A tough one for Elon!

Triple Dog Dare

It's safe to say that Elon Musk, by backing Donald Trump and weaseling his way into the president-elect's inner circle — and in effect his administration — has catapulted himself to the uppermost echelon of power, where he could use his influence to punish his enemies.

But Musk's arch nemesis Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, sounds like he's not too worried about that happening, at least nominally. Instead, he appealed to Musk's better nature.

"It would be profoundly un-American to use political power to the degree that Elon has it to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses," Altman said Wednesday at The New York Time DealBook Summit.

"I don't think people would tolerate that," he added. "I don't think Elon would do it."

Bad Blood

It's a nice thought, Altman. But Musk is a petty, vindictive guy. During his takeover of X-formerly-Twitter, for example, Musk abused his newfound influence to silence his biggest critics. Why stop there?

Anyhow, Musk and Altman don't exactly get along famously — so it's tempting to interpret Altman's comments as a dig.

Together, they co-founded OpenAI in 2015. But by 2018, their partnership had soured into a rivalry, and Musk formally left the AI startup allegedly due to heated disagreements over its direction.

Since then, Musk has been a vocal critic of Altman's leadership, and in particular his decisions to take the company down a for-profit route when it was originally founded to be a non-profit. And for these reasons, Musk sued OpenAI.

But on the other hand, Altman's comments could be interpreted  ascozying up to Musk and Trump — much like how the rest of the tech industry has already bent the knee to their two new overlords.

Playing Nice

Certainly, no one in Silicon Valley — Google, Microsoft, etc — would like to be on the new administration's bad side and have their monopolies broken up.

Musk himself poses a threat by co-chairing the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he hopes to slash federal spending by trillions of dollars.

Many of these tech companies — Musk's included, and that's a conflict of interest for another time — enjoy lucrative government contracts, which Musk could recommend cutting off. But he could also gut regulators that have stood in the way of his companies, thereby giving himself an edge over his competitors.

It's unclear, however, if Musk will actually have the power to do any of this, since DOGE is currently not an executive department but a mere commission. Nonetheless, he has Trump's ear — and that's distressing enough for his rivals.

More on Musk: Bernie Sanders Offers Support for Elon Musk's Plans to Cut Pentagon Spending


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