Speaker 1: On the twenty twenty five CEO Performance Award to our
Speaker 1: founder and CEO Elon Musk, with over seventy five percent
Speaker 1: voting in favor.
Speaker 2: Approved.
Speaker 3: The world's richest man just got the world's biggest pay rise,
Speaker 3: with Tesla shareholders approving a one trillion dollar package for
Speaker 3: Elon Musk over the next decade. As he accepted the deal,
Speaker 3: Musk danced on stage with Tesla's humanoid robots and thanked
Speaker 3: his supporters, saying he super appreciated it.
Speaker 2: I super appreciate it. Thank you everyone.
Speaker 3: But as the company's stock is known to plummet when
Speaker 3: Musk intervenes in politics, questions remain about the damage his
Speaker 3: recent maneuverings will do to Tesla's future. I'm Ruby Jones,
Speaker 3: and you're listening to seven AM Today Power and Tech
Speaker 3: reporter at the Guy in Us Nick Robins early on
Speaker 3: what Mask has been up to since he left the
Speaker 3: White House and how a trillion dollar pay packer will
Speaker 3: shape his next moves. It's Tuesday, November eleven, so Nick.
Speaker 3: Last week Tesla shareholders approved this one trillion dollar compensation
Speaker 3: package for Elon Musk. It'll be the largest corporate payout
Speaker 3: in history. If he does manage to deliver on it.
Speaker 3: So to begin with, can you just tell me what
Speaker 3: he needs to do to get the trillion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's a lot of milestones that he actually
Speaker 4: needs to hit in order to get this pay package
Speaker 4: in full. He has to primarily guide Tesla to this
Speaker 4: eight point five trillion dollar market cap, which is about
Speaker 4: eight times what it's worth today. In addition to that,
Speaker 4: he has to get about four hundred billion dollars in
Speaker 4: actual earnings for four consecutive quarters. That's kind of a
Speaker 4: tall order since Tesla's actual earnings for this latest quarter
Speaker 4: were four point two billion in which was actually down
Speaker 4: from last year. So he would really have to turn
Speaker 4: things around in a very drastic way. It's going to
Speaker 4: take quite a lot of work to get Tesla to
Speaker 4: these marks.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, tell me then a bit more about what
Speaker 3: his vision for Tesla's future is where he wants to
Speaker 3: take the company.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, Musk has laid out this vision of the
Speaker 4: future where Tesla's products are basically central to how society runs.
Speaker 2: The first car that is specifically built for unsupervisedbul self
Speaker 2: driving to be a robotaxis called a cybercap It doesn't
Speaker 2: even have pedals or steering wheel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Tesla's cars would all drive themselves, and they can
Speaker 4: turn into autonomous robotaxis when you're not using them. There
Speaker 4: would be millions of these autonomous robotaxis in every city
Speaker 4: around the world. But there's this big other push that
Speaker 4: he's been making for Tesla, which is moving into robotics. Specifically,
Speaker 4: he wants to take the company's Optimus robot. That is
Speaker 4: this not yet mass produced, still very much tentative in
Speaker 4: its abilities, humanoid looking robot.
Speaker 2: I guess the way to think about it is that
Speaker 2: every human on earth is going to want to have
Speaker 2: their own personal R two D two C three po.
Speaker 4: So who wouldn't and he wants basically one of these
Speaker 4: in every home. He wants them in every factory. He's
Speaker 4: claimed that this is going to be the biggest product
Speaker 4: of all time.
Speaker 2: You know, people often talk about like eliminating poverty, giving
Speaker 2: everyone amazing medical care. Well, there's actually only one way
Speaker 2: to do that, and that's with the Optimius robot.
Speaker 4: He's gotten into some very kind of sign fiction predictions
Speaker 4: about how it could replace healthcare workers doctors. During the
Speaker 4: shareholder meeting, he said that it could replace prisons by
Speaker 4: having a robot follow people convicted of crimes around twenty
Speaker 4: four to seven, which sounded particularly dystopian. And then he
Speaker 4: has also even said that you might be able to
Speaker 4: download your consciousness into one of these robots in the future.
Speaker 3: Okay. And so this deal, seventy five percent of shareholders
Speaker 3: agree to it. So it seems like there's strong backing
Speaker 3: for Musk at the moment. Why is that, Well.
Speaker 4: Musk does have a huge amount of belief behind him
Speaker 4: from Tesla's shareholders and from the people who are involved
Speaker 4: in the companies that he runs. And part of this
Speaker 4: is that he's made a lot of money through these companies.
Speaker 4: He's made the people who work at these companies a
Speaker 4: lot of money. He's made a lot of very rich
Speaker 4: people even richer. He had the backing of the board
Speaker 4: as well, which is a board that's pretty personally and
Speaker 4: financially enmeshed in his success, and they lobbied very hard
Speaker 4: for him to get this compensation. By and large, seventy
Speaker 4: five percent of shareholders said we want this for him.
Speaker 4: We really want Elon focused specifically on this company and
Speaker 4: not on his other SpaceX neuralink x endeavors his political fixations.
Speaker 4: They wanted him dialed into Tesla specifically.
Speaker 3: And that's interesting because we know Elon Musk has not
Speaker 3: been totally focused on Tesla. There's all these other business
Speaker 3: interests that you mentioned, and then, of course he has
Speaker 3: also been incredibly active politically. So what impacts his political
Speaker 3: stance had on Tesla's value.
Speaker 4: It's been a challenge for Tesla. There was a Yale
Speaker 4: study published last month that found that between twenty twenty
Speaker 4: two and April of this year, Musk's political affiliations, his
Speaker 4: far right rhetoric, his backing of Donald Trump along with
Speaker 4: other far right political parties around the world, that had
Speaker 4: cost Tesla about a million car sales during that period
Speaker 4: of time. And then if you look at polling from consumers,
Speaker 4: you see that Tesla's brand loyalty just plummeted. Over the
Speaker 4: course of this year.
Speaker 1: Dozens of cyber trucks at a parking lot in Fort
Speaker 1: Lauderdale were spray painted with a vulgar term directed at
Speaker 1: Tesla owner Elon Musk. Some vandals recorded themselves in the act.
Speaker 4: There was a massive backlash that we saw over the
Speaker 4: summer and over earlier this year, where you had people
Speaker 4: burning Tesla's you had people attaching stickers to their cars
Speaker 4: saying I bought this before Elon went crazy.
Speaker 1: Tesla's are being torched across the country.
Speaker 3: Dealerships shot up and set on fire.
Speaker 4: There is a real and sizable sea change in the
Speaker 4: way that a lot of people who maybe once viewed
Speaker 4: to him as just sort of this tech entrepreneur, began
Speaker 4: to view Musk in recent years. But when he first
Speaker 4: stepped away from the White House, a lot of shareholders
Speaker 4: were really optimistic. Tesla's stock rose. They thought that maybe
Speaker 4: he would leave his politics behind and dial in on
Speaker 4: the company, and that really hasn't happened. He has been
Speaker 4: both very very vocal politically, but he has also been
Speaker 4: infusing his companies, especially Xai, with a lot of his
Speaker 4: political beliefs. So it seems like as much as he
Speaker 4: promised that maybe he was going to step away from
Speaker 4: some of his more divisive political activities, it kind of
Speaker 4: seems like he hasn't been able to.
Speaker 3: Solve himself coming up the artificial intelligence being shaped in
Speaker 3: Musk's image so Nick and April of this year, Elon
Speaker 3: Musk announced that he would be having back his time
Speaker 3: with the Trump administration and the Department of Government efficiency.
Speaker 3: That decision did come after the company it had a
Speaker 3: huge drop in sales. Tesla stock was pummeting, and at
Speaker 3: that moment in time, he said that he was done
Speaker 3: with politics, he was done with political spending. So since
Speaker 3: then has he stuck to that?
Speaker 4: No, I mean not, no, he hasn't. He has maybe
Speaker 4: spent less time physically in the White House, and he's
Speaker 4: not running doge anymore. But he's been extremely involved in politics.
Speaker 4: He's been very, very vocal about supporting far right causes
Speaker 4: around the globe. He tweets constantly about anti immigration views
Speaker 4: and election conspiracy is about attacking trans rights. He's been
Speaker 4: backing parties like Germany is alternative for deutsch Land, which
Speaker 4: has very explicit history of far right, anti immigration, anti
Speaker 4: Islam views. He has even had a kind of more
Speaker 4: ground activist level, been backing people like Tommy Robinson, the
Speaker 4: British far right anti immigration activists who claimed this week
Speaker 4: that Musk had bankrolled his entire legal defense over a
Speaker 4: terrorism charge. All you have to do is go on
Speaker 4: his Twitter feed and within seconds you'll see just how
Speaker 4: prominent this is as part of his online persona.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can we talk a little more about that because,
Speaker 3: as you are saying, it's really not about Elon Musk
Speaker 3: just sort of, you know, weighing in with his views
Speaker 3: on a certain thing. He owns x He's pursuing AI.
Speaker 3: So can we talk a bit more about how his
Speaker 3: businesses are becoming kind of infused with his beliefs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. And
Speaker 4: it's not only x as a social media platform. He's
Speaker 4: been working on Xai, which is his artificial intelligence company.
Speaker 4: One of the things that Musk has been worried about
Speaker 4: for a very long time is this idea that artificial
Speaker 4: intelligence could become too woke, and it's something that he
Speaker 4: frequently talks about.
Speaker 2: Well, like, the problem is essentially the woke mind virus
Speaker 2: retreated to Blue Sky. Yeah, but it's where they're just
Speaker 2: a self reinforcing lunatic.
Speaker 3: As sounds, they're all just triple masked.
Speaker 4: He was on Joe Rogan in the last couple of
Speaker 4: weeks and he went at length about this idea that
Speaker 4: if AI is programmed to think that diversity is more
Speaker 4: important than anything else, then there would be the possibility
Speaker 4: that in the future, when AI is more intelligent or
Speaker 4: more powerful, that it could decide that straight white men
Speaker 4: were just in essential for the world, and that the
Speaker 4: AI would then kill them.
Speaker 2: Every AI except groc is saying that basically straight white
Speaker 2: male should die and this was a problem and we
Speaker 2: should fix it.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that Musk has been building
Speaker 4: as part of his XAI company is this Wikipedia rival,
Speaker 4: which he calls Grockipedia after his chatbot, which is also
Speaker 4: called grock And for a long time, Musk has been very,
Speaker 4: very vocally opposed to Wikipedia, which he accuses of having
Speaker 4: this leftist bias and being too woke. So in building Grokipedia,
Speaker 4: he's tried to create this AI driven alternative version of
Speaker 4: Wikipedia which is more closely aligned to his views. Immediately,
Speaker 4: researches have said that there is just a whole raft
Speaker 4: of falsehoods and misleading information and a bunch of issues
Speaker 4: with it that make it an unreliable source. If you
Speaker 4: look at, for instance, the difference between Wikipedia articles and
Speaker 4: Grockipedia articles on some subjects, you can see that there
Speaker 4: are right wing narratives in Grokipedia about the slave trade,
Speaker 4: about immigration, about trans writes. One example is that there
Speaker 4: was an entry on Britain First, which Wikipedia describes as
Speaker 4: a neo fascist party, and Grakipedia refers to it as
Speaker 4: a patriotic political party.
Speaker 3: And we've spoken about how at times Musk's beliefs have
Speaker 3: hurt his businesses. We spoke about the impact on Tesla,
Speaker 3: but shareholders there they believe in him. They've ultimately chosen
Speaker 3: to reward him with this payout, the biggest payout in
Speaker 3: corporate history. So how do you think that that decision
Speaker 3: and that trillion dollars is likely to impact, you know,
Speaker 3: how willing he is to keep pursuing influence like this.
Speaker 4: Well, I think to some degree, it shows that he
Speaker 4: can have a very low personal approval rating, he can
Speaker 4: face a lot of widespread public backlash, you know. To
Speaker 4: put it in context, there's been multiple studies this year
Speaker 4: and surveys that show that he has extremely low favorability
Speaker 4: within the US, which is probably his biggest base of
Speaker 4: support out of anywhere. He for instance, in one study
Speaker 4: was viewed the lowest favorability out of fourteen major political newsmakers.
Speaker 4: And that's including net Yahoo, who's facing war crimes charges.
Speaker 4: It's including Trump, who's a very polarizing figure. It's including
Speaker 4: you know, JD Vance, who a lot of people dislike,
Speaker 4: he ranked lower than any of them. There was a
Speaker 4: separate Quinnipiac poll in June that found that only around
Speaker 4: two and ten women in the US had a favorable
Speaker 4: view of Musk. In the end, none of that really
Speaker 4: mattered over whether he got this money, whether he was
Speaker 4: viewed favorably by shareholders, which is one of the biggest,
Speaker 4: most powerful groups that he actually does need to get
Speaker 4: the approval of. And so if there isn't really any
Speaker 4: consequences to these views and the way that he is
Speaker 4: backing the political far right around the world, then it
Speaker 4: seems like that there's very little reason for him to stop.
Speaker 3: Oh, Nick, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Also in the news, Anthony Alberzi has denied that his
Speaker 3: appointment of former Labor Premier j Weatherall to the position
Speaker 3: of top diplomat in the UK is the reason the
Speaker 3: government has not yet released its Jobs for Mates report
Speaker 3: whether Ull will replace former Labor Minister Stephen Smith as
Speaker 3: High Commissioner, a role he's held since twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Albernizi said weather All's work as Premier of South Australia
Speaker 3: over six years makes him an entirely appropriate appointment. Labor
Speaker 3: is facing pressure from the cross bench to release a
Speaker 3: report into the appropriateness of political appointments, but has so
Speaker 3: far failed to do so, and New South Wales Speaker
Speaker 3: Greg Piper says he knew about the weekends Neo Nazi
Speaker 3: rally in Sydney ahead of time and tried to stop it,
Speaker 3: only to be told it was not an option to
Speaker 3: relocate the protest. His comments come after two female politicians
Speaker 3: revealed they'd been subjected to death threats and threats of
Speaker 3: violence by Neo Nazis after they spoke out against the group.
Speaker 3: Both for Close MP Kelly Sloane and Wentworth MP a
Speaker 3: Legraspender have referred the threats to New South Wales Police.
Speaker 3: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.