Elon Musk's Endgame

If Republicans keep the Senate, if they perform better in the House than people expect, a lot will come down to one man, and that man is not Donald Trump. It’s Elon Musk.

At this point, Musk has given around $450 million to the Republican campaign effort. That makes him the single largest donor in any election cycle ever.

Musk’s contributions are now one-quarter of all campaign donations Republicans have received. And yet the size of this, and what it throws into relief, is how hard it is to conceptualize how much money he really has.

Because for Musk, with a net worth of around a trillion dollars, giving $300 million, $400 million, is like the median American household giving, like, $100. It is for him nothing, and yet it is reality warping for the rest of us.

But his money is not Elon Musk’s only source of power. There’s his control of X, of Starlink, of SpaceX, of Neuralink, of Tesla. He has power over wealth, attention and critical infrastructure that no human being has ever had at this level, at least once you’re outside the range of, say, a Donald Trump or a Xi Jinping — somebody who controls a superpower as a state.

That’s not what Musk has, and yet he has this almost statelike thing that is completely pursuant to his whims.

So what does he want to do with it? What is he doing with it? What is this world he is flexing his power and taking real risk to build?

by Ezra Klein, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images