Crossed Wires: Musk, Trump, Mountainhead and the epic battle for the reins of influence

Daily Maverick

2 days ago

The plot of the newly released film, Mountainhead, about four tech bros who have the power to move world opinion at the flick of an algorithm, feels very much like what is happening with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Last week, a film called Mountainhead was released on HBO/Showmax. Social media has been all atwitter (sorry about the bad pun) since its release. The film is a darkly pointed satire, its four characters an amalgam of the world's most powerful tech barons. One of them, a guy called Venis, is inescapably Musk-ish, while the others are recognisable by personality and type, if not as specific people.
The film's release coincided perfectly with the delicious and explosive outbreak of war last week between Elon Musk and Donald Trump and his party. Calling it 'delicious' calls into question my journalistic objectivity, I am sure, but when two of the world's most powerful and narcissistic men end up in a cage fight, it is a spectacle, and this writer is not immune to its pleasures. But they are transitory, these pleasures. There is more at stake here.
Let's return to the film. Four tech bros gather in an ostentatious modernist monstrosity of a house in the mountains for a weekend of relaxation, alcohol, drugs and poker. Simultaneously, the world is aflame with violence stoked by AI-generated deepfake political videos which have been consumed by gullible populations.
The four bros periodically glance at their smartphones where images of carnage and mayhem multiply in cities across the globe. They are interested, even fascinated, but they are not horrified, nor even are they disturbed. These are the little people killing each other as a result of tech that they have developed; the violence doesn't touch them in their gilded palaces and it is unimportant next to the grandeur of their visions.
The plot, such as it is, springs from a falling out within the group, an attempted murder and an interpretation of friendship which ranks it significantly less important than their business transactions and desire for global dominance.
Linking it to Musk's real-life outburst, there is a series of scenes in the film in which one of the characters is called by the US president and is put on hold. While he waits for the call to be put through, it becomes clear that none of the men gives a damn about what the president has to say. They have the power to move world opinion at the flick of an algorithm; their financial and human reach is incalculable. They see themselves as gods. Mere politics is the common man's delusion.
This feels very much like what is now happening IRL. Musk has gone full tilt against his erstwhile supporters in Congress and the cabinet (including the president), presumably because he has calculated that he has more power to shape US opinion than the entire administration and its acolytes.
The Tweet War – how it started
The spat started slowly, with these two Musk tweets:
'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. Shame on those who voted for [the budget]: you know you did wrong. You know it.'
A short while later he ratcheted it up a notch…
'In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.'
This was about as great a challenge to the GOP as one can imagine. Musk was threatening to use the full power of his bullhorn to unseat elected GOP members. Then it exploded, leaving even battle-hardened political journalists gasping.
Trump, predictably, hit back with his own comments about his disappointment in Musk amid a few other choice barbs. Musk went nuclear:
'Time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's why the FBI won't release them. Have a nice day DJT.' (This tweet has since been deleted; one wonders why.)
Oof. There's no coming back from that. And it didn't stop there, as the veiled and not-so veiled threats continued on X from Musk and on Truth Social from Trump.
Why did Musk start this war?
There are a couple of unanswered questions here. First, what prompted Musk to start this war? There are a few possible scenarios:
Like the boys in Mountainhead, perhaps he believes he has more power to shape public opinion than the entire GOP machine in Washington (or anywhere else), and he intends to use it. He is saying: the president's opinion doesn't matter as much as mine.
Or, perhaps he is simply a child throwing his toys out of the cot because Steve Bannon and other GOP influencers have accused him of lying about Doge cuts and succeeded in getting him ejected from Washington.
Or, he was so messed up on ketamine that he didn't know what he was doing.
Or, he was furious that Trump had nixed his choice for head of Nasa, Jared Isaacman.
Or, he is doing this to reclaim some respect from the Democrats, to scare up some Tesla sales and right his listing commercial ship.
Perhaps he was really annoyed about being excluded from a $400-million armored EV contract by the State Department, especially after his pally relationship with the president.
Or, he thinks the budget will hurt his companies, particularly Tesla which will lose its tax incentives.
Or, perhaps he really does think the budget is catastrophic for the US and is just speaking his truth to power.
My bet is on a combination of the first and the last scenario – he really does believe that X is the biggest weapon in history, his to wield as he sees fit, and he really does objectively hate the budget.
What does Musk want?
The second, more bewildering question concerns Musk's endgame. Where did he imagine this was going to lead him? Did he even think about the consequences of his tweets, particularly the threats to congressmen and what amounted to accusing the president of being a paedophile? I have tried to put myself in Musk's head (a stretch, I know), but I simply cannot see what his objective might be.
Perhaps it is this: he launched an X poll last Friday asking whether it was time for a third political party, a centrist party. Presumably he wants to be its architect and founder. It has been tried many times before by big personalities in US history, most recently in the 1970s. They were all spectacular and embarrassing failures. That is not how US politics works, so good luck with that.
Which leads us back to Bannon (now seemingly back in favour at the White House). In his Friday tweet he urged that Musk should be expelled as an illegal alien. Were it to happen, it would be the ultimate irony.
There is one thing we can say, with reasonable certainty. Unless there is a rapprochement (unlikely, given that insults have been hurled and cannot be taken back), Musk will use X against Trump and Maga, probably all the way to the midterms in 2026. One of his whining tweets claimed that Trump would have lost to Kamala Harris without his financial and social media support, which is probably accurate given the mere 44,000 votes that separated them in the electoral college.
A finely targeted X campaign could definitely influence the midterms, at least at congressional level, which could defang the president. And those who claim that no one can shake the absolute power of Trump would do well to recall that Trump's most recent favourable ratings were less than 50%, while Musk's were more than 75%.
Who runs the world now, in these most chaotic of times? Governments? Or social media titans with their grandiose aspirations for humanity, like Venis in Mountainhead?
We are about to find out. DM
Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg, a partner at Bridge Capital and a columnist-at-large at Daily Maverick. His new book, It's Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership, is published by Maverick451 in South Africa and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.