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26 April 2025

Elon Musk’s First Principles

Adam Tooze

Elon Musk is the richest person in the world—one of the richest in history. But Musk’s power is no longer just tied to the financial wealth derived from Tesla, X, or SpaceX. Musk, by virtue of his close relationship with President Donald Trump, has been given a sweeping mandate to influence policy across the entire U.S. government through the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). His life as an entrepreneur sheds important light on his work as a political actor.

Musk has often claimed that physics is at the center of his worldview: He talks about the search for natural first principles as a motivation for his actions in business and life more generally. And “first principles thinking” has become something of a mantra in Musk world. It evokes both rigor and a childlike, innocent approach to any problem, however complex.


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