What a Trump Presidency Means for Elon Musk

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[00:00:19] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Thursday, November 7th. I'm Cordelia James for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:00:26] Some little tech fixes go a long way, especially when it comes to your most sensitive accounts.

[00:00:32] We'll get into what you need to know to safeguard your digital life from hackers.

[00:00:36] And then, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has been promised a role in Donald Trump's administration.

[00:00:43] WSJ reporter Emily Glazer tells us how a new Trump presidency could give Musk an opportunity to tailor policy to suit his own financial interests.

[00:00:56] But first, data breaches and cyberattacks are on the rise.

[00:01:01] A Verizon analysis logged over 10,000 breaches in 2024, a record high.

[00:01:07] And a survey by security company Yubico found that over 70% of respondents had been exposed to cyberattacks within the past year.

[00:01:16] Managing hundreds of accounts can be overwhelming.

[00:01:19] But our personal tech columnist, Nicole Nguyen, says you should start by securing three key areas of your digital life.

[00:01:26] Your bank account, your email, and your phone.

[00:01:30] She joins us now with more on that.

[00:01:32] Okay, so let's walk through each of these.

[00:01:35] How do I safeguard my bank account and my financials?

[00:01:38] So bank account, make sure that password is unique, is the most important thing, and strong.

[00:01:46] The longer, the better.

[00:01:48] The word password should actually be passphrase because the longer a password is, the harder it is to crack with computer software.

[00:01:56] This may make it hard to remember that password.

[00:02:00] So when possible, use biometrics like Face ID, Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor on your phone to access your banking apps on mobile devices.

[00:02:12] Second, it's very important to turn on two-factor authentication, but also verify that your contact information is up to date in case they can only send you a verification code by text.

[00:02:24] Okay, so how do I keep my email protected?

[00:02:29] I'm going to focus on Gmail here because it is by far the most popular email service.

[00:02:34] And Gmail is run by Google, and Google does a pretty good job at putting all of the settings that you need to look at and should care about in what's called a security checkup.

[00:02:46] So it's an overview of where you're signed in, the third-party apps that are connected to your Google account, which different security activities such as when you've last changed your password, etc.

[00:02:59] This is a great place to make sure you have a long, strong password, as I mentioned, and that you have 2FA turned on, and also other things like which third parties have access to your email.

[00:03:12] Email is very important because email is the username for many of your accounts, and it's the way by which you can reset a lot of passwords.

[00:03:21] So if hackers have access to your email, they have access to a lot of your accounts.

[00:03:26] And Outlook and Yahoo also have guides for protecting your email, though they don't have a tool like security checkup.

[00:03:32] Let's talk about phones. How do I make sure that I'm safeguarding all my information there?

[00:03:36] So this is a two-parter. The first part is that you should protect your phone number, your cellular plan, by adding a PIN to your account.

[00:03:45] And you can easily do this via AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile.

[00:03:49] This means that whenever you make a change to your account, for example, if you change phones and you want to get a new SIM card or download an eSIM to a new phone,

[00:04:02] they will require you to hand over this PIN in order to do so.

[00:04:07] The next part is to lock down the cloud account that's tied to your phone.

[00:04:12] So for iPhone users, this is the Apple account or Apple ID.

[00:04:17] On Android, this is your Google account, which hopefully you secured already since we already talked about an email.

[00:04:22] So I'll just focus on the Apple ID for now.

[00:04:25] Most Apple IDs have two-factor authentication turned on already, which is great.

[00:04:31] Make sure in settings you review the trusted devices that your Apple ID is connected to.

[00:04:36] And then it makes sure that the trusted phone number on your account matches your current number.

[00:04:41] Because if you're ever locked out of your Apple ID account, that is how you are going to recover your Apple account.

[00:04:47] And the next part is make sure your iPhone's passcode is very strong.

[00:04:53] This is because the iPhone passcode can change your Apple ID password and a bunch of other things on your phone.

[00:05:00] It can access the saved passwords on your phone.

[00:05:04] It can boot you out of any trusted devices where you're logged into your Apple account.

[00:05:09] That was WSJ personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen.

[00:05:13] Coming up, Donald Trump has won a second term in the White House.

[00:05:17] What could this mean for Elon Musk and his companies?

[00:05:20] We'll find out after the break.

[00:05:33] Elon Musk has been by Donald Trump's side on the campaign trail since early October.

[00:05:38] And the billionaire entrepreneur has spent more than $100 million to help send Trump back to the White House.

[00:05:46] So now that he has won the election, what do Musk and his companies stand to gain?

[00:05:51] WSJ reporter Emily Glazer joins us now to discuss.

[00:05:55] What role could Elon Musk potentially have in this Trump presidency?

[00:05:59] So Musk has been promised a role auditing federal expenditures and regulations in a Trump administration.

[00:06:06] And this is through this whole proposed Department of Government Efficiency.

[00:06:10] So that means he'll likely have a real seat at the table on how a number of decisions are made and might give him an opportunity to tailor policy to suit his own financial interests.

[00:06:21] He oversees six companies and they have more than $1 trillion in assets and, you know, many, many thousands of employees.

[00:06:30] Tell me a little bit more about how would that work exactly?

[00:06:33] What does that mean for how Elon will get to run his businesses?

[00:06:36] This is a question that a lot of people want answers to.

[00:06:40] And right now it's very vague.

[00:06:41] So what we know is that for many months this year, it's something that was first privately raised between Trump and Elon, some sort of strategic advisory role that Elon Musk could have should Trump win the presidency.

[00:06:56] And then it became way more public.

[00:06:58] Elon Musk and Donald Trump had what they called like a conversation on X spaces a couple of months ago.

[00:07:05] And Elon and Donald Trump talked a lot about reducing government oversight.

[00:07:11] Cutting costs was how they were really talking about it a lot.

[00:07:14] A number of people viewed that as lightning regulations.

[00:07:19] And Elon said, I'd be happy to help with that.

[00:07:22] And then over time, that turned into Donald Trump more formally saying and promising that Elon could have this role in coming up with a name of this department.

[00:07:32] And so we have to see how that all could play out.

[00:07:35] But what we believe and what our reporting shows is that it ultimately is likely to result in less regulation.

[00:07:43] And that can help Elon as a businessman and the six different companies that he oversees.

[00:07:48] Which of his companies have the most to gain from this?

[00:07:51] Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world.

[00:07:54] And he has the most to gain through SpaceX.

[00:07:58] SpaceX has more than $15 billion in government contracts over the last decade.

[00:08:05] And the United States is extremely dependent on SpaceX.

[00:08:09] NASA relies on it for some of its most high-profile missions.

[00:08:12] SpaceX is also the dominant rocket launcher for the Pentagon.

[00:08:16] It has a growing business working on the intelligence community's satellite programs.

[00:08:22] And then Starlink, which is a part of SpaceX, and that's the whole kind of satellite business, could really benefit from the government's $42 billion internet expansion campaign.

[00:08:32] And what we'll be looking for is who Trump selects to lead the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC.

[00:08:39] And the frontrunner, someone named Brendan Carr, has said that Starlink could better connect some rural areas.

[00:08:45] But more so, even Tesla, his electric vehicle maker.

[00:08:50] It also has contracts with the government.

[00:08:52] And you have to look at some of his other companies.

[00:08:55] Like XAI could benefit hugely as AI regulation is proposed throughout the United States.

[00:09:02] We're really at the nascent stages right now.

[00:09:04] Social media regulation.

[00:09:06] He oversees Twitter or X.

[00:09:08] He also has the company Neuralink, the brain implant startup that relies on the trials right now with the FDA and the boring company, his tunneling venture.

[00:09:19] So besides the billions that SpaceX has tied to the government, regulations by these various different agencies all across the government each play a role in his different businesses.

[00:09:32] We should note that Musk, his representatives and spokespeople for the companies, didn't respond to requests for comment.

[00:09:38] But what has he said recently about his relationship with Donald Trump?

[00:09:42] Just days before the election, Elon Musk wrote on X, quote,

[00:09:47] And to be clear, I have never asked at real Donald Trump for any favors, nor has he offered me any.

[00:09:53] You wrote, the fact that Musk could reap enormous financial rewards potentially presents an unprecedented conflict of interest at the highest level of government.

[00:10:02] How could those concerns be addressed?

[00:10:04] Certainly, we're waiting to see who Trump appoints to run different agencies.

[00:10:11] The Federal Trade Commission, the FTC is one where it is investigating different Musk companies and Lena Kahn, who Musk has been very public about denouncing.

[00:10:23] So it'll be interesting to see who might run that agency.

[00:10:25] The SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[00:10:28] It'll be interesting to see who runs that agency, the Department of Justice.

[00:10:32] So one way to look at it is there's this perceived sense that Musk will benefit.

[00:10:37] But until we see who's running those agencies and what actions they take, then it will become more clear how much he stands to gain.

[00:10:47] Elon Musk also communicates with and has relationships with foreign leaders.

[00:10:51] How could this potentially impact the presidency?

[00:10:55] Geopolitics is going to be huge under Donald Trump, and there are a lot of different ways that this could come together.

[00:11:03] So what we've already reported is that Elon Musk has been quite chummy and in some cases blurred the lines when it comes to business and geopolitics.

[00:11:13] The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Elon Musk has had secret conversations with Vladimir Putin.

[00:11:18] We know Elon Musk has had contacts in China, and China is a major player in the electric vehicle market.

[00:11:25] Elon Musk was even supposed to meet with the head of India, PM Modi, over potential new business there.

[00:11:31] And Elon Musk and his companies also rely on foreign investors.

[00:11:35] We know that the Saudis and the Qataris are the largest ex-backers.

[00:11:40] There's also a funding round going on with ex-AI.

[00:11:44] And so it'll be interesting to see if Elon Musk and Donald Trump's interests align when it comes to different countries across the globe.

[00:11:54] What has Musk said about these relationships?

[00:11:57] Not a whole lot.

[00:11:58] He has sometimes acknowledged that he talks to world leaders.

[00:12:02] So after the Wall Street Journal published its article about Elon Musk having secret conversations with Putin, Musk responded on X without denying it.

[00:12:12] He did not respond to comment for that story.

[00:12:15] That was WSJ reporter Emily Glazer.

[00:12:17] And that's it for Tech News Briefing.

[00:12:20] Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop.

[00:12:24] I'm Cordelia James for the Wall Street Journal.

[00:12:27] We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute.

[00:12:30] Thanks for listening.