Now Available: The power playbook

Ed's Note

In 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli was in a bit of a pickle. He was living in exile outside Florence on his family farm after a bout of torture and a right royal downturn in his political fortunes — the Republic of Florence had just collapsed and the Medicis were back in power.

It was down and out for the seasoned political animal more used to the corridors of power than the bucolic landscapes to which he found himself confined. What to do?

Like any self-respecting Renaissance chap, Niccolò applied himself to literature in a bid to ingratiate himself with the fresh princes of Firenze. His masterful exposition on the ways of realpolitik did not get him back in the pound seats but The Prince — his cold-blooded and clear-eyed assessment of what it takes to run the show, outwit your enemies or alternately shock and awe the shit out of them while taking the populace along for the ride — has become textbook fare for anyone on the road to absolute power, or a version of it.

Now, I cannot be sure that either Donald Trump or Elon Musk has been studying The Prince on the lavatory with their morning constitutional but, by all the powers that be, these blokes have internalised some of the most strategic lessons the wily old diplomat had up his mutton sleeve or tucked into his doublet. They are both alarmingly brilliant at cultivating support from the masses (“A prince must have the people friendly otherwise he has no security in adversity”); turning defeat into power; dominating the narrative (“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are”); effectively eliminating or weakening their rivals (“Injuries should be done all at once”); using fear and love to rule; taking crazy risks; and keeping the sands shifting under their hapless enemies’ feet while consolidating long-term power retention (“A prince should be a fox to recognise the traps and a lion to frighten the wolves”).

It’s like a blow-by-blow Machiavelli playbook unfolding on a screen near you, down to the most recent dispatch from under the desk at Doge headquarters where Elon is currently camping out with his fingers cramping on the Ctrl+ Alt+Delete buttons. It may be that they are doing “all the things” through pure osmosis or a raw, unfiltered, preternatural talent for total dominion of land, sea, the interwebs, the low-Earth orbit, and a not-insignificant stretch of galaxy on or around Mars.

Perhaps they skipped Machiavelli altogether and went straight to Julius Caesar — a prince Machiavelli studied in close detail. Caesar was the OG of singing his own praises — in the third person, no less — as he sent daily reports from his illegal battles in Gaul to his adoring Roman public, demonstrating all the reasons they needed to give up on their own republic and just let Caesar become emperor — “You know you want it.”

On his fatal path to world domination and imperium, Caesar was not counting on his old frenemy Brutus (an oversight that cut his bid abruptly short) but, by Jove, his anointed heir Augustus became the first Roman emperor, putting an end to any other kind of power-sharing arrangement. It’s a power play that should give us all pause. Perhaps we would do well to brush up on that old dog-eared Machiavellian text with our morning coffee — at least we’d have an inkling of what might be coming next and, if nothing else, it would act as a resounding wake-up call.

x Aspasia

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