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Why Musk wants to take over Europe with Starlink

Elon Musk wants to become the Italian government’s sole telecommunications provider. The billionaire’s SpaceX company is closing in on a $1.6 billion security contract after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The Italian government promised that Meloni did not talk to Musk about the deal while she was there. If the deal is sealed, Musk’s SpaceX would provide Italy with encryption services for government and military use. “Ready to provide Italy with the most secure and advanced connectivity!” wrote Musk on his X platform.

Others within the Italian government are not as enthusiastic about the potential deal. “If 1.5 billion euros of Italian money to use an American billionaire’s satellites in our country is the price to pay for his friendship, we disagree,” said centre-left Democratic Party (PD) leader Elly Schlein. Musk’s willingness to do business with the Italian government is not surprising considering the neo-fascist right wing that currently leads it. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni considers Musk a “genius.” Her crusades against immigration, same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, and anything else she considers “woke” have brought her closer to Musk, who has linked up with the European right in recent times.

This telecommunications deal is just the latest instalment in Musk’s attempt to take over the Eurozone. The CEO has meddled in the German elections, singing the praises of his own right-wing party (AfD) while German politicians denounce his involvement. In the UK, Musk called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a popular far-right activist and Islamophobe who is a founding member of the British National Party. He also railed about how civil war is “inevitable” in that country.

The EU economics

Thus, the richest man in the world is expanding his political sphere of influence and, in the process, raking in money from abroad. Elon Musk is changing global politics. And in the process, he is getting even richer. The leaders of four European countries- France, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom- denounced his influence in separate statements on Monday, warning that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, should not be involved in their countries’ politics.

Musk, the world’s richest person and close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, has lashed out on social media against various world leaders, posting relentlessly on his social media app, X, and trying to duplicate the influence he had on U.S. politics last year. On numerous occasions, Musk has supported far-right candidates in various European countries with his social media posts. Musk’s message proved divisive, and resentment seemed to simmer among the leaders of some of Europe’s largest and most powerful countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron, without naming Musk, targeted him in a speech in Paris on foreign policy. “Who could have imagined, 10 years ago, that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would directly intervene in elections, even in Germany?” Macron said, according to the Associated Press, alluding to Musk’s support for a far-right German political party. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government criticized Musk by name and predicted that his social media posts would not work with the public. According to national broadcaster Deutsche Welle, “normal people, reasonable people, decent people are by far the majority in this country,” a government spokesman said.

A deeper political move

“(Keir) Starmer must go and face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in Britain’s history,” the multibillionaire wrote recently. He was referring to the British prime minister’s time as chief prosecutor in England and Wales, which coincided with a child grooming scandal, posting repeatedly on this topic Friday. Musk has also called for the release of Tommy Robinson, an extremist agitator, and supported the anti-immigration Reform UK party, whose leader Nigel Farage met recently. As in the United States, Musk is increasingly popular among young Britons, according to the polling institute Savanta.

For them, “the lines between perceptions of success and wealth are increasingly blurred with politics,” Chris Hopkins, Savanta’s director of policy research, told AFP on Friday. So far, Downing Street has refrained from commenting on Musk’s comments, except with some mild rebuke and stress that he “looks forward” to working with the Trump administration. A senior British government minister’s response to Musk’s latest attacks on the exploitation scandal highlighted the sensitivity of the leaders’ act. Health Minister Wes Streeting told ITV News that Musk’s comments were “misjudged and certainly misinformed.” But, he quickly added, “we are willing to work with Elon Musk, who I believe has an important role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries address this serious problem.”

“As 2025 begins, Musk is no longer an ironic commentator on British politics, but a power player within it,” political commentator Patrick Maguire wrote in The Times on Friday. The government needs to figure out how to handle Elon Musk and his speeches because he is not sustainable,” Sky News political reporter Ben Bloch wrote on Friday, as Musk once again called for new elections.

Why Musk wants to take over Europe with Starlink
Starlink

Beyond the UK

Britain is not Musk’s only target in Europe: he met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a prominent figure on the radical right when the latter visited Trump in Florida last month. The businessman has also been accused of interference by the German government over his strong support for the far-right AfD party ahead of parliamentary elections. On Jan. 9, he hosted a conversation on X with the party’s leader, Alice Weidel.

The 53-year-old entrepreneur also branded as “dictator” the judges who recently annulled the presidential elections in Romania amid suspicions of Russian interference. Musk is also an enthusiastic supporter of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the country’s most right-wing leader since 1945, who calls him a “genius.”

Politics and business

According to experts, Musk’s political initiatives are intimately linked to his business interests: for Musk and Trump, “democracy, debate, disagreement, and state welfare systems all get in the way of business,” said Ilan Kapoor, a professor at York University in Toronto known for his critical research on neoliberalism. “So, they look favorably on more authoritarian forms of government, which they think can work more efficiently by eliminating political opposition and reducing the role of government (although the contradiction is that they need a lot of state intervention when it comes to their ‘law and order’ agenda).”

Musk also criticized the European Commission, calling the functioning of the EU undemocratic and calling for a greater role for the European Parliament. Musk spoke as the EU, grappling with rampant disinformation on social media, seeks to regulate its X network with a new content law. A former EU commissioner, Věra Jourová, went so far as to describe Musk as a “promoter of evil” in an interview with Politico last October. In December, researchers at the European Council on Foreign Relations warned that Musk could use X “to mobilize citizens and far-right parties to increase the political cost for EU decision makers pursuing repression.”

Antonino Caffo has been involved in journalism, particularly technology, for fifteen years. He is interested in topics related to the world of IT security but also consumer electronics. Antonino writes for the most important Italian generalist and trade publications. You can see him, sometimes, on television explaining how technology works, which is not as trivial for everyone as it seems.