Having followed SpaceX for a very long time, I think that Elon kinda figured early on how to get engineers excited for a lofty goal and give them sufficient room to fail and innovate, whilst squeezing every drop of work out of them.
So he was a good hype man for things he broadly understood and he was willing to put loads of money into making it successful.
But following a long tradition of people who are actually excellent in a narrow field, he convinced himself that he can translate this into imposing weird and frankly really stupid philosophy onto the world. The Bloombergs and the Carsons of the world have already failed at this, happily it looks like he will too. Not that he’ll learn anything from it, just hope he goes away and stops trying.
Probably to continue getting ‘Gulf Region’-rich off the back of the oil it found in an area that is internationally recognised as their territory.
Even Venezuela recognised it as part of Guyana’s EEZ until very recently.
After Maduro mismanaged one of the most resource rich countries into basically a failed state, he’s now trying to cling to power the tried and true way: stoking a pointless war with its neighbour.
Best case he’s trying to rally support for a 2025 election, or use the threat of as an excuse to say the election. Worst case he’s gonna do a Putin and actually start a war. Not a bad time for it either, whilst the world is already distracted with Ukraine and and Gaza.
Here’s a decent video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ7fTSirNDs