts Musk’s estimated $39 billion fortune in 2020 with his nearly $1 trillion fortune six years later. The increase did not come mainly from a sudden transformation of Tesla or SpaceX into highly profitable companies. Slobodian says it came from extraordinary valuations built around what he calls “financial fabulism”: investors price Musk’s companies according to possible future markets rather than current revenue and profits. Both speakers stress that this does not mean Musk is simply a liar or a grifter. SpaceX genuinely reduced the cost of putting material into orbit, and Starlink has launched more than 11,000 satellites and accumulated more than 12 million subscribers. Tesla has made electric vehicles commercially visible, and Starlink has affected military communications in Ukraine. Slobodian attributes part of these successes to a production model that anticipated deglobalization and supply shocks. SpaceX brought many components in-house instead of relying on long procurement chains, while Tesla’s Gigafactories consolidated more of its supply chain under one roof. That helped Tesla recover faster than other automakers after borders and supply networks were disrupted by COVID-19. Musk’s valuations therefore combine tangible technological accomplishments with expansive claims about robots, AI and future economies.

Slobodian says Musk’s idea of the “woke mind virus” is more literal and more technological than ordinary complaints about progressive culture. The phrase draws on Richard Dawkins’s ideas about memes and “viruses of the mind,” treating beliefs as units that move through networks in ways analogous to computer viruses. Musk sees people and machines as connected in “cybernetic collectives,” where political loyalties, anger and consent can be changed by amplifying or suppressing particular memes. In this framework, X is not merely a social network. Slobodian describes Musk’s larger system as an end-to-end communicative space stretching from chatbots to satellites. X supplies real-time human reactions and opinions; xAI can use that material to make its models seem current; and Musk can influence which views receive attention through algorithms and monetization. Slobodian cites the example of British far-right politician Rupert Lowe, whose anti-Muslim post was followed by reporting on how much money he earned from engagement on X. Musk’s political project, in Slobodian’s account, is to build a media engine that he can call “truth” while controlling the mechanisms that determine what becomes visible.

The host plays a clip in which Musk says Western civilization suffers from “civilizational suicidal empathy.” Musk says empathy is being exploited as a bug in the system: societies care so much about individuals, particularly migrants and refugees, that they allow people who allegedly do not share Western values to enter and weaken the civilization as a whole. Slobodian says this echoes the European far right’s argument for restricting immigration and pursuing “remigration.” Musk’s concern is not simply individual policy but the idea that liberal societies are dissolving the hierarchies and boundaries that made Western civilization possible. Slobodian connects this outlook to Musk’s childhood in apartheid South Africa, while acknowledging that the evidence about direct influence is limited. He argues that apartheid’s division between a privileged minority and a largely excluded population could reinforce a distinction between “playing characters” and “non-player characters.” Musk’s politics also fits an older alliance between neoliberals defending market freedom and cultural nationalists opposing immigration, racial equality and feminism. Slobodian says this worldview assumes that nature distributes ability and rewards unequally. In the present, traditional IQ hierarchies are being transformed into an even narrower hierarchy: if AI automates most knowledge work, the cognitive elite may shrink into a tiny “super-aristocracy.” That helps explain how Musk can promote expanding human consciousness while opposing immigration and policies that help more people survive and flourish.

The discussion returns to the practical problem created by Musk’s political and economic power. His companies are intertwined with government, defense and retirement savings, but that dependence makes them vulnerable to political backlash. Slobodian says the risk factors in SpaceX’s own filings identify national legislation as a major threat. Musk’s posture of invulnerability is therefore part of his political project, not proof that governments lack leverage. Slobodian offers three possible responses, especially visible in European discussions: regulation, building substitutes for Musk’s systems, and rethinking what the technology should be for. He points to proposals to nationalize Starlink, including a recent discussion by economist Paul Krugman, as evidence that ideas once considered economically extreme are becoming plausible because of Musk’s behavior. The speakers note that a crisis—such as Musk shutting off Starlink during a military operation—could produce a direct confrontation under the Defense Production Act, although they avoid claiming certainty about disputed reports involving Ukraine. Musk’s financial reach complicates any response. More than half of Americans own equities directly or indirectly, and Slobodian estimates that perhaps 20 to 30 percent have some connection to Musk’s companies through funds and pensions. Musk has even proposed giving every American child one SpaceX share through Trump accounts, which could raise that exposure toward 50 percent. Teachers’ pension funds, Harvard and the University of North Carolina are among major holders. This gives Musk a way to argue that restraining him would harm ordinary people’s savings.

The host argues that Musk’s fascination with simulation theory matters psychologically. Musk has said that a physicist once assigned a zero percent chance that reality is a simulation while a computer scientist assigned 100 percent, leading him to choose 50 percent. He adds that, if he is really building spaceships, influencing politics and becoming the first trillionaire, it can feel as though he is playing an unusually improbable role. Slobodian says one version of simulation theory implies that only a small number of people are actual “players,” which can encourage people to ignore social responsibility, accumulate wealth and organize the world around themselves as entertainingly as possible. The host and Slobodian also discuss why Musk’s rhetoric appeals to many young and middle-aged men. Musk and Trump can represent a return of masculine will, conquest and building after an era associated with consensus and progressive politics. Slobodian says this resembles a wager: if Musk is making the future, aligning with him may seem safer than resisting him and becoming obsolete. They end by arguing that Musk has monopolized achievements produced partly through collective labor and public investment, so the alternative is not necessarily abandoning the technologies but deciding collectively what they are for. Slobodian recommends “Extraction” by Thea Riofrancos, “Silicon Empires” by Nick Srnicek and “Against Tech Oligarchy” by J.S. Tan and Clarissa Redwine. The final book focuses on organizers inside technology companies and the possibility of exercising class power in Silicon Valley.