Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3: A star is born Elon On mars Juson Kennedy.
Speaker 4: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 5: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5: I feel for the guys. I would say ninety eight
Speaker 5: percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 6: But those two percent.
Speaker 5: That are nasty, they are all pay in four folks.
Speaker 7: We were meant for great things in the United States
Speaker 7: of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 6: Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
Speaker 6: governments called Elon.
Speaker 2: Musk mock mus.
Speaker 7: Welcome to Elon and Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon muskets Tuesday,
Speaker 7: May sixth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. Now Elon may
Speaker 7: be preparing to wind down his time in Washington, but
Speaker 7: Doge certainly isn't done yet. Just last week, it's stepped
Speaker 7: up at scrutiny of the Securities in Exchange Commission, and
Speaker 7: Elon's relationship with the powerful financial regulator has been shall
Speaker 7: we say tens.
Speaker 3: The two sides have squared.
Speaker 7: Off again and again over the years, and he stands
Speaker 7: to benefit enormously from a smaller and perhaps more lenient SEC.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Elon is on his way to founding.
Speaker 7: His own brand spanking new city down along the Mexican border.
Speaker 3: Madlin Meckleberg will.
Speaker 7: Join us later to talk about the birth of Starbase Texas,
Speaker 7: but we'll start with Doge and the SEC.
Speaker 3: And to do that, I'm.
Speaker 7: Here with our regulars, BusinessWeek's Max Chafkin and Ace Elon
Speaker 7: reporter Dana Hall. Max, Dana, welcome to you both.
Speaker 2: Hey David, Hey David.
Speaker 3: And from Washington, DC.
Speaker 7: We're joined by Nicola White, Bloomberg's SEC reporter Nicola, Hello,
Speaker 7: welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi there.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Doze stepping up a bit. It's scrutiny the SEC.
Speaker 7: Let's go back to the r archives and remember what
Speaker 7: Musk said about the SEC years ago.
Speaker 5: I want to be clear, I do not respect the SEC.
Speaker 5: I do not respect them.
Speaker 7: Dana Hull tell us a little bit more about those
Speaker 7: comments for Musk and help us set the stage here
Speaker 7: for Doge's incursion into the SEC.
Speaker 3: Now, So, Elon.
Speaker 4: Musk has had a long standing feud with the SEC,
Speaker 4: stretching back years. Probably the highlight was in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: As you all may remember, in August, he attempted to
Speaker 4: take Tesla private. He tweeted out that he was, you know,
Speaker 4: considering taking tesl private at four twenty a share. That
Speaker 4: got him into huge trouble with the SEC. That the
Speaker 4: SEC ultimately fined him twenty million dollars and he couldn't
Speaker 4: be chair of the company for at least three years.
Speaker 4: And he's just always been super angry at the SEC,
Speaker 4: particularly the office in San Francisco, and you know, at
Speaker 4: times has called them the short sellar Enrichment Commission. And
Speaker 4: this is a guy who's not particularly fond of regulation.
Speaker 4: He sees it as holding back you know, industry and
Speaker 4: all of his enterprises. And now that he's a very
Speaker 4: powerful figure in the Trump administration, I think that he,
Speaker 4: you know, of all the agencies where Doge could really
Speaker 4: make it smark, I would think that the SEC would
Speaker 4: be the one that would have among the most importance
Speaker 4: to Musk and his companies. And the SEC has also
Speaker 4: investigated Musk's companies with Tesla and the way that it
Speaker 4: marketed Autopilot. Nikola knows better than I do, but there
Speaker 4: are various probes that have been launched and then it's
Speaker 4: not really clear what the status is if they are
Speaker 4: still under active investigation, if they've died on the line,
Speaker 4: if they've been referred to DOJ or AG offices like.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of questions about what happened to
Speaker 4: those SEC investigations and where the people leading those investigations
Speaker 4: are they still even at the agency.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and there's also a lawsuit against Musk for the
Speaker 8: way he just or didn't disclose his amassing of Twitter
Speaker 8: shares before he basically did a takeover bid, and that's
Speaker 8: that was filed days before Trump's inauguration, So it was
Speaker 8: like the they squeaked it in right before the administrative change.
Speaker 7: And as Dana was just alluding to, do we have
Speaker 7: a sense of where that one is.
Speaker 3: His purchase of Twitter shares before you launched a bid.
Speaker 8: That is a question on everyone's mind. I think I
Speaker 8: know several people who have alerts set up for the
Speaker 8: docket for that case. Any movement in that case would
Speaker 8: be of high interest to anybody watching the SEC, anybody
Speaker 8: who's into following what's happening with Elon Musk. We don't
Speaker 8: have any update on that yet, and there's a lot
Speaker 8: of eyes on what happens to that case. The SEC
Speaker 8: is in like a weird position. If they dropped the
Speaker 8: case wouldn't look good. If they go full throttle, and like,
Speaker 8: you know, try to sue Musk for hundreds of millions
Speaker 8: of dollars that also might not look good. So they're
Speaker 8: in a very weird, uncomfortable position.
Speaker 3: I want to go back for second.
Speaker 7: Next, what Dana was saying and calling the SEC and
Speaker 7: saying it doesn't stand for the Securities in Exchange Commission
Speaker 7: Musk that it stands for the short Seller Enrichment Commission.
Speaker 6: There was also a vulgar one that he not going
Speaker 6: to bring up on this podcast, but well you just
Speaker 6: did show it's all right.
Speaker 2: But anyway, and as we.
Speaker 7: Know, there is no group of humans in the world
Speaker 7: who Elon Musks hates more than the short sellars. And
Speaker 7: in his mind, the SEC was just doing the bidding
Speaker 7: of the shorts.
Speaker 3: He also is called the SEC at one point or
Speaker 3: he eeked or tweeted.
Speaker 7: About him, called them shameless puppets of Wall Street. Has
Speaker 7: there ever been a human who has been more at
Speaker 7: odds and feuded more with the SEC than Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: Well, not that I'm aware of I mean, the way
Speaker 6: Elon Musk runs his companies is sort of like totally
Speaker 6: opposed to everything that the SEC stands for. Like Elon
Speaker 6: Musk's empire is a web of conflicts of interest, lots
Speaker 6: of self dealing, weird shared ownership stakes, like Musk is.
Speaker 3: A sort of weird midnight tweets.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, right, And it's just like a whole bunch
Speaker 6: of things that like are not in keeping with the
Speaker 6: way the sort of conventional wisdom.
Speaker 3: About how public company.
Speaker 2: CEOs are supposed to act.
Speaker 6: Now, the one thing I'll say is, this is not
Speaker 6: like a secret and that's what kind of always made
Speaker 6: this these these disputes with the SEC kind of funny.
Speaker 6: It's not like, you know, most Tesla investors and most
Speaker 6: of the investors who are in Musk companies understand this
Speaker 6: about him, understand that he's different, and that's why they
Speaker 6: like him. And so it is this kind of weird
Speaker 6: thing where where Musk like seems to continually either violate
Speaker 6: securities law or walk right up to the line where
Speaker 6: where I don't know, like a neutral observer.
Speaker 2: Would probably think he was violating Security's law.
Speaker 6: And the SEC has really struggled to and a glove
Speaker 6: on him effectively.
Speaker 2: In other words, they've find him, they've found.
Speaker 7: Him twenty million dollars, but he hasn't ever changed his behavior.
Speaker 2: He just goes from one.
Speaker 6: It's like it's like somebody, it's like a rich guy
Speaker 6: who gets caught speeding in his Lamborghini. Right, It's like
Speaker 6: he pays a ticket and he and he keeps on driving.
Speaker 7: But wasn't he also forced to step down his chair
Speaker 7: of Tesla coming out of one of these lawsuits.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, yeah he was forced. But so what, David,
Speaker 4: He's still on the board. I mean it's still his board.
Speaker 4: He's still the largest chareholder.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he was.
Speaker 4: He stepped down his chair. Now Robin Denholm is the chair,
Speaker 4: but he's still on the board.
Speaker 7: It sounds like a big deal, but it actually doesn't
Speaker 7: mean anything.
Speaker 6: He had a Twitter sitter, remember, like made him get
Speaker 6: a guy, and we always wondered who, Like, who's the
Speaker 6: guy who's gotta like vet Elon Musk's tweet this guy,
Speaker 6: And you know, for a while it seemed like maybe
Speaker 6: it was possible that this was actually happening. I don't know,
Speaker 6: it doesn't let me just say, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 6: the Twitter sitter was empowered the right to do a
Speaker 6: lot of city.
Speaker 7: I forgot about that that the SEC made somebody walk
Speaker 7: around with his phone as if like you know that
Speaker 7: with a person carrying the codes to the nuclear you know,
Speaker 7: nuclear warheads that the president has or something. But Nicola,
Speaker 7: I want to go back now to the arrival of
Speaker 7: Doge at the SEC as it's happened in recent months,
Speaker 7: like in you know, branches of government across Washington.
Speaker 3: Any sort of sense.
Speaker 7: That you have of what the feeling, what the mood
Speaker 7: was like there as this long time nemesis of the
Speaker 7: SEC now had all this influence over it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I think that there was a lot of
Speaker 8: briefing for impact and everybody was freaked out about the
Speaker 8: arrival of DOGE and what it would mean, just given
Speaker 8: Elon Musk's extremely public, extremely you know, it's out there.
Speaker 8: He does not like the SEC, and the fact that
Speaker 8: he's active litigation with the with the agency, and I
Speaker 8: feel like there was a lot more anxiety versus like
Speaker 8: what has actually.
Speaker 3: Transpired A transpired.
Speaker 8: So Doze arrived later than any other like it seemed
Speaker 8: like any other agency, like you know, at the beginning,
Speaker 8: like USAID got gutted, The CFPB got gutted. There has
Speaker 8: been headline after headline about drama at the IRS and
Speaker 8: privacy and records and things like that. And the Doge
Speaker 8: arrived at the SEC with like much much less fanfare.
Speaker 8: It was like initially one guy and the leadership at
Speaker 8: the SEC was like, hey, guys, dog is in the building.
Speaker 8: Like it wasn't so much cloak and dagger. Like an
Speaker 8: email went out staff wide and it said, you know,
Speaker 8: there is a liaison or there's liaisons in the agency
Speaker 8: with the DOGE person.
Speaker 4: You know, proceed, Remind me who is the DOGE person.
Speaker 4: I've kind of lost track. We have this like spreadsheet
Speaker 4: of all the DOGE people and like how they're tied
Speaker 4: to Elon and I'm blanking on is it?
Speaker 3: Uh No?
Speaker 8: So this is someone His name is Ellie Mashori and
Speaker 8: he is a former CFTC attorney and CFTC is another
Speaker 8: DC financial regulator that regulates derivatives. And he most recently
Speaker 8: was at Kalshi, which is an online trading I don't
Speaker 8: want to call it, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like a Silicon Valley act startup.
Speaker 8: Yes, So he was in there, and you know, there's
Speaker 8: was like we're looking for efficiencies, but like there has
Speaker 8: not been the like the crazy headlines of you know,
Speaker 8: people you know going in and ripping things up or
Speaker 8: walking out with file boxes and things like that. I
Speaker 8: think that's, you know, by design in a lot of ways,
Speaker 8: because we all knew that, Like Musk has well known
Speaker 8: beef with the SEC.
Speaker 7: So hold on, just to pause there for a second.
Speaker 7: So you're saying it's it's by design. It's known that
Speaker 7: Musk has feuded quite a bit with them, So you're saying,
Speaker 7: what because it would be such a bad look that
Speaker 7: they opted to not go that route.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And the other thing too, is that the leadership at
Speaker 8: the SEC. So now we have a permanent chair, but
Speaker 8: there was an interim chair.
Speaker 3: Remind us of who that is.
Speaker 8: So the new chair is Paul Atkins, and the interim
Speaker 8: chair was Mark YadA, and he kind of did a
Speaker 8: lot of restructuring before Doge arrived, and there were voluntary
Speaker 8: buyouts and then there was like this more unusual one
Speaker 8: time fifty thousand dollars you know, resign early kind of
Speaker 8: payout dangle to SEC employees. And the other thing to
Speaker 8: remember is that the SEC has an awful lot of power,
Speaker 8: but it's a pretty small agency. It's only five thousand
Speaker 8: employees and more than five hundred employees, so more than
Speaker 8: ten percent have taken these voluntary buyouts, So like, how
Speaker 8: much more can you kind of cut? You know, And
Speaker 8: then also.
Speaker 3: Mark ask Musky, they came, I know five important.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you also got to keep in mind that, like
Speaker 8: the SEC is Wall Street's main regulator. Who likes chaos
Speaker 8: in the markets. We've seen that Trump does not like that.
Speaker 8: You know, if you cut the SEC down to the
Speaker 8: bare bones and there's chaos, that doesn't look good. So
Speaker 8: I think there's been a little bit of like, let's
Speaker 8: take a lighter touch at the SEC.
Speaker 3: I mean that's to be seen right.
Speaker 7: From Yeah, but as you were saying it, initially there
Speaker 7: was just one person from DOGE there, and then I
Speaker 7: think a second was added. And I saw some reporting
Speaker 7: last week that we're now up to a third person
Speaker 7: from DOGE at the SEC.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I've seen that reporting also. But again there has
Speaker 8: been much less kind of like people freaking out and chatter.
Speaker 6: I think just just to step back, like one thing
Speaker 6: that has happened during the first few months of the
Speaker 6: Trump administration that I don't think Elon Musk anticipated and
Speaker 6: I don't think Tesla investors anticipated, is that Trump has
Speaker 6: hesitated to like directly expose himself in ways that would
Speaker 6: be politically damaging. So like he hasn't handed Musk a
Speaker 6: bunch of cash, he hasn't directly dropped cases against must companies.
Speaker 6: It does feel like there's hesitancy to do things that
Speaker 6: would look like we are just paying back a guy
Speaker 6: who bought, you know, who helped us.
Speaker 2: Win this election, who who put up you know, three.
Speaker 6: Hundred million or so dollars in contributions related to the election,
Speaker 6: and here's the payback. They don't want to do that,
Speaker 6: And of course it's reasonable why they wouldn't want to
Speaker 6: do that, because that would be a very very bad look.
Speaker 6: It be a very bad look to cut the regulator
Speaker 6: of Wall Street at a time where there's tons of
Speaker 6: anger on both sides because the world's richest man wanted
Speaker 6: them to. And so I think when you're seeing, if
Speaker 6: we're seeing restraint, the restraint that we're seeing has to
Speaker 6: do with the politics of this.
Speaker 7: Yep, Nicola, thank you very much for joining us, and
Speaker 7: we will see again down Thanks for having me. Now
Speaker 7: we're joined by Madelin Mecklberg, our Texas legal reporter, Madlin.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 9: Thanks for having me now.
Speaker 7: Madeline, tell us all about the formation of this place,
Speaker 7: star Base, and about the vote that happened last week,
Speaker 7: and then give us like a super abbreviated history of
Speaker 7: what led to it.
Speaker 5: Try to be abbreviated, but I could talk about this forever.
Speaker 5: I'm so excited to have the opportunity to do it today.
Speaker 5: It is incredibly fascinating. But basically, the idea for Starbase
Speaker 5: started in Texas more than a decade ago, when SpaceX
Speaker 5: first started buying land in the very southern tip of
Speaker 5: the state along the Gulf of Mexico slash America.
Speaker 9: And it really started building in Ernest in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 9: and they've created this community of a giant rocket manufacturing facility,
Speaker 9: a testing site, and a launch site for SpaceX's Starship rocket.
Speaker 9: And essentially what you have there is this huge futuristic
Speaker 9: production facility and then dozens of tiny houses and airstream
Speaker 9: trailers where employees of SpaceX live with their families, their partners.
Speaker 9: It used to be a really quiet retirement community kind
Speaker 9: of in the middle of nowhere in Texas. It's really
Speaker 9: far out there. But over this past decade period, SpaceX
Speaker 9: has been building, They've been growing, and all that growth
Speaker 9: culminated in a vote this past weekend where residents overwhelmingly
Speaker 9: supported an initiative to create their own city and local government.
Speaker 3: Elon won on an election, Max, you finally got it.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, when you fail in Wisconsin to southern Texas,
Speaker 6: there you go.
Speaker 2: I will say, I believe almost all the voters work
Speaker 2: for Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: Is that right? All of them?
Speaker 2: Like ninety percent?
Speaker 9: I don't know, Madeline, that's correct, Yes, that is exactly right.
Speaker 5: They all either work for Elon or have a loved
Speaker 5: one who works for Elon.
Speaker 6: For the most part, Madelin did find the one guy.
Speaker 6: I mean, there are a handful of holdouts in this community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they're.
Speaker 6: Essentially like the Homer Papa, right, Yeah, he is a
Speaker 6: great character.
Speaker 3: Tell us about him for a second, Madeline.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 9: Homer represents the old guard and what this community used
Speaker 9: to be, which was, like I mentioned, a retirement community,
Speaker 9: but also a place for people who just wanted to
Speaker 9: get away from everybody else. It's like a twenty mile
Speaker 9: drive from the closest city, which is Brownsville, which is
Speaker 9: to call it a city, you know, a reserve judgment
Speaker 9: or that in air quotes in air quotes exactly. But
Speaker 9: basically Homer has lived there since the seventies and as
Speaker 9: he told us, he used to be able to walk
Speaker 9: naked down the beach, down the road. He was totally
Speaker 9: by himself down there in this nature preserve. And so
Speaker 9: he is part of this really small group, this dwindling
Speaker 9: group of landowners who have been there since before SpaceX
Speaker 9: and who are who have refused to turn their property
Speaker 9: over to Elon and their aff's basically, so they kind
Speaker 9: of represent this last resistance to the star base vote.
Speaker 9: But obviously that resistance is really tiny in number.
Speaker 6: Regular listeners will know. We've talked about this a couple
Speaker 6: times on the podcast. Like Madlin's saying was this, it
Speaker 6: was kind of, I think served as sort of like
Speaker 6: the working man's beach for Brownsville, Like it was a
Speaker 6: place where anyone goes, open to the public, and there
Speaker 6: was also full of these kind of like you know,
Speaker 6: sort of hippy, dippy ish older folks who moved to
Speaker 6: the beach, and like this guy that Madeline is describing,
Speaker 6: you know, sort of living on off the grid bohemian
Speaker 6: lifestyle and.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden life we all aspire to, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and all of.
Speaker 6: A sudden, like these gigantic rockets are going off there
Speaker 6: all the time, and the ground is literally shaking.
Speaker 7: Right, and it's suddenly become like almost the most futuristic
Speaker 7: or one of the most futuristic places on earth. So
Speaker 7: Madeline until this weekend, or perhaps even including now, I
Speaker 7: don't know how things work postpote. This whole area was
Speaker 7: just unincorporated. If someone's home burned down or was burning down,
Speaker 7: there was no fire department, there's no blank or did
Speaker 7: they lean on Brownsville for that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they were unincorporated, but it wasn't like they were
Speaker 5: totally off by themselves. Basically how it works in Texas
Speaker 5: is if you're not a city, the local government authority
Speaker 5: that is over all those things is the county. So
Speaker 5: in this case that's Cameron County, and they've kind of
Speaker 5: reached an equilibrium with them as far as offering public services.
Speaker 5: They do have fire service out there, they do have
Speaker 5: electricity and utilities and water and all those things that
Speaker 5: make it pleasant to live in house. But right, they
Speaker 5: have not had a local city government up to this point.
Speaker 4: Madland, you see this effort bye you on to create
Speaker 4: his own city as part of like this larger push there.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of talk about freedom cities
Speaker 4: and like the network state, Like what is his grand
Speaker 4: and is it just that like they wanted it to
Speaker 4: be easier to build housing for their employees, or is
Speaker 4: he going to start like building schools and creating his
Speaker 4: own like star based police force. Like how grand of
Speaker 4: a scheme is this?
Speaker 5: That is the question. Basically, you'll you and your listeners
Speaker 5: will be unsurprised to know that we got basically no
Speaker 5: information from SpaceX about this, no information from the candidates
Speaker 5: running for public office about what their big vision is.
Speaker 5: But you talked about housing and building, and I think
Speaker 5: that is really the primary and immediate thing that we're
Speaker 5: going to see happen in this case. What they have
Speaker 5: said is that they want to be able to control
Speaker 5: the pace of their own growth and development in the region.
Speaker 5: At this point, if they want to build anything new,
Speaker 5: they have to get permission from Cameron County.
Speaker 3: And has Cameron County pushed back or slowed them down?
Speaker 9: Well, we know that about a month before they requested
Speaker 9: this election, Cameron County rejected a proposal by SpaceX to
Speaker 9: build moremultiple townhouses on a few different lots, and so
Speaker 9: at that time, an engineer for SpaceX basically said, you know,
Speaker 9: we have hundreds of people on a wait list who
Speaker 9: are dying to come live.
Speaker 5: Out here in our little community, we promise, and we
Speaker 5: really need to be able to build as much housing
Speaker 5: as we can. And so they haven't come out and
Speaker 5: said explicitly, you know, we're frustrated by the pace of
Speaker 5: approvals and the rejection we're getting from Cameron County. But
Speaker 5: that's kind of the unspoken idea here of what initiated
Speaker 5: this effort.
Speaker 4: So who is the mayor? Like, the city now has
Speaker 4: like three elected officials, right, So who exactly is the mayor?
Speaker 3: Again? That's right.
Speaker 5: So they've created it's a city commission technically, and it's
Speaker 5: got a mayor and two city commissioners, all of whom
Speaker 5: are current or former SpaceX employees. The mayor is a
Speaker 5: guy named Bobby Peden, and I can pull up his
Speaker 5: title for you. He's the vice president of Texas Test
Speaker 5: and Launch down in Starbase, and that's from his LinkedIn
Speaker 5: page because he did not answer my many phone calls
Speaker 5: and emails and letters sent to his address.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all know who the mayor really is
Speaker 2: going to be right.
Speaker 7: With the mergers, since the guy was like the huge
Speaker 7: statue of his of his face there, you know, is
Speaker 7: it that one that was by the way about the statue?
Speaker 2: What's up with that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it's as you drive out there, it's a
Speaker 1: really surreal experience because you go from a city to
Speaker 1: basically nothing for many miles on this highway, and there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of trees on the side of the road,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, the trees go away
Speaker 1: and you see.
Speaker 9: A big gold bust of mister Musk's head and it's.
Speaker 3: Right next to these Oh it's gold.
Speaker 9: It's a color golden, maybe bronze. I don't know the
Speaker 9: exact metal material.
Speaker 5: Please don't quiz me about that.
Speaker 2: But wait, is it a full body or just not
Speaker 2: just the head? Actually no, just just.
Speaker 9: The head shoulders up.
Speaker 5: I think they're shoulders a neck at least, but it's
Speaker 5: sitting right next to also these two big concrete slabs
Speaker 5: that have some art of the doge dog, and then
Speaker 5: another portrait of Elon as well, so it greets you
Speaker 5: as you're driving out there.
Speaker 7: Just like Homer likes to hang out with his dogs,
Speaker 7: as you guys told me so are so too does
Speaker 7: Elon the Boss hang out with his doze dogs.
Speaker 3: How tall is this thing made? One?
Speaker 5: That's a really great question.
Speaker 3: Very tall?
Speaker 5: I don't I don't have an exact matter for you,
Speaker 5: but it's imposing, we'll say, Max.
Speaker 3: This is although, of course, part of a broader.
Speaker 7: I don't know if campaigns the term, but initiated by
Speaker 7: Musk to put his stamp on Texas all across the state.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and not just Texas, but to kind of present
Speaker 6: himself as as he long has as as this kind
Speaker 6: of industrial titan, as this guy who's you know, making
Speaker 6: a lot of industry from yeah, from from as he
Speaker 6: sees it.
Speaker 2: Nothing. I mean.
Speaker 6: One of the weirdest parts of of the the story,
Speaker 6: as we've talked about it before, is you know, as
Speaker 6: Musk saw it, he just sort of spun the globe
Speaker 6: and you know, put his finger on a map where
Speaker 6: it looked like it wasn't totally inhabited.
Speaker 2: Of course, there were there were people there, but just
Speaker 2: not that many.
Speaker 6: And like Yeah, like creating this kind of beacon of
Speaker 6: American rocketry and private industry. You can see how this
Speaker 6: this could, you know, assuming they're able to build a
Speaker 6: bunch of houses and continue growing this uh community and
Speaker 6: this headquarters or whatever it is, this place launch site.
Speaker 6: You know, it's gonna be a real monument to Elon Muskin,
Speaker 6: not just because of.
Speaker 2: The of the bus. Are the are the residents gonna
Speaker 2: have to have his portrait in their home?
Speaker 7: I mean, I don't know, if I don't know if
Speaker 7: half probably strongly encouraged to matt next steps that we
Speaker 7: will be seeing coming out of Starbase on its way
Speaker 7: to full proper municipality.
Speaker 5: Right, So, there's a lot of stuff that has to
Speaker 5: be worked out. Honestly, when you create a city, there's
Speaker 5: a lot. Texas gives a lot of leeway to cities
Speaker 5: to determine what they want to do and what they
Speaker 5: want to offer. So this city council is going to
Speaker 5: have to sit down and decide do we want to
Speaker 5: have a library system, do we want to have parts,
Speaker 5: do we want to you know what, what do we
Speaker 5: keep going?
Speaker 9: That's a great guess, we'll see what happens. They're going
Speaker 9: to have to decide.
Speaker 5: A huge question is going to be money. You know,
Speaker 5: if they want to do anything, they're going to need money. Traditionally,
Speaker 5: cities make money by imposing property taxes on its residents,
Speaker 5: but SpaceX owns practically all of the property in this
Speaker 5: area and its employees rent from it, so it will
Speaker 5: be if they do impose a property tax, it's a
Speaker 5: tax that SpaceX is largely going to pay. But we
Speaker 5: know also that cities can accept donations from a friendly
Speaker 5: company that maybe has an interest in the community, So
Speaker 5: that's that's something that we could look out for. I
Speaker 5: don't know if anyone.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's there a lot to choose from down there,
Speaker 9: so it could be anyone, but they'll have to publicly
Speaker 9: disclose it.
Speaker 5: And I think that's going to be the biggest thing
Speaker 5: if I can just say, and aside about what I'm
Speaker 5: personally excited about about this city, is that, unlike a company,
Speaker 5: a government is in theory supposed to be open. They
Speaker 5: have to have open meetings, they have to maintain public
Speaker 5: records that they turn over to friendly reporters when they
Speaker 5: file open records requests. So I think that's going to
Speaker 5: be one of the first real tests of how this
Speaker 5: city is operating. But that also involves them making decisions
Speaker 5: about are we going to hire who are we going
Speaker 5: to hire to manage these records? Where are we going
Speaker 5: to house these records? Are they going to create a
Speaker 5: city hall? Like, there's a ton of unanswered questions that
Speaker 5: while legally they may be a city now, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's it's.
Speaker 6: A potentially like huge economic boon for this community. And
Speaker 6: I'm not just talking about Starbase. I'm talking about larger
Speaker 6: Texas community. But it's something that's going to remake the geography,
Speaker 6: the way it feels, and of course the culture.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I guess all these places now we're
Speaker 7: going to have all these huge busts of musk made
Speaker 7: by the way. So Starbase it's you know, the it's
Speaker 7: a teeny tiny area, right, this town it's got to
Speaker 7: be one of the smaller towns in the country.
Speaker 3: One just over a mile.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's one point four or five square miles and
Speaker 5: it's really lake long and narrow along the State Highway.
Speaker 5: It's very odd.
Speaker 3: That is indeed super odd. Meta. This is terrific.
Speaker 7: You will have to come back again and tell us
Speaker 7: As the town of star Base grows and booms and
Speaker 7: they add and build more and more.
Speaker 5: We'll have you back on that would be fabulous. Thanks
Speaker 5: for having me.
Speaker 7: Now, Max and Dan, you know, I actually had a
Speaker 7: plan to do a sort of serious feud segment here
Speaker 7: at the end Elon versus his very own Tesla board, because,
Speaker 7: as reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Tesla board
Speaker 7: has been, you know, doing a little bit of a
Speaker 7: CEO search, thinking about maybe hut just in case we
Speaker 7: need to replace this guy, which was kind of interesting.
Speaker 7: But you know, Max, you think you've found something bigger,
Speaker 7: more important than Elon Musk versus his very own Tessel board.
Speaker 6: Two wars on that CEO search. The board has disputed
Speaker 6: that right. They've said that they are not conducting a
Speaker 6: CEO search. Elon is the right, and the Journal is
Speaker 6: essentially saying that they stand by their phy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 4: Just want to say that, like Tesla's board has kicked
Speaker 4: the tires on finding a new CEO before this came
Speaker 4: up during in the DELA. This came up in court
Speaker 4: in Delaware Transfer Court during the dispute about his pay package,
Speaker 4: where like Antonio Gracias and James Murdoch who you know,
Speaker 4: current former war members basically said, Oh, yeah, we've looked
Speaker 4: for CEOs before, but you know, we just could never
Speaker 4: find anyone with the vision and the drive to like
Speaker 4: lead the company. So Elon is the CEO. And I
Speaker 4: think that this is kind of what happened here. Like,
Speaker 4: I think it's a great scoop by the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 4: but like the board has kicked the tires on trying
Speaker 4: to find someone new in the past. It sounds like
Speaker 4: they've done it again. But the story said that they
Speaker 4: were like looking to hire a search firm, not that
Speaker 4: they like, Like was how wide and the serious this
Speaker 4: attempt was this time is not clear?
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 6: The real feud, though, forget the board of the world's
Speaker 6: biggest company may be attempting to replace the world's richest man.
Speaker 6: The real feud is between Elon Musk and the Westlake
Speaker 6: Hills like homeowners Association or whatever. These the homeowners of
Speaker 6: this community in Texas where Elon Musk has relocated.
Speaker 3: Not okay, not near Star based different.
Speaker 6: Now, this is a sort of you know, suburban, upper
Speaker 6: middle class suburb in Austin where Elon Musk has a home.
Speaker 6: And The New York Times has a absolutely hilarious story
Speaker 6: about Elon Musk's battle with some of the residents who, unsurprisingly,
Speaker 6: you spend a lot of money on your you know,
Speaker 6: suburban home, you pay property taxes, whatever.
Speaker 2: It's not great when like a rich, kind of erratic
Speaker 2: late night.
Speaker 6: Partying, late night flowing buying guy shows with a huge
Speaker 6: security detail shows up in your community.
Speaker 2: They put up a giant fence around this home. Residents
Speaker 2: are mad about that.
Speaker 6: There's a gate to let staff in and out of
Speaker 6: this property that Elon Musk owns.
Speaker 2: They're not happy about that.
Speaker 3: And because they think it's an iore. What's the issue.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's like a lot of traffic and so on. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's an i soore. Oh yeah, there as many of
Speaker 6: these residentsy it. They're violating lots of the sort of
Speaker 6: homeowners associated the zoning rules for this community.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Westlake Hills in Austin is like it's like the Atherton.
Speaker 4: It's like Atherton. It's like it is the place where wealthy,
Speaker 4: it's like it's it's the wealthy, hilly, leafy like area
Speaker 4: of Austin that's near the Colorado River, and it's where
Speaker 4: Elon now lives. It's where it's where Elon supposedly was
Speaker 4: building this compound. So you know, the idea was that
Speaker 4: he had like a house and then multiple houses, with
Speaker 4: the sort of vision that eventually maybe all of his
Speaker 4: you know, female friends and children would potentially all live together.
Speaker 2: But that hasn't really worked out.
Speaker 4: Like they're not they're not all living with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wait, let me get to the feud.
Speaker 6: So Paul Hemmer, tesla owner, longtime resident, got so frustrated
Speaker 6: with the Elon Musk's comings and goings and construction he
Speaker 6: got a drone. He flew it over the house to
Speaker 6: check for violations. He started reporting those violations to local officials,
Speaker 6: and Elon Musk hit back with his own complaints about
Speaker 6: Paul Hemmer, saying.
Speaker 3: That he's flying drones over my house.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 6: What they said is that he was walking around the
Speaker 6: community naked. Mister Hemmer denies this. He was just wearing
Speaker 6: black underwear. Now there was a second allegation that he
Speaker 6: peeded on the street, and now Hemmer and he.
Speaker 3: Actually didn't kissed while he was walking his dogs.
Speaker 6: Response to the query from The New York Times, mister
Speaker 6: Hemmer said, the cameras got me.
Speaker 2: It's it's scary. They have guys sitting and watching me pee,
Speaker 2: So he caught to that one.
Speaker 6: I don't know the disputing the charge of nakedness, but
Speaker 6: but this is, of course comes you just gotta go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like no one's on the street.
Speaker 6: I'm sort of somewhat sympathetic to Paul Hemmer's complaint.
Speaker 7: I'm not entirely sure it's better than Elon versus the
Speaker 7: Tesla board, but it is. It is good, all right, Max,
Speaker 7: do keep reporting this out.
Speaker 6: I guess it's just like a lesson to all of us,
Speaker 6: Like before you complain about your neighbors, your billionaire neighbors gate,
Speaker 6: you know, make sure your own house is in order.
Speaker 3: Max, Dana, thanks as always.
Speaker 4: Okay, guys, that was great.
Speaker 3: Bye.
Speaker 7: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong Lake, Maples Handles
Speaker 7: engineering and daper self fact checks. Our editor is Anna
Speaker 7: Massa Rakas, and our supervising producers Magnus Hendrickson. The Elon
Speaker 7: In theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and
Speaker 7: Alex sugi Era. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
Speaker 7: and Sage Bowman as the head of Bloomberg Podcast. A
Speaker 7: big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Webber and Bradstone.
Speaker 3: I'm David Papadoppolos.
Speaker 7: If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
Speaker 7: it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 3: See you next week.