After Texas' blue wave, what happens to Elon Musk and SpaceX?

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

Following his public disputes with California authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic, Elon Musk personally moved to Texas, outside of Austin, in 2020. Over the next six years, he doubled down on the Lone Star State. In 2021, Musk increasingly focused the Starship program in South Texas, urging SpaceX employees to move there and work on the company’s future. In March of that year, he began using the name Starbase to describe the production and launch facilities near the Rio Grande River.

在 COVID-19 疫情期间与加州当局发生公开争执后，埃隆·马斯克于 2020 年搬到了德克萨斯州奥斯汀郊外。在接下来的六年里，他加倍押注于这个“孤星之州”。2021 年，马斯克将“星舰”（Starship）项目的重心更多地转向德克萨斯州南部，敦促 SpaceX 员工搬迁至此，为公司的未来而工作。同年 3 月，他开始使用“星际基地”（Starbase）这一名称来描述里奥格兰德河附近的生产和发射设施。

In 2023, he built a massive factory east of Austin to manufacture customer terminals and other electronics for the Starlink program. In July 2024, he announced that SpaceX would relocate its corporate headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas. He cited California’s regulatory and political environment as the motivating factor. Since then, Musk has continued with major expansions of the Starbase facility.

2023 年，他在奥斯汀以东建造了一座大型工厂，用于生产“星链”（Starlink）项目的用户终端及其他电子设备。2024 年 7 月，他宣布 SpaceX 将把公司总部从加利福尼亚州霍桑迁至德克萨斯州的星际基地。他将加州的监管和政治环境作为此次搬迁的动因。自那以后，马斯克继续对星际基地设施进行大规模扩建。

This summer, his company announced that Terafab, “the most epic-chip building effort in the world,” would be built in Grimes County, Texas, and that “a vertically integrated factory with more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space is planned,” the company said. That’s right, 100 million square feet. This is equivalent to 1,700 American football fields, 15 Pentagons, or three Central Parks. Everything is bigger in Texas, of course, and for a time, so was the bromance between Musk and Texas politicians.

今年夏天，他的公司宣布将在德克萨斯州格莱姆斯县建造“Terafab”，称其为“世界上最宏大的芯片制造工程”，并表示“计划建造一个拥有超过 1 亿平方英尺制造空间的垂直整合工厂”。没错，就是 1 亿平方英尺。这相当于 1700 个美式足球场、15 个五角大楼或 3 个中央公园。当然，德州的一切都更宏大，而马斯克与德州政客之间的“兄弟情”也曾一度如此。

He has repeatedly said he loves Texas’ political climate, its regulatory environment, and the state’s Republican leaders. And in turn, they have loved him back. In July, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised Musk before interviewing him as a guest host of The Sean Hannity Show as “the leading visionary of our time. Thomas Edison. Just like that, maybe even bigger.” And then, the Midterms During the 2026 midterms, Musk went all in on Republicans, investing nearly half a billion dollars in their election campaigns through his own America PAC and other organizations, according to The New York Times.

他曾多次表示自己热爱德州的政治气候、监管环境以及该州的共和党领导人。作为回报，他们也对他青睐有加。今年 7 月，德州州长格雷格·阿博特在担任《肖恩·汉尼提秀》客座主持并采访马斯克之前，称赞他是“我们这个时代领先的远见卓识者。就像托马斯·爱迪生一样，甚至可能更伟大。”随后，中期选举到来了。据《纽约时报》报道，在 2026 年中期选举期间，马斯克全力支持共和党，通过他自己的“美国政治行动委员会”（America PAC）及其他组织，向他们的竞选活动投入了近 5 亿美元。

Of this estimated $474 million, nearly half went to candidates in Texas. And then, on Tuesday, a historic blue wave washed over the formerly deep-red state. Most of Musk’s political friends in Texas will soon be gone. So what happens next? We don’t really know. But there are some important things to watch. First up is Musk’s public comments on the social media site he owns, X. Throughout the evening on Tuesday, as it became clear Republicans were headed for a historic defeat, Musk remained uncharacteristically quiet.

在这估计 4.74 亿美元的资金中，近一半流向了德克萨斯州的候选人。然而周二，一场历史性的“蓝色浪潮”席卷了这个曾经深红的州。马斯克在德州的大多数政治盟友很快就会离任。那么接下来会发生什么？我们并不真正清楚。但有一些重要的事情值得关注。首先是马斯克在他拥有的社交媒体平台 X 上发表的公开评论。周二整个晚上，当共和党注定要遭遇历史性惨败的消息变得明朗时，马斯克表现得异常安静。

His first comment came 12 minutes after midnight in Texas, where the key statewide races had all been called. “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” he wrote. A bit later, he tried to react with some sarcastic humor and then largely went back to promoting SpaceX’s AI Grok bot and the Starlink Internet service. I think we can read a lot into this, drawing on my own understanding of Musk’s motivations and conversations with a couple of people familiar with his thinking.

他的第一条评论出现在德州时间午夜 12 点 12 分，当时全州关键选区的选举结果均已出炉。他写道：“太空数据中心现在看起来相当有吸引力。”稍后，他试图用一些讽刺的幽默来回应，随后基本又回到了推广 SpaceX 的 AI Grok 机器人和“星链”互联网服务上。我认为，结合我对马斯克动机的理解以及与几位熟悉他想法的人士的交谈，我们可以从中解读出很多信息。

Politically, Musk has changed his stripes before. He bundled for President Obama’s campaigns and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. Later, of course, he took a hard-right turn, becoming Donald Trump’s most prominent and largest financial backer in the 2024 presidential campaign. Now there are two avenues open to Musk. He can lean further into Republicans and far-right politics. He still has allies there and could look to become a kingmaker in selecting the party’s 2028 presidential nominee.

在政治上，马斯克过去曾改变过立场。他曾为奥巴马总统的竞选活动筹款，并在 2016 年支持希拉里·克林顿竞选总统。当然，后来他转向了极右翼，成为唐纳德·特朗普 2024 年总统竞选中最突出、资金支持力度最大的支持者。现在，马斯克面前有两条路。他可以进一步向共和党和极右翼政治靠拢。他在那里仍有盟友，并可能寻求成为该党 2028 年总统候选人提名过程中的“造王者”。

He could also expand his footprint in other red states (more on this below). The alternative, which would be consistent with some of his past behavior, is for Musk to moderate politically. But are Democrats interested in de-escalation after such a decisive victory? For several years, Musk has been one of the Democratic Party’s loudest antagonists, after Trump. But he is also doing, at enormous scale, some things Democrats have spent a decade saying America needs: investing in domestic manufacturing and chip fabs and creating thousands of industrial jobs, many of them in the red and purple districts Dems just won.

他也可以在其他红州扩大自己的足迹（下文将详细说明）。另一种选择，即与他过去的一些行为相一致的做法，是马斯克在政治上采取温和立场。但在取得如此决定性的胜利后，民主党人还有兴趣缓和局势吗？几年来，马斯克一直是继特朗普之后民主党最响亮的反对者之一。但他也在以巨大的规模做着民主党十年来一直声称美国所需要的事情：投资国内制造业和芯片工厂，并创造数以千计的工业岗位，其中许多岗位位于民主党刚刚赢得的红区和摇摆区。

Whether Democrats treat him as someone to be investigated or someone to be bargained with may be the most important open question for him in the next two years. At the end of the day, what I believe Musk wants most is power. Not so much power in the traditional political sense, but the power to bend the world toward the future he envisions. Right now, that future is heavily steeped in artificial intelligence and requires extraordinary amounts of energy and computing infrastructure to run his AI agents、robots, self-driving vehicles, and more.

民主党人是将他视为调查对象还是谈判对象，可能是未来两年对他而言最重要的悬而未决的问题。归根结底，我相信马斯克最想要的是权力。这并非传统政治意义上的权力，而是将世界引向他所设想的未来的权力。目前，那个未来深深植根于人工智能，需要大量的能源和计算基础设施来运行他的 AI 智能体、机器人、自动驾驶汽车等。

One thing to watch is whether Musk develops any kind of relationship with Texas Senator-elect James Talarico, whom he demonized prior to the election and spent so heavily to defeat. Talarico did not specify Musk in his post-election speech but did say, “In this race, we went up against our own Goliaths. The richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world and the entire Washington, DC establishment.” Later, he added, “Tonight, we sent a crystal-clear message to the people at the top: We will not be conquered.”

值得关注的一点是，马斯克是否会与德克萨斯州候任参议员詹姆斯·塔拉里科（James Talarico）建立某种关系，马斯克在选举前曾对他进行过妖魔化，并投入巨资试图击败他。塔拉里科在选后演讲中没有点名马斯克，但确实说道：“在这场竞选中，我们对抗的是我们自己的歌利亚（巨人）。世界上最富有的人、世界上最有权势的人以及整个华盛顿特区的建制派。”随后，他补充道：“今晚，我们向高层人士传达了一个明确的信息：我们不会被征服。”

At the same time, Talarico has promised voters that he will serve all of Texas, to love all of his neighbors, and seek to build bridges rather than tear them down. Musk is the richest and most prominent Texan. He also could help ignite the state’s economy in the coming decades. Can he and the state’s newest senator, a gifted speaker and clearly talented politician, be good neighbors? SpaceX SpaceX has the bulk of its operations in California, Texas, and Florida. California is deep blue, Texas is blue (for now, at least), and Florida came within 3 points of electing a member of the D

与此同时，塔拉里科向选民承诺，他将服务于整个德克萨斯州，爱所有的邻居，并寻求架起桥梁而不是拆毁它们。马斯克是德州最富有、最显赫的人物。他也有可能在未来几十年帮助点燃该州的经济。他和该州这位新晋参议员——一位出色的演说家和显然才华横溢的政治家——能成为好邻居吗？SpaceX 的大部分业务位于加利福尼亚州、德克萨斯州和佛罗里达州。加州是深蓝州，德州是蓝色（至少目前是），而佛罗里达州在选举民主党成员方面仅以 3 个百分点的差距失之交臂。