How is Elon Musk shaping Trump's presidency and tech policy?
“A star is born, Elon! He’s a super genius,” President-elect Donald Trump said in his victory speech last week. And just last night, he named him to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE for short, a reference to a meme and a cryptocurrency associated with Musk — alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.
Quick takeaways:
Elon Musk “has been seen at Mar-a-Lago nearly every single day since Donald Trump won, dining with him on the patio at times” and “weighing in on staffing decisions, making clear his preference for certain roles,”
“Kissinger is dead and the one person who is out there that could be the conduit of information, and potentially better relations between the two most powerful countries in the world is Elon,”
, founder of Eurasia Group and , on the US-China relations in a video on X. “Will he be effective? On technology policy is kind of interesting because Trump first time around did not do technology policy. Remember the CHIPS Act, that was Biden; semiconductors export controls, that was Biden. It wasn’t something Trump was focused on. He was focused on trade, on the trade deficit, on tariffs, on those issue […] not as focused on technology. Elon will be. He’s going to want people he wants to be appointed in relevant positions in the Trump administration.”
Kelsey Piper at Vox points out on artificial intelligence and generative AI policy: “Trump’s supporters include members of the accelerationist tech right, led by the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who are fiercely opposed to regulation of an exciting new industry. But right by Trump’s side is Elon Musk, who supported California’s SB 1047 to regulate AI, and has been worried for a long time that AI will bring about the end of the human race (a position that is easy to dismiss as classic Musk zaniness, but is actually quite mainstream). […] AI policy goes in his second term may depend on who has his ear at crucial moments.”
“Musk stands to benefit from a second Trump presidency,” write Queenie Wong and Wendy LeeHe in the Los Angeles Times. “He runs companies such as Tesla and SpaceX that hold billions of dollars in government contracts, but has also clashed with regulators. […] Once critical of policies that benefit electric vehicles, Trump softened his tone after Musk endorsed him.” The LA Times adds that Musk’s nomination to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency is sparking “concerns about potential conflicts of interest.”
Sarwant Singh writes in Forbes: “Irrespective of the role […], I think we can expect Musk to push a couple of agendas—the biggest being federal approval for fully autonomous vehicles as opposed to state approval. […] A second area I think Musk will want to capitalize on will be his solar and energy storage business, which will help shift the focus from vehicle-related sales. […] In short, if he plays his cards right, Musk’s alignment with a Trump-led administration could not only drive Tesla’s competitive edge, regulatory ease, and expansion into new markets but also help Starlink reshape both US and global satellite and connectivity landscapes.”
“Elon Musk's X platform was already proving a tough test for the European Union's efforts to police social media. Donald Trump's reelection just raised the stakes, giving the tech tycoon some powerful backing that could fuel U.S.-EU tensions,” Pieter Haeck explains in Politico Europe. Musk “could be heading for a European Union fine, the first under its Digital Services Act (DSA), which aims to clamp down on illegal and toxic content online. X got EU charges in July for breaching those rules over verified users, advertising transparency and giving researchers access to data.”
David Ingram and Lora Kolodny explain on CNBC: “Free speech advocates said they’re concerned that Musk could use his influence to strike out at his enemies, or make sweeping changes that would help him do so, such as suggesting personnel for the Justice Department.”
“We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere,” the Guardian said today in announcing: “We will stop posting from our official editorial accounts on the platform, but X users can still share our articles.”
Marietje Schaake, non-resident Fellow at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and former Member of the European Parliament, writes on X: “Musk merely makes visible what power tech companies often invisibly and unaccountably have.”
In an article titled “Foreign-born techies fear for their work visas under Trump,” Rya Jetha of the San Francisco Standard writes: “The theory goes that Trump, now surrounded by a coterie of tech industry influencers, can be convinced to preserve — and maybe even improve — the legal pathways for highly skilled workers immigrating to the United States, even as he launches a mass effort to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.”