Within hours of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Elon Musk had inserted himself into the news cycle by providing Starlink terminals that were quickly ferried by the US military to the besieged country. Musk received great praise for his action, even as governments like those of the United States and Poland had bought many of the terminals and paid for the service being put to use by the Ukrainian army.

But by the fall, Musk’s views had shifted. A Ukrainian attempt to attack Russian forces in Crimea failed in September because its Starlink access had been disabled. In October, Ukrainian soldiers found that SpaceX had geofenced their service area, ensuring that when they got close to Russian positions in southern Ukraine they’d lose Starlink access. Musk was reportedly not only getting fed up with paying part of the cost of the service, but according to Colin Kahl, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon who had to personally make a deferential call to the billionaire, “he was getting nervous that Starlink’s involvement was increasingly seen in Russia as enabling the Ukrainian war effort, and was looking for a way to placate Russian concern.” On the same call, Kahl claims Musk volunteered that he’d personally spoken to Russian president Vladimir Putin, something Musk later denied.

The Pentagon negotiated a contract with SpaceX in the months that followed to take over the cost of provisioning Starlink service, which likely also included clauses against Musk’s unilateral disabling of service. Since then, Russia has reportedly also obtained thousands of Starlink terminals that its soldiers are using, and which Musk has shown no sign of disabling. This story shows Musk is not just any old tech billionaire. He’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, and that’s turned him into a figure who can stand alongside world leaders and governments as their equal, and in some cases even their superior as they praise him in the hopes of gaining access to his growing empire.

Musk’s shifting preferences away from Ukraine and toward Russia are indicative of a larger shift in his politics where he’s not only been speaking out in favor of right-wing issues and echoing conspiracy theories around topics like immigration and gender, but actively seeking to build an alliance with likeminded political movements the world over. In some cases, there’s a business incentive to what Musk is doing, but it’s become increasingly clear that the relationships he’s forging are not just about getting preferential access for his companies; they're about creating a world where the political agenda he champions on Twitter is the policy of governments around the world.

Ties to the extreme right

The first key international meeting Musk had with a member of the ascendent extreme right-wing axis in global politics was in May 2022 with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Musk was officially in the country to launch Starlink, promoting it as a means to connect rural schools and increase monitoring of the Amazon. As Progressive International explained, that narrative not only helped to greenwash Starlink, but also to provide a technological cover for the cuts the Bolsonaro government had been making to environmental protection and enforcement in the rainforest. Bolsonaro also praised Musk’s plan to buy Twitter as a “fresh breath of hope.” Later that year, after Musk took over the company, he fired virtually all the company’s Brazilian staff, leaving it open to right-wing influencers who promoted false narratives about election fraud.

That meeting showed how politics and business could complement one another. Musk got a new market for Starlink and helped advance Brazil’s far-right movement. But things only accelerated from there. In June 2023, he met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, calling himself “a fan.” Modi has been credibly called a fascist, and his Hindu nationalist movement is undertaking an unprecedented crackdown on the country’s Muslim population. Musk and Modi discussed potential uses for Starlink in India and the prospect of building a Tesla factory in India. But Musk has also allowed Twitter to become an important tool of Indian government censorship. As the Washington Post reported of Twitter months after the meeting, “A company that not long ago adopted the risky strategy of fighting government censorship in the Indian courts now consistently bends to official demands.” Those demands meant taking down posts critical of the Modi regime and removing the accounts of journalists and political opponents.

A few months later, Hungarian president Katalin Novák arrived in Texas for a tour of the Tesla Gigafactory. She hails from the same party as prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has been a central figure in the growth of illiberal right-wing populism in Europe, with a particular focus on racist anti-migrant politics and similar natalist views as Musk espouses. The meeting took place because Musk hadn’t been able to attend the Demographic Summit in Budapest the week before. Soon after, he agreed with Orbán’s criticism of European migration policies on Twitter and retweeted a post from a right-wing account called Radio Genoa that called out non-governmental organizations helping save the lives of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. “Let's hope AfD wins the elections to stop this European suicide,” the tweet read. Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a far-right German political party.

In October, Musk replied to a tweet by New Zealand’s newly elected conservative prime minister Chris Luxon, saying, “Congratulations and thank goodness!” He had just ousted the Labour Party and now leads the most right-wing government the country has seen in decades, in coalition with the libertarian ACT and nationalist NZ First parties. Musk has also intervened in the politics of his native South Africa, echoing the myth of “white genocide” spread by white nationalists to suggest Black South Africans are killing white farmers en masse, and more recently has been boosting Ireland’s far-right fringe by giving them free rein on Twitter and echoing their criticisms of the government, including on recent attempts to pass new hate speech legislation. After those interactions, Musk gave an interview to Gript, a website that promotes extreme right-wing politics.

Musk’s most recent dalliances are probably no surprise. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is quickly becoming a driving force in Europe’s tilt to the far right. She leads the Brothers of Italy, which has direct links to the country’s fascist past. In December, Musk was the main attraction at Meloni’s annual Atreju festival for conservative youth. He joined Meloni on stage to warn of “unchecked” migration, emphasize the importance of preserving the “cultural identity” of countries like Italy, dismiss climate fears as “somewhat overblown,” and tell attendees how important it was to have more children. “If people do not have children there is no new generation,” he said, which was almost exactly what the Hungarian president was quoted as telling him months before.

Back in the Americas, Musk swiftly congratulated “anarcho-capitalist” Argentine president Javier Milei when he was elected last year and praised an unhinged speech he gave at the World Economic Forum in January. Milei acted quickly to unleash “shock therapy” on Argentina, gutting public spending and making life even worse for citizens who were already struggling under the weight of soaring inflation. Musk is one of the beneficiaries of Milei’s economic deregulation, as rules were changed to allow the launch of Starlink in the South American country. Milei also confirmed that Musk is “extremely interested” in gaining access to the country’s lithium deposits.

To top it all off, Musk met with Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu in November to clean up his image after echoing an antisemitic conspiracy theory on Twitter. In exchange for his tacit support of the genocidal war in Gaza, Musk promised Israel would have a veto over any access to Starlink in the besieged enclave, including by aid organizations.

Embrace of the Republican Party

Musk’s growing relationship to the global extreme right may be concerning, but it’s not surprising. There was a time when Musk was happy to present himself as a liberal businessman aligned with some progressive priorities like fighting climate change because it meant preferential loans and various subsidies to benefit Tesla, not to mention getting Democratic backing to transform the aerospace industry in SpaceX’s favor. But those days are long gone.

It’s reasonable to believe that Musk has long held views that are more aligned with a conservative understanding of the world, and they were turbocharged as he became more radicalized during the pandemic (arguably by the very platform he now owns) and his position in society changed. No longer is he the plucky upstart challenging the big guys in the automotive and aerospace industries. SpaceX and Tesla are now powerful forces in their own right, and that means they’re subjected to higher standards of accountability. As the Democratic Party has targeted the tech industry for greater regulation and billionaires to pay higher taxes, Musk’s incentive to turn to the political right has only grown. Conservatives are not only willing to embrace him, but will eagerly defend his power just as they do with other corporate titans.

In the United States, Musk has shifted his base of operations from Democratic California to Republican Texas after being wooed by the latter’s governor Greg Abbott. He has a long-running problem with the Securities and Exchange Commission after they held him accountable for lying about having funding to take Tesla private in 2018. He’s also hidden injuries at Tesla from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, blasted the Fish and Wildlife Agency for doing environmental reviews of SpaceX’s operations in Texas, and has a history of conflicts with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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Most recently, Musk decided to have SpaceX sue the National Labor Relations Board to gut its authority, which would cause an unprecedented setback in the rights of workers across the country. That campaign is supported by the Republican Party, which Musk has been forging closer ties to in recent years. He’s explicitly backed extremist GOP candidates and told his followers to vote Republican in the 2022 primary elections. Musk now regularly scaremongers about migration across the southern US border, and even traveled to it last year to sneer at migrants with a Republican lawmaker.

In taking those actions, Musk’s business, political, and personal interests are often intertwined. He’s undoubtedly seeking to preserve his own power and grow his empire, but he’s also looking to move forward the right-wing project that he vocally advocates on Twitter and in virtually any interview he gives these days. Yet not all of his relationships are designed to move forward every one of those interests at the same time.

Mixed motivations are still dangerous

The United States is the place where Musk’s political and business interests are most closely aligned, since he lives there and his companies are based there. As Tesla and SpaceX have grown, he wants to make sure they can continue ignoring environmental and safety regulations and that his vast wealth will not be targeted by lawmakers. That creates an incentive to back the Republican Party, even beyond his political views — though it certainly helps that he agrees with them on a long list of issues. The Republicans also want to be close to the man who was lauded for so long and held up as the creator of our collective future. Seizing him for their project is politically valuable, meaning there’s mutual benefit to the alliance.

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In much of the rest of the world, right-wing movements have a similar incentive to attract Musk’s attention and support him because it boosts their profile. In some cases, those alliances are more political, like in Hungary or Italy where Musk does not have major business interests. Meanwhile, there are other instances that are much more about commercial opportunities, such as Musk’s relationship with Modi as Tesla looks to India as a future market for its products and a likely site for a factory that can make use of lower cost labor, along with Argentina’s potential to be a supplier of lithium without the problem of dealing with the left-leaning governments of Chile or Bolivia.

This is also where Musk’s relationship with China is distinct. American liberals often point to Musk’s uncritical embrace of China as evidence of his fondness for the Chinese Communist Party, but that’s a misread of the situation just as it would be for other Silicon Valley companies that have sought to break into the Chinese market. Musk built a relationship with Chinese officials because it’s a large consumer market, is ahead of the West in electric vehicle adoption, and provided low-cost manufacturing labor as he hopes to grow Tesla and export its vehicles to more markets.

Does Musk like the labor discipline and dependability that comes with a lack of Western democracy? Undoubtedly. But he doesn’t have the approach to Xi Jinping as he does with Giorgia Meloni or other members of the extreme right-wing axis. Politically, Musk is much more interested in making sure Western countries align with his values, while other parts of the world are seen through more of an economic lens. Musk approaches India like he does China: whether Modi is fascist or not is of little concern, as long as he can access its market and cheap labor on good terms. If that requires letting Modi’s government censor Twitter to make him happy, then so be it.

Ultimately, Musk is not alone in this. He’s just the most visible Silicon Valley leader to have openly embraced white nationalism and far-right politics to defend the power and wealth he accumulated since the internet’s privatization in the 1990s. It helps that the right-wing views many tech CEOs and investors advocate have a long history in the tech sector, but more than anything they’re concerned with cementing their positions at any cost. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was quite explicit about it in last year’s techno-optimist manifesto where he cited numerous far-right thinkers, including the Italian Futurists that supported Meloni’s forebears. If fascism rises again, that’s perfectly fine with the titans of tech, as long as they get to hold onto their influence.

The United States is flirting with a TikTok ban again.

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a bill that sounds absolutely ridiculous and would allow the president to designate non-US social media apps as national security threats. If they’re hit with that label, they have six months to make sure they have no ties to a US adversary, which means a country like China or Iran. If they don’t follow through, they’d be banned from app stores and web hosting services, effectively cutting them off in the United States.

If the bill makes it through the Senate, is passed into law, and the president issues a designation to TikTok, that means its parent company ByteDance would have to sell it or risk having it being banned. A total ban still feels unlikely, but the United States flexing its muscle in this way should prompt a deeper examination of the ties that bind Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. For decades, the tech industry wanted to appear in opposition to government power, but the truth is that the global expansion of US tech was always a project of US geopolitical ambition.

A mutually beneficial arrangement

Imagine if some random country — let’s say Canada — passed a law tomorrow saying that Facebook or Google had to divest from US ownership or it would be blocked in the country within 180 days. After Facebook refused to abide by a local regulation to pay news publishers last year, some retaliation might be warranted. But putting that aside, how would the United States react? Its government would be furious — and it already is about lesser transgressions against its tech companies.

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Take, for example, when Canada regulated streaming platforms last year so they’d have to show a bit more Canadian content to Canadian viewers. The US embassy was not happy about it. It also got angry when the Canadian government announced plans to move forward with a digital services tax targeting US tech companies, which it considered necessary because the United States has spent years stalling a global tax treaty aimed at making US tech multinationals pay more tax in the countries they operate, not just where they’re headquartered.

Even though the domestic discourse in the United States has shifted in recent years with more concern over monopolistic practices, the US government and Silicon Valley are still on the same page about the role US tech plays internationally. Back when US lawmakers were preparing to commercialize the internet, they were explicit that their intention was to use it to expand the country’s geopolitical influence. As internet “inventor” and then Senator Al Gore told the Senate in 1989, “the nation which most completely assimilates high-performance computing into its economy will very likely emerge as the dominant intellectual, economic, and technological force in the next century.” The United States wanted to win the race — and dominate everyone else in the process.

In The Promise of Access, Daniel Greene says the US government saw the internet as “an instrument of soft power,” especially in post-Soviet states that were emerging from communism. But it was also a great market opportunity. As internet access expanded globally, US companies got a head start (along with a massive influx of investment to accelerate their growth) as they planted their flags in international markets before foreign competitors could rise up to challenge them. And once they had the scale that came with global operations, it was easy to crush virtually any foreign upstart.

As Silicon Valley embarked on its global conquest, the United States supported it the entire way. Like in the Canadian examples, US diplomats are always ready to help their tech companies in international markets. Documents that leaked in 2022 showed how US ambassadors in France and the Netherlands had directly intervened to help Uber’s rollout in those countries, as it underpriced its service to push out local competitors and sought to steamroll local regulations. The United States also had problems with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and is currently trying to negotiate the ability to exempt firms from an international treaty on the responsible use of AI.

This is a common tactic for the United States. Last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren called out how her own government negotiates protections for US tech companies in international trade deals. She cited how the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement placed limitations on those governments’ ability to regulate cross-border data flows and review source code, and how companies are lobbying for similar provisions to be inserted in the 14-country Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. In 2019, the New York Times reported they’d also been included in a deal with Japan and were being pushed by US diplomats in negotiations with the European Union, the United Kingdom, and members of the World Trade Organization.

Those specific rules designed to limit governments’ ability to regulate the tech sector came together in the negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership under the Obama administration, and were continued under the Trump presidency. “Such rules open a Pandora’s box of issues for achieving public policy goals such as protecting privacy, competition, social and economic justice, and sustainable development,” explains lawyer Burcu Kilic in a study for the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

China’s tech success

The United States’ diplomatic advocacy for the tech industry and the broader system of liberalized international trade it fought for in the latter half of the twentieth century have been immensely beneficial to Silicon Valley. Not only could US tech companies easily spread their products around the world without worrying too much about local regulation, but foreign governments were constrained whenever they tried to respond lest they run afoul of international trade rules. That meant that as Silicon Valley firms took over international markets, local governments had few tools to stop them or to promote local competitors in their place.

In Western discourses, China’s internet policies are often positioned solely as attempts to limit the freedoms of Chinese people — and that can be part of the motivation — but it’s a politically convenient explanation for Western governments that ignores the more important economic dimension of its protectionist approach. Chinese tech is the main competitor to Silicon Valley’s dominance today because China limited the ability of US tech to take over the Chinese market, similar to how Japan and South Korea protected their automotive and electronics industries in the decades after World War II. That gave domestic firms the time they needed to develop into rivals that could compete not just within China, but internationally as well. And that’s exactly why the United States is so focused not just on China’s rising power, but how its tech companies are cutting into the global market share of US tech giants.

As digital services and tech hardware made by Chinese companies displaces those made by US firms, it also affects the power and influence of the United States. The US government exaggerates the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the operation of ByteDance and other Chinese tech companies, while downplaying the power it wields over its own tech firms. It’s as if they expect us to forget the Snowdon revelations about the vast surveillance apparatus developed by US intelligence agencies and the cooperation they received from US tech companies. Not to mention how US agencies buy their own citizens’ data from the same data brokers the Chinese government could use if it wanted to — all without TikTok being on people’s phones. Even Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen spoke openly about the counterespionage work done by the company in the interest of US national security when she testified before Congress in 2021.

The United States used to be firmly opposed to any attempt to restrict the free flow of information technology because it benefited US companies that were dominating global markets. It’s been changing its tune in recent years not because its convictions have changed, but because the real guiding principles were always misunderstood. The global spread of the internet was framed by US lawmakers and tech capitalists as being synonymous with the spread of freedom and democracy — concepts the United States loves to wrap itself in — when it was really about geopolitics and economic power. Now that those goals are threatened, it’s happy to embrace bans to protect its interests, while pressuring its allies to back them and, by extension, accept the position of US tech firms within their economies.

But as US power slowly declines, it’s not guaranteed that will work. Western allies may be broadly on side with many of the restrictions the United States has been placing on the Chinese tech sector, but much of the rest of the world is not — and many of those countries are growing much faster than Europe and North America. Meanwhile, US attempts to thwart China’s technological rise don’t seem to be working as planned. Despite the restrictions on access to chip technology, China is pouring billions into the sector and already starting to see tangible results.

The US is protecting its power

When US lawmakers discuss their plans for a TikTok ban, they often talk about it as a national security threat — that it will allow China, through ByteDance, to get access to US data and information — but as I’ve already outlined, that’s not a strong argument. It overestimates China’s ability and desire to use ByteDance to that end, and ignores how the Chinese government has much easier ways to get that data without compromising one of its own tech giants.

There’s also a suggestion that lawmakers are trying to curb the spread of pro-Palestine sentiment as Israel’s genocidal campaign continues and other content critical of the United States. While I’m sure some of the gerontocrats that govern the country are incensed to hear those stories in the media or from lobbyists — and maybe even falsely believe the CCP is pulling the algorithmic strings — the primary reason behind this latest push is still to protect US power and defend its tech industry. Congress isn’t seriously pursuing a federal privacy law, restrictions on data brokers, or regulations that would cover all social media companies doing what it accuses TikTok of doing — it’s just singling out one (Chinese) company.

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Just as the prospect of antitrust action against the titans of Silicon Valley started gaining traction in Washington, DC, the hysteria around China emerged as a key issue — and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. After finally coming in for some scrutiny, the tech industry had to find a bigger threat if it was going to protect itself. China was the perfect target. Facebook paid for an astroturf campaign to set the groundwork for the turn against TikTok to protect its control over social media, and the industry more broadly saw that if Chinese tech companies could be presented as a geopolitical problem, it would mean their monopolistic practices could be positioned as a necessary evil to counter that competition.

Silicon Valley has a long history of working with the US military, but the ties it has to the Pentagon today might still be surprising to someone watching the industry ten years ago. As the “New Cold War” rhetoric has gone into high gear, tech companies have been eager to get their own lucrative military contracts or government subsidies to develop new defense tech, find new ways to use AI to wage war, or help boost key industries like chip manufacturing. In short, positioning China as a geopolitical threat has been a boon for the tech industry, and any morals they once claimed to have are out the window as they cash in.

An end to US tech dominance

The global spread of the internet and dominance of the US tech industry that followed it also coincided with the United States’ several decades of global hegemony. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no other country that could challenge US power and it took full advantage by increasing its economic influence and, let’s be honest, launching a ton of unnecessary wars with disastrous consequences we’re still living with today. Now, as we transition toward a more multipolar world with other countries carving out regional spheres of influence, it’s not surprising that the “open” internet — meaning a US-dominated internet — is facing serious challenges.

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Maybe you’re an American and you think the TikTok ban makes sense. Sure, US tech companies can track virtually everything you (and people in many countries outside the US) do, will hand that data over to the government, and even sell it to a ton of data brokers — but at least they’re US companies. Chinese ones shouldn’t be allowed to do the same thing, at least to US residents. That line of thinking makes no sense to me, but I can see how people only thinking of their own narrow national interests can believe it.

But why should a Canadian, a European, a Brazilian, a South Korean, or people from any number of other countries outside the United States defend that reality or find it in any way acceptable? When previous forms of media like radio, film, or television and communications technologies like the telephone rolled out, countries often placed rules on foreign ownership and content distribution, but with the internet little of that was allowed. Countries were expected to accept US dominance of the new medium, yet now we see what happens when those US firms start to face real competition at home: the US government does exactly what it long said no one else was allowed to do and protects its domestic industry.

Whatever happens with the TikTok ban, it’s time to reconsider the myths that have been built up about the internet and digital technology that were designed to serve the interests of US tech companies. China is in the crosshairs today because it’s the only country that’s developed a domestic tech industry that can really give Silicon Valley a run for its money. Should the rest of the world, or even just Western countries, really be expected to accept the dominance of Facebook, Amazon, and Google in perpetuity? Instead of defending US tech companies from Chinese competition, we must work toward a vision of an internet (and a world) that rejects the dominance of either.