Jess Bidgood of the NYTimes writes about the recent cabinet meeding where Trump said that “From now on, he said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.” What are the chances of that? No one knows.
Ryan Mac, a colleague of mine who covers big tech, has reported on Musk for a long time. Today, I asked him if Musk had ever been content with an adviser-style role, one in which he doesn’t run the show.
Ryan’s answer was simple: No.
Musk has never liked being one voice among many, Ryan explained. Vivek Ramaswamy, who was initially going to be Musk’s partner in leading the Department of Government Efficiency, is long gone. Musk doesn’t sit on a lot of boards. And throughout his corporate history, whenever he hasn’t initially had control over a company, he’s tended to seek it.
At Tesla, where he was an early investor, he became the chief executive. Before he bought Twitter and renamed it X, he almost joined the company’s board. Then he decided to acquire the company outright, fire its board of directors and executives and become the chief executive. (He later named a new C.E.O. but retains considerable control over the company.)
Not all of Musk’s bids for control have worked. Decades ago, for example, he was forced out as the chief executive of PayPal. His effort to get control of OpenAI — a nonprofit he co-founded in 2015 — failed, as did his more recent bid to buy it.
I'm saying in a generous supply of popcorn.
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