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1. Strategery
We’ll get to the schadenfreude in a minute, but let’s start with two big-picture thoughts:
This could all go away tomorrow. It is possible that by the time you read this, Musk and Trump will have brokered a peace. Then they say, “Ha-ha, you shitlibs fell for it. We were trolling you for the lulz. That was all kayfabe.”
There are a lot of stakeholders who desperately need Trump and Musk to end hostilities. Their incentives are strong enough to expend resources making it worth both parties’ whiles to sign a ceasefire.¹
If it doesn’t go away tomorrow, the Trump-Musk rift creates peril for both Trump’s authoritarian project and the tech oligarchy.
Let’s walk through the strategic implications for all of the players.
Donald Trump. There is a scenario in which he emerges from this fight stronger than he is now. If Trump is able to break the richest man in the world, he will have demonstrated a new level of power.
There are reasons to think Trump will subjugate Musk. For starters, Trump may be addled and doddering, but Musk is a man going through a multi-year, drug-fueled nervous breakdown. He is not a canny adversary. He isn’t even all that smart about power. Musk’s singular genius is for leveraging his public-market chip stack in a ZIRP environment—not an applicable skillset for this battlespace.
Also: Trump has tremendous leverage over Musk.
Musk made his primary source of wealth—Tesla stock—hostage to Trump by destroying the company as a consumer product brand. If Trump unpersons Musk, the available consumer market for Tesla goes from terrible to zero.
Trump also has all of the levers of the federal government at his disposal to hurt Tesla: He can rig tax credits against the company; cancel government contracts; reward competitors. This chart might as well be the battleplan of Operation Barbarossa:
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There’s more. Musk’s second largest source of wealth is the private market valuation of SpaceX. SpaceX is heavily dependent on state-level international customers. Musk has been using his relationship with Trump to strong-arm governments into contracting with SpaceX. That dynamic could now run in the opposite direction, with Trump threatening countries who do business with SpaceX.
Even more dangerous: SpaceX should not be a private company. Under multiple administrations, the U.S. government essentially privatized the aerospace industry, which runs counter to our national interest. A sovereign government cannot allow a private company to own the top of a gravity well.²
By all rights, SpaceX should be nationalized. The next Democratic administration was going to have to grapple with that problem.
Trump might do it for them.
If Tesla’s stock price implodes and SpaceX gets nationalized, Elon Musk goes from Tony Stark to Kim Dotcom.
Mind you, Trump has skin in the game, too. His project is supported by the tech oligarchy. He is (theoretically) term limited. He knows he cannot trust anyone outside his own family.
If he is unable to subjugate Musk, and Musk succeeds in creating an independent power base around which MAGA can rally, then Trump’s entire project could unravel. And quickly.
Elon Musk. He has made the mistake of believing that he can target Trump the same way he targeted Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: With utter impunity.
He’s a little like John Daggett, thinking that his money gives him control—but not realizing that money only gives him control in a liberal system.
In the illiberal context, his money is much less useful than he understands.
Musk stands to lose everything in this fight, which is why the rational version of him would sue for peace and eat whatever shit-sandwich was required. But Musk isn’t rational. He’s a middle-aged man with an alleged drug problem and a personal life that has spiraled into depravity.
Maybe that makes him dangerous? Maybe Musk goes full-Nazi and is able to paint Trump as the RINO? I don’t know.
What I do know is that over the next 72 hours Musk is going to find out what his peer set thinks and where they’re placing their bets.
You want more of this? Of course you do. It’s Christmas morning. Do me a solid: Join Bulwark+. Be part of our community. Stick it to these asshats.
JD Vance. No one has more to lose than the VC Hillbilly. Even in the worst-case scenario, Musk is worth a few billi. If Vance falls off the tiger he spends the rest of his days hustling to keep a roof over his head.
Vance’s patron has long been Peter Thiel, who made him into the darling of the techno-feudalism set. But today Vance lives in Donald Trump’s house. In order to remain viable after 2028, he has to please not just his president, but Donald Trump Jr., too.
Vance will do everything possible to avoid taking sides here, but that won’t be possible in the long run. Which is why Vance is incentivized—more than anyone else—to broker a peace.
His challenge, though, is that even if he can make it happen, how he accomplishes it will be important, too. He’ll have to get Trump and Musk to yes while
not alienating his Silicon Valley patrons,
but also convincing Trump that he is totally and completely on the team.
Right before I pressed send on this newsletter, Vance tweeted out a statement.