Loading summary
Transcript490 lines
- [00:00]
Michael
This is, like, not a bit. I, like, genuinely don't have a singer. The only thing I could come up with is be straight. Do Grimes.
- [00:08]
Peter
That's really offensive to straight people. I feel like, by the way, the beverage center has maintained some element of meme status.
- [00:16]
Michael
It's escaped containment.
- [00:18]
Peter
I have people posting it at me. I'm like, shit.
- [00:23]
Michael
Just photos of beverage centers.
- [00:25]
Peter
Well, I think that they're trying to make the accurate point that I am a bougie young man. Well, yeah, I also don't know how many people realize how. How bougie I can be.
- [00:33]
Michael
Yeah, that's also. They don't know about your sweaters or your watches.
- [00:35]
Peter
They don't know about the sweaters. They don't know that I'm the light jacket king of New Jersey.
- [00:40]
Michael
And you and you have a podcast with a gay man who only shops at Goodwill. I feel like we're doing, like, gender as a social construct.
- [00:46]
Peter
We're combating stereotypes so effectively.
- [00:49]
Michael
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have one. I have one. Okay. I finally came up with a zinger. Peter.
- [00:53]
Peter
Michael. Peter, what do you know about Elon Musk?
- [00:56]
Michael
All I know is that I'm happy to finally have a reason to get a bumper sticker that says, I made this podcast after Elon went crazy.
- [01:16]
Peter
This is Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography of Elon Musk. Do you know anything about Walter Isaacson?
- [01:25]
Michael
He did the Steve Jobs book, right?
- [01:27]
Peter
Yeah. He is a journalist. Spent many years at Time magazine. Became the CEO and chairman of CNN in 2001 for a bit.
- [01:36]
Michael
Oh, I didn't know that.
- [01:37]
Peter
He bopped around after that. But what he's really known for is, like, these great men biographies. He wrote one of Kissinger in 1992. He did Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs. And so this is his latest foray into the great man biography, this massive biography of Elon Musk.
- [01:58]
Michael
A big book about a very small man.
- [02:00]
Peter
I imagine that you've heard of this book.
- [02:01]
Michael
Yeah, I thought it was, like, kind of too fawning of an account. Kind of like the Michael Lewis, Sam Bankman Freed book.
- [02:08]
Peter
I wouldn't say that Isaacson is fawning. He correctly identifies the vast majority of Elon Musk's issues. He doesn't seem to weigh them that heavily against, like, the good aspects of Elon Musk as he sees them.
- [02:23]
Michael
But what are those? I'm so. I'm so ready to hear what the good aspects of Elon Musk are.
- [02:28]
Peter
How dare you? He's the richest man in the world.
- [02:30]
Michael
I'm also so proud of myself for being early on the Elon Musk hate train.
- [02:35]
Peter
I was also early Elon Musk hater, although I don't know if I just got lucky on that.
- [02:41]
Michael
What was it? What did it for you?
- [02:42]
Peter
I just don't like how he is, you know, I just don't like the way that he carries himself in.
- [02:47]
Michael
The world seems weird, undefeated.
- [02:48]
Peter
Other issues with Isaacson's portrayal. Musk himself is obviously an unreliable narrator. Not just in terms of like what happened and when, but also his motivations. And Isaacson seems to both know this and not fully process it. Yeah, he will say, you know, he will point out that Elon has been misleading in certain ways, but he doesn't act like Elon is lying to him consistently. And at various points he just sort of tells Elon's story. Right? He interviewed many, many people for this, but he also spent a huge amount of time with Elon. A lot of the stories you're hearing are just sort of Elon side of things.
- [03:26]
Michael
I feel like we see this with like powerful people all the time where there's like, yeah, he lies. But anyway, here's a thing that he said that we're going to take credulously for no particular reason.
- [03:34]
Peter
The big thesis here is that Elon is sort of a weirdo asshole, but also he couldn't have accomplished everything that he's accomplished if he wasn't, oh, I'm actually going to send you the final lines of the entire book.
- [03:49]
Michael
So Isaacson says, but would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk seeking man children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world. Yeah, this reads like a defense of him.
- [04:19]
Peter
Crazy enough to think they can change the world. Are you in 10th grade? Please calm down. This, this is like a very common theory of great men, right? That their excesses are necessary to achieve these incredible things. And I think that we are meant to believe that the trade off is worth it, right? That it's worth tolerating someone like Elon because we get electric cars and space travel. I think that's a coherent thesis. I don't agree with it, but it's coherent. Right, but if you want to make that case, you have to reckon with what that trade off really is. And I think this is the real big problem with Isaacson's book is that he is not very willing to engage with what those trade offs are. He very quickly references them and then skips over them. And I think that leaves this book feeling sort of incomplete.
- [05:12]
Michael
I think you also have to reckon with all of the things that he promised and didn't pan out as well.
- [05:16]
Peter
And we will, and we will.
- [05:18]
Michael
I mean you specifically, you have to reckon with you in the next four hours.
- [05:23]
Peter
Let's dive in to the prologue here. Send you something else.
- [05:28]
Michael
When he was 12, he was taken by bus to a wilderness survival camp known as a Veld School. It was a paramilitary Lord of the Flies, he recalls. The kids were each given small rations of food and water and they were allowed, indeed encouraged to fight over them. Bullying was considered a virtue. His younger brother Kimball says the big kids quickly learned to punch the little ones in the face and take their stuff. Elon, who was small and emotionally awkward, got beaten up twice. He would end up losing 10 pounds. Near the end of the first week, the boys were divided into two groups and told to attack each other. It was so insane, mind blowing, Musk recalls. Every few years, one of the kids would die. The counselors would recount such stories as warnings. Don't be stupid. Like that dumb fuck who died last year. They would say, don't be the weak dumb fuck. Jesus, did he grow up in like the 1500s?
- [06:14]
Peter
So right off the bat you're being met with a story that just seems like it has to be bullshit, right? Like, let's put our thinking caps on here. There was a camp in South Africa where the children of well off families frequently died.
- [06:29]
Michael
This is probably just an urban legend that, like the kids told each other that Elon has sort of changed in the retelling over the years.
- [06:34]
Peter
Eve Fairbanks, who wrote a piece about the portions of the book that pertain to South Africa. She says that Veld School was a wilderness camp that most white South African children attended under apartheid. She interviewed South Africans to see if anyone had a recollection similar to Elon's. She said, nobody with whom I spoke remembered hearing about deaths at Veld School. Veld School was all about discipline designed to prepare boys to join the military and, quote, fighting was discouraged. There are other suspect stories here. Isaacson says that as a teenager in the 80s, Musk and his brother Kimball were going to an anti apartheid concert and, quote, had to wade through A pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife still sticking out of his brain.
- [07:17]
Michael
Oh, my God.
- [07:18]
Peter
Fairbanks spoke to a journalist who covered Johannesburg in the 80s. They said that this was almost certainly a fabrication because it would be enough.
- [07:26]
Michael
Of a news story that you'd be able to find evidence of it. It's like a really big deal.
- [07:29]
Peter
Presumably. I mean, there was a lot of violence in apartheid South Africa, but there are some weird things here. It's notable that there were no official anti apartheid concerts in South Africa due to the government censorship. This was not a free. In 1985, there was the concert in the park, which wasn't openly political, but was like a big concert that had a protest vibe because it wasn't segregated. It was also famously peaceful. Elon would have been 13. It doesn't quite line up. In general, though, Isaacson seems to want to convey that Elon's childhood in South Africa was very brutal and dangerous. He does it without ever really examining how much of this might have happened or not happened. And he doesn't dive into, like, the racialized elements of this, which is fucking crazy when you're talking about apartheid South Africa. Here's a passage about why Musk's maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, moved to South Africa from the Netherlands.
- [08:29]
Michael
What were they originally?
- [08:30]
Peter
He was in Canada.
- [08:32]
Michael
Oh, okay. With his quirky conservative populist views. Haldeman came to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft. So in 1950, he decided to move to South Africa, which was still ruled by a white apartheid regime. Okay, so they. So he's like a make Canada great again guy.
- [08:53]
Peter
In this day and age, when someone says quirky, conservative populist views.
- [08:57]
Michael
Right?
- [08:57]
Peter
And the year is 1950 and he.
- [08:59]
Michael
Left to go to South Africa.
- [09:01]
Peter
Alarm bells should be blaring in your fucking head when you. When you read something like this. Right? His grandfather was living in Canada in the 40s. He was an avowed anti communist who appeared to be a Nazi sympathizer. He was active in the Technocrat political movement until he resigned his position in the organization he was in after they expressed support for the Soviet Union following the German invasion. He then joins the Social Credit Party of Canada, where he defends their party newspaper's decision to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
- [09:33]
Michael
Oh, my God.
- [09:33]
Peter
We actually know a good amount about his beliefs because he self published, like, a mini book booklet in 1960. According to reporting by the Atlantic from a couple Years ago, he moved to South Africa because, quote, he believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead white Christian civilization in its fight against the international conspiracy of Jewish bankers and the hordes of colored people they controlled.
- [09:56]
Michael
That sounds out of context, Peter. I don't know if we can conclude anything from that.
- [10:00]
Peter
Let's just say that it's quirky and move on. He also ignores the timing of the move. He says that they moved when South Africa was still ruled by a white apartheid regime. But the Atlantic piece pointed out that in July 1950, South Africa instituted arguably its foundational apartheid laws, one requiring people to register their race and the other segregating urban housing by race. The family moved one month later.
- [10:26]
Michael
Holy shit.
- [10:27]
Peter
So to say that they were, like, moving to South Africa, which was still ruled by an apartheid regime, it's like, no. This guy, who we know is a weird racist, moves there right on the ground floor.
- [10:38]
Michael
It is notable that these are the politics that he came to eventually. So it is important context for, like, the kinds of conversations that they were presumably having at the dinner table as a kid.
- [10:47]
Peter
I feel like it's important context. Regardless. Isaacson does not see Elon's upbringing in this extremely reactionary place by this extremely reactionary family as, like, a meaningful part of his story.
- [11:02]
Michael
And also, it's clear that Elon has this narrative about himself that he overcame, like, bullying and, you know, this really rough upbringing. But it also sounds like a lot of the bullying is, like. Doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny.
- [11:13]
Peter
I'll say this, regardless of what is or is not true about his experience of South Africa, what is true almost certainly is that he was subjected to pretty brutal abuse at the hands of his father. Right, Errol Musk.
- [11:24]
Michael
Yeah. Yeah.
- [11:25]
Peter
Errol would brutally berate Elon on a regular basis. There's a story where Elon is beaten so severely by bullies at school that he's hospitalized. And here's what Errol says about it.
- [11:36]
Michael
After the school fight, Errol sided with the kid who pummeled Elon's face. The boy had just lost his father to suicide, and Elon had called him stupid. Errol says Elon had this tendency to call people stupid. How could I possibly blame that child? Oh, this is fucked, right? So he's basically my kid. Deserved it to get, like, kicked down the stairs or whatever. Although it is fucked up to do that to a kid whose father just died.
- [11:57]
Peter
Here's the thing. We have two competing unreliable narrators here in Elon and Errol, both of whom are known bullshitters Right. So it's hard to say, but it seems like both parties agree on like a basic story here that he was beaten so severely that he was hospitalized. He returns home from the hospital and Errol berates Elon for an hour. Isaacson says that both Elon and Kimbal Musk, who no longer speak to their father, say that his claim that Elon provoked the attack is unhinged and that the perpetrator ended up being sent to juvenile prison for it.
- [12:32]
Michael
Oh, wow.
- [12:32]
Peter
They say that their father is a volatile fabulist, regularly spinning tales that are larded with fantasies, sometimes calculated, at other times delusional.
- [12:41]
Michael
This also sounds like Elon Nem.
- [12:43]
Peter
So who does that sound like? Like you don't want to do too much armchair psychology here. Yeah, yeah, but a volatile and delusional.
- [12:49]
Michael
Fabulist with racist views.
- [12:52]
Peter
Right? One way or another, it is pretty clear that Elon is molded by the abuse that he endured at the hands of his father. Different people in his life frame it in different ways, but all of them say that this is left to him with like, limited empathy and that he goes to dark places mentally. His second wife, Tallulah Riley, said that he would wake up thrashing and recount abusive things that his father said to him. She said, quote, he's retained a childlike, almost stunted side inside the man. He's still there as a child, a child standing in front of his dad. Both of his ex wives said that Elon would say abusive things to them that had been said to him by his father.
- [13:32]
Michael
I hate that you're drumming up emotions in me of feeling bad for this person.
- [13:35]
Peter
It'll fade over time.
- [13:36]
Michael
It would be such a sad human story if he wasn't one of the most powerful people in the world and inflicting this garbage on other people.
- [13:42]
Peter
If he was just a guy, you'd be like, yeah, sad.
- [13:45]
Michael
Somebody like this is just never going to have a stopping point because he's trying to fill some fucking hole within himself that just can't be filled.
- [13:52]
Peter
A quote from a friend. He was not hardwired to have empathy. And this is a big part of Eisen's theory of Musk, that he just has limited empathy. And it's very interesting how little this basic observation seems to factor into his analysis of Elon's claims about wanting to better humanity. All of Elon's big projects, going into space, electric cars, hyperloop, all that shit. Elon tells a story where he is trying to get humanity to this very important next stage, right? That we need to get to, and it's all for the betterment of humanity. And yet Isaacson admits that Musk is not an empathetic guy. What does that tell you about his claim that he's just trying to help out the human race?
- [14:43]
Michael
Because what you're actually looking at is a pattern of like selfish behavior, but somehow you're kind of like believing his narrative, that it's like it's all for the greater good.
- [14:50]
Peter
I'll lighten the mood a little bit. There we go. A little more.
- [14:53]
Michael
The science fiction book that most influenced his wonder years was Douglas Adams the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The jaunty and wry tale helped shape Musk's philosophy and added a dollop of droll humor to his serious mean. The Hitchhiker's Guide, he says, helped me out of my existential depression. And I soon realized it was amazingly funny in all sorts of subtle ways.
- [15:13]
Peter
Elon Musk trying to figure out the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is my favorite B plot in the Isaacson biography. Have you ever read it?
- [15:23]
Michael
No.
- [15:23]
Peter
He's like. I soon realized it was amazingly funny in all sorts of subtle ways. The Hitchhiker's Guide. I haven't read it in like 30 years, but it's like a comedy. It's like overtly. It's satirical. Alright, keep going.
- [15:36]
Michael
He says the denizens of the galaxy are trying to figure out the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. They build a supercomputer that after 7 million years spouts out the 42. When that provokes a befuddled howl, the computer replies, that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is. That lesson stuck with Musk. I took from the book that we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe. Oh, that's dumb. What is he, what is he saying?
- [16:09]
Peter
What is he talking about? So the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is like a sci fi satire of capitalism. Like the entire thing is predicated around the demolition of the Earth to build an interstellar superhighway. And the whole 42 thing, the idea that the answer to everything is 42, it's meant to be an absurdity, right? This really simple number is the answer to this grand question Douglas Adams has said. I just thought of like, what, like what would be kind of the silliest number, right? Anyway, so now we have this guy choosing presidents for us because he's too stupid to understand. Like a book that is widely read by children. I was 12 years old when I read this.
- [16:50]
Michael
Nobody show Elon Musk Starship Troopers. It's like robocop, like these other.
- [16:55]
Peter
Anyway, he's into computers and programming. At a young age, he programmed a rudimentary video game. At the age of 12. At the age of 17, he leaves South Africa on his own for Canada. I just sent you something.
- [17:08]
Michael
A myth has grown that Musk, because his father was on and off successful, arrived in North America in 1989 with a lot of money, perhaps pockets filled with emeralds. Errol at times encouraged that perception. But in fact, what Errol got from the Zambian emerald mine had become worthless. Years earlier, when Elon left South Africa, his father gave him $2,000 in traveler's checks, and his mother provided him with another $2,000 by cashing out a stock account she had opened with the money she won in a beauty contest as a teenager. Otherwise, what he mainly had with him when he arrived in Montreal was a list of his mother's relatives he had never met.
- [17:40]
Peter
There is a sort of storyline around Elon that you'll see floating around that he comes from real wealth that does not appear to be true.
- [17:47]
Michael
All right, the emerald mine thing that people always talk about is, like, kind of an urban legend, because, like, it. It didn't actually produce that much money, Right? Yeah.
- [17:54]
Peter
I mean, it existed. And Elon at times has entirely denied the emerald mine thing.
- [18:00]
Michael
Right.
- [18:00]
Peter
A couple years ago, he tweeted, quote, the fake emerald mine thing is so annoying. Like, where exactly is this thing?
- [18:06]
Michael
Right.
- [18:06]
Peter
But in an interview in 2014, he said, quote, my father had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia. So the fact that he, like, denies parts of it, I think has sort of fed the story that he actually did come with a bunch of money.
- [18:21]
Michael
Right.
- [18:21]
Peter
Errol gave an interview to the sun where he claimed that he sent Elon to the States with plenty of money. He also said that this was his idea, which Elon denies. It's hard to know what's up, because both of these guys are serial liars. Right? But it's pretty safe to say that Elon wasn't particularly wealthy when he arrived in Canada.
- [18:40]
Michael
And he's not, like, the heir to an emerald mine in the way that people do sometimes throw that around. I mean, he definitely grew up fine, but he wasn't. He wasn't like one of Trump's Kids or something.
- [18:48]
Peter
So the thing about Errol is that he had some money, but he was up and down. He was not consistently successful in business. He was also, like, a degenerate gambler.
- [18:58]
Michael
Right.
- [18:59]
Peter
There's an anecdote about a time when he thought he could beat roulette, and I think it was Kimball came down to the kitchen, and he's got, like, a model roulette wheel, and he's trying and he's. And he tells him, like, I'm seeing how microwave. Microwave waves affect meal.
- [19:17]
Michael
Isn't that, like, the least beatable game at a casino?
- [19:20]
Peter
Unless you get the microwave waves flowing in the right direction.
- [19:24]
Michael
Unless you're cheating, yeah.
- [19:25]
Peter
Elon does well on the SATs, but nothing insane. 730 math, 670 verbal. That's a 1400, folks.
- [19:32]
Michael
Better than I got.
- [19:33]
Peter
I did better, baby.
- [19:34]
Michael
Wait, you got better than that? Really?
- [19:35]
Peter
Yeah. I'm, like, smart as shit, dude.
- [19:37]
Michael
Now you host a podcast, and now you live in New Jersey and host a podcast.
- [19:40]
Peter
My life is a series of downward trajectories and then a standardized test on the left. A lot of people are like, we need to bottle standardized testing. I'm like, please, no. You will leave children like me behind.
- [19:50]
Michael
Right? The smart yet lazy kids. Yeah.
- [19:52]
Peter
If you tell me you must perform consistently over the span of three years, it will never happen. But if you tell me you've got a test Saturday, I am on it.
- [20:01]
Michael
This is such a good dynamic for the podcast because I was very hardworking, but also kind of dumb.
- [20:06]
Peter
Is this why we work so well?
- [20:08]
Michael
Yeah.
- [20:08]
Peter
So he goes to Queens College, Canada. He likes gaming. He tries to network with important people. Him and his brother Kimball does a summer internship at Scotiabank. And then in 1992, he transfers to Penn, double majors in physics and business.
- [20:26]
Michael
Isn't that your alma mater? Didn't you go to Penn?
- [20:28]
Peter
I went to Penn for law school, yes.
- [20:29]
Michael
Oh, okay.
- [20:30]
Peter
Isaacson says he had conceived by then a life vision that he would repeat like a mantra. I thought about the things that will truly affect humanity. Musk says, I came up with three. The Internet, sustainable energy, and space travel.
- [20:46]
Michael
Whatever.
- [20:46]
Peter
You read this and you're like, this feels a little convenient, right? That, like, in the 1990s, Elon identified these three things that happen to be the three things that he works on now as, like, the most important things in the world. I found an interview that Musk did with GQ in 2008 where he told the same story, except in that interview, he said they were space travel, electric cars, and solar Power. Nice. So no mention of the Internet. It seems like he's just sort of telling variations of this story depending on what he's working on. Right.
- [21:15]
Michael
This is like us doing our Worst Takes of the Year episode and just the three most recent articles that were published.
- [21:19]
Peter
Right. I came up with three. Space travel, electric cars, and not enough racism. And I've decided to fix all of them. Elon and Kimbal, his brother, head to Silicon Valley at this point to try to materialize an idea that they have to basically put the Yellow Pages online. They put a directory of businesses online with maps that provide directions to them. The company is called Zip2. I'm going to send you a bit, it says.
- [21:47]
Michael
From the very beginning of his career, Musk was a demanding manager, contemptuous of the concept of work, Life, Balance. At Zip2 and every subsequent company, he drove himself relentlessly all day and through much of the night without vacations. And he expected others to do the same. His only indulgence was allowing breaks for intense video game binges. The Zip2 team won second place in a national Quake competition. They would have come in first, he says, but one of them crashed his computer by pushing it too hard. This also sounds fake, but the part about him being a terrible manager seems true.
- [22:18]
Peter
So the part about him being a demanding manager is the substantive portion here. But I do want to talk about him being good at Quake for a second. Elon has elsewhere claimed that he was one of the best Quake players in the world at the time. Quake was one of the first. First person shooters.
- [22:32]
Michael
Yeah. I was a big Quake head that was like, the grandson of Doom, basically. In, like, Wolfenstein 3D. Yeah.
- [22:38]
Peter
The consensus best player in this era was a dude who went by the online handle Thresh. Okay. And he has basically said Elon was one of the early players who played a lot, but that he, quote, wasn't very good.
- [22:53]
Michael
Brutal.
- [22:55]
Peter
The competition story is basically unverified. The idea that their team won second place in a national qu competition. It's sort of hard to believe that someone crashed a computer and that's why they lost.
- [23:06]
Michael
Right. My computer's never played Quake before.
- [23:08]
Peter
Gaming was not a thing in the 90s, and so there weren't really national competitions the way there are now. But, yeah, this is just another thing where I think Isaacson's like, wow. Yeah. And he has, like, zero interest in whether or not this is actually true.
- [23:19]
Michael
Because he's actually missing, like, a. What should be a big thread of the biography that, like, this is a guy who cannot tell the Fucking truth and lies about the weirdest things.
- [23:27]
Peter
Yeah.
- [23:28]
Michael
You can just say, like, I was really into Quake at the time and I was pretty good, right? I was one of the best in the world.
- [23:32]
Peter
Like, you don't have to say that shit.
- [23:33]
Michael
Yeah, no one cares.
- [23:34]
Peter
I know it feels like I'm nitpicking, right? Because I'm sort of skipping past the fact that he's like an awful manager who hates work life balance and talking about how he's lying about Quake. But yeah, this is what I think Isaacson is missing, that there's this like B plot that is always happening that Isaacson isn't even aware of.
- [23:50]
Michael
Right.
- [23:51]
Peter
Where Elon is just constantly throwing in little lies.
- [23:54]
Michael
He, like, needs something from this. Like it's fulfilling some sort of weird emotional need and it deserves some like, exploration.
- [24:00]
Peter
Yeah, we've seen this more recently too, with, with, with newer video games. But he has to believe that, that if he were to do something, he would be one of the best in the world at it. Oh, it's so.
- [24:10]
Michael
God, it's such loser energy.
- [24:11]
Peter
It really is.
- [24:12]
Michael
I like video games, but also, it's so pathetic to have this be your thing that you have to lie about.
- [24:18]
Peter
Exactly.
- [24:19]
Michael
I would say as the world's ninth best ball X pit player, I don't have to lie and say that I'm the second best. I'm happy with my standing.
- [24:25]
Peter
So. So the Zip2 business gets bought out, big buyout and it leaves Elon with $22 million and he becomes a worse person.
- [24:36]
Michael
Every dollar just makes him like 1% shittier.
- [24:39]
Peter
His next venture in 1999 is x.com, not the one today.
- [24:44]
Michael
But the original isn't like a PayPal payments something something.
- [24:48]
Peter
Yep, yep. I'm gonna send it to you. Send this to you. Do not click the link. It automatically created a link to x.com?
- [24:54]
Michael
Oh yeah, of course.
- [24:55]
Peter
That will bring you to a hardcore porn formerly known as Twitter. Okay.
- [24:59]
Michael
His concept for X.com was grand. It would be a one stop everything store for all financial banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments and loans. Transactions would be handled instantly with no waiting for payments to clear. His insight was that money is simply an entry into a database. And he wanted to devise a way that all transactions were securely recorded in real time. If you fix all the reasons why a consumer would take money out of the system, he says, then it will be the place where all the money is. And that would make it a multi trillion dollar company. Honestly, I kind of wish this existed.
- [25:30]
Peter
Well, yeah, I mean, but that's the thing is sometimes he will say something that's actually insightful about business and he does. Like, he's not a total dipshit, but then sometimes he'll say shit like this where it's just like, well, yeah, but you have to actually do this, right? Like, transactions will be handled instantly. What does that mean? How? Right. If you fix all the reasons why a consumer would take money out of the system, then it will be the place where all the money is. It's like, yeah, I guess that's an idea, right? If there was a place and no one ever took their money out.
- [26:03]
Michael
Yeah.
- [26:03]
Peter
Well, then eventually all the money would be in there. Right? It's like, Elon, you are the smartest man in the world.
- [26:08]
Michael
This is also such a pattern for him because with the hyperloop, he was like, well, it's basically the same infrastructure as a high speed rail, but you just need to take out all of the parts that cost a lot of money magically saying it would be cheaper to do it. Cheaper, yes.
- [26:21]
Peter
He. After, after taxes, he has $16 million from the sale of Zip2. He invests 12 million of it into X dot com.
- [26:29]
Michael
Oh, wow.
- [26:29]
Peter
This is a very important Elon thing. As rich as he is, he doesn't seem to care about his own personal wealth in and of itself. He was very willing to just keep risking all of it on the next venture over and over and over again. This next anecdote we've actually discussed before in the context of the Sam Bankman Freed episode, but it is so funny that I'm gonna share it again. And also, I think it's relevant to this episode because it's in this book.
- [27:00]
Michael
I hope it's polycule related. Some people were playing a high stakes game of Texas hold'. Em. Although Musk was not a card player, he pulled up to the table, there were all these nerds and sharpsters who were good at memorizing cards and calculating odds. Levchin says Elon just proceeded to go all in on every hand and lose. Then he would buy more chips and double down. Eventually, after losing many hands, he went all in and won. Then he said, right, fine, I'm done. It would be a theme in his life. Avoid taking chips off the table. Keep risking them.
- [27:30]
Peter
This is just the story of someone losing over and over again at Texas hold'.
- [27:34]
Michael
Em.
- [27:35]
Peter
Like, so. For people who aren't card players, what they're describing is a situation where you put in, say, $100 and you lose it like four times consecutively and then the fifth time you win, what does that mean? It means you're down, like, 300 bucks.
- [27:52]
Michael
Yeah.
- [27:53]
Peter
It's such an interesting part of the book because it does feel like a microcosm of what Isaacson is bad at. It's like he doesn't know quite enough about this to know that Elon just sucks at poker and that all this anecdote is. Is the tale of a dipshit who doesn't understand poker.
- [28:11]
Michael
He's like a rich sucker story, basically, right?
- [28:14]
Peter
Exactly. But Isaacson is like, he loves risk. Like that's all he takes from it, because he just doesn't. He doesn't really know what he's looking at here.
- [28:22]
Michael
Because the story is also about somebody who just refuses to change their strategy given new conditions. It's clear that wasn't working. And he just kept doing the same thing.
- [28:30]
Peter
I have seen people do this, and the only thing they have in common, generally, is that they're action junkies, that they just want to keep gambling. They have a gambling addiction.
- [28:40]
Michael
Right.
- [28:40]
Peter
All right, I am going to send you bits.
- [28:42]
Michael
One of Musk's management tactics then, as later, was to set an insane deadline and drive colleagues to meet it. He did that in the fall of 1999 by announcing in what one engineer called a Dick move, that X.com would launch to the public on Thanksgiving weekend. In the weeks leading up to that, Musk prowled the office each day, including Thanksgiving, in a nervous and nervous making frenzy and slept under his desk most nights. One of the engineers who went home at 2am Thanksgiving morning got a call from Musk at 11am asking him to come back in because another engineer had worked all night and was not running on full thrusters anymore. Such behavior produced drama and resentments, but also success. When the product went live that weekend, all the employees were marched to a nearby ATM, where Musk inserted an X.com debit card, cash, word out. And the team celebrated.
- [29:29]
Peter
This is very important to process. Something that consistently comes up, is that Elon seems to only be able to really get things done himself when there's like a crisis, an imminent deadline, or something else high stakes. And so when there isn't one, he will create one. If you read this story, Isaacson's like, it produced results, but what results? They launched this product Thanksgiving weekend, and so was that better than launching it a week later?
- [29:58]
Michael
It also seems like he's someone who, because he does this, like, I'm willing to work through the night.
- [30:02]
Peter
Exactly.
- [30:02]
Michael
He expects other people to do it, but he's the owner of the company, so if the company does well, he makes millions and millions of dollars.
- [30:09]
Peter
The framing that this is success is like capitalism, brain rot. Right? The question is whether this was necessary to achieve their goals and whether those goals made sense and also whether these people were adequately rewarded for their sacrifices. This is like one of Isaacson's big errors. He really seems to believe that this sort of cruelty is like a necessary component for great men building great things.
- [30:35]
Michael
The only person I will let get away with this behavior is James Cameron. I'm canceling everybody else.
- [30:41]
Peter
Well, yeah, because he went down to the Titanic. That's real results. So after a bit, X.com merges with the company that would shortly become PayPal, and Musk becomes CEO of the resulting company. This is the beginning of what's now referred to as, like, the PayPal mafia, the group of early PayPal employees and founders, many of whom went on to much Silicon Valley success. Peter Thiel. David Sacks. Right, I'm now gonna share with you a story that has no purpose other than being fucking hilarious.
- [31:17]
Michael
Which video game is he lying about now?
- [31:19]
Peter
So this is a story about Peter Thiel getting into Elon Musk's McLaren, which is sort of the fancy car he bought himself after his Zip2 sale.
- [31:28]
Michael
So what can this car do? Thiel asked. Watch this. Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the accelerator. The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded.
- [31:43]
Peter
Watch this. And it immediately crashed. Both of them are fine. I am now going to send you a famous drill tweet.
- [31:51]
Michael
Yeah, I was just about to say this.
- [31:53]
Peter
Yeah, just. Just read the drill tweet here.
- [31:55]
Michael
So long, suckers. I rev up my motorcycle and create a huge cloud of smoke. When the cloud dissipates, I'm lying completely dead on the pavement. Yes.
- [32:05]
Peter
I immediately thought of this tweet. Oh, my God, watch this, watch this, watch this. And just immediately crashes. The car is so fucking good.
- [32:14]
Michael
That's also kind of a metaphor for what he did, but, like buying Twitter and stuff. He's like, watch this. And then runs it into the ground.
- [32:20]
Peter
It's not just a dunk. That's actually an important metaphor. Alright, I sent you another thing.
- [32:24]
Michael
Musk insisted that the company's name should be x.com with PayPal as merely one of its subsidiary brands. He even tried to rebrand the payment system x PayPal.
- [32:35]
There was a lot of pushback. PayPal had become a Trusted brand name, like a good pal who's helping you to get paid. Focus groups showed that the name x.com, on the contrary, conjured up visions of a seedy site you would not talk about in polite companies. But Musk was unwavering and remains so to this day. If you want to just be a niche payment system, PayPal is better, he said. But if you want to take over the world's financial system, then X is the better name. It sounds like a porn site, dude.
- [33:00]
Peter
It's not good. His belief that X is like a cool name.
- [33:04]
Michael
It's weird.
- [33:05]
Peter
Is so funny. It's classic Elon. The things that he thinks are cool are, generally speaking, things that like a 12 year old thinks is cool.
- [33:12]
Michael
Also, ex PayPal sounds like he used to be my friend, like my ex pal.
- [33:15]
Peter
I can't even talk. This is just common sense. When you hear x.com, it's like, what? What is that? Yeah, he's like, if you want to take over the world's financial system, then X is the better name. No, it's not. Dude.
- [33:26]
Michael
Do you know where he got this from? Because didn't he, like, name one of his kids X as well?
- [33:30]
Peter
Yeah, he just likes, like sci fi shit and his brain is trapped in childhood to some degree. I mean, that's. That's all there is to it. Later on, Thiel and the other PayPal mafia guys secretly commission a study that shows that the PayPal brand is more valuable. And then they show it to Musk and he gets mad and he retaliates, stripping the brand from the website.
- [33:52]
Michael
Really? God.
- [33:53]
Peter
Isaacson says during the merger, Musk kept insisting that X.com had close to twice as many users as PayPal. And Levchin, who's one of the PayPal guys, would check with its engineers and get the real number. Elon didn't just exaggerate, he made it up. Levchin says no way. It was what his father would have done. That's Isaacson. Levchin also says Elon will say crazy stuff, but every once in a while, he'll surprise you by knowing way more than you do about your own specialty. I think a huge part of the way he motivates people are these displays of sharpness, which people don't expect from him because they mistake him for a bullshitter or goofball.
- [34:28]
Michael
I've never heard him say anything that shows any expertise.
- [34:31]
Peter
Maybe not, but I actually think this is really important to understand because Elon is a serial bullshitter, but he is in some ways very smart and capable. He's a very fast learner and he will hyper fixate on shit and focus on understanding it until he does. And the result is that he will often have a very detailed knowledge about certain projects and certain aspects of companies. And the bullshitter and the guy who knows a lot of rocket science are the same guy.
- [35:01]
Michael
Right. Because he has the same amount of confidence whether he's lying or telling the truth. Right.
- [35:05]
Peter
I actually think that almost like the magic of his appeal. Right. When I look at the widespread appeal of elon Musk circa 2015 or whatever, I'm a little bit baffled. But I think what's happening is a lot of people view his bullshitting and his like big dreams and the things that he's capable of as like part of like a mosaic. Right. And I think that's how Isaacson views him too.
- [35:29]
Michael
It feels to me from the outside that the, the ratio of knowledge to bullshit has also shifted over time.
- [35:36]
Peter
His ego has reached a different place. Right, right, right. So Musk was too difficult to deal with as CEO and so they coo him out in 2000, per Isaacson. And this seems true. He doesn't really hold a grudge about this. He seems to accept that he was sort of outmaneuvered.
- [35:52]
Michael
That is actually interesting.
- [35:53]
Peter
But he becomes very interested in control of his companies in future projects because.
- [35:58]
Michael
Is he still friends with Sachs and Thiel and stuff?
- [36:00]
Peter
Yeah, he maintains ties with them. In 2002, PayPal is acquired by ebay and Musk of course still has shares and that leaves him very rich. Something in the ballpark of the. Of 250 million. Okay. And so at this point he's sort of adrift. He has a bunch of cash and grand ambitions. He claims that he realizes that NASA has no plans to go to Mars and that kind of shocks him. He does some early research and then he founds SpaceX in 2002 and he starts hiring competent engineers.
- [36:32]
Michael
People are so obsessed with Mars for like no fucking reason. I just don't get like there's no reason to do it other than like dick measuring.
- [36:40]
Peter
No, it's the next step in human civilization, obviously the next planet to go to. The key is to start ruining this one as quickly as possible. He's actually doing an incredible PR move of making himself so prominent on Earth that the planet itself becomes intolerable and that we're like, just send me to Mars.
- [36:58]
Michael
It is very funny that all these guys, like we have a habitable planet and they don't seem to care about like, like the fact that we're destroying it. They're really excited about this, like, this, like, radioactive dust ball that's fucking six months on a spaceship away.
- [37:11]
Peter
This is from Isaacson. SpaceX's goal, he said in an early presentation, was to launch its first rocket by September 2003 and send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2010. Thus continued the tradition he had established at PayPal, setting unrealistic timelines that transformed his wild notions from being completely insane to merely very late.
- [37:30]
Michael
And also he gets a bunch of headlines about these goals that he sets, which makes him seem like a visionary, but he never actually delivers on anything.
- [37:36]
Peter
He is laser focused on keeping down costs early on. Isaacson says his focus on cost, as well as his natural controlling instincts led him to want to manufacture as many components as possible in house rather than buy them from suppliers, which was then the standard practice in the rocket and car industries. At one point, SpaceX needed a valve, Mueller recalls, and the supplier said it would cost $250,000. Musk declared that insane and told Muller they should make it themselves. They were able to do so in months at a fraction of the cost.
- [38:06]
Michael
Right. So you do see him producing some, like, genuine results here.
- [38:09]
Peter
This is something that Elon is very good at. He seems to have a good instinct for where costs can be drastically cut.
- [38:17]
Michael
Right.
- [38:17]
Peter
And I think a real key component of Elon's business success is it just leads to a lot of vertical integration.
- [38:24]
Michael
Right.
- [38:25]
Peter
Vertical integration is where you consolidate your supply chain in your own company. Right. So instead of buying parts from a supplier, you make them yourself, which is.
- [38:34]
Michael
What NASA used to do before it started outsourcing everything to suppliers. And that is one of the things that caused the Challenger explosion.
- [38:41]
Peter
What was happening to them is that first they would find cheaper sources for their parts, but then those suppliers would catch on and jack up prices. So Elon's like, let's just start building this stuff ourselves. Right, Right. The downsides of vertical integration, it requires a bunch of upfront costs. Right. But you can keep costs and hassles down later.
- [39:00]
Michael
Right.
- [39:00]
Peter
Once again, Elon fosters a culture where everyone is subjected to brutal deadlines. Send you this.
- [39:08]
Michael
Musk insisted on setting unrealistic deadlines even when they weren't necessary, such as when he ordered test stands to be erected in weeks for rocket engines that had not yet been built. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. He repeatedly declared the sense of urgency was good for its own sake. It made his engineers engage in first principles thinking. But as Muller points out, it was also Corrosive. If you set an aggressive schedule that people think they might be able to make, they will try to put out extra effort. But if you give them a schedule that's physically impossible. Engineers aren't stupid. You've demoralized them. It's Elon's biggest weakness.
- [39:40]
Peter
Isaacson says that this is similar to what Steve Jobs did. And he says although the practice demoralized people, they ended up accomplishing things that other companies couldn't.
- [39:49]
Michael
This ideology is so weird because you could also say they make their workers work 12 hour shifts, seven days a week.
- [39:55]
Peter
Yeah, yeah, it would.
- [39:56]
Michael
It would work in some industries to employ children. But there's reasons we don't do that. Like, we wouldn't lionize somebody who just like, base their company on essentially illegal behavior or certainly immoral behavior.
- [40:07]
Peter
Yeah. There's also, like. He sort of imagines that there's like a magic to this. Right. But it's not magical. They're getting together some really talented people. Like, Elon hires top engineers, and then he just is like, fucking do this in three days. And, yeah, sometimes they accomplish a lot. I don't really understand what Isaacson thinks the magic is. And I went into this willing to engage with the idea that Elon has some, like, real genuine talent.
- [40:35]
Michael
Right.
- [40:35]
Peter
I think that there are too many people who are Elon haters in the Elon hater space. People who imagine that he's like, just a total bumbling fool.
- [40:46]
Michael
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [40:46]
Peter
And I just think that's obviously not true. Right. Like, there is something here. There are things that he's genuinely good at. Some of what he's good at is just abusing his employees. Right, Right. He also, like I said, is, like, has a really good instinct for where costs can be cut. He will look at certain designs and think, like, we don't need that. Right. There are real strengths here. But I don't know why Isaacson insists on believing that just like cracking the whip on your employees is like a talent or like, there's like a mystical quality to it almost.
- [41:17]
Michael
I mean, he did get to Mars in 2010.
- [41:19]
Peter
That's true.
- [41:20]
Michael
This did pay off. You can't deny the fact that I'm.
- [41:22]
Peter
Recording this from Mars does undermine. So over the course of the next few years, SpaceX gets production going, they get a factory, they're able to secure some smaller government contracts to launch satellites. Part of how they do that is with, like, some Elon showmanship. They built a rocket prototype and lit, literally bring it to D.C. and it gets the attention of some NASA folks. They get a $278 million contract to attempt to put some shit into orbit. But they burn through that and by 2008, SpaceX is essentially out of money. They've attempted to send a rocket into orbit three times. They have failed. Elon reaches out to the PayPal guys for some investment to keep them afloat, which he gets. Their fourth launch is successful. That ends up securing them a big contract with NASA. Musk is well connected within the first Obama administration, especially with Lori Garver, who is deputy administrator at NASA. In 2010, Obama makes a publicity visit to the SpaceX launch pad. And then that summer, they land the biggest ever commercial space deal. Almost half a billion dollars to send up satellites for a communications company.
- [42:37]
Michael
Oh, I thought you were gonna say that. This is when they sent Katy Perry to space, which is gonna be the crescendo of this episode.
- [42:42]
Peter
Now that is Bezos, I believe.
- [42:45]
Michael
Oh, that makes me feel like a plastic bag.
- [42:47]
Peter
This is really the early stages of a media honeymoon that lasts until about 2018. Between the rise of SpaceX and Tesla. Elon is able to portray himself as like this mogul slash innovator who is invested in advancing the cause. Going to get us off of fossil fuels with Tesla, and he's going to get us to Mars with SpaceX. He has cameos in Iron Man 2, on the Simpsons, in Rick and Morty, I guess. I'll send you this. Here is a sampling of headlines and news coverage from this era.
- [43:22]
Michael
GQ 2015 How Elon Musk Plans on Reinventing the World and Mars. Rolling Stone, 2017. Elon Musk, the Architect of Tomorrow Inside the inventor's world. Changing plans to inhabit outer space, revolutionize high speed transportation, reinvent cars, and hopefully find love along the way. That one did come true. Well, he found 12 unwanted babies. The Guardian, 2018 Elon Musk, the Real Life Iron Man. A December 2008 profile of him from GQ said that Elon was endeavoring to give the human race its biggest upgrade since the advent of consciousness. Ooh, that one's really bad.
- [44:01]
Peter
The advent of consciousness.
- [44:04]
Michael
Since we were like fish.
- [44:05]
Peter
Step one, consciousness. Step two, cars without gas. What are you talking about?
- [44:10]
Michael
Like, we've already gone to space, right?
- [44:11]
Peter
Like, we already went to the moon. Which, for the record, is more than SpaceX has done at the time of recording. Elon likes to speak in like, dramatic terms like this that the way he speaks about shit is often both like, really dramatic and also really nerdy, which makes me think that he Said that?
- [44:29]
Michael
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:29]
Peter
I don't know.
- [44:30]
Michael
I remember when I was living in Berlin. Berlin. I had, like, a German tutor, like, a guy that I would go speak German with, who was like a big. Elon Musk. Stan. And so all we would do is argue in German about Elon Musk. And, like, all he would ever present was, like, things Elon Musk was going to do.
- [44:45]
Peter
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:46]
Michael
He's like, the hyperloop is going to be amazing. Soon everybody will have an electric car. And I was like, this is all things that he has not done. It's things that he's promised. But, like, other people promise outlandish stuff, too, and don't get media coverage like this.
- [44:57]
Peter
There was a really good esquire piece in 2012 that focuses on Musk's relationship with NASA and his desire to get to Mars, but seems to understand his personality a little bit more than most people did at this time. They are basically talking about his willingness to take on risks and dangers in the context of trying to get people to Mars. And so they say this.
- [45:22]
Michael
It says, but you should know something about him. In 20 years, he plans to ask you to sell everything you own and to give him the $500,000 he figures will be the price of a TR to Mars. Whether such a price is impossible or laughable is immaterial. He will ask you to leave everything you own and everything you know. He will ask you to start a colony on a planet that exists as a red star in the night sky. He doesn't want you to come back, but he doesn't want you to die either. For a long time, he thought you would have to risk death to accomplish his dream. But now he's decided he doesn't want you to. You don't have to die for Elon Musk. For you to be willing is more than enough.
- [45:55]
Peter
In this piece, they sort of put together like, well, are you going to be able to safely get people to Mars?
- [46:01]
Michael
Yeah.
- [46:01]
Peter
And initially, Elon had been kind of realistic about this, where he's like, obviously, this sort of space travel is very dangerous. People might die. Right. And then he sort of, like, realizes that, like, from a PR perspective, maybe you need to walk that back a little bit. And so that's what they're talking about here. These plans all sound nice, but at the end of the day, what he's actually talking about is you pay a huge sum of money and then he sends you off to Mars where you will end your life.
- [46:29]
Michael
Just say he loved Big Brother. This is taking forever. It's also not clear what anyone is supposed to fucking do on Mars. Mars is just a giant desert.
- [46:37]
Peter
Obviously, if you look at a camera shot of Mars from a rover, you're like, wow, beautiful. By year two, you're gonna be like, by hour two.
- [46:45]
Michael
I mean, there's literally nothing there. There's nothing to do. It's not like you can go hiking or something.
- [46:50]
Peter
You can play board games.
- [46:52]
Michael
Yeah, you can do anything that you can do, like in Seattle in the winter when you're stuck inside. But, like, you are stuck inside. And also it takes six months to get there. I cannot get over this detail.
- [47:02]
Peter
I'm gonna skip over a lot of the much more recent SpaceX stuff, mostly because this story gets really boring. It's no longer like a startup. And so Isaacson is just sort of like telling you stories of business, and it's just like, who could possibly care?
- [47:17]
Michael
Does he have a sense of whether the company is, is like, I don't know, still promising, or has it kind of stalled out?
- [47:21]
Peter
I mean, it hasn't stalled out in the business sense because the United States government has moved over huge portions of their space program to the private sector, right? And SpaceX is the most prominent company. But the rest of the story here is kind of the same thing over and over again. Like a problem emerges and Elon enters crisis mode to fix it. And that's it.
- [47:41]
Michael
Right.
- [47:41]
Peter
In broad strokes, SpaceX continues to work closely with NASA. NASA, they put a civilian crew into orbit in 2021, the first private company to do so. The last big event that Isaacson witnesses is the failed launch of the starship, which is the latest SpaceX rocket, in April 2023. And so the story just sort of trails off. Okay, there is a story that is very important. I need you to read it. It's from a book called Liftoff by Eric Berger. Liftoff. Elon Musk and the desperate early days that launched SpaceX. I'm going to send you a quick excerpt here.
- [48:14]
Michael
Eventually, Musk realized that Pop Tarts were best enjoyed toasted. So he opened a package and put two of them into the toaster. Only Musk made the rookie mistake of inserting the pastries horizontally rather than vertically. When they popped back up, he had to stick his fingers into the toaster to grab his breakfast. This was a problem. And at about 6 in the morning, Musk proceeded to scream at full volume, fuck it burns. Fuck it burns.
- [48:41]
Rich guy encounters eating. Dude, you just put your fingers in the fucking toaster, dude.
- [48:45]
Peter
It's like Bart getting Shocked and like and getting increasingly angry and going back for it. Oh God, it's so beautiful.
- [48:53]
Michael
This is the person who's like in charge of like 80% of the government right now. Grab a fork, Elon. Just dig around.
- [48:59]
Peter
That's SpaceX. Let's talk about Tesla. We're gonna rewind in the mid aughts. Just a couple of Years after getting SpaceX up and running, Elon starts aiming to meet people in the electric car space. He meets some guys with prototypes. Eventually he meets two guys who had a company called Tesla. Martin Eberhard is the guy who created the Tesla Corporation. He had seen an existing prototype of an electric car and he invested in it. But he basically decided that the guys involved were not serious about building and selling cars. So he brings in a friend, Mark Tarpenning. They hatch a broad plan to develop an electric roadster and they create Tesla in 2003. They do not have any money, but someone hooks them up with Elon and they get going. I am going to send you a bit here.
- [49:51]
Michael
Both Eberhard and Musk consider themselves to be the main founder of Tesla. In Eberhard's mind, he had come up with the idea, enlisted his friend Tarpenning, registered a company, chosen a name and gone out and found fund wonders. Elon called himself the chief architect in all kinds of things, but he wasn't, Eberhard says he was just a board member and investor. But in Musk's mind, he was the one who put Eberhard together with CTO JB Straubel and provided the funding needed to start the company. When I met Eberhard and Wright and Tarpenning, they had no intellectual property, no employees, nothing. All they had was a shell corporation.
- [50:23]
Peter
It's a pretty commonly held belief that Elon took over Tesla after its founding and then like started calling himself a founder. I actually think that's sort of a myth or at least like a HAC truth. These guys, they had a pre existing idea, but Elon got in so early. He was involved from the early planning stages in everything from design to tech.
- [50:45]
Michael
So it wasn't like there was a factory and like they were making products. It was like it was literally just an idea.
- [50:49]
Peter
He's right. When they said they didn't have ip, they didn't even have a patent. Right. Let alone like a prototype.
- [50:54]
Michael
Right.
- [50:54]
Peter
It's safe to say that he did not literally found the company in the sense that like the corporate entity he was established before he got involved, but that's literally all there was also.
- [51:04]
Michael
It sounds like he's really involved in the company from then on. So it's not like he just gave them money and was like, call me in five years when you have a car.
- [51:10]
Peter
He's super involved. I think that he probably pissed off Everhard with how involved he was, but he's involved nonetheless. Long time point of sensitivity for Elon. He got into disputes, legal disputes about being called an investor early on. Everhard is ousted a couple years later after much tension. Isaacson described them as very similar, like hard headed engineer types. Eberhard sued him for libel in 2008, which ended in a mutual non disparagement agreement that Musk violates constantly to this day.
- [51:42]
Michael
It's so weird that he hates this Eberhard guy, but he doesn't hate Thiel and the other guys that pushed him out of his company.
- [51:46]
Peter
You'll see, you'll see. Just read this bit.
- [51:48]
Michael
Eberhard, after being ousted, launched a little website called Tesla Founders Blog where he vented his frustrations about money Musk and accused the company of trying to root out and destroy any of its heart that might still be beating. Board members asked him to tone it down, which didn't work. And then Tesla's lawyer threatened to withdraw his stock options, which did. There are certain people who occupy a demon's corner of Musk's headspace. They trigger him, turn him dark and rouse a cold anger. His father is number one. But somewhat oddly, Martin Eberhard, who is hardly a household name, is second. Getting involved with Eberhard was the worst mistake I ever made in my career. Musk said. That's how I talk about getting involved with a bougie in New Jersey, a bougie lawyer.
- [52:28]
Peter
I was in New York City at the time when we went into business, when we permanently intertwined our fates.
- [52:33]
Michael
You had no ip. You had nothing.
- [52:35]
Peter
I had shitloads of ip dude swimming an ip. I think it's very clear that Eberhard A talked a bunch of shit early on and B wants to undermine the image of Elon as a founder of Tesla. And they're sort of both arguing over it. The argument over who's the founder is sort of beside the point, right? Like they both have a real claim to that word, whatever it might mean. But yeah, it just seems like it's two egomaniacs who hate each other.
- [53:03]
Michael
This is an everyone sucks here situation, to put it in Reddit.
- [53:06]
Peter
And again, very similar to SpaceX. What really sets Tesla apart is the extent to which he pursues vertical integration Isaacson says one of the most important decisions that Elon Musk made about Tesla was that it should make its own key components, rather than piecing together a car with hundreds of components from independent suppliers.
- [53:23]
Michael
That's also why it was hella expensive, probably too.
- [53:25]
Peter
Yeah, yeah. Getting off the ground.
- [53:27]
Michael
Right?
- [53:27]
Peter
Yeah. This not only allows for control of costs and control of supply chain logistics, but also it prevents their competitors from easily replicating what they're doing. If you're Ford, you can't just call up Tesla's suppliers and be like, we'll have what they're having. Right. Because Tesla is the supplier. Right. So the first car that they produce is called the Roadster. It launches in 2007. It's a two door sports car and it's meant to be everything that, that a two door sports car traditionally is just electric. The idea is that you put out this expensive sports car and it's sort of like proof of concept. Your sort of dream car could be electric. So you get some publicity, you sell a few of these, and then you have the cash to produce a more affordable version which you can sell to the mass market.
- [54:14]
Michael
And also, I wonder, I do think Elon was important to this because he was cool. He was seen as cool. And electric cars at the time were like hippies and kind of like a joke, like a punchline.
- [54:24]
Peter
And that was very intentional. Like, they were like, this needs to be cool in a way that electric cars have not been. But also he had a knack for certain types of pr. They got like celebrities on their wait list. George Clooney was on the waitlist. Schwarzenegger was the governor of California at the time, which is where the factory was. He's at the prototype unveiling. So this puts them on the map. They only sell like 2,500 of these. But the point wasn't to sell a ton of.
- [54:49]
Michael
Right.
- [54:50]
Peter
In 2012, they launch the Model S, which was their attempt at a fully electric family sedan. It's more affordable than the Roadster. It's still expensive. Base cost is like 57 grand. But the Model S gets some great reviews. It sells very well, and so now they're sort of a household name.
- [55:11]
Michael
Yeah.
- [55:11]
Peter
Brief interlude. The factories where they, like, make all their shit. Elon calls them gigafactories. And the worst part part about reading this book is, like, he's obviously into this nerd shit and thinks it's cool. The, like, giant arms that the SpaceX rockets sit in. He calls that contraption Mechazilla.
- [55:33]
Michael
Okay.
- [55:34]
Peter
And, like, you're just sort of forced to deal with this as the book goes on where Isaacson is like Mechazilla and, like, you can tell that, like, Isaacson kind of thinks it's charming or something. It's like, so embarrassing and cringy.
- [55:47]
Michael
I'll bet he had to cut like 300 Lord of the Rings references. Yeah, like, oh, you call your conference room Tom Bombadil.
- [55:53]
Peter
This is actually like an interesting blind spot for Isaacson that I think is material. And I'm not just trying to dunk. He doesn't understand that Elon is cringe. I think he sort of takes for granted that Elon is kind of like funny and cool in a way that he has this appeal that he doesn't. Here's a really good example I'm gonna send you.
- [56:15]
Michael
His humor has many levels. The lowest is his puerile affection for poop emojis, fart sounds programmed into the Tesla and other discharges of bathroom humor. Say the voice command open butthole to the console in a Tesla and it opens the electric charging port at the rear of the vehicle. He also has a mordant, ironic strand of humor, demonstrated by a poster on the wall of his cubicle at SpaceX. It shows a twinkling dark blue sky with a shooting star. When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. It reaches reads, unless it's really a meteor hurtling to the earth, which will destroy all life, then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteorite. Oh, God. I'm like in an Airbnb by the airport.
- [56:57]
Peter
Like, Isaacson is like, yeah, he's got these poop jokes, but then he has this unbelievably hilarious, ironic sense of humor. It's like, no, these are just different types of cringe ass. Try hard humor, dude.
- [57:09]
Michael
He has two kinds of Family Circus cartoons that he recites. Jesus Christ.
- [57:14]
Peter
It's very important to understanding Elon Musk that he is a cringe ass dork. Right? But Isaacson is not young or hip enough to understand it.
- [57:23]
Michael
And also a lot of his joking seems to be very approval seeking. It's sort of simpy.
- [57:27]
Peter
It's pathetic, dude.
- [57:28]
Michael
Yeah.
- [57:28]
Peter
And I think it's even like, changed our perspectives on other billionaires. Like, now I look at Bezos and he's like, obviously on the, like, light steroids and like, shaving his head and stuff. And I'm like, oh, are you doing this for me, Jeff? You want me to think you're cool.
- [57:43]
Michael
Or mark Zuckerberg going on Joe Rogan, right?
- [57:46]
Peter
Like Zuckerberg with a big gold chain. I'm like, zuck, if you want me to like you, just tell me. Elon has almost like fostered, like, brought about this era of like the cringe billionaire. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about one of the big. Elon promises self driving vehicles.
- [58:05]
Michael
God.
- [58:06]
Peter
He starts pushing this in the mid 2010s. I'm going to send this to you.
- [58:11]
Michael
As with his other mission driven obsessions, including travel to Mars, he made what would turn out to be absurd predictions about timing. On his October 2016 call with reporters, he declared that by the end of the following year, a Tesla would be able to drive from Los Angeles to New York without the need of a single touch on the wheel. When you want your car to return, tap summon on your phone, he said. Said it will eventually find you, even if you are on the other side of the country. I look forward to getting fucking rear ended by one of these.
- [58:38]
Peter
We are building towards a future where a lot of people are gonna die and like, your last thought's gonna be Elon Musk killed me.
- [58:45]
Michael
Yeah.
- [58:46]
Peter
This sucks so bad, dude. There's one incident that Isaacson does not discuss. In 2016, Tesla released a video of a car driving ostensibly by itself. The video has text reading, the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself. Musk tweeted the video saying there was no human input at all, but the car was following a predetermined route that they established by doing a 3D map of the area, which is not something the Tesla software is inherently capable of. And during recording, it crashed once, which they edited out. This was initially reported in the New York Times in 2021, and then it was confirmed when testimony from a 2018 deposition of the Director of Autonomy was leaked.
- [59:41]
Michael
Again, the actual story in the biography here is like, this is someone who's willing to lie to boost the stock price and like, get positive pr.
- [59:50]
Peter
No, the story is that this is what's necessary to make the magic happen, happen. Sent you a little bit more.
- [59:55]
Michael
Almost every year, Musk would make another prediction. That full self driving was just a year or two away. When will someone be able to buy one of your cars and literally just take their hands off the wheel and go to sleep and wake up and find that they've arrived? Chris Anderson asked him at a ted talk in May 2017. That's about two years, Musk replied in an interview with Kara swisher. At the Code Conference at the end of 2018, he said Tesla was on track to do it next year. In early 2019, he doubled down, down. I think we'll be feature complete, full self driving this year, he declared on a podcast with Ark Invest. I would say I'm certain of that. That's not a question mark.
- [60:27]
Peter
That is not a question mark.
- [60:29]
Michael
Yeah. Jesus.
- [60:29]
Peter
Isaacson says as Musk pursued his autonomous vehicle ideas, he stubbornly and repeatedly exaggerated the autopilot capability of Tesla cars. That was dangerous. It led some drivers to think they could ride in a Tesla without paying much attention. Of course there have been wrongful death lawsuits and so forth from this. Isaacson does not dive into it, which cause he doesn't bike, is part and parcel with my primary critique here, which is if your whole book is predicated on the idea, the whole thesis is that there's a trade off. Yes, he's a total freak and an asshole, but it produces these results. Then like you actually need to talk about the details of that trade off, right? You actually need to talk about the wrongful death lawsuits.
- [61:13]
Michael
His statements arguably have like gotten people killed, right? You see a press conference with him, you're like, oh, it's safe for me to play on my phone while I'm on the freeway. And then you fucking kill somebody.
- [61:20]
Peter
I mean, look, Tesla has paid out money to people because of these lawsuits, right?
- [61:24]
News Reporter
Oh yeah.
- [61:24]
Peter
The fact that Elon Musk has not been held personally responsible is most mostly just an artifact of our criminal laws.
- [61:30]
Michael
And our quirky right wing legislators. Is quirky the right word? I say quirky.
- [61:35]
Peter
In 2019, Musk hosts an Autonomy day where the goal is to provide a demonstration of a partially self driving car. They're able to get the car to do like a short predetermined route and then he says once again that full autonomy is about a year away. After which he says Tesla will unleash a fleet of 1 million robo taxis for public use. I think this is a good place to talk about his history of broken promises and his sort of general willingness to bullshit the public. Isaacson, you can tell by the excerpts, is aware of this, but he sort of sugarcoats it, right? He says about the autonomy so stuff Musk mixed, as he often did, vision and hype. Even in his own head, he blurred the line between what he believed and what he wanted to believe.
- [62:17]
Michael
Yeah, vision and hype are both just ways of saying bullshit. He blurred bullshit and bullshit.
- [62:20]
Peter
This makes it seem like, almost like it's not conscious. Or, like, it's not done to deceive. Like, oh, he's just a dreamer. He's just dreaming. But I think it's beyond that. He knows he's bullshitting. He said in 2018 that they were going to place small rocket thrusters around a new roadster model and that it could potentially fly. He said that the. Do you remember when he said the cybertruck might be able to double as a boat?
- [62:43]
Michael
Yeah, briefly. To act briefly as a boat.
- [62:46]
Peter
Yeah. He also, like, he bullshits about the Mars timeline, Of course, in 2011, he said we'd have a man on Mars within a decade. As a best case, 15 to 20. As a worst case in 2022, he tweeted that he hoped to have men on Mars in 2029. Just this year, he said there'd be an unmanned mission to Mars in 2026, which, if I pause long enough while speaking, will be right now.
- [63:12]
Michael
Also, didn't he famously say that the COVID pandemic would be over in April of 2020, like, in March of 2020?
- [63:17]
Peter
But, yeah, no, like, there's a lot of evidence that Elon knowingly lies to the public with frequency, and I think you have to reckon with that.
- [63:24]
Michael
And he does it for financial gain, too. Like, this pumps up his stock price. It's not like he's doing this out of, like, the goodness of his heart, right? Like, even if it is unconscious, he's making money. Money on these fucking lies.
- [63:33]
Peter
Like, to wrap up the sort of car portion of this. I think most people are aware that Tesla's had a rough couple years. We will talk about Elon's political shit in Part two, but obviously he has alienated what was once his primary target demographic of, like, environmentalist lives. Yeah, yeah. That has resulted in pretty notable sales declines. And on top of that, if you want to get a little more businessy, competition has gotten a lot more robust. That has put pressure on Tesla's margins, which were once its strong point. Then you have the complete flop of the cybertruck, launched a couple years ago. Just the ugliest piece of shit in history. It has sold something like 50,000 in the entire country.
- [64:13]
Michael
There's no other physical object that screams I am an asshole like a cybertruck. There's no T shirt you can wear. There's no other thing you can buy. It's like, I'm a huge dick.
- [64:24]
Peter
There was a cybertrude truck in our local, like, Target parking lot, and I saw, like, multiple people laughing and taking pictures. There's no other car where people will just demonstrate visible disgust.
- [64:35]
Michael
That's what I do when I see them. I try to make sure they see me being like, bro.
- [64:39]
Peter
Despite these struggles, Tesla's stock price has remained high. The company is worth one and a half trillion dollars. And that is mostly because Elon continues to weave various tales for investors. One of them is autonomous driving and the prospect of robo taxis. But the other is humanoid robots.
- [65:01]
Michael
Oh, that's a Tesla thing. I thought that was like a separate company.
- [65:03]
Peter
This is under Tesla, so there's a chapter in this book called Optimus is Born. We haven't talked about the format of this book, but it's sort of semi chronological where he's going approximately chronologically, but also bouncing back and forth between the companies.
- [65:17]
Michael
Like this podcast will.
- [65:18]
Peter
Yeah, yeah. But he bounces back and forth so much that there are 90 chapters, so each one just like a few pages. It's a nightmare, dude. Isaacson covers the beginnings of this initiative, this humanoid robot initiative, when he talks about Tesla's AI day in 2021. The big announcement is this humanoid robot named Optimus.
- [65:41]
Michael
Even though it's like kind of a.
- [65:42]
Peter
Cringe name, as you might expect, they did not have a working prototype at the time. Instead, they dressed an actress up like the robot and she dance around on stage.
- [65:52]
Michael
Really?
- [65:53]
Peter
Yep. Again, the chapter is called Optimus is Born, but the robot does not exist.
- [65:59]
Michael
Does he say why I would want a humanoid robot?
- [66:03]
Peter
Like, what is the purpose? Yes, you will see. Musk gave one directive. It was to be a humanoid robot. In other words, it was supposed to look like a person rather than the mechanical contraption with wheels or four legs like Boston Dynamics and others were making. If we're able to produce a general purpose robot robot that could observe you and learn how to do a task that would supercharge the economy to a degree. That's insane. He said, would it though? This is a mustquote. Humanoid robots will uncork the economy to quasi infinite levels. The well known concept of quasi infinity, folks.
- [66:39]
Michael
Also, isn't this just like he wants a personal assistant? That just seems like a weird rich guy thing.
- [66:42]
Peter
At no point in the book does the phrase robot butler appear. But it's robot butlers. There's no other way around, right? Musk says this means a future of abundance, a future where there is no poverty. We can afford to have a universal basic income.
- [66:56]
Michael
Wouldn't a robot do the opposite?
- [66:57]
Peter
You're listening to Jesus Christ himself speak, okay? Show some respect. It really is a fundamental transformation of Civilization. Recently he said there will be billions of them.
- [67:09]
Michael
His entire role in public life now is making poverty worse. He's like cutting fucking food stamps. So whenever these guys are like, we can solve poverty, we'll solve poverty now, bitch.
- [67:16]
Peter
Just because he cut USA and can't killed 10 million people doesn't mean that his dream of robot butlers that do surgery is not real.
- [67:24]
Michael
Michael, this is again, the vision thing. He's promising a vision. Like, I'm about to become a good person.
- [67:28]
Peter
Once my mass murder spree is over, you'll all see how nice I am.
- [67:32]
Michael
What would you even do with a robot butler? I would have it chop sweet potatoes for me. But then it would just sit idle in the corner like my fucking robot vacuum does now.
- [67:39]
Peter
I would become one of the problematic consumers in Wall E. Just like my robot just bringing me soda and chips all. And I'm just like playing video games.
- [67:51]
Michael
Cause like, what problem does this even solve? Yeah, you have to like get up from the couch every once in a while to like fizz some water and then sit back down. But like, is that a major thing? Like a major issue in society?
- [68:01]
Peter
I mean, look, obviously if there were like real humanoid robots that could do shit, it would be very useful professional stuff, I guess.
- [68:08]
Michael
Not for like personal.
- [68:09]
Peter
Well, I would make it clean my house all the time.
- [68:11]
Michael
That would actually be kind of nice.
- [68:12]
Peter
And then I would use that free time to think of ideas. So, you know, big picture. As concern about the core business of Tesla is rising, he very loudly pivots to this big new thing that's going to change the world. Right. It's hard not to see through this where car sales are down. And he's like, car sales don't matter. Robot butler's for everybody.
- [68:34]
Michael
And also gets a bunch of earned media from it too. Yeah.
- [68:36]
Peter
Elon has been interested in AI for a while, and Optimus is sort of an offshoot of this. He helped found OpenAI back in 2014 with Sam oh Altman. Although they've been at odds in recent years, he resigned from the board in 2018. Isaacson says that Elon helped found OpenAI because of, quote, the possibility that someone might create intentionally or inadvertently AI that could be harmful to humans.
- [69:01]
Michael
Yeah, I'm really worried about the next pandemic. That's why I'm creating super AIDS in my laboratory.
- [69:04]
Peter
Elon says that this is all based on a conversation he has with Larry Page at Google, who is working at. Who is working on AI. And he decides that Larry Page is not sufficiently concerned about the prospect of AI turning on humanity or damaging humanity or whatever. And based on the conversation he relays, it actually does sound like Larry Page is a psychopath who says like, oh yeah, well, who cares if computers take over? It's just the next stage in evolution.
- [69:30]
Michael
Jesus Christ, let my robot butler live my life for me.
- [69:34]
Peter
So when the Optimus idea comes about out. Isaacson says this about an ultimate expression.
- [69:40]
Michael
Of safe AI, especially for someone who imbibed sci fi as a kid, would be creating a humanoid robot. One that could process visual inputs and learn to perform tasks without violating Asimov's Law that a robot shall not harm humanity or any human. While OpenAI and Google were focusing on creating text based chatbots, Musk decided to focus on artificial intelligence systems that operated in the physical world world, such as robots and cars.
- [70:05]
Peter
Why would AI in the form of a physical robot be safer than like a chatbot?
- [70:11]
Michael
It seems significantly worse because then it can like slap you in the face.
- [70:13]
Peter
Like, how is this safer than a chatbot? This is just a chatbot that can physically kick your ass, right? Like even in Ex Machina, the robot stabs him.
- [70:24]
Michael
It's tidying your house by pushing you out the window. Like you're actually detritus.
- [70:27]
Peter
The robot decides that you are dirty and then you're in a fight for your life.
- [70:31]
Michael
Or those insane cases where chatbots have sort of encouraged people to kill themselves. This could be like tying the noose.
- [70:37]
Peter
He's like, oh, I'm interested in a safe AI and what's safer than a robot? And Isaacson is like, yeah, what's safer than a robot? And just writes it down like, a lot of things, dude, a lot of things are safer than a robot. I think Isaacson buys the pitch that at his core, Elon does in fact simply want to help save humanity from the these perceived threats. But I think that gets it wrong. There's a great quote from Sam Altman in a New Yorker interview where he said Elon desperately wants the world to be saved, but only if he can be the one to save it.
- [71:10]
Michael
Right? That's like with all these guys, it's all an ego thing. That's the Mars thing. There's no fucking reason to go to Mars. But it's just like he wants to be able to say, I sent people to Mars.
- [71:17]
Peter
And yeah, I think that's right. Like Elon isn't interested in saving people. He's interested in being the savior, right? And that's why whenever he does something, he counters couches it in those terms. He's founding SpaceX to give us access to Mars and save civilization. He's founding Tesla to save us from fossil fuel dependency. He's founding OpenAI to save us from being destroyed by AI. He's buying Twitter to save free speech. Everything gets pitched in these terms and I think Isaacson just sort of buys it. He just sort of buys it. Even though in my mind it's just obvious bullshit, when clearly I think it's.
- [71:48]
Michael
A story he's telling himself. Right? Because nobody wants to think that they're a piece of shit. But there's no reason for a journalist to look at this and just, like, repeat it.
- [71:55]
Peter
Here is a quote about these robots from the latest Tesla earnings call.
- [72:01]
Michael
My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army? Not control, but a strong influence influence. I don't feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence.
- [72:21]
Peter
Not disconcerting at all that he's talking about controlling a robot army. And so I think you see this stuff and it's kind of obvious that his concern isn't saving humanity, it's power. It's having leverage over humanity. Think about how wrong Isaacson is getting this right. He believes in Elon's grand aims. His whole thesis is like, yeah, he's a damaged asshole, but he's doing these incredible things. And now Elon is openly like, I want control of this robot army.
- [72:51]
Michael
Right?
- [72:52]
Peter
So Elon has some smaller projects in the pre 2020ish era, and we're going to go over them quickly. I think the way that Isaacson covers them is indicative because they both get covered very briefly in a chapter or two. The first is Neuralink. This is Musk's company dedicated to creating a computer brain interface, which would be achieved by an implant in the brain.
- [73:17]
Michael
Which previously could only be achieved by getting a vaccine. A rich person putting a microchip inside of you.
- [73:22]
Peter
So Musk unveils an early version of the device that he has in mind. In 2020, it's implanted into a pig and you could watch a computer pick up her brain signals. Musk said I could have a neural link right now and you wouldn't know. Maybe I do.
- [73:39]
Michael
In fairness, if Elon Musk said he was being controlled by a pig this entire time, I would believe him.
- [73:43]
Peter
Right.
- [73:44]
Michael
What is the act actual purpose of this thing in my brain.
- [73:48]
Peter
So they teach monkeys to play Pong with their brains. So there's one purpose right there. So write that down, Michael.
- [73:55]
Michael
I can teach a monkey video games. Okay?
- [73:56]
Peter
Isaacson barely spends time on this, and he skips the fact that the testing on monkeys was an awful dystopian nightmare. Yeah, this stuff came out after the book was ready for publication, I think. So I don't know how much claim Isaacson deserves here, but it was reported that a bunch of monkeys died, okay? Musk said online that the deaths were not the result of the implant and that they purposefully chose subjects close to death for ethical reasons. Both of those things are untrue. Several monkeys were euthanized after complications from the implant. Wired talked to an employee about the close to death comment, and the employee said it was ridiculous, if not a complete fabrication. The monkeys needed a year of training before they could get the implant. So they could not have been chosen if they were close to death.
- [74:41]
Michael
Those monkeys were no angels.
- [74:43]
Peter
Again, Isaacson talks about Musk's dishonesty as if he's just sort of like always bloviating, making these big promises and he's like, well, it's not entirely dishonest. Right? He just says unrealistic things, but he believes them to some degree. But he doesn't really explore things like this that are just flat out lies to the public.
- [75:03]
Michael
Also, even if this information was not available, you should know that this guy has a pattern of over promising things and lying in these tests. Right? They lied in the prototype of self driving cars. So if they're having this prototype of monkeys playing Pong, you should just assume that it's a fucking lie to get publicity. Like he does this over and over again.
- [75:20]
Peter
Right.
- [75:20]
Michael
Also, what if my robot butler learns.
- [75:23]
Peter
To control me using the neuralink?
- [75:24]
Michael
Then I'm cleaning up after my Robot.
- [75:26]
Peter
Butler Black Mirror episode. Your robot is making you play Pong with your brain. The other thing that Isaacson spends almost no time on is the hyperloop. The hyperloop, of course, an idea Elon had for a tunnel where a car would descend into a sort of sled that would be shot through the tunnel using magnets.
- [75:46]
Michael
Well, there were a couple different ideas because there was also one where you would be in a pod and the pod would be going through, and then eventually it became you're in the car. He like watered it down like 50 times.
- [75:54]
Peter
That's right. Musk publishes a white paper about the idea in 2013, but nothing really comes of sort of devolves from there. And you said it gets watered down. I think that's putting it pretty lightly. It devolves from there into a more mundane plan to build tunnels more efficiently.
- [76:13]
Michael
Right.
- [76:13]
Peter
And this is how the boring company comes about. This is how Isaacson describes it.
- [76:20]
Michael
On a trip to Hong Kong in late 2016, Musk had a jammed day of meetings and, as was often the case, needed some minutes of downtime when he could recharge, check his phone, and just stare blankly. He was doing that stare when John McNeil, Tesla's president of sales and marketing, came over to break him out of his trance. Did you ever notice that cities are built in 3D, but the roads are only built in 2D? Musk finally said. McNeil looked puzzled. You could build roads in 3D by building tunnels under cities. Musk explained. This is why I'm so skeptical of the stories where people are like, oh, he had such technical proficiency. Because this is. This is like a child.
- [76:55]
Peter
No, but this is what's funny about Musk is that, like, I do believe that the stories of his technical proficiency, at least some of them, but I believe that it has led him to a place where he also occasionally rediscovers really basic, simple things and thinks that he's the first person to think of it. It's like he didn't invent tunnels just now. Did you think that you just invented tunnels? Right now we should do a digit.
- [77:19]
Michael
Underneath a city that's, like, really big. We should pick, like, a city like Boston to try it out.
- [77:23]
Peter
I don't know, but what would you call the dig? Maybe Isaacson thinks that this anecdote speaks for itself, but it is sort of weird to just glide past Musk acting like he's the first person to think of tunnels.
- [77:36]
Michael
Right?
- [77:36]
Peter
Like, surely you have something to say about this. Right?
- [77:39]
Michael
And also, where did the conversation go after that? Right? Because you'd think this guy who's like a functioning adult would be like, ah.
- [77:44]
Peter
You notice, Elon, how you had a word to describe what you're thinking of, and that word is tunnel. That's because they exist already.
- [77:50]
Michael
I immediately got a mental image. How did that happen?
- [77:53]
Peter
So when Musk is initially discussing the hyperloop, he's discussing this really futuristic thing that could span the length of California or the Northeast Corridor, and then it turns into what he ends up calling future tunnels that would have sleds but move slower than he originally envisioned. The only thing that is ever actually built is a 1.7 mile tunnel in Las Vegas. There are no magnets. It is a little tunnel with Teslas in it. We're gonna watch some news coverage.
- [78:24]
Michael
Wait, are we?
- [78:26]
Peter
Hell, yeah, dude.
- [78:29]
News Reporter
As you descend the escalator into the loop station, you see the Teslas waiting to whisk you into a tunnel 43ft below below ground. Now, you might think, all right, it's like a subway, but this is more like a highway underground. And because it's Las Vegas, this is also a thrill ride.
- [78:48]
Michael
The Las Vegas, the cars are going.
- [78:50]
Peter
So slow, it's crazy.
- [78:51]
News Reporter
Thrill ride, park, light and sound show.
- [78:54]
Michael
They have to speed up the footage to make it look like it's going.
- [78:56]
News Reporter
Back across a sprawling convention center.
- [79:00]
Michael
It's a car driving in a production center.
- [79:02]
Peter
It can be a 45 minute walk from one end to the other.
- [79:05]
News Reporter
What the loop gets you there in less than two minutes. Here's how it works. You enter the station and call for a Tesla.
- [79:11]
Peter
The system operates like an Uber or a lift where you have an app on your phone. You say, I'm here, I want to go there. Car comes up, has an identifier on it that matches with what is on the app on your phone.
- [79:23]
News Reporter
Passengers don't have to make it doesn't.
- [79:25]
Michael
Even just run on a set schedule.
- [79:26]
News Reporter
There are multiple exits. You go directly to your station of choice. The convention center has three. But plans are in the works to build a loop system. Citywide.
- [79:39]
Construction on this loop was completed in two years for a cost of less than $53 million. Including the stations, it's designed to handle 4,400 people an hour with 62 cars. Right now with drivers. But soon there'll be a. And what happens?
- [79:56]
Michael
They need drivers to go to a fucking straight line in a tunnel.
- [79:58]
News Reporter
Likely won't stay in Vegas.
- [80:01]
Peter
Any place that has congestion issues needs to move people and really can't just keep expanding roadways.
- [80:10]
Michael
Why hasn't anybody thought of this before?
- [80:11]
Peter
I want to look at a system like this because it really makes a difference. God, this is just a little tunnel. They're flashing different colored lights in the tunnel. And so when she's like, it's part thrill ride, all she's showing is cars moving through a tunnel at like 10 miles an hour with flashing colored lights.
- [80:33]
Michael
From one end of a convention center to the other end of a convention center.
- [80:37]
Peter
And they're like, it only costs $50 million. Yeah, that's because it's just a mile of tunnel.
- [80:43]
Michael
What's also so amazing to me is like, why does the media run interference for this? Because, like, a much better story is just like the city spent money on this thing. That is dumb, right? But like she is basically operating as an advertisement, part thrill ride.
- [80:58]
Peter
What are you talking about? She's describing things to you that you've seen a thousand times as if no one's ever seen them before in history.
- [81:05]
Michael
It's a car in a fucking tunnel.
- [81:07]
Peter
Going like it's a car in a tunnel, but this one is underground and there are cars in it.
- [81:13]
Michael
I just noticed that the Kryon is Tesla powered loop tackles traffic. It's from one end of a convention center to another end. It's not tackling traffic.
- [81:22]
Peter
Well, it's tackling.
- [81:23]
Michael
I mean, it's tackling foot traffic.
- [81:25]
Peter
I want to talk about what I think is the biggest substantive omission from the book. Substantive, which is Elon's treatment of workers. I'm going to send you a bit.
- [81:35]
Michael
The United Auto Workers had failed to unionize Tesla's Fremont plant partly because of what the National Labor Relations Board deemed to be illegal anti union actions by the company company. And partly because its workers, as at the other new electric vehicle companies, Lucid and Rivian, got stock options, not usually part of union contracts.
- [81:52]
Peter
This makes it seem as though the fact that these workers got stock options somehow prevents them from unionizing. But that's not true. If you're in a union, you don't automatically forfeit stock options. That could be part of the union contract that they're allowed. It could be part of a union contract that they're forbidden. Anything can be part of a union contract contract. What actually happened was that during the union vote, Elon tweeted, quote, nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Which the NLRB said was illegal because it sounded a lot like he was threatening to eliminate their stock options if they unionized. It really seems like Isaacson doesn't understand what happened happened here and that he doesn't bother to look into it at all. Tesla was also said to have targeted union activists for termination prohibited workers from talking about wages and working conditions, which is illegal. Isaacson doesn't talk about any of it. He also does not touch on the discrimination lawsuits that came out of Tesla factories in the late 2010s, which we've actually discussed before.
- [83:00]
Michael
Egregious stuff.
- [83:01]
Peter
Yeah, really egregious. The California Civil Rights Department alleged that black employees in the Fremont, California, California Tesla factory were subjected to discriminatory treatment and pay and promotions. There are allegations that supervisors use the N word and other like, all sorts of bigotry. The eeoc, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, brought a similar case alleging extensive discrimination. One man was awarded over $100 million initially based on the severity of the treatment. There were several lawsuits filed in 2021 alleging rampant sexual harassment. Assessment. No mention from Isaacson at all. At one point, he mentions in passing that the injury rate at Tesla factories was about 30% higher than the rest of the industry, which is based on a report from like 2017 or so. But he doesn't dig into it. Why? Right, right. What's happening? Is it still true? Like, what do we know?
- [83:51]
Michael
It's also, it's always telling who these authors speak to as sources. Right. It sounds like he's reached out to these other kind of CEO that Musk worked with. But why didn't you reach out to someone who worked there? Why didn't you reach out to somebody at the uaw? You could have also reached out to people who were on the ground in these disputes and could have talked about them.
- [84:07]
Peter
I just don't think he's interested in this shit. Which again, I think it's like a fatal flaw in his book.
- [84:12]
Michael
Because the thesis of the book is like, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, right? And so you're not gonna look into the eggs all that much. You're like, well, it's just another thing that he did.
- [84:20]
Peter
Right? But that's the thing. It's like, how can your whole. And I know I'm repeating myself, but how can your whole body book be about the trade off between the broken eggs and the omelet? And you're not even going to glance at the eggs.
- [84:31]
Michael
Exactly. It's not like he made Terminator 2, something for which any number of eggs is totally worth it.
- [84:36]
Peter
One of the best quotes in the book comes from an employee who is berated by Elon after not knowing certain information. And Isaacson reveals that the employee may have been distracted by the recent death of his infant daughter.
- [84:50]
Michael
Oh, wow.
- [84:51]
Peter
Elon himself, himself has lost a child. One of his babies died of SIDS when he was in his first marriage. Isaacson talks to the employee about it and the guy says, quote, elon cares a lot about humanity, but humanity in more of a very macro sense. I think it's such a good encapsulation of it. Like, Elon is not truly kind to anyone in his life. And yet here are all these people who buy into his vision about wanting to better humanity. And maybe if you just took a step back and you looked at how he treats the people around him, you'd conclude that the simplest explanation is that he doesn't actually care about humanity.
- [85:32]
Michael
Right.
- [85:32]
Peter
And it speaks to like the world that he envisions. Because when are we going to suddenly manifest this utopian world where workers shouldn't be treated like that? Right. Does Elon Musk believe in a future where one day we don't need to treat workers like that? No, he doesn't believe in that future. It's something that Isaacson doesn't think about at all.
- [85:53]
Michael
It's kind of like the full self driving. It's always 10 years down the line, this care for humanity is going to happen.
- [85:59]
Peter
I have skipped one thing, which is the women in Musk's life.
- [86:03]
Michael
Yeah, I was going to ask because we're at the part of the Wikipedia article where it should be like personal life.
- [86:07]
Peter
He's had four prominent relationships. His first wife, Justine, his second wife, Tallulah Riley, and then he dated Amber Heard and Grimes.
- [86:17]
Michael
I forgot about Amber Heard.
- [86:18]
Peter
Jesus Christ. Think that these relationships are particularly interesting in and of themselves in like the context of the Elon biography. But I do think that Isaacson fumbles them enough that we should mention it. Everyone in Elon's life says Justine was crazy and toxic. Just about everyone says the same thing about Amber Heard. But then we are told outright that he's verbally abusive in ways similar to his father. Right. There's a bit where Elon nearly calls off the wedding with Justine because she won't sign a last second prenup. His family and friends portray it like, oh, he seeks out these toxic and chaotic women and it's like, okay, maybe. But it sort of feels like a subset of this mode of analysis where Musk himself has no agency when he's doing shitty things. Like when he's being verbally abusive to these women, it's this like the output of his father's abuse. But when they're being toxic towards him, these women, like his mother, his mother says about his first wife that she had no redeeming qualities. Like, I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, I do not believe the story being told by Elon Musk and his best friends and family. You know what I mean? Because I don't think that they are reliable narrators.
- [87:33]
Michael
It is very funny to be like this narcissistic man child with temper issues, happens to have dated two women in a row who are just like, crazy and toxic.
- [87:44]
Yeah. Weird how that happens.
- [87:46]
Peter
As I have mentioned before, for Elon's extended media honeymoon really comes to an end in 2018, when a series of humiliating mishaps changes the course of his life and public image forever. All that and more on the next if books can kill.
- [88:03]
Michael
Oh, yeah, we're ending with a cliffhanger.
- [88:05]
Peter
Yeah, I thought. I thought that would keep people in.
- [88:07]
Michael
Tune in to find out all of the stuff you know already.
- [88:11]
Peter
That's right.
- [88:13]
Michael
Bum.
- [88:15]
Bum, bum bum bum bum bum bum, bum, bum, bum.