WSJ What’s News - Musk Shakes Up European Politics

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

A.M. Edition for Jan. 7. From the U.K. to Germany, the world’s richest man is causing a stir by wading into hot-button political debates. The WSJ’s Max Colchester and Bertrand Benoit explain what Elon Musk’s overarching goals may be, and how Europe is responding. Plus, the Pentagon labels Tencent, CATL and other major Chinese businesses as having ties to the country’s military. And Nvidia touts its inroads in robotics as a driver of future growth. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three, two, one. What will the world look like 10 or 20 years from now? The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a peek. And we can't wait to show you what's coming. Subscribe now. From the UK to Germany, Elon Musk royals European politics. This has some echoes of what former Trump advisor Steve Bannon tried to do after Trump's first term when he tried to kind of create a sort of coalition of right-wing groupings

in Europe. And obviously Musk has the added advantage of actually controlling a major social media company. Plus the Pentagon labels several major Chinese businesses as having ties to the country's military. And Nvidia touts its inroads in robotics as a driver of future growth. It's Tuesday, January 7th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal and here is the AM edition of What's News,

the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. The Pentagon has added a number of well-known Chinese firms to a list of companies that it classifies as military in nature, reflecting the Defense Department's view that Beijing fuses commercial and military technology. Journal reporter Lisa Lin says that more than 50 businesses and subsidiaries have been added to the list, including some of the country's largest internet, battery, science and shipping firms. From the additions yesterday, two really stand out.

One is Tencent Holdings, the owner of China's most popular chat messaging app. And another is CATL, which is the world's largest maker of EV batteries and also a Tesla supplier. Both are generally seen as among the most innovative and the largest tech companies in China. For many of these companies, the biggest risk to being included on the list is really reputational risk. There are no immediate legal repercussions and in practice, it's really a warning by the US government to its own companies to be careful when dealing with Chinese entities. The other more immediate impact to the Chinese A spokesman for WeChat owner Tencent said its inclusion was clearly a mistake and that

unlike sanctions or export controls, the designation has no impact on its business. CATL also denied any connections with China's military. US, European and Arab officials say that Iranian forces have largely pulled out of Syria following the collapse of the Assad regime. According to a senior U.S. official, members of Iran's elite Quds Force, thousands of whom were still in Syria as of last month, have now fled to Iran and that Tehran-backed militias have disbanded. Their exit marks the end of Tehran's years-long strategy of using Syria as a base to spread

influence in the region and wage proxy wars against the US and Israel. The Iranian mission at the United Nations in New York declined to comment. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong is doubling down on the chipmaker's bet that robotics and cars will emerge as future growth areas. Speaking at the CES Tech Conference in Las Vegas yesterday as NVIDIA's valuation hit an all-time high amid a rally in chip stocks, Huang said that the time had come for autonomous vehicles and that just about every major car company was working with it. And he also touted the development of humanoid robots,

a market Nvidia thinks could be worth almost $40 billion in the coming decades. The chat GPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner. And in fact, all of the enabling technologies that I've been talking about is going to make it possible for us in the next several years to see very rapid breakthroughs,

surprising breakthroughs in general robotics. Well, as for the current state of play in general robotics, Journal Enterprise tech reporter Isabel Bousquet told our tech news briefing podcast that after primarily being relegated to factories, robots are beginning to enter new spaces. We're starting to see more robots in restaurants. They can cut vegetables. They can start to do some of those more repeatable tasks that happen at, say, a fast food restaurant. We're starting to see them in retail stores.

Sam's Club has robots that go around and clean the floors and at the same time are checking out inventory levels all around. And then we're also starting to see them a little bit in entertainment spaces. There's a company called Engineered Arts and their robots are more designed to interact with people and entertain them. And to hear more, including about the limitations

that robots still need to overcome, check out this morning's episode of Tech News Briefing wherever you get your podcasts. And in markets today, the Canadian dollar is inching up after former Bank of England and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney said he was considering joining the race to succeed Justin Trudeau as the leader of Canada's Liberal Party. While Carney is seen as a market-friendly candidate, the Canadian dollar could be in for a tough year amid the threat of U.S. tariffs. Coming up, we'll get the latest from London and Berlin as Elon Musk injects himself into

political debates across Europe. That's after the break. What then will the future reveal? There's one thing we know about the future. It's being built now. We all have a stake in the future. The future. The future.

The future. And the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a glimpse of what's on the way. I'm Danny Lewis. Join us as we dig into how science and technology are shaping the future. That is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. In recent weeks, Elon Musk has accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of being complicit

in rape. He's also backed a far-right party in Germany, denounced judges in Italy, and criticized how the European Commission works, just to name a few. Posting to his more than 200 million followers on X on issues ranging from immigration to free speech, the world's richest man and a key advisor to Donald Trump has succeeded in driving the news agenda across Europe and in the process created a dilemma for leaders as they weigh how to respond to his attacks. Journal UK correspondent Max Colchester and Germany bureau chief Bertrand Benoit have been looking on as Musk injects himself right into their beats and both of them are with

us now. Max, starting with you, how has Musk left his mark on UK politics of late? Yes, Musk has really, as you say, has dominated the news agenda here. And this weekend he posted non-stop accusing Starmer of failing to bring to justice child rapists when Starmer was head of the country's prosecution department. And yesterday we saw that. Starmer was supposed to hold a press conference nominally about the state of the country's prosecution department. And yesterday we saw that. Starmer was supposed to hold a press conference nominally about the state of the country's health service

and actually spent a large chunk of that taking questions about Musk's allegations and rebutting them. It really sort of showed how Musk has managed to basically take over the news agenda and start a debate about this issue of grooming of children and the role of Muslim men in that. Yeah, I mean, and Stammer himself rebutting Musk's allegations quite strongly, saying he reopened several closed cases that were linked to child grooming rings when he was a chief prosecutor and overhauled the way that such crimes were prosecuted, though, whether that actually puts this issue to bed is another question. I mean, do we know Musk's

endgame, as it pertains to the UK at least? He basically wants to encourage political change in the UK by empowering right-wing, liberal, free speech loving political parties and that's taken the shape of this political party called Reform here, which is an upstart anti-immigrant party. And he's doing that by cheerleading their policies online and cheerleading their leaders and at one point hinting that there might be some sort of financial donation he may make although that seems to have been upended after he seems to have fallen out with the leader of reform who's called Nigel Farage because Musk has been vocal in supporting

for the release of a man called Tommy Robinson who's a sort of hard right figure in the UK who's currently in jail. And that's even too much for Farage to stomach. So you're seeing a sort of fight within the right over the direction of British politics. And Musk is trying to play a key role in steering that. Bertrand, over in Germany, would you say Musk's goals are the same? This is a country with an election on a calendar unlike in the UK. He's endorsed the AFD, which is the second most popular party now in Germany. You know, it's one of these new right or hard right parties that are on the ascent around Europe, but it's one of the hardest. It doesn't accept the notion of manmade climate change. It says

it wants Germany to leave the EU, which is the destination for 40% of German exports. of man-made climate change. It says it wants Germany to leave the EU, which is the destination for 40% of German exports. It's vigorously anti-immigration. It has a bit of an anti-American tradition. A lot of people in the AFD would prefer rapprochement with Russia. deliveries from Russia, they want to suspend sanctions that have been put on Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine. And the question here, we haven't seen any polls yet since Musk started tweeting to support the AFD. The concern about mainstream politicians here is that this could upset the expected result.

Max, based on some of the people you spoke to for your recent reporting, it sounds like there's a sense here that maybe there's a broader strategy behind these individual moves by Musk. Yes, there are some who say that Musk genuinely believed that he saved the US democratic system by making sure that the progressives in the form of the Democrats didn't come to power and that he wants to replicate that across Europe as well. And in some ways, this has some echoes of what the former Trump advisor Steve Bannon tried to do after Trump's first term when he tried to kind of create a sort of coalition of right-wing groupings in Europe.

Obviously, Musk has the added advantage of actually controlling a major social media company. But there are question marks as to whether Musk would really be able to pull this off. I mean, in Britain, we can say there's been polling and it shows that Musk is not popular with the British people. And X has been losing users since Musk took it in a more sort of free speech, more right leaning direction. So there are some who question whether he will actually be able to do this. But whatever it is, it's definitely having a big impact here. And it's definitely shaking up the way the political leaders are having to

Work out how they're gonna interact with this key player in the Trump administration And Musk could face some degree of pushback, right? We should note the EU Commission is considering expanding an existing probe into X and then there's The possibility that countries could just say enough to outside interference, right? This is something that had come up for debate a bit in the UK Yes, exactly. There is this debate as to whether someone who doesn't live in the country and doesn't vote in that country can influence a political outcome. And in the UK, they are looking at changing laws to limit donations made by foreign-based entities into British

political parties. But that hasn't happened yet. But if Musk does manage to engineer political change in Europe, there will for sure be a pushback. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal UK correspondent Max Kolchester and our Germany Bureau Chief Bertrand Benoit. Max, Bertrand, thank you both so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning. Additional sound in this episode was from Reuters. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal.

We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.