Musk, like Henry Ford, is a reckless and powerful leader. Can anyone apply the brakes?

Ford was an industrial trailblazer who controlled his own media to promote controversial opinions and had several legal bust-ups. Sound familiar? He came unstuck after backing the wrong candidate for the White House. Musk has made no such mistake, writes Michael Skapinker.

Observing Elon Musk’s fervent support for Donald Trump during the US presidential campaign, the Financial Times commentator Edward Luce called him “the Henry Ford of the 2024 election”. Luce was referring to Ford’s backing for the right-wing populist and aviator Charles Lindbergh in the run-up to the Second World War. The similarities go further. Ford and Musk both had fraught relationships with their fathers. Both had a prodigious breadth of interests fitting for their times. Ford’s ranged from schoolbooks to agriculture – he had a suit and tie made from soybeans to promote their use – to creating visitor attractions that recreated America’s past. Musk is obsessed with birthrate decline, multi-planetary existence – insisting that humans need to live on Mars – and creating brain-machine interfaces to ensure artificial intelligence…

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I by IMD (Digital) - 1 Issue, 16. December 2024

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