The Biggest Mystery of Elon Musk

Opinion|The Biggest Mystery of Elon Musk

Must any pair of would-be great men of history always find a path to conflict? Ask Caesar and Pompey, Octavian and Antony, Lennon and McCartney. But the specific thing they fight about is less predictable. I would not have guessed, six months ago, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s version of the Battle of Actium would be fought over the budget deficit.

That’s because six months ago I understood Musk’s interest in politics, his long march away from Obama-era liberalism and his reinvention of himself as the prince of the very online right, as reflecting two key goals: his newfound desire to defeat cultural progressivism, rooted in the experience of his child’s gender transition, and his long-term, career-shaping desire to get human explorers to Mars.

These interests reinforced each other. Musk was already moving rightward on cultural issues when his purchase of Twitter, a particular Rubicon, led him to shed the leftward political alliances that once yielded Democratic patronage and support. This strengthened his financial incentives to go all in for Trump and the Republicans, because it was clear that a Kamala Harris administration would be unremittingly hostile to his technological projects. He had already been willing to make all kinds of wild business gambles for those projects, the dream of Mars-bound rockets above all, so placing a stark political bet was second nature.

Given that reading of his intentions, I assumed that Musk’s role in a second Trump administration would be some combination of first technologist, deregulator in chief and anti-woke crusader — a space and tech focus with a side of culture war.

But that isn’t what happened. We did get the third role to some extent in some of the ideological justifications for the DOGE campaign against U.S.A.I.D., but Musk wasn’t really the point man for the White House’s anti-woke battles.

Nor did Musk assume a leading role in the administration’s deregulatory efforts. That seemed to be part of the initial plan for DOGE, but it went into abeyance when Musk forced out Vivek Ramaswamy.