He says he is “very impressed” with Macron. He is “a fan” of Narendra Modi. Netanyahu also just stopped by to see him.
Elon Musk has been added to the schedules of a slew of foreign leaders who have recently traveled to the US, including on official state visits at the invitation of the White House.
The leaders of France, Italy, India, South Korea, and, most recently, Turkey and Israel, have all met with the richest man in the world this year.
Even though the erratic billionaire is more in demand than ever, he and the Biden administration do not get along.
Even though the erratic billionaire is more in demand than ever, he and the Biden administration do not get along.
Additionally, as the outspoken contrarian’s political influence grows, notably by addressing delicate geopolitical matters, some people are getting increasingly concerned about Mr. Musk’s access and authority
Face meeting with world leaders for Musk
Some foreign politicians are hoping that a new Tesla factory or an infrastructure investment from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet services will help the economy and the electric vehicle industry.
Others have talked about the future of AI, X, the platform controlled by Musk that was formerly known as Twitter.
Three times since December, French President Macron has courted the tech titan in a charm offensive motivated by his desire to host a new Tesla gigafactory.
Both the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made similar appeals in New York this past Sunday.
Even though Mr. Musk had just returned from New York ahead of this week’s UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to California on Monday to speak with him on artificial intelligence.
The latter conversation took place against the backdrop of Mr. Musk’s simmering dispute with the Jewish civil rights organization Anti-Defamation League.
Since he acquired the website last year and altered its moderation policies, the ADL and other organizations have published studies that imply a sharp increase in hate speech on X.
In their live-streamed talk on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu, who has previously expressed respect for Mr. Musk’s “genius & impact on humanity” on Twitter, urged him to “find the balance” between defending free expression and penalizing hate speech.
Since he came over, he has had to address complaints about X more than once.
The former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said that the Indian government had threatened to shut down the service if it did not abide by requests to remove information before his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Modi in June.
Pre-Musk firm employees had often resisted such demands, but Mr. Musk claimed he was unable to do so.
The best we can do is hew closely to the law in any particular country, but it is impossible for us to do more than that since we will be shut down if we don’t follow local government rules.
Growing political influence of Musk
Even while many of these discussions purportedly centered on Mr. Musk’s important business concerns, they occur as he exercises and exerts increasing control over global geopolitics.
Recent comments made by the US citizen of South African descent have been seen in some quarters as a slight against US interests as well as those of the larger global West.
He angered Taiwanese officials last week when he made what appeared to be casual remarks about Beijing’s “One-China” policy, comparing the autonomous island to “something like Hawaii or something like that, an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China.”
The argument supported allegations made by Musk’s detractors that he is eager to comply with international demands, especially when those nations are US rivals.
“Hope Elon Musk can also ask the CCP to open X to its people,” Mr. Wu remarked. Perhaps he believes that outlawing it is a wise course of action, similar to cutting off Starlink to stop Ukraine from retaliating against Russia.
US allies were disturbed by the Starlink assertion that the businessman “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage” to stop a Ukrainian sneak strike on the Russian naval fleet in Crimea.
But as his book was reaching the market, author Walter Isaacson started retracting his claims in response to Mr. Musk’s vocal opposition, writing on X that Starlink coverage up to Crimea was never actually enabled.
The BBC contacted Mr. Isaacson and Mr. Musk for comments, but neither one answered.
While the Russian ambassador to the US allegedly “explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response” before Mr. Musk made his decision, this assertion is made elsewhere in the Isaacson book.
And political analyst Ian Bremmer delivered a surprise on X after he tweeted a peace proposal last year that prompted one Ukrainian official to wonder whether he had “been hacked by Russians.”
Elon Musk claimed to have had direct conversations regarding Ukraine with Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. He also revealed to me the red lines of the Kremlin,” he wrote.
Mr. Bremmer repeated his criticism of Mr. Musk, saying, “I’ve long regarded musk as a unique and world-changing entrepreneur, which i’ve expressed publicly. He lacks geopolitical expertise.
President Biden responded that Mr. Musk’s “cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at” the following month in response to a question about whether he posed a threat to US national security.
The White House typically avoids mentioning Tesla in its public comments on the electric vehicle industry, instead focusing on unionized automakers, while Mr. Musk spars online with prominent Democrats, declares he can “no longer support” the party, and plays around with Republican presidential challengers.
According to Ashlee Vance, a Musk biographer who has spent more than ten years writing about him, Mr. Musk has been feeling disgruntled and unappreciated.
“This is a guy who likes to get a lot of [expletive] done, he thinks he’s right, and he never likes things getting in his way,” Mr. Vance said to the BBC.
He was already a dangerous substance, and the Biden administration only added fuel to the flames, leaving them with no goodwill left to attempt to restrain him.
Musk’s evolving public persona
The meteoric success of Tesla and SpaceX has aided in Mr. Musk’s transformation from brilliant inventor to cultural icon.
You could say he has accomplished more than any other person in the past 25 years, according to Mr. Vance.
“He stands out in history for doing this on an unparalleled scale across different industries.”
But over the past few years, Mr. Musk’s increasing riches and political development have also coincided with a more polarizing public image, which is partly attributable to his constant online presence and troll-happy character on X.
He has always been this guy who is very confident in his beliefs and not hesitant to voice them, according to Mr. Vance.
He once used to play both sides to help his businesses. He was really systematic, didn’t discuss politics all that much, and whenever he did, it was in relation to a problem like climate change.
But according to him, the billionaire has started to caricature his public character from 2017 or 2018.
“He expresses himself however he feels like. He is intentionally alienating people. At a time when his firms are actually doing incredibly well, he is sort of sabotaging himself.
“In person, he’s actually not the Twitter character at all,” Mr. Vance added. He’s gotten much more gregarious over time, is incredibly intelligent and fascinating, and is a very different guy.
The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball author and former New York Times technology columnist Noam Cohen has a somewhat different perspective.
He thinks that Mr. Musk has become a “quasi-governmental” entity in addition to being an overachiever in business due to his singular desire and vision.
According to Mr. Musk, “the physical” (massive factories, a vast workforce, and valuable products) and “the digital” (control over information dissemination) have been united.
And, according to Mr. Cohen, no other internet tycoon has been able to equal that, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Would we be talking about him now if he hadn’t bought Twitter? If he were merely a large firm, it would be expected that he would meet with China if he wanted to build factories there.
And yet, he continues, Elon Musk has made a lot of the same mistakes as his Silicon Valley counterparts.
They share a similar outlook on life, according to Mr. Cohen: “You’re out for yourself, there’s no social safety net, you’ve got to work hard, and the best rise to the top.”
“It’s a combination of greed and a fundamental mentality that views intelligence as the most important factor and believes that the smartest people should run the world,” the author said.
According to Mr. Cohen, the ability of Mr. Musk and other unelected billionaires to make decisions on their own that have enormous international repercussions is an indication of growing income inequality and a decline in democracy.
Is it appropriate for him to have the power to decide whether the satellites operate or not? He questioned, “Is it acceptable for him to lay the public square?”
Why would it follow that just because you’re strong at business or programming that you’re also good at establishing rules for how the world ought to function?
