“The tycoons are unleashed” : here is what written The New York Times after the acquisition of Twitter, for 44 billion dollars, by Elon Musk. “It used to be that when a tech boss wanted to buy something big, they needed a company to do it, explains the American daily. This time, it’s a single man personally offering himself what 240 million people around the world regularly use.” And that changes everything.
Elon Musk is no longer just the richest man in the world, he also enjoys inordinate power which is seriously beginning to worry the foreign press (and us with it). The aggressive takeover of Twitter (followed, a few days later, by the brutal dismissal of half of the social network’s workforce) was the straw that broke the camel’s back, revealing the omnipotence of these billionaires of the tech which are increasingly replacing States and which will become increasingly difficult to thwart.
“We are the playthings of billionaires rather than the big corporations that embodied the XXe century, says a historian New York Times. And it is the titans of technology who lead the dance.” The same historian denounces the total absence of opposition to these new “masters of the world”.
They made their fortune in Silicon Valley, but their influence now extends far beyond that. We find them in the media, in space programs, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But also in politics: Elon Musk, always, who took up the cause of the Republicans during the mid-term elections of November 8; Peter Thiel and the “PayPal Mafia”, as they are nicknamed The New Republic, who have invested millions of dollars in campaign finance for extremist right-wing candidates in the United States. Mark Zuckerberg, he wanted to convince us to go live in a metaverse (compromise bet, for the moment). Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Warren Buffett remain, for their part, the spearheads of a movement, philanthrocapitalism, which is increasingly criticized. The two billionaires may have invested massively in charity, education, health…, they are, ultimately, even richer, say their detractors, quoted by the magazine Vox.
Among all these figures, it is obviously the uncontrollable Elon Musk who arouses the most fears. Brilliant and whimsical, according to the portrait that paints The Washington Post in the well-documented article that opens our dossier, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX has become dangerous in the eyes of many American politicians. “In October, between the acquisition of Twitter, the launch of four astronauts and a new salvo of 54 satellites into space, Elon Musk still found time to propose peace plans for Taiwan and Ukraine, alienating the leaders of these countries while triggering the ire of Washington”, writes the daily.
“It owns and controls more than 3,000 satellites orbiting the Earth – far more than any state.”
The diary mostly portrays an eccentric, self-absorbed and versatile boss who brags d’“to improve the future of humanity” with real technological innovations but also empty promises.
After the takeover of Twitter, a hate campaign spilled onto the social network to salute the takeover by the billionaire boss and his promises of “release” speech on the platform, explains CNN. Since then, tens of thousands of Internet users have left Twitter, when many advertisers suspended their campaign given the brutality of its methods. Did Elon Musk go too far? This is the subject of this file.
As I write these lines, Tuesday November 8, the results of the midterms have not reached us. Largely favored by the polls, the Republicans seemed able to win at least the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, promising two years of political confusion in the United States. For lack of results, we could not devote the front page to it. We will come back to this extensively next week. In the meantime, there is no doubt that Elon Musk and his billionaire peers will have more than their share in the chaos that lies ahead.