Elon Musk And The First Trillion-Dollar Worship Machine

Lede

The world got its first dollar trillionaire and somehow the real demand is that ordinary people admire the invoice.

Words used

Trillionaire: someone whose estimated net worth reaches 1 trillion in a currency.
Key person risk: when a company depends so heavily on one person that the business starts to look like a personality hostage note.

Hermit Off Script

Elon Musk becoming the first trillionaire in dollars is not the part that shocks me. The shocking part is the choir asked to sing around it. First trillionaire in dollars, not pounds, so maybe that explains the strange obsession with the UK. Maybe he looks at Britain falling into extremism, culture-war noise and political stupidity and thinks: “Good, but still not enough. I need this disaster priced in sterling.” I wonder how many people have been crushed, ignored, fired, mocked, pressured or simply left behind so one man can stand on the tallest pile of money in history and still be sold to us as a misunderstood genius. Of course, I cannot count every damaged life. That is the point. When someone becomes this rich, the human cost gets lost in the accounting mist. No one wants to fight a man with that much power. No one wants to be the small name in the big lawsuit. So everyone starts praising the leadership, the vision, the character. Really? Since when did public tantrums, far-right flirtations and platform politics become admirable leadership? I imagine even behind closed doors plenty of people say what they won’t say on camera. They know the emperor is not naked; he is wearing a share price. I used to admire him, long ago, when it felt as if the mission was cleaner: electric cars, reusable rockets, bold engineering, human future. But money plus vision without moral restraint becomes something else. If the only measure is how much cash the machine can make, then yes, he is a master. But a master of accumulation is not automatically a leader worth following. Without real competition, real accountability and real consequences, the empire prints money from all sides and calls it destiny. I am not building this roast on drug claims, because that needs care and receipts. I will say this instead: I still hope he wakes up from the moral hole he has fallen into and uses the machinery for good again, because the saddest villain is the one who once looked like he might help build the future.

Jonathan Pie – A Trillion Dollars – Elon Musk

Elon Musk, short bio with baggage

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971, studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and built the modern billionaire legend through Zip2, X.com, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink, xAI and the usual cupboard of companies that sound like they were named during a midnight caffeine crisis. He deserves credit where credit is due. Tesla helped drag electric cars from polite environmental brochure into serious industry pressure. SpaceX made reusable rockets feel almost normal, which is still absurd in the best possible way. The problem is that the story did not stop at engineering. It became a one-man weather system with share prices.

The official trouble started early enough to be called a pattern. In 2018, the SEC charged Musk with securities fraud over his “funding secured” Tesla tweets, saying they were false and misleading. He and Tesla later settled, with Musk stepping down as Tesla chair and both paying civil penalties. [SEC]
That should have been the moment when someone took the phone away and replaced it with a notebook, a pen and maybe a small supervised nap. Instead, the phone became a market fog machine.

Then came the Thailand cave rescue insult, where Musk called British diver Vernon Unsworth “pedo guy” after Unsworth criticised Musk’s mini-submarine idea. Musk later argued it was an insult rather than a literal accusation, and a US jury found him not liable for defamation in 2019. [Guardian] [TechCrunch]
Legally, he walked away. Morally, the room still smelled burnt.

Then came Twitter, bought for $44 billion in 2022 and renamed X, because apparently one of the richest men alive still needed a website to sound like an abandoned superhero draft. Under Musk, X became both platform and personal loudspeaker. The backlash grew after his 2023 reply to an antisemitic conspiracy post, which the White House condemned while major advertisers paused spending. [Reuters]
That is not small gossip. That is brand damage with a login screen.

There are also reported concerns around drug use. The Wall Street Journal reported worries among executives and board members about alleged drug use; Reuters later reported that Musk defended prescribed ketamine use in an interview and said what mattered to Wall Street was execution. [Reuters]
This must be handled carefully. It is not a licence to write “drug addict” as fact. It is fair to write that alleged drug use became part of the public controversy around him, especially because the man is tied to cars, rockets, satellites, AI, public contracts and a social platform that can move politics before breakfast.

Then there is the UK politics mess. In January 2025, Musk posted attacks linked to the grooming gangs scandal; Keir Starmer condemned “lies and misinformation”, and the Guardian reported that Musk had made unsubstantiated claims about UK politicians. [Guardian]
Around the same period, Reuters reported that Musk abruptly said Nigel Farage should quit as Reform UK leader after previously appearing friendly with him. [Reuters]
That is the gossip section wearing a tie: public posts, political interference, sudden reversals and a billionaire treating another country like a comment thread.

So yes, Elon Musk is a builder. He is also backlash with a launch schedule. The tragedy is that the same man who helped make the future feel possible now often behaves as if the future must kneel before his ego first.

SpaceX, the short history

SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with the mad but clean aim of lowering the cost of reaching space and, eventually, making human life possible beyond Earth. At the beginning, it looked less like the future and more like a very expensive way to scatter metal over the Pacific. Falcon 1 failed 3 times before its fourth flight finally reached low-Earth orbit in September 2008, becoming the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to do it. [SpaceX]
That was the point where the joke had to sit down quietly.

Then NASA arrived, not as a small footnote, but as the oxygen tank. SpaceX won work under NASA’s commercial cargo programme, and Dragon became the first commercially developed spacecraft to reach the International Space Station in May 2012. [NASA]
By then, the company had moved from “rich man’s rocket hobby” to “serious national infrastructure”, which is usually the moment everyone discovers how much private genius enjoys public contracts.

The real SpaceX revolution was reuse. In December 2015, Falcon 9 landed an orbital-class first stage back on land. In April 2016, it landed one on a droneship. In March 2017, SpaceX flew a previously used orbital-class booster again. [SpaceX]
That changed the launch business. Rockets stopped being one-use fireworks for governments and became machinery that could return, be checked, and fly again. It was brilliant engineering, and pretending otherwise would be childish.

Then came the showpiece era. Falcon Heavy launched in February 2018, with Musk’s Tesla Roadster sent into space because apparently subtlety had already been ejected from the vehicle. Starlink began its first main satellite deployments in 2019 and turned SpaceX into both a launch company and an internet infrastructure company. [SpaceX]
The power shifted again. SpaceX was no longer only selling access to orbit. It was filling orbit with its own network.

In May 2020, Crew Dragon carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station on Demo-2. NASA said it was the first astronaut launch from American soil since the Shuttle programme ended in 2011, and SpaceX called it the first time a commercial company had taken astronauts to orbit and back. [NASA]
That achievement deserves respect. It also explains why criticism of Musk gets messy: the machines are excellent even when the man behind the microphone behaves like a governance problem with Wi-Fi.

After that, Starship became the next giant bet. SpaceX wants a fully reusable heavy-lift system for the Moon, Mars and large cargo missions. NASA selected SpaceX’s Starship human landing system for Artemis work, and in October 2024 SpaceX caught a returning Super Heavy booster with the launch tower’s arms during Starship’s fifth flight test. [NASA] [SpaceX]
That is not normal engineering. That is science fiction asking for planning permission in Texas.

So the history of SpaceX is simple and uncomfortable. It is one of the most impressive engineering stories of the century, built through private risk, public money, NASA partnership, brutal iteration and a cult of speed that sometimes treats failure as research and people as background noise. Keep the rockets. Keep the reuse. Keep the courage to test hard things. But don’t confuse a successful launch history with a moral blank cheque for the billionaire standing near the smoke.

What does not make sense

A man can become a trillionaire and still be marketed as the fragile genius who needs more loyalty.
Tesla shareholders approved a pay structure so large it makes normal executive greed look like pocket lint.
The same public figure can stir politics in another country, then hide behind the myth that he is only “building the future”.
People call it vision when the result is profitable, but call it chaos when anyone weaker behaves the same way.
The worship machine asks workers, consumers and governments to absorb the risk while the legend keeps the upside.
Britain does not need a billionaire abroad treating its politics like a side quest with bad Wi-Fi.

Sense check / The numbers

Reuters reported in June 2026 that SpaceX’s share sale raised a record $75 billion and helped lift Musk’s estimated net worth to about $1.1 trillion, with most of that wealth resting in SpaceX. [Reuters]
Tesla shareholders approved Musk’s 2025 pay plan with over 75 per cent support; Reuters said it could be worth as much as $1 trillion in stock over 10 years, or about $878 billion after required payments. [Reuters]
The Tesla plan’s goals included 20 million vehicles, 1 million robotaxis, 1 million robots, up to $400 billion in core profit, and a market value rising to $8.5 trillion. [Reuters]
Sterling traded at about $1.3416 on 16 June 2026, so a $1.1 trillion fortune would be roughly GBP 820 billion. A GBP 1 trillion fortune would need around $1.34 trillion at that rate. [Reuters]
In January 2025, Musk used X to make unsubstantiated claims about UK politicians over the grooming gangs scandal, and the Guardian reported that Keir Starmer accused those spreading such claims of “lies and misinformation”. [Guardian]

The sketch

Scene 1: The worship meeting
A boardroom table shaped like a rocket. A tiny worker silhouette sits at one end while a giant empty chair marked “Founder” fills the room.
Dialogue:
Chair: “More loyalty.”
Worker: “More wages?”
Chair: “Wrong metric.”

Scene 2: The sterling problem
A billionaire silhouette stands on a mountain of dollar signs, looking through binoculars at a smaller hill labelled “GBP 1 trillion”.
Dialogue:
Billionaire: “Almost there.”
Britain: “Please don’t help.”
Algorithm: “Boosting outrage.”

Scene 3: The future invoice
A robot, a rocket and a social media megaphone print a long receipt that stretches over a queue of ordinary people.
Dialogue:
Machine: “Vision delivered.”
Public: “Who pays?”
Receipt: “Everyone below.”

What to watch, not the show

Founder worship dressed up as shareholder discipline.
Political influence moving through platforms instead of elections.
Companies priced on belief before delivery.
Workers treated as background noise in executive pay debates.
UK politics being pulled into foreign billionaire attention cycles.
Regulators trying to keep up after the empire has already scaled.
Public contracts, private fortunes and personal brands becoming too tangled to separate.

The Hermit take

Admire the engineering. Audit the empire.
A leader who needs worship is already asking for too much.

Keep or toss

Keep / Toss.
Keep the rockets, batteries and ambition.
Toss the leader-worship, political chaos and moral blank cheque.

Sources

Reuters, SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-ipo-makes-elon-musk-worlds-first-trillionaire-2026-06-11/
Reuters, Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay plan wins shareholder approval: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/tesla-shareholders-approve-878-billion-pay-plan-elon-musk-2025-11-06/
Reuters, Sterling steady as traders assess US-Iran deal, focus turns to UK data and BoE: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/sterling-steady-traders-assess-us-iran-deal-focus-turns-uk-data-boe-2026-06-16/
Guardian, Why is Elon Musk attacking Keir Starmer over the grooming scandal?: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/06/why-is-elon-musk-attacking-keir-starmer-over-grooming-scandal
Japan Times / Reuters, Musk turns on U.K.’s Farage, saying he should quit as Reform party chief: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/01/06/world/politics/musk-uk-farage-reform-party/
Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Elon Musk profile: https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-musk/
SEC, Elon Musk charged with securities fraud for misleading tweets: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018-219
Guardian, Elon Musk claims he did not intend to accuse British diver of paedophilia: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/16/elon-musk-defamation-lawsuit-pedo-guy-tweet-diver
TechCrunch, Elon Musk found not liable in British diver defamation case: https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/06/elon-musk-found-not-liable-in-case-brought-against-him-by-british-diver/
Reuters, Musk defends his ketamine use as beneficial for investors: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/musk-defends-his-ketamine-use-beneficial-investors-new-video-2024-03-18/
Reuters via Investing.com, White House condemns Musk post as advertisers pause on X: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/white-house-condemns-musk-for-spreading-hideous-antisemitic-lies-3237955
Guardian, Starmer condemns lies and misinformation as he hits back at Musk: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/06/starmer-condemns-lies-and-misinformation-as-he-hits-back-at-musk
Reuters via Japan Times, Musk says Nigel Farage should quit as Reform UK leader: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/01/06/world/politics/musk-uk-farage-reform-party/
SpaceX, RatSat mission and Falcon 1 first successful orbital flight: https://www.spacex.com/launches/ratsat
SpaceX, mission timeline and reusable rocket milestones: https://www.spacex.com/mission
NASA, Dragon approaches the International Space Station in May 2012: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/dragon-approaches-station/
NASA, Commercial Resupply Services overview: https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-resupply-services-overview/
NASA, SpaceX Demo-2 astronaut launch in May 2020: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronauts-launch-from-america-in-historic-test-flight-of-spacex-crew-dragon/
SpaceX, Demo-2 mission: https://www.spacex.com/launches/demo2
NASA, Human Landing System history and SpaceX Artemis work: https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/nextstep-h-human-landing-system/
SpaceX, Starship fifth flight test and first Super Heavy booster catch: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-5
Jonathan Pie – YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JonathanPie