Musk for president? Swaying the American election Elon-style

Anti-woke Trump surrogate. Campaign mega-donor. Informal (yet) policy adviser. Restless media influencer. Online disinformation superspreader. Meet Elon Musk and dive into his unprecedented effort to sway a US presidential election.

Billionaires are always around US politics – the ultra-wealthy have never shied away from using their immense resources to drown the lawmakers in intense lobbying.

And yet, it’s rarely brazen. American tycoons who get involved in politics usually seek to stay in the background and work through dark money groups – it’s a shame, of course, because excess outside power is never healthy for any democracy.

But then there’s Elon Musk. He loves attention. He jumps on stage next to Trump, openly supports the orange ticket, bankrolls a superactive pro-Trump political action committee, and threatens zombie apocalypse if Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, wins on November 5th.

The Tesla, SpaceX, and X owner is now almost overshadowing Trump, actually – so much so that governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, Harris’s running mate, referred to Musk as Trump’s true “running mate.”

With so much money and – especially – unlimited control over X, his influential social media platform, Musk is betting quite a lot indeed on Trump’s win.

And even if the other side raises much more cash in donations large and small, according to a Federal Commission, Musk can still influence the presidential election in many other ways – and here, X helps a lot.

It’s not traditional media control

The very fact that Musk owns X means a high chance that he’s at least attempting to steer political conversations to his and Trump’s advantage. He calls the platform “a global digital town square” but makes sure the MAGA-type arguments are heard and seen first and foremost.

Reinstated far-right accounts have been freely roaming and spreading misinformation and deepfakes, and Musk himself has more than 200 million followers. He has also reportedly asked his engineers to boost his posts.

A large percentage of Musk’s tweets amplify false or misleading information, an investigation by The New York Times recently showed, and the people he interacts with are mostly pro-Trump accounts with a history of spreading hogwash.

At the same time, Musk is preventing the spread of content that could be harmful to the Trump campaign. When reporter Ken Klippenstein published a leaked dossier on vice-presidential candidate JD Vance in late September, X blocked links to it and suspended Klippenstein’s account.

Although conversations on X probably matter less than we think, they can still influence key groups of voters, especially in swing states, that could be directly micro-targeted with specific content.

“Musk could employ amplification tricks: using bots, engagement algorithms, or shadow-banning to subtly elevate conversations that benefit him politically. Another less-known tactic is curating influencer accounts, incentivizing creators whose views align with his goals,” James Allsopp, the CEO of AskZyro, an AI-powered personal assistant, told Cybernews.

“Another under-the-radar method could involve using AI to auto-suggest more right-leaning content to users who engage with centrist posts, slowly pulling them into more polarized discussions.”

In other words, you emphasize some voices while downplaying others, and hope for the best. Sure, Musk is not directly steering every conversation but he’s the one making the rules of engagement, tech expert Charlie Clark told Cybernews.

“This isn’t traditional media control – it’s an ecosystem where the loudest and most persistent voices win, and Musk is fine with letting that unfold because it ultimately positions him as a key gatekeeper of modern discourse,” said Clark.

Edward Luce, associate editor at Financial Times, isn’t that sure Musk is just a gatekeeper. This week, Luce scathingly posted on X: “Hard to overstate what a sinister figure Elon Musk is. Never seen one oligarch in a western democracy intervene on anything like this scale with unending Goebbels-grade lies.”

Where’s all the voter data from?

And Musk may also be using X in an even more nefarious way. It’s related to Musk’s super PAC, called America PAC, which is handling Trump’s ground game in key battlefield states like Arizona, Nevada, or Pennsylvania.

The billionaire himself has already funneled at least $132 million of his own money into the super PAC. It’s not illegal. Well, such extravagant campaign financing wouldn’t be OK in most other countries – but it is in the US.

The issue is, though, how is Musk’s cash used. Another conservative group Building America’s Future, for example, has run targeted ads against Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff as “America’s pro-Israel power couple” in areas of Michigan with large numbers of Arab and Muslim voters.

“Hard to overstate what a sinister figure Elon Musk is. Never seen one oligarch in a western democracy intervene on anything like this scale with unending Goebbels-grade lies.”

Edward Luce.

That particular group is simultaneously running ads aimed at Pennsylvania’s Jewish voters that accuse Harris of being too soft on the Palestinians.

Finally, the America PAC has now for a week been awarding $1 million to registered swing state voters who sign a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.

It’s illegal to pay people to register to vote, and the Justice Department has already warned America PAC that the initiative might violate federal laws, the NYT said. The excuse is laughable – allegedly, the group merely pays people who sign a petition.

But Musk himself has said that one of his goals was to register voters, and, most importantly, the petition is only open to registered voters in swing states.

The effort might soon be shut down by regulators, and the whole point of it seems dubious – people can register as voters but still vote for the other candidate. However, that may not even be the point, John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, recently warned in a X thread.

You've probably heard about Musk's petition.

It's run on the same website that ran bait-and-switch voter registration back in August.

They had to shut it down.

The goal then: probably soak up detailed voter data.

Remember, lots of shady micro-targeting is going on right now… pic.twitter.com/I0nblkvswA

undefined John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) October 21, 2024

“You've probably heard about Musk's petition. It's run on the same website that ran bait-and-switch voter registration back in August. They had to shut it down. The goal then: probably soak up detailed voter data, said Scott-Railton.

“Remember, lots of shady micro-targeting is going on right now from Musk-backed PACs. And now? Data collection is again a key priority.”

According to the researcher, there’s a possibility that PACs backed by Musk have special access to X’s data. Cash offers to voters could show how important Musk thinks voter data is – and X is indeed a goldmine of political data.

Trump’s victory would mean rewards

“It is absolutely against federal law for Musk to essentially buy votes in this way, and he should be held accountable under both state and federal election laws,” Mike Nellis, a marketing professional and one of the organizers of the “White Dudes for Haris” campaign.

It’s, of course, natural for a Harris supporter to complain about Musk’s behavior. But Ben Michael, an attorney in Texas, points out: “Even if Musk faces serious criminal charges here, he is quite literally the richest person in the world, and as such, he will easily be able to afford the very best legal counsel possible.”

Besides, “he has the financial power to more effectively sway public opinion to his favor and get away with deals rather than doing hard time,” Michael adds.

Supporting the Trump ticket is also a way to turn financial power into political power. A lot of commentary revolves around Musk’s willingness to score lower taxes for his businesses after and if Trump wins – but it’s a bit more ambitious.

Paris Max, a tech critic, neatly summed the status quo up recently on his blog: “If Trump wins, Musk will be rewarded with a government position, a favorable regulatory environment, and plenty of subsidies for his businesses.”

Musk, rumored to be a committed sovereign, has long been battling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), seeking to unshackle his companies from safety regulations.

There’s a lot to worry about. Just recently, SpaceX was alleged to have broken launch safety protocols, and the EPA has launched investigations into whether the firm was dumping wastewater into the ecosystem.

Tesla brags about self-driving robotaxis but the company’s claims seem dubious to federal regulators, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating 2.4 million Tesla vehicles following crashes linked to its Full Self-Driving system. The Cybertruck is a disaster.

All this could go away if the victorious Trump camp kept its promise to appoint Musk. In mid-October, Trump said on Fox News he would create a new position called “secretary of cost-cutting” – essentially, Musk would be overseeing the overseers.

Finally, investigative journalists at The Lever say that thanks to a provision buried in the tax code, Musk could reap one of the largest personalized tax breaks in American history. The special benefit is only available to federal officials – and Musk would be one.

Regular conversations with Putin

To be sure, Trump could just as easily lose – the race is really close at the moment, and the battle is especially furious in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. What then?

Well, one could practically be sure that Trump would not concede – just like in 2020. And his allies, including Musk, are already using X to spread various conspiracy theories – that mail ballots are too risky (they’re not) or that non-citizens are voting (they’re no).

Researchers at CBS just found that among hundreds of posts by Musk about election security this year, 55% either contain misleading or false statements, or amplify posts that do this.

But even if Harris does win and is successfully inaugurated in January, Musk might get to keep his license to essentially do whatever he wants. The US government can’t be too happy about it – but Musk’s influence over it is extraordinary.

SpaceX effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule, the Pentagon relies on Musk for his Starlink satellites, Tesla still gets federal benefits – in all, his companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.

Researchers at CBS just found that among hundreds of posts by Musk about election security this year, 55% either contain misleading or false statements, or amplify posts that do this.

In fact, legal experts who talked to The New York Times recently, say that Musk’s interactions with the federal government are so broad it might not be possible for him to serve as a prominent adviser to Trump without creating major conflicts of interest.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk has even been in regular contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin since late 2022. They have allegedly discussed both business and geopolitical tensions.

Even though this is obviously a big national-security issue as Putin’s Russia is one of America’s chief adversaries, Musk can’t really be touched – only scolded in private. He even has a security clearance that allows him access to certain classified information.

And again, the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. That means that Musk can keep criticizing US military aid to Ukraine – just like Trump does.

“It’s a problem when a billionaire with so much influence can try to shape an election in his favor and bend the system to his own advantage. We have to ensure that no one is above the law and that no individual has so much power that they can control the federal government from the outside,” Nellis told Cybernews.