> Seems like we're near a tipping point in that regard, if we haven't already crossed it.

Sure... As long as the army is following the government it's a non-issue. Billionaires are political/industrial/&c. power if you want but they're one "go get them" order away from disappearing forever. It just so happens that for now their goals are somewhat aligned with the gov's.

And even if the gov falls a lot of US three letters agencies are already semi or fully autonomous, and from the few things we know about them they don't fuck around.

Corruption exists, probably on a large scale, but it's not a single coordinated effort, it's more like an army of rats fighting for the crumbs. If even Mexico didn't completely fold against their drug cartels it's not the soy boy Musk & lizard man Zuck dream team who'll destroy the USA

I think US defense blob is actually the entity at the top of the entire global power food chain. Probably the actual last entity you'd want to meaningfully fuck with.

As Mao once noted, at the end of the day, political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Billionaires certainly have significant influence over policy decisions, but the tools of violence are still controlled by the politicians. Money can't protect you from the army or the secret police, as Jack Ma discovered in China.

Yes, it does. The government, indirectly or directly can indefinitely owe any entity money, or even print money on demand if really necessary and ultimately, Musk is just a person.

He's a useful idiot at the moment. Once he is no longer useful, he's collected a very long rope.

I suspect the end game will be Tesla's collapse when his hype train hits a wall and other manufacturers perfect low cost vehicles, Twitter/X is already dying and SpaceX will get involved in an ITAR violation or conflict of interest and suddenly end up in the hands of Lockheed Martin or someone similar and him in front of the SEC for one last time.

The US gov would not want to look like they're intervening. They don't need to.