The War of the Emperors

Will Trump and Musk Take Each Other Down—Or Transform?

On Sunday night, I started writing a prediction based on some warning signals in the air but even I was surprised by how fast warfare erupted between Elon Musk and Donald Trump before I could finish an article. As yesterday’s eruption of overt and personal battle grows, what’s going to happen next?

For one thing, I believe that Trump’s going to find out that DOGE truly was a scam on the American people, to the tune of hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars. I think he’s going to find and reveal that Musk created a convenient fictional cover story for what was effectively one of the greatest heists in American history: that of the most valuable database in the world.

With the power that came from funneling government technology and money through DOGE, Musk got the ability to aggregate an integrated database on the American people and then to port that to Grok (his AI), and Palantir (Peter Theil’s surveillance software).

Where are they aiming to go with that move?

While some of what follows is speculative, it unifies a lot of dots. I believe their vision is to create the most powerful AI (Grok), paired with the most powerful database (the US. Government’s) paired with the most powerful surveillance software (Palantir) to basically reshape America in their vision and carve out new network states (aka Liberty Cities) from American democracy as it exists. If you have not been exposed to that full vision, I recommend this video.

Elon Musk, by effectively buying Trump’s trust through nearly $300 million of political contributions, was the lead man for a larger play, which was backed by Peter Thiel, who can come in now appearing to be more reasonable than Musk. But Musk was carrying out a synchronized plan to take over the US.’s most valuable database AND install one of Thiel’s chief lieutenants as Vice President JD Vance so that after the drama of Trump’s demise plays out, they would have the master database on America, the largest communication channel for the country, potentially the most powerful AI, combined with the ability direct President Vance as they wish. Such a situation would enable them to implement their Network State vision, which I think they genuinely believe is an upgrade on democracy.

I don’t see any reason yet why they have given up this vision. In fact, the warfare between Musk and Trump so far confirms it.

If you read about his early Paypal days, Peter Thiel was a master chess player who could play the best other players from the company in parallel and he was only defeated once. That reveals Peter Thiel as a better strategist that Elon Musk. I think Thiel has carefully played his board pieces so that after the takedown of Trump and the meltdown of Musk that he could show up as as the rational, most powerful “adult” in the Silicon Valley world and run the systems AND effectively direct the next President - the successor emperor after the downfall of the rival emperors.

So the fight between Musk and Trump is not just an adolescent tantrum. It’s actually part of a plan to switch from backing Trump during the phase necessary to take over the technical infrastructure of the U.S. federal government. We have now entered the next phase designed to push for Trump’s demise and removal, leaving the country President Vance in his place. That is probably a yearlong process. Given Musk just stepped out of the Administration last Friday, they didn’t waste any time. My bet is that the gameplan was for Musk to take down Trump after the heist was successful. Musk has already made clear that he knows things that could destroy Trump (Epstein files) and he’s willing to use them.

After the demise of Trump is complete?

In their gameplan, I see Musk doing a resurrection and mea culpa tour for some years while Peter Thiel and JD Vance take over more and more power in America, inserting new regulations that enable the creation of Network States called Liberty Cities in former US territories within our current borders that can demonstrate the concept. Basically, they create sovereign carve outs from the United States that can be run according to the desire and design of the lead CEO who runs each. In theory, this could create greater diversity of societal experiments but in practically, it is likely to lead to more totalitarian states akin to El Salvador, each powered by advanced surveillance with AI.

Most of the anti-Trump forces now see Musk and Trump fighting as a glorious outpicturing of what they dislike about both. But if both go down in fiery flames, we won’t realize the deeper lessons of this moment AND we will get Peter Thiel basically in charge of the country through Vance. So it’s actually much better if Musk and Trump start to fall and then go through a transformative scenario where they fess up to their crimes, are humbled by the damage they have wrought and engage in a real transformation as a result. Basically, they emerge from the war as changed men. This would be a far more valuable scenario than the mutually assured destruction scenario, which would simply install less obnoxious but more strategic authoritarian successors.

That’s why we need to hold the space for the potential of real transformation in this war. It would be a better example for people around the world who revere a patriarchal mindset to see the world’s top patriarchs go through a transformation and emerge as a more humble, statesman-like leader (Trump) or a visionary steward (Musk) from the war that has begun.

Witnessing a transformation of distorted masculine leadership into a more evolved form would be a great gift.

We thus should hold the space and see their public battle as an outworking of karma. They are both, in their own ways, lead representatives for a wound in the masculine psyche and by revealing the dysfunction and the damage caused by the unconscious reenactment of those wounds, they could catalyze wide-scale introspection and healing around those wounds.

The more consciously that process is held, the easier the transformation can happen. Instead of indulging the impulse towards revenge, we are better served to see these souls as walking wounded who do need to be healed for us to go forward collectively. They are traumautized humans in ways led to extereme overcompensation in ways that people often admire but ultimately led them to become unstable and self-serving leaders. They are the most visible examples of a mode of masculine leadership we need to outgrow and thus it’s to everyone’s advantage that they grow rather than simply incinerate.

What if they could begin to heal those wounds publicly? That would be a real blessing.

So no matter how many mixed or negative feelings you harbor about these two men, I encourage you to find a way to generate more compassion for them, which creates a more supportive energy for their transformation. If you think of them as emissaries of the wounded masculine, each embodying distortions that we need to integrate collectively, then you can feel just how intense the process is going to be for them as they enter the karmic bonfire that I believe is coming.

I think they are going to fight each other all the way down. And I want to invite us to hold the vision that at some point, parts of them start to recognize that they are not on the path of liberation and that they need to realign with their soul’s commitments. By holding the vision for their transformation, I hope we can contribute in some small way to them choosing a pathway towards a more mature future.

To go a bit deeper into the game that I think Musk is playing with Trump, I believe he already made hundreds of billions by knocking out major investigations of his companies, each of which offered barriers to future growth for years to come. Realizing that fully is going to anger Trump, who will see that Musk has made more from his time in government, long-term, than Trump.

But I think that is only one level. The Really Big goal, as I shared above, has been to create the most powerful database in the world and the most powerful AI in the world to effectively rule the planet. Musk is willing to take a few dustups with popular opinion for that. What’s one public black eye en route to world domination?

In the long term, I believe Thiel and Musk, both South Africans, are aiming to create a two tiered world akin to apartheid where a certain owning class can control the masses through the tools of psychological control run by AI, media distributed by X, and backed up with an advanced surveillance system (Palantir). Then, once Vance is installed, they can change the regulations of the United States to create new Liberty Cities that are sovereign nations run like companies and outside of the jurisdiction of the United States but still protected by our military bubble. In those enclaves, they can play out their fantasies even further and locate the companies that can dominate the world.

Part of the reason they are going for this vision, I believe, is they see how much AI is going to change the game on the planet and they fear mass unemployment, even if there is universal basic income to at least ensure people can survive. The future they see is one in which AI rapidly takes over more knowledge work and eventually physical work, leading to mass unemployment for humans. So they want to have a very secure state surveillance system to prevent unrest from the have-nots rising up against the haves, who will live in unprecedented affluence. That’s what I mean by an apartheid-like state. It wouldn’t strictly be on race lines but on economic ones.

In this context, the reputational damage from Musk’s time in DOGE was a worthwhile short-term hit in the service of long-term gain. He basically stole the most important database asset in the world. Imagine the market value of having the US. government database to build upon with an AI company aspiring to global dominance in the largest market ever created? That’s at least a trillion dollar asset he stole. A few cycles of bad polling isn’t really going to impede the plan substantially and if he helps to take down Trump? Many, even on the left, will see him as a hero.

Trump fell for the whole fiction as he believed Musk was a genuine supporter of Trump, when he was actually using Trump as a stepping stone in a larger plan and is now planning to destroy him to cover his tracks.

Moving forward, there is a lot Trump can also do a lot to take Musk down. But I think Musk holds more cards on Trump, as his insinuations yesterday imply about Epstein. I think there is more coming as well.

What Trump is going to realize eventually is that he’s been conned by a more skilled con man and that Musk has the resources, information and database to take him down and install Vance in his place. Trump is not going to like that Musk has taken the potential to make trillions from the technology and data he stole, and may just have capsized his Presidency from the resulting damage in the trust of the American people. Whereas Trump was just grabbing a few billion through Trump coins and private jets, Musk was playing a much bigger game. AI is the biggest arms race, technologically and economically, in the world and Musk bought a politician so that he could get access to the most valuable database to then build an AI and surveillance state that could, through the US government takeover, eventually rule the world in partnership with a handpicked successor as President.

Basically, Trump and the Republican party gave the keys to American democracy to a wealthy immigrant with problematic ethics and dubious motivations. Musk used his trusted relationship with Trump to steal that which was most valuable to our country: our sovereign data on every citizens so he could use that to power the next phase of his goal of world domination.

This, I believe, is true.

And Trump is now asking the questions and launching the inquiries that are going to lead to answers that reveal this. When he finds out he’s been played by the world’s richest man, he is going to get very aggressive. His ego cannot sustain a blow like that so he will go nuclear on Musk. But I think Musk has it roadmapped out how he can take Trump down. He does not seem to be sweating. He seems excited for the war.

Trump has spent a life time being able to take advantage of people who had less economic power that he has. Musk just turned the tables on that game.

Earlier this year I speculated about a potential scenario for the ending of the Trump regime in 2025. I was betting on an economic implosion by the summer along with further moves into aggressive authoritarianism. But I’m now seeing a variation on this scenario as more plausible, where Musk and Trump enter a war, neither backs down and they pummel each other into mutual destruction by outting each other’s sensitive secrets.

The question is whether they take each other out too fast such that we can’t collectively steer towards out of the authoritarian scenario together, which would require the impeachment of J.D. Vance for conspiring against the United States with Thiel and Musk. Because I believe it’s likely that he’s been in on it the whole time.

Basically, Trump will have to find a way redirect the ire of the Republican Party and Democrats away from himself and towards Vance by exposing Vance’s collaboration in a scheme to defraud the American people of our sovereign data and dismantle our democracy in the service of Silicon Valley fever dreams of world domination.

So I think we should all do our best to send healing energy to both of these aspiring emperors so that they can transmute the karma being activated in this battle and begin to transform out of it in a way that can help us all to avert the worst case scenarios collectively.

There will need to be a movement to impeach Vance before Trump is toppled in order to foil the longer-term coup of American democracy. I think we are better off having a diminished Trump limping forward for a time with low support from the American people than to have a Vance-Silicon Valley surveillance state.

So let’s hold the vision that Trump can transform through this and perhaps Musk as well so that America can emerge from its dark night wiser and more healed, with less lasting damage.