For Musk, it was a chance to win over public — and corporate — sympathy after antisemitic posts on the platform he owns, X, triggered an exodus of advertisers.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, left the meeting with a new deal that secured Israel’s control over Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellites across Israel and Gaza.
“Because he is such an influential and powerful person, he can get the attention of the Israeli prime minister even in the middle of a war,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
“That allows him to dramatically send messages that other business leaders, let alone ordinary people, just would never be able to muster,” Barrett added.
Musk’s control of Starlink in particular — a massive satellite network that has proven more effective than even U.S. military internet solutions in war zones such as Ukraine — has amplified his clout at times of global conflict.
But the visit also showed how his erratic persona is intertwined with the very businesses world leaders have come to rely on.
For example, although the White House condemned Musk for engaging with an antisemitic social media post, the administration is still on track to keep up its partnership with Musk’s SpaceX.
Barrett said Musk’s other entities may not face an immediate impact, but in the long term his erratic behavior could eventually hurt his other enterprises.
Especially as electric cars become less of a novelty, consumers may be less drawn to Tesla, he said.
As for SpaceX, though, he said there are “too few alternatives in the commercial space industry for the government to casually just swear off a company that they’ve been working with very closely for a period of years.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
