Elon Musk's political influence became even stronger this year

• With great wealth inevitably comes influence and power.
• But Elon Musk is pushing the boundaries, given how many industries he's dominating.

Elon Musk isn't known for staying in one lane.

He either sits at the head or owns six companies — Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, Neuralink, X, and xAI — and is a pioneering rocket creator, EV manufacturer, and all-round maverick.

But should we add geopolitical diplomat to that list?

Musk has held billionaire status and all the inherent political clout that brings for over a decade.

But in the last year, his control over a variety of key technologies, communication streams, and even national security mechanisms has continued to grow. Not to mention his packed diplomatic schedule of meetings with world leaders.

It's a concentration of decision-making and economic might that analysts warn undermines democracy.

Here's a look at just how much political influence Elon Musk has.

X

Musk's $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022 hasn't brought him great financial returns.

But it has given the tech mogul the role of gatekeeper over one of the world's most influential social-media platforms, with the ability to amplify or ban whoever he pleases.

As Musk himself tweeted, in reference to old media sources: "They are no longer the arbiters of opinion."

The implication now being that he is.

His management of the platform that plays a key role in documenting and sharing current affairs hasn't filled onlookers with confidence.

In December, the European Commission launched an investigation into X over its content-moderation rules and the spread of illegal content.

As Musk reinstates a number of prominent banned accounts, such as far-right figure Alex Jones, he's not dissuading claims that marginalized communities are being subject to increasing hate speech on the platform.

With a year of elections on the horizon, Musk's apathy towards fighting misinformation could influence US political division.

Delivering key infrastructure

Musk is the CEO behind two major companies developing core national infrastructure across the world — and outer space.

SpaceX dominates its industry and has been responsible for almost 50% of orbital launches this year, per Space News.

Crucially, the Pentagon and NASA depend on Musk's rocket company to fly them to space and have paid SpaceX billions of dollars in contracts for space missions.

Starshield, a satellite network created for governments to "support national security efforts" has just been announced.

It's a relationship that The FT has argued marks the "privatization of defense."

Meanwhile, on the ground, Tesla now controls the nation's biggest network of electric-vehicle charging stations and has world leaders lobbying to host his new gigafactories.

There are worries that this dependence gives him leverage to influence national policy and avoid regulation.

"We should be concerned because the sheer range of his monopolies mean the rules that apply to everyone else often don't apply to him," says David Karpf, professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.

"The government has to walk on eggshells with his Tesla and Twitter regulatory violations because of his Starlink and SpaceX exclusive contracts."

Starlink

Musk's Starlink satellite network, which offers connectivity to remote and conflict-hit regions, has expanded massively in 2023, with internet traffic from the constellation of around 5,000 satellites nearly tripling globally.

Rival networks like Amazon's Project Kuiper or the Chinese government's constellation remain years behind Musk, having only launched a few hundred satellites so far.

The capability Starlink gives Musk to administer internet access has already proved controversial, most notably in Ukraine.

At the onset of the war, Musk donated thousands of Starlink internet kits to the Ukrainian military forces, helping them overcome Russian cyberattacks and internet blackouts.

Yet, this October, he was forced to defend his decision to deny the Ukrainian military internet access during an attack that could have decimated Russia's navy in Crimea in 2022.

Musk claimed he had averted nuclear war, but his ability to control Ukraine's military operations led to accusations that he was trying to "play god."

The issue arose again in the Israel-Gaza conflict when Musk offered Starlink to aid organizations operating in the Gaza Strip after the IDF cut off internet access to the besieged region.

Steven Livingston, a political science professor at George Washington University, says this development is extraordinary.

"It's a reflection of this position that Musk has got himself in, where he's the arbiter of geopolitical events," says Livingston. "Musk ended up being in a position of operational command of another nation's military operations against an invading military force. And that is a problem."

xAI

Musk's investments in OpenAI and founding of his company xAI, lend him more influence in over policy and regulation of yet another pivotal future technology.

He was brought out as the star guest at this year's AI Safety Summit.

Tania Duarte, cofounder of We and AI, a nonprofit that promotes AI literacy and ethics, says his influence on the direction of AI is "certainly not that he is a great technologist driving forward successful or safe development."

"In the six months of proposed pause [in the letter Musk and over 1,000 experts signed in March 2023], he was catching up and launching his own AI chatbot trained on realtime Twitter data, the opposite to pausing," Duarte said.

A global diplomat

"I would prefer to stay out of politics," tweeted Musk in 2021.

That hasn't stopped him taking on the schedule of an international diplomat this year and meeting global leaders from Turkey, France, Italy, Israel, the UK, India, and China.

From discussing Tesla expansion to visiting the sites of devastating terror attacks, Musk has used his businesses to cosplay as a statesman.

The concern is how much of a geopolitical wildcard he can be before he threatens national security interests, particularly regarding Tesla's expansion in China.

Meanwhile, back in the US, he's been increasingly outspoken about his political views, used X to host a presidential campaign launch for Ron DeSantis, and visited the US border to call for immigration reform.

"Musk is a new kind of non-state geopolitical actor. He controls nodes of the new global economy and information environment," says Karen Kornbluh, former US ambassador to the OECD and senior fellow for technology at The German Marshall Fund.

"When he negotiates with foreign leaders he brings incredible leverage," she explains.

"It remains to be seen if his power and influence will continue to grow or if others in the industries of AI and quantum will eclipse him — but the phenomenon he represents is here to stay for a while."

X and SpaceX did not immediately reply to Business Insider's request for comment.