TechXGeopolitics #19: Payments on X? Inside Elon Musk’s Drive Towards “The Everything App”
Also featured: US military buildup in the Middle East, new reporting in Responsible Statecraft
Welcome to my newsletter, where I set out to highlight significant, yet un- or underreported recent news and trends at the intersection of geopolitics and tech.
Why the intersection of technology and geopolitics? The future of geopolitics will be shaped by today’s tech advances, yet the two topics are often isolated from one another in journalism and geopolitical analysis. This newsletter strives to bridge the gap while also spotlighting relevant work by emerging and veteran writers in independent media.
Feedback on this newsletter’s format and content is more than welcome — please feel free to write to me at stavroula.pabst@proton.me. Thank you for reading!
US Military Buildup in the Middle East
With tensions skyrocketing in the Middle East as Israel continues genocide in the Gaza strip, the US Military is flooding the region with arms, personnel, vehicles and ships.
Namely, an August 11 Department of Defense (DoD) press release indicated the United States would send the USS Georgia (SSGN 729) guided missile submarine to the Central Command region, which includes much of the Middle East.
The announcement follows other recent US government efforts to build up the region with military personnel and equipment. For starters, the Air Force has moved F-22 Raptor aircraft to the region. Generally, the Air Force is working to bolster aerial refueling capacities in the region; USAF KC-135 tankers have been spotted on tracking websites in the process.
And August 2 press statement from Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson Sabrina Singh explained that myriad military and naval ships and adjacent resources, including the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN Carrier Strike Group, ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers, and an additional fighter squadron would be sent to the larger Middle East region in a commitment to “personnel and interests in the region, including our ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel.”
Meanwhile, financial assistance to Israel continues unabated: in early August, the United States also announced intentions to send 3.5 billion USD in military aid to Israel. The military aid package is the most recent of many, where the US committed about 17 billion USD to Israel in military aid back in April. In the wake of October 7, the Biden Administration previously requested 14.3 billion USD in additional emergency aid to Israel.
And upon accepting the Democratic Party nomination for President, US VP Kamala Harris reiterated Israel support, saying “I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself” and emphasized a need to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Although the US political class’ dedication to Israel remains functionally unconditional at the time of writing, other developments suggest such support is cracking under public pressure. Israeli weapons company Elbit has apparently suspended operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts due to frequent protests. A growing number of states are reconsidering relations with Israel, with the Scottish government recently suspending meetings with the state until Israel "co-operates fully with its international obligations on the investigation of genocide and war crimes.” Meanwhile, Israeli businesses are reeling: Al Mayadeen English estimated in July that 60,000 Israeli businesses could shut down by the end of the year.
Press TV Appearance: I appeared on Press TV on August 10 to discuss a recent Israeli attack on a Gaza City-based school, which led to the deaths of over 100 Palestinians. Over 350 Palestinian families were believed to be staying at the school compound as a place of refuge when the attack occurred. Watch.
New reporting in Responsible Statecraft: How the Pentagon Built Silicon Valley
“The increasingly close-knit relationship the tech industry enjoys with the Defense Department is not a sudden development. Rather, Silicon Valley was made by — and in the service of — a U.S. government and military eager to establish dominance over its adversaries in the Cold War and beyond.”
I recently reported on the inextricable ties between Silicon Valley and the military for Responsible Statecraft, where post-WW2 US government contracts, especially military contracts, helped build and sustain prominent Silicon Valley companies from the ground up. Read.
Payments on X? Inside Musk’s Drive Towards “The Everything App”
“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life…If it involves money it’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So it’s not just, like, send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”
– Elon Musk, in an audio recording retrieved by The Verge
Recent developments suggest Elon Musk’s X, formerly twitter, is making key strides towards payment functionality on its platform, where users would be able to send and receive digital payments. Indeed, X Payments has its own account on the platform with almost 132K followers, though it has yet to post, and a majority of U.S. states have approved money transmitter licenses for X.
Musk is often depicted as libertarian (though, hailing from South Africa, perhaps his politics don’t quite fit so neatly into traditional American depictions of “left” and “right"), and many have hailed him as an anti-establishment figure despite his billionaire status. (Those being “shadowbanned” on X, apparently for their political views, may disagree.)
Despite this pro-freedom veneer, Musk seems to be more after power for himself, as showcased through his efforts to make social media platform X do… well, just about everything.
Namely, Musk wrote on X in 2022 that “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” He subsequently wrote in 2023 that “we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world...The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”
True to his word, a newly-branded X has subsequently (and somewhat clunkily) rolled out a number of new features in turn, including audio and video calling, AI chatbot Grok, and the ability to edit and make longer posts for paying premium users. Now, payments appear to be the next frontier.
The Next WeChat?
Musk’s “everything app” fixation is on par for a WeChat obsessed Silicon Valley. For context, WeChat, often described as an “everything app,” is a multipurpose social media platform in China, where users can send payments, conduct tasks like ordering cabs, message friends, post, and conduct other day-to-day tasks. As Musk himself told then-Twitter staffers about WeChat in 2022: “You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can achieve that, or even get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success.”
X attaining “everything app” status would certainly be an entrepreneurial success for Musk; by creating critical financial infrastructure, which millions would use everyday, he would also secure unprecedented influence over daily life. (Debatably, he’s already gained unprecedented political influence through buying twitter, one of the world’s most-frequented social media platforms.)
In reality, Musk has been working towards such ends for decades. In fact, Musk originally launched X.com back in 1999, which was slated to become a “one-stop everything-store for all financial needs.” X.com, merging with fellow entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s software company Confinity, became PayPal after Thiel outmaneuvered and ousted Musk over his branding choices and vision for the company and autocratic, off-putting management style. (Musk and Thiel’s relationship hasn’t fully recovered since, though the two still collaborate: notably, Thiel’s funding through Founders Fund has been instrumental in Musk’s SpaceX success.)
A critical aside, PayPal was itself apparently a power-minded creation about “replac[ing] the U.S. dollar.” As I wrote in my last TechXGeopolitics newsletter:
“Many may think of PayPal, a digital payment service Thiel founded early in his career, as an easy way to pay back friends for drinks or taxi rides.
In fact, PayPal was created to much larger political ends (before it went public in 2002), including apparently “replacing the U.S. Dollar” and even “the erosion of the nation state” through the development of digital financial infrastructure slated for widespread and even crossborder use.
Namely, as per Thiel’s own words about PayPal, “our goal was nothing less than to replace the U.S. dollar by creating a new digital currency.” (Emphasis my own.) As More Perfect Union highlighted: “Thiel told the full [PayPal] staff “the ability to move money fluidly and the erosion of the nation-state are closely related”... as they were building a system to move money fluidly.”
This X/PayPal history is apparently on Musk’s mind as he moves to expand X’s capabilities. “The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000,” he said at a previous X internal call. “And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago.”
And now, Musk’s own words suggest a renewed interest in subverting and replacing traditional finance through X payments along similar lines. In a previous meeting with X staff, Musk said “When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life…If it involves money it’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So it’s not just, like, send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.” (Emphasis my own.)
Who’s In?
So, who’s in on Musk’s X Payments plan? The question is crucial within the context of X Payments’ possible impact on the world of finance, where widespread usage of X Payments could give unprecedented economic power and influence to Musk and whichever financial platforms facilitate the payments.
According to June Bloomberg reporting by Aisha Counts and Kurt Wagner, X already has partnerships with Stripe and Adyen for payments solutions, and it is “anticipated” that these existing partnerships may be tapped for X Payments. Counts and Wagner reported that while the plans were still murky, they described X Payments as a “Venmo-like payments feature that will let users store money on their X accounts, pay other users or businesses, and even buy goods and services in physical stores.” While rumors have circulated (examples of this here and here) that prominent cryptocurrency protocol Ripple (XRP) may facilitate X-Payments, other reporting suggests crypto has been excluded from X Payments generally.
In the meantime, Musk’s X platform faces considerable obstacles on its way to “Everything App” status. Musk’s chaotic Twitter-to-X takeover, for starters, suggests the entrepreneur has bit off more than he can chew; the company lost over 400 million USD in revenue in 2023. There’s skepticism, further, that X users will want to use a prospective payment function. And despite a rocky roll-out, Meta’s Threads, a competitor, is now gaining ground. Meanwhile, European officials have threatened the platform with shutdown if the platform does not comply with increasingly restrictive European data and speech laws.
All matters considered, developments surrounding X Payments deserve scrutiny in the months to come.
Further Reading: Social media users say their Palestine content is being shadow banned – here’s how to know if it’s happening to you by Carolina Are in the Conversation
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Superb and timely report. Note Musk is making noise regarding the "US rapidly approaching bankruptcy."