When the world's richest man Elon Musk poured $120 million into Donald Trump's re-election kitty, nowhere close to the $400 million 'Zuckerbucks' that he, wrongly, accused Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, of donating to the Democrats in 2020, it was seen as an extension of his enthusiastic backing of the former president's re-election campaign.
In fact, it could be more than that. In electing Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States in a campaign marked by vitriol and shaming that has not been seen in some time, has America voted Musk in as the shadow president?
The club of billionaires, the business magnates and Republican donors whom Musk has strategized with to re-elect Donald Trump, were working to a plan. They had no intention of letting a complete outsider like Kamala Harris through the door. It wasn't just her race, her gender or the entrenched patriarchy in American society that cuts across white, black, Hispanic and Latino voters which worked against Harris. She simply wasn't part of the inner circle.
No surprise though, that Donald Trump's 'victory speech' saw Elon Musk get a huge thank you! "We have a new star, a star is born, Elon," Trump said, revealing that Musk personally campaigned for him in Philadelphia, and the two of them spent time together on the last day of the campaign.
Musk's X has run a visceral campaign against the Democrat Vice President and canvassed enthusiastically for Trump, leaving even the 'deep state' concerned that many of the feeds that he reshares with his 200 million followers are spun from Russia's and China's disinformation campaigns.
Trump is on the cusp of making history, with Fox News and a host of other news outlets predicting that he is poised to sweep all 26 Republican states, as well as the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. As the final numbers add up in Trump's favour, winning as he claims 'a never seen before political victory', has the 47th American President made a Faustian bargain that the United States may yet live to regret?
Musk's closed club, which had little faith in the Democrats' ability to pull the US economy back from the brink, or for that matter, working with a Harris-Walz administration, is made up of the powerful Silicon Valley elite. Deeply invested in China as an economic partner, they have no intention of cutting the supply chain links that are vital to their cheap, affordable production lines. More Chinese-made goods are on US shelves than ever before. Musk's Tesla certainly relies heavily on China for its electric vehicles. He has gained President Xi Jinping's confidence to run and independently control the Tesla subsidiary in China. Since then, China may have outrun Tesla to become the leading manufacturer of EVs in the world, but Musk still needs the China market more than ever.
Musk is also deeply invested in building a series of spy satellites for the US Department of Defense, and the secret service, underscoring his deep ties to the US military and defense with contracts between Musk's Space X and the Pentagon, totalling $3.6 billion. With two manned missions on the cards, Musk and NASA are working together on a $11.8 billion project.
Musk's initial friendship with Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky saw him supply Kyiv with Starlink satellites that helped the Ukrainian military communications network. But Musk – and Trump – have a very close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and it is all too possible, that Trump's campaign claim that all he needed was 'two phone calls' to end the Ukraine war stems from Musk's ability to shut down Starlink and cut off the Ukraine army's internet. A facility he is even prepared to deny Taiwan to keep China happy.
Trump is anything but predictable. In his last term in office (2017-2021), he kicked off a trade war with China. And through his poll campaign, he has threatened China with increasing import tariffs by 60%. As he has India. But will it be Musk that prevails this time?
And to all those who say that Trump – 'the friend' whom Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated – is getting on in years, Musk may have a fallback. How many know that it was Musk and his business clique, which includes Silicon Valley scion Peter Thiel, who picked a Trump-hating JD Vance as Trump's running mate and Vice-Presidential candidate. The man who called Harris 'trash' during one of his election campaigns. The man might have been a 'Never Trump' guy but has taken a 360-degree turn, and is backed by Donald Trump Jr., who played an influential role in the last Trump administration. He could be Musk's hand in the Trump administration.
Clearly while Trump's misogyny, his anti-immigrant bigotry and claims he would bring down runaway inflation were a far bigger vote-grabber than Harris' pro-abortion trope as America shuns yet another woman for president, it is Elon Musk, the influencer extraordinaire who is the man to watch out for. His role in the incoming Trump administration impacts not just the US' military, space and defence sectors but geopolitics, given his close links with Russia's Putin and China’s Xi, the two leaders that actively seek to diminish US' global dominance.
India, set to become the world's second largest economy, hopes to attract fresh Chinese investment after its boundary pact with Beijing, strengthen its strategic multi-polarity with robust ties to Russia while keeping 'friend' Trump on its side. That may be tougher than envisaged. Perhaps, India's charm offensive as it navigates the geopolitical fault line needs to begin by wooing Musk, as much as it once did Trump.
