The Empire Didn’t Crumble — He Let It Rot

Tesla slowed, X unraveled, Starlink is stalling. Elon Musk didn’t lose control.

It’s not how the mighty have fallen. It’s more of an oscillation — between “What a clown” and “He earned this, cold-handed.”

For years, when people talked about Tesla’s ability to disrupt the auto industry, most assumed it would be the software, the design, the battery tech, or the self-driving system that pushed it past the giants. But I always had a different view.

From then to today, I still believe this: Tesla’s success — and now, its slow-motion failure — begins and ends with Supercharger density. Everything else flows from there. Musk knew it too. By 2016, the Supercharger network was already a core strategic advantage. But as the cars sold in greater volumes, the charging network began to stall. He stopped investing in the very infrastructure that made Tesla viable.

He didn’t stop building stations entirely.

By 2016, there were 790 Supercharger stations worldwide. By 2020, that number climbed to 2,564. And by 2024, it reached around 6,975. Fair growth on paper. But between 2020 and 2024, Tesla delivered over 6 million vehicles — and added only 4,400 new stations.

The ratio of vehicles per charger didn’t just grow — it exploded. In 2016, there were around 97 vehicles per Supercharger station. By 2025, Tesla had nearly 1,000 vehicles for every Supercharger station on Earth. That’s not scale. That’s stress. And it didn’t happen by accident — it happened because Musk stopped feeding the system that made the whole thing run.

And when it was time to reinvest in that foundation, Musk didn’t. He sold $8.5 billion in Tesla stock — not to expand infrastructure or strengthen the company’s lead — but to buy Twitter. Not to serve customers. Not to build the future. He did it to shift his political weight. To embed himself in the MAGA orbit. To position Twitter as a cultural weapon — and himself as a player in the power arena. It wasn’t a business decision. It was alignment — calculated and loud.

And the rot spread. In Europe, X saw a 10% drop in users in a single year, according to Politico. That kind of exodus doesn’t happen because people get bored. It happens when people make a decision: “I no longer want to be associated with this.” It wasn’t just what the platform was turning into. It was the man who was driving it. The Nazi salute at a MAGA rally. The virtual appearance at a far-right AfD campaign event in Germany. The relentless mocking of critics, allies, and public figures. Musk wasn’t disrupting. He was contaminating.

Bluesky didn’t just grow by hosting fleeing X users— it became the emotional refuge. A space to detox from the bile, the posturing, the performative chaos. The decision to leave wasn’t passive. It was an act of self-respect. That’s the real collapse: Elon Musk is no longer a misunderstood genius. He’s a man people are quietly, collectively backing away from.

Which brings us to Starlink. On paper, it’s still the most powerful satellite network on Earth. But geopolitics doesn’t run on specs — it runs on trust. In Italy, Starlink rollout is now stalled. On the surface, it’s about bureaucracy. But under the hood? It’s Musk himself. He publicly called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool” before the German national election. That wasn’t just reckless. It was stupid. Politicians are not algorithms. They live and die for their own brand and remember when some one takes a hammer to hit a fellow politician’s brand value. Pens are out. Notes are written. Now governments are responding the only way they can: by slowing down the systems he controls.

And then there’s Ukraine — the line he never should’ve crossed. Publicly threatening to pull Starlink access from a country under siege was already disgraceful. But pairing it with a shift toward pro-Putin rhetoric turned it into something darker: alignment with aggression. In Europe, where support for Ukraine still holds steady across party lines, this wasn’t just offensive.

It was destabilizing.

This is the pattern. He builds something extraordinary. Then he poisons it. Not through failure — but through contempt. Tesla. X. Now Starlink. One by one, the pillars are shaking. Not because they weren’t brilliant. But because he stopped caring who he was hurting to hold onto them. And now, finally, the world is responding. Not with outrage. With exit.

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