> but I don't think anything they're doing is worth making Musk more powerful than he already is A lot of Musk's "power" is simply the fact that Trump listens

> but I don't think anything they're doing is worth making Musk more powerful than he already is A lot of Musk's "power" is simply the fact that Trump listens to him. Trump may at some point decide to stop listening. And even if he doesn't, in four more years Trump won't be President any more (ignoring any possible attempt at a third term, which frankly I think is very unlikely). Even assuming a Republican wins again in 2028 (far from guaranteed), will that Republican (whoever they may be) listen to Musk anywhere near as much as Trump does? Power is fleeting. Take away Trump, and what power does Musk have? Okay, he's a centibillionaire and CEO of a couple of major companies... how is that hugely different from what Zuckerberg or Bezos have? And he owns a social media network... Zuckerberg does too – and Zuckerberg's network has 10 times the user base, 60 times the revenue... SpaceX gives Musk a lot of influence over the US space program - but that isn't readily transferrable to other domains. The kind of power he recently seems to have been wielding over unrelated parts of the US government has nothing to do with SpaceX, it is all about his personal friendship with the President and his donations to the President – which in principle any other centibillionaire could have done – it is just they weren't trying, or not as hard, or maybe they were but didn't have the same luck