Elon Musk is probably the most hated man on earth. Americans hate him, because in a tight job market, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is busy firing people. People outside America hate him, because he is seen as the brain behind his boss Donald Trump’s hugely damaging and unpopular policies. Many people may rank, Musk’s boss, Trump ahead of him in an unpopularity contest, but while Musk is almost universally disliked, Trump does have his admirers in the backwoods of America.

Except for his association with Trump, there is no ostensible reason for Musk’s unpopularity. His life is an American dream come true; Musk is a self made billionaire, and at the age of fifty-four, Musk is the world’s richest man, with a net worth of US $345 billion. Musk is the key person behind a host of the world’s biggest companies ~ Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, OpenAI, Twitter (now X) and America PAC. Musk was born to moderately rich parents in South Africa. His political instincts, future ambitions, and overall worldview should be judged in context of a person, who was regularly beaten by bullies in his childhood, and emotionally tortured by his father ~ a highly complex character ~ an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. Musk emigrated to Canada at eighteen years of age.

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After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Musk moved to California, founding the software company Zip2, and an online payment company, X.com. Musk acquired US citizenship in 2002, and in the same year founded SpaceX, and became its CEO and chief engineer. Presently, SpaceX is the world leader in reusable rocket technology and commercial spaceflight; its technical prow – ess could be gauged by the fact that a SpaceX craft rescued NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who had been stranded in space for the last nine months.

Musk joined Tesla Inc, the current market leader in electric vehicles, in 2004, and became its CEO and product architect in 2008. Musk co-founded OpenAI to advance AI research in 2015, only to quit it in 2018. In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a company focused on brain computer interfaces, and in 2017, Musk launched the Boring Company, which aims to develop tunnel transportation. Musk was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2021. Musk owns Twitter (now X), one of the world’s most visited websites, and one of the largest social media platforms. With a contribution of a quarter of billion dollars, Musk was the largest donor to Trump’s election fund. Musk was rewarded, almost instantaneously, with the headship of the newly created DOGE, which was given over-riding power over government employees and the remit of shutting down entire government departments and firing thousands of employees. Musk’s unpopularity started from this point.

Earlier also, Musk had worked closely with the US Government; Musk stepped in the thick of the Russia-Ukraine war by offering ogrid high bandwidth internet access to Ukraine through his Star link constellation of 3,335 active satellites. Around 150,000 Ukrainians use Star link: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky uses it for his nightly broadcast, and the military uses it for C4ISR (comma – nd, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).

Ukrainian soldiers upload images of potential targets to an encrypted group chat where the best located soldiers take on the target, and Ukrainian drones use Starlink to hit targets. Russian hackers have been unable to penetrate the highly advanced Starlink system, and Russia has been unable to jam them by conventional methods. Musk has been careful not to let Starlink operate in Russian controlled territory, including Crimea, and Russia has desisted from using missiles against Starlink satellites, as they are positioned outside Russian territory.

Even otherwise, because of high latency, knocking out a few satellites would achieve nothing and knocking out many satellites may not be easy. A full scale missile attack on Starlink satellites in Western airspace may escalate hostilities, which Russia does not want. Thus, Musk has become vital to Ukraine’s war efforts. Currently, the Polish Government pays Musk US$ 50 million per year for the use of the Starlink system by Ukraine, but given the change in political equations, Ukrainians are now haunted by the fear of Musk cutting off satellite communications, which has kept their hospitals, military bases and troops online.

Matching his boss in braggadocio, Musk warned that the “entire front line would collapse if I turned it (Starlink) off.” Proximity to Trump has its pros and cons; after a White House meeting last month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Starlink was allowed to set up shop in India ~ permission for which had been denied in 2022. However, Tesla dealerships and vehicles have faced fire-bombings, gunfire, and vandalism internationally, and across the U.S. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in the US, in a massive Tesla Takedown protest, giving calls to burn a Tesla in order to save democracy.

Defending himself, Musk said it was ‘insanely ironic’ because he did ‘literally zero violence.’ At the same time, Tesla owners are distancing themselves from Musk, with bumper stickers reading: “I bought this before we knew Elon was cra – zy” and “I just wanted an electric car. Sorry, guys.” Used Tesla Cyber truck prices have dropped nearly eight per cent since Trump took office, and Tesla’s stock has erased post-election gains, showing that Tesla buyers and investors are not happy with Musk’s political role. After losses of US$ 99 billion earlier this year, Musk lost a further US$ 11 billion, and Tesla shares slumped by 5.5 per cent, on 2 April 2025, when Trump announced his extortionate tariffs. Despite being an immigrant, Musk is solidly anti-immigration.

Musk’s libertarian and far-right views have been publicly criticised by European leaders like the French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Musk supports universal basic income (UBI), gun rights, freedom of speech, a tax on carbon emissions, and H-1B visas and is concerned about artificial intelligence (AI) and climate change, and has been a critic of wealth tax and short-selling, government subsidies. As if this was not enough, Musk often promotes conspiracy theories and makes statements that have led to accusations of sexism, antisemitism, transphobia, disseminating dis – in formation, and support to white pride.

Musk describes himself as a “pro-Semite,” but his comments about George Soros and Jewish communities tell a different story. Also, Musk defied Covid-19 lockdown restrictions and made unfounded epidemiological claims, all the while supporting protests against vaccine mandates. Musk’s larger than life role and highly controversial views have attracted less-than-kind attention to his tangled personal life; over the last twenty-three years Musk has fathered fourteen children with five different partners, with his youngest child being less than a month old. Musk has himself admitted to using doctor-prescribed ketamine for occasional depression, while the media have gleefully reported that Musk also takes marijuana, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine and even his boss’s bugbear ~ fentanyl. Musk first refused to comment about his alleged drug usage, and then said that he had never tested positive for drugs, and if drugs somehow improved his productivity, “I would definitely take them!” Musk has not done well in his later forays in electoral politics.

Recently, Musk’s candidate for judgeship of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, Brad Schimel, was conclusively defeated by his Democratic party rival. Musk had spent US $25 million for Schimel’s campaign; in a thinly veiled cash-for-votes scheme Musk handed out checks to voters who signed a petition against “activist” judges. Analysts see the election as a referendum on Musk’s character and on his DOGE project. Be that is it may, for the first time, Tesla deliveries have declined by 13 per cent in the last quarter, and sales also have declined ~ for the first time in 2024.

Deterred by business losses and public ire, Musk is thinking of stepping down from DOGE, though Trump wants Musk to stay on, as he wants ‘smart people’ around him. Still, politics and business make uncomfortable bedfellows. For political reasons, Trump did not heed Musk’s direct appeal to roll back his unpopular and counter-productive tariffs.

Musk’s recent misadventures seem to have overshadowed his genius as one of the twenty-first century’s greatest entrepreneurs. As fellow billionaire businessman Stephen T Jurvetson had said: “Elon Musk is an incredibly prolific entrepreneur, having come up with, or been at the founding team of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, PayPal, all different industries that seem to have nothing to do with each other.”

(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)