he world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and the most powerful man, Donald J Trump, are no longer allies. After their relationship exploded all over the social media last week, only the Los Angeles riots shifted the spotlight from the break-up.

The Musk-Trump relationship was an uneasy convergence of political and business interests, evolving from tentative cooperation to a strategic alliance shaped by selfish opportunism and ideological shifts. It is now for some, a case study in the volatile nature of tech capital and reactionary politics, a process contingent upon intersecting crises of neo-liberal legitimacy, the decay of institutional trust and the opportunistic exploitation of anti-establishment sentiment.

The relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump has followed a complex trajectory. Before Donald Trump appeared as a frontline Republican candidate for US presidency, Musk had operated within establishment tech circles, donating to both parties while maintaining distance from the conservative populist movement that later turned into MAGA movement personifying Trump.

The 2016 election forced an uneasy engagement, as Musk joined Trump’s business advisory councils in 2017, a move driven less by political affinity than by SpaceX’s reliance on NASA contracts and Tesla’s interest in deregulation. Their relationship fractured publicly when Musk resigned from the councils following Trump’s Paris Agreement withdrawal. Yet this performative break belied deeper continuity: SpaceX continued securing billions in federal funding and Tesla benefited from Trump’s anti-union policies.

The post-presidency years (2021-2024) saw a dramatic convergence. Musk’s purchase of Twitter and embrace of “free speech absolutism” led to Trump’s account reinstatement, despite the former president’s earlier dismissal of Musk as a “bullshit artist.” By 2024, their alliance had crystallised through shared anti-establishment posturing. Musk amplified conspiracy theories about election fraud and hosted Trump on X; Trump incorporated Musk’s tech-libertarian rhetoric into his campaign. This evolution from transactional cooperation to ideological partnership reflected both men’s recognition that their power projects: Trump’s authoritarian populism and Musk’s vision of unregulated techno-capitalism reinforcing each other in an era of institutional decay.

However, this apparently strong bond doomed because of the underlying contradictions. For one thing, Trump advocated small and smart government, something that Musk supported interpreting it as libertarian approach to the state-society relationship. However, Trump’s model of shrinking the federal bureaucracy, famously promising to “drain the swamp” and reduce Washington’s influence, meant hurting Musk’s business interests as well. For example, President Trump rejects the idea of global warming correlated with fossil fuel emissions and calls climate science a “hoax.” He is in favour of a “drill, baby drill” philosophy emphasizing the use of cheap oil located in the United States and in the Middle East to propel American domestic industrial reincarnation. Since getting back to the White House, President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, exited the Paris Agreement and mocked renewable energy, claiming that wind turbines “kill all the birds.” Most importantly, he has slashed EV tax credits and renewable energy incentives. This directly hurts the business interests of Elon Musk. Musk strongly advocates for climate action, calling fossil fuels “the dumbest experiment in history.” He is the founder of Tesla which has a mission to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Musk has warned that “climate change is the biggest threat humanity faces.”

When Trump threatened to revoke “billions of dollars of contracts” of Elon Musk’s organisations, Elon Musk was ready to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “immediately.”

The relationship was complicated not because of differences on climate change alone, but also because they disagreed on how the ‘small and smart’ government should treat the economy, particularly when it came to collaborating in sensitive areas such as espionage. Over the years, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been an indispensable partner to the US government, providing cutting-edge technological services across defence, space exploration, communications and energy infrastructure. The company has secured over $11 billion in NASA contracts, including the $3.1 billion Commercial Crew Program that restored American crewed spaceflight capabilities after the Space Shuttle’s retirement. Beyond civilian spaceflight, SpaceX has become crucial to national security through its $4 billion in military contracts, launching sensitive payloads for intelligence agencies and developing Starshield, a hardened version of Starlink specifically designed for Pentagon use. The company’s rapid launch capabilities and cost efficiency have made it the preferred provider for Space Force missions, essentially privatising what was once core government infrastructure.

Perhaps the most geopolitically significant of Musk’s government-facing technologies is Starlink. It has evolved from a commercial internet service to a strategic asset. Its deployment in Ukraine demonstrated how private space infrastructure can become instrumental in modern warfare, even as Musk’s personal interventions in its military use sparked controversy. Meanwhile, emerging ventures like Neuralink and xAI hint at future government applications, from DARPA-funded brain-computer interfaces to defence-oriented artificial intelligence systems. Musk’s companies are not merely suppliers but increasingly shaping the technological direction of national security.

Therefore, when Trump threatened to revoke “billions of dollars of contracts” for Musk’s organisations, Musk threatened to “immediately” decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Obviously, these revocations could have disrupted American global espionage system and operations. Though Elon Musk finally backed away from the threat, the argument had exposed the vulnerability of the United States government vis a vis a private company. While Musk’s companies provide capabilities that government agencies struggle to match, their reliance on federal funding complicates Trump’s small government and Musk’s libertarian rhetoric. The paradox lies at the heart of the Musk-government relationship: a simultaneous drive for market freedom and dependence on public contracts. As these companies continue to mature, their role in executing what were once considered inherently governmental functions will likely grow, making Elon Musk not just a tech mogul but arguably one of the most influential figures in shaping America’s technological future.

With help from some “sane minds”, Elon Musk reached out to the president, made a call and talked to him. Following that, he wrote on X that he regretted on some of the tweets about the president, including his tweet suggesting Donald Trump’s involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein affair. However, the relationship between the two seems over.

After serving the government for over four months and hurting thousands of American federal government workers, including career officials, by terminating their services, Elon Musk has left the government. His mission to reduce federal spending by at least $1 trillion did not materialise. The most optimistic experts estimate that his efforts could a little less than $200 billion in federal spending. The extent of overall political damage has yet to be understood.

As Elon Musk returns to his business, it looks like his political venture has cost him a lot. The share price of Tesla has gone down. The sales have been hurt and many of his current and potential customers did not like his political role.

The Trump-Musk dynamic is a revealing case study in the evolving relationship between political power and technological capital in the 21st Century.

The story is not just about two men, but about how political and technological power fuse in dangerous ways. It seems that the billionaire feuds matter less than the systems they create, how they control platforms that govern speech, how private companies wage wars and anti-government rhetoric masks unprecedented corporate-state entanglement.

The writer is a professor of government at Houston Community College, USA. He recently published his book The Rise of the Semi-Core: China, India, and Pakistan in the World-System. He can be approached at suklashari@gmail.com