It’s Elon Musk’s World Now

By Quinn SlobodianBen Tarnoff and John Guida

Mr. Slobodian and Mr. Tarnoff are the authors of the forthcoming book “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.” Mr. Guida is an editor in Opinion.

Roughly a year ago, Elon Musk was everywhere, a “co-president” or “first buddy” who promised to slash $2 trillion from the federal bureaucracy via the Department of Government Efficiency.

He is no longer involved with DOGE, but Mr. Musk remains the world’s wealthiest man — and very much enmeshed in the U.S. government and global politics.

Is he also an avatar of bigger shifts in historical forces that will remake politics and economics? The writers Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff have a theory that “Muskism,” as they call it, is reshaping America, and maybe even the world. They explored the theory in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion.

John Guida: Elon Musk is still very active in business and global politics. Just the other day, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called him both this generation’s Thomas Edison and “one of the great disappointments” of our time.

How does Muskism map onto what’s going on in the world right now?

Quinn Slobodian: Our attraction to the category of Muskism was to use it how social scientists have used “Fordism” for the last century — based in part on the life and work of one man but, more relevantly, as a prod to ask questions about what new society is required for their model of building businesses and capital to function. We know what products and services Musk builds, but what is the social contract that comes along with it? What is the future for humans in a world, as he foresees it, where blue-collar labor has been taken over by humanoid robots and white-collar labor has been taken over by artificial intelligence? The one-way bet the U.S. economy is currently making on a specific kind of A.I. makes these questions all the more relevant.

Ben Tarnoff: The war on Iran by the U.S. and Israel is a good prism for a few of the themes integral to Muskism. One is “electric autonomy.” This is the idea that renewable energy can fortify a country’s self-reliance. From the start, Musk has positioned Tesla as a provider of electric autonomy to various nation-states, beginning with the United States during the Obama era but also extending to China and the European Union.

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