Few imagined the Musk-Trump bromance would unravel as promptly as Day Two of the administration. Then again, when one can issue executive orders at the drop of a hat and the other is in charge of government efficiency, it tracks. Things turned sour this Tuesday after Trump announced the launch of Stargate, a gargantuan infrastructure project involving seemingly everyone but Elon. It follows reports in December that Trump was getting fed up with the tech billionaire turning up uninvited to dinner with rival moguls at Mar A Lago (the Tesla boss even took up temporary residence down the road from the President); and after said rivals (Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman) lined up to pledge $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund. All were present at the ceremony on Monday.
To Stargate, then: a colossal tech infrastructure project that sounds more like the name of a Pink Floyd album, one of Musk’s own companies or a political scandal involving NASA. One of Stargate’s backers, SoftBank, has already given $15bn and pledged an additional $500bn investment over the next four years – a figure Musk has disputed on X. The company – registered in Delaware, of course – aims to cement the US as the undisputed world leader in AI (beating China), with new, state-of-the-art enterprises starting with a data centre in Abilene, Texas. For Trump, the goal is simple: to score big early on in his second and final term in office by riding the AI wave, generating “more than 100,000 jobs” from the get go and returning America to its former glory (his words).
