How Elon Musk went from Tesla CEO to the 'most powerful civilian, non-governmental actor in history'

Elon Musk's influence over first Tesla ( TSLA ) and now SpaceX ( SPCX ) has long been measured in terms of corporate valuations, technological breakthroughs, and personal wealth, where his companies have made him the richest person in the world. Across the last few years, however, the centi-billionaire's growing portfolio of businesses has pushed him into a new lane entirely.

Over the past decade, Elon Musk has become far more than a corporate executive or political power broker. Through his control of companies underpinning global communications, military operations, space access, and artificial intelligence, Musk has acquired a degree of influence over national security, international relations, and the global economy that few private individuals have ever possessed.

"There's a very real chance that [Musk] is the most powerful civilian, non-governmental actor in history," Gautam Mukunda, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and managing director of the consultancy Two Rivers Group. Musk "has resources that are vastly larger than those of all but a handful of governments on the planet."

That influence came into sharp focus this month when widely reported restrictions on SpaceX's satellite communications services disrupted Ukraine's military operations, exposing just how dependent a sovereign nation's battlefield capabilities had become on infrastructure supplied by a private-sector company.

There are conflicting accounts of who ordered the restrictions in Ukraine, which disrupted battlefield drones and prompted several hours of faltering drone speeds and faulty communications on the front lines of the nation's conflict with Russia. Musk says the White House controls Ukraine's access to Starshield, a military-grade version of Starlink funded by the Pentagon, while officials in the Trump administration have said they weren't involved in the decision .

Regardless of responsibility, the incident has highlighted the increasing separation between corporate access to governments and governmental reliance on the private sector, particularly given Musk's singular control over rocketry and satellite communications.

SpaceX is now responsible for roughly 90% of all mass sent into orbit off Earth, Musk said on SpaceX's recent earnings call. The Pentagon is Starshield's largest customer , while countries such as the Philippines , Argentina , and Indonesia use Starlink for national communications, including emergency services.

"He can turn a country's communications on or off — that's an extraordinary power," Darrell West, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, told Yahoo Finance. "Even governments can't do that."