Read moreOne morning in December 2022, Musk types a tweet: "My pronouns are Judge/Fauci. "A full-blown attack against the anti-Covid policy led by former White House health advisor Anthony Fauci." And a clear disdain for transgender people who sometimes specify in their profile which pronouns they identify with. This double-edged mockery garnered 1,2 million likes and revolted a powerless Democratic camp. Musk is the new prince of the kingdom: a few weeks earlier, the man of the year 2021, according to Time, put $44 billion on the table to buy Twitter. Having been a member of the network for a decade, Musk has always been an avid user. He is one of the rare bosses to spend his entire life there, from morning to night. A good portion of his publications are devoted to his flourishing businesses: Tesla, a pioneer of the electric automobile, SpaceX with its Martian ambitions, or Neuralink, specializing in biotechnologies. As Béatrice Mathieu of L'Express and Emmanuel Botta recount in the excellent investigative book Elon Musk, to be published on May 17 by Robert Laffont, from which we are publishing exclusive passages here, Musk likes to flirt with the yellow line. A joke about a possible Tesla delisting, published on Twitter in 2018, cost him a fine of $20 million, imposed by the financial markets regulator, the SEC. But his thread is also populated with powerful domestic thoughts. “Sunday morning: to make or not to make cookies…”: 12 likes, all the same. Its community has 138 million subscribers, a world record. Five million more than Obama. More than Trump and Biden combined. An army of fans in whose eyes he often appears as a prophet, an inspiring hero. An Iron Man escaped from the comics. "No diplomatic legitimacy" In recent months, more political messages have been added to photos of rockets and schoolboy jokes. The tweet about Fauci is not an isolated case. One day, he relayed a conspiracy theory about the husband of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, before deleting his post. The other, he declares his love for the Republican candidate, the (very) conservative Ron DeSantis. In October, he also published a mind-boggling poll inviting Internet users to vote for or against a peace plan between kyiv and Moscow, taking up some of Putin's demands. Ukrainians are furious, observers are astonished. "Elon Musk has no diplomatic legitimacy," recalls Charleyne Biondi, digital policy advisor at the Montaigne Institute.READ ALSO >> Elon Musk, his latest projects for humanityThis statement is, however, revealing of the influence he has gained in the geopolitical field. For a long time, its Starlink satellite connection was only the stuff of dreams for geeks living in the many black spots in the United States. The war in Ukraine showed that this constellation was much more than a substitute product: a strategic tool for communicating in a war zone. As for SpaceX launchers, they have allowed the Americans to no longer depend on the Russians for manned flights. The US Air Force is looking further ahead, hoping one day to use them to move equipment and soldiers at high speed to all the hot spots on the globe. Musk's latest "toy" is not the least politically charged. "Twitter only accounts for 5% of global social media activity, but it is particularly influential and connected to current events," points out Bruno Breton, CEO of Bloom, which monitors global chatter. It was in 2016, during the campaign opposing Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton, that the blue bird made its nest in the debate of ideas. In June 2022, according to the Pew Research Center, 30% of Twitter conversations were about politics. "It's not just about voters from the far-right Trumpist and libertarian movement." Twitter was first and foremost, and still is, an essential relay for the most left-wing ideas of the Democratic Party,” underlines Charleyne Biondi. Black Lives Matter, MeToo… These movements emerged on Twitter, before being picked up by traditional media. Today, "making an announcement by tweet rather than through the press has become common for public figures," notes Alban Saint-Joigny, manager of Backbone Consulting, a management consultancy. The tag (@) and hashtag (#) functions allow you to directly address each other and invite yourself into all conversations. Exposing the flaws in the system, in order to better fill themThe purchase of Twitter is undoubtedly a nice political move. Could Musk have secret ambitions in this area? It's unlikely. Born in South Africa, he is not eligible to run for the US presidency. His political line is, moreover, fluid. In April 2022, the entrepreneur published a diagram of his positioning, placing himself in the center-left in 2008, at the start of the Obama era, then drifting towards the center-right, as the poles of right and left moved further apart, including since the election of Trump in 2016. After his recent support for Ron DeSantis, he immediately added that he was "open to the idea of ​​voting Democrat again one day." Understand who can...More than the choice of a camp, it was his move to California that first proved decisive in his journey. "Intellectually, Musk owes a lot to Silicon Valley," underlines sociologist Olivier Alexandre, research fellow at the CNRS and author of La Tech. When Silicon Valley remakes the world (Seuil). "He found himself in the right place at the right time: in the mid-90s at Stanford University, in the heart of this region, just before the democratization of the Internet. He made his first fortune in software with the idea that this technology would be a revolution. He is therefore far from being the only one in this situation. "This Californian gimmick – the star entrepreneur with big ambitions – then takes precedence over everything else. His meeting with Peter Thiel, at the turn of the year 2000, completes his ideological construction. In addition to founding PayPal with him, which took him to the upper echelons of this tech elite in full development, Musk embraced with the latter the libertarian principles of the philosopher Ayn Rand. "A kind of right-wing anarchism, extreme social liberalism and economic opportunism," explains Olivier Alexandre. This worldview is now taken to the extreme with Twitter, where he defends unlimited expression (except for those who criticize him). "What motivates Elon Musk above all is to constantly point out the flaws in the system," explains Asma Mhalla, a lecturer at Sciences Po and a specialist in Big Tech. And, if possible, through its various businesses, to fill them. "It fills a general political vacuum on the question of the future. "It gives a horizon, a purpose, an objective," analyses the expert, particularly on the question of the survival of humanity with SpaceX. On the fight against global warming with Tesla. And according to him, on the future of democracy, with Twitter. At the risk, however, of threatening its own business, notably Tesla, with its divisive positions. Danger to business "The more Elon Musk becomes politicized on Twitter, the more difficult it will be for him to sell electric cars to a wide audience," warned Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, in a note in January. After the initial excitement, Musk's arrival at the head of the network seriously cooled some advertisers and users. The latter are worried to see his maximalist vision of freedom of expression paving the way for hate speech, while 90% of employees have been dismissed. The new account certification system does nothing to reassure them: the identity of the tweeter is not checked, all you have to do is pay to benefit from the "Verified" badge. A godsend for trolls and other spreaders of misinformation, or simply unknown people who can now dream of becoming influencers, thanks to the gain in visibility granted by the badge. "Before Musk arrived, Twitter was the most advanced social network in terms of collaboration with researchers, data sharing, in order to set up effective moderation systems, safeguard healthy discussion spaces... He broke everything," regrets Nikos Smyrnaios, researcher in information and communication sciences at the University of Toulouse. At a time when former Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is launching Bluesky, a new platform heavily inspired by the blue bird, Elon Musk's success in social networks is becoming more uncertain. Winning hearts and souls is far more complex than sending humans to Mars.

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