In Washington's May downpour, Musk stood on the top floor of Tesla's headquarters, watching the 300 billion dollars evaporate from his account, suddenly recalling that fateful night six months ago — when he received the call about Trump's victory, he thought he was the one orchestrating this power game.
The alliance between this Silicon Valley tyrant and White House madman is nothing short of magical. When Musk landed his private jet at Mar-a-Lago, they reached a devil's bargain over whiskey and cigars: Tesla gained entry to the military-industrial complex, SpaceX monopolized NASA's budget, and in exchange, Musk would pave the way for Trump's return to the White House with 150 million dollars in political donations and millions of fans.
"America needs real businessmen to govern!" At the inauguration ceremony in January 2024, Musk cheered loudly from the VIP seats. He indeed shone for 87 days — he criticized Capitol Hill until they modified the bill overnight, the Secretary of the Treasury's redwood desk was shaken by his slaps, and Pentagon generals lined up to report military expenditures to him. Until that fateful April morning.
When Musk stormed the Pentagon's treasury with a 200-person auditing team, the surveillance camera captured the moment when the chief of staff's face turned pale. This self-proclaimed "national savior" tech mogul did not know that he was not only unveiling the military spending black box but also touching Washington's most dangerous taboo. After receiving a confidential report, Trump in the inner palace smashed his coffee cup: "Immediately cut off all this madman's powers!"
The ensuing political strangulation was suffocatingly swift. NASA's 10 billion dollar contract was re-signed with Boeing, Tesla's tax rebate policy was urgently halted, and more critically, the Treasury suddenly initiated a "special review of overseas assets" — this counterattack directly pierced Musk's capital armor. When Besant made a throat-cutting gesture to him in the White House corridor, the world's richest man finally understood: in the real power game, tech newcomers are merely sacrificial pawns.
"We don't need anyone's charity." Trump casually remarked in an exclusive interview with Fox News, with behind him the recently signed (Space Defense System Reorganization Order). This super contract, which should have belonged to SpaceX, was quietly lying in the safe of the Lockheed Martin CEO.
Musk's last tweet on the X platform was posted at three in the morning: "When you stare into the abyss..." The accompanying image was of a broken rocket model. Sharp-eyed netizens noticed a faint blue light disc (House of Cards) in the corner of the photo — perhaps this real-life "Frank Underwood" finally understood Washington's survival rule: there are no eternal allies, only eternal interests.
This trillion-dollar political tuition reveals not only the cognitive gap between Silicon Valley and Washington but also the eternal game between capital and power. As Musk's private jet took off again, the destination was no longer the White House lawn but a new base deep in the Nevada desert — where a Mars colonization spacecraft is being secretly assembled, perhaps his final refuge.