The new year has barely started, and Elon Musk is already doubling down on X as a tool for his personal politics. After test-driving his use of X as a tool to jawbone Congress in December, the mogul and adviser to the incoming administration is now giving it a whirl across the Atlantic. This morning he called for the imprisonment of United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer over what Musk perceives as insufficiently bold action in the face of a well-known systemic sexual abuse case in northern England. “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government,” Musk posted on X this morning. It was framed as a yes/no poll, leaving little ambiguity about how he views both European governments (as subjects of his influence) or the platform itself (as a tool for determining “the will of the people” — as defined mostly by him and his followers). Musk’s direct political agitation isn’t limited to the U.S. and U.K. He recently came out in favor of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany, leading Chancellor Olaf Scholz to declare “don’t feed the trolls”; French President Emmanuel Macron today called him out as the leader of a “new international reactionary movement.” For Europe, this poses a new and messy problem. On one hand, the EU and U.K. should have a ready-made means of curbing what they see as Musk’s harmful influence through laws already on the books. The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill requires platforms to remove what it deems false information, and the European Union’s Digital Services Act does the same. In response to a question about Musk today, Starmer rebuked “those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible.” (It was widely read as a reference to the inflammatory and conspiratorial content Musk has posted about the “grooming gangs” scandal.) And in cases like Germany’s, the DSA does have strictures that preclude platforms from putting their thumb on the scale in favor of any one party or candidate. But Musk’s X isn’t just any renegade tech platform. Its owner now has the ear of the incoming president of the United States at a time when both the EU and the U.K. are desperate to preserve the transatlantic alliance. And not all European countries are necessarily opposed to closer ties with him: Italy’s conservative government announced today it’s negotiating a €1.5 billion deal with Starlink, and its Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made a surprise trip to Mar-a-Lago on Saturday. For years Europe has pitched an alternate vision of how society and government should relate to the tech industry, as a friendly adversary bent on ensuring new technologies benefit citizens first and foremost, in contrast to America’s let-her-rip entrepreneurial attitude. Now, Musk’s consolidation of digital power and political influence poses a simple, profound challenge: How well do all of these guardrails around digital platforms actually work in the face of such an opponent? His close relationship with Trump means European nations will need to tread lightly when dealing with Musk, despite the regulatory tools ostensibly at their disposal. “If the EU pokes the eye of Trump's 'first buddy,' they could needlessly malign their ability to preserve positive trade relationships over the next four years,” Matthew Mittelsteadt, an AI and cyber policy fellow at the Mercatus Institute, told DFD. “Already Trump is threatening tariffs and will have considerable authority over the future prospects of all forward trade, both digital and physical,” he said. The European Commission is investigating X for violations of the DSA, specifically its strictures about disseminating illegal and false content. (Here in the U.S., Musk notably boosted false and inflammatory stories and rumors about the response to last fall’s hurricane in the Southeast.) In October the EU warned Musk that his entire business empire could be included in the calculation of fines incurred by X, which could reach 6 percent of global revenue. The Commission is still considering whether to levy such a fine and what its amount might be, as Musk’s relationship with EU regulators continues to sour. While the DSA’s rules about spreading false information are probably the EU’s cleanest shot at curbing Musk’s influence, even Musk-skeptical regulators are unsure that they want to take it. One anonymous U.K. official told POLITICO last week that while Musk is “a dangerous figure,” it’s “in no one's interests to have him as an enemy," and "Governments should never rule out a significant opportunity to do business with him." Musk’s expansive business ambitions could prove a double-edged sword in that regard, according to Mercatus’ Mittelsteadt. Musk’s long-harbored wish to make X an “everything app” for payments, communications and more could give Europe a larger potential regulatory foothold, and X’s integration with Musk’s AI company has already exposed it to the strictures of the EU’s new AI Act. “As Musk considers further potential integrations, I'm sure the EU will be delighted at the enforcement toolbox that could create,” Mittelsteadt said. While the incoming Trump administration seems poised to achieve almost a synthesis with Musk and his platform, Europe then finds itself in an awkward middle position between holding his companies to its regulatory standards and trying not to poke the beast. “The beast” in this case could be not just the megaphone of X, but the Starlink services provided by Musk’s SpaceX, which is still powering Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Europe has announced its own effort to develop a Starlink competitor to decrease the bloc’s reliance on Musk, but the 290 satellites it plans to launch will still pale in comparison to the more than 7,000 launched by SpaceX since 2018. There are, however, comforting examples for Europeans uneasy about Musk’s growing political influence. Last year when Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to ban a slate of conservative commentators it deemed responsible for spreading false information, Musk made the ensuing legal battle into a cause celebre on the platform, calling that country’s Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and calling, like the U.K.’s Starmer, for his imprisonment. None of it worked. The company eventually met all of the Brazilian court’s demands, worried about losing access to one of the world’s fastest-developing digital markets. It’s possible that when it comes to dealing with Musk’s unpredictable, frequently hostile demands, the carrot of market access might be more effective than Europe’s trademark stick of stringent tech regulation.
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