In Godzilla vs. King Kong, Musk Wins
In Trump-Musk showdown, paper beats rock
The Musk vs. Trump feud is a battle between the most powerful man on the planet and the President of the United States.
That’s not what the mainstream media thinks. “The POTUS is more powerful than the richest man in the world,” CNN’s Chief Political Analyst David Axelrod said of the feud. This is exactly backwards: Elon Musk will come out on top because corporations now rival nation states in terms of power. The media may not yet realize that, but the federal government, intelligence community and Wall Street sure do.
Trump can beat his chest, as he did when he threatened to terminate government subsidies and contracts for Musk’s businesses. But Musk’s response was devastating. He announced that one of his many companies, SpaceX, would begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft, currently the only way of reaching the international space station where four astronauts from NASA are in orbit.
The move sent shockwaves through the space industry, with former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Carver saying the decommissioning of the Dragon was “putting astronauts’ lives at risk…”
The move even caused Wall Street hype machine CNBC to utter a word I never thought they would: “oligarch.”
“The line about decommissioning Dragon was a signal … of how reliant the government is now on what some call oligarchs,” CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla said to co-host Jim Cramer, practically choking on the word as he said it.
Of course, characteristic of this game of chicken, Musk withdrew the threat. But the message was received.
Trump, normally at his best when exchanging insults, countered with the lamest retaliation I’ve ever seen from him: threatening to sell his Tesla car. To borrow one of his own phrases, Trump does not hold the cards.
Musk, on the other hand, has lots of them. He has a net worth somewhere north of $400 billion, making him the richest man in the world, and he owns Space X, Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. Even though Musk’s Tesla company lost some 71 percent of its revenue in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year (thanks to citizens voting with their steering wheels), it’s chicken feed for Musk.
Trump’s net worth is somewhere around $5 billion, according to Forbes (about one percent of Musk’s wealth). In contrast to Musk, who has pioneered electric vehicles, commercial space, Starlink, AI and now owns a major social media platform, Trump is a real estate “mogul” who has failed at virtually every one of his ventures beyond that.
Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts for one has expressed alarm over America’s reliance on Musk for not just the Dragon spacecraft but for his communications satellites as well.
“This is getting ridiculous, where the federal government, the defense of the American people becomes more and more dependent upon a single individual that would withhold that support for our nation,” Markey told CNN.
Now compare that panicked tone with SpaceX investors, like Justus Parmar, CEO of Fortuna Investments. Despite the potential for lost contract opportunities, Parmar said, "It fortunately wouldn't be catastrophic, since SpaceX has developed itself into a global powerhouse that dominates most of the space industry…”
The American tech oligarchy — what I call the appistocracy — have unprecedented levers of power, technologies that the military not only is increasingly dependent on, but ones that are transforming the national security state.
Last year, the intelligence community quietly wrote of the power of these “Non-State Entities.” They launched a sweeping program called the “NSE [Non-State Entities] Initiative” that has “spawned a suite of changes that will revolutionize public-private” partnerships, the national intelligence strategy stated.
When I asked an Office of the Director of National Intelligence official what an example of an NSE might be, they pointed to Starlink, the Musk-owned SpaceX product, and the crucial role it plays in providing communications to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
As then-Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in a speech last year, “there is no question that certain industries now wield substantial geopolitical influence” and the need to partner with these companies is “far more acute” than in previous decades.
Big brother has become little brother, as I wrote in January when the intelligence community was ordered to “routinize” and “expand” their partnerships with private companies — even to the point where those agencies are allowed to incur “risk” in those relationships, according to a federal government directive.
Nowhere was this new big brother more evident than in Trump’s inauguration. Legally the inauguration was overseen by a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who most people couldn’t name; but they certainly recognized the appistocracy in attendance. Alongside figures like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, richest of them all, drew the most attention.
It was as if they were being inaugurated.
The Godzilla character comes from a Japanese movie released in 1954 and was meant to symbolize the threat of nuclear weapons. Keeping with the character, Musk launched an ICBM at Donald Trump this week.
“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk said in a post on X alleging that President Trump “is in the [Jeffrey] Epstein files,” referring to the disgraced sex offender with whom Trump used to socialize.
Three and a half years from now, Trump will be gone, and Musk, in his fifties, will still be in the game. “Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years,” Musk said on X.
Donald Trump, the usually great insult comic, is already backing down, reportedly urging those around him not to pour gasoline on the fire and saying of Elon: “I just wish him well.”
This never was a fair fight.
Update: Musk has since deleted his post his post alleging Trump appearing in the Epstein files
— Edited by William M. arkin
No, government is still more powerful. People may label my comment as communist, but I really don't care, especially when its a matter of defense/natsec. If Trump had the stones, he would nationalize SpaceX and make it a part of NASA. But he doesn't. And there isn't a single living elected official in the U.S. with the stomach for it. FDR would have, though. If put in a similar position, Xi Jinping would do so without hesitation. But that speaks to our limitations as a nation. The U.S. Constitution protects us from state tyranny, but it doesn’t account for the tyranny of private industry which is what Elon Musk is threatening to do with SpaceX. And he's far from the only one.
Most people couldn't name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? C'mon, everybody knows it's Rob Johnson.