Elon Musk has taken over my world, and I don’t like it

The Twitter/X CEO has access to the world’s leaders, and the power to influence wars, the future of AI, and the tech that dominates our lives, writes Sean O’Grady. Where should we draw the line?

Do we want Elon Musk, and maybe a few others, to tell us how to think? (AFP via Getty)

How am I in this war?” It’s a question we’d all like some sort of answer to.

The question was posed by Elon Musk to Walter Isaacson, whose biography of Musk is due to be published next week. It refers to Ukraine, and the questions about whether Musk ordered his Starlink internet system to be shut down to prevent it from being used in a potentially humiliating attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet by Ukrainian forces. Musk denies doing so.

In any event, understandably Musk doesn’t want to play a role in provoking World War III – even his ego isn’t that big – but the episode shows the incredible power and reach the tech billionaire now has.

We learn from the new book that Musk has more free access to American leaders than most heads of state or government, but he consults them rather than obeying them. When the Ukrainians wanted to utilise Starlink, Musk discussed the implications with Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan; the chair of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley; and the Russian ambassador to the US. Then he made his own mind up, with results that may have changed the course of the war – and world history.

There have been rich people and powerful corporations throughout history who’ve thrown their weight around for good or ill – Henry Ford, JP Morgan and Bill Gates, say. Yet the emergence of a billionaire industrialist who has quasi-military capabilities, alongside his role as an informal diplomatic entity, is a novelty, and one that at least raises some concerns.

Musk isn’t elected, and he’s not democratically accountable to anyone. Aside from a few financiers (and the whims of the marketplace) to consider, he can do as he wishes. But can we trust him?

Take, for another example, his controversial and chaotic acquisition of Twitter – now rebranded X, and apparently his route into the world of artificial intelligence. Like space and autonomous electric vehicles, it’s the kind of thing that captivates Musk, and he has this instinct to possess and control that which fascinates him.

But this was also personal. In a strange phrase that betrays the immaturity that characterises much of his thinking in such areas, he says he had to get control of Twitter in order to prevent something called “the woke mind virus” from infecting his daughter. Musk describes how Jenna, 19, went “beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil”, and cut all ties with her father after transitioning to female. No surprise, then, that last December Musk tweeted: “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters”.

To my (supposedly woke-infected) mind, there is no such thing as a “woke mind virus”, because being “woke” – ie awake to racial and social justice – is part of what makes us human, and in day-to-day life it means nothing more than being tolerant and exercising respect and good manners.

But so what? It is Musk who owns Twitter/X, and will soon no doubt be a force in AI, and who will be using all his power to ensure that the ethical framework that social media and AI inhabit will not be “woke”, and will be – well, something rather less humane, pleasant and safe.

That attempt to define the political and cultural conversations of the West is not just a matter for Musk, but for all of us, and it cannot be right that one individual should wield such power without restraint or accountability. What do we do if, say, our search queries and AI-generated content end up embedding antisemitism in the discourse as a sort of mainstream political viewpoint – like social conservatism, or wanting to nationalise public transport or subsidise green energy?

In that context, Musk’s decision to wage legal war on the Anti-Defamation League, a US-based Jewish defence organisation, is a worrying development. Musk blames the ADL for a decline in Twitter/X advertising revenues, and argues: “To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!”.

“Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss,” he wrote, adding that the group “would potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion”.

“Advertisers avoid controversy, so all that is needed for ADL to crush our US & European ad revenue is to make unfounded accusations,” he wrote in a long thread that started with a clarification that he favours free speech but is “against anti-Semitism of any kind”.

So that’s how it’s rolling right now as we approach the new world of AI: the ethical and cultural framework of the future is being decided by a billionaire bringing an action in a courtroom. Whatever else, that’s not a sustainable democratic solution.

National governments, supranational bodies such as the EU, and intentional treaties have previously managed to constrain the activities of the mega-rich and the vast transnational corporations – and still do so now. Some of them have even been made to pay their taxes. But as the 21st century gets into its stride, the fear must be that what worked with behemoths in the past – General Motors, ITT, IBM, the oil giants, investment banks, Microsoft, hedge funds, and even, up till now, the likes of Facebook/Meta, Amazon and Google/Alphabet – may not work with the all-pervading future powers that will influence, if not dominate, the very intellectual life of humanity.

Governments and parliaments have been too slow and too weak to keep up. Legislation such as the British Online Safety Bill is likely to find itself out of date almost as soon as it is enacted. The imbalance of power in this latest iteration of capitalism is growing all too apparent.

Do we want Musk, and maybe a few others, to tell us how to think? To shape our civilisation? Personally, I’d quite like a more “woke” world. Will I get a say in that? It doesn’t feel right, this emerging concentration of power, our own Western oligarchy – but no one is talking about it much (though the Isaacson book may change that a bit). As Musk himself said in Forbes magazine a decade ago: “We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world.”