The director of a highly anticipated documentary about Elon Musk said this week that the Texas-based billionaire may have used his Starlink satellites to intercept signals from polling places during the 2024 presidential election.
Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the newly released Musk, made the explosive allegation during an interview with Variety magazine. Even so, Gibney said he doesn’t believe Musk directly influenced the election’s outcome.
“Nobody thinks — at least I don’t, and I don’t believe Elon did either — that that means he switched votes in the election of 2024, but I do think it meant that he found some way to intercept signals of reporting from ballot places so that he knew well in advance … . It puts in your mind this idea that Starlink is not just a means of communication; it’s a means of surveillance and control,” said Gibney, who also directed Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
Left-wing conspiracy theorists have speculated in internet chatrooms and on Reddit that Musk may have used Starlink satellites to change the outcome of the 2024 election in favor of Trump. That theory stems from an alleged text exchange between Musk and his then-partner, Ashley St. Clair.
However, no credible evidence has emerged that Starlink satellites were used to alter votes or manipulate the results of the 2024 election. Gibney also hasn’t publicly presented technical evidence substantiating his allegation that Musk intercepted election reporting signals.
Gibney said St. Clair told him during filming that Musk was certain Trump had won on election night, long before the race was called.
“I have to be careful with this one because this was the issue on which Elon’s lawyer threatened to sue us,” Gibney told Variety. “What Ashley told us — and also showed us in terms of the texts she got from Elon — was Elon felt certain that Trump had won long before anybody else knew. And she said, ‘Really? How did you know that?’ And then he sent her a text, and the text said, ‘I found an anomaly in the matrix, and I have 10,000 space lasers that help me understand this.’ Now, what does that mean? Well, obviously that refers in some way to Starlink.”
Although Gibney said he doesn’t think Musk “stole” the 2024 election, he does believe Musk desperately wanted Trump to win because he was facing investigations by 11 federal agencies at the time.
“I think he saw an opportunity to elect Trump and, knowing that he would be history’s most transactional president, knew he could get rid of all those investigations,” Gibney told Variety.
Musk spent nearly $500 million backing Republican candidates during the 2026 midterms.
Despite the billionaire’s spending spree, a blue tsunami swept the nation last week, giving Democrats control of both the U.S. House and Senate.
In Texas — where Musk has cultivated cozy relationships with GOP leaders while moving his business operations from California — Democrats now control the Texas House and every major statewide executive office.
That power shift in the Lone Star State could spell bad news for Musk.
In July, Texas Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson, a Democrat, said he wanted to investigate Musk’s SpaceX for corruption related to $110 million in taxpayer-funded state grants the company received for its Starlink program.
“I am not declaring that corruption was at work in this instance,” Johnson told the Dallas Morning News at the time. “I am saying that it sure looks like it. Public confidence in the bidding process has been undermined.”
Meanwhile, Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, also a Democrat, said during a press conference last week that she had asked the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission to pause the proposed sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX.
Gibney’s Musk is now playing in select theaters and is available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.
