Elon Musk Prepares for Next Act: Bureau Chief Cuts Red Tape

His recent comments suggest that if he is appointed to head Donald Trump’s government efficiency commission, which will be tasked with reducing government activity and regulation, it would be the Federal Aviation Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency that would exercise oversight over him.

Musk said Tuesday he plans to sue the FAA, claiming it is engaging in “lawsuits” and “over-regulation,” after seeking a fine of about $633,000 from his rocket company SpaceX for alleged violations. The comments follow similar criticism of the EPA a week earlier.

“FAA Space Division is harassing SpaceX with nonsense that has no bearing on safety,” Musk wrote on Twitter.

No businessman today works with regulators the way Musk does—threatening, cajoling, cajoling—to protect his companies’ interests. He’s essentially worked his way through an alphabet soup of agencies, from the SEC and NHTSA to the EPA and NLRB. In doing so, Musk has made clear that he’s willing to fight for any perceived slight.

The risk is that such tactics, often used publicly in front of nearly 200 million followers, will make even the hard-line agency think twice about taking on him again, especially as appointed leaders think about their jobs beyond their term in office and subordinates fear losing protections when administrations change.

Now Trump is promising to give Musk even greater leverage in such fights: presumptive presidential powers.

Musk would say he’s not against regulation in general, just specific ones that don’t make sense to him.

“If you add up all the times I’ve argued with regulators — hundreds of regulators over decades — it can sound really awful, except when they forget to mention that there were 10 million regulations that we complied with and only five that I disagreed with,” Musk said at a conference last year.

Yet he often talks about how regulations can be like tiny strings that come together to bind a giant like Gulliver and deprive us of our freedom.

History has shown that one man’s bureaucracy can be another man’s line of defense against the masters of the universe who have no concern for the safety of their employees, customers, or the world at large.

Musk has made this clear himself, particularly with regard to the FAA, advocating for regulations regarding the development of artificial intelligence.

“Planes crashed a lot!” Musk wrote last year. “Ultimately, so many people died that the FAA was created to make sure commercial aircraft manufacturers and airlines didn’t skimp on safety. Now, flying a commercial aircraft in America is super safe.”

A year ago, Musk sounded a bit more measured about the FAA. “In fairness, the FAA rarely causes significant delays to launches,” he tweeted. “The overwhelming responsibility falls on us.”

But now, as SpaceX launches rockets into space at record speeds for paying customers and to expand its Starlink satellite business, Musk is blaming the agency for the delays, warning, “The fundamental problem is that humanity will be confined to Earth forever unless there is radical reform of the FAA!”

The FAA has not responded to Musk’s social media attacks. In announcing the proposed fines, Chief Counsel Marc Nichols said the agency is guided by safety. “A company’s failure to meet safety requirements will have consequences,” he said in a statement.

A Trump victory, Musk said, could give the country a rare opportunity for a major cleanup not seen since the Reagan administration’s massive deregulation efforts.

“It’s been a long time since there was a serious effort to reduce the size of government and remove absurd regulations,” Musk said during an appearance at the “All-In Podcast” conference this month.

While he sidestepped the issue of exactly what he would do, Musk made it clear that the EPA is the kind of agency he has in mind. He pointed to a proposed fine of about $148,000 from the EPA, announced earlier this month over claims that SpaceX improperly dumped floodwaters and spilled liquid oxygen at its launch pad in South Texas.

Musk called it an example of “irrational regulation” and compared the company’s actions to pouring drinking water on the ground. “No harm was done,” he said. “It was just water to cool the launch pad during launch.”

Texas observers questioned Musk’s characterization. “Elon & Co. are making this harder than it needs to be,” tweeted Chap Ambrose, an Austin software developer who has criticized Musk’s environmental record in the state. “If a corporation wants to dump anything in Texas waters, they need a permit. Even space companies. This process allows independent experts to measure, set limits, and ensure minimal impact.”

Ultimately, Musk said SpaceX agreed to the proposed settlement because the EPA threatened to withhold approval of future launches. The EPA has not responded to Musk’s claims.

It’s not just the FAA and EPA where Musk’s business dealings have been either lacking or failing, which is why some observers have raised conflict-of-interest concerns about Musk’s potential role in the Trump administration.

Next month, Musk has promised to unveil Tesla’s robotaxi, a technology that regulators are still trying to understand as they weigh the safety implications.

Neuralink announced a regulatory victory last week. Musk’s brain implant company said the Food and Drug Administration had granted its experimental Blindsight microchip, which aims to restore vision, a special designation reserved for medical devices intended to treat life-threatening or irreversible debilitating conditions.

If successful, it will sound like material from the television series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“If the visual cortex is intact, this could enable even those who were blind from birth to see for the first time,” Musk said last week.

It’s this kind of progress that excites his fans and why he’s so hard to stop, despite his public support.

Write to Tim Higgins at [email protected]