When not advising President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk has spent the past few weeks attempting to influence various European countries’ politics. His latest target is the British government, going so far as to call for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to step down and for new elections to be held. “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government,” wrote the billionaire.
Musk’s embrace of the far right has meant backing parties with authoritarian leanings, including Germany’s AfD. But in truth, Musk doesn’t want a government-centric authoritarianism like fascism. He wants a world in which business swallows government and becomes the actual ruling class. And to understand the larger narrative, we need to examine the strategy he has taken in the United States.
Unlike Trump, Musk’s influence within the U.S. government is designed to outlast any election.
The basis of Musk’s attack on Britain’s government is a long-running child exploitation scandal still roiling the country: gangs of men had groomed, trafficked and raped young girls more than a decade ago, almost entirely without being held accountable. Musk accused Starmer of failing to prosecute the gangs while he was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, even though Starmer brought the first case against one of the gangs.
But Musk is not focusing on this horrific injustice because of the systemic failure to protect young girls. It’s that the abusers were mostly Pakistani and the girls were mostly white. He has never mentioned numerous similar scandals involving white perpetrators. By reframing it as a conspiracy theory centered on race, Musk is employing the same playbook he used in the United States: spread racist conspiracy theories, turn them into scandals and use those scandals to get people to vote for the far right. Britain is simply his latest target.
Musk is not only trying to bring down the U.S. liberal establishment, but hollow out the government itself while strengthening himself and his influence over the country, all without having to face an election. Recently appointed as the co-head of a new Department of Government Efficiency, he wants to massively cut the federal government’s budget and workforce. This is not an attempt to be efficient; it’s an attempt to destroy the regulatory bodies and bureaucracies that will get in the way of complete control of the government.
Unlike Trump, Musk’s influence within the U.S. government is designed to outlast any election. His position allows him to not only cut spending but to expand his businesses’ influence by extending lucrative defense contracts, such as those involving SpaceX and Starlink. This dual influence over private and public sectors positions Musk as a power broker whose reach may grow unchecked, creating a dependency that transcends electoral politics and concentrates power in his hands.
The country got a taste of this power last month, when he played the lead role in tanking a government funding deal that Congress had already struck. On social media, Musk posted a litany of falsehoods about the deal, leading to his fans jamming GOP lawmakers’ phone lines. They abandoned the deal, and Trump meekly followed. What Musk didn’t mention was that the deal would have made it harder for Tesla to expand its investment in China. When a new spending deal was passed a few days later, the new restrictions on U.S. companies investing in China had vanished.
Britain and Germany illustrate how Musk’s ambitions could extend globally if he secures the same access to power he has in America.
Musk doesn’t just want to destroy the American government’s infrastructure. He wants to be more powerful than the government itself. And he is well on his way to achieving his goal. While many are rightly concerned about the damage Donald Trump could inflict on democracy, Musk’s ambitions extend far beyond, threatening to create a system where corporate power eclipses Trump and the government itself.
The closest analogs to Musk are robber barons of the Gilded Age like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Where Rockefeller and Carnegie dominated steel and oil, Musk controls technologies like space exploration, energy and global communications — foundations of modern national security. But Musk goes farther: Unlike the robber barons, who influenced government from the outside, he now holds direct influence within it. This allows him to shape policy to his advantage while embedding his businesses deeper into critical infrastructure.
It’s important, when thinking of Musk’s ambitions, to understand that they go farther than most people expect. His desire to go to space and inhabit Mars is not just a dream: He is building the infrastructure to make it happen. The same can be said about Musk’s ambitions in America. He wants to be more powerful than the president. Which would make him an unelected, technocratic dictator: a figure who wields immense authority without the accountability of democratic oversight.
Britain and Germany illustrate how Musk’s ambitions could extend globally if he secures the same access to power he has in America. In Britain, his Starlink satellites could soon be crucial to rural internet infrastructure, and in Germany, Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin is the company’s first manufacturing center in Europe. Both nations, under far-right leadership, would find common cause with Musk in dismantling democratic bureaucracies that impose accountability. With those shared goals and his significant business presence — along with his demonstrated power to shape the course of conflicts, as seen with Starlink in Ukraine — Musk’s ability to eclipse governmental power in these countries becomes not only plausible but a natural extension of his strategy in the U.S.
From his actions in Britain to his influence in Germany, Musk is building a framework for domination, using corporate power as his tool to control governments and reshape nations in his image. His goal is not just to dominate America, but to install himself as the unelected ruler of a new global order, wielding authority unchecked by elections or oversight. And so far, he is succeeding.
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