In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, for instance, Musk said he thought Ukraine should be “neutral” while Russia invaded the country and tried to take over. The Kremlin showered him with praise as he parroted Moscow’s talking points that Ukraine should just roll over.
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Chinese Premier Li Qiang meets with Elon Musk, CEO of the U.S. electric carmaker Tesla, in Beijing, capital of China, April 28, 2024.
Photo by Wang Ye/Xinhua via Getty Images
But Musk hasn’t necessarily been a hardliner against Ukraine through and through. Since the early days of the war, Musk has helped Kyiv by providing his Starlink units to Ukraine to help soldiers on the front line fighting Russians, for instance. As time wore on, those around him observed that he seemed to grow paranoid that his company was being used to wage war. Eventually, he wiggled his way out of what he perceived to be a tight spot: Musk shared in the fall that he had rejected a request from Ukraine to re-activate Starlink units to help with an attack on Russian forces, drawing ire from Kyiv.
Still, Musk’s warm relationship with China could backfire like it did with Ukraine, too. Lately, competitors in China have been catching up to Tesla, The New York Times reported.
“For a while there’s been a strong interest in having a fairly cozy relationship with China because he was manufacturing … there,” Jackson said. “That might change as China does what China does, which is let a foreign company in, compete with it, and then kill it.”
