The Scariest Mask in America

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Skip the rubber Frankenstein mask at Spirit Halloween. The scariest costume in America is the one Elon Musk wears every day: genius inventor, real-life Tony Stark. Pull it off, says filmmaker Alex Gibney, and underneath is "the classic American trickster or confidence man."

Gibney's new film, "Musk," runs nearly four hours. He found a lot. On Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan asked him straight up: is Musk the most dangerous person on Earth? "Right now, I think he is."

How the con works

A con man doesn't just lie, Gibney says. He talks so confidently that people start asking him about everything. "It's worse in some ways than being a liar," he says, "because a liar has to keep track of the truth."

His whole read on Musk fits in a fortune cookie: "power without purpose."

Who paid for the come-up

The self-made legend has plot holes. Hasan ran the numbers: Musk's first company, Zip2, failed, and he still walked away with $22 million. PayPal pushed him out as CEO, and he still made $250 million. Losing never paid so well.

Then the government money. Gibney says Musk's career is "inconceivable without the assistance of government," from federal loans under the Obama administration to California carbon credits, an "extraordinary amount" he says Musk got for running an electric car company, and gamed.

So next time Musk swings at government waste, remember who bankrolled him. California taxpayers. That's us.

Free speech, terms apply

Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist. Gibney's receipts say otherwise. Musk called the film a "hit piece" on X. Before anyone had seen it, Gibney says, Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro threatened to sue him over a Hollywood Reporter article about the movie.

Then the distributor tried to buy trailer ads. Gibney says YouTube, Meta, TikTok and X all said no, then said no again on appeal. Only an embarrassing article brought the platforms around, he says, and not all of them.

He's really the classic American trickster or confidence man. | Alex Gibney

Ratioed at the Super Bowl

Authors Gibney interviewed told him Musk was at the Super Bowl when a Joe Biden tweet out-liked his own similar post. He flew back to San Francisco that night and called an emergency all-hands. Does Musk game X's algorithm for himself? Gibney: "100%."

The richest man alive, rewiring a platform over a likes battle. Gibney calls it the behavior of "a young, wounded adolescent" with way too much power. Somebody check on him. Actually, somebody check him.

Whichever way the money blows

Musk once tweeted he was a "socialist" on health care, Hasan notes. Now he's attacking Democrats over Medicare for All. Gibney says Musk gave about $50 million to Republican congressional candidates in 2022 and kept it quiet until the Wall Street Journal dug it up.

Gibney's take: liberal when there was Obama money to get, MAGA when there was Trump money and power to get. The one constant? He can't stand any limit on his own power.

Where the jokes stop

Gibney says the DOGE teams Musk led inside the federal government were sophisticated about getting into Americans' data. He says the sudden shutdown of USAID funding came with a body count: 500,000 children dead within a year. That's Gibney's figure, and it's a heavy one.

Then there's AI. Gibney calls xAI "the most reckless AI company there is," and compares Musk running it to "the Joker being handed the keys to the Manhattan Project."

Closer than you think

Our angle, not the film's: SpaceX launches rockets out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, the ones the whole Central Coast steps outside to watch. When one man controls the rockets over Lompoc, the feed in your pocket and an AI company, it's fair to ask who checks him. Right now, good luck naming anyone.

Want more stories about who holds power and who pays for it? Open the new issue of Connxct Magazine.

Sources

This Filmmaker Exposed Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, He’s Taking On Elon Musk (Zeteo)

The claims in this piece come from Alex Gibney and Mehdi Hasan in the interview above. Check the reporting yourself before you share.

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