Elon Musk’s greatest political advantage may be how difficult he has become to replace.
Historian Quinn Slobodian argues that Musk’s political spending serves a larger purpose: deepening dependence on his companies. In Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, co-written with Ben Tarnoff, he describes a system that promises greater freedom through technology while placing essential services under private control.
The concern extends beyond campaign donations. When governments need your rockets, communities use your satellite network, and politicians seek audiences on your platform, your business decisions acquire public consequences. Dependence becomes a source of power. Slobodian and Tarnoff make this the central argument of their book.
When a supplier becomes hard to replace
SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, and X operate in different markets. Slobodian’s argument is that their roles reinforce one another.
Launch services and satellite communications create infrastructure dependence. Tesla’s valuation ties investors to expectations about Musk’s future. X gives him a platform for shaping political debate. Campaign spending strengthens relationships with officials who may oversee those businesses.
The resulting influence can outlast an election. Replacing a political donor is relatively easy. Replacing essential infrastructure takes time, money, and working alternatives.
Disruption can serve the business
Musk’s polarization can look commercially reckless. Slobodian offers another interpretation: alienating established institutions may help Musk become indispensable to political movements seeking to overturn them.
His support for Germany’s Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, and Britain’s Reform movement fits that reading. A disruptive government might offer opportunities that a stable political establishment would resist.
Personal grievance also matters in this account. Conflicts over pandemic restrictions, labor organizing, and workplace activism helped widen Musk’s break with the left. Tesla’s exclusion from President Biden’s electric-vehicle summit became a symbol of that rupture. It was one episode in a longer shift, rather than a complete explanation.
Artificial intelligence moves from threat to opportunity
Slobodian traces a similar change in Musk’s approach to artificial intelligence, or AI.
Earlier warnings focused on machines becoming more intelligent than humans. Neuralink’s vision of closer connections between brains and computers reflected a proposed response: help people keep pace by merging with technology.
After ChatGPT demonstrated generative AI’s commercial potential, Musk’s emphasis shifted toward building a competing system. Grok’s promise of truth-seeking, coupled with opposition to what Musk calls political correctness, made AI part of his cultural politics.
His robotics ambitions extend that vision into the physical world. Combining AI with humanoid robots could connect software to manufacturing and everyday work. Slobodian sees the prospect of an integrated industrial system, although that ambition should be distinguished from demonstrated capability.
The value of a promised future
Slobodian and Tarnoff use the term financial fabulism to describe the ability to turn expansive stories about the future into investment today.
Musk’s companies have real achievements around which investors can build those stories. Electric vehicles and reusable rockets provide evidence of technical ability. Investors then price in possibilities such as autonomous transport and large-scale robotics, often far beyond what current profits alone would support.
The distinction matters. An engineering achievement can strengthen confidence in a company without proving every promise attached to its valuation.
Politics becomes a software problem
Musk frequently describes political beliefs through computing metaphors, including the woke mind virus. Slobodian argues that this language encourages a view of disagreement as contamination to be removed.
His criticism of civilizational suicidal empathy applies a similar logic to immigration and refugee policy: compassion becomes a vulnerability that outsiders can exploit.
There are legitimate arguments about borders and public resources. Slobodian’s concern is what happens when those arguments become a programming exercise. Citizens with competing values become faulty inputs, and compromise gives way to correction.
Control of a social platform and an AI system adds weight to that worldview. It creates opportunities to influence which ideas people encounter and how those ideas are framed.
Who shares in the gains
Earlier industrial economies developed social bargains through labor struggle and political negotiation. Productivity gains helped support higher wages, collective bargaining, and public benefits. Those gains were uneven and contested.
Slobodian questions whether Musk offers a comparable bargain. Philanthropy and company-centered schools provide no clear answer to how the wider public shares in the wealth these technologies create.
AI makes that question more urgent. If machines automate substantial amounts of knowledge work, economic rewards could flow increasingly to those who own the systems. Slobodian warns of a tiny technological aristocracy. That is a possible outcome shaped by policy, rather than an established forecast.
Build alternatives and preserve public control
Slobodian’s proposed response is to regulate concentrated power, develop substitutes for essential services, and reconsider what society wants technology to accomplish.
Useful inventions can retain their value while their owners face competition and democratic oversight. Governments can support alternative suppliers. Public contracts can protect continuity of service. Citizens can insist on a voice in decisions that affect their lives.
The practical goal is to make essential services replaceable and their providers accountable. Slobodian’s argument is that these arrangements remain choices. Technological progress does not settle who should hold power over it.
This summary from Ezra Klein’s podcast: Musk’s Endgame written with AI assistance.
