Is Elon Musk a 21st-century Svengali? Two weeks after being accused of acting like the president – instead of a presidential advisor – when he attempted to sway Congress to torpedo a spending bill, the tech magnate is wielding political influence once again – and enraging some supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.
At issue: the H-1B Visa program, which Musk says is crucial to attracting foreign tech talent, but which many Republicans claim takes jobs away from Americans. Last Friday, Musk and fellow Department of Government Efficiency head Vivek Ramaswamyfeuded publicly with GOP firebrand Laura Loomer, who posted to X Thursday, “Donald Trump promised to remove the H1B visa program and I support his policy.”
On Friday, Musk posted that “hateful unrepentant racists” – a swipe at MAGA anti-immigrant Republicans – must be removed from the Republican Party “root and stem.” The next day, Trump seemed to toe Musk’s line: Despite having previously criticized the H-1B program as “very bad” and “unfair” for US workers, Trump told the New York Post, “I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas.” Hmm.
But it’s not clear just whose team Musk is playing for. While telling racists to leave the GOP and praising the contribution of foreign workers in the US, Musk declared his support for Germany’s far-right anti-immigrant party, Alternative for Germany, aka AfD, ahead of Deutchland’s February elections. Three state chapters of the AfD in the former communist East are classified as extremist – and are under surveillance by Germany’s domestic intelligence service.
But the contradictions don’t seem to bother Trump. “Where are you?” Trump posted on his Truth Social account Friday morning, entreating Musk to visit him and Bill Gates at Mar-a-Lago, aka “the center of the universe.”
For more on MAGA, the American dream, and immigration, check out Ian Bremmer’s latest Quick Take here.
In this episode of GZERO Europe, Carl Bildt reflects on the NATO summit in Ankara and why Europe is treating the outcome as a success mainly because it avoided open controversy.
AI is spreading faster, and the gap is growing wider. What that means in practice isn’t straightforward. In the first edition of AIEI Perspectives, a new editorial series from the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, six experts answer the same questions about who benefits from AI, who’s still waiting, and what shapes that outcome. Their answers don’t all land in the same place. Instead, they offer different ways of interpreting the same challenge — highlighting where views align and diverge and what it may take to close the gap over time. Read the perspectives here.
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Artificial intelligence is advancing at an extraordinary pace, but are governments and society keeping up? In this interview from the 2026 AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, pioneering AI researcher Yoshua Bengio discusses why today's AI safety debate goes beyond technical questions to broader issues of governance, public understanding, and international cooperation.