Wikipedia describes Nikola Tesla as an “engineer” but the CEO of Tesla as a mere “entrepreneur”. And so on it goes: the vexed question of whether and to what degree Elon Musk knows his onions. Jibes about the man’s engineering credentials, once confined to sad and digressive internet threads, are now aired on the floor of the United States Congress.  

Being unfit to judge such things, I offer just one thought. If his technical grounding is indeed limited, might that not help him? Looking at a subject from a slight distance must allow for certain feats of intuition, certain associative jumps, that wouldn’t occur to an expert. A decade ago, a professional politician should have noticed the latent public demand for a rougher kind of leadership. It took a real estate developer with a side interest in politics to spot it. Musk and Donald Trump, whatever their rift, offer the same lesson. You can get too close to a subject. 

This column has wondered before why so much of life has stagnated: why a street scene from 2010 and one from 2025 are hard to tell apart. Pet theories include prolonged peace, for war is a reliable scrambler of the status quo, and demographic ageing, for new ideas — or at least the vigour to act on them — are most present in the young. But there is no getting at a rounded answer without a look at specialisation.