Outside In | Elon Musk and the worrying political reach of the super-rich

James Ashley wrote a 2023 book on Elon Musk, with a summary describing the world’s richest and most hyperactive man as a “tough yet vulnerable man child, prone to Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama and success, an epic sense of mission, and an insane intensity”.

Ashley’s insights were forged out of an exploration of Tesla, Twitter (now X), Starlink and Musk’s prodigiously chaotic not-so-private life (six reported partners, 14 children and counting), but they apply equally to his past three months as US President Donald Trump’s political muse, vested with perhaps more power than any private figure in US history.

While Musk is far from the first business figure tantalised by the challenge of translating financial wealth into political power (think the Carnegies and Rockefellers, dubbed “robber barons” in 1920s America, or Britain’s press barons: the Northcliffes, Beaverbrooks and Rothermeres), his prodigious ascent under the benefaction of Trump has raised broader questions about the unprecedented empowerment of the US “political donor class” – and whether this jeopardises the proper functioning of democracy itself.

Open Secrets, which tracks US political funding and donations, says private finance amounting to US$1.45 billion went to Trump and the Republican Party for last year’s elections, with nearly US$2 billion going to Kamala Harris and the Democrats. Musk was among the largest donors (at over US$290 million, according to the Federal Election Commission) but there were plenty more super-rich Americans who joined the fray – 150 of the world’s wealthiest families contributed an estimated US$2 billion.

Commentators galore are concerned that government policy (not just in the US, but in other democracies) is being disproportionately shaped by the wealthy, and that rising wealth inequality has made this a direct threat to democratic institutions. They look not only at Musk (who of course has no formal government position) but at the billionaires and multimillionaires filling so many of Trump’s cabinet positions.