Musk Faces A Reckoning

Sunday Briefing

Read the headlines and you might think Elon Musk is winning and winning big. On course to becoming the world’s first trillionaire. Massive merger. Huge public offering.

He might actually be losing.

If there’s one thing Musk is good at it’s garnering publicity and particularly self-publicity. Over the last few weeks he’s barely been out of the public eye and that’s for one big reason: to whip up enthusiasm for the initial public offering that will launch SpaceX on the stock market later this year.

He gained attention with his usual wild and unreliable predictions, most notably this time that in five years there will be more AI in space than on earth. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect for a company that makes its money hurling products out of the atmosphere, but it was accepted uncritically by most of the media.

Dig into the reality behind the fantasy claims, though, and there are strong reasons to believe that difficult times are coming for Musk.

In some of his recent outbursts on X, he seems to recognise this himself.

Things have got much worse for him since he shackled his wagon to Trump. Outside the US, Musk has become a symbol of an untrammelled American hegemony, the swaggering, bullying Nu America that wields power with malice.

That’s painted a big target on his back.

Across the world countries are now lining up to take Musk on in what is seeming like a concerted effort to limit the powers he has and the threat he posses to democracy.

And that has severe implications for his business interests.