Will 2025 be the year of Musk, the Gladiator and Tech Politician?
He ended 2024 by "attacking" the United Kingdom and started the new year renaming himself Kekius Maximus. What is the creator of Starlink, Tesla, and SpaceX planning?
Musk's clash with British Prime Minister Starmer is stirring (to say the least) the EU and European capitals, and for days everyone has been wondering what the efficiency tsar of Donald Trump has in mind. Political ambitions? Market strategies? Something else?
Interviewed by Frediano Finucci on Omnibus on LA7, the CEO of Mashfrog Group, Edoardo Narduzzi, analyzed Musk’s moves and intentions, suggesting that “he has the strength, power, technology, and wealth to become the deus ex machina of a Western world in crisis”.
Why does the "Doge" have an issue with Britain?
The furious diatribe against Labour Prime Minister Starmer could be a tactical move, motivated by two reasons, Narduzzi explains: “One is more immediate, the weakness of the United Kingdom, and the other is to wedge himself into a fragile Europe, targeting a country outside the EU that has been weakened post-Brexit and simultaneously does not disrupt the political balance of a fragile European Union.”
However, the objective of the future Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) could be broader and more complex, according to Narduzzi. It is rooted in several factors, particularly the fact that “he is the most successful tech entrepreneur on the planet and the one best positioned to anticipate trends.”
Based on Musk’s view of the current global historical moment, “he envisions that we are moving beyond the Western nation-state as we have known it since the Magna Carta. We are heading towards a hybrid dimension between humanity and technology. In this hybrid dimension, the tripartite framework on which we base our Western democracies—Montesquieu's system—will become much less relevant, because technology is objective, unafraid of power concentration, and needs only to be managed by a post-nation-state elite.”
Between Maximus Decimus Meridius and Manzoni
Presenting himself in 2025 on his X profile as Kekius Maximus—a mix of gladiator, deity, and gamer—also points in this direction, as references to technology and the Roman Empire are integral to Musk’s worldview.
“He is preparing to be the strongest political brand in the coming years,” says Narduzzi, should his vision of the Western nation-state in crisis materialize and “a new institutional order emerge.”
“He is capable of ‘managing’ the world from above with satellites, while moving within mobility, data, and Artificial Intelligence through his X platform and X AI, a company already valued at $50 billion and technically outperforming ChatGPT,” Narduzzi notes. These elements make him feel like “a politician in the making, ready to protect the West, as Roman emperors once defended the Greek West from crisis”.
As Manzoni would say: “Was it true glory? The judgment is for posterity”. But we are that posterity.
