There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space. SpaceX is currently the sole means by which NASA transports crew from U.S. soil into space, a situation that will persist for at least another year. The government’s plan to move the auto industry toward electric cars requires increasing access to charging stations along America’s highways. But this rests on the actions of another Musk enterprise, Tesla. The automaker has seeded so much of the country with its proprietary charging stations that the Biden Administration relaxed an early push for a universal charging standard disliked by Musk. His stations are eligible for billions of dollars in subsidies, so long as Tesla makes them compatible with the other charging standard.

In the past twenty years, against a backdrop of crumbling infrastructure and declining trust in institutions, Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where, after decades of privatization, the state has receded. The government is now reliant on him, but struggles to respond to his risk-taking, brinkmanship, and caprice

Current and former officials from NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration told me that Musk’s influence had become inescapable in their work, and several of them said that they now treat him like a sort of unelected official

Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, with whom Musk has both worked and sparred, told me, “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.

later. “He had grown up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa,” Justine wrote. “The will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home.”

There are competitors in the field, including Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, but none yet rival SpaceX. The new space race has the potential to shape the global balance of power. Satellites enable the navigation of drones and missiles and generate imagery used for intelligence, and they are mostly under the control of private companies.

A number of officials suggested to me that, despite the tensions related to the company, it has made government bureaucracies nimbler. “When SpaceX and NASA work together, we work closer to optimal speed,” Kenneth Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, told me. Still, some figures in the aerospace world, even ones who think that Musk’s rockets are basically safe, fear that concentrating so much power in private companies, with so few restraints, invites tragedy.

Tesla for a time included in its vehicles the ability to replace the humming noises that electric cars must emit—since their engines make little sound—with goat bleats, farting, or a sound of the owner’s choice. “We’re, like, ‘No, that’s not compliant with the regulations, don’t be stupid,’ ” Cliff told me. Tesla argued with regulators for more than a year, according to an N.H.T.S.A. safety report

Musk’s personal wealth dwarfs the entire budget of OSHA, which is tasked with monitoring the conditions in his workplaces. “You add on the fact that he considers himself to be a master of the universe and these rules just don’t apply to people like him,” Jordan Barab, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor at OSHA, told me. “There’s a lot of underreporting in industry in general. And Elon Musk kind of seems to raise that to an art form.”

Some people who know Musk well still struggle to make sense of his political shift. “There was nothing political about him ever,” a close associate told me. “I’ve been around him for a long time, and had lots of deep conversations with the man, at all hours of the day—never heard a fucking word about this.”

the cuts that Musk had instituted quickly took a toll on the company. Employees had been informed of their termination via brusque, impersonal e-mails—Musk is now being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by employees who say that they are owed additional severance pay—and the remaining staffers were abruptly ordered to return to work in person. Twitter’s business model was also in question, since Musk had alienated advertisers and invited a flood of fake accounts by reinventing the platform’s verification process

Musk’s trolling has increasingly taken on the vernacular of hard-right social media, in which grooming, pedophilia, and human trafficking are associated with liberalism

It is difficult to say whether Musk’s interest in A.I. is driven by scientific wonder and altruism or by a desire to dominate a new and potentially powerful industry.

Maybe we’ll get to a point where the novelty will be that a human being wrote something: This person proved that they were in a box away from any A.I. when they wrote this thing

as writers and creators, you want people to watch your show, so if you can make something look and sound like something else that people already want to watch, then you might be able to convince a producer that it will have legs. But I discovered through doing “Fleabag” that you have to write something that is more dangerous, more honest, more unusual and more provocative — especially if it’s going to go into a pool with a million other things. Honing the uniqueness of whatever you do is your best chance. I know I’m saying that having just signed up to do “Tomb Raider,” which has an audience already, and I know that’s what Amazon wants, and Amazon made this unbelievable deal8 8 In 2019, Variety reported about Waller-Bridge’s development deal with Amazon Studios, that “sources say the deal is worth around $20 million a year.” with me. I care so much about delivering for them. Being able to do that dangerous, naughty, transgressive stuff in the heart of something that is very valuable to them in terms of I.P. satisfies both of those things, but the discipline for me is to not just give them the “Tomb Raider” they think they want, but to give them something else.

People are going to interpret everything I do as my feelings on contemporary womanhood because I’m a contemporary woman. I don’t want to escape that part of me. I can see how I’ve gone into masculine roles with Bond and “Indiana Jones,” but those worlds are the ones that always intrigued me. The high-stakes action world appeals to me, whether it’s masculine or feminine. I like the urgency of it and the idea of being able to write a female character in a world like that.

It’s a window into your psychology: You want to be a pleaser and do the assignment well, but what you actually want to do is something riskier. Oh, my gosh. That’s exactly what it is. But the best thing is when you satisfy both. The journey there can be quite [laughs] — I love the feeling of having done what’s been asked, but I hate the feeling of pleasing.

I think that with Bond there is something dangerous, transgressive and incendiary about that character, and it’s the same with Indy. He completely revolutionized the action hero, which Harrison1 1 Harrison Ford, of course, who has said “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will be his last go-round with Indy’s famous whip and fedora. is dead set against him being described as, but there was something that broke the form. We accept them now as the biggest franchises, but in the kernel of these characters is something naughty and dangerous. They were the rascals of their time, and I feel like Villanelle and Fleabag are rascals.2 2 Villanelle is the name of the assassin character, played by Jodie Comer, in “Killing Eve.” “Fleabag,” for those who haven’t seen it, is that show’s title character, played by Waller-Bridge. The show earned six Emmy Awards and 11 nominations for its second season. So it was less like, “I want to go do this big movie,” and more, “I want to play in the sand pit with these rascals.” That’s one way of looking at it.

I couldn’t write anything that I felt didn’t have that deeper element sincerely at the heart of it, and that writer is with me everywhere I go. It’s ever-present: What does this mean? Because I’m obsessed with having an audience be moved.6 6 Waller-Bridge said the most recent things that moved her were the TV series “Dead Ringers,” a concert by the singer Christine Bovill in which she performed Edith Piaf songs and a revival of “Guys and Dolls” at the Bridge Theater in London. I was moved when I read the script, and I was moved when I heard Jim7 7 James Mangold, the director of “Dial of Destiny.” He is the first director other than Steven Spielberg to direct an “Indiana Jones” movie. and Harrison and Kathy talk about it. I mean, I wasn’t in tears on the floor, but I felt that tingle of, this has got some human stuff going on. But the day-to-day? Some of the days were superfun, and we did look really cool. But the proper actors don’t want to just look cool. They want to make you cry while looking cool.