The exchanges between Donald Trump and Elon Musk yesterday were enough to drop Tesla by $ 153 billion on the stock market, to briefly destabilize the NASA space program, and to revive a debate on the stability of public procurement. No parliamentary debate took place, no geopolitical crisis was underway. Everything was played on X and Truth Social, through a series of publications between two figures whose influence goes beyond their official status.
Beyond the spectacular character of this sequence (to which we begin to get used to it), it is a relationship to power that is expressed. A diffuse, public power, exercised in real time by personalities who move the balances, sometimes without mastering the consequences.
Markets that adjust to the second
The fastest reaction came from the scholarship. At the end, Tesla lost 14 %, or $ 153 billion in capitalization erased in a few hours. This fall was not linked to any change in strategy or a macroeconomic indicator, it simply translated a loss of confidence in the manager’s stability.
At the same time, Echostar and Ast Spacemobile, two potential SpaceX competitors, won between 7 and 17 %.
A political class that instrumentalizes
Political parties did not try to calm the game, all the blows are in order. On the republican side, Trump’s statement was immediately followed by personal attacks against Elon Musk. Steve Bannon proposed to investigate his nationality and question his naturalization. On the democratic side, the accusations launched by Musk on a link between Trump and the Epstein affair were taken up, sometimes indirectly, in certain circles close to power. If the moderates called for de -escalation without calling into question the logic of public confrontation, no one challenged the canal, and everyone exploited it according to their own interests.
Observers taken from short
Throughout the day, many analysts have struggled to comment on events in real time. The rating agencies, economists and consulting firms do not have the tools to assess a threat of deactivation of space capsule made on a social network, followed by a withdrawal three hours later. The volatility induced by this type of sequence is difficult to integrate into traditional risk analysis models.
This vagueness feeds a second reading, namely that messages are not only reactions and become acts. They redraw the perception of industrial balances and power relations between private sector and public power.
Administrations which absorb without counter-fire
If NASA has not communicated, it has undoubtedly reassessed (at least partially) internally) the rescue scenarios in the event of suspension of the Dragon program, without being able to confirm or deny the announcement. For its part the trade department remained silent, only the president of the chamber mentioned a regret, but no executive player tried to publicly refer the exchanges.
What is certain is no administration has time, language or space to counter this type of situation at the moment. Reacting to each declaration would amount to validating a channel that escapes them and saying nothing is undoubtedly the best posture.
Governance in jolts
What this day reveals is a profound disparagration between personalities in responsibility and the usual operating rules of the public apparatus. They can influence critical decisions apart from any consensus and compliance with institutions, whose managers and operational people must manage the effects.
It is a system that now works in their open, depending on the emotional stability of actors on which the State no longer really has a catch.
This poses a structural question, how long can a modern state maintain operational, industrial and diplomatic continuity in an environment where potentially strategic decisions can be taken, canceled or distorted in a few hours or even minutes?
The public power has not disappeared, it absorbs, it adjusts but no longer fixes the tempo, and all the less the story. This discrepancy between administrative temporality and instantaneity of public figures with a strong audience creates a regime of permanent desynchronization.
In hollow, this day highlights the urgency of a reflection on how to regulate the exercise of power in a space of non -hierarchical expression, and on the ability of institutions to preserve their missions in a regime where personal arbitrary produces systemic effects.
It is not a formal crisis, it is above all a system that works in the open, and which depends on the emotional stability (and under substance?) Of actors on which the State and democracy no longer really take.
