All posts tagged "Elon Musk"

Elon Musk could have kept the Senate in Republican hands for far less than he spent losing a single race, according to economist Justin Wolfers.

“Musk spent $200 million+ trying to win one Senate seat in Texas,” Wolfers wrote on X on Saturday, alongside a video breaking down the numbers. “Spread across the close races instead, roughly $130 million might have kept the whole Senate Republican.”

In the video, Wolfers ran the math on what it would have taken for Republicans to hold the chamber. “The answer is it would have cost about $130 million,” he said....

Billionaire Elon Musk's record-setting political spending this cycle looks almost trivial next to what one economist calculates the blue wave actually cost him.

Economist Justin Wolfers argued in his Platypus Economics newsletter on Thursday that the Democratic sweep of Congress sent Tesla and SpaceX shares tumbling on election night, knocking somewhere between $50 billion and $70 billion off Musk's personal fortune. Those losses dwarf the $474 million the billionaire spent backing Republicans in the midterms, more than any single donor has ever put into one cycle.

"It might just be a blip in Elon Musk's week," Wolfers wrote of the campaign cash....

A bipartisan group of senators hoping for answers about a recent disruption to Ukraine's battlefield communications hit a wall at the Pentagon.

The Defense Department's inspector general has turned down the lawmakers' request to investigate the throttling of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. In a response dated Tuesday, the watchdog told the nine senators that the Air Force was better positioned to address their concerns.

The senators, four Republicans and five Democrats, sought the probe after Ukrainian officials said this month that connection speeds on Starlink and Starshield, its military-grade counterpart, had been slowed. Officials in Kyiv said the restrictions hampered their ability to intercept incoming Russian drones....

Elon Musk acknowledged that SpaceX changed how Ukraine's military can use Starlink and followed it with a stark warning about the war.

In a lengthy post on X Saturday, the billionaire accused Ukrainian forces of violating Starlink's terms of service by using the satellite internet system "for offensive drone strikes to kill people" before announcing, "That loophole was closed last week."

Musk then made clear how much rides on the service. "Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately," he wrote. "This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact."...

Former Republican strategist Tim Miller had a blistering response for Elon Musk after the billionaire posted an ominous message aimed at him and his colleagues.

Miller responded on a Saturday episode of "Bulwark Takes" after Musk replied to a clip from the hosts' recent live show in Atlanta by writing, "If they want to live by the sword, that is how they will die too."

The clip, posted by an account Miller described as a MAGA meme page, showed his colleague Jonathan V. Last arguing that people don't loathe Musk enough and calling for him to face congressional subpoenas next year. "However mad you are about Elon Musk, it's not enough," Last told the crowd. "Justice is coming."...

The Trump administration's insistence that it has no say over Elon Musk's satellite network just ran headlong into a damning new account.

Reuters reported Friday that the Biden and Trump administrations both asked SpaceX several times over the years to switch its Starlink service on or off in various countries, long before this month's slowdown of Ukraine's military access. Six former senior U.S. officials described the requests to the outlet, which said they had never been reported before.

The report lands two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted the decision over Ukraine's access belonged to Musk and SpaceX rather than the White House....