Elon Musk ’s Tesla is taking a hit across the globe and “sales are tanking” since the billionaire got heavily involved in politics. Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to get Trump elected and has since taken the reins of a non-governmental entity that’s tasked with shrinking the size of the U.S. government.

Pentagon angst is as old as the military-industrial complex. Past secretaries of defence, including Bob Gates and the late Ash Carter, were philosopher kings next to their new and manifestly unqualified successor, Pete Hegseth. And yet the defence bureaucracy has always seemed to come out on top.