Present at several Donald Trump meetings, Elon Musk was not on stage during the new president-elect's first speech from his HQ in Florida. But the Republican billionaire did not fail to greet the one he described as “amazing guy” : “We have a new star, a star is born… Elon! He's an incredible guy.”
Four minutes of praise during which Donald Trump notably praised the success of the boss of Space X capable of landing his rockets: “Can Russia do it? No. China? No. Can anyone else in the US do this? No. No one else can do this and that’s why I love you Elon! “
“A genius” according to Donald Trump who turned out to be a real running mate. In addition to more than $110 million invested from his personal fortune, Elon Musk “Trumpized” his social network a very controversial pro-Trump lottery.
The messages from the man who has 203.4 million subscribers on his X account concerning the elections have been seen more than 1.2 billion times! And a third of messages posted between May and September contained false information according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.
Since he bought the old Twitter, the man who repeatedly calls himself a fervent defender of freedom of expression has virtually banned moderation and a modification of the algorithms has allowed a profusion of pro-Trump content. The head of Tesla must now inherit an audit from the federal government with a view to draconian reforms.
Political scientist, specialist in the political and geopolitical issues of Tech, Asthma Malla answered our questions on this subject.
How much did Elon Musk matter to Donald Trump?
Elon Musk has been absolutely central from this summer, from July 13, 2024 and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Elon Musk then really put himself forward. And he adopted a posture, a role almost as a running mate, more than James David Vance.
In the spring, he had already launched the super PAC, an aid, financing and logistics fund with Donald Trump's campaign teams to help him beat the ground. With also data capture and micro-targeting which have also led to the beginnings of an investigation, investigations on the part of a few States in relation to the collection of this data for example.
Then, there was obviously the role of news, deep fakes, theories and strategies to destabilize the Democratic camp with an over-visibility of pro-Trump comments and an under-visibility of accounts, comments or relays in favor of Kamala Harris. This was extremely significant throughout the campaign.
And then he went at the end, literally, physically, to Pennsylvania to lead the campaign on the ground in a totally baroque and reinvented form of what we call in the United States “community organizing”. This is really the network of territory to create a pro-Trump movement.
Did he ultimately become a sort of vice-president of digital on this campaign?
Much more than for digital. Digital is a very outdated word today. Who is Elon Musk? He is an absolutely hybrid actor. He is a technological entrepreneur, but he is also a geopolitical actor, a military actor, an ideological actor and who can also have his own agenda. And so the blow of the Trump-Musk alliance is a blow with several bands and which must be understood in this complexity.
It is also the reconquest of space, Space Very libertarian, right-wing or even far-right federal state.
So the ideological and political agenda behind this couple must be looked at with a lot of questions, with something quite new and dizzying, really.
You therefore insist on its multiple influence.
Contracts over the last ten years from Elon Musk and the federal government and American federal agencies represent more than 15 billion dollars, notably with the Pentagon and NASA. We must therefore understand that Elon Musk is not this clown or just someone crazy or dangerous. Today it has become a geostrategic bottleneck and one of the key players in American power. Which raises huge concerns about Trump's future foreign policy with Musk at his side, particularly on the China issue. Because China today is Tesla's second most important market for Elon Musk. And this is at the same time part of this geostrategic rivalry, also of this American obsession with preserving their power. It will be very interesting to see how this couple will build and tell the new story of American power. And what's very interesting is that Musk brings to Trump this image, this symbol of technological power on steroids, with the conquest of space. In his speech this morning, Donald Trump paid tribute to Elon Musk and his rocket.
A form of retro futurism is playing out on an ultra reactionary neoconservatism and at the same time a futuristic technological projection.
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To stay within the sphere of influence, at least on social networks, fake news is omnipresent on Elon Musk's X account. And besides, today, the American media are commenting on this fake news. They therefore spread well beyond this social network.
There really was an algorithmic resetting, with instructions from Elon Musk so that his accounts and his content were over-visited. You can't enter X today without coming across Elon Musk's tweets.
Beyond that, we should note the recent revelations from the Wall Street Journal on the links between Putin and the Kremlin more generally, and Elon Musk. We could therefore also ask ourselves the question of the convergence between disinformation, fake news and domestic post-truth but augmented, optimized by strategies of influence, interference, informational struggle coming from Russia.
And finally, the mainstream media, the written press repeating the rhetoric, Elon Musk's tweets give it and amplify, whitewash in a certain way the own striking force of the man who has more than 200 million followers. So, there is also the question of the amplification system which is taken up in a continuum with more conventional media.
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Also new in this campaign is artificial intelligence which was extremely present.
Yes, it was very present, first in the rhetoric, in the power strategy. Then AI, as such, on governance, it will be very interesting to see what will now be the posture of a Donald Trump who is not entirely in phase with JD Vance, who himself is not necessarily in phase with Elon Musk. We will have to see how they will manage the highly geopolitical problem of global governance of artificial intelligence which is part of the geostrategic rivalry with China.
Then, regarding generative AI strictly speaking, this was obviously a generator, an amplifier of deep fakes, notably against the Democratic camp and against Kamala Harris in particular, taken up by Elon Musk and to extraordinary proportions. Then above all, Donald Trump had also prepared the ground for a possible defeat by using the argument of artificial intelligence to say that if they ever lost attention, it was perhaps hacks and tricks by artificial intelligence to already prepare a practically insurrectional climate. He also understood the ambiguity and duality of this technology.
And when Elon Musk poste ce mercredi “You are the media now”“you are now the media” on X, what does it mean?
It's very interesting because Elon Musk, since his acquisition of X – Twitter in 2022, has always had this vision, beyond the question of the economic model, of: “I am a practically anarchist anti-system actor” . He has a grudge against the mainstream media, in the same way as Trump and they agree a lot on this point. Musk's idea was therefore to make the mainstream media, the news channels, but also the written press against which he has a real grudge. And he was radicalized literally before our eyes on this issue.
So, when he says “You are the media now”, he says that, roughly speaking, we have won. Ultimately, it is: “Power to the people”. This is an extremely populist tweet in the true sense of the term, the power of the people, whatever the danger of this ideological current.
And he should have an important place with the new President Trump?
He'll get it either way. And in any case, even if Harris had won, Musk would have remained a fundamental strategic player, given the ties that bind him today with the American state. But it is true that Donald Trump's victory will give him a place, an extremely important preponderance, and that we will have to follow him much more closely, well beyond the technological entrepreneur that he is no longer for a long time. He has gone beyond this simple box to become an actor, let's say systemic, but truly leading.
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