Elon Musk. By far.
A partial list of his assets:
- He is the richest man in the world.
- He has the ear of the world’s most powerful national leader.
- He has the ear of the world’s third most powerful national leader.
- He has a new, formal position in the American government. (As co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency.)
- He has a new, informal position in the American government. (E. g….this week he met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, to explore the reduction of tensions between Iran and the U.S.)
- He is chief executive officer of Tesla, one of the world’s leading car companies.
- He controls X Corp (aka Twitter), one of the world’s leading social media sites.
- He is the founder and effectively in control of Neuralink, which develops brain-computer interfaces.
- Most importantly, he is the founder and CEO of SpaceX. SpaceX is described as “an American space technology company.” But this does not begin to capture its present performance or imagine its future feats. SpaceX already has its tentacles deep into space exploration, into America’s military-industrial complex, and into satellite constellation technology. Don’t you just love this line, from Wikipedia. “SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of government contracts”? Says it all, straight faced!
But for all his tangible assets, Musk’s greatest strength is his indisputable and undiminished genius. Compare him to, for example, his new best bud, Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t know much about governance but likely he knows more than Musk. But Musk can run rings around Trump and most every other American leader on subjects that pertain to technology – which most subjects now do. Musk’s mastery of technology gives him a preternatural control of the country, the world, in which we now live.
He is not my favorite person in the world. Far from it, very far from it. But give the man his due. The power of Musk’s presence is an astonishment.