By Elizabeth Lopatto , a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she

How SpaceX became the MyPillow of government contractors

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2024-10-12 04:00:02

By Elizabeth Lopatto , a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg.

Christ, I guess I have to list off all the depressing stuff from the past few months: the Trump rally, the creepy assassination comments, the even creepier comments about impregnating Taylor Swift, spreading hurricane misinformation on X (and thus hindering relief efforts), claiming his own child was “killed” by the “woke mind virus,” that kind of thing. I have seen a lot of people suggest this is political radicalization, and sure, maybe it is. But I can’t help noticing a sick business logic, too.

I have never accused Musk of being anything other than self-interested. As I see it, his only real politics are: Elon Musk should get to do whatever he wants, forever. And his latest political outbursts strike me as being clearly connected to his money. He’s come to the same conclusion as Donald Trump, which is that it’s particularly easy to grift Republican voters, and there are lots of rewards and very few consequences for doing so. Donny, these men are nihilists.

On the face of it, it might look stupid for a businessman to alienate one of the major US political parties. Musk has a long history of taking subsidies from local, state, and federal governments. His business SpaceX is built essentially on agency contracts in the heavily regulated aerospace industry. But I’m guessing Musk has figured out he can leverage the culture wars to his advantage.