On Elon Musk and Sleazy Optionality

Is he serious about the America Party? <Smirk-shrug> it depends!

[PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m back from my self-imposed blogging hiatus. The book manuscript is done! It’s with my editor now. I think it turned out kind of great. And I am now free to explore non-book-related thoughts. Woo!]

There’s a bit that I meant to write up a few months ago, back when Elon Musk offered to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit arm for $97.4 billion. I wish I had. It’s a decent framework for interpreting his “America Party” gambit, along with the rest of his general antics. And, also, it’s quite mean. Which Elon Musk deserves.

So, here goes:

Elon Musk has a go-to move of sorts. I call it sleazy optionality. (1) He makes a dramatic proposal. (2) It is unclear whether he is serious or not. (3) That uncertainty causes a reaction from his counterparty. (4) It is only in the aftermath of their reaction that he decides whether to commit to the proposal or back off. He benefits either way.

The image that best fits sleazy optionality the archtype of the sweaty-overeager-guy at the club, proposing a threesome. He’s just joking! Why are you taking him so seriously???Unless… you’re into that?

In the OpenAI case, OpenAI was making plans to convert from a complicated nonprofit-sitting-atop-a-gigantic-for-profit company to a more straightforward for-profit corporate structure. Musk swooped in and announced that he and was prepared to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit outright. This was, clearly, a newsworthy event. But much of the analysis got bogged down in debates over whether Musk was serious or not. (Was he just doing this to fuck with Sam Altman? Or was there a real chance he could take control of the biggest brand name in AI?)

The answer, quite obviously, was <smirk-shrug> it kind of depends!

If OpenAI responds by taking him seriously, then he has a path to buying the company and folds it into X.ai. That would put him on a quicker path to building mega-mecha-Hitler. (Which is something that Elon aspires to. It was that or therapy, I guess.) It costs him a lot of money. But that’s fine, he can just pass around the hat in the tech oligarch group chat.

If OpenAI tells him to fuck off into the sun, then it costs him nothing, but he has also set an artificially high price for what the company will have to pay out to the nonprofit arm in a restructuring. In so doing, he effectively scuttles his competitors reorganization attempt. Which, yeah, that’s how it all turned out.)

There’s a sort of quantum uncertainty when he initially makes the offer. He is both serious and unserious at the same time. It all depends on how the observer reacts.

(Note that there is nothing inherently sleazy about preserving optionality as a strategic ploy. The reason I call this sleazy optionality is because Elon Musk is doing it. And Elon Musk is, himself, inherently sleazy.)

There are two reasons why this is Musk’s go-to move. He can execute it on a scale that others can’t, because (a) he’s shameless and (b) he has access to practically infinite cash.

Elon can get away with constantly overpromising and underdelivering. He can take over Twitter and ruin it. His test rockets can repeatedly blow up. The Cybertruck can abysmally fail. He can put USAID through a woodchipper, resulting in mass death. And yet he faces no consequences. Wealth is a suit of armor. Too much wealth makes you functionally untouchable, at least in the medium-term.

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Let’s think about Musk’s America Party through the lens of sleazy optionality. The New Yorker, just today, published an article under the headline “Is Elon Musk’s ‘America Party’ Worth Taking Seriously?”

Again: <smirk-shrug> it kind of depends!

Is Musk serious about this? Eh, maybe. It really depends. Even he doesn’t know at this point.

Could it actually succeed? Well that depends on what we mean by success. Could it become a viable third party in contemporary American politics?

No. Of course not.

But could it be a problem for Republican incumbents facing tough 2026 races? Yeah, sure. And could that create some negotiating leverage for him and his buddies in intra-party squabbles? Sure.

Could it blow back on him, with Trump and a jilted Stephen Miller subjecting Musk’s companies to the same sort of targeted harrassment that they are directing at universities and cancer researchers? Yeah maybe.

So, y’know…

At this stage, it is pointless to ask whether Musk is serious. That is simply the wrong question. Musk is talking about launching a third party because he sees an advantage to talking about such a thing. He can always laugh it off later. Or maybe he wastes a few hundred mil backing candidates. Neither the potential reputational hit nor the burned cash will affect him. He has infinite money and no capacity to feel shame.

This is something quite different than the biennial tradition of centrist columnists engaging in Tinkerbell Politics, trying to wishcast a centrist third party into being. Elon isn’t the next coming of No Labels or Andrew Yang’s Forward Party.

Elon Musk is the DOGE guy. He’s the racist chatbot guy. He’s the nazi salute guy. He is universally known and near-universally despised. The America Party wouldn’t be able to escape the Musk-stink in its branding.

But also, it isn’t worth treating this as a serious proposal right now. Because its just Elon Musk doing the sleazy optionality routine again.

The least we can do is stop falling for it.