Elon Musk is the richest man in the world.
While his fortune fluctuates daily, it’s well over $200 billion dollars.
He’s revolutionized the electric car industry. His company SpaceX is better at sending rockets into outer space than NASA. From The Boring Company to cutting edge artificial intelligence initiatives, Elon arguably has done more – and is doing more – to shape the future more than any other entrepreneur alive today.
But it was his acquisition of Twitter – now “X” – for $44 billion in 2022 that could be the most consequential. It certainly will be for the upcoming election.
The Transformation of Elon Musk
Musk is an interesting character (obviously). But one of the more interesting things is his transformation over the last few years. It really wasn’t so long ago that he was revered and adored by the establishment Left. It wasn’t uncommon for him to be the subject of glowing coverage from the likes of Rolling Stone, which dubbed him the “Architect of Tomorrow” for the November 2017 cover.
That’s all over now…
Today, Musk is one of the favorite boogeymen of the corporate press, right up there with Trump himself. And one of the reasons is that he keeps saying things like this:
It’s unusual to see somebody once so loved by the establishment left go so off-message. The only conclusion I can come to: He actually means it.
He’s also proven a nuisance in other ways. Thanks to X, that “system” he references can no longer count on total information dominance online.
In the 2020 presidential election cycle, the Democrat-Left was able to fully weaponize social media. Twitter (pre-Elon purchase) and Facebook infamously colluded to stop the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story just weeks before the election.
Given how narrow the final victory for Biden was, it’s reasonable to think the intentional suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story could have turned the election for the Democrats.
Instead of allowing users to share the truth with millions of others online, Twitter and Facebook took steps to actively block the NY Post reporting. When called out for this blatant partisan censorship, Twitter pretended that the Hunter Biden laptop violated an obscure policy about hacked materials.
It was as laughable as it was dishonest. But it worked. Joe Biden became president despite the clear onset of senility at that time – which has since become so blatant and debilitating Democrats had to arrange an election-year coup to kick him off the ticket.
This time will be different. As a daily user of X, I can tell you that it is night and day in terms of freedom of speech, compared to what it was when the petty commissars of the Left were in charge. The political ramifications of this are massive.
For one thing, it’s more difficult for major Democrat-aligned news and social media outlets to totally smother unflattering stories online.
In fact, X provides an information exchange so powerful and instantaneous that legacy media organizations often find themselves struggling to keep up with even the most major breaking news stories. And instead of being able to ignore stories that threaten their narrative, the propaganda machines of the Left must at least do counter-messaging to viral stories.
X doesn’t guarantee a Trump victory in this election, but it does level the playing field online. Free speech is in a far stronger position now. We have Elon to thank for this.
A global fight for freedom of speech and thought is underway. X isn’t perfect. But Musk has brought the platform much closer to the initial promise – as the true global town square – than ever before. And it will be increasingly necessary to defend the core ideals of western civilization, which are under a sustained assault.
The rise of digital authoritarianism is an enormous challenge for humanity. British authorities, for example, have threatened to lock up people who write or “share” demeaning things about illegal immigrants online.
On a much larger scale, the biggest, most powerful companies in the world – including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and many others – were actively engaged in policing “disinformation” about Covid-19 on their platforms.
In reality, these companies betrayed their users by going along with the false consensus of health experts who pushed lies themselves about Covid risks and interventions.
With a more open Twitter, perhaps we might have prevented the world from descending into the madness of lockdowns, mandatory masking (moronic and pointless in every way) and vaccine passports.
Time will tell if Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter was a smart business decision, but it was most certainly a public service.
And what’s interesting is that Musk doesn’t appear to be alone.
Some Titans of Silicon Valley Join Elon
Silicon Valley was – historically – a place of misfits, vagabonds, and heretical thinkers. This was the industry that gave the world everything from modern semiconductors to the iPhone. That only happens with independent thinking and a willingness to break a few rules. For years, Silicon Valley was broadly aligned with the left, and American democrats happily embraced them.
But as the American Left grew more authoritarian, more censorious, and less concerned with individual liberties, the Silicon Valley old guard grew more skeptical. Musk might be the most visible example of a tech executive taking the red pill, but he’s not the only one.
X recently abandoned San Francisco. That was a major development, a bad one for the riddled San Francisco municipal government. But he has not been the only one. A long list of other tech companies and founders have done the same.
Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison moved his company’s headquarters to Austin, Texas, while also establishing a personal residence in Hawaii. Similarly, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel left for Los Angeles, seeking a more politically aligned environment. Even Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and venture capitalist Keith Rabois have made their exits, opting for cities like Miami, where a burgeoning tech scene is emerging.
This migration reflects a broader trend of Silicon Valley elites seeking out regions with lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a better quality of life, signaling a potential shift in the epicenter of American innovation.
I don’t want to overstate it. Many of the largest tech companies still call Silicon Valley home, Google, Apple, and Meta among them. But the fact that a “schism” is forming is interesting. And Elon Musk – whether he knew it or not – is now the heretic. And he’s leading the charge toward an enlightenment.
And in the short term, at a minimum, It will certainly make this election more likely to reflect the truth – and the will of the American people – than the last one.
Regards,
Buck Sexton
Editor, Message From Buck