While the world’s eyes were on the 47th President of the United States during the intimate ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on January 20, cameras often panned to Elon Musk – the richest man on earth and, according to some, the true power behind the re-elected president. Even in a room filled with tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, it was Musk who stole the spotlight. After all, his massive donations and strategic use of his social media platform, X, played a key role in Trump’s re-election.
One cannot help but wonder why Musk does what he does. It’s not as if he’s bored. He’s the CEO of Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, valued at $800 billion. In 2024 alone, Tesla sold over 1.9 million vehicles, and Musk’s 13% stake forms a big part of his wealth. He’s also the founder and CEO of SpaceX, which dominates the commercial space industry, and owns X Corp, the ‘everything app’ that provides social media, financial services and more to its 400 million active users. His contributions don’t stop there. Musk is also behind The Boring Company, which built the Las Vegas Loop – a transport network that carried over a million passengers last year. Another of his companies, Neuralink, achieved a breakthrough in 2024 by implanting a brain-computer interface in a patient.
It takes an exceptional person to achieve all this. Everyone knows Musk is brilliant and creative, but many people share those qualities. What sets him apart is his ability to inspire others and unite them around his vision. The economist Noah Smith wrote last year that Musk’s real superpower is ‘bringing talented people together, motivating them, and setting ambitious goals that enable them to achieve the impossible’.
Smith then compares Musk to Henry Ford:
Both built world-beating car companies and became the richest man in the world. Just as Elon bought Twitter and turned it into X in order to advance his own viewpoints, Henry Ford bought the Dearborn Independent and turned it into the country’s second-most-widely-read newspaper by putting it in every Ford dealership. And just as X has seen an explosion of antisemitism, the Dearborn Independent ran a series of columns about “The International Jew”. Ford eventually apologized for this antisemitic content and disavowed any personal involvement, just as Musk deleted his tweet promoting a Tucker Carlson segment that defended Adolf Hitler and apologized for a tweet where he agreed with someone who claimed that Jews are anti-White. Ford also received a lot of negative attention and scrutiny for his factories in Nazi Germany, just as Elon’s Gigafactory Shanghai has raised questions about China’s ability to pressure him.
Interestingly, Smith doesn’t mention Ford’s political ambitions. Encouraged by President Woodrow Wilson, Ford ran as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Michigan in 1918. Although he was very popular, he narrowly lost to Republican Truman Newberry, who later resigned over illegal campaign financing. That marked the end of Ford’s political career.
Perhaps Ford, then, is not the best comparison. May I suggest another South African? Cecil John Rhodes.
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