Elon Musk apparently thinks that running Tesla, Space X, xAI, X (Twitter), and Neuralink isn’t keeping him busy enough. When Donald Trump mused about putting Musk in his cabinet last week, the billionaire immediately turned to X to let us know that he "can't wait,” and that there’s “a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go."

If elected, Trump says he’d strike a commission of business leaders to review government programs, reduce regulations, and cut spending. “Secretary Musk” responded with a photo of himself standing behind a podium titled “Department of Government Efficiency.” 

He’s also hired Chris Young, a prominent Republican operative and organizer, to help him plan and manage his political activities. Clearly, Musk is angling for a role in politics, but why?

While there is no evidence he is losing interest in business, the mogul does have strong views about government, especially when it comes to regulating businesses. Musk is a passionate, visionary leader who for a decade has relied on his own instincts to slowly align his diverse portfolio of companies around a single, overarching theme: artificial intelligence (AI).

Take Tesla: Musk’s obsession with self-driving cars has pushed this company to the forefront of AI research on image recognition, machine learning and neural networks. Now Tesla is leveraging this expertise to build Optimus, a state-of-the-art humanoid robot.

Neuralink is using AI to explore and create an interface between brain activity and body movements, and perhaps one day will connect artificial with human intelligence. Space X is integrating AI into its navigation system – perhaps eventually to guide its vessels to Mars.

But Musk’s futuristic AI vision finds its clearest and most ambitious expression in xAI. This fledgling start-up has already produced two versions of Grok, its signature chatbot – and it’s barely a year old. Now it’s at a crucial juncture: Musk wants to make Grok the crown jewel in his portfolio. 

Last week xAI unveiled a massive new data centre to train future versions of Grok. According to Musk, “Colossus” is already “the most powerful AI training system in the world,” yet he promises to double its size within a few months.

This multi-billion-dollar investment reflects Musk’s belief that a huge breakthrough in Generative AI is at hand, and that this next wave will be key to transforming the global economy. If he’s right, chatbots like Grok are about to be transformed into “agents”—AI-driven tools poised to reshape conventional industries. Colossus will put xAI at the front of this wave. 

Musk is not alone in this race. Silicon Valley’s giants are all making similar bets. As one observer notes, we are witnessing what may be the biggest wager in history. The gamble is that when the breakthrough comes, companies that have this technology in hand will be able to use it to grab part of a new multi-trillion-dollar market. 

Colossus thus is a trail blazer. Silicon Valley believes that massive data centres like it will provide the computational heft needed to drive AI to the next level. Size absolutely matters, and the richest firms on the planet—Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, and more—are now engaged in a gargantuan build-out of AI infrastructure, which Goldman Sachs estimates will top $1 trillion over the next five years. 

So, while Wall Street frets over whether the AI bubble is about to burst, in Silicon Valley it is full steam ahead. The biggest fear there is FOMO. But there’s another shoe to drop.

In recent months, a new political narrative has taken shape in the AI community. In this view, the political significance of AI has been hugely underestimated. That may be about to change. If the build-out succeeds, AI will explode onto the world stage as a transformative new geopolitical force, economically, militarily, and politically. OpenAI’s Sam Altman warns that governments, especially the US government, are a shade away from realizing that AI is the biggest national security issue since the atom bomb—and that China is the West’s biggest security threat. That’s the clue to Musk’s political ambition.

As the owner of Colossus, Musk is acutely aware that these new data centres will soon be put to the test; and that the world will quickly learn whether they can punch through to the next level of AI development. He is betting big that they can. If he’s right, AI will enter a new and politically volatile phase, as governments plunge into a regulatory frenzy. The killer question for Silicon Valley is whether this frenzy will halt, hinder, or help AI’s development.

Musk is leaving nothing to chance. He is preparing to leap into the political arena and confront the looming regulatory question head-on. The best defence, as they say, is a good offense. 

So, if Trump wins, Musk will likely wield major influence over AI regulation from within the White House. If not, he will find himself on the sidelines, watching as Democrats shape the policies that will determine the future of AI—and perhaps planning his next political move. The top job in the Republican Party will almost certainly be open.

Don Lenihan PhD is an expert in public engagement with a long-standing focus on how digital technologies are transforming societies, governments, and governance. This column appears weekly.