Trump could turn Elon Musk into an American oligarch

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to have Elon Musk lead a government efficiency commission would vault the world’s richest man to an unprecedented role: American oligarch.

The details of the commission and Musk’s involvement are still vague, but any formal role in government would give greater influence to the billionaire owner of Tesla, Space X, satellite company Starlink and the social media platform X — signature ventures that have benefited from federal contracts, tax credits and government incentives.

“This is like red lights blaring, all kinds of conflicts of interest,” said Danielle Brian, president of the Project on Government Oversight.

Beyond the possible competing interests, Musk’s potential foray into government would represent a striking development for the tech titan, who would essentially have a role at the highest levels of business, manufacturing, media and Washington.

At the same time, handing Musk a position in his potential administration would fit neatly into Trump’s approach to government. The former president tapped billionaires Wilbur Ross and Steven Mnuchin to serve in his Cabinet, though they had far lower public personas as Musk — and less to gain directly from their involvement.

“Musk is the latest example of a totally gearheaded, engineering-brained, Silicon Valley guy who looks at government and says ‘How hard can it be? Let me at it and I can solve it for you,’” said Peter Leyden, founder of the strategic foresight firm Reinvent Futures and a former managing editor at Wired. “There’s been many of these characters before and he’s just the latest.”

Musk firmly planting himself into politics is not surprising to those who have watched him move from electric car innovator to space entrepreneur to owner of X (and online troll of liberals). But tech experts say Washington may be tricky terrain for a Silicon Valley businessperson unaccustomed to the complexities of federal bureaucracy.

“He’s always been a contrarian,” said Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “He’s worked on electric cars when no one cares about electric cars. He’s worked on space when no one cared about space.”

“That has pushed him into this space where being a contrarian has this value for me.”

Musk has described himself in the past as a moderate but shifted his allegiance to Trump, formally endorsing him after the attempted assassination in July.

“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Musk wrote on X. “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”

Like Trump, Musk has expressed hostility toward government oversight — particularly in California.

The billionaire had long-running feuds with the state’s deep-blue government and has often tussled with the state’s powerful labor interests. Early in the pandemic, he defied local public health orders and continued manufacturing cars at Tesla’s Fremont plant in spite of the threat of Covid-19 — later suing to block what he called “fascist” restrictions and threatening to move the headquarters out of state.

He ended up moving some company’s operations to Texas later that year, but continued to grow Tesla’s footprint in California. He made similar threats of withdrawal earlier this year when, outraged over new protections for LGBTQ+ youth, he vowed to move X and SpaceX to the Lone Star State. Last month, he announced the social media platform would shutter its offices in downtown San Francisco, relocating employees to nearby Palo Alto and San Jose.

Musk has also faced legal scrutiny for his labor practices at both Tesla and X. A California judge found that he and other Tesla executives violated labor laws in 2017 and 2018 by sabotaging attempts to organize workers. Hundreds of former Twitter employees sued him after his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform in 2022, accusing him of failing to pay severance.

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, for years has traded barbs with the billionaire. She noted that state lawmakers often viewed Musk as a positive for the state — giving Tesla millions in subsidies and touting it as a marquee California company.

“His product was often kind of labeled as enviro,” she said. “But there was nothing about him that suggested he was a progressive or liberal.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s push into national politics grew with his 2022 purchase of Twitter, which he later renamed X. He immediately oversaw mass layoffs and implemented a new vision promoting free speech — reforms that brought partisan criticism he was enabling misinformation and harassment on the platform. Under Musk’s leadership, X’s valuation has plummeted and investors lost over $24 billion.

At the Reboot conference Thursday, hosted by the right-leaning tech think tank Foundation for American Innovation, attendees were largely indifferent or inattentive to Musk’s audacious pledge to lead Trump’s commission.

Patrick Blumenthal, founder of the Anomaly venture capital fund, suggested that given its apparent lack of relation to any of Musk’s tech projects it reflected a certain level of dilettantism not uncommon in the tech world.

“Tech and politics, to some extent, I think are incompatible,” Blumenthal said. “But you have an industry full of intelligent people, so it’s inevitable that some of them will want to see if that intellect works in another arena.”