Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Elon Musk could be putting Tesla people in a real pickle, and not in the ways you may be thinking. Or maybe it’s just a not-very-thought-out “yeah, let’s do it!” after some mixture of imbibed potions and would never actually happen. Either way, since he’s put it out there, let’s quickly explore a few scenarios for Musk and Tesla.
First, what the heck are we talking about?
A couple of days ago, Elon Musk posted this:
I am willing to serve pic.twitter.com/BJhGbcA2e0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024
That was in the midst of many other right-wing posts, including claiming that Donald Trump didn’t call neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people” in 2017 (oy vey) and lamenting that gun emojis look more and more like toy guns rather than real guns.
The point of this tweet embedded above appears to be that Elon Musk would happily serve as the head of a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Naturally, that’s a reference to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency Musk hyped up for years, so there is a question of whether this is all a joke, but that seems unlikely since he says “I am willing to serve” and has indicated elsewhere that he could work in a Trump administration on this type of thing.
The first things that came to mind for me from this were:
Tesla fans and shareholders may be happy with Musk getting into government under the assumption that he could influence things from there to help Tesla in various ways.
However, Musk would need to cut back significantly on his Tesla work if he took that job, and most Tesla fans and shareholders still see him as critical to progress in the company. (There are many others who have come to conclude the opposite, but the recent shareholder vote seems to indicate those people are in the minority.)
Would the same people who would be happy about Musk getting that job be happy about him stepping back from Tesla (not to mention X, Neuralink, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and whatever other ventures I’m forgetting now)?
However, I wasn’t even thinking deeply enough about this. As CNN points out, “Anything’s possible, of course, in a Trump 2.0 White House. But to take on any major role in that administration, Musk would have a mountain of conflicts of interest to climb.” Ah, yeah, you can’t just work in the US government while running a business — there are conflicts of interest with that. (Not to say Trump wouldn’t work to dismantle them, but that’s the story today.)
“By law (and by common sense), you can’t work on government matters that would affect your own personal finances. That’s a big problem for someone like Musk, whose $245 billion fortune is largely tied up in shares of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), along with his holdings in the fields of biotech, artificial intelligence, satellite communications and road infrastructure projects.”
Yes, and, aside from Tesla, which is regulated by various government agencies just like other car companies, SpaceX gets huge contracts from the US government. How would Musk disentangle himself from all of that? By selling his shares in these companies? Hahaha, that’s not happening. “Much would depend on what the job is and how it relates to his economic interest,” said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School. “Is there anything that wouldn’t relate to his economic interests? I’m not sure what that would be.”
It seems to me this is another not-very-thought-out idea from Trump and Musk aimed at two things: getting more attention and support for themselves. At the same time, both are happy — if not eager — to break rules, even laws, and spend the consequences of that employing more lawyers. So, who knows what they would push and try? Still, just as Dogecoin never went to the moon like Musk hyped for months or even years, don’t expect Musk to enter government service.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Videos
[embedded content]
Advertisement
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
Share this story!