Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s “minister”, for what profit? (analysis)

Appointed to head a “Department of Government Effectiveness,” the businessman is expected to play an important role in the Republican’s second presidency. Its industrial activities should not suffer.

First there is the observation. “Elon Musk a mis the entirety of its X network at the service of Donald Trump. He posted the deepfake where Kamala Harris talked about Joe Biden’s senility and the corrupt methods he taught her. It took him 48 hours before he said it was fake. For two days, this content was disseminated to the four corners of the world at high speed. deepfakes gangrene the brain. You only need to be confronted with it once for it to leave a mark. We should be able to measure how its digital content influenced the presidential election. We often talk about ballot stuffing. With Investigation into Elon Musk, the man who defies science (Alisio, 2022). Given the scale of the billionaire’s victory on November 5 (312 voters against 216 for Democrat Kamala Harris, successes in the seven “swing states”…), It is difficult to believe that this support played a decisive role. However, shouldn’t it spark a debate on the health of American democracy?

Olivier Lascar’s disillusioned words lend credence to this. “It is intriguing to see that when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, the weight of social networks was greatly questioned. The Cambridge Analytica affair raises the question of how the data the company had was used to change the course of the election. Russian interference in Hillary Clinton’s campaign raises the specter of major manipulation. We then say to ourselves that we will have to be very careful about the use of social networks in an electoral context. However, what do we observe eight years later? The situation is so caricatured that it’s as if all of the above never existed. X was used in favor of Donald Trump in full view of everyone. We are no longer even in the register of hidden manipulation. And yet, it looks creamy. It’s scary.”

Jen Schradie, digital sociologist and professor at Sciences Po, bid in a newspaper column The World (“In the hands of Elon Musk, X is no longer just a social network, but a weapon”, November 4) and warns: “Elon Musk seems ready to use [de cette arme] in a way that will mark American politics for years to come.” Her research has in fact convinced her that “The Internet favors conservatives, adept at using its platforms to spread their messages ever closer to the extreme right.” Elon Musk and the Trumpists, winning alliance in a series of upcoming presidential elections?

A mission dreamed of

In the meantime, it is important to evaluate the dividends that the businessman will draw from his support for the re-elected Republican. Donald Trump appointed him on Tuesday November 12 to head a “Department of Government Efficiency” which he will lead with another businessman, Vivek Ramaswamy. He competed in the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidency before joining Donald Trump. The two men “will lead the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies – essential to the ‘Save America’ movement,” the re-elected president said in a statement. . The mission is of limited duration. Its term is set for July 4, 2026. “A smaller, more efficient and less bureaucratic government will be the perfect gift to give to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” Trump added.

The Department of Government Effectiveness, whose acronym in English, DOGE, is a “nod” to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency supported by Elon Musk, will act “outside the federal government” and will report directly to the White House . The boss of Tesla, Space Nevertheless, the mission fits perfectly in the ideological line of Elon Muskhe who is a fervent slayer of public regulations, obstacles, according to him, to free enterprise…

A political role, Musk already seemed to want to play one when he got involved and invested his company Starlink in the conflict in Ukraine. He put his satellites at the service of the Ukrainians, to ensure communications between the military. But reduced the possibility when the kyiv army wanted to use their capabilities to attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Crimea. The businessman even authorized himself to publish, on October 3, 2022, a “peace plan” which was judged at the time outrageously favorable to Russia, but which would perhaps be judged a little differently today, after almost three years of war (Russified Crimea, fate of other occupied territories subject to the results of a referendum , neutrality of the Ukrainian state…)

Could Donald Trump use Elon Musk and the Starlink company as “means of pressure” to force President Volodymyr Zelensky into negotiations? “The use of Starlink satellites has been restricted. If we could say at the start of the war that Elon Musk was an important supporter of Ukraine, we can no longer say it today. It’s much more ambivalent, believes Olivier Lascar. However, we should not underestimate the technical success of which Elon Musk and his companies are capable. What Space X achieved with the Starship launcher on October 13 by recovering the first stage of its rocket is extraordinary. In terms of projecting soft power and embodiment of the technological power of the United States, it is a decisive piece. But it’s a polarizing piece. As Trump polarizes…”

Ambiguity towards the State

The credo of the boss of Space Without a doubt. Two examples demonstrate this.

Beforehand, however, it is necessary to pinpoint with the author ofInvestigation into Elon Musk, the man who defies science another ambiguity of the character. “The man is ambivalent and hypocritical in his relationship to public power. On the one hand, he demands as few rules as possible from the State to be able to achieve what he wants to do. Thus, in the space sector, he has been tweeting for weeks to complain about the attitude of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which, according to him, takes far too long to issue launch authorizations for its rockets. Starship. But, on the other hand, public power was very useful to him and continues to be so. Space X owes its financial windfall to contracts provided to it by the federal government. THE New York Times estimated the sums received by the company from various American federal agencies over the last ten years at an amount of around fifteen billion dollars. Elon Musk appreciates public money. The rules of public authorities, much less so.”

Examples of dividends that Elon Musk could directly draw from Trump’s mandate include NASA’s orders for Space takeoffs,” predicts Olivier Lascar. And there is another area where one might have thought that a divergence separated Elon Musk and Donald Trump but which, ultimately, could be served by the mandate of the second, it is that of the electric car. We know that the former president was not a fervent defender of this progress. His new proximity to the Tesla boss will probably change his position. He himself announced it in August during the electoral campaign: “Elon supports me so much that I have no other choice but to support the electric car”… As soon as he was elected, the The company’s shares have also been valued at 50% on the New York Stock Exchange.

Not an environmentalist

For Elon Musk, the challenge for the years to come in this sector lies in the autonomous car. “Overtaken on the global electric car market by the Chinese BYDit seeks to regain control of the next stage of transport, autonomous driving. On October 10, it presented the heart of its new growth strategy, autonomous taxis,” comments Philippe Escande, director of the economic supplement of the Monde. Its development depends greatly on the relaxation of the regulatory framework which governs experiments in this niche. Donald Trump’s mandate could help him there.

According to Olivier Lascar, there is no on one side Musk the environmental defender, and on the other, Trump the climate skeptic. Quite simply because the first is not the one that Tesla’s success would define. “I don’t think Elon Musk came to the electric car because the electric motor prevents the emission of greenhouse gases, unlike thermal engines. He invested in this sector because he realized that fossil fuels will be exhausted in the short term and he said to himself thatwe had to move to another type of energy. From time to time he supported his remarks with environmental considerations to sell the project or to find a typology of clients who are sensitive to it. But he is not. Elon Musk is still the man who literally takes the opposite view of the argument that we heard a lot during the negotiations of the Paris climate agreement which consisted of saying that there is no of plan B because there is no planet B. Musk maintains the opposite. He says that there is a planet B, Mars, and that we must do everything to get there. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have the same point of view on the issue of climate change: they don’t care. The first will continue to defend the electric car for economic reasons. The second will do “at the same time” like Macron. He will drill at all costs and he will support the activities of his new friend. But It is a mistake to consider that because he is the promoter of Tesla, Musk is an environmentalist. He’s a pragmatist and an opportunist.” It couldn’t be better said that the two men were made to get along. History will tell whether this alliance served or harmed Americans and the planet.

(1) His latest book is titled Deepfake, AI at the service of fakery (Eyrolles, 200 pages).