Video meetings. You probably had one earlier today, and you’ll have another one later. Accustomed as we all are to this mildly irritating—but admittedly convenient—fact of modern life, most of us have gotten pretty good at making it through one without coming across as malevolent, spectral, looming, or otherwise Palpatinesque.
Not so with the richest man in the world, who teleconferenced into the G20 meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Tuesday to give a sermon on the evils of business regulation, and possibly to debut a whole new persona:
After taking a long time to say that he doesn’t like how many business regulations there are in the E.U., he points out that there’s a whole lot of energy grid capacity in China, but it’s not an ideal place to run data centers, due to GPU export bans. Then he says:
“Really the consideration is what sort of electricity growth is there outside of China? And that is currently a significant shortfall relative to AI chip production. So there is this—this creates an opportunity I think for countries around the world to sort of, if they’re interested in AI data centers, to construct a lot of power, and offer that to AI companies. And in exchange of course these AI data centers would be taxed and have to pay you know reasonable fees and stuff.”
He’s saying, in other words, construct a lot of power and sell it to AI companies like mine. It’s nothing you wouldn’t expect someone in his position to say, though it is funny that he’s literally grasping for power.
Mark Zuckerberg’s G20 appearance also happened via webcam, but it was, of course, more awkward than overtly villainous. Something about Musk’s isolated floating head, accentuated by the black shirt and the, um, rather martial and Germanic haircut, along with his newly croaky voice echoing around that conference room just feels like… the next logical step for Musk’s vibe?
In June, another Musk teleconference was staged—one that involved much higher production values—in which he rang the Nasdaq opening bell the day of the SpaceX IPO while remaining firmly ensconced in Starbase, Texas. It’s strange for anyone, even someone as rich and famous as Musk, to not travel in order to attend something so auspicious in the business world.
It’s not clear why he phoned that one in, although he said in 2024 that “homicidal maniacs” are gunning for him. That same year, the New York Times wrote about a vast, Secret Service-like security team that goes wherever he goes. And crime has become one of his posting fixations.
So as his energy level depletes with age, and he becomes less apt to, say, hop around on stages, and as he apparently shifts into more of a bunker-type existence, its reasonable to expect that his eerie presence might materialize on more and more screens so he can state his demands. It’s just what you do when you’re the unquestioned lord and master of the world.
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