alt Hacker News> For better or worse, I'm fairly confident Musk and Zuckerberg will have input on US trade policy on these issues.
Input, yes.
May even be able to get the US to threaten a trade war or to leave NATO if they can't rake in the advertising dollars.
But I think the former would be seen as Trump being Trump and the latter as a bluff, and in both cases it would be reason to more permanently disentangle the UK economy from the US economy and defence relationship than to dry away the crocodile tears of multibillonaires.
The US has more leverage over the UK then perhaps any other country. Largely because of the shared political culture.
They could throw hand grenades into British politics by declassifying embarrassing events involving British soldiers in Iraq, investigating tax issues with labour party donors (many of whom conduct business in the US) or recognising Northern Ireland as part of the Republic of Ireland.
Attacking the British economy would be a political mistake, because a well advised politician would use it as a scapegoat for any economic problem in the UK. Similar with defence - e.g the withdrawal of intelligence cooperation could allow a terrorist attack to be blamed on Trump rather than MI5/MI6 funding stress.