Defund Elon Musk

No private individual should have the power to determine US foreign policy, as Musk has attempted to do in Ukraine

He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we must get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk “ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine”. The decision “sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said”.

Musk and Trump, the Journal noted, have both “expressed anger at Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries in recent weeks, which the president blames for high energy prices” – although the high prices are really due to Trump’s war in Iran.

This month, Musk slowed “the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network … rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless”.

According to the Journal, “Musk and Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public.”

Who gave Musk authority to slow his satellite service in the first place? Musk finally admitted this weekend that he had pulled the plug because, he wrote on Twitter/X: “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people.”

So Musk can decide on his own when a foreign country working alongside the United States against a brutal dictator can have access to vital US intelligence?

Every time I list another of Musk’s outrages, someone says: “Yes, but he’s an innovator!”

He’s not. As is made clear in Alex Gibney’s smart new documentary, Musk, Elon didn’t invent Tesla. He didn’t invent X. He got plenty of help founding SpaceX.

Musk is to innovation what Trump is to governing.

Both are conmen. Both are megalomaniacs. Both love authoritarians and detest democracy. Neither believes in (or harbors an ounce of) empathy toward anyone. Both think nothing of corrupting governments for personal gain.

Both spout bigoted filth all hours of the day and night to hundreds of millions of people.

OK, let me just say it out loud: Both Musk and Trump are loathsome human beings.

Someday historians will come up with an explanation of how two such awful people could have become the two most powerful people in the US, if not the world (what was it about the US in the early 21st century?).

But for now, the goal of all sane people must be to defund both and get them as far away from politics as possible.

That will be difficult, to be sure. Musk has so far sunk roughly $445m into the 2026 midterm election cycle – all to help Republicans retain control of Congress. That makes him the largest single known donor in the entire midterm elections. Will he expect a return on his investment?

Hell, he spent a quarter of a billion dollars in 2024 to help Trump win re-election and ended up with access to vast troves of government data, along with billions of dollars’ worth of no-bid contracts with the Pentagon.

His Starlink satellite system is now key to the military strategy of the United States as well as that of Ukraine. He was also rewarded with a chainsaw inaptly named “department of government efficiency”, which he used to destroy USAID and slash other government agencies he doesn’t like.

Musk has given at least $168m to Texas Super Pacs seeking to elect Republican Ken Paxton to the Senate, despite (or is it because of?) Paxton’s long record of ethical lapses and legal controversies. Musk’s businesses are headquartered in Texas, so he needs friends there.

Musk recently pushed the false story to his 242 million followers on X that James Talarico, Paxton’s Democratic opponent, was absent from the campaign trail because he had suffered a mental breakdown and was receiving counseling at the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health center in Ohio.

That story has been thoroughly debunked. Security camera footage shows Talarico at home, not at an Ohio mental health facility. (Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, on New Year’s Eve 2024, Paxton partied in Dubai with his extramarital girlfriend and two fugitives from charges of about $300m in healthcare fraud in the US. One of the men donated $190,000 to Paxton, $25,000 of it after he was indicted.)

The project of defunding Musk will probably have to wait until after 20 January 2029, when, let’s pray, we have a sane administration in Washington that will end all government contracts with him (his support for rightwing extremists around the world makes him a security risk), bust up his monopolies (a reinvigorated Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission will see to it), and impose a significant wealth tax on him.

No private individual should have the power to determine US foreign policy, as Musk has attempted to do in Ukraine.

If Musk’s Starlink system has become so central to military strategy that its Pentagon contracts can’t be cancelled, it should be nationalized. (After I suggested this on my podcast last Saturday, Musk posted: “Stealing companies is a serious crime. Prison for Reich.”

But you don’t have to wait until Musk is officially defunded. Stop buying Teslas. Don’t use X. Don’t sign up for Starlink. And support politicians who promise to defund him.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK