The cover of the book “Muskism” by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff.
analysis
The techno king challenges democracy.
June 12, 2026, 4:39 p.mJune 12, 2026, 4:47 p.m
Probably the biggest misunderstanding about Elon Musk portrays him as a libertarian, as someone who, like Christoph Blocher once did, wants to turn the state into cucumber salad. In their very readable book “Muskism,” Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff show that exactly the opposite is the case. In contrast to the numerous libertarians who actually exist in the California tech scene, Musk did not want and does not want to eliminate the state. Instead, he wants to turn him into “a vassal who can only exercise his powers by purchasing services from a monopoly provider,” as Slobodian/Tarnoff note.
Quinn Slobodian is Professor of International History at Boston University. Ben Tarnoff is an author and writes regularly about the tech scene.
It used to be a good thing: the Tesla.Image: keystone
Musk originally enjoyed a lot of sympathy on the progressive side. With Tesla he has finally set a significant milestone on the path to a green revolution. The state gave him a lot of help. It was Barack Obama who gave Tesla a $450 million loan in 2008, and without that loan the electric car pioneer would not have survived.
Tesla also benefited massively from the state indirectly. In California there is a so-called zero-emissions program for cars, which means that anyone who puts too much CO2 into the air has to purchase credits from other companies, a kind of indulgence. “At its peak in 2024, Tesla generated around 40 percent of its net revenue from the sale of credits,” said Slobodian/Tarnoff.
Of course, the state also plays a central role in SpaceX. Without him, the cyber economy planned by Musk would not be possible.
With Tesla, Musk became a model student in the fight against global warming. He said little politically, and when he donated, it was for the Democrats. He also benefited from the fact that peak oil – the thesis that the peak of oil production had already been passed – was a much-discussed topic at the time. Electric cars were therefore on the right track not only ecologically but also economically.
Sign of Musk’s change of heart: the Cybertruck.Image: keystone
Then came fracking. The United States transformed almost overnight from an importer of fossil fuels to the largest producer of oil and gas. This also changed Musk’s consciousness. “Confidence gave way to a dystopian picture of the future,” said Slobodian/Tarnoff. “The humanitarian rhetoric of the Obama years faded into the background. The climate crisis and the resulting conflicts made the world a merciless place, and not all people would survive.
Tesla also became much more than a means of transporting people in an environmentally friendly way. “The car is no longer a tool for the driver, but a machine whose intelligence could make the driver superfluous. In the factory, human work is no longer organized but eliminated,” write Slobodian/Tarnoff.
Musk became convinced that the only way to survive in this world was with the help of technology. “To win, you have to connect to the machine and you are never allowed to log out again,” said Slobodian/Tarnoff. The dangers of new technologies can only be brought under control with more technology.
The consequence that Musk drew from this was the cyborg, a mixture of man and machine. “The idea was to create a species that could survive its own technological creations by evolving into something indistinguishable from those technologies,” said Slobodian/Tarnoff.
For Musk, who grew up in South Africa and apartheid, this does not apply to everyone. Slobodian/Tarnoff formulate it as follows: “Humanity should become one with the machine – but only as long as it remains divided according to gender, ethnicity and class. You could call this program cyborg conservatism.”
Cyborg: man as machine.Image: Warner Bros. entertainment
The former green model student Musk has become a nasty racist who supports right-wing extremist movements, warms to the theory of the “great exchange” and advocates remigration. His worldview, Muskism, has become a paradox: a nationalist international.
In Muskism, people become cyborgs, the state an algorithm. “If we merge with our machines, every component of the human experience can be programmed,” say Slobodian/Tarnoff. “And that means that everything can be reprogrammed – including the state.”
That’s why Musk saw Doge, the program to clear out government administration, as a kind of repair for defective software. “If the state was just a database, then the inefficiency had its origins in bad data: foreigners without a residence permit, employees who didn’t exist, vampires who collected welfare payments,” said Slobodian/Tarnoff.
Failed with Doge: Elon Musk and Javier Milei.Image: keystone
As is well known, Musk failed miserably with DOGE. He hasn’t changed his beliefs because of that. “The end goal was an AI government,” said Slobodian/Tarnoff. “The state should no longer be a place of deliberation, but should instead be transformed into lines of executable program code.” And: “Muskism didn’t just want to trim the budgets. Applied to society as a whole, he wanted to weed out those who were considered superfluous.
With SpaceX’s IPO, the richest man in the world has become infinitely richer. In doing so, he has come a big step closer to his goal of subjugating the state as a vassal. Without Musk there will be no second moon landing and no cyber economy.
Musk’s first attempt at power as Donald Trump’s “shadow president” failed. But the last word has not yet been spoken. Trump has no global political convictions; it’s enough for him to always be on everyone’s lips and collect as much money as possible. Musk, on the other hand, not only wants to colonize Mars, he also wants to reinterpret what it means to be human. He wants an authoritarian, AI-controlled state with him as the techno king at the top.
Cult film: “The Matrix”.Image: keystone
To illustrate it in the metaphor of the legendary sci-fi film “The Matrix”: It’s about destroying an artificial illusion world, a matrix, in order to become human again. Or as Slobodian/Tarnoff put it: “Musk, on the other hand, is a loner in that he does not see the matrix as the problem, but as part of the solution. Ultimately, Muskism is about building a better matrix.”