Tech billionaire Elon Musk is following the “playbook” of media magnate Rupert Murdoch to influence American politics and its foreign policy, according to the Silicon Valley insider who has charted his rise to power.

On the ABC’s Q+A on Monday, Australian leaders were also warned by a former British Labour government adviser that our relationship with the United States “may be part of the problem rather than the solution” under President Donald Trump.

Kara Swisher, a Washington-based writer and podcaster who has covered the rise of big tech leaders for decades, said Mr Musk could prove even more influential than the Murdoch family and their Fox News organ.

“The troubling part is, Rupert was never embedded in government in this way,” Swisher told Q+A.

“This guy has control over huge amounts of data and huge amounts of insight into the US government.”

Mr Musk, a key ally to the president who has led a program of deep cuts to US agencies, owns the social media site X and is a contractor to government via his Space X company.

Musk could ‘meddle’ with Starlink

Space X manages the Starlink network of telecommunications satellites.

In Australia, defence forces and state and federal agencies have spent millions of dollars on Starlink hardware and systems, with around 200,000 Australians relying on the company for internet access.

“It’s a real problem when there’s only one provider of these things right right now, which is Starlink,” Swisher said.

“It puts [Musk] in a really powerful position and he could do what he wants in that way, and he has shown himself to do that.”

Swisher said Australia needed to extract assurances on service reliability.

“I would get as much independent ability to control the technology as possible, because he could suddenly decide to weigh in on things the Australian government is doing.”

But the government insists there are “a range of providers” for satellite communications.

“I just don’t want to leave anyone with the idea that we are relying on one provider here for our satellite communications,” Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts said.

“The Australian Defence Force and the Defence Department thinks very carefully about sovereign capability and about ensuring that we have agency and the sovereign capability we need to defend Australia.”

Mr Watts told Q+A that Australians “should be confident in our ability to work with the United States”.

“We partner with the United States as our … closest security partner because it makes Australia safer and stronger. It enables us to do more. It leverages up our capabilities,” he said.

“Australia is a middle power. We cannot go it alone in the world.”

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US ties ‘part of the problem’

But Tom Baldwin, a British political strategist and former Labour Party adviser, believes President Trump’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Oval Office dressing-down of Ukranian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, should have allies reassessing their relationship.

“I think that entanglement, that close relationship, now looks like it may be part of the problem rather than the solution,” he told Q+A.

“I think Australia has recognised that there’s something more at stake than one country’s sovereignty, it was an idea of freedom and democracy. That is at stake again now.”

Mr Baldwin said he worried about his teenage son having to fight a war in Europe if Ukraine was not supported and defended.

“The way to stop that happening is for democratic countries to be as strong as possible,” he said.

Tim Watts said the government “disagreed” with Donald Trump on the Ukraine issue, calling Mr Zelenskyy an “absolutely extraordinary” leader.

“That’s why we have stood steadfast behind him and supported the cause of him and the Ukraine people,” he said.

But Mr Watts would not be drawn on whether Australian troops should join a planned “coalition of the willing” to maintain peace in Ukraine.

“We haven’t been asked to do that at this point,” he said.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned on Monday that Europe was “at a crossroads in history” and must continue to arm and help defend Ukraine.

Mr Baldwin, who has written a recent biography on the UK PM, said he was a “serious man for serious times” and would become a statesman on the world stage if the United States retreated.

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