Blog

Two weeks ago, Time magazine selected Donald Trump as its 2024 “Person of the Year.” A week later, the Financial Times did the same, bestowing on Trump the identical title, “Person of the Year.” Time pointed out that Trump’s “rebirth” was “unparalleled in American history.”The Financial Times cited a longtime Trump acolyte, Roger Stone, who proclaimed, “We are living in the age of Trump.”

But their selection is silly! Trump Person of the Year in 2024?! Give me a break. All the man managed to do in the last twelve months was to get reelected president of the United States. OK, I’ll grant it was not a small success. But what he’ll do when he moves back into the White House, not to mention what he’ll be able to accomplish, remains uncertain. Besides, that’s next year, not this one.

My selection as Leader of the Year 2024 is obvious. So glaringly, blindly, obvious, that I’m sure you’ve guessed it. Elon Musk.

Some of you might remember from previous years that my selection for Leader of the Year is based on only one criterion – impact. No matter if the impact is positive or negative, good or bad, the single question that pertains is which leader was most impactful during the twelve months preceding.

Musk is an exceedingly rare bird – a leader who leads in more than one lane. He is so singular a leader that not only does he lead in more than one lane, he does so simultaneously.

Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in business – and in politics. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in the United States – and around the world. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is (by far) the richest man in the world – and because he has one of the world’s biggest megaphones. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in technology – and in industry. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change on earth – and in space. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in human intelligence – and in artificial intelligence. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is exceedingly ambitious – and because he is exceedingly aggressive. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is a genius – and an activist.

In 2024 Elon Musk decided to make the reelection of Donald Trump a pet project. I do not claim that Musk is single handedly responsible for Trump’s triumph. I do claim that Musk’s support was important, very important. He poured over a quarter of a billion dollars into Republican campaign coffers which made Musk the single largest underwriter of a political campaign ever. Moreover, he used his name, and his fame, and X, which he owns, regularly and relentlessly to make Trump’s case. Finally, like Trump, Musk’s relationship to the truth is, shall we say, fluid. This came in handy as Musk regularly repeated whatever Trump’s lies, first and foremost that he, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election.      

As Musk greased Trump’s palm so Trump greased Musk’s. For weeks after the election Musk effectively took up residence at Mar-a-Lago, the president elect’s palace in Palm Beach. For weeks after the election Musk served as one of Trump’s closest advisers. For weeks after the election decisions were made about how officially to embed Musk in the machinery of government. And for weeks after the election Musk felt increasingly entitled to intrude not just on the workings of the executive branch but on those of the legislative one.

But does Musk need Trump to leave his stamp? Not at all. It helps that Musk now has an official role in Washington. That he, along with Vivek Ramasamy, has been anointed co-leader of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency.” Still, it’s impossible to tell how that will go. Anyway, my point is, no matter. Musk’s fingerprints are already all over the federal government.

The New York Times describes his influence – his influence now, before Trump becomes president again – as “extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative.” An example: Musk’s rocket company, Space X, “effectively dictates” NASA’s rocket launch schedule. Another example: Musk’s companies have already been promised some $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 different federal agencies.   

There is much about Musk that is not admirable. He has had 12 children with three different women and seems largely absent as both partner and father. He is known in recent years to have used drugs including LSD, cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy and mushrooms. He and Space X have reportedly repeatedly failed to comply with protocols aimed at protecting state secrets. He has a reputation as an erratic, excessively demanding and sometimes bullying employer. And now he is inserting himself, regularly and sometimes outrageously, into politics both at home and abroad. At home he posted over 150 times on X to demand that congressional Republicans reject a bipartisan spending deal crafted to avoid a government shutdown. And abroad he strongly aligned himself with Germany’s far-right party, the AfD, which has ties to neo-Nazis and has been classified by the German government as “confirmed extremist.” Notwithstanding, Musk posted to X, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

Impossible to say for how long Musk’s now knee-deep involvement in domestic and foreign politics will last. But if it does not, no worries. He’s got plenty to keep him busy. His companies include but are not limited to 1) Tesla; 2) Space X; 3) X; 4) The Boring Company; 5) Neuralink; and 6) xAI.

You might not love or even like him. You might not admire or even respect him. But no matter. In 2024 no leader had as great an impact on the planet we inhabit than Elon Musk.

Who knows why the mainstream media failed to level with the American people? Failed to tell us the truth about how frail and feeble Joe Biden was during the entirety of his presidency.

Ideally, we would anyway have known. Ideally leading Democrats, among which I include members of the House and Senate, should have said, publicly, that under no circumstances should Biden run again in 2024. For neither his physical nor mental health was up to being chief executive of the United States of America for another four years.    

Thanks to outstanding investigative journalism by four Wall Street Journal reporters – their recent piece was based on some 50 interviews – we are finally getting a sense of how, from day one of his presidency, Biden was protected from prying eyes by family and close aides. But we the people were not protected. We were not informed and so remained ignorant of Biden’s failing health until we saw for ourselves, in his “debate” last June with Donald Trump.   

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was the wife of President Woodrow Wilson. After he was felled by a stroke, she thought to protect him by concealing from nearly everyone his true condition. But that was then – in the early 20^th century when veils of secrecy and silence still shielded the high and mighty. Now though such niceties are supposed no longer to exist. Now the American public is supposed to be told if the president is failing.

Here is some of what we did not know in 2021, or in 2022, or in 2023, or for most of 2024.

• That during the 2020 presidential campaign it was suggested to Jill Biden she limit her activities, so her husband would not seem sluggish in comparison.
• That visitors to the Biden White House were instructed to keep their meetings short and focused.
• That even the most important members of the president’s cabinet – for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin- saw him only infrequently, or very infrequently, especially during his second two years in the White House.
• That Biden often depended on top aides to serve as stand-ins.
• That these same aides shielded the president from negative press coverage.
• That even as the 2024 campaign ramped up, Biden was not in touch with his own pollsters.
• That limits were set on to whom Biden spoke, on what he was told, and on what information he was given.  
• That Biden had good days and bad days. That on his bad days he could not remember key lines or simple instructions, such as where to enter and exit a stage. Similarly, on some bad days meetings were simply canceled. 
• That during his four years in office Biden held only nine full cabinet meetings. (This year was only one.) This in comparison with, for example, his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, who held 25.
• That Biden engaged in far fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of his seven predecessors. President Barack Obama had 570 in total – this in contrast to, as of last summer, Biden’s 164.
• That Biden was kept at a distance not only from the press but from Congress – and from some of his own aides.

It can be argued and often is that during his one term Biden chalked up an impressive list of accomplishments. But the Democrats were unable to capitalize on them in the election. And now Biden has essentially exited the national stage while his successor is already front and center. The incumbent president has evolved into an exaggerated version of what he has been all along: not so much a lame duck as a missing duck.

People need a leader. People want a leader. The American people are no exception. We need a president. We want a president. But even during his four years in the Oval Office Joe Biden was more spectral than palpable – while Trump was and is the opposite. Trump was never an absence – even in exile he was a presence. Now as throughout he looms.  

I like the idea of a “leadership class.” It’s not a phrase I coined, but rather columnist and commentator David Brooks. I first noticed he used it several years ago – it reappears big time in a piece he wrote for this month’s Atlantic. The article is titled, “How the Ivy League Broke America: The Meritocracy isn’t Working. We Need Something New.”

When Brooks uses the term “leadership class” he refers to the “meritocracy” that’s in the title of his piece. Or he alludes to the “elite,” another word he uses interchangeably both with “leadership class” and “meritocracy.” At one point in the article he asks, “Did we get a better elite?” At another he lists the “six sins of the meritocracy.” And at still another he concludes, “It’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites.” In short, Brooks uses “leadership class,” and “meritocracy,” and “elite” synonymously.

My intention is not to criticize Brooks’s writing. Instead I am asking if those who constitute America’s “leadership class” are different from – or should be considered different from – those who constitute America’s “meritocracies” and its “elites.”

My question is about definition. Not so much the definition of a meritocracy, or of an elite, as of a “leader.”  As anyone who has been – as I have – around the leadership block for years knows, the words “leader” and “leadership” are plagued by literally hundreds of different definitions. Usually though by no means always the word “leader” refers to someone who is in a leadership role. And usually though by no means always the word “leadership” refers to someone in a leadership role who is controlling or directing their followers.

But not every member of either a meritocracy or of an elite is in a leadership role or is exercising leadership. To be at the top of a meritocracy means you have clambered up the ladder due to your intelligence, skill, or ability. It does not mean that you necessarily are controlling or directing anyone. Similarly, an elite. You are in the top tier of some group or organization because of some attribute or asset you have, not because you are in any way, necessarily, engaging with others.

Let’s be clear. Leadership is a relationship. You cannot be a leader without at least one follower. The same does not however apply either to those who are members of meritocracies or of elites. In neither of these cases is any relationship necessary or implied.

Let’s not, though, throw out the baby with the bathwater. The idea of a “leadership class” is valuable – as is the term. So, let’s confine members of the leadership class to those who are in a leadership role and, or, who get others to follow where they lead. In most cases leaders get their followers to follow because they, the former, rank higher than the latter. But in some cases, leaders get their followers to follow without the privileges and advantages of rank, of title. So long as Cindy can get Sam to go along, she is a leader, and he is a follower. But once Sam balks, once he refuses to do her bidding, it’s over. She has dropped out of the leadership class.

In recent days some of us have had the excruciating if vicarious experience of bearing witness to evil. Specifically, evil ordered by Syria’s ousted leader, Bashar al-Assad. The most infamous example is film taken at Sednaya Prison, not far from Damascus, where Assad’s government detained tens of thousands, torturing and killing them as the New York Times reported, “on an industrial scale.”

What happened in Sednaya is without exception described as crimes of which Assad was guilty. Which he was.

But let’s be clear. He did not – he did not literally – commit these crimes. So far as we know Assad kept his distance – he did not personally torture or kill anyone. Instead, the pain and suffering were inflicted by his followers. By people who in other circumstances might have been perfectly normal, but who in this circumstance committed crimes of obedience.

There is a considerable literature on obedience to authority when authority is bad. Some of the best-known works are based on social science experiments conducted in the 1960s and ‘70s by, most famously, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.

But for all the knowledge that’s been accumulated since then about followers as agents of atrocity, it remains easier for us, much easier, psychologically, to attribute evil to a single individual. To the leader. Why? First, because it simplifies a process that is exceedingly complex. Second, more importantly, because it lets us, people like you and me, off the hook.

We prefer to think that good people would never, could never, turn evil. But the evidence suggests that what we prefer to think is wrong.

—————————————————

Note: The phrase “agents of atrocity” is the title of a book by Neil Mitchell.   

A week ago, most people did not know the name Bashar al-Assad. Since then, the man who was president of Syria for almost a quarter century is known to almost everyone everywhere who follows the news. The overthrow of him and his regime, which had ruled Syria with unmitigated brutality, has been cause for cautious celebration both at home and wherever else in the world repression is reviled. Among other sins against Syrians, Assad tortured tens of thousands in brutal prisons and used poison gas as punishment for going against him. He was, as I wrote in an earlier post, “the worst of the worst.” A totalitarian tyrant. 

This brings me to my present point – which is that the leadership industry ignores nearly entirely the Assads of the world. Nearly all leadership courses and programs, centers and institutes, books and videos, focus on developing good leaders. Nearly no leadership courses and programs, centers and institutes, books and videos, focus on precluding bad leaders. On coming to understand how bad leaders happen – Assad was able to subjugate more than 23 million people – so that we can learn how to stop or at least slow them.*

I have been studying bad leadership – and bad followership – for over a quarter century. My most recent book, published earlier this year, is titled, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers. This year I also published an article in a journal, Leadership, titled as is this post, “Bad Leadership – Why We Steer Clear.” Anyone curious to know why the leadership industry has for the entirety of its approximately 50-year history avoided the dark side, should click on the link below.

*The fact that Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria for almost thirty years is relevant to the reign of his son, though not to the point of this post.

President-elect Donald Trump has more malleable a mind than he prefers to project. On the surface he seems certain of every syllable he speaks, persuaded by the truth of his every word. But in fact, he is not. He changes his views or adapts his stance as circumstances dictate. On abortion, for example, over the years Trump has been consistently inconsistent.  

To this general rule there is, however, an exception. An exception that amounts to an idee fixe – an idea so firmly fixed over so long a period it has become a conviction, even an obsession. Whether this obsession conforms to the truth or not no longer matters. To Trump it feels true, so now it is true.

The idee fixe to which I refer is the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s truth is that four years ago he, not Joe Biden, won. Anything that threatens this truth, and anyone who questions it, is anathema. It, they, drive Trump nuts. They threaten his identity which is that though he might be many bad things – an inveterate fraudster, a chronic liar, even a convicted criminal – the one thing he is not now and never was, is “a loser.” Trump cannot bear the idea that he would ever lose any competition, including an election, to anyone.

His psychological vulnerability on this issue was in full view again this past weekend, during his “Meet the Press” interview with Kristin Welker. He was calm and measured on the subjects of, for example, tariffs, immigration, and Ukraine. He was neither calm nor measured on any subject relating to the 2020 election. This included the congressional committee tasked with investigating the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol. In discussing the committee Trump became animated and his face furious. He especially attacked committee leaders Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, saying that both did something “inexcusable,” saying that both “lied,” and that both should “go to jail.” As to the rest of the committee, all were “political thugs,” all were “creeps.”

Should we care that Trump has an idee fixe? That on this one subject, the outcome of the 2020 election, his ego remains frighteningly fragile? Yes. For if ever the second Trump administration does engage in retribution, it will be in this one area, on this one subject. It will be against anyone who dared to challenge his conviction that he won against Joe Biden. And against anyone who dared to question anything he said, or did, between Election Day November 2020 and Inauguration Day January 2021.

Americans are accustomed to violence. But this particular murder was a shock. It was a street crime all right, but an unfamiliar one. This one seems a targeted killing and this time seems the target was a leader. A leader of national repute, the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest healthcare insurers. The dead man’s name was Brian Thompson, he was 50 years old, a husband and the father of two.

Several things distinguish Thompson’s death from that of other murder victims. I’ll name three. First, his assassination, in front of New York City’s Hilton Hotel, led to a nationwide manhunt that still has not been resolved. Second, his prominence has meant his murder made and continues to make national news. And third, his violent death led to feelings of sadness and dismay – and to ones of fury and frustration. Fury especially not at the killer but at his victim.

The murder was a stunner – and so has been the response. The Wall Street Journal said the “online jubilation” over Thompson’s death was a “new low” in social-media culture. The New York Times headline claimed the “rage and glee” in response to Thompson’s killing was “alarming.”  The Financial Times quoted a lecturer at Columbia University who tweeted, “Today we mourn the deaths of 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.” And experts in online threats were said to be “pretty disturbed” by the “glorification of the murder” of Brian Thompson and the “lionization of the shooter.”

What are we to make of this? So far, the explanation for the “rage and glee” at Thompson’s death has been attributed solely to the glaring deficits in America’s healthcare system – exemplified and personified by the nation’s healthcare insurers. Thompson was an industry leader who is presumed to have been assassinated by a furious follower. A follower furious at UnitedHealthcare for denying his claim and ruining his life.

Maybe. But maybe not. Unless and until the killer is caught, we can only speculate, we cannot know. And even then, can we trust the killer to tell us what motivated him? Can any man know what makes him a murderer?

Meantime, large numbers of ordinary people are so angry at what’s gone wrong that for them the murder of a leader is a source of satisfaction. Seems to me though that the anger is less specific than it is general. That the anger is less about the healthcare system than it is about the system generally. About a system in which the few who are very, very, very rich are forever getting richer while many of the rest are struggling to stay afloat. The likelihood is that Brian Thompson was murdered not because of what he did but because of what he stood for.             

No, I am not an oracle. I did not know three days ago, when I posted the piece of the above title, that in a flash would be pushed from his post Syria’s longtime tyrant, Bashar El-Assad.

I was though signaling the Zeitgeist, the mood of the moment when people in positions of power best watch their backs lest they get stabbed in the back. Not literally, of course, Though just last week was shot in the back – literally – the CEO of Unted Healthcare, Brian Thompson. But stabbed in the back metaphorically – as just last week was for example Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger is the once widely admired CEO of Intel who, after a disappointing performance, was sacked so far as we can tell as suddenly as unceremoniously.

But, back to Bashar. No need for me here to describe him in detail. Suffice it to write he was among the worst of the worst. He was not among the cast of characters in my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse. But heaven knows he qualified.

Furious followers are a force to be reckoned with.

• Lesson learned by South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol.
• Lesson learned by Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.
• Lesson learned by United States President Donald Trump?

For suddenly declaring martial law in a country recently grown accustomed to democracy, Yoon was faced with riots in the streets and in the National Assembly.  Moreover, within hours his own People Power Party voted unanimously to strike down his infuriating imposition of martial law. Now Yoon is hearing calls, loud calls, for his impeachment. The rapidity with which he was forced to pay the piper was as if his followers had read Leadership from Bad to Worse. As I write in the book, the sooner bad leadership is stopped not only the better to do, but the easier to do.

For his draconian crackdown Kobakhidze plunged his country into chaos. The flash point was his government’s decision to delay any attempt to join the European Union. But the real issue is a far larger one – the tension between autocracy and democracy. Georgia’s scant acquaintance with the latter makes it hard to resist the former, promulgated by its neighbor, Powerhouse Putin. But Kobakhidze’s Putinesque tactics will continue to face resistance – which will continue to require he use force to shut his followers up.

For some of his outrageous nominees to Cabinet posts and other top jobs, Donald Trump is facing blowback. Polite blowback. Cautious blowback. Blowback behind closed doors. But blowback, even resistance, nevertheless. Trump has become accustomed to getting his way. Specifically, with members of his Republican Party who have been nearly entirely supine for nearly a decade. Almost without exception they have been willing to do his bidding. But if I were him, I would not assume that past is prologue. If I were him, I would watch my back and clutch my crown.

Added note: Silly me. I did not foresee – this happened just a few hours ago – that in keeping with the point of this post, France’s Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, would be ousted from his post barely three months after taking office.

A few months ago, there was a piece in the Financial Times titled, “Political Leaders Must Push Back Against Tech Bullies.” Written by Marietje Schaake, a director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, she pointed out that tech executives have “increasingly resorted to threatening officials and governments over democratically legitimate proposals that don’t suit their business models.” Her advice to political leaders was to get tough! Push back hard against threats made by “tech bullies” to withhold investments or pull out of markets. She warned government leaders that their “independence and authority” were at stake.

She’s right. In theory it’s important that democracies ensure that government controls business, not the other way around. Trouble is the problem is not in theory; it’s in practice. How is a top political leader supposed to manage a top tech company leader if the former has no idea what the latter is doing? No idea of how the cloud works. Hardly any idea of what a data center is or even an algorithm. Only a weak idea of what artificial intelligence can do today – and not the slightest conception of what AI will be capable of tomorrow.

No wonder that tech leaders have been bullying political leaders or trying to for years. In addition to their knowledge-power, tech leaders have money-power. Lots of it. Elon Musk’s financial support for the candidacy of former president Donald Trump was only the most visible recent example of the role that American tech titans now play in American politics, freely using their money in addition to their expertise to sway voters’ preferences and shape political outcomes.

Musk is also the most visible example of how easily America’s government can slide into dependency on America’s tech companies. Musk is the mastermind behind Starlink, a powerful satellite internet network. And he is the mastermind behind Space X, a powerful space technology company. Both companies already have their tentacles deep into the U. S. government, including the Defense Department.

Nowhere, though, is it written that public sector leaders must bow before their private sector counterparts. The European Union has long been ahead of the United States in using the law to set boundaries on behemoths such as Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple, forcing them to comply with rules on, for example, data privacy and content regulation. Just recently the EU’s highest court went further than it did previously, dealing a major blow to Apple among others, forcing it to pay billions of dollars in unpaid back taxes. In France, a few months ago, the government even saw fit to arrest a leading tech executive, Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, who is facing charges that include complicity in child exploitation.

Perhaps Europe’s jurists explain why America’s jurists are somewhat bolder now than before. In Pennsylvania, a federal court recently ruled that TikTok can potentially be held liable for harm caused by its algorithms. Similarly, a Federal District Court ruled that Google is illegally maintaining a monopoly over internet search. But so far – indicative of the complexity of a problem seeking a solution – the remedy to the monopoly remains elusive. Forcing the company to sell Chrome – Google’s very, very widely used internet browser – which recently was proposed by the Justice Department, could be a cure worse than the disease.

The issue of tech dominance and, therefore, the dominance of leaders of America’s most powerful and advanced tech companies, is so large it’s hard to wrap our heads around it. Just this month Australia became the first country in the world to ban the use of social media for those under the age of 16 – a significant step toward controlling a bad situation that up to now has been uncontrolled. Notwithstanding successes like these, challenges brought on by the new technologies are so many in number, and so complicated, that most mere mortals can barely understand them.

Last week, a little-known extreme right-winger scored a significant, shocking, success in a Romanian election. How did this ultranationalist catapult himself to center stage? He went viral on TikTok. After the fact, Romanian regulators requested that TikTok be suspended – they requested the barn door be shut after the horse got out.

It’s possible we’re at a tipping point. That leaders in the public sector will increasingly be emboldened to take on their private sector counterparts, specifically those at the top of America’s top tech companies. But count me a skeptic. Those who have drawn parallels between 20^th century regulatory efforts and those we should and could see in the 21^st, seem to me to imagine that the present resembles the past. But it does not. Regulating anyone or anything in the Internet Age – and now the age of AI – is not like regulating anyone or anything in the Gilded Age.

America’s Wild West tech landscape is one of the reasons why America’s tech industry has been exceptionally successful. Unfettered capitalism. But the problems associated with the lack of meaningful regulation are bad and they are getting worse. In large part this is because corporate leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, and Satya Nadella – and oh, yes, Mr. Musk – continue for the most part to roam freely.

Which still leaves open the question of whether leaders in government and jurisprudence will take on the tech bullies. Will the tail continue to wag the dog – or will the dog finally wag its tail?