Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 3

Summary

Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 3 – “The Legion” (January 1, 2026)

Host: Jacob Silverman (with additional reporting and interviews)
Main Theme:
This episode delves into Elon Musk’s ideologically driven quest to build a “legion” of children, examining his pronatalist beliefs, use of advanced reproductive technologies, and how his views on genetics and legacy-building echo both old and new controversies. The episode explores Musk’s influence as a public advocate for pronatalism, the intertwining of his personal life and philosophy, and the ethical quandaries raised by reproductive tech and artificial intelligence as part of his vision for the future.

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1. Opening & Framing

• Host’s Introduction (00:36):
  Jayme Poisson (Front Burner host) briefly hands off to Jacob Silverman, who frames the episode around Musk’s pronatalism, reports of embryo screening, his estranged children, and the bigger question: What does Musk expect from his “legion” of 14 and counting children?
• Main Episode Host: Jacob Silverman

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2. Breaking the Musk Procreation Story

Reporter Julia Black’s Investigation

• Journalistic Instincts and Skepticism (01:06–02:16):
  Julia Black explains discovering rumors about the surprising depth of Musk’s parenting (“this was kind of a project for him”).
  • Quote (02:05 – Julia Black): “They suggested this was something he was involved in on more than just a personal level, that this was kind of a project for him.”
• Verification and Document Search (02:44–05:13):
  Black describes flying to Austin to obtain legal docs on Musk’s previously unknown children with Neuralink exec Siobhan Zilis, highlighting the minimal efforts to keep the information private and her moral deliberation over reporting the story.

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3. Musk’s “Legion” as Ideological Project

• From Tabloid to Ideological Narrative (05:53–07:01):
  Black and Silverman clarify that Musk’s prolific parenting isn’t mere celebrity scandal but part of a “natural genetic hierarchy” worldview.
  • Quote (06:19 – Julia Black): “This is so much bigger than the births of a couple of children … in Elon's mind, it’s about reshaping the public understanding of a natural genetic hierarchy and taking these ideas to suggest that some people are just born better...”
• Historical Context and Pronatalism (07:21–10:03):
  • Silverman relates Musk’s ideology to apartheid-era anxieties over “good breeding” and to 2000s Silicon Valley's embrace of “longtermism" and fears about “dysgenics” (coined by AI theorist Nick Bostrom).
• Cultural Fears and “Idiocracy” (10:23–12:44):
  • “Idiocracy” emerges as a cultural touchstone among Silicon Valley pronatalists and Musk himself, who tweeted:
    • Quote (12:44 – Julia Black): “He’s kind of obsessed with this film.”

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4. The Evolution of Musk’s Family

Personal Loss and Technology-Driven Parenting

• Nevada’s Death & Early Family Building (13:48–18:44):
  Outlines the death of Musk’s first child, Nevada, and subsequent use of IVF with Justine Musk to have twins and then triplets. The narration contrasts Musk's statements about child loss with alternative recollections by Justine.
  • Quote (15:25 – Musk): “My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”
  • Quote (15:54 – Silverman): “Wilson’s post read in part, ...But I was the one who was holding him.”
• Growing the “Legion”: Partners, Surrogacy, and Surprises (18:44–22:08):
  • Discusses Musk’s relationships with Grimes, Siobhan Zilis, public and private legal wrangling with mothers, and the secrecy (and accidental disclosure) of new children.
  • Reveals Musk's ambition for expanding his “legion,” including through surrogacy and embryo selection.
  • Quote (21:49, Wall St Journal text from Musk): “To reach legion level before the apocalypse, we’ll need to use surrogates.”

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5. Pronatalism, Demographics, and Social Concerns

• Pronatalism’s Real-World Context (23:21–24:41):
  • Black and Silverman note that declining birth rates are a real problem in many Western societies.
• Intersecting Debates: Immigration vs. Native Birth (24:22–25:46):
  Black observes immigration is the clearest solution to demographic decline, but pronatalists—and Musk—often resist, focusing instead on optimizing “native” populations.
  • Quote (24:41 – Julia Black): “The best solution … is going to be immigration.”
  • Quote (25:32 – Musk at AfD rally, Jan 2024): “It’s okay. It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”

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6. Genetic Optimization and Technology

• Embryo Screening and IQ Selection (26:53–30:07):
  • Julia Black reports Musk’s use of the startup Orcid for advanced embryo selection, with allegations that the company offers IQ screening to “high roller customers.”
  • Musk is described as a techno-optimist, equating genetic selection with responsible parenting.
  • Quote (29:44 – Julia Black): “If you have this elite, super wealthy subset of people who are able to do it … what does that do for inequality?”
• Philosophical and Social Ramifications (30:19–31:37):
  • The hosts raise the specter of Gattaca-like societies, social stratification, and children growing up knowing they were engineered, including emotional implications for Musk’s kids.

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7. Vivian Wilson’s Story: Rejection & Agency

• Vivian’s Public Rebuttal to Musk (31:37–34:49):
  • Musk’s estranged trans daughter, Vivian, emerges as a counterpoint to the paternalist ideology. After Musk deadnames her to Jordan Peterson and claims she was “killed by the woke mind virus,” she responds with viral humor.
  • Quote (32:22 – Musk): “The reason it’s called dead naming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.”
  • Quote (34:33 – Vivian): “I look pretty good for a dead bitch.”
• Critique of Optimization (35:30–36:57):
  • Julia Black: “It’s no coincidence that all five of those kids turned out to be … biological boys. … Perhaps the reason her being transgender has been so very offensive to her father is because he actually, you know, paid for her to be a boy.”
  • Raises questions about autonomy, parental expectations, and the emotional consequences of “selecting” children.

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8. Neuralink and the Optimized Future

Technology, Potential, and the Ethics of Enhancement

• Neuralink Human Trials (38:07–42:46):
  • Paralyzed volunteer Nolan Arbaugh describes receiving the implant, an encounter with Musk post-surgery, and the life-changing abilities it granted—remote computer control, playing chess, dreams of prosthetic arms.
  • Quote (40:57 – Nolan Arbaugh): “It’s all brain power up there.”
• Musk’s Larger Aims: Human-AI Symbiosis (43:11–44:28):
  • Recaps Musk’s stated goal for Neuralink:
    • Quote (43:41 – Musk, to Rogan): “The merge scenario with AI is the one that seems like probably the best for us. … If you can't beat it, join it.”
    • Quote (44:07 – Musk): “… create a high bandwidth interface to the brain such that we can be symbiotic with AI … you just can’t communicate through your fingers.”
• Ethical Uncertainty & Widening Inequality (45:12–47:46):
  • Bioethicist Davidja Mehta praises the tech but flags concerns about privacy and identity:
    • Quote (45:28 – Mehta): “This is our private inner life. How comfortable would one be to share that in form of data?”
    • Mehta also asks, “The traditional borders of the self dissipate.”
  • Julia Black points out the tech-elite tendency to create exclusive bubbles, “exit society,” and reinforce barriers.

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9. The Future as Blueprint – and Warning

• Conclusion – Musk’s Vision and Its Risks (48:20–49:00):
  • “A bubble sealed and optimized… like the one Elon Musk grew up in in South Africa, or the one … in Austin and… Starbase, Texas.”
  • Musk’s literal and figurative project is to engineer people who will colonize new worlds.
  • Quote (48:55 – Musk): “We were supposed to have a base on the moon. We’re supposed to send people to Mars. And that stuff … it just didn’t happen. We went backwards.”
  • The episode credits Musk's silence in response to interview requests.

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10. Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Julia Black (06:19): “This … is about reshaping the public understanding of a natural genetic hierarchy.”
• Elon Musk (09:09): “If people do not have children, there is no new generation.”
• Musk (15:25): “My firstborn child died in my arms. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”
• Wall St Journal (21:49): “To reach legion level before the apocalypse, we’ll need to use surrogates.”
• Julia Black (29:44): "...super wealthy subset of people who are able to ... make sure that their children ... have superior IQs... what does that do for inequality?"
• Elon Musk (32:22): “My son Xavier is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.”
• Vivian (34:33): “I look pretty good for a dead bitch.”
• Elon Musk (43:41): “The merge scenario with AI is the one that seems like probably the best for us. … If you can’t beat it, join it.”
• Davidja Mehta (45:28): "This is our private inner life. How comfortable would one be to share that in form of data?"

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11. Key Themes & Takeaways

• Musk’s project isn't just egotism or scandal; it’s an attempt at legacy-building through genetics, technology, and ideology.
• Pronatalism as practiced by Musk blurs into eugenics, raising ethical and social red flags.
• The intersection of wealth, tech, and futurism allows elites to cocoon themselves—and their offspring—from society’s problems instead of solving them.
• The risks of “optimization": loss of autonomy for children, hardening inequalities, unforeseen harms from untested technologies.
• Neuralink and reproductive technologies epitomize Musk’s belief in engineering both humanity’s biological and cognitive future—a vision both thrilling and deeply problematic.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode offers a nuanced, at times chilling exploration of how one hyper-powerful individual’s ideas about legacy, genetics, and technology echo the past—and shape the possible futures ahead.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is a CBC podcast.

[Podcast Host]

Hey everyone. Happy New Year. We're continuing on with episode three of the Making of Musk the Legion. What does Musk, father of 14 expect from his quote, legion of children? In this episode, host Jacob Silverman unravels Musk quest for genetic optimization, including alleged embryo screening and his pronatalist views. And we hear from his estranged daughter Vivian. Have a listen.

[Julia Black]

So that was truly one of the most surreal chapters in my journalism career.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Julia Black, a journalist who's reported on the esoteric ideologies being adopted by tech elites.

[Julia Black]

I actually sat on this tip for a while. I didn't even tell my editor at first because I thought it sounded so crazy.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Back in 2022, she was looking into the burgeoning tech scene in Austin. She was poking around, asking questions when she heard a rumor.

[Julia Black]

And someone said to me something really funny. You know, Elon Musk is. Everyone knows he has a lot of kids, but it goes way deeper than that. He's got like a lot of kids.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

They didn't give her an exact number, but it was clearly significant beyond single digits.

[Julia Black]

They suggested that this was something he was involved in on more than just a personal level, that this was kind of a project for him.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Intriguing, definitely. But Julia was still skeptical.

[Julia Black]

The way it was put to me, it just, it sounded really outlandish and tabloidy and I didn't know what to do with it.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

She's a reporter. Gossip like this is just a starting point. She had to find out more.

[Julia Black]

I'm sure you know this feeling as a journalist when you're on the scent of something, but you're running into dead end after dead end. I was getting really frustrated.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

I do know the feeling. You know that something is true, but it doesn't satisfy the test of what's publishable. You need more.

[Julia Black]

And then one day I was sifting through a stack of legal documents that I had pulled on Elon.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Sitting at her desk in New York, Julia saw some online legal filings indicating that Elon Musk had Two previously unknown children. But she couldn't access the complete filings remotely. She had to get on a plane right now.

[Julia Black]

I ended up flying down to Austin that same night so that that I was at the Austin courthouse first thing in the morning. There was something so surreal about being at this courthouse, downloading these documents, and I was really shocked at the lack of effort to keep this private.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Julia had come across a request to change the names of a set of twins. There in black and white were these children's names, Social Security numbers, and the names of their parents, Elon Musk and Siobhan Zillis. That's why Julia had rushed to Austin to get official copies of the documents before Musk or someone who worked for him wised up and got them placed under seal. Siobhan Zylis is an executive at Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain computer interface company. Born and raised in Ontario, she moved to the US for college and to play ice hockey, naturally. She met Musk in 2016 when she was a board member of OpenAI, which Musk helped found. She's been part of his world ever since.

[Julia Black]

She's kind of one of these Musk Orbit loyalists. She is by all accounts, a very brilliant woman by her own right.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

But there hadn't been any reporting that the two were dating, much less that they'd had twins together.

[Julia Black]

I, of course, immediately called Elon Musk and Siobhan Zylas for comment.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

She didn't get through to Musk, but the message seemed to have been received. The files about Musk and Zyliss's children were quickly sealed, but Julia already had the documents. She did eventually get through to Siobhan.

[Julia Black]

She picked up and, you know, understandably, was not happy to hear from me. She hung up on me pretty quickly.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Julia's story that she wrote for a Business Insider put Siobhan and her seven month old twins under the spotlight, attracting a level of public scrutiny she had never experienced on a personal level. Julia understood her reaction completely.

[Julia Black]

I really wanted to avoid this being some tabloid story. I did, frankly, have some moral deliberation about doing this story. I had to decide for myself that this was really important for the public to know about. The thing is, from the moment this tip was brought to me, it was very clear to me that this was part of an ideological project.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

As Julia made clear, this wasn't just a celebrity story and it would break at a time when Musk was not only the richest man in the world, but also in the midst of acquiring Twitter and moving more firmly into the political arena. And it would help change the public's understanding about Musk's obsessive desire to have a legion of children.

[Julia Black]

This is so much bigger than just the births of a couple of children and some tabloid story. This is really, if you ask me, in Elon's mind, about reshaping the public understanding of a natural genetic hierarchy and taking these ideas to suggest that some people are just born better and therefore deserve a higher place in society and are natural born leaders. And you know, if we see inequality in society, that's not a problem, it's simply a reflection of biology. So it's, this stuff goes pretty deep.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

I'm Jacob Silverman and this is understood. The Making of Musk Episode 3 the Legion. Last episode we learned about the technocracy movement and the larger than life story of one of its leaders, the political radical Joshua Haldeman, and the example he set for his grandson, Elon Musk. But what about Musk's own attempts at legacy building, such as his many, many children? He calls them his legion as if they were a Roman military unit. And in a sense, that's what they are. Another way to conquer this world and whatever others he ends up visiting. Pronatalism seeks to encourage people to have as many children as possible. Sometimes policy inducements, baby bonuses or subsidized childcare are part of the picture. But increasingly, Western pronatalism seems accompanied by a troubling belief in one's innate superiority. Silicon Valley's pronatalists are driven to have a lot of kids because they think the world needs more people like them, as many as possible. This flavor of pronatalism has landed firmly on the political rights agenda over the last five years, finding proponents beyond tech elites in Silicon Valley, from MAGA leaders like JD Vance to so called trad wives on Instagram. Yet with 14 known children by four different mothers, Elon Musk is still perhaps its most visible spokesperson.

[Elon Musk]

I really want to emphasize that it's important to have children and to create the new generation. And as simple as it sounds, it's if people do not have children, there is no new generation.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

So this was Musk speaking in December 2023 at a political festival for right wing Italian politician Giorgio Meloni. But the roots of his obsession go back much further. Of course, Musk grew up under an apartheid system that obsessed about the size of the black population and declining numbers among its white citizens. But in 2002, the tech elite embraced a new version of this fear, formulated by the AI theorist Nick Bostrom. He published a paper called Existential Risks that became a foundational text for long termism, which is this idea that we have an ethical responsibility to think about the very long term future of the human race.

[Julia Black]

And one of the existential risks he brings up is something he called dysgenics. If only, quote, unquote, intellectually inferior individuals were to have children, eventually the collective IQ of the human race would go down and that would be bad for human civilization.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is a great fear among pronatalists that the wrong people, by their definition, are having lots of kids. In the early 2000s, this was a rather niche idea, and a potentially sinister one too. You might already be detecting echoes of Nazi eugenics and other racial supremacist movements, but dysgenics found a surprising vehicle to reach a mass audience. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. In 2006, Mike Judge, the creator of films and shows like Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, and Silicon Valley, released a comedy called Idiocracy. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species. Idiocracies seem to dramatize the pronatalists worst fears. The film imagined a world where America's cognitive elites had been outbred by the unintelligent rabble. The result was a great dumbing down as people became, well, idiots. Society became practically dysfunctional, governed by a wrestler turned politician and overrun by garbage. The movie's hero is a guy who would be completely average at the beginning of the 21st century. But in this world, his basic common sense ends up saving the day.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

Okay, wait a minute. I'm the smartest guy in the world.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Says who? The IQ test you took in prison, you got the highest score in history. Idiocracy was a box office bomb. But its bleak satirical vision of a very, very dumb future saved by one ordinary man gained a cult following. Over time, it also gained an unlikely champion in the world's richest man.

[Julia Black]

He's kind of obsessed with this film.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk has tweeted about idiocracy repeatedly. In June 2022, he first shared the opening scene and said, quote, when I ask my friends why they're not yet having kids, very few are. It sounds exactly like the movie. For Musk, Idiocracy was Practically a documentary from the future, a future he was determined to prevent from happening. By the 2020s, pro Natalism was moving into the mainstream and Musk was doing his part by talking about why we should all be having more kids. But while many of us were being introduced to these ideas for the first time, this was old hat for Musk, as he so often is. He was an early adopter.

[Julia Black]

I spoke with sources who knew Musk in the 2000s and said that this was something he began speaking about as early as when he was having his first children.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

His initial interest aligns with when Bostrom's ideas were first gaining traction and with a particularly tragic event in Musk's own life. Elon Musk's first experience of fatherhood was steeped in tragedy. On May 18, 2002, Nevada Musk, the first son of Elon and Justine Musk, was born. Ten days later, Nevada died of SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome. It was 20 years before Elon Musk spoke publicly about his first child's death. In November 2022, a month after he had acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal, Musk began fielding questions asking whether he would reinstate the account of Alex Jones, the popular right wing broadcaster and conspiracy theorist who had spread the lie that the Sandy Hook School massacre was a hoax. The parents of the 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook became subject to mass harassment campaigns and later sued Jones, earning a billion dollar judgment. Musk was unequivocal that his free speech agenda didn't extend to people lying about the deaths of children. Musk wrote in a tweet, My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame. It was an unusually poignant, emotionally sincere remark from Musk. But Justine Wilson, Musk's first wife and Nevada's mother, had a different recollection. Wilson's post read in part, not that it matters to anyone except me, because it is one of the most sacred and defining moments of my life. But I was the one who was holding him. Musk didn't respond to Justine's tweet. The next year, he reinstated Alex Jones's account. In his own life. Musk didn't have a good model of fatherhood. Just after the tragedy of Nevada's death, Musk was also caught up in another complicated aspect of his family life. Managing the arrival of his estranged father Errol and his new family to Los Angeles. Musk and his brother Kimball decide to try and rebuild relations by living once again in the same city. But a dark aspect of his family story would emerge. Between 1993 and 2023, there have been five allegations of abuse toward Errol Musk involving his children and stepchildren. In 2003, Elon sent his father back to South Africa and has kept distance from him to this day, describing him as a terrible human being. Errol Musk has denied all allegations to date and has not been charged nor prosecuted in connection to these allegations. What Elon knew about the allegations isn't clear, but after his father returned to Pretoria, Musk began growing his own family. In 2004, two years after Nevada's death, Musk and Justine had twins. Two years after that, they had triplets. Both pregnancies were conceived via IVF or in vitro fertilization. In 2008, Justine and Elon Musk divorced. Musk would cycle through relationships, including with the actresses Amber Heard and Tallulah Riley. But he didn't have any more children, at least that we know about. In May 2020, Musk and his then girlfriend, musician Claire Elise Boucher, aka Grimes, made headlines because of their unusually named Son X. Ash, 12. Most people just call him X. That's the young boy you may have seen riding Musk's shoulders during his Mar A Lago and White House visits.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

This is X and he's a great guy. High IQ.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

In 2021, Musk and Grimes had another child via surrogate. And here's where things get particularly interesting. In 2021, when Grimes was pregnant, Siobhan Zillis was also pregnant with the twins whose existence Julia revealed in her article. At the time, Grimes, who had socialized with Zillis and occasionally tried to set her up on dates, didn't know that Grimes learned about Zillis kids with Musk the way most people did. From Julia Black's article. In 2022, Grimes and Musk were having another child, this time via surrogate. Grimes was visiting the surrogate in a hospital. Zylis was in the same hospital being treated for complications for another IVF pregnancy. Grimes and Zylas didn't know that they were both having children again with Musk, much less that they were in the same hospital on the same day. Zylis and Musk now have four children together, while Grimes has been in a prolonged and occasionally public legal battle with Musk over their three children. But Musk has continued reproducing. In 2024, a right wing influencer named Ashley Sinclair announced that she had had a child with Musk, whom he refused to acknowledge that makes 14 known children. Almost all of them are boys. It's not unusual for people, especially rich and famous ones, to have big families or multiple partners, even if the details are deemed by some as scandalous. We aren't here to judge anyone's consensual choices about how they set up their families. But what Musk is doing goes far beyond just having a bunch of kids. It's a highly coordinated effort on his part to access both partners and technologies to accelerate his ability to father more children. A project to build Musk's so called legion of children, a term he used in texts to Ashley Sinclair. In one message seen by the Wall Street Journal, Musk wrote, quote, to reach legion level before the apocalypse, we'll need to use surrogates. Cultivating this legion is an increasingly organized endeavor concentrated in a compound in Austin that Musk built for his children and their mothers. Like many of Musk's most important business affairs, the day to day management of his brood and their mothers falls to Jared Burchell, one of Musk's closest aides and the longtime head of his family office. It's Burchell who negotiates payments and hands out non disclosure agreements for women to sign. This is why Julia describes what Musk is doing as an ideological project. At the same time that Musk began immersing himself in right wing politics, he began having as many kids as possible. Based on her reporting, Julia sees this as one big legacy building project.

[Julia Black]

I think Elon, just for really over 20 years now, has had this obsession with building a legion of children who can maximize his own personal impact on the future of humanity and who can carry what he sees as his massively superior genes forward.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

An early adopter, a 20 year mission that tracks with a pattern we've seen before. Musk doesn't just stumble onto new obsessions, he nurtures them across decades. We see it with his passion for space, which can be traced back to his childhood love of sci fi. We see it in his quest to get to Silicon Valley. And we see it here in his pronatalism. A seed planted early growing up in a white segregated society that encouraged good breeding among its white population.

[Julia Black]

It's kind of this narcissistic idea that one man can reshape the future of the human race by having lots of kids.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

There is a kernel of truth here, a real problem facing many aging societies.

[Julia Black]

You do look at the data on birth rates and there is an undeniable.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Phenomenon here in a number of countries mostly prosperous Western ones. Birth rates have declined below 2.1. That is below the point where the population is no longer reproducing itself.

[Julia Black]

A population is supposed to have more young people than old people, so that those young people can take care of the old people. And we are approaching a world where those dynamics shift and the elderly are going to become a burden on society.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This leads to a potential cascade of social and economic problems. Fewer workers, a smaller tax base, higher health costs, not enough caretakers for the elderly. It's a very real concern that also speaks to underlying issues about the cost of living and why people aren't having more children.

[Julia Black]

These are all questions that I think are worth talking about. That said, the way that this has intersected with the immigration debate has been pretty alarming to see. Probably first and foremost, because I think the best solution to what I do think is a problem is going to be immigration.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

More immigration. That's not something that appeals to many pronatalists, and it's certainly not something that appeals to Elon Musk, at least for certain kinds of immigrants. For years, Musk has positioned himself as a supporter of legal immigration, particularly for the highly skilled. Even in December 2024, he was defending H1B visas, saying America needed super motivated engineers from abroad. It probably helped that H1B holders, while qualified, often made less money than their US counterparts. But Musk also took up right wing rhetoric about how migration was imperiling Western civilization. It was the kind of talk that recalled Europe's fascist past.

[Elon Musk]

It's okay. It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This was January 2024, from a speech Musk gave via video at a rally for Germany's far right AfD party, which he called the best hope for Germany. He showed support for a classic AfD grievance that Germans need to let go of their historical guilt. We need to move beyond that, he said to his adoring audience. The subtext couldn't have been lost on anyone in the room.

[Elon Musk]

We don't want everything to be the same everywhere, where it's just one big sort of soup.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

His ideas about immigration were coming into focus. A green light for H1B visas that helped the tech industry import more engineers and a red light for everyone else. That was how to stop America's slide into idiocracy. But there was more to be done. Because if the future depends on intelligence, then why leave it to chance?

[Julia Black]

Okay, so there are millions of podcasts, and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like. But if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help. Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must hear show from CBC Podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make. Go to CBC CA Sounds good to subscribe. We've entered like a whole new era of genetic optimization, as they call it.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

If the right people need to be having lots of kids, then those kids should be as healthy and smart as possible. In tech parlance, they should be optimized. This enthusiastic embrace of reproductive technologies extends further into enhanced embryo screening.

[Julia Black]

Elon Musk has used a company called Orcid to select the embryos of some of his more recent children.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

IVF is just one step in the optimization of reproduction. Services like Orcid go further.

[Julia Black]

Publicly, this company says that it can do a variety of genetic tests for, you know, things like schizophrenia or breast cancer risk, or things that are more, let's say, less controversial.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This kind of screening for specific genetic risk factors is pretty well established, but.

[Julia Black]

Secretly behind the scenes, I have it confirmed from a number of sources with direct knowledge that they will offer, quote unquote, high roller customers the opportunity to test embryos for iq.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Noor Siddiqui, founder and CEO of Orcid and Orchid Biosciences Incorporated, was contacted but did not respond to our request for comment. For a techno optimist like Musk, this is an incredible advancement. The promise of a utopian future, all children, healthy, smart and optimized. But is that really what's on offer?

[Julia Black]

So that's like, for a number of reasons, a very controversial technology. For starters, you know, some geneticists would argue that we don't understand IQ well enough to select an embryo for intellectual superiority based on an embryo's DNA.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

It's one thing to ask whether this technology works at all, but even attempting to do this kind of testing introduces profound ethical and social concerns. Where Musk sees a utopia, others see a warning.

[Julia Black]

Let's say this technology actually works. Which again, is kind of an open question. If you have this elite, super wealthy subset of people who are able to do it, who, who are able to make sure that their children never have any diseases and allegedly have superior IQs and any number of things, what does that do for inequality?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Will it be like in the film Gattaca, where testing like this has hardened social Stratification to the point where your path, your potential is fixed from the moment you're born.

[Julia Black]

What does it mean for a billionaire to believe that his children are intellectually superior, are worthy of, you know, better lives and more power than anyone else because he's got the paperwork to prove it?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And what does it mean for the kids themselves? Do they grow up believing that they're the best? Believing some people like them were just born better? Beyond their superior education and resources and network, they were literally engineered to excel. If that makes for an unequal society, one that has echoes in the segregated worldview of racist colonial South Africa, well, that's just biology.

[Julia Black]

I really, really wonder what this generation of children who were selected from these embryos are going to feel in 20 years. Because certainly to hear Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk's daughter, talk about it, she does feel deeply hurt that, you know, she feels like she was a product that was bought and paid for by her father. And when she naturally came out as something other than what he wanted, she was then rejected by him. Like, that's. That's a deep wound. I don't know.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

I'm just curious if it's been overwhelming or how you're dealing.

[Podcast Host]

With, like, it has very much so been overwhelming, but, like, I am doing everything I can to not be overwhelmed and just be whelmed.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Vivian Wilson speaking with podcaster Matt Bernstein. Back in the summer of 2024, Vivian was living in a small apartment in Tokyo when her life was suddenly upended. It was just before finals week. She should have been studying, but she was distracted. Her phone was blowing up. She had been sent a clip of her estranged father. He'd been talking about her to Jordan Peterson, the celebrity psychologist and right wing influencer.

[Elon Musk]

The reason it's called dead naming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is not the typical definition of dead naming, which refers to someone being called by their birth name when they have chosen a new name in line with their trans identity. Vivian was one of a set of twins born via IVF in 2004, the first children Musk and his then wife Justine had. After the loss of their firstborn in 2022, when she was 18, Vivian filed to legally change her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson, shedding the name Musk forever. She wrote in her petition, I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form. Vivian was not a public figure in her own right, but journalists took notice of the filing. Soon, the fact that Musk had been essentially disowned by one of his children seemed to become a major aspect of his public image, Even if Musk didn't talk about it himself. That was about to change. In that conversation, viewed by millions, Musk deadnamed his trans daughter While describing himself as a victim. He vowed to fight the woke mind virus he believed had killed his son. Vivian was furious.

[Podcast Host]

No, I was literally like, hell, no. I am not about to let this come for me and have that just slide. So I had.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

She messaged her mom, telling her she planned to go on the attack.

[Podcast Host]

Like, I'm gonna go public, so sorry, you cannot stop me. And at that point, she was kind of just like, yeah, I trust you.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Do what you need to do.

[Podcast Host]

Obviously, just be careful and whatnot. So I had my little threats response.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Vivian wasn't going to be issuing press releases filled with polite corporate speak.

[Podcast Host]

I look pretty good for a dead bitch.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

She posted herself lip syncing. I look pretty good for a dead bitch. A nod to a RuPaul's Drag Race meme.

[Podcast Host]

And it went mega coconuts viral.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Unlike her father, who passed off old Reddit memes as his own, Vivian had a lightness, a humor, a native fluency in Internet speak that felt authentic and deeply sympathetic. Unspooling bits of her life in funny TikTok videos. Unafraid to criticize her powerful father in the most direct terms, Vivian's profile grew, culminating in lengthy interviews and magazine photo shoots that marked her as her own person, not a willing member of Elon Musk's legion. But this apparently wasn't what Musk had in mind when he ordered up another round of ivf.

[Julia Black]

Vivian has spoken publicly about the fact that we, when they were choosing the embryos to implant for his twins and triplets. It's no coincidence that all five of those kids turned out to be boys, biological boys. And so Vivian has kind of spoken about the fact that, like, perhaps the reason that her being transgender has been so very offensive to her father is because he actually, you know, paid for her to be a boy.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

From advanced genetic screening to embryo selection for sexual or even more fantastical claims about iq, this is the logic of optimization taken to its furthest edge. It recalls dystopian sci fi and some very real, very dark history, from apartheid South Africa to Nazi eugenics. And yet, in Silicon Valley, dystopia often passes for a blueprint. Among parents who choose this path, the defense is familiar. If you could give your child every possible advantage why wouldn't you?

[Julia Black]

If you would send your kids to private school, if you would get your kids tutors, if you would, any parent would do anything they could to make their child have the best life possible, why wouldn't you do embryo selection? Why would you, as they like to say, roll the genetic dice and give your child a worse chance at life?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Vivian might answer that she never felt she'd been given the best chance in life, that she was engineered for someone else's ideal, not her own. And that's the through line in Musk's world. Whether it's children, companies, or the human species, he sees the future as something to be designed and controlled. For techno optimists like him, the tools to do that are always just around the corner. It's a philosophy that echoes the technocracy movement his grandfather once championed. The belief that society could be rationally engineered, its future managed like a machine. Which brings us to another of Musk's bets on the brain computer interface, or bci. A technology that, depending on your view, is either a leap forward in human potential or the opening act of a cyberpunk nightmare.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

A little over a year ago, my buddy called me up just randomly drunk on a Wednesday at 11am as one does. As one does. And he was like, hey, you want to get a chip in your brain? I was like, sure, why not? I got nothing going on.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Nolan Arbaugh speaking with tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz. In December 2024, when Nolan was 22, he was paralyzed from the neck down after a freak swimming accident. After seven years spent adjusting to his new life, an opportunity came knocking. Well, ringing via his buddy Greg, he'd seen online that NeuroLink, the Musk company where Shivan Zylis is director of Special Projects, was looking for a participant for their first human trial. And Nolan wanted in. Your friend calls you and says, elon Musk wants to put a chip in your brain. And you said, yep.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

Yeah, I mean, why not?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Like.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

Like, the dude's done so many amazing things.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

After a rigorous selection process, he found himself undergoing the experimental surgery in January 2024. He remembers waking up from the anesthesia, everyone still unsure if the procedure had worked. To a visitor.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

And I don't remember much, but what I do remember very vividly is how cool his bomber jacket was. It was a sweet bomber jacket. The whole time, in my mind, I was like, don't talk about the bomber jacket. Don't talk about the bomber jacket.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Because I didn't want to seem like Musk was there. The day of the surgery, making him one of the first people to see Nolan after this groundbreaking operation. The visit was brief but memorable, even in Nolan's post surgery fog. Later that day, the Neuralink team would begin tests to see if the device was working as they'd hoped. Two months later, the world would really see what he could do.

[Davidja Mehta]

And I remember watching it and just absolutely, you know, my mind was blown. It was almost stunning.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Davidja Mehta, an ethicist working on emerging technologies like brain computer interfaces. She remembers seeing that video which shared Nolan's new powers with the world.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

I love playing chess, and so this is one of the things that y' all have enabled me to do so. Something that I wasn't able to really do much the last few years, especially not like this. I had to use like a mouth stick and stuff, but now it's all. It's all being done with my brain.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The video shared by neuralink on X shows Nolan's laptop screen. A game of chess. Loaded up, the cursor flying about freely.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

Y' all can see the cursor moving around the screen.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And that's.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

That's all me, y'.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

All.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

It's pretty cool, huh?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Actually, can you pause this on just for the audio coming through? And I was also done with your brain.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

Yep, it's all brain power up there.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

So a lot of I spoke to David to try to understand what was happening inside Nolan's head.

[Davidja Mehta]

So what happens is, when the user imagines something, this area is going to light up and the BCI is going to pick up on these patterns.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Imagination is what makes the whole thing work. That and experimental neurosurgery.

[Davidja Mehta]

So in neuralink's case, they're using thousands of electrodes which are implanted in the patient's brain, normally in the motor cortex area.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Neuralink has even invented a robot to implant these incredibly fine electrodes more accurately. Once implanted, the device connects brain activity to the interface, translating those patterns into action. The tech has developed quickly. In 2021, Neuralink was letting a monkey play Pong. By 2024, they were in human trials. Nolan became the company's most public success story. Neuralink's brain computer interface holds huge promise, offering new possibilities for people like Nolan, who is paralyzed from the neck down.

[Davidja Mehta]

Things change a lot because now they're, you know, in touch with the world. They can do a lot more with their computers. They can text people, they can talk.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

To people, play video games, reconnect with the world. Nolan describes how it turned him into A social butterfly.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

It's given me a lot of hope, like I might be able to get a job, I might be able to go to school.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And in the near future, BCIs could also let people control advanced prosthetics.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

It's not clear to me if I will get a robot arm. I have some really fun plans. If they do give it to me.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Nolan is ready for his cyborg future. And like Nolan, for Musk, this is just the start. Do you think that it's likely that.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

We will merge somehow or another with.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This sort of technology and it will augment what we are now? Or do you think it will replace us? This is Joe Rogan talking to Elon Musk in 2018 as America's preeminent bro. Rogan and his immensely popular show have been important for building the cult of Musk. Their dorm room style conversations are listened to by tens of millions of people.

[Elon Musk]

Well, the merge scenario with AI is the one that seems like probably the best for us. Yes, like if you can't beat it, join it.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

That's. Once an outspoken AI alarmist, Musk has already founded Neuralink. By this point he had skin in the game. His mind was changing.

[Elon Musk]

From a long term existential standpoint, that's like the purpose of neuralink is to create a high bandwidth interface to the brain such that we can be symbiotic with AI because we have a bandwidth problem. You just can't communicate through your fingers. It's too slow.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Neuralink was created with these grander ambitions in mind of a general use bci. One where human and machine and AI become one while solving our pesky bandwidth problem. This picture of a cyberpunk future comes with some hefty technological and ethical concerns. First, there is a big question of control. Remember BCI's work on imagination And I don't know about you, but I imagine things all the time I don't want to act on. It's a simple example, but reveals the layers of review that need to be considered as this next era approaches.

[Davidja Mehta]

Another issue is again, when one uses bci, all of their neural data is collected.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And what about privacy of thought? Personal information takes on a more profound meaning when data is being siphoned from your very thoughts.

[Davidja Mehta]

This is our private inner life. How comfortable would one be to share that in form of data?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

For Musk, who built his fortune on capturing human attention, neuralink offers something even more intimate. Our thoughts themselves. And perhaps the biggest existential head scratcher.

[Davidja Mehta]

I think the question of self identity comes here, you know, when we merge mind and machine. The traditional borders of the self dissipate.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Like the ship of Theseus. If you replace every part of the boat during its journey, does it remain the same ship? The same question applies to humans. When it comes to a future that imagines such high level integration, where do I stop? And the machine begins. For Dvija, these risks don't outweigh the promise.

[Davidja Mehta]

I'm very pro bci. I think I love what technology is able to offer to people who really need it. When it comes to cyberpunk future again, I think A would be so cool. But I think the best way to do it is to do it responsibly.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

It's an exciting prospect. But despite David's optimism, I can't help having some questions and doubts. Are the people building this future, people like Musk, thinking as carefully as David about its ethical limits? Do they care about doing this responsibly? It's important to say neuralink's story isn't one of unalloyed triumph. The company has been accused of killing thousands of animals during testing. Nolan Arbaugh himself has faced setbacks, including some of the threads connecting to his implant withdrawing from his brain. There was a point where he thought he was going to lose the connectivity completely. And then there's the bigger picture, the nagging question. Who benefits from Musk building his idealized cyberpunk future? And who gets left behind? It sounds to me like something that could dangerously exacerbate the gap between the have and the have nots. It's a trend that Julia sees all the time in her reporting.

[Julia Black]

It's these ideas that these small elite minorities should have the right to exit society and to build their own kind of parallel universe where they don't have to, you know, deal with the masses and they don't have to worry about covering, you know, other people's education with their taxes. They don't. They don't want to do that. They just want to create their own lane where, you know, they have only the best schooling, only the best embryos, only the best communities. And it's very much building more and more of this exclusive bubble around themselves.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

A bubble sealed and optimized, not unlike the one Elon Musk grew up in in South Africa, or the one that he seems to be developing at his compound in Austin and in his company town in Starbase, Texas. He's no longer just exiting Earth. He's building new kinds of people to send to another world. And those people are going to need all the help they can get.

[Elon Musk]

We were supposed to have a base on the moon. We're supposed to send people to Mars.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And that stuff just.

[Elon Musk]

It just didn't happen. We went backwards.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

This is perhaps the most important thing.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

That will be done in this century. That is the expansion of humanity to become a multi planet space faring species. Just to be absolutely clear, Mars is absolutely awful. Mars is a terrible, terrible place. I think this is bat guano crazy. You don't just land a million people on Mars like Normandy Beach. We contacted Elon Musk through his family office. He did not respond to our request for comment. Understood. The Making of Musk is a chalk and blade production for cbc. It is written and produced by Jason Phipps, M. Walley, eva Krisiak and me, Jacob Silverman. This episode features clips from the independent 20th Century Studios, Matt Bernstein, Jordan Peterson, Alex Cantrowicz, NBC, Maximo, TV, Neuralink and Joe Rogan. Matthew Blackman is our South African story consultant. Fabiola Carletti is our coordinating producer. Mixing and sound design by Julia Whitman. Our story editor is Derek John. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe. Locos, You can follow Understood on whatever app you're using to listen to me now. And check out my previous season, the Naked Emperor, a deep dive into fallen crypto king Sam Bankman. Fried.

[Podcast Host]

That was the third episode of the Making of Musk. We've got the final episode coming your way tomorrow.

[Nolan Arbaugh]

For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.