In the photo only one group of attendees was seen to encounter Sean Penn in the wide space of the Kcho study in Havana. The attendees surrounded the American actor, who was a frequent visit in Cuba. It was the year 2013. Looking carefully at the photo, I saw another of the visitors and said: “That is Elon Musk.”
My daughter was present. After I explained (“it is the Tesla and the private rockets to space”). He replied that I knew, as well as younger than I imagined, who Elon Musk was.
Musk looked at the camera with the fixedness and absence that we have seen so many times later.
Born in the South Africa of the Apartheid, He studied his university engineering studies in the United States, and left a doctorate at the prestigious Stanford University, because he needed that time. I already knew what I wanted*.
Some critics question their technical merits. It is known that the electric car that is now Tesla was not created by Musk, but by two engineers with whom he worked in his redesign and in his improvement. But if Musk had not participated, the use of electric motor in motor racing would probably not reached today’s expansion levels. Tesla is the bow ship of this movement.
Nor, of course, he is the only one who has thought that a private company (SPACE X) goes to space with economic interests. Jeff Bezos does. Musk succeeded after failed attempts and lacking budget. But always at a lower cost than NASA. It also joins the Starlink project, which seeks to provide high -speed Internet to remote areas of the planet through a satellite constellation. The main course can be its ambition with the Starship, a vehicle designed to take humans to Mars and beyond.
Neuralink is another of his efforts. It is a neurotechnology company that aims to develop implantable brain-computers interfaces. In simpler terms, Neuralink seeks to create devices that can directly connect the human brain with computers, with benefits for research and treatment of brain diseases.
And he has other efforts: he was one of Openai’s animators, and his creation, Chatgpt. Or a difficult urban transit project with autonomous cars and with Hyperloop high speed tunnel, or the energy plan synthesized in Solarcity.
It has not only been his visionary and animator status of these ideas that has formed the image of Musk.
The businessman is a case, admitted by him, of the so -called Asperger syndrome, a condition of the autistic spectrum. It is characterized by difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication; while showing highly developed skills in areas such as memory, logic, attention to detail and concentration; as well as occasional violent and aggressive reactions.
An old categorization of leadership says that leaders are classified into two extreme types in the search for an objective: on the one hand, those that focus on the mobilization of the collective to reach the fulfillment of the task. They work with people. At the other extreme is the leader who subordinates everything, even interpersonal relationships, to the fulfillment of the task. The sun rises from where it comes out. Gúste to whoever likes it.
Musk is a typical leader consecrated to the achievement of the objective. It is with a character that has brought him, together with undoubted successes, defections, lack of trust, disappointments, and extreme disputes with prestigious collaborators. It can be a tyrant who treats who does not follow him in his idea. “Idiot,” they say that it is its most used epithet.
Around its creativity, its long vision and its unpredictable character, their ideas have grown and their public image has been formed. His partner synthesizes it in the creation of the Jeffrey Straubel electric vehicle: “Elon can be a storm of hell at meetings, and completely unpredictable. But I have also suddenly become a charismatic businessman, incredibly effective and with great emotional intelligence when he has to do it. ”
So far the visionary. We have not removed any merit.
It is the ideology, stupid
Until then, Musk’s known ideas about human society originated in his memory of the abuses of Apartheid Against the black population. Its ideological manifestations did not go beyond their intention to adapt the world to the incessant development of technologies. Sympathized with the fight against climate change, the promotion of electric vehicles and renewable energies.
Within Silicon Valley, Musk aligned with common thinking about technology, innovation, market freedom and minimal government regulation.
With X, he began to show why ranges of the political world was his head.
Nothing new. It is simply the magnification, passed by the turbulent waters of his personality, of liberalism in his pure state: all the power to the market, death to the world of regulations and taxes. For that, it should be the exercise of political power. As for Donald Trump.
And then magic occurred. From one day to another that strange young man and in the lonely background, became Trump’s fellow Diario Diario, then candidate for the presidency. An unprecedented combination. Two stormy and unpredictable characters. The president of the United States, and a billionaire with a fortune of 400 billion dollars, plus an ultraconservative agenda.
They call him the real vice president and the co-president. Invite personalities, censorship to international leaders, publicly supports, with the weight of their position and personality, the ultra -right groups in Europe.
The European ultra -right
The AFD case (alternative for Germany, in Spanish) is an illustrative example. Musk had already opened the doors of scandalous support when he affirmed in X in December: “Only AFD can save Germany.” The response of the leader of the Alice Weidel party was immediate: “Yes!, He is right!”
This happened with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. But in this case the combination of ideology and interests is more concrete. Musk has praised Meloni, calling her “genius” and “extraordinary innovative.” The Italian government has been in contact with Spacex for a possible agreement that allows Italy to use its Starlink satellite telecommunications system. The project could represent an investment of 1,500 million euros.
Musk has been criticized for his comments on Italian judges (“these judges must leave”), after a ruling related to government’s immigration policy. His statement was considered by President Sergio Mattarella as an unacceptable interference in the country’s internal affairs.
In parallel with his criticism of the current government (he has called Starmer “despicable”), Musk has expressed support for extreme right figures in the United Kingdom, such as Tommy Robinson, a British activist known for his extreme right -wing positions, especially in Immigration and Islam.
The rejection of Musk’s interference in European politics has not been waiting. Emmanuel Macron accused him of supporting “a new reactionary international” and interfering with different elections, especially in Germany. Keir Starmer denounced that “those who spread lies and misinformation are not interested in victims but in themselves.” These voices have joined, among others, the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and the leader of the German Liberal Party, Christian Lindner.
It is an infinite issue and a concern for European progressive forces. Because it is not difficult to know that whoever speaks with his famous outbursts and his interference in the policy of the old continent is the same one that speaks to the ear of the president of the United States.
In the White House
Now Musk has entered a new phase, in Trump’s White House. Its mission, in principle, is well known: the fight against state bureaucracy, an ubiquitous monster and that in that country has an influence and a capacity for politically significant and economically very expensive resistance.
As expected, the resistance was considerable and its partial results.
Musk seems to look for the same; But his task focuses on a radical transformation of the government with a business approach, including drastic cuts and aggressive deregulation.
Something else awaits him in the White House: powerful for the support of Trump, but lonely and strange in traditional political circles, his “equals” does not seem that they will give him the best welcome.
He says: “Elon Musk is a truly evil person,” or “stopping him has become a personal matter for me”, or “I will get Elon Musk to be expelled before he is invested.”
We must not forget that Trump holds the record of more than 40 resignations or layoffs of senior officials in his first term. The question is now obvious: can this unique president coexist with the big boy who jumps awkwardly on his rallies in strange pirouettes, and that in the microphone is stunned before throwing an incomprehensible harangue?
Or, the better, how long can these two capital egos coexist?
*From here, Musk’s biographical data have as a source the biography Elon Musk, of Walter Isaacson.
