Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak didn’t hold back as he reflected on Elon Musk’s influence on Donald Trump’s administration.
In case you haven’t paid any attention to US politics for the last couple months… Elon Musk is basically everywhere.
The Tesla CEO and billionaire was in the news a lot over the years following his acquisition of Twitter, but he has been in the spotlight even more so (if possible) since he allied with Donald Trump.
Despite not being an elected official, Musk appears to be influencing Trump’s administration, at least in an advisory capacity, and the billionaire has taken plenty of flack for this.
Wozniak criticized Musk for directly veering into politics (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
Most recently Wozniak has made it clear how he feels about this situation.
The 74-year-old who, founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976, spoke to hundreds of attendees at Barcelona’s Talent Arena developers fair on March 4 and took issue with Big Tech getting way to caught up in politics.
However, he did acknowledge that due to major tech companies being so big, they have a clear interest in lobbying politicians.
Wozniak said: “Technology companies are huge, they’re huge and [because they are] worth that much money, they have to have some political involvement.
“But actually taking a direct role because they’ve made it big in technology, I don’t like that at all.
As he began to criticize Musk, he also added that ‘the skills of politics are very different than the skills for technology companies to have success.’
He continued: “When you run a business, you look around and you look for a consensus. If half your employees feel one way and half the other way, you negotiate, you compromise.
Elon Musk has been making waves in politics since allying with Trump (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“I don’t see that happening in the case of Elon Musk… you don’t just say everything is out and start fresh.”
And since leading DOGE (Department of Government Spending) Musk hasn’t been shy about making waves among the status quo when it comes to government.
Late last month, he sent an email to all US federal staff and suggested that those who didn’t reply would be fired.
The email demanded that workers outline five tasks they’d completed in the last week with a deadline of 11.59pm on Monday or their failure to respond would be taken as a resignation.
Musk later explained the email on Twitter and said: “This was basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email.
“Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will.”
