Elon Musk and the rise of supranational oligarchs

Musk isn’t an outlier. He’s just ahead of the curve.

X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, is now banned in Brazil. Barely — which is to say, X is almost unbannable. Elon Musk is almost unaccountable, unstoppable, above the law of most nation-states — a “supranational entity,” as the Brazilian judge in the case called him.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to suspend user accounts within Brazil that he claimed were spreading disinformation. When X failed to comply, he attempted to bring an X representative before the court and learned that X had no such representative in Brazil, in violation of Brazilian law. X closed its Brazil office on August 17 after its representative resigned. On August 30, the judge gave X 24 hours to appoint a new one, and the company failed to comply.

The judge then banned X in Brazil and ordered internet providers to block it. Another Musk-run company, Starlink Services, a subsidiary of SpaceX, refused to comply with that order.

So Justice Moraes ordered the government to seize Starlink Services' assets within Brazil, including its bank accounts, real estate, and vehicles, if the company continued to refuse. He also threatened to revoke Starlink’s license to operate in the country. A board member of Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency, Anatel, also said the agency could eventually seize Starlink's 23 ground stations.

Most controversially, the asset freeze of Starlink Services would also be used to extract the payment of X’s fines, which exceeded $3 million, even though the two companies are separate entities. Their only connection is that Musk is the CEO of one and owner of the other.

So Starlink backed down and blocked X in Brazil.

But here’s the interesting part: Starlink didn’t have to back down.

If Musk chose to, he could have just refused to comply. Brazil could revoke Starlink’s license, seize its financial assets and physical property, and even dismantle Starlink base stations. After all that Starlink could still provide internet service to Brazil.

(Base stations improve the quality and range of service but aren’t completely necessary. Starlink’s newest satellites use lasers instead of base stations, and so without base stations, service in Brazil would get worse for a while and then improve over time.)

Starlink could even collect payments from Brazilian subscribers via Bitcoin, via some anonymous financial system on X itself, or some other payment system beyond the reach of Brazilian authorities.

At that point, Musk could use his own satellites to beam his own social network into Brazil, and the Brazilian government’s only recourse would be to look for Starlink terminals one by one.

While huge and powerful nation-states like Russia and China work hard to spread disinformation and sow division in Western Democracies, constantly setting up sleeper accounts by the millions, which eventually spring to life pretending to be real people and start spreading lies, Elon Musk needs only to direct minions to favor disinformation lies over truth in X algorithms to spread false ideas globally. China and Russia would kill to have Elon Musk’s power to spread disinformation (although TikTok will come close when China invades Taiwan and leans on Bytedance to bend US public opinion in favor of China).

With yet another company, Tesla, Musk has the theoretical and technical ability to cause havoc. He could, for example, suddenly shut down every Tesla in Brazil or cause them to display disinformation on their screens. There are fewer than 5,000 Teslas in Brazil, so this is a limited threat in that country.

A far less likely course of action would be for Brazil to destroy Starlink satellites in orbit. SpaceX could retaliate by destroying Brazilian satellites, including communications satellites. SpaceX would win this war. Musk personally controls a much bigger and better space program than the nation of Brazil.

Brazil is just one country. Musk could theoretically go to war against any of 100 countries by marshaling resource combinations of X, Starlink, and Tesla. He could personally tip the scales in close elections, personally choosing the leader of another country. He could theoretically leverage that power to gain favors in exchange for disinformation that favors a specific candidate.

I’m not predicting that Musk will do any of this, but I am saying that he has so much power that it’s his choice.

Other nation-state-like individuals have emerged in recent years. You’ll recall that Russian trolls and hackers worked hard to sow division in the United States and favor Donald Trump via a privately owned company based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, called Internet Research Agency. That company was owned by none other than Yevgeny Prigozhin, who also owned Wagner Group, a private army with its own foreign policy — Prigozhin‘s foreign policy. After working for Putin in Ukraine, Prigozhin decided to reverse course and wage war against Russia. His private army invaded Russia from Ukraine and got within 120 miles of Moscow before negotiating a truce. Soon after that, he died in a plane crash, probably killed by Putin’s agents.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is another semi-supranational oligarch. His social messaging platform has 900 million active users worldwide. Born in Russia, he’s a full-fledged citizen of Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. He’s worth $15 billion. As on all social networks and messaging platforms, criminals, terrorists, pedophiles, and other monstrous people try to advance their crimes on the platform. But unlike other services, Durov’s Telegram routinely refuses to work with law enforcement to stop or catch the bad guys.

National law enforcement agencies found it hard to catch Durov and hold him accountable because he avoided countries looking to nab him. Until he didn’t. For reasons known only to himself, Durov went to France last month, and was arrested at Le Bourget airport near Paris and indicted on 12 charges related to criminal activity on Telegram. He was released but banned from leaving France. If he does leave France, he could continue to operate Telegram as is and evade authorities indefinitely by simply going “home” to one of the other countries he’s a citizen of.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is another semi-supranational oligarch with his own space program and media empire. His Washington Post acquisition 11 years ago also got him the Express newspaper, the Gazette newspapers, El Tiempo Latino, Greater Washington Publishing, and other affiliated publications and services. Bezos also has major investments in (and therefore some influence over) Business Insider, Cha-Cha, and The Atlantic. His foundership of Amazon also gives him some influence over the books people read and listen to (via Audible).

Fortunately, Bezos is primarily interested in being a capitalist rather than an enabler of disinformation, crime, and violence. He only looks like a supervillain.

The trendlines are clear: We live in an age overseeing the emergence of supranational oligarchs, who are accountable to no one and have the personal power and influence of a nation-state.

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