Adventures of an inventor in the White House

ExclusiveElon Musk, an innovator and inventor, stormed into the White House with the ambition to change everything and turn one of the world's most important institutions into a Tesla, or at least a Twitter.

– I don't want to… The over two hundred year old man (White House) objected slightly.

– Don't be such a bore! – Elon replied resolutely, hinting that no objections would be tolerated. – You don't want to go to Mars and make it great, do you?

As you know, in 1792, architect James Goban began work on the Presidential Palace, or as it was planned to be called, the President's House. Construction was completed on November 1, 1800, and on the same day, John Adams, the second president of the United States, began living there.

However, the name "Presidential Palace" did not stick, and in 1811 the residence of the US president began to be called according to its color - the White House. This name became official only in 1901 by order of Theodore Roosevelt.

Elon Musk narcissistically looked at the cover of the February Time, which announced that the Person of the Year is not Donald Trump, who confidently entered the Oval Office for the second time, but... Elon Musk.

At a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba Trump tried to pretend, as if he were completely unfazed by that cover, hinting that he didn't know that the popular American news magazine (which named him "Person of the Year" in December) still existed.

The February issue of the magazine depicts Elon Musk as the President of the United States, sitting at the Resolute Desk, which is used by US presidents in the Oval Office of the White House.

A similar thing happened to Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump during his first term. In February 2017, exactly eight years ago, Bannon was also on the cover of Time, and was called “The Great Manipulator,” which increased Trump’s irritation with his chief strategist at the time.

By the summer of that year, Bannon had left the White House, and Trump publicly disowned him in January 2018 after the book “Fire and Fury” reported that Bannon had criticized Trump’s children. Does Time expect something similar to happen to Musk? The tech mogul has already irritated White House staffers in the first week of Trump’s presidency, and now he has reportedly angered Trump’s inner circle and Republicans in Congress with his fascination with the federal government.

Last month, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles bluntly refuted the narrative of Musk's enormous influence over the administration, telling Axios that anyone who wanted to be a "star" would have no place on her team.

"I don't welcome people who want to go solo or be a star," Wiles said. "My team and I will not tolerate bad language, inappropriate doubt or scheming. It's counterproductive."

The tech mogul and fascist enthusiast is rapidly losing popularity among Americans, even among Republicans. Trump also hates sharing fame with anyone. A split between Trump and Musk is not out of the question.

Elon Musk's unbridled power over the executive branch has drawn criticism. It's said that the world's richest man is effectively the president of the United States. But some of Musk's alleged campaigns to cut government waste, including the dismantling of federal agencies like USAID, have troubled foreign policy experts, who say Musk's actions are more in the service of his personal financial interests — and those of the Chinese government.

Musk has co-founded seven companies over the course of his career, including PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and Starlink. A December analysis of Musk's $447 billion fortune, conducted by Bloomberg, testified that the bulk of his funds are Tesla shares, which rose 71 percent in 2024.

But above all, his closeness to US President Trump has allowed him to increase his net worth by 77 percent since election day, with investors predicting that key drivers for the billionaire's products — from easing rules for artificial intelligence to simplified production of driverless cars — would be possible during Trump's second presidency.

The billionaire's good relations with both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping may not only benefit Musk's financial interests. Critics say they could also serve China, which dreams of replacing the United States on the world stage.

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul spoke out for The Dispatch that many of the Trump administration's first actions (most of which were initiated by Musk) "directly harm the United States' ability to compete with its main geopolitical rival."

“All of these actions create enormous opportunities for [the People’s Republic of China]. Chinese President Xi Jinping is offering his country trade and investment assistance,” wrote McFaul, now a professor of political science at Stanford.

Contrary to a drop in sales worldwide, Tesla has maintained its position in the Chinese market. The company's "Gigafactory" in Shanghai is one of the largest, and it accounts for more than half of Tesla's global sales in 2023.

Business there has been so successful that Tesla broke ground on another $2024 million “megafactory” in Shanghai in May 200, just three months before Musk joined Trump’s presidential campaign. The new facility, which focuses on making lithium-ion batteries for general use, took 10 months to build. Production is set to begin on February 11.

During a trip in 2023, during which Musk met with many Chinese officials, most notably Shanghai Communist Party leader Chen Jining, Musk said that "the cars we make here are not only the most efficient, but also the highest quality."

And Tesla has made some big moves in China. For much of last year, Musk has been lobbying Chinese officials to approve his car company's self-driving features, which would transform Tesla into an AI-focused company.

Following Musk's visit to Beijing in early 2024, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers released a statement saying that Tesla Model 3 and 7 cars had passed a national data security test.

In April, Tesla struck a deal with Baidu, the company behind China’s largest search engine, to allow its vehicles to use its mapping service to improve the navigation capabilities of its drones. Tesla is currently planning to launch “fully autonomous” vehicles in China. “Regulatory approval is expected” in Q1 2025. China has yet to approve the product.

Meanwhile, in the US, Tesla's full autonomous feature has come under increased scrutiny from federal regulators as the company reported four accidents (one of which killed a pedestrian in Arizona) due to bright sunlight, fog and dust.

In October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation Tesla's fully autonomous driving features.

It is worth adding that NHTSA found 467 crashes involving active cruise control. According to PBS, 54 people were injured and 14 died as a result of the crashes.

The Trump team has reportedly recommended that the new president scrap NHTSA’s crash reporting requirement for self-driving cars. In an internal document obtained by Reuters, the team described the safety reporting requirement as a mandate for “excessive” data collection, advising the president to scrap the requirement entirely.

A Reuters analysis of NHTSA data showed that Tesla crash data accounted for 40 of the 45 fatal crashes recorded through Oct. 15.

In the middle of January Bloomberg і The Wall Street Journal reportedthat Chinese officials are ready to sell TikTok to Mask, contrary to a statement from China's Ministry of Commerce that the country would "strongly oppose" the sale of the popular video-sharing app.

So Musk's apparent dependence on the Chinese market, as well as his willingness to accommodate the country's geopolitical position, has caused alarm among American critics — on both sides.

In a letter to newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, Senate Finance Committee member Ron Wyden emphasized that Musk's business operations in China constitute a fundamental conflict of interest, so the billionaire should be denied access to confidential data and state secrets.

“I am concerned that Musk’s vast business operations in China — a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including that of American government employees, by hacking into U.S. government systems — jeopardize U.S. cybersecurity and create conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk,” Wyden wrote.

Wyden also accused Tesla of receiving “several unusual concessions” from the Chinese government, including privileges that “no other car company” had in the eastern market. Wyden also argued that Musk’s favorable tax and loan rates from China’s state-owned banks made the automaker passive in the White House, as these privileges could “quickly change if Musk angers the Chinese government.”

“In light of China’s recent hacking of Treasury Department systems, it seems unusual to grant access to confidential systems to an individual with such significant business interests in China,” Wyden said.

Musk’s former co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was unexpectedly fired, warned in 2023 that he thought “Tesla was becoming increasingly dependent on China.” “I have no reason to think Elon wouldn’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in a time of need,” he said at the time, discussing Musk’s decision to build a battery plant in Shanghai.

In 2022, Chinese officials praised the automaker for its intention to make the former colony a “special administrative zone.”

Instead, some of Musk’s recent federal machinations seem to be aimed at helping a foreign superpower on more than just a political level. Foreign policy experts argue that destroying USAID and its foreign policy strategy, for example, would weaken the U.S.’s global positioning and provide China with leverage to take center stage on the world stage, with some unexpected complications to boot.

“As China expands its diplomatic and economic influence around the world, American support for systems of oversight, accountability, and sustainable economic and environmental solutions helps prevent China from dragging countries into debt traps and diplomatic subjugation, as well as monopolizing critical minerals or strategic access points, which the Trump administration is so concerned about,” wrote Wanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution for Foreign Policy, citing the Panama Canal as an example.

Andrew Natsios, head of USAID under President George W. Bush and a staunch conservative told Politico, that Musk's criticism of the agency was a "blatant lie" and the administration's idea of ​​transferring USAID authority to the State Department was "the worst idea [he] could have imagined."

According to Natsios, USAID’s mission is in the “national interest.” Data from aid missions around the world inform U.S. policy on everything from health to diplomacy. For example, on Monday, a USAID mission reported on an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda. By deciding to abandon the agency, the United States would return to an information dark age, when the country could be caught off guard by future health crises.

In fact, the destruction of the American international humanitarian program, which provides aid and funding for infrastructure and development technologies in developing countries, would be a “major global disaster,” according to Chris Barrett, a professor of public policy and economics at Cornell University.

“The U.S. government and American companies, charities, and citizens would be severely limited in our engagement with the rest of the world without USAID’s data, expertise, and funding,” Barrett wrote. “China and Russia would benefit from closing USAID as they seek to gain access to vital resources abroad and forge alliances that are not in the U.S. national interest.”

Just a few days after the USAID budget freeze The South China Morning Post reportedthat developing countries that have historically relied on USAID “may turn to China for support or other concessional investments in infrastructure projects if China does not offer first.”

This is just a small part of the inventor's achievements during his tenure in Donald Trump's second presidency.

How long this will last and how it will threaten the very principles of the existence of the United States - we will see, I hope, soon.

I added Maryna Kovalchuk, Deputy Editor-in-Chief (Central Europe and Canada), Project Manager, V5 Media