It’s going to blow… but when?

The president and his Doberman have had a fight before. As part of an intelligence project that is as artificial as it is pharaonic, Donald Trump is now working with the worst enemy of his right arm: Sam Altman, the powerful father of OpenAI. Musk disavowed Trump and lost his temper in public. Decryption.

100 days. By the way. Until a week ago, it was a reasonable bet that Elon Musk and Donald Trump would need each other at least until the end of the trial period. The story is that everyone benefits and takes control of their narcissism. However, they have barely had time to digest an investiture, a few decrees and a Nazi salute, when the two males offer us their first (and noisy) argument.

As is often the case, it was an ex who came to spoil the young, close relationship. In an unexpected press conference, the President of the United States announced the creation of a new artificial intelligence entity called “Stargate”. And who do we find at the origin of this liner supposed to invest 500 billion in four short years? Sam Altman. Yes, Elon Musk’s worst enemy, accused by the latter of having made their baby, OpenAI, a for-profit beast. (Among others.)

While the divorce between the two cerbers of the world of tomorrow is still not resolved, Altman came to flirt with the president just before his inauguration, we learned from MSNBC, Wednesday evening. The father of ChatGPT would have made a (very) long phone call to Donald Trump to sell him a concept that he really likes: America First, but in AI and facing the Chinese giant. The result? A new entity full of challenges, led by OpenAI, Oracle and the Japanese SoftBank.

Jealous, Elon? Not just a little.

As soon as “Stargate” was born, the richest man in the world grabbed his favorite weapon to spit on his ex and criticize the announcement made by President Trump. Between small emotional references and big salad of figures, Elon Musk grumbled all night, publishing an insane number of messages.

The future will tell us if this new entity has the ambitions attributed to it. But there is substance and form, and this first public argument between the Trump-Musk couple is rather unprecedented in the American system. That a senior political official dares to criticize the decisions of a president, on social networks, like a jealous and impulsive lover, is inflated.

Of course, the king of tech will never be a minister like any other and Trump has already proven that decorum has never been his favorite word. Even more juicy, the excessive reaction of the boss of SpaceX could make us believe that he was only informed at the last minute.

Although we only know what they are willing to reveal, several questions arise from the fight, the day after the birth of Stargate. Elon Musk, despite his omnipresence with the president for more than three months, was he voluntarily kept aside? On the contrary, did he try, without success, to oppose the project before it took off?

Even worse: Did he want to be part of it or simply monopolize one of the major geopolitical and economic issues of the next fifty years? Let’s not forget that with xAI, Elon Musk is (still) a competitor to be taken seriously, in this sprint for the artificial intelligence of tomorrow. As was to be expected, his many hats begin to blend together, in his large chest of responsibilities.

The boss of Tesla and SpaceX is no longer a simple powerful industrialist who tries to influence power from afar, by limiting himself to a handful of lucrative government contracts. He is responsible for cleaning up the layers of the federal administration and sticks his nose into most presidential decisions. At the beginning of December, Sam Altman nevertheless wanted to be confident about the impartiality of the man he always considered “a hero”:

Between the lines, the CEO of OpenAI raises an even more sneaky question: for how much longer will Elon Musk need to pretend to love his friend Donald very much? Before his public support for the Republican candidate, there was ultimately only one piece missing from his puzzle: executive power. Buying Twitter, financing the campaign and bringing together the tech boys were three relatively unsurprising steps to achieve this.

But by choosing to sleep at Mar-a-Lago and infiltrate the strategic core of the Trump system, Elon Musk went fishing for global legitimacy, very useful for his business, especially when one violently imposes himself in the debates of several European nations.

For several experts, the president would therefore have every interest in cleaning up the corridors of his own power. And quickly: “Unless Trump breaks it right away, he will stay in this sort of dependent relationship until the end, because we get used to people giving us money and attention, alerts the American historian Timothy Snyder in particular, in The Guardian.

In other words, the honeymoon is over. The passion, all-consuming and bordering on the ridiculous, should turn into a divorce between two uncontrollable egos, the outcome of which will undoubtedly prove catastrophic. And not only for the credibility of Donald Trump’s second term which, every day, will logically lose by biting, until 2028. If three days of reign were enough for the couple to tear each other apart like capricious adolescents over the social networks, we hardly dare imagine the breakup.

Especially since, as is often the case, the one who dares to break first will have control of the story. At least, at first.