Books written with the solvency and stylistic quality of this one feed the horror about the current phase of the digital revolution much more efficiently than any bizarre tweet. The cold succession of data about contracts, profits, investments, public aid, market shares, public statements, business alliances, and reliable sources is the best method to critically describe and militantly condemn the current structural dependence the world has on Elon Musk’s companies, a true contemporary genius (they don’t say it, but it seems so to me, even if he is a genius of evil), progressively leaning towards the ultra-racist far right but above all modeled on a fantasy of global domination that is literally in his hands today.
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The book summarizes it like this towards the end (discarding some weak Conclusions in the form of an apocalyptic prophecy): “His career has consisted of manufacturing the modules of that superstructure [which would gradually integrate the world within it]: in the form of rockets that place satellites in the sky, in the form of brain implants that expand the bandwidth of our interface with the cybernetic collective, and in the form of artificial intelligence models and social network algorithms.” It refers to only some of the central companies Musk has founded —SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, Tesla, Grok, that is, the MAGA version of ChatGPT— always in symbiosis with the State and therefore with multibillion-dollar public funds, with the effective and practical consequence of having become simply “indispensable” for governments and people.
The basic translation of this diagnosis is that he will continue to be there, and his companies will continue to operate at the heart of the globe in the future, even if he no longer remains in the White House kitchen after having perhaps prematurely given up the goal of centralizing in a single organ, the DOGE, all the information and data, sensitive or not, public and private, of the U.S. Administration and its population. The aim was to hunt down imperfections, irregularities, dissonances, all dictated by AI systems without human verification, and at supersonic speed executed by ACE: the hell of efficiency and impunity taken to an extreme unknown until now in our Western democracies.
If I say it, it sounds like verbiage, I know, but this is the real synthesis of this essay and the authors —Quin Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff— do not lessen the gravity of the situation at all, although they prefer to meticulously and unhurriedly unfold every step, every motivation, every contract, and every operation of a devilishly intelligent and also unscrupulous businessman/engineer. The Muskism of the title, imitating Fordism, would be his pattern of conduct: never against the State, always in symbiosis with the State (and State funds) because the ultimate goal is to colonize it and put it at the service of private enterprise and its own strategy of economic interests and political and military domination.
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Just as in 2025 his company SpaceX was responsible for 95% of orbital launches in the United States (and half in the rest of the world), that same year two-thirds of all active satellites belong to Starlink, owned by Elon Musk: he is literally the owner of the “aerospace market” of the globe. States need it no matter what, while Twitter turned into X favored “limbic resonance,” that is, emotional, to encourage user interaction, the stark rightward shift of discourse, and the reconversion of the woke into the diabolical enemy: “a mental virus” ready to bring down Western civilization, as Elon Musk has repeated so many times. He bought Twitter because its infection risk was high, so better to apply prophylaxis by reversing its direction starting from X, after firing 80% of the company’s staff and reinstating hundreds of far-right accounts, including Qanon (and Donald Trump, obviously). In 2024, of Elon Musk’s average 60 daily tweets, more than 1,300 were directed against immigration and denunciation of election fraud, “viewed about 10 billion times in total.”
Among the most astonishing aspects of the book is the count of dozens of literal quotes from his conferences, statements, tweets. He has been communicating almost explicitly every step he is going to take
Among the most astonishing aspects of the book is the count of dozens of literal quotes from his conferences, statements, tweets. He has been communicating almost explicitly every step he is going to take, without much disguise or rhetoric, and often interacting frenetically on X with common interlocutors and many other times strategic ones. The invisible threads that tie the human figure to his professional history are very well brought out —the South African root, the fondness for science fiction, the obsession with some video games, the fixation on some books and characters— as well as the explanation of the success of what the authors call his “financial fabulism”: great business expectations founded on what we would call here a gift for people… Indeed, it is an excellent Guide for the Perplexed, as the original subtitle of the book says.
The worst and most credible conclusion for skeptics is as disheartening but credible after the “dream of a reactionary technocracy” that was his DOGE phase: “The public servant is a transitional species. State reform is the bridge to a new regime of algorithmic sovereignty in which the regularity of Machine Government replaces consensus and legitimacy.” Democracy? What democracy?
Muskism. Elon Musk and the new post-liberal era
Translation by Raquel Marqués García
Taurus, 2026
256 pages. 19.85 euros
