Articles for category: Musk

Does the EU Have What it Takes to Counter American Plutocratic Power?

Our symposium ‘Musk, Power, and the EU’ has evolved in parallel with the inauguration of the new US administration and has been marked by numerous and unprecedented attacks on the European Union. Amid a flurry of announcements challenging the status quo - often with brutal disregard, even against traditional allies - the European Union, along with the way it exercises power, suddenly appears as the antithesis of the new America. Yet does the EU have what it takes to resist such an expansionist and plutocratic projection of power, which now threatens Europe’s security, lifestyle and overall existence? 

11. Februar 2025

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Corporate Power Beyond Market Power

Elon Musk’s corporate empire spans an impressive array of markets and industries. This empire includes SpaceX (and its subsidiary Starlink), Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company, X, xAI, and the Musk Foundation. These corporations are connected and interlinked, creating a cross-corporate power structure. Competition law, which focuses on market power in narrowly defined relevant markets – say, a market for booster rockets – has very limited reach to guard against the possible detrimental effects of such multifaceted concentrated power in the hands of a few on open democratic societies.

10. Februar 2025

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Elon Musk, the Systemic Risk

Elon Musk seems to many in Europe to symbolize the dawn of a digital dystopia. I argue, however, that this view may be incorrect in several respects. With the Digital Services Act (DSA) and its new “systemic tools,” the EU has an opportunity to address the technological roots of Musk’s powerful position in the digital sphere. In this context, Musk (potentially) using his platform (or AI) to intentionally influence the access, distribution, and presentation of information is “merely” a manifestation of risks that are already inherent in the systemic position of certain digital services.

7. Februar 2025

Democracy vs. Digital Giants

After Elon Musk's attacks on European politicians, Emmanuel Macron warned of digital tycoons threatening democracy. This post examines how tech giants have evolved from EU allies to political actors shaping policy and public debate. It questions whether current regulations can curb their growing influence while balancing free speech and platform neutrality.

3. Februar 2025

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Elon Musk’s Wake-up Call for Europe

Viewing Elon Musk’s recent forays into (electoral) politics in Europe primarily as a geopolitical wake-up call to European leaders, our analysis focuses on the promise and relative weaknesses of law and policy solutions as well as institutional arrangements the EU has put in place to protect European democracies from foreign interference. The EU and its Member States must adapt quickly to the new international realities if they do not want to be norm-takers rather than norm-shapers on major international dossiers.

27. Januar 2025

Countering the Tech Oligarchy

Seeing Elon Musk with Donald Trump at the latter’s inauguration, it would be tempting to single him out as a unique and overbearing threat to a range of EU interests, such as its online environment, election integrity and regulatory capacity. But that would be to miss the point of a larger trend; what Joe Biden has termed the “tech-industrial complex” is not limited to the US. It, and an associated worldwide oligarchy, is converging with ascendant ultra-nationalist political agendas to pose wide-ranging challenges.

24. Januar 2025

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The US Supreme Court and Plutocracy

Populist authoritarianism is a global phenomenon. However, the US is the only so-called consolidated democracy where its ascent has been eased by the systematic dismantling of legal limits on campaign donations. US elections are now not only the world’s most costly, but they are also directly subject to the inordinate influence of wealthy individuals and corporations. The Supreme Court of the United States’ 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling has paved the way for the emergence of so-called “super” PACS (political action committees) that, while formally barred from coordinating with candidates or parties, can accept unlimited corporate contributions.

24. Januar 2025

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Democracy or Domination

The urgency of Europe’s creep towards plutocracy calls for a similarly urgent response. Competition law, given its history and potential as a tool of anti-domination, is a natural fit to protect and revitalise democracy in Europe from the threats posed by excessive concentrations of private power. For it to be effective for that purpose, competition scholars must clearly articulate which democratic values, like non-domination, competition law should seek to pursue, and clear-mindedly design mechanisms through which to channel them.

23. Januar 2025

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Trump and the Folklore of Capitalism

How can we make sense of the return of Donald Trump, who again convinced enough US voters of his populist bonafides? Populist authoritarianism has made inroads around the world. Only Trump’s version, however, probably brings together so much wealth and power, with super-rich business executives now at the helm. Here I tap a brilliant but neglected book, The Folklore of Capitalism (1937), by the legal scholar and New Deal trustbuster, Thurman Arnold (1891-1961), to understand this remarkable development. Folklore of Capitalism helps explain Trump’s wide appeal, despite the electorate’s disagreements with many of his policy preferences.

22. Januar 2025

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Zuckerberg’s Strategy

On January 7, 2025, and in the days following, the founder and CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, made a series of statements that framed Meta's previous and future content policy with an evidently strategic intention. The change of content moderation policy, as described in three comprehensive points in his personal announcement on his own platforms, may even sound reasonable, as discussed below. However, the reasoning and the framing of these changes appear to show that Meta is up to something entirely different from just further optimizing its curation of content on its platforms.

21. Januar 2025

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