Elon Musk, Technocracy Inc. and the family connection

Who should have the power to govern?

What happens when running a society is treated as an engineering problem? Technocracy puts technical experts at the centre of decision-making. Its appeal is the promise of efficiency. Its political question is who gets to decide what everyone else needs.

This is the focus of Dr. Joseph Opare’s investigation. The episode looks behind the familiar discussion of Elon Musk’s inventions to explore Technocracy Inc. and a family connection that reaches back to Canada.

Technocracy Inc. and Joshua Haldeman

Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, held a leadership role in the Canadian technocracy movement. Technocracy Inc. promoted an economy run by scientists and engineers rather than politicians.

Geoff Leo’s March 2025 CBC investigation, reproduced here, traces Haldeman’s involvement through historical reporting and family records. It describes Canada’s ban on the organisation in 1940 and Haldeman’s subsequent arrest and conviction. He later left the movement and continued in Canadian politics.

The movement raises a question that remains relevant to the episode: if experts replace elected representatives, how can ordinary people challenge their decisions? Knowing how a system works and having the right to govern people are different kinds of power.

From Canada to South Africa

Haldeman moved his family to South Africa in 1950, including his daughter Maye, Elon Musk’s mother. The move came a decade after the Canadian ban. The same investigation records his support for South Africa’s apartheid government and his favourable comments about its policies after arriving.

That history places the family’s relocation within a political story as well as a personal one. Apartheid made racial exclusion part of government. For African readers, this background gives the investigation a direct connection to the continent and its struggle over who could exercise power.

Why investigate technocracy now?

Opare uses this history to examine the rise of technocratic power. The modern question is how much authority passes to those who own or operate the systems on which society depends.

AI, communications networks and automated decision-making make that question practical. Who sets the rules inside those systems? Who can question a decision? What happens when the priorities of a technology company conflict with the wishes of the people using its services?

The episode brings Musk’s family connection into this wider investigation. Watch for the history of Technocracy Inc., the journey from Canada to South Africa and the questions Opare raises about technology becoming a route to political authority.