“I think he knows that what big tech companies have spent decades worrying about, which is essentially how to moderate or how to organize speech on this crazy scale, that’s not a problem,” said Magalhaes. “That’s an opportunity for him.”

Since the election, Musk has not disappeared into the shadows, content with backroom meetings and covert influence. Instead, he participated in the calls foreign leadersweighed to select personnel for the new administrationand threatened to use the America PAC to fund primary challenges against lawmakers who don’t support Trump’s (and his) agenda.

Last November, Trump announced that Musk would co-chair a new federal advisory committee called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, like memecoin)responsible for cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. (Eliminating all discretionary federal spending, including defense, will not achieve this goal.) The committee doesn’t exist yet, but Musk is already using his presence in X and this new adjacent government, if insignificant, position to dictate policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, on paper, his estimated wealth reportedly increased to about $170 billion after the election.

“He’s put (his ownership of X) in a government position where his ability to influence policy that affects all of his business interests is enormous. And that could pay huge financial dividends, “said Phil Napoli, a professor of public policy at Duke University. “I think that’s the scariest thing that could happen, if most of these platforms take that signal from Musk.”

Early returns suggest other technology leaders are likely to follow suit. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos THERE visited Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. Meta officials say Zuckerberg wants to taking an “active role” to help shape the Trump administration’s tech policies.

“Every time there is a new government, big capitalism, big money, try to put themselves in a position to benefit from it. And I think that’s what they are doing,” said Magalhaes. And Musk’s use of X for clearly political purposes could prompt the Trump administration to expect similar behavior from other companies, he said. “I think in that sense it’s a blueprint .”

Musk’s ambitions are clearly not limited to the US. Since the election he has visited the UK to meet with far-right politicians there and posted about his support for Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany. Earlier this year he tried to defy the court order in Brazil ordered X to remove some far-right accounts that the court said were undermining the integrity of the country’s elections.

All of this means that Musk’s political control is not just a matter of his closeness to Trump. Even if the two titanic egos have many predicted explosions, Musk’s influence will be felt in the new coziness between Silicon Valley and the MAGA movement, and in any part of the world he chooses to look.

In a way, it’s a return to familiar ground. Even before buying Twitter in 2022, Musk was a super user, one of the most followed people on the platform. His Tweets can affect stock prices for his other companies, especially Teslaand his favorite memecoin, Dogecoin. Trump, similarly, was an active Twitter user before becoming president, and during his first presidency he is famous for making policy by tweet. It now appears that the next four years, at least, will see more management by post on social media—now by another shitposter.