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Three ways to look at Brazil’s fight with Elon Musk
What on Earth is going on in Brazil? The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is locked in a high-profile, increasingly nasty clash with Latin America’s largest economy, which has recently banned Musk’s X platform.
There are strong feelings and spicy memes. The X boss has accused his main opponent, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, of being “Voldemort” and “Darth Vader.” The dispute has even reached low-Earth orbit, ensnaring Musk’s Starlink satellites.
There are a few different ways to understand the spat – as a fight over speech, over sovereignty, or over egos. Each sheds light on a bigger issue in the increasingly fraught relationship between tech companies and national governments.
But first, the backstory.
For five years, Moraes has been investigating online disinformation and perceived online threats to Brazil’s democracy.
He has focused particular attention on accounts related, or sympathetic, to former President Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing firebrand whose followers – whipped into a frenzy by (false) online allegations of vote rigging – ransacked Congress after he lost the 2022 election.
Moraes – whose prominent brow and perfectly bald pate do give him a bit of an Orlokian air, even if Voldemort is a stretch – has ordered raids on politicians’ homes, frozen their bank accounts, and even got Bolsonaro himself banned from politics for eight years.
His supporters say he’s fighting to protect democracy in an extremely online country that has a recent history of dictatorship. His critics say he’s playing loose with the law, overreaching, and pursuing an ideological agenda that suppresses free speech.
Enter Musk.
Not long ago, Moraes ordered X to suspend several popular accounts without naming them or explaining why. Musk, who now styles himself as a free speech defender (so long as he isn’t doing the defending in, say, India or Turkey, where he has complied with government demands to ban content), said the orders were illegal. He laid off a bunch of local staff rather than comply (while still leaving the service running).
Moraes, in turn, shut down X entirely in Brazil on the grounds that the company now lacked a local legal representative. As of a week ago, X no longer functions there. For X-ers in the rest of the world, the site has run extensive threads on what they say is Moraes’ overreach.
Ordinary Brazilians are split over the ban, but to be fair, X isn’t even among the top five social media apps in the country. (If you know Brazil, you know that if Moraes were to shut down, say, WhatsApp, there would either be a revolution or the country would simply evaporate in 24 hours.) Things could stay like this for a while.
So what’s this all about?
View one: It’s about speech! It’s no secret that governments around the world are grappling with the security and political stability implications of massive, unfiltered communications platforms where the velocity and reach of truth, lies, opinions, and cat memes is simply unprecedented.
“There’s a common thread of governments these days getting impatient with the platforms’ inability to self-police,” says Alexis Serfaty, a technology policy expert at Eurasia Group. “And they’re trying to act against a range of threats that they see, from public safety, to public health, and even to political stability.”
This explains X’s simultaneous legal battle with the EU over content moderation, as well as France’s charges against Telegram, which it accuses of prioritizing free speech over public safety and respect for local laws.
For a democracy, Brazil has especially expansive rules on what the government can try to root out – critics point out that the country now joins Russia, China, and Iran on the list of places where X is banned.
And if companies want to be there, they have to follow those rules, sure. But in the broader perspective, is the opaque policing of speech like this really the best way to preserve a democracy?
View two: It’s about sovereignty! Moraes has said as much. But this isn’t your grandad’s clash between multinational companies and national governments. The big global companies of yore – oil, mining, manufacturing – operated in a small number of sectors and had little direct contact with the public at large. Today’s tech firms, by contrast, shape the discourse, perceptions, politics, commerce, and even romances of billions of people globally all day, every day.
That’s a new kind of power – a very smart and well-known person I work with has dubbed it the “Technopolar world” – and we haven’t figured out yet what the balance of that power is.
View three: It’s about me! Moraes and Musk are two of the biggest egos on the planet. Part of this fight is personal, but not in the way you might think: Each of these men sees the outcome of this conflict as setting a big precedent.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in Brazil,” says Serfaty, “because I think if a government has success enforcing a specific action against a specific company – does that encourage more regulatory or other kinds of enforcement action in different countries? Does that kind of give them a little bit of momentum to push that forward?”
Should it? Where are the right lines between speech and safety, companies and countries? Let me know your thoughts here, and I’ll run some of the best responses in an upcoming mailbag.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X,.
Elon Musk and the Political Power of Young Men
There is no shortage of polls showing that the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump istighter than a pair of skinny jeans on Will Ferrell.
Numbers in key swing states like Arizona and Pennsylvania have gone from a Trump lock to a toss-up or even a small Harris lead. But as the saying goes, you don’t win elections in August. Both campaigns still need to swing large constituencies of voters, and one group is emerging as critical: young men.
In this election, there are roughly 41 million Gen Z voters — people between the ages of 18 and 29, and while Dems have traditionally counted on their support, the war in Gaza and the slow growth economy have turned many of them away.
In particular, young men struggling with job prospects and rapidly changing notions of masculinity are seeking a new ideological home that gives them a sense of meaning, support, and respect.
Enter Elon Musk. The tech billionaire recently endorsed Trump, but it was their two-hour-long conversation on X this week that formally ended their 2022 feud, during which Trump called Musk a “bullshit artist” and Musksaid it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Musk has now pulled a JD Vance-level pivot to Trump. He’s even offered to work with the former president on a “government efficiency committee” to make sure federal money is “spent in a good way.” Trump said yes, he was very open to hiring “Chainsaw” Elon to do some government clear-cutting.
So, how consequential is Elon’s endorsement of Trump? Very. Musk is a modern-day mashup of Thomas Edison and William Randolph Hearst — at once a transformational figure in business and technology but also, now that he owns X, an immensely powerful media influencer.
His publicly acknowledged journey from moderate Democrat to MAGA Republican has major appeal to certain voter segments — especially those with a Y chromosome who believe Call of Duty is not just a video game but a possible career.
To study those people, a group called theYoung Men’s Research Initiative just ran a YouGov poll of key influencers on American young men between the ages of 18 and 29. They found Musk and X at the top of the list, with the next in line not even close.
“68% of young men in our survey said they ‘like’ Musk, among the highest influencers tested,” the YMRI team wrote on their Substack.
Why? First off, because of his career. “The survey found that ‘entrepreneur’ was the most admired career among young men, particularly for young Black men.”
But does Musk’s popularity among young men really give him the power to turn the election?
“Trump’s base is MAGA, but that’s not enough for him to win, so he is appealing to groups that have often been overlooked, particularly young men,” Shauna Daly, a Democrat who helped found YMRI, told me.
“Historically, they haven’t turned out in large numbers, but this year they are frustrated, and somewhat organized, thanks to right-leaning influencers and media who are urging them to get out and vote for Trump. Democrats ignore the potential of young men to make a difference in the election at our peril.”
This is why Trump undermined his own social media company, Truth Social, and went back to X. Because X marks the spot where these young male voters live.
YMRI found that a massive 52% of respondents said they used X in the last week—up from a Change Research poll last year that put the number at just 33%. Even more critically: 64% of young Black men say they’ve used X in the last week.
Who else do these young male voters look up to? Far-right, male-chauvinist influencers like Andrew Tate in the UK — where Musk has played a massive role in the unrest surrounding immigration — are highly influential. Fully 27% of respondents say they like and trust Tate’s views, which is surprising since Tate is essentially a UK figure. Podcaster Joe Rogan was also tested, and 36% of young men say they like and trust his views, while 34% say the same about author and polemicist Dr. Jordan Peterson.
“Young men’s movement to the right is being fueled by their consumption of right-leaning media and influencers, with little competition from comparable [male] figures on the left,” said Daly. “The trust young American men have in Elon Musk, Andrew Tate, and others impacts not only their vote choice but also their offline actions, as we have seen in the UK this month, and their views of women.”
The views on women are fascinating, and they give some insight into why Trump’s Veep pick JD Vance’s radioactive statements about “childless cat ladies” or Trump’s infidelities don’t seem to have any negative impact on the young Republican base. “38% of the cohort say they have never been in a serious relationship,” according to the YMRI/YouGov poll.
About half of respondents agreed with the following statements: “A serious relationship is too big an emotional commitment” and “When it comes to relationships, there are too many social norms and rules for what is expected of someone like me.”
Too many social norms and rules is the key phrase. Trump’s campaign is fueled by a culture war on social norms which posits that everything from a “woke culture” to the “deep state,” from the courts to the education system, are out to curtail or crush the freedoms of young men.
For this group, then, the election is about something bigger: the very definition of masculinity.
The poll found that most men see key masculine qualities as “protecting your family,” “honesty,” “confidence,” and “helping people who need it,”which is confusing since the same young men don’t seem to want to be in a long-term relationship. How can you protect a family if you don’t have one?
But the bigger point is that for these young men, to be a “man” means playing by your own rules — as a maverick business entrepreneur stereotypically does — and projecting “strength.”
This finding illuminates why the Democrats, who have focused much of their efforts on suburban women and who rely on the salience of the abortion issue to rally support, are now scrambling to shore up their traditional “male” bona fides with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Selecting a military veteran, football coach, and hunter who sports Carhartt jackets and a camo hat — while defending trans rights and school breakfast for kids — is the Dems’ way of trying to redefine what masculinity means in a progressive context.
They know they need to offer young men a place in their party, and they have done a poor job of doing so up to this point. Which is why the Vance-Walz fight over their military service is playing out so openly: Each views it as the strongest card in their masculinity deck.
“Republicans believe they own masculinity and are campaigning on a belligerent and domineering version of it,” Daly told me. “But Democrats are embracing a different version, one that is centered on protecting those who need it and fighting back against the bullies trying to diminish the rest of us.”
As Kamala Harris heads to the Democratic National Convention next week, aiming to keep her enthusiasm train rolling and make history as the first female president in US history, the Musk-Trump interview has pushed a counter-narrative to the forefront of the election: What does it really mean to be a man in 2024?
Donald Trump's X account displayed on a laptop screen and Elon Musk's account displayed on a phone screen
Trump-Musk interview mired with technical difficulties
It was billed as the “biggest interview in history,” but for the first 40 minutes, Donald Trump’s X Space with Elon Musk was one of the biggest failures imaginable: silence, with hundreds of thousands of listeners unable to join.
Musk blamed the delay, without evidence, on a DDOS cyberattack and unexpectedly large numbers of listeners. (Skeptics pointed out that a DDOS attack would have brought down all of X, not just a single space.) Trump and his campaign immediately framed the difficulties as further evidence of a conspiracy to silence his voice.
There was little silence in the two hours that followed. Musk began by clarifying that it would not be an “adversarial” interview but rather an opportunity for undecided voters to hear Trump as he is naturally, in conversation.
Throughout the exchange, which topped out around 2 million listeners on X specifically, Trump hit many familiar notes about the threat he says is posed by “radical left” Democrats. He argues they have stoked crime and inflation, opened the borders, weaponized the justice system against him, over-regulated the economy, and presented a weak posture to the world that has encouraged allies and adversaries alike to take advantage, putting us at risk of nuclear war. Had he been president, Trump said, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine.
Trump also showed more of the hand that he’ll play against Kamala Harris – portraying her as too far left for America, while also insulting her intelligence and commenting on her appearance.
Musk’s role was arguably more interesting than Trump’s. While enthusiastically praising Trump or teeing up opportunities for Trump to tout (and in some cases exaggerate or distort) his achievements, the billionaire also struck the pose of a reasonable, common-sense former Democrat, driven to support Trump by the excesses of the current Democratic Party.
That endorsement by Musk, particularly framed in that way, could be the most important upshot of the conversation: One of the world’s richest men, with a vast communication platform at his disposal, has pointedly given both cover and encouragement to MAGA-curious moderates to take the plunge and vote Trump.
The ball is now back in the Harris campaign’s court. As the Democrats prepare for the start of their party convention next week in Chicago, Harris has yet to sit for a press interview or public conversation of her own, but her team had some comments about Trump's interview on X.
“Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com,” Harris' campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement.
“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”
Musk, meanwhile, posted early Tuesday that he is "Happy to host Kamala on an X Spaces too."
FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024.
Trolling with power: Elon Musk’s online antics are getting real
Businessman, entrepreneur, and increasingly, a disruptive force in geopolitics.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, SpaceX, and Tesla, has never shied away from controversial political posts, but over these last few weeks, his online trolling has had very real-world consequences.
Last week, he amplified posts on X that fueled racist riots in the United Kingdom and prophesized that civil war in the country was inevitable. Today, he is reportedly set to interview former President Donald Trump on X, a sitdown that will generate hundreds of headlines in a presidential cycle in which the interviewer, Musk, has unabashedly chosen a side.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last month, Musk took to his app to endorse Trump’s candidacy – shattering the norm of self-declared neutrality by the leaders of social media platforms. (Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is not nearly as vocal about his political views). And in July, Musk announced the creation of a political action committee, America Pac, that would “mostly but not entirely” support the Republican Party.
The South African-born investor has also signaled his disapproval of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and even disseminated a deep fake video purportedly showing Harris calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire.” He also suspended the account “White Dudes for Harris” on X after it held a massive fundraising call that raised more than $4 millionfor her campaign.
Musk’s political interventions on X have been particularly controversial in the UK, where his inflammatory posts have been linked to recent civil unrest. British officials have criticized Musk for spreading misinformation, including false claims that the murderer of three British girls – which fueled protests and riots last week – was a Muslim migrant. During the riots, “super sharers,” or accounts like Elon Musk’s with large followings, acted as “nodes” for disseminating this lie through their interaction with the far-right content.
Musk is also responsible for relaxing the content moderation guidelines on the site and reinstating many far-right accounts that acted as super-sharers of misinformation. For example, he unbanned Tommy Robinson, a fringe and four-times-jailed extreme-right British activist, who went viral during the riots. He also promoted Ashlea Simon – co-founder of a white supremacist group — who claimed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer planned to send British rioters to detention camps in the Falkland Islands.
Can he be regulated? As a result of the riots, many political leaders, including Starmer, EU commissioners, and US senators, have called for an inquiry into social media’s role in spreading incendiary disinformation.
According to Scott Bade, a geo-technology expert at Eurasia Group, Musk is increasingly becoming a “geopolitical agent of chaos.” But Musk isn’t too powerful to regulate, says Bade. “The thing is, you’re not going to regulate Elon himself. You’re going to regulate the pieces of his empire.”
The Online Safety Act is already set to take effect in the UK at the end of the year and will require platforms to remove illegal content or be fined 10% of global annual turnover or £18 million, whichever is higher. In the wake of the riots, legislatures are considering tightening restrictions so companies can be sanctioned if they allow “legal but harmful” content such as misinformation to flourish.
“There is a clear consensus emerging in the aftermath of the riots that Musk and X are a problem, given the amount of misinformation, racial abuse, and incitement to violence that was spread on the platform,” says Eurasia Group Europe expert Mujtaba Rahman. “There will be a political and a policy response, but what shape that will take remains unclear for now.”
UK far-right riots and Elon Musk's role
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Adriatic Sea.
What are the risks inherent in the fact that Elon Musk is de facto encouraging the right-wing thuggery that we see in the UK at the moment?
Well, I think the risks are, primarily, there for the reputation of Elon Musk. A lot of people have reacted against the fact that he's seen as de facto encouraging what is far-right violence and far-right thuggery. It's a difficult situation in the UK, and I think everyone, particularly those that have responsibility via social media, should try to make whatever they can to calm things down, not the other way around.
What’s going to be the likely effect of the Ukraine incursion into the Kursk region on the Russian war effort?
I think it's far too early to judge the nature of that particular attack or incursion. It's clearly something done with fairly qualified military units. It evidently caught the Russians by surprise, and it's fairly obvious that Putin is disturbed by it. But exactly what kind of military significance it will have one or two or three weeks down the line, that remains to be seen.
Tesla, X, and SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk speaks with members of the media during the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Britain, on Nov. 1, 2023.
Elon Musk refiles his OpenAI lawsuit
Billionaire Elon Musk is reviving a lawsuit in California federal court against OpenAI, the company he co-founded, and its CEO, Sam Altman. The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of fraud and breach of contract, among other allegations. The lawsuit casts Musk, one of the world’s richest people, as a victim of a complex scam whereby he agreed to donate $44 million of his own money, after which OpenAI, he claims, violated its non-profit mission. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after attempting to take over the company.
In June, Musk withdrew this suit against Altman for unknown reasons, but the new filing includes federal racketeering allegations against Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman. OpenAI said that Musk has understood OpenAI’s mission and direction from the beginning, and that his donation was not coerced.
Musk now runs xAI, a company he hopes will rival OpenAI, and has AI interests with his automotive company Tesla. So, some may question whether Musk truly feels wronged or just wants to stick it to his former colleagues.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and owner of X, looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on May 6, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Tesla’s Grok infusion, New Jersey wants AI jobs, Visa’s fraud-busting, In-Cohere-nt strategy
5 billion: Elon Musk wants the Tesla board of directors to invest $5 billion in xAI, his artificial intelligence startup that built the Grok chatbot. Tesla’s self-driving ambitions depend on artificial intelligence, but this move also represents Musk’s ambition to further intermingle his many businesses. Grok lives entirely within X, formerly Twitter, and is available to paying subscribers.
500 million: The Garden State is making a half-billion dollar bet to become a hub for AI. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law on June 25 that allocates $500 million in tax credits for artificial intelligence companies and data centers willing to come to the state. It’s part of Murphy’s ongoing “AI Moonshot” to bring more AI jobs to the state.
40 billion: Visa says that artificial intelligence and machine learning helped it double its fraud detection in a year. Between October 2022 and September 2023, the payments company prevented $40 billion in fraud, double what they prevented the year prior. While AI can certainly help fraudsters trick people into handing over their credit card details or other sensitive information, it can also help financial services companies monitor and prevent irregular activity.
500 million: The AI startup Cohere, which makes enterprise AI tools, raised $500 million last week based on a $5.5 billion valuation. But the next day, it laid off 20 employees — about 5% of the company. The company called the decision “necessary” to ensure it remains “highly competitive and at the forefront of the industry.”
People walk behind the logo of SoftBank Corp in Tokyo.
Hard Numbers: SoftBank’s hardy investment, Grok gets cash infusion, Humane’s rescue plan, Kenya’s tech upgrade, News Corp and OpenAI strike a deal
6 billion: Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion from venture capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, plus Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Kingdom Holding Company. The new funding round boosts the value of xAI, which makes the AI chatbot Grok, to $24 billion. Musk is a cofounder of OpenAI but severed ties with the firm in 2018 and has since sued the ChatGPT maker, alleging it abandoned its founding principles.
750 million: Humane, the company that recently released an AI-powered pin to scathing reviews, is reportedly looking for a buyer to swoop in. While customers have to cough up $699 for the signature pin, a corporate buyer would need to pay between $750 million and $1 billion — if the company’s current management fetches any interest, that is.
1 billion: Microsoft and the UAE-based tech giant G42 are pouring $1 billion into a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya. This East African investment is the first big announcement since Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 in April, a deal brokered by the Biden administration. Microsoft and G42 also pledged to work on local language and skills training initiatives with the Kenyan government and companies in the country.
250 million: OpenAI struck a licensing deal with News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, reportedly worth $250 million over five years. News Corp’s stock rose on the announcement, and the deal represents a burgeoning revenue stream for news companies. But the deal isn’t without critics: The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin wrote that publishers like News Corp need to know their worth with AI companies, hungry for content, and not rush into any deal for “relative pennies.”