Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, runs like six corporations. It’s a humorous factor, provided that even earlier than his DOGE hatchet job to the federal government, he spent all day on X spouting off. However he did discover time to make disastrous selections like greenlighting the Cybertruck and eliminating all steering wheel stalks in his automobiles—all issues for Tesla even earlier than he outed himself as a Nazi.
Since its Dec. 17, 2024 excessive of virtually $480, the inventory is down round 45%, right down to $263 as of Friday’s shut. Given how a lot of Musk’s internet price is tied to Tesla, that has shaved $121 billion from his excessive of $464 billion. Sadly, he has loads of cash left over to proceed his supervillain quest to destroy the world.
However he positive is making an attempt his darndest to kill his different corporations.
Over the weekend, following the lead of the Trump administration, he threatened Ukraine with pulling its entry to Starlink—the SpaceX web service powered by a constellation of satellites, that has given Ukraine the power to carefully coordinate fight actions within the nation’s entrance strains.
“I literally challenged Putin to one on one physical combat over Ukraine and my Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” he tweeted. Good Starlink you’ve got there. Certain could be a disgrace if one thing occurred to it.
This infuriated Europeans like Polish Overseas Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who tweeted, “Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year. The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
Elegant as ever, Musk responded, “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the price. And there’s no substitute for Starlink.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was simply as a lot of an asshole, tweeting, “No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink. And say thank you because without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”
Once more, Poland pays for Starlink. The one “thank you” ought to be from Starlink, for having a $50 million account with the Poles.
To be very clear, Starlink isn’t charity for Ukraine. Each terminal is paid for as a result of it’s a enterprise transaction. However identical to Europeans are ditching American arms producers now that the U.S. is an unreliable associate, it has additionally spurred them to legitimately discover an alternate to Starlink. Whereas the EU’s IRIS2 system isn’t scheduled to be operational till 2030, Musk’s shenanigans are already spurring discuss rushing up that timetable. Europe not faces a single foe from the east. The US is now actively belligerent to its west.
Musk is correct that nothing matches Starlink’s present capabilities, however he’s simply executed every part attainable to destroy his worldwide enterprise.
Italy was about to ink a deal to spend $1.6 billion for its personal Starlink community. After threatening Ukraine with the lack of the service, that deal is now seemingly useless. A determined Musk is now begging Italian President Sergio Mattarella for a gathering to salvage the deal. How do we all know he’s determined? Look what he tweeted:
“It would be an honor to speak with President Mattarella.”
Fairly the far cry from “be quiet, small man.” Musk might not care a few $50 million Polish contract, however oh, now he could be so “honored” to satisfy with the Italians given a $1.6 billion deal has been pulled.
Imagine it or not, this isn’t the most important Starlink deal SpaceX has misplaced attributable to Musk’s antics.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is head of América Móvil, an enormous cellular community supplier in Latin America. In late January, a big right-wing X account tweeted that Slim “is known to have significant ties to the drug cartels in Mexico. You don’t become a billionaire in Mexico without being part of the network that is controlled and protected.” Musk approvingly retweeted it.
5 minutes later, Slim cancelled a Starlink contract price $7.5 billion, and an hour later, introduced a brand new $22 billion funding in each European and Chinese language suppliers to construct a Starlink-like alternative.
The board of administrators at Musk’s corporations are crammed along with his members of the family, buddies, and cronies. However at what level do they see the harm he’s doing to the businesses and resolve sufficient is sufficient.
Will $9 billion in misplaced contracts for SpaceX spur some form of response from its board? On condition that Tesla shedding a whole lot of billions of market cap hasn’t moved Tesla’s board to behave, nobody ought to maintain their breath.
However his antics are taking a toll on his personal internet price, and whereas he’ll at all times have loads of cash for his evil deeds, the extra his corporations endure, the better the possibility he would possibly, in some unspecified time in the future, endure some penalties.
