The dispute between Elon Musk and President Trump underscored how dependent the U.S. government has become on SpaceX, even though Trump could still affect Musk’s businesses through regulatory reviews involving agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration. The conflict was eventually resolved, but it highlighted SpaceX’s growing leverage over NASA and the U.S. space program, as well as Musk’s broader ambition to control the infrastructure, software, hardware, and physical products underpinning artificial intelligence.
“Mr. Musk’s spat with President Trump when he threatened to take away the dragon was completely irresponsible,” said Arizona State University professor and Rocket Dreams author Chris Davenport. “If the Falcon and Dragon go away, that’s a big disadvantage for the U.S. government. NASA desperately needs SpaceX, SpaceX knows it, and Elon knows it.”
This marked a remarkable change for anyone who had watched SpaceX fight for years to establish itself with NASA and the U.S. Space Force. However uncomfortable it may be, the shift in the balance of power can no longer be denied: the U.S. government now needs SpaceX more than SpaceX needs the government.
What is Elon Musk thinking?
Around the time of his dispute with Trump, Musk came to view artificial intelligence as more than the next major technology trend. He began treating it as the defining industrial revolution of his lifetime and started steering his two largest companies, Tesla and SpaceX, toward control of the AI software, hardware, and computing infrastructure needed to operate systems on Earth and in space.
That ambition helps explain SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI and its subsequent initial public offering. It also provides context for a possible merger between SpaceX and Tesla. Such a merger would give Musk more direct control over Tesla, which he values, while providing vast assets that could be deployed to build data centers, self-driving cars, robots, giant rockets, and other systems on Earth and in space.
At least in the short term, no other company has the potential to control the entire artificial-intelligence stack. Musk wants to manufacture chips and the power infrastructure for data centers, build the data centers that will support the AI revolution, develop and train the models that provide its intelligence, and produce the physical technologies he believes will help shape the 21st century.
Source: arstechnica.com
