How Elon Musk Is the World’s Most Powerful Person

15 June 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Of course, in 2024, Musk donated to Trump’s re-election campaign and Republicans in Congress $291,482,587, which beat even the prior all-time record of Miriam and Sheldon Adelson’s $218,168,500 in the 2020 contests, and both of those billionaires (the trillionaire Musk and the $35-billionaire Adelson) have an immense impact upon Trump’s policies. Soon, when Friday, June 19th, comes and the end of America’s war to conquer Iran (that conquest being Miriam’s top goal in life — Sheldon now is dead) either comes or doesn’t come, we might then know the extent to which Trump still feels obligated to subordinate America’s policies to Israel’s policies — as both Trump and Biden have been doing. However, there is no question nor indication yet that Trump goes against Musk’s policies.

On June 14th, the extremely astute geostrategic analyst “Simplicius76” headlined “How Russia is Responding to New Ukrainian ‘Drone Threat’ to Cut Crimean Corridor” and reported that

The first and most important change which gave Ukraine a newfound advantage was the removal of Biden-era restrictions on the US providing targeting and authorizations for long-range strikes deep into Russia. The second, was the likewise apparent lifting of restrictions on Ukrainian Starlinks operating on Russian territory. Recall that in the beginning of the war, Elon Musk had famously said that Starlink would not be allowed to be used in an “offensive” manner. This was later swept under the rug when Ukraine desperately needed some new advantage to save its collapsing war effort—and so, Starlink was allowed to operate offensively, but was still restricted to Ukrainian territory only.

Now many reports claim that Starlink is used on Ukrainian FP-1/2 and other drones even outside Ukrainian territory.

https://www.hisutton.com/Ukraine-OWA-UAVs.html

Much of the current campaign against Crimea is also powered via Starlink. One of the newly emerging top drones for hitting Russian logistics along the ‘Crimean corridor’ is the US-made “Hornet”, which is variously seen with a Starlink panel on its back.

He denigrates the significance of Ukraine’s drone campaign. However, back on 29 January 2025, he had headlined “SITREP 1/29/25: Ukraine’s Mass Drone Heave”, about what was, by then, already a six-month Ukrainian drone-based offensive against Russia, which had become a serious matter at around November 2024, but he concluded, “Of course, to think this would cause Putin to capitulate and end the war, even in the worst case scenario, is foolish — that’s simply not going to happen.” The following day, I ventured a contrary opinion, calling it “A Possible Turnabout in the Ukraine War”. And it certainly has turned out to be that.

This, for example, is the reason why the U.S. edition of the empire’s THE WEEK magazine (week of “June 12, 2026), headlines on page 17, “Ukraine: Putin is in deep trouble”, and sums up the prior week’s reports from the empire’s billionaires’ media on this topic, as follows:

Vladi­mir Putin is cornered and lash­ing out, said The Wash­ing­ton Post in an edit­or­ial. Four years ago, the Rus­sian dic­tator pre­dicted that his inva­sion of Ukraine would crush the coun­try in a mat­ter of weeks. But as the con­flict “grinds on,” Ukraine is “slowly gain­ing the upper hand.” With Ukraine’s innov­at­ive drones tak­ing a huge toll, Rus­sian forces are suf­fer­ing 35,000 cas­u­al­ties per month and have lost 1 mil­lion troops to death and injury since the war began. In April, the coun­try suffered a net loss of ter­rit­ory for the first time since 2024. Ukrain­ian mis­siles and drones are now reach­ing far into Rus­sia, includ­ing Moscow, lead­ing the “obvi­ously des­per­ate” Putin to ratchet up mis­sile and drone attacks on Ukrain­ian apart­ment build­ings—and to threaten Ukraine’s European allies. After a Rus­sian drone hit an apart­ment build­ing in Romania last week, Putin’s attack-dog aide Dmitri Med­ve­dev warned that cit­izens of EU states “will not be able to sleep peace­fully.”

Putin’s des­per­a­tion makes him even more dan­ger­ous, said Yaroslav Tro­fimov in The Wall Street Journal. Now that it’s clear Putin is hold­ing a los­ing hand in Ukraine, he may try to “reshuffle the cards” by expand­ing the con­flict to neigh­bor­ing nations. In recent weeks, Rus­sian author­it­ies have made “increas­ingly bel­li­cose” state­ments against the Baltic states, threat­en­ing to bomb Latvia and appar­ently send­ing drones that triggered an air­raid alarm in Lithuania. Rus­sia also pub­lished the addresses of com­pan­ies in eight European nations that it said were help­ing Ukraine build drones, warn­ing of “unpre­dict­able con­sequences” if they don’t stop. Attack­ing NATO coun­tries would be a huge gamble for even the risk-tak­ing Putin, but he clearly sees Europe as “an implac­able enemy that must be pun­ished or des­troyed.”

Putin is wor­ried not only about the war, “but about his own pos­i­tion,” said Gideon Rach­man in the Fin­an­cial Times (U.K.). Obstacles to Putin’s removal “remain for­mid­able.” But as the coun­try’s eco­nomy sags under the weight of war-fueled infla­tion and higher taxes, there are “vis­ible signs of dis­sent within the Rus­sian elite.” It’s widely under­stood that peace may require “a new face and fresh think­ing,” which threatens his grip on power. “Nobody has a map for what comes next,” said The Eco­nom­ist. Putin’s war in Ukraine has cre­ated “a situ­ation that in chess is known as zug­zwang: when every move wor­sens the pos­i­tion.” As he flails, Rus­si­ans are already “start­ing to ima­gine a future without him.”

Notwithstanding such propagandistic flourishes as calling the overwhelmingly popular-among-Russians (82% Approve versus 16% Disapprove) Vladimir Putin “The Russian dictator” (while America’s Donald Trump, by contrast, is 38% versus 57%, UK’s Keir Starmer is 27% versus 65%, Germany’s Friedrich Merz is 19% versus 76%, and France’s Emmanuel Macron is 18% versus 75%), the decisions that Elon Musk has made, and that Trump supports and carries out, really ARE having a significant impact in favor of the empire, and against Russia, in America’s war against Russia that is being waged through Ukraine, in order to conquer Russia.

That ‘news’-summary by The Week is only a summary of U.S.-and-allied billionaires’ propaganda. And, like the publications it summarized, it misrepresented the evidence it claimed to be representing. For example, the article’s second sentence, “Four years ago, the Rus­sian dic­tator pre­dicted that his inva­sion of Ukraine would crush the coun­try in a mat­ter of weeks” misrepresented what Jeff Bezos’s newspaper had actually said. Bezos’s newspaper said no such thing. Though it DID refer to Putin as an “aging dictator,” it did NOT allege that “Four years ago,” that ‘dictator’ had “pre­dicted that his inva­sion of Ukraine would crush the coun­try in a mat­ter of weeks.” Not at all. Furthermore, Putin’s speech to the nation on that day, announcing the “Special Military Operation” and its reasons and objectives, included nothing of the sort. He made no prediction of how long would be required in order for those objectives to be met. Unlike U.S.-and-allied heads-of-state, who represent ONLY the billionaires who got them there, and so can stay in office no matter how high a percentage of the public that they are SUPPOSED to represent disapprove of their leadership, Putin — and ALL of the polling confirms this — does NOT make to the public promises he fails to fulfill on. That’s why he has been popular for decades now. Inside the U.S. empire (or ANY empire — but now there is no other), it’s fine for a head-of-state to promise to the public repeatedly and fail those promises repeatedly, which is why its heads-of-state (such as Trump, Macron, etc.) are despised by their public. But, unlike those leaders, there are many heads-of-state OUTSIDE the empire who — like Putin — take seriously not ONLY the promises that they make privately to billionaires, but ESPECIALLY the promises that they make publicly to their public. So, they strongly tend to keep their public promises.

The reasons that the fake ‘democracies’ are fake, and what must be done in order to achieve democracy, I discussed in my 27 October 2025 “The Radical Governmental Policy-Changes That Must Be Done, and Why”.

We live under a kleptocracy. It must be replaced by an authentic democracy. In the United States, the first step would be an appropriately written Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. All billionaires will oppose this. They will oppose it because it would end the system that siphons wealth from the masses to the classes. That’s all the more reason it’s needed.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.