The author, a professional biographer, trailed Elon Musk for two years. Although he claims that Musk did not ask to, nor read the book prior to its publication, I still wonder if the author did not feel some obligation to portray him in what is generally an admiring and laudable light, perhaps out of fear of being sued for defamation.
The product of an abusive, conspiracy-toting estranged father and a Canadian beauty queen author, Musk enrolled in physics at Queens University but then transferred to U. Penn, graduating in physics and business. On the autism spectrum, he is obsessed with science fiction, particularly Douglas Adam’s’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. He has become obsessed with the fate of humankind, enthusiastically espousing space travel, colonization of Mars, the development of electric cars with driverless features, the risks of misinformation, and the need for more children. Disdaining regulation and government oversight, he made his first million at a Silicon Valley company writing code to digitize the Yellow Pages. Then the venture capitalists came knocking and he never looked back, becoming the boss of Tesla, a rocket launch company, a human-computer interlink, and then Twitter, and the richest man on earth.
Demanding and driven are gross understated adjectives when applied to Musk. He sets many unrealistic deadlines and to his credit often achieves them working incessantly, simplifying designs and ignoring government regulations. The overriding theme of all his efforts, at least as portrayed here, is an attempt to save humankind from extinction. He fires people frequently, goes on temper tantrums like a two year old, yet has met and helped many politicians, including Obama, Macron and Zelenskyy.
“Musk’s push to move faster, take more risks, break rules and question requirements allowed him to accomplish many feats such as sending humans into orbit, mass produce electric vehicles, and getting homeowners off the electric grid. It also meant that he did things- ignoring SEC requirements, ignoring California Covid restrictions that got him into trouble.”
“ A lot was hitting him that week. He was scheduled to give depositions in the Delaware court seeking to force him to close the Twitter deal, an [sic] SEC investigation, and a lawsuit challenging his Tesla compensation. He was also worried about controversies over the use of Starlink satellites in Ukraine, difficulties in reducing Tesla’s supply chain dependence on China, the launch of a Falcon 9 carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station, a West Coast launch the same day of a Falcon 9, carrying 52 satellites, and sundry personal issues regarding children, girlfriends and former wives.”
His conversations with the author and many other conversations are laced with unnecessary obscene words.
One obvious typo that I cannot now find is in relation to the in-vitro fertilization where an egg is referred to as male!
Has my opinion of Musk changed after reading this wordy long book?
I will give him some credit for trying to do the right thing, but I lack the imagination to see how colonizing Mars could ever become feasible.
6/10
Thanks, Din and The New Yorker.
The Passionate Reader 