Source: Z
As billionaire Elon Musk seizes control over vast swaths of the U.S. government, blurring the line between his private business empire and the state, some analysts have begun to call this takeover what it is: a coup. This corporate coup may not look like the military coups we are familiar with — often backed by the U.S. itself — but it is not without precedent. The unfolding crises in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo show just how quickly this kind of unchecked corporate power can lead to state takeover and widespread violence. As the U.S. descends further down this path by the day, these examples hold a crucial warning.
The Corporate Coup
In 2019, in response to widespread protests demanding regime change, long-time Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir contracted a private militia group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to act as the presidential palace’s personal security. The choice backfired: Al-Bashir was himself deposed in a coup in partnership with the very militia that he had hired. Later that year, in a violent crackdown, the militia publicly massacred protestors staging a sit-in calling for civilian, not military, rule. With every coup comes a power vacuum and, with the help of Emirati and Israeli backers, the RSF seized the power vacuum, overtook the Sudanese military and violently established control over much of the country.
The militia’s founder and leader is Chadian billionaire warlord Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. His forces function as a corporate entity, profiteering off war, controlling state resources and using violence as a business strategy. The RSF began as a transnational corporation that dealt in war crimes globally, hired as mercenaries in counterinsurgency campaigns throughout the Middle East and North African region. In 2014, they were contracted by Saudi Arabia to massacre Houthis in Yemen. In 2017, they were deployed by the European Union as mercenary border patrol to violently stop migrants attempting to make their way to Italy. In 2019, they were hired by the former Libyan military commander to aid in his military campaign targeting civilians in Libya.
Now, in the U.S., another corporate coup is unfolding. In recent months, Elon Musk has increasingly acted as an unelected power broker, using his economic and political might — including his influence in the spheres of telecommunications, militarism and artificial intelligence — to undermine democratic institutions and reshape the government in his own image.
Musk’s influence extends far beyond the private sector. His power manifests through private ventures that dictate public policy — from X’s (formerly Twitter) control over the public conversation to Starlink’s role in global conflicts. His satellites control critical military and civilian communications. His companies, including Tesla, StarLink, SpaceX and StarShield, SpaceX’s military subsidiary, are deeply embedded in national security infrastructure, while his growing AI and data collection through X gives him unprecedented political sway. Now, Musk is openly using his wealth and influence to stage what can only be described as a corporate coup.
Musk is effectively seizing federal spending and usurping the congressional power of the purse with his newly created “Department of Government Efficiency.” Just as Hemedti used the RSF to consolidate his control over Sudan, Musk is positioning his private empire as the backbone of an authoritarian takeover in the U.S. With Starlink increasingly playing an outsized role in critical communications infrastructure, Tesla’s surveillance systems tracking intimate data and AI-driven disinformation sourced from X flooding the media landscape, Musk’s coup is not coming in the form of tanks on the White House lawn — it is happening in boardrooms, data centers and the back channels of government contracts.
Hemedti has managed to operate the RSF at its current scale primarily due to external support, with most of the funding and weaponry for the RSF coming from the United Arab Emirates. And much like Hemedti in Sudan, Musk is not acting alone. He is coordinating with a network of people who see democracy as an obstacle to their control.
The Legal Black Hole: Corporate War Crimes and Private Militias
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States laid the groundwork for a bleak future in the U.S. The dissenting judges raised the hypothetical that a president could deploy the Navy’s Seal Team 6 as his personal militia. In a broad expansion of presidential immunity from criminal consequences, the justices warned that the ruling functionally permitted a sitting president to wield state violence for private gain. The court quietly greenlit the type of corporate coup that has already engulfed Sudan.
One of the fundamental principles of a functioning nation-state is the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. When that monopoly dissolves — whether in Sudan, where the RSF now controls entire regions, or in the U.S., where a sitting president could theoretically deploy private mercenaries with legal impunity — chaos follows. The rise of private militias is not just a symptom of state collapse; it accelerates it.
Consider how private armies operate: They are not bound by the same rules as national militaries. They answer not to a constitution or a civilian government but to the highest bidder. The RSF, for example, sustains itself through gold smuggling, foreign contracts and exploitation of Sudanese resources. In the U.S., entities like Erik Prince’s former Blackwater (now Academi) have already demonstrated the dangers of privatized warfare, from civilian massacres in Iraq to clandestine counterterrorism operations. Musk’s SpaceX is already actively being used to coordinate military operations, with its military subsidiary StarShield. Recent reports have found that nearly 100 private mercenaries from an American private company, UG Solutions, are contracted to be used in Gaza. The difference between a mercenary force in a foreign war and one used domestically to suppress dissent is merely a matter of time and political will. This reality might come sooner than we think, as Erik Prince and his fellow mercenaries pitch the Trump administration on a plan to establish “processing camps” on U.S. military bases and deploy a private force to arrest migrants within the U.S.
Prince, a close ally of Donald Trump, played a key role in backchannel diplomatic efforts, including a secret 2017 meeting in the Seychelles that was reportedly intended to establish a covert line of communication between the Trump administration and Russia.
While the parallels between Musk’s corporate overreach and Hemedti’s warlord capitalism are striking, it is crucial to acknowledge the fundamental differences between the U.S. and Sudan. The conditions that enabled Hemedti’s rise — decades of colonial extraction, neocolonial meddling and the deliberate destabilization of Sudan’s political institutions — are not identical to the factors driving Musk’s consolidation of power. Sudan’s trajectory was shaped by imperialist forces that systematically dismantled its ability to maintain state sovereignty, while the United States, as an imperial core, has long been the architect of such destabilization elsewhere. However, the concept of the imperial boomerang — the idea that tactics of control developed in the periphery inevitably return to the center — helps explain how forms of corporate authoritarianism refined in places like Sudan and Congo are now manifesting in the U.S. The analogies must therefore be drawn carefully: Musk is not Hemedti, and the United States is not Sudan. But the underlying mechanism — unaccountable private power overtaking public governance — is the same.
While Sudan provides the most direct warning, another unfolding crisis underscores the global nature of this phenomenon: the resurgence of the M23 militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much like the RSF, M23 is not simply a rebel group — it is a corporate-backed paramilitary force acting as an occupying power. Supported by Rwanda, M23 has seized key mining regions in eastern Congo, displacing thousands and securing access to vast deposits of coltan, gold, and other critical minerals essential to the global tech supply chain. M23’s purpose is not ideological but economic. It secures strategic resource hubs, brokers deals with foreign actors and sustains itself through transnational networks of financing. In the same way that Hemedti profits from Sudan’s gold and RSF-controlled trade routes, M23 functions as a business venture in addition to wielding a military faction.
The deeper problem is that both private militias and the entities who fund them exist in a legal gray zone. Under international law, war crimes and crimes against humanity are prosecutable when committed by state actors or state-backed forces. But what happens when the actors are corporate entities?
The International Court of Justice cannot hear cases involving private corporations in genocide. Whilst the International Criminal Court may prosecute individuals, it has historically focused on heads of state, not corporations or billionaire executives. The United Nations has repeatedly failed to regulate private military companies beyond issuing toothless condemnations. This legal vacuum is not accidental; it is the result of decades of lobbying and legal maneuvering to ensure that the world’s most powerful economic actors remain beyond the reach of justice.
Despite the atrocities committed by the RSF — including mass executions, forcible displacement, ethnic cleansing and sexual violence — there is no clear international legal mechanism to hold them accountable as a corporate entity. Hemedti himself remains not just free but powerful, using his wealth to shield himself from justice. The same impunity extends to M23’s leadership in Congo, which continues its operations despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes.
Sudan as a Warning, Not an Exception
An unelected plutocrat seizes government infrastructure, wields control over telecommunications and raids the treasury for personal gain. A billionaire-backed political strongman uses a loyal militia to usurp democracy. These are not the hallmarks of rogue states; they are the logical outcome of corporate authoritarianism.
What is happening in Sudan is not an isolated crisis — it is a warning. The fusion of private capital, military power and unchecked corporate immunity is not just a problem for “fragile” states; it is a global threat. Sudan and Congo are the testing grounds. The United States could be next. If a private security force massacres civilians on behalf of a political leader, if a corporate-funded militia stages a coup — who is held responsible? As of now, no one.
When private militias operate with immunity, when billionaires dictate government policy, and when corporate leaders wield military power without consequence, democracy ceases to function. The only way to stop this slide into corporate authoritarianism is to confront the legal black hole that allows it to exist. That means pushing for international accountability mechanisms for corporate war crimes, breaking the legal immunity of billionaires who fund paramilitary violence and reinforcing the principle that no private entity can wield the power of a state.
The question is not whether the U.S. is immune to the fate of Sudan or Congo. It is whether Americans will recognize the warning signs before it is too late.
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