Elon Musk is the richest person in the world – one of the richest in history. But Musk’s power is no longer just tied to the financial wealth derived from Tesla, X or SpaceX. Musk, by virtue of his close relationship with President Donald Trump, has been given a sweeping mandate to influence policy across the entire US government through the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency. His life as an entrepreneur sheds important light on his work as a political actor.

Musk has often claimed that physics is at the centre of his worldview: He talks about the search for natural first principles as a motivation for his actions in business and life more generally. And “first principles thinking” has become something of a mantra in Musk world. It evokes both rigor and a childlike, innocent approach to any problem, however complex.

Foreign Policy