If Elon Musk is ever told to stop doing what he’s doing, will he comply?

One of the world’s richest men is also one of the most powerful with his grip on social media, but his ventures into space are raising antitrust issues with the US government

South African born businessman Elon Musk is currently worth in the region of €240bn (€215bn). File picture: Patrick Pleul/ AP

It's very hard to live in today’s world and not know who Elon Musk is. 

If not the world’s richest man at all times, he’s generally in the conversation, currently worth in the region of €240bn (€215bn).

That enormous wealth is the result of both corporate savvy, an appetite to take extreme risks in terms of the businesses he has owned over the past 30 years, and, as with all such stories, not a little luck.

If you’re someone who uses X, formerly Twitter, then you can’t help but know who Musk is, because he insists that you do so — his posts to his 200m followers are relentlessly gamed by the algorithm to reach as many eyeballs as possible.

X is not the real world, and its reach — roughly 320m daily users and falling at a rate of about 5% per year since Musk took over, compared with the roughly three billion global users of Facebook and two billion of YouTube — positions it quite far down the pecking order in terms of the social media totem poll.

Nevertheless, its userbase is not to be sniffed at.

If you are on X however, and are of any sort of moderate disposition, the 53-year-old Musk’s behaviour can be difficult to square with the image of the genius business wunderkind.

For starters, X is worth less than half the $40bn Musk paid for it in October 2022. 

A phone displays the X account for Elon Musk. 

His relentlessly objectionable views as represented in his X postings are a smorgasbord of right-wing talking points, from conspiracies to overt anti-semitism to his much-trumpeted love-in with US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

That behaviour, and Musk’s liberal attitude to fascist content being posted on the site, has seen advertisers desert X in their droves (to which Musk infamously retorted to said advertisers in November 2023: ‘go fuck yourself’) and has driven the company — never the most profitable of the original generation of social media behemoths to begin with — to the brink.

It has also altered Musk’s public image irrevocably — from that of the genius, oddball billionaire pioneer of futuristic technology, to that of insanely rich manchild with little or no sense of humour and too much time on his hands.

There are two sides to his outpourings on X however — in amongst the endless inanities, you will occasionally see something decidedly more sober in nature, generally involving the other businesses with which he made his name — electric car pioneers Tesla, and private spacecraft maker SpaceX, the first non-state-sponsored entity to reach near-earth orbit with a rocket-powered vehicle whose stated goal is to eventually establish a colony on Mars.

Last week, for example, he noted his plans to eventually offer travel to Mars to anyone who wants to go, stating that “becoming multi-planetary ensures the long-term survival of life,” a point he has repeatedly made online.

SpaceX more powerful than America’s Nasa

At present, SpaceX is arguably more powerful than America’s Nasa — a fact highlighted by the American space administration turning to Musk’s company last month to secure a passage home on one of its vehicles from the International Space Station early next year for American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams after the Boeing Starliner vehicle they had used to make the outward trip was deemed to be too big a risk in terms of making the voyage home.

SpaceX, meanwhile, has a subsidiary, Starlink, which you may have heard of; it is basically a next-generation internet service provider functioning on the back of coverage provided by more than 7,000 launched satellites floating above the earth.

If that figure sounds enormous, it’s because it is — as Musk tweeted himself, since the launch of its first rocket in 2019 Starlink now accounts for more than two thirds of the orbiting satellites in existence, and its coverage accounts for over 100 countries and territories, including Ireland.

Eventually, the company’s lofty plan is to launch more than 42,000 such machines to provide web coverage planet-wide, delivering the internet to people living anywhere on earth.

The power of the network as it stands is perhaps best summed up by two recent events.

The first occurred in February 2022 when Ukraine requested that SpaceX activate Starlink across the country to replace domestic internet services which had been devastated by Russia’s incursion and the beginning of the still-ongoing conflict between the two countries. 

This Starlink did, and continues to do, initially at its own expense though the costs are now being picked up by the US Department of Defence via its contract with SpaceX.

Starlink satellite antennae are part of the satellite internet provider operated by Elon Musk’s American aerospace company SpaceX. Picture: Getty Images

More controversially, Musk refused a request by Ukraine to extend Starlink’s coverage to the Crimea area of Ukraine during a Russian offensive, with the act justified by the fact Starlink was never intended to be used for military purposes.

The point remained however — at that time Ukraine desperately needed Musk. He did not need Ukraine.

The second, more recent event, concerns Musk’s ongoing legal battles in Brazil. Those conflicts had their origins in X’s refusal to ban a series of far-right accounts in the country despite being ordered by the State’s supreme court to do so.

Matters came to a head when Musk refused to appoint a legal representative for the social network in the country, leading to X being banned in Brazil outright. 

Or so it should have been. Instead, Musk’s initial reaction was to provide access to X for any Brazilian citizens who wanted it via Starlink, a stance he eventually reversed.

The point is that regardless of whether or not Musk is anyone’s cup of tea, the power he wields is immense and undeniable, possibly more than any private individual in the world’s history.

As the man himself tweeted in April 2023:

Between Tesla, Starlink and Twitter, I may have more real-time global economic data in one head than anyone ever.

Certainly, historically most shadowy business-type figures intent on furthering their interests around the globe have tended to do so quietly.

That is far from the case with Musk, who is utterly overt about what he gets up to, and seems to be eternally hooked on the ego boosts provided by his companies.

The high profile of the South African’s escapades may be finally coming back to bite him, however.

After the recent launch of Starlink’s 7,000th satellite, the chair of America’s Federal Communications Commission Jessica Rosenworcel seemed to suggest that there may be antitrust issues at play in SpaceX’s domination of the private space industry.

“Every communications market that has competition is stronger — we see lower prices and more innovation, and honestly space should be no exception,” Rosenworcel told US government tech publication Fedscoop.

“We do have one player that’s got almost two-thirds of the satellites that are in space right now and has a very high portion of internet traffic,” she said.

“The way I see it is our economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies so we’ve got to invite many more space actors in many more companies that can develop constellations and innovations in space.”

While Starlink was never mentioned specifically, the implications are fairly clear — eventually the power of the State may seek to rein Elon in.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, last year carrying dozens of Starlink satellites; he recently launched the 7,000th satellite which has raised antitrust issues around SpaceX’s domination of the private space industry. File picture: Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today/AP

This may go some distance towards explaining Musk’s notorious distaste for ‘bureaucratic red tape’ and his enthusiasm for Trump, a man who seems to like bureaucracy even less, and who campaigns on commitments to deregulate every industry he can.

But what would happen should the American federal government move to bring Musk to heel?

Probably the best indicator is the man’s own actions. Musk is not averse to either outrageous claims or picking fights, particularly with Governments.

While many of his more outlandish claims do not see follow-through, Musk’s appetite for battles with national administrations appears endless.

Some of those skirmishes amount to conflicts over freedom of speech, such as Musk’s condemnation of France after the CEO of notoriously unregulated messaging service Telegram Pavel Durov was arrested last month.

Others have darker elements, such as Musk’s tweet stating that Leo Varadkar “hates Irish people” at the height of the powderkeg Dublin riots in November 2023, or more recently when he suggested that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain as the country descended into race-baiting riots in the aftermath of the murder of three young children in Southport last July.

Those words have effect — as anything which is bullhorned into the brains of 200m people will do.

During his recent legal travails in Brazil, Musk did eventually comply with the aforementioned court order, finally appointing a legal representative in the country as requested and blocking the far-right accounts which kicked off the impasse. 

Though Brazil did have a deal of leverage — the nation is home to 21m X-users.

More recently, he deleted a tweet which queried why no one appeared to be trying to assassinate Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, in the wake of two separate attempts on Donald Trump’s life, indicating that some statements are too extreme even for Elon Musk.

So we know he is capable both of occasional self-censorship and of backing down. 

The question is, as his power grows and whole countries become ever-more-dependent on his companies and their technology — if Musk is eventually told to stop doing what he’s doing, will he comply?