Speaker 1: We welcome Welcome back, Bob left the podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Ryan Mack, co author of the book Character Limit,
Speaker 1: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter? Ryan, what does the average
Speaker 1: person not know about Elon Musk?
Speaker 2: Oh Man? Where to start? Gosh, so much, especially in
Speaker 2: the last couple weeks days that he's been in the news,
Speaker 2: But I don't know. One of the things that I've
Speaker 2: found very interesting is explaining to people how much power
Speaker 2: he has now, especially with this position he has close
Speaker 2: to the White House. But even before then, you know,
Speaker 2: he's you know, one of the most successful menstionneurs of
Speaker 2: his time. He controls these major companies in Tesla and SpaceX,
Speaker 2: and in some ways he is the second most important
Speaker 2: person in the White House next to Donald Trump. Now,
Speaker 2: so yeah, we can get into all that, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot to unpack.
Speaker 1: Well, why don't we start there, because that's what's happening
Speaker 1: right this second. He is working with the Department of
Speaker 1: Government Efficiency. You know a lot of people say, oh,
Speaker 1: the guy cut all these people at Twitter, It's gonna
Speaker 1: be great. What might we anticipate in his work there?
Speaker 2: It's actually kind of crazy reporting out what happened at
Speaker 2: Twitter and seeing almost the exact same playbook being talked
Speaker 2: about with this Department of Government Efficiency. I think first
Speaker 2: of all, what should be made clear is that we
Speaker 2: really don't know what this DOGE is. Obviously it's a
Speaker 2: reference to a meme cryptocurrency, which is the abbreviation of
Speaker 2: Department of Government Efficiency. But we don't know what this
Speaker 2: is gonna do. They've talked about it, you know, cutting
Speaker 2: two trillion dollars, you know, Elon and Vivek Ramaswami his
Speaker 2: co head of this department, making decisions over hiring and firing.
Speaker 2: But what they've talked about, we've compared to what we
Speaker 2: reported on it in Twitter. You know, for example, at Twitter,
Speaker 2: he cut more than at this point eighty percent of
Speaker 2: the staff then, you know, compared to when he what
Speaker 2: he when he took over, that's thousands of jobs. You know,
Speaker 2: if he applies that to the federal government, that's tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of jobs that could be that could be removed.
Speaker 2: You know. He slash costs kind of ruthlessly at Twitter
Speaker 2: as well, cutting things from rent payments to janitorial services,
Speaker 2: to food services, to systems that help make the website run.
Speaker 2: And we could see that kind of kind of slash
Speaker 2: and burn technique play out in the government to an
Speaker 2: extent we've ever seen before. So, you know, we have
Speaker 2: to talk very generally about what he's saying he's doing.
Speaker 2: And of course Elon is someone that makes a lot
Speaker 2: of promises, but the precedent has been kind of set
Speaker 2: with what he did at Twitter.
Speaker 1: Let's start from the beginning. What is your gig? What
Speaker 1: is your purview with The New York Times?
Speaker 2: Sure, so, I'm a I'm a reporter on our tech desk.
Speaker 2: We have people around the world who cover the technology industry.
Speaker 2: On that desk, I do what we call accountability accountability reporting,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of investigative work, a lot of
Speaker 2: deeper dives into the movers and shakers of the industry.
Speaker 2: I've covered Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg in the past. I've
Speaker 2: covered Jack Dorsey, and I've covered Elon not only in
Speaker 2: this job but in previous gigs. I've worked at BuzzFeed
Speaker 2: News before this, at Forbes magazine as well, and my
Speaker 2: rem at The Times is to, you know, find these stories,
Speaker 2: dig deeper into these guys, and you know, report out
Speaker 2: these monumental business decisions or happenings in the industry. So,
Speaker 2: you know, two and a half years ago, when Elon
Speaker 2: decided to buy Twitter, I was one of a couple
Speaker 2: of reporters that was thrown head on into covering this
Speaker 2: kind of unprecedented transaction, this transaction of one man, you know,
Speaker 2: the world's richest man worth two hundred billion dollars at
Speaker 2: the time, buying a whole company for forty four billion dollars,
Speaker 2: and one thing led to another. I was teamed up
Speaker 2: with Kate Conger, my co author now in the book,
Speaker 2: and we were reporting two or three stories a day
Speaker 2: to the point where we couldn't fit everything into the
Speaker 2: pages of The New York Times. And you know, that's
Speaker 2: where we got this book and kind of continued it
Speaker 2: from there. But at the Times these days, I effectively
Speaker 2: cover Elon full time. You know, there he is someone
Speaker 2: that is incredibly powerful, incredibly interesting, and I'm one of
Speaker 2: a couple of reporters where are dedicated to, you know,
Speaker 2: following him and understanding what he's up to, whether that's
Speaker 2: a Tesla or SpaceX or now in the White House.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back a step. How did you get
Speaker 1: the gig at the New York Times?
Speaker 2: Gosh, I guess I have to start from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: Go for it, Let's do it. Coming out of college, I,
Speaker 2: you know, in college, didn't really know what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: And where'd you go to college?
Speaker 2: I went to Stanford, to Stanford, and like a good
Speaker 2: immigrant son, you know, son of immigrants, I was on
Speaker 2: the med school track and looking to become a doctor
Speaker 2: and realizing that the life sciences weren't necessarily for me.
Speaker 2: But I was always doing the school paper in school
Speaker 2: and having a lot of fun with it and realizing,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe I could pursue this as a profession.
Speaker 2: You know, I started doing internships while in school. I
Speaker 2: worked for the half Moon Bay Review in half Moon Bay, California.
Speaker 2: I worked at the Orange County Register, my hometown paper
Speaker 2: where I grew up in Orange County. I ended up
Speaker 2: working for The Times as an intern and in Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: and eventually, you know, you know, what the heck, I'll
Speaker 2: give this a shot. And after school I went to
Speaker 2: Forbes worked there for five and a half years as
Speaker 2: a staff writer on the magazine covering Silicon Valley. I
Speaker 2: was based in San Francisco, so it made it a
Speaker 2: lot easier and actually at Forbes, I started on this
Speaker 2: thing called the Wealth Team, which is the team that
Speaker 2: puts together these kind of Forbes ritualists, you know, the
Speaker 2: Forbes billionaires, the Forbes four hundred riches, Americans, And actually
Speaker 2: it's a great place to start. As a cub reporter,
Speaker 2: you are essentially doing these calculations that ever one sees
Speaker 2: of you know, so and so is worth billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: But behind the scenes, as reporters, you are doing the
Speaker 2: nitty gritty of those calculations. You are tallying up SEC
Speaker 2: documents and looking at the financial filings. You are valuing
Speaker 2: things like megayachts and wine collection and art. You're talking
Speaker 2: to you know, some of these people talk to us
Speaker 2: and like, you know, say, you know, I'm actually up
Speaker 2: this year. You're missing my picasto that I just bought,
Speaker 2: or you know that that wine collection is too low
Speaker 2: for me. Actually it should be higher because the price
Speaker 2: of burgundy went up. So as a twenty two year
Speaker 2: old reporter who was making peanuts thirty five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year talking to the richest people in the world,
Speaker 2: it was kind of surreal for me. And actually that's
Speaker 2: where I developed kind of my early network, my rolodex.
Speaker 2: As a reporter, you know, you're as good as your
Speaker 2: sources and the people you talk to, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of a start for me, kind of a because
Speaker 2: you know, you're that young, you don't usually get introduced
Speaker 2: into those circles. And from there I kind of built
Speaker 2: a platform, you know, I moved off that team. I
Speaker 2: was able to generate my own story ideas, did a
Speaker 2: lot of profiles of CEOs and those types. I actually
Speaker 2: covered music briefly with zach O Maalley Greenberg at Forbes,
Speaker 2: who was a business music business guy, and kind of
Speaker 2: learned from him as well. And uh yeah, moved to
Speaker 2: BuzzFeed a couple of years later, kind of pivoted a
Speaker 2: little bit to do more investigative type reporting, where I
Speaker 2: reported quite a bit on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and
Speaker 2: won some awards there and ended up at the Times
Speaker 2: three and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: Now, so, okay, are you just working at BuzzFeed and
Speaker 1: The Times calls you also BuzzFeed took an ax to
Speaker 1: their news department, So how did the transition happen?
Speaker 2: Very very sad. Yeah, because BuzzFeed, if you remember that
Speaker 2: kind of optimist era of digital media. Right, you have BuzzFeed,
Speaker 2: you have Vox, you have all these startups popping up
Speaker 2: with the promise that they could figure out, you know,
Speaker 2: how to put things online better than the legacy publications.
Speaker 2: And you know, ultimately what we learned is that they
Speaker 2: were at the whims of these tech platforms. These giants,
Speaker 2: right and Facebook, you know, love that content initially and
Speaker 2: then didn't like it so much and turn off the spigot,
Speaker 2: and that's what caused the collapse. But in that kind
Speaker 2: of heyday, which I kind of joined towards the end of,
Speaker 2: you know, the venture capital fueled digital media revolution, it
Speaker 2: was great. You had these amazing resources to pursue these
Speaker 2: long term stories. You know, you didn't have to deal
Speaker 2: with the nitty gritty day to day coverage your news cycle.
Speaker 2: I could kind of pull out and do a three
Speaker 2: month investigation into Facebook or Google or I covered a
Speaker 2: lot of Peter Tiel, for example. It was a billionaire
Speaker 2: who was on the Facebook board. And I kind of
Speaker 2: built my name on those stories. And BuzzFeed had the
Speaker 2: resources to do that and gave the opportunity to kind
Speaker 2: of mid career or early to mid career reporters like myself.
Speaker 2: So it was a great place to work, super collegial.
Speaker 2: Everyone is like friends and sharing each other's work, you know,
Speaker 2: and just an amazing place to be a great energy. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: what we learned is that that model wasn't a great business,
Speaker 2: you know, And when this bigot was turned off by
Speaker 2: the digital platforms, there were layoffs and quite a few
Speaker 2: until the point where the news division is effectively dead.
Speaker 2: I left before the very very end of BuzzFeed News Buzzy.
Speaker 2: The New York Times saw my work and liked it
Speaker 2: and recruited me. But yeah, that's that's kind of how
Speaker 2: that played out.
Speaker 1: Okay. At this late date, in the wake of the election,
Speaker 1: the New York Times the paper of record irrelevant of the truth.
Speaker 1: It is seen as more of a left wing publication
Speaker 1: in light of the election and the election of Trump.
Speaker 1: Has there been any wee valuation or adjustment at the
Speaker 1: Times in general?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't want to speak for the paper.
Speaker 2: I've only been there for three and a half years.
Speaker 2: I know that the paper has focused so much on independence,
Speaker 2: you know. Obviously there's a perception of bias one or
Speaker 2: the other. I mean, you could talk to progressives, for example,
Speaker 2: that I think the paper is actually conservative, but I
Speaker 2: think above all it's this idea of editorial independence that
Speaker 2: the paper values more than most. And honestly, you know,
Speaker 2: that could sound like me blowing smoke up people's asses,
Speaker 2: but in reality, you know, there is no political bent
Speaker 2: to the paper that I've experience, and you know, on
Speaker 2: my desk, you know, I'm I cover technology. There's no
Speaker 2: remit to go after whatever, report on certain targets, whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know, we for me, it's always been about
Speaker 2: interrogating power. That that for me has kind of been
Speaker 2: my north star, regardless of political affiliation. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think my career has kind of proven that that
Speaker 2: I have focused on the powers, the titans of industry,
Speaker 2: you know, the powers that be, you know, the richest
Speaker 2: people in the world, the people that control these platforms,
Speaker 2: that control these companies that shape our daily lives. And
Speaker 2: that's how I hope I continue to report, you know,
Speaker 2: and and you know, I think that's that's kind of okay.
Speaker 1: Point in time. The mainstream media is a pejorative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do people not understand about The New York Times? Hm?
Speaker 2: Hm, you know, that's a that's a good question. I mean,
Speaker 2: the mainstream media has it's it's so easy to criticize, right,
Speaker 2: And my world of looking at social media and seeing
Speaker 2: people that criticize the New York Times, particularly like when
Speaker 2: when I'll use Elon Musk as an example, right, who says,
Speaker 2: you know, you shouldn't get your your news from the
Speaker 2: New York Times or the wash Journal or the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Everything is actually going to be on X. You know
Speaker 2: you could X is the news source. You are the
Speaker 2: news source because it's it's people feeding X. Well, a
Speaker 2: lot of that news comes from mainstream media. You know
Speaker 2: that that we're the ones reporting it that is then
Speaker 2: aggregated into those tweets or or or shared in those videos.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the kind of uh, shortsightedness. I
Speaker 2: think in all this that like when when I when
Speaker 2: I cover social media, for example, when people talk about
Speaker 2: social media replacing newspapers or CNN or whatever, a lot
Speaker 2: of what they draw from is is what we work
Speaker 2: on every day. You know that information couldn't come out
Speaker 2: without a reporter at the New York Times calling someone
Speaker 2: up and writing up a story which then gets aggregated
Speaker 2: or pulled out into a tweet or put on TikTok,
Speaker 2: for example. And it's that ecosystem that I think people
Speaker 2: don't understand. And yeah, it's it's it's kind of sad
Speaker 2: because Elon Musk and Lynda Akarino, the CEO of X
Speaker 2: now it's called X because that's what they've changed the
Speaker 2: name to have made this kind of antagonistic point that
Speaker 2: like X is actually the replacement for the New York
Speaker 2: Times or for whatever fill in news source. You know.
Speaker 2: But the last two decades of Twitter I have shown that,
Speaker 2: you know, the platform has been super reliant on news
Speaker 2: generators and reporters, and to alienate them seems pretty shortsighted.
Speaker 2: And not to understand that that ecosystem seems kind of
Speaker 2: absurd to be.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're working at the New York Times, can
Speaker 1: you literally follow anything you want? Or do they say
Speaker 1: stay on this.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of give and take. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: hopefully you know, if I wake up one morning, I'm
Speaker 2: editor is like, you know, we should pay more attention
Speaker 2: to this. I'll definitely listen. You know, It's it's not
Speaker 2: completely me generating everything, but there's also a give and take.
Speaker 2: And if I say, like, look, we should be paying
Speaker 2: attention to this more. I think this is undercovered. I
Speaker 2: have that freedom, and it's a it's a nice place
Speaker 2: to be in your career. I don't necessarily have a
Speaker 2: beat at the company. You know, we have we have
Speaker 2: reporters that cover Tesla. We have reporters that cover X. Kate,
Speaker 2: my co author, covers X on a full time basis.
Speaker 2: We have reporters that cover Google and you know, name
Speaker 2: whatever company. I help those reporters, I'll supplement them. But
Speaker 2: if there's a deep dive that we need to go
Speaker 2: into or you know understand you know, musk relationship with
Speaker 2: the White House, for example, which is something we've been
Speaker 2: trying to do over the last couple weeks to months,
Speaker 2: you know, the deploy me on that and I'll kind
Speaker 2: of shift my resources and my efforts to that kind
Speaker 2: of story.
Speaker 1: So you've been covering starting and forwards, you and covering
Speaker 1: the wealthy, forgetting people who inherit their wealth, people who
Speaker 1: make their wealth. What similarities to all these people have.
Speaker 2: That's something I've always thought about, and I don't think
Speaker 2: there is one unique characteristic. You know, it's actually really funny.
Speaker 2: I've I've I have been around them. I guess I've
Speaker 2: been around them more relative, more around more rich people
Speaker 2: relative to the average person. But there's all types, you know,
Speaker 2: there's all types of people I can like there. For example,
Speaker 2: some folks do not want to talk to us about
Speaker 2: their wealth at all. You know, they would they would
Speaker 2: hang up the phone as soon as I called, never
Speaker 2: return my emails, that kind of thing. Some people want
Speaker 2: to get down to the every last detail. You know,
Speaker 2: you miss this. I think my holding over here in
Speaker 2: these stocks and you know, I'm actually up by one
Speaker 2: hundred million over here and down, and it's it's like
Speaker 2: it was like such an exercise in egos in a way,
Speaker 2: and you start to realize that, like it's gonna sound
Speaker 2: like weird, but like, you know, they're normal people like us,
Speaker 2: you know it. They have the same hang ups or
Speaker 2: you know, same motivations in some ways, same fears. And
Speaker 2: that's actually really like it took me a while to
Speaker 2: understand that, Like there wasn't like one gene, for example,
Speaker 2: that causes you to become super wealthy. I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of luck at play, a lot of where
Speaker 2: you start in life. Sure there's things like hard work
Speaker 2: and that kind of thing and effort, but Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: there's no one characteristic that I could ascribe to, or
Speaker 2: else I would have followed that and made myself a
Speaker 2: billionaire myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, we live in an era where money is everything,
Speaker 1: and people who have money are seen in comp usually
Speaker 1: they made the money in one specific vertical, and people
Speaker 1: who have made money there's a conception by the hoyploy
Speaker 1: that these people are experts in all areas. Having covered
Speaker 1: these people, are they experts in all areas or are
Speaker 1: they just super smart in the one area they're in
Speaker 1: and they're as blind as the next person in another area.
Speaker 2: Well, I've read your review of our books. I think
Speaker 2: we're aligned on this. But one of the findings of
Speaker 2: our book. Let's let's talk about Elon specifically here, right,
Speaker 2: I mean a generational entrepreneur like that that I'm not
Speaker 2: going to deny that by any means. He brought in
Speaker 2: the electric car revolution. He foresaw this industry to privatize
Speaker 2: space and get things into into orbit, which now he
Speaker 2: has a virtual monopoly with the US government and getting
Speaker 2: things into space, you know, to see that and be
Speaker 2: successful in that not once but twice, because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of credit at the same time, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: make him, you know, smart in another area. He is
Speaker 2: not a epidemiologist, you know, when he was making comments
Speaker 2: about COVID, for example. He is not by any means
Speaker 2: an expert in social media and how to run a
Speaker 2: social media platform, which I think is in some ways
Speaker 2: the original sin when he bought Twitter, right, it's this
Speaker 2: idea that he had been so successful in these other
Speaker 2: areas that, you know, how hard could it be. This
Speaker 2: is a social media company. It's you know, in his view,
Speaker 2: servers and a website. You know, you're just plugging it
Speaker 2: in and letting it go and keeping it online. How
Speaker 2: hard could that be compared to you know, developing autopilot
Speaker 2: or making a rocket land on a ship in the
Speaker 2: middle of the ocean. And I think that is the
Speaker 2: original sin because what he didn't realize is social media
Speaker 2: isn't a tech problem. It's actually a human problem. You are,
Speaker 2: it's a societal problem. It's a social problem. You're connecting
Speaker 2: people online and figuring out ways for them to communicate
Speaker 2: without killing each other or you know, causing huge disturbances
Speaker 2: and making everyone feel at least most people feeling like
Speaker 2: they're welcome to exhibit and express themselves, and yeah, so
Speaker 2: I mean that that kind of central understanding which powered
Speaker 2: our book is one that I come back to a
Speaker 2: lot that oftentimes there are people that are very successful
Speaker 2: that think because they've reached such success in one area,
Speaker 2: they can be successful in another, and oftentimes that's not
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 1: Okay, when Elong makes the offer to buy Twitter to
Speaker 1: what did we were you on the Elong beat?
Speaker 2: Hmmm? I started covering him, like really covering him in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen at BuzzFeed. There were some issues at his factories.
Speaker 2: This is a period of turmoil for him, and there
Speaker 2: were some kind of investigative stories, and he was a
Speaker 2: subject I would return to every now and then, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't by any means like my main focus. And
Speaker 2: by the time he made the offer for Twitter in
Speaker 2: April of twenty ti twenty two, I don't think I
Speaker 2: had written a single story on him for The Times
Speaker 2: I had joined gosh, I think the year prior, year
Speaker 2: and a half prior, I hadn't written about him for
Speaker 2: The Times, but they had known my pastwork and covering him.
Speaker 2: There's actually a trial we can talk about that I
Speaker 2: was kind of in some ways involved with with him,
Speaker 2: but at the times. You know, they saw my past
Speaker 2: work and they're like, Okay, this is a pretty monumental event.
Speaker 2: That's actually take some time and understand how serious this is,
Speaker 2: because what you have to remember is when he actually
Speaker 2: made the bid, people didn't know if he was serious.
Speaker 2: You know, it was he made a reference to a
Speaker 2: weed joke, you know, for fifty four twenty fifty four
Speaker 2: to twenty per share was his offer amounted to forty
Speaker 2: four billion dollars. His offer letter was pretty thin when
Speaker 2: he when he made the offer, it wasn't clear if
Speaker 2: he was going to go through. And then obviously he
Speaker 2: tried to pull out of it a couple weeks later later.
Speaker 2: But they had me spend a lot of time trying
Speaker 2: to interrogate whether or not this thing was going to happen,
Speaker 2: and you know, what was the mindset and what was
Speaker 2: the thinking. So I started to dig in and work
Speaker 2: closely with Kate. And when he finally did take over
Speaker 2: the company after all the kind of legal wrangling in
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty two, it was kind of all hands
Speaker 2: on deck. You know, it was two or three stories
Speaker 2: a day. You know, it was, oh my gosh, he's
Speaker 2: laying off people over in this part of the company,
Speaker 2: or he stopped paying rent over here. At one point
Speaker 2: we heard the janitorial services were cut, so like I'm
Speaker 2: in a toilet paper in the offices. But everything was
Speaker 2: like a fire. Every day. We'd wake up when we
Speaker 2: have two or three things to report on about his takeover.
Speaker 2: And since then, it's kind of hasn't stopped. You know,
Speaker 2: it's led from one thing and the other into the book,
Speaker 2: into our coverage of him now as a political figure,
Speaker 2: and that kind of that roller coaster hasn't stopped.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a legendary story before you were at the
Speaker 1: New York Times where a reporter Drove Tesla wrote a
Speaker 1: review Elon mark Back said, hey, there's data. I checked
Speaker 1: the data in the car and he contradicted you're reporting.
Speaker 1: Are you hearing from Elon? You or Kate or somebody
Speaker 1: else saying you got it wrong.
Speaker 2: Actually, I've had a couple interactions with Elon, so we
Speaker 2: can start from beginning, and actually I know that anecdote,
Speaker 2: and what I would say about that is like fighting
Speaker 2: against the media has been core to Elon's beliefs since
Speaker 2: he started his companies. You know, you guys, remember there
Speaker 2: was a lot of doubt about his companies, particularly Tesla,
Speaker 2: where he in some ways relied on the media to
Speaker 2: get at his message. He was very big on getting
Speaker 2: on magazine covers and in stories, to the point where
Speaker 2: we were talking to folks used to work with him,
Speaker 2: and he'd be up at three am reading like some
Speaker 2: obscure Belgian blog, you know, trying to understand like every
Speaker 2: piece of coverage was near and dear to him. He
Speaker 2: had a Google, earned his own name. He cared so much,
Speaker 2: you know. And on the other hand, he battled with
Speaker 2: the media anytime they got something wrong. And so that
Speaker 2: story you reference actually is very telling, and it was
Speaker 2: it kind of in some ways proved his belief that
Speaker 2: there was this kind of media force against him and
Speaker 2: against his success, and he was out to kind of
Speaker 2: prove them wrong, which in some ways you can see
Speaker 2: the line that's drawn to the Twitter acquisition. In terms
Speaker 2: of my interactions with him throughout my career, I don't
Speaker 2: think he's ever denied a story I've reported. My famous
Speaker 2: run in with him was that when I was at
Speaker 2: BuzzFeed in twenty eighteen, and do you remember when those
Speaker 2: kids got caught in the cave and time of course, man,
Speaker 2: the whole bit exactly. So for the listeners, like, you know,
Speaker 2: cave rescuer gets involved, a British guy living in Thailand.
Speaker 2: Elon then gets involved. It's like this crazy thing. He
Speaker 2: builds a submarine to get these kids out of this
Speaker 2: winding underwater cave. They don't end up using the submarine,
Speaker 2: but Elon gets a lot of press out of it,
Speaker 2: and one of the rescuers goes on CNN and says, like,
Speaker 2: you know, that didn't work, like he can stick that
Speaker 2: sub up his butt, you know, and you know kind
Speaker 2: of was like it was a complete distraction and he
Speaker 2: didn't help at all. And in return, Elon calls this
Speaker 2: guy a pedo guy you know, on Twitter, and it
Speaker 2: was like this kind of I mean, those reactions now
Speaker 2: were kind of part and parcel of who he is
Speaker 2: on Twitter, but at that point in time, it was
Speaker 2: kind of a insane accusation to call someone a pedophile
Speaker 2: on Twitter with no basis. So in that process I
Speaker 2: ended up emailing Elon asking him why he thought this
Speaker 2: guy was a pedophile. Elon emails me back with this
Speaker 2: kind of screed. Bear in mind I'd never really talked
Speaker 2: to him. The screed of why this guy was a
Speaker 2: quote child rapist who had a twelve year old bride.
Speaker 2: Since she's trying to get me as a reporter at
Speaker 2: BuzzFeed to write a story about this guy being a pedophile,
Speaker 2: we actually didn't did not end up doing that. We
Speaker 2: reported it out a little more, and it turns out
Speaker 2: that Elon was kind of making all this up and
Speaker 2: trying to get a reporter to dump this out into
Speaker 2: the world, and so we ended up publishing Elon's email
Speaker 2: in full, to kind of show his state of mind,
Speaker 2: you know, to show that he was willing to destroy
Speaker 2: someone's reputation and to show that this, you know, was
Speaker 2: kind of a typical behavior for anyone, much less us
Speaker 2: someone who runs, you know, a major company in Tesla.
Speaker 2: Fast forward that that that cave Rescuer ends up suing Elon.
Speaker 2: Elon tries to depose me in court to for the case.
Speaker 2: But you know, that was a that was a crazy
Speaker 2: interaction in my career and one of the times that
Speaker 2: I've ever gotten to interact with them.
Speaker 1: So, Okay, a lot of these people can push back
Speaker 1: very hard, accurately or inaccurately. I've dealt with some reporters
Speaker 1: who laugh I know in my own particular cases, sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, you hold your ground, but you shake when
Speaker 1: these people push back. Do you ever feel any personal
Speaker 1: anxiety where you say, no, I'm a reporter, I'm getting
Speaker 1: it right. I work for the New York Times, Or
Speaker 1: sometimes you say, well, shit, do I really have it right?
Speaker 2: That? That's I think about that every day. And you know,
Speaker 2: as a reporter, the worst thing that can happen is
Speaker 2: for you to get something wrong, especially in such a
Speaker 2: key story where the people that you're reporting on have
Speaker 2: unlimited resources to challenge you or to possibly sue you,
Speaker 2: or you know, one of the biggest scoops in my
Speaker 2: career was finding out that Peter Teele was funding the
Speaker 2: Gawker case, the whole cloaging Gawker case that took out Gawker.
Speaker 2: You know, I broke that story, and you know, I
Speaker 2: was a cub reporter at Forbes, a younger reporter at Forbes,
Speaker 2: and before we publish, you know, there was a doubt
Speaker 2: in my mind that flash. You know, I was so
Speaker 2: solid on the reporting, it's spent months doing it, but
Speaker 2: was like, you know what if that point zero zero
Speaker 2: one percent chance is right? You know what if I've
Speaker 2: been duped the whole time into reporting this out what happens,
Speaker 2: you know, and like that that feeling never goes away.
Speaker 2: And I think being paranoid in some ways as a
Speaker 2: reporter helps you because that will lead you to make
Speaker 2: the next call, right, You'll be like, actually, you know
Speaker 2: I have sources. Maybe I'll go for six or seven,
Speaker 2: or maybe I'll make that extra send that extra email.
Speaker 2: You know, It's helped in my career that I've been
Speaker 2: supported by major publications that have great resources, in Forbes,
Speaker 2: in the New York Times. But you know that that
Speaker 2: fear stays with you. And I don't know, I could
Speaker 2: be eighty years old and you know, have worked the
Speaker 2: New York Times for fifty years. I'd be worried if
Speaker 2: that fear wasn't part of me still, you know, because
Speaker 2: you always want to have a little bit of paranoia,
Speaker 2: I guess. And yeah, when when when it's someone like Elon,
Speaker 2: you gotta you gotta do everything by the book, You gotta,
Speaker 2: you gotta, you gotta be so solid on your reporting.
Speaker 2: And I've always led with that, you know, my I yeah,
Speaker 2: I've always relied on the reporting and the like you know,
Speaker 2: my source saying and everything like that, and yeah, but
Speaker 2: you know, if someone tries to intimidate us at the
Speaker 2: same time, like, I'm not going to back down. You know,
Speaker 2: if we know something is right, we're gon we're gonna
Speaker 2: go with it. And it's kind of that weird balance.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a summer of twenty twenty two. Yeah, elon
Speaker 1: trying to wiggle out. We know there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: case in the Delaware Court. You're in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: I agree with you one hundred percent. New York Times
Speaker 1: has boots on the ground everywhere, whereas all these other
Speaker 1: people's just opinion at the source. Do you think, hey,
Speaker 1: this is going to close based on the history of
Speaker 1: the Delaware Court? And to what degree are you penetrating
Speaker 1: the company in terms of sources such that when the
Speaker 1: case goes down, you're prepared.
Speaker 2: You're doing everything. You You're calling the people on the deal.
Speaker 2: You're calling the lawyers, the bankers, the pr people, you know,
Speaker 2: people who you might think might be in the room.
Speaker 2: You know, these are very high level conversations too, So
Speaker 2: when you're talking about sourcing, you're talking about C suite level.
Speaker 2: You know, those are the people that are having conversations,
Speaker 2: and what we realize is that on the Twitter side
Speaker 2: of things, they had no idea what to expect from Elon.
Speaker 2: You know, they had some meetings about what it would.
Speaker 2: Bear in mind as he was backing out, there were
Speaker 2: still some meetings that were going on between him and
Speaker 2: the company over there was a calculat there was that
Speaker 2: bot argument, for example, and there were they were trying
Speaker 2: to assuage him concerns about bots because the company was
Speaker 2: bound by it's pretty sure your duty to make this
Speaker 2: deal happen, right, which is why they sue the company.
Speaker 2: But you know, gosh, that was it was a crazy period.
Speaker 2: Kate was ready to go to Delaware and and spend
Speaker 2: like weeks there. I was having to read up on
Speaker 2: chancery court, which I knew very little about until that,
Speaker 2: until that kind of moment. But that's kind of the
Speaker 2: beauty of reporting, right, Like you're thrown into the deep
Speaker 2: end of these weird situations you might have never been
Speaker 2: in before, you might have never thought about the court
Speaker 2: of chancery, and suddenly you're making calls to trial lawyers
Speaker 2: who have you know, practiced there or represented other companies
Speaker 2: who're trying to find comparisons to maybe legal precedents that
Speaker 2: I played out similar to this, where you know the
Speaker 2: court has compelled someone to buy a company like that.
Speaker 2: What did you think did you think it? Did you
Speaker 2: think it was going to happen at that time?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Because of the Delaware Court. It blew my mind.
Speaker 1: All these people. You know, I got a book up
Speaker 1: my ass about Kara Swisher anyway, Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, there's law involvement that happened to be a
Speaker 1: lawyer or whatever. And if you know anything about why
Speaker 1: all this stuff is in Delaware. But let's go back
Speaker 1: to your story. You're saying, you're yeah, will everybody talk
Speaker 1: to you? And to what degree is the fact that
Speaker 1: you're writing for the New York Times to your advantage
Speaker 1: or disadvantage?
Speaker 2: It goes both ways, actually, and I've been on both
Speaker 2: sides of it. When I was at BuzzFeed, I used
Speaker 2: to think, you know, those reporters of the New York Times,
Speaker 2: they must get everything handed to them on a silver
Speaker 2: platter because they're the New York Times. Who wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to talk to them? And then now being on this
Speaker 2: side of things, there are instances where people are like, sorry,
Speaker 2: you guys are too big, Like I'm worried about my reputation.
Speaker 2: I want this information to be out there, but like
Speaker 2: in a smaller setting. And so it's kind of funny
Speaker 2: seeing that play out in a way. That being said,
Speaker 2: when you're at the New York Times, you know, it
Speaker 2: carries the gravitas that has the name, the rename recognition.
Speaker 2: When you call someone, they're not asking you to spell
Speaker 2: out you know what do you who does that mean? BuzzFeed?
Speaker 2: Can you spell that for me? You know, you're at
Speaker 2: the New York Times, You're like, oh, okay, I get it.
Speaker 2: You know, you know where you're coming from. But in
Speaker 2: those moments, it's it's it's kind of you kind of
Speaker 2: have to be lucky, and sometimes people don't want to
Speaker 2: talk to you at all. You bear in mind, you know,
Speaker 2: the people around the Twitter deal are especially on the
Speaker 2: Twitter side, are scared. Are scared shit lists. You know,
Speaker 2: they don't want to ruin the deal. They don't want
Speaker 2: to say anything to report that could scupper this, this
Speaker 2: monumental deal, this payout for shareholders and whatever. But in
Speaker 2: writing a book, what I found is that oftentimes after
Speaker 2: the fact, if you say, you know, actually my book
Speaker 2: is going to come out in a year or two
Speaker 2: years time. You know, people might be open to talking
Speaker 2: to you for that because it's going to be past
Speaker 2: the period where it's sensitive for them. You know, this
Speaker 2: is something that is for history in a way. It's
Speaker 2: not just a daily story, and so we use that
Speaker 2: to our advantage for the book. You know, some people
Speaker 2: that that didn't talk to us for these stories in
Speaker 2: the New York Times came back to us or towards
Speaker 2: the very end of the process they were like, actually,
Speaker 2: I want to make this one thing very clear and
Speaker 2: just the specific thing. But it ended up being very helpful.
Speaker 2: So you get all types. I'll say it. In the moment,
Speaker 2: it's quite hard to get people to speak immediately, but
Speaker 2: if you give them a little time, if you work
Speaker 2: on them a little bit, you keep reminding them there's
Speaker 2: always a chance. And I've learned that kind of perseverance
Speaker 2: is kind of the you know, one of my most
Speaker 2: important traits as a reporter.
Speaker 1: Okay, I dealt with the press a lot, calling me
Speaker 1: for stuff. Yeah, like being on television news like the
Speaker 1: classic story of the Today Show. They provide you a
Speaker 1: limo there, but not back. You're just fodder. You're just
Speaker 1: hit and run. I've had a lot of people forget
Speaker 1: a lot of times. You know, music is a you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these papers have already fired all the
Speaker 1: music people. You know. This is a lot of times
Speaker 1: I'll put some junior person who's ignorant on the issue.
Speaker 1: But if you get a reporter from an publication, a
Speaker 1: lot of times they're aggressive. And most people who deal
Speaker 1: with the press deal with the press and frequently what
Speaker 1: is your style?
Speaker 2: I tend not to be aggressive, largely because I am
Speaker 2: not a beat reporter, like I don't have to file
Speaker 2: tomorrow about you know, the news of the day that
Speaker 2: happened at Facebook or Twitter or you know X you
Speaker 2: know or Google. I have time to like build relationships,
Speaker 2: and any good reporter is doing that. And everyone has
Speaker 2: their own style. But I've never found the kind of
Speaker 2: you know, give me the information before everyone else, or
Speaker 2: some people use kind of like a bullying you know,
Speaker 2: why why did you talk to the Washington Posts over there,
Speaker 2: Wall Journal and not to me? Next time? I want
Speaker 2: you to come to me first. I've never found that
Speaker 2: works for me. Some people it works great, and it
Speaker 2: makes them really dogged reporters. My style is to talk
Speaker 2: to people NonStop. You know, if I think the worst
Speaker 2: thing for someone to feel like is for someone to
Speaker 2: feel used in a way. And I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: the social engineering is like the wrong word here, but
Speaker 2: something lighter than that. But I want to make people
Speaker 2: feel like they can talk to me about anything, and
Speaker 2: so you know, it's not just me checking in for
Speaker 2: information when I need it. You know, I'm talking to
Speaker 2: them about their holidays or you know, what do you
Speaker 2: have for Thanksgiving? And you know, how is your Christmas break?
Speaker 2: You know, how is your soccer team doing. I'm building
Speaker 2: those relationships. I'm meeting people for drinks to the point
Speaker 2: where when it comes to talking about something that is
Speaker 2: relevant to my reporting, it feels natural for them to
Speaker 2: talk to me about it. And that isn't like a
Speaker 2: unique finding like that could a banker could do that
Speaker 2: or a lawyer. You know, it's just a relationship building
Speaker 2: and people building. And it took me a long time
Speaker 2: to realize that. You know, I wasn't the biggest chatterbox
Speaker 2: in college and I still am not. But like, you
Speaker 2: don't ever want to make people feel like you're just
Speaker 2: pumping them for information, and then you'll never sty'll never
Speaker 2: see you again, and you know I and that just
Speaker 2: feels weird and not human to me anyway, So I
Speaker 2: guess yeah, playing the human card is actually is actually
Speaker 2: pretty important to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the deal now. The first thing
Speaker 1: that is striking in the book that comes back to
Speaker 1: haunt Elon is he makes a deal with no due diligence.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: It's one of the it's one of the crazier things
Speaker 2: about this whole thing. You know, these mergers or takeovers
Speaker 2: take months, sometimes years to close, and that's because bankers
Speaker 2: and lawyers are haggling over every small detail. They're running
Speaker 2: their fine tooth combs through every legal filing and findancial
Speaker 2: filing and making sure everything is up to standard. And
Speaker 2: in this case, Elon wanted to bouldoze a deal through
Speaker 2: in days as fast as he could. After the after
Speaker 2: the after his offer letter. Remember he was on the board,
Speaker 2: he had bought this this chunk of the company. He
Speaker 2: was on the board because Twitter brought him in to
Speaker 2: be closer to them. He ended up kind of getting
Speaker 2: into a fight with the CEO and offering to buy
Speaker 2: the company kind of in this huff, right, and right
Speaker 2: after that, he wants the deal to close immediately, so
Speaker 2: much so that he tells his his bankers and his lawyers,
Speaker 2: you know, we don't need to I don't need to
Speaker 2: look at the books here, I don't need any non
Speaker 2: public information. I don't need to sign an NDA to
Speaker 2: get that non public information. I just want the company,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna You're going to force that deal through
Speaker 2: for me, so I have that company by the end
Speaker 2: of the month. And that's what he did. There was
Speaker 2: no diligence. You remember when he steps on stage at
Speaker 2: the TED conference in I think it was a Vancouver
Speaker 2: in the day after his offer letter comes out, he
Speaker 2: makes all these grand pock proclamations. You know, he says
Speaker 2: he's going to get rid of the bots, He's going
Speaker 2: to say free speech, and that was said without any
Speaker 2: understanding of the business. So yeah, there was no there
Speaker 2: was no looking under the hood effectively, and that was
Speaker 2: one of the major quirks of this deal that caused
Speaker 2: him a lot of problems down the line. Basically immediately
Speaker 2: as soon as soon as the merger agreement assigned.
Speaker 1: Is that evidence of how Elon works, and he's impulsive.
Speaker 1: Let me move forward. Worry about the repercussions after.
Speaker 2: Totally. I mean, I'll reference something he said about the
Speaker 2: Department of Government efficiency. He said something to the effect of,
Speaker 2: you know, if something we cut and it goes wrong,
Speaker 2: just put it back. You know, it's not like I'm
Speaker 2: gonna learn about this and what this thing does. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna cut it. See if something breaks, something some people suffer,
Speaker 2: and if it's enough pain, then I'll just put it back.
Speaker 2: And this kind of impulsiveness is how he's operated through
Speaker 2: his whole career. It's very gut instinct, it's very primal
Speaker 2: in some ways, and it served him well. You know,
Speaker 2: he's going to look back on his successes. Is net worth,
Speaker 2: you know, he's worth more than three hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2: He has two major companies. He's gonna be like, what
Speaker 2: this has served me so well throughout my life. You know,
Speaker 2: why why shouldn't I do things this way? And in
Speaker 2: this case, in the Twitter case obviously came back to
Speaker 2: bite him because he doesn't do the due diligence. He
Speaker 2: signs the merger agreement and then he starts to get
Speaker 2: really cold feet and tries to find ways to back out.
Speaker 2: You know, he starts to name issues around bots, for example,
Speaker 2: and you know that's kind of the source of his pain.
Speaker 1: Now with this deal, Okay, since you cover Elon in general,
Speaker 1: let's go to Tesla for a second. So we have
Speaker 1: the Tesla self driving. They're the first movers in that area.
Speaker 1: He gets rid of light ar relying solely on cameras.
Speaker 1: The competitors go to lightar. Okay, Meanwhile, the government is
Speaker 1: investing for crashes. Is he doubling down based on his
Speaker 1: personality saying fuck you? Well, do you think he really
Speaker 1: evaluates a cameras are enough or is he convinced himself
Speaker 1: cameras are enough?
Speaker 2: I think in these beliefs, he's convinced himself. I think
Speaker 2: it's very key to understanding he's not just saying things right,
Speaker 2: he fundamentally believes them. And the thing with lightar is
Speaker 2: that he believes that cars should see like humans do,
Speaker 2: and and and cameras will be enough, and cameras are
Speaker 2: much cheaper than a light r you know that being said,
Speaker 2: look at the progress of where Tesla is relative to Weimo.
Speaker 2: For example, Wemo actually has cars on the streets that
Speaker 2: are taxing people around with no drivers, and Tesla is
Speaker 2: still kind of making these half promises about full self driving.
Speaker 2: Oh actually it's not full self driving. You have to
Speaker 2: be engaged with the driver. And he's kind of jerked
Speaker 2: people around on the meeting of Autopilot. You know, he
Speaker 2: had that Robotaxi event a couple months ago. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you saw it right where he had. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a staged event. You're on a literally on a movie
Speaker 2: set in Burbank, driving people around these pretend cities on
Speaker 2: these supposedly autonomous vehicles. And he's selling that to people
Speaker 2: as if it's like the next revolution, when if you
Speaker 2: walk over to Hollywood you can find a Waimo, you know,
Speaker 2: going up and down the street with no driver. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the one thing understand a boy
Speaker 2: Elon is that one of his superpowers, if not his
Speaker 2: most super important superpower, is his ability as a salesman,
Speaker 2: his ability to sell you on a mission and a vision.
Speaker 2: And people love that, you know, because you know, we
Speaker 2: can we can debate whether or not he hits his
Speaker 2: his his goals or his his projections. You know, he said,
Speaker 2: for example, we get to Mars by twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's going to happen. But you know,
Speaker 2: you look at this robotax event and me as a report,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm very skeptical, like this is. But you
Speaker 2: have people that are screaming and cheering and posting online.
Speaker 2: You know, they're loving the robots that are serving the
Speaker 2: beers and everything, and you're like, wow, he really has
Speaker 2: sold this to people. People really believe him on this stuff,
Speaker 2: and I don't. Uh, yeah, I don't know. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's an interesting quality that he has.
Speaker 1: So okay. You also say that he has these advisors
Speaker 1: that he trusts in the deal. They really have no
Speaker 1: portfolio that have no expertise in this area whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Aside from having large Twitter followings. You know, he's yeah,
Speaker 2: he's in the room with some of these venture capitalists,
Speaker 2: people that have had good careers in technology, have built
Speaker 2: massive fortunes investing, but in terms of running a social
Speaker 2: media company something to the scale of Twitter, which few
Speaker 2: companies are. You know, there's Facebook, there's Instagram, Reddit, But
Speaker 2: these guys don't have an understanding of this, and they
Speaker 2: again view this as a technical problem as opposed to
Speaker 2: a people problem. And so he's taking advice from people
Speaker 2: of his same background of the same ilk you know,
Speaker 2: like David Sachs, Jason kalakhanis of these investors that have
Speaker 2: put money into this deal. He at one point takes
Speaker 2: advice from his own biographer, Walter Isaacson, and he and
Speaker 2: also in that process decides to fire people that have
Speaker 2: worked at the company for years studying this stuff and
Speaker 2: working on it, largely because he believes they're inept or
Speaker 2: they're too woke or whatever. And that's I think that Hubris.
Speaker 2: Again we talk about these kind of gut decisions that
Speaker 2: he makes, but that is what has hampered him throughout
Speaker 2: the deal and throughout the takeover to the point where
Speaker 2: the company is, you know, valuation wise is crashed. It's
Speaker 2: advertising as crashed, the user numbers have crashed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even his lawyer, you know, even the people,
Speaker 1: you know, the the he's not using blue chip people
Speaker 1: even to make the deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Alex Alex Spiro, who is his I'm sure you've
Speaker 2: come across me as a is a big celebrity lawyer.
Speaker 2: He represented Megan the Stallion and Robert Kraft. He's a
Speaker 2: Jay Z's lawyer and actually becomes Elon's lawyer in the
Speaker 2: Pedal Guy case where he defends them successfully against deformation,
Speaker 2: ends up being one of the kind of lead lawyers
Speaker 2: on this deal, and also someone who ends up like
Speaker 2: somewhat leading the legal department in the early days of Twitter.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a trial lawyer. This isn't you know.
Speaker 2: He may be wildly successful, but does he have the
Speaker 2: expertise to understand what it means when an FTC consent
Speaker 2: decree comes in from the FTC? Does he understand what
Speaker 2: happens when the EU demands information? And does he have
Speaker 2: international law expertise to under like to grasp that. I
Speaker 2: don't think so, you know. And Elon fired a lot
Speaker 2: of the people or got or encouraged them to leave,
Speaker 2: folks that have kind of specialized in these areas and
Speaker 2: working in it for their whole careers. And again, that's
Speaker 2: just kind of one of the wilder things of this,
Speaker 2: of this whole thing. There was really no transition in
Speaker 2: place to understand how Twitter operated when he took over
Speaker 2: the company. There were a handful of meetings, but there
Speaker 2: wasn't like a transition plan. There wasn't like, Okay, these
Speaker 2: these people work over here. I understand that this is
Speaker 2: how the advertising business works. Let me understand that that
Speaker 2: came after he took over the company and after he
Speaker 2: laid off hundreds and thousands of people, and that has
Speaker 2: fundamentally damaged to the company.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's since you mentioned let's stay with the FTC
Speaker 1: for one second. There was the lawsuit where Elon said
Speaker 1: he was going to take the company private. This is Tesla. Okay,
Speaker 1: the government sued him. He made an agreement that he's
Speaker 1: been bitching about ever since, trying to overturn. You make
Speaker 1: a point that there are certain deals with the FTC.
Speaker 1: The FTC keeps asking for compliance and they don't imply.
Speaker 1: Does this basically say, if you're one of these guys,
Speaker 1: you have these balls, the real rules really don't apply.
Speaker 2: So the yeah, so the the the UH funding secured
Speaker 2: stuff that that Tesla take private, that was the that
Speaker 2: was the securities in the Change Commission sec But that
Speaker 2: that case, I feel like he is where he draws
Speaker 2: his understanding of how unaccountable he is. There is nothing
Speaker 2: that can hold him accountable. And I'll explain why, which
Speaker 2: is in twenty eighteen, he tweets that he has the
Speaker 2: money to take Tesla private funding secured. It has at
Speaker 2: four hundred and twenty dollars a share. He's going to
Speaker 2: take Tesla private, take it off the public market where
Speaker 2: it's not doing well because he's not hitting his numbers
Speaker 2: with the Model three rollout, and he says, screw it.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't need the public market. I have
Speaker 2: my private investors. You know, he didn't have that money,
Speaker 2: so I was going to come from Saudi Arabia wasn't coming.
Speaker 2: And the SEC sues him because he puts out a
Speaker 2: statement that manipulates the markets and offers a false promise
Speaker 2: to investors. YadA YadA. They sue him. He fights it,
Speaker 2: briefly settles what is what is he? What does he
Speaker 2: have to pay for that? You know, he personally pays
Speaker 2: a twenty million dollar fine. Testa pays a twenty million
Speaker 2: dollar fine. He's no longer able to be chairman, whatever
Speaker 2: that means. But what is a for What does forty
Speaker 2: million dollars mean to someone who's worth one hundred billion dollars?
Speaker 2: You know it it's a parking ticket for you and me.
Speaker 2: And his fundamental understanding of that that he could either
Speaker 2: fight something or simply pay the fine is crucial to
Speaker 2: how he operates now because when you get to something
Speaker 2: like operating Twitter and complying to an FDC consent decree,
Speaker 2: He'll be like, you know, I don't care about that,
Speaker 2: Like what are they going to do to me? Like
Speaker 2: are they going to They're not going to take the
Speaker 2: company away from me. They'll levy a fine. What is
Speaker 2: the fine going to be? Tens of millions dollars? Hundreds
Speaker 2: of millions of dollars? You know, I'm now worth two
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars. And not only that, I'm going to
Speaker 2: fight on every level using the legal system to really
Speaker 2: clog this process up. Right now, he is being asked
Speaker 2: to sit for a deposition by the SEC in a
Speaker 2: in a related securities cases. He's simply not showing up
Speaker 2: to his depositions, you know, and he's flaunting the SEC.
Speaker 2: He had a tweet the other day which is a
Speaker 2: play on something. He's kind of childish thing he said,
Speaker 2: but he says, the SEC stands for you know, the
Speaker 2: E stands for Elons, So you know S, you know,
Speaker 2: suck Elon's blank. You know that's what the s. You
Speaker 2: know that that was his tweet the other day, And
Speaker 2: you start to realize that in some ways he's he's
Speaker 2: blown past the gravitational pool of accountability. You know, he
Speaker 2: is so rich, he has so many resources. The government
Speaker 2: is so reliant on him with that, you know, he
Speaker 2: doesn't care, and that I think is a crucial understanding
Speaker 2: understanding how he operates.
Speaker 1: Okay, to make the deal. It's not all his own money.
Speaker 1: He raises some Silicon Valley money, raises some Wall Street money.
Speaker 1: Anybody who followed this closely knew that was a bad deal.
Speaker 1: Why did they put the money in and it's been
Speaker 1: proven to be a bad deal. They can't lay the
Speaker 1: money off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he raised what was publicly just goes about seven
Speaker 2: billion dollars of external capital, not including the debt, which
Speaker 2: we can talk about later, which is kind of a
Speaker 2: millstone around the company's neck. But the external this external
Speaker 2: venture capital. Some of it came from Qatar, for example.
Speaker 2: Some of it came from Kingdom holding the Saudi Prince,
Speaker 2: who is effectively overseen by MBS Mohammed bin Salman, who
Speaker 2: rolled over his steak from he already owned past Twitter share,
Speaker 2: so he just rolled over his investment about two billion
Speaker 2: dollars into into Elon's deal. But a lot of these
Speaker 2: were blue like leading venture Capital from the Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: We're talking about Siquoy Capital, Andreas and Horowitz, you know,
Speaker 2: and these and these firms believe in him as an entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: you know, they they see him as a generational talent.
Speaker 2: He has done so much with SpaceX and with Tesla
Speaker 2: that they're just going to take a punt on this
Speaker 2: Twitter deal. And even if it's a money loser, they're
Speaker 2: still close to him. They've they've it's it's especially buying
Speaker 2: loyalty in a way where on his next deal they
Speaker 2: might come to him. And so I think about this
Speaker 2: message that we reported in the book from Mark Andreesen,
Speaker 2: the head of Andresen Horowitz, who was offered to invest
Speaker 2: I think to initially two hundred million dollars. The number
Speaker 2: changed after but the emails, the messages came out. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know, two hundred million. Sure, we don't even need
Speaker 2: to do dilig just whatever he wants, he gets the check.
Speaker 2: And that's the level of influence he has over these people.
Speaker 2: And if you actually think about this deal, yes, it
Speaker 2: individually it's a money loser for the Sequoia Capitals of
Speaker 2: the world, for the and recent Horowitz of the world,
Speaker 2: but these same firms invested in this ai company that
Speaker 2: Elon spun up off of the data from Twitter Xai.
Speaker 2: And yes, it's funny money, but that company was recently
Speaker 2: valued at fifty billion dollars in a private venture round.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you're looking at the plus minuses
Speaker 2: here Twitter goes down, it's now about eight to nine
Speaker 2: billion dollars if you believe Fidelity's valuation of the company.
Speaker 2: But he's been able to create xai out of zero
Speaker 2: zero to fifty and so you're like, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: they have a point. You know, maybe they've they've gained
Speaker 2: the system enough where they understand that just being close
Speaker 2: to Elon begets more wealth.
Speaker 1: And what about the banks that loan them the money?
Speaker 2: Do they think that? Yeah? Those that's where it gets.
Speaker 1: Rough.
Speaker 2: You know. I have to look back on the actual
Speaker 2: debt that was raised. I think it was gosh, I'm
Speaker 2: off top of mad, like twelve thirteen billion dollars. It
Speaker 2: amounts to a billion dollars in interest payments alone a year,
Speaker 2: and those I mean, it's it's it's it's the worst
Speaker 2: deal since the Financial crisis for these banks. These banks
Speaker 2: are whole, They weren't able to sell on this debt,
Speaker 2: and they're holding these this horrible you know, this horrible debt.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just like they're getting crushed by it.
Speaker 2: These are the Morgan Stanley's, the Moral Think Bank of
Speaker 2: America had some of the debt Mizuno as well, and
Speaker 2: for them, I think the calculus is is somewhat even similar.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe we take this hit, really ugly hit
Speaker 2: on our books from this this Twitter deal. But let's
Speaker 2: say SpaceX goes public in the next couple of years,
Speaker 2: we want to be on that i PO. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a that's a billion dollar i PO for us
Speaker 2: and so and you know what happens with Neuralink and
Speaker 2: Boring Company. You know, they're probably doing the plus minus
Speaker 2: calculation and thinking, actually, they will still come out on top,
Speaker 2: even if even if Twitter is a historically bad deal.
Speaker 1: Okay, one of the reasons he wanted to buy what
Speaker 1: was then called Twitter was because of content moderation. Okay,
Speaker 1: he felt it was too tight. He comes in and
Speaker 1: he immediately blows out everybody involved in content moderation.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, he's he's he doesn't hide what he wants
Speaker 2: to do, you know. Uh, he was mad about the
Speaker 2: Babylon Bee being suspended, if that that that kind of
Speaker 2: right wing satirial satirical account. He was upset with Trump
Speaker 2: not being on the platform, even though he technically didn't
Speaker 2: like Trump. He thought it was a bad implication for
Speaker 2: free speech whatever, you know, and we'll talk about what
Speaker 2: he means by free speech. But yeah, well, actually, actually
Speaker 2: what happened was he tried to play nice with some
Speaker 2: of the content moderation folks. You remember this guy Yoel Roth.
Speaker 2: We ended up like severely harassing on the platform, to
Speaker 2: the point where Roth had to sell his home because
Speaker 2: he was being chased in real life by this online harassment.
Speaker 2: They were trying to get along. Elon was taking advice
Speaker 2: from this guy Yoel Roth ahead of Trust and Safety.
Speaker 2: Yoel eventually resigns, I think in the two or three
Speaker 2: weeks after the deal closes, and then kind of all
Speaker 2: hell breaks loose. He goes after you Wel he continues
Speaker 2: to fire Trust and Safety people. But yeah, content moderation
Speaker 2: for Elon was one of his big bugaboobs begaboos, and
Speaker 2: like it still is to this day. You know, he's
Speaker 2: he still thinks that Twitter was or the previous administration
Speaker 2: was influenced by progressive woke wokeism or whatever, and that
Speaker 2: everything flowed from that, and uh yeah, now you kind
Speaker 2: of that's that's kind of how you can understand or
Speaker 2: the content that's on Twitter now these days.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not only the United States of America. There's
Speaker 1: been the recent thing with Brazil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is he just.
Speaker 1: Flying naked or is this is it at some point
Speaker 1: with no content moderation team in place? Is it gonna
Speaker 1: ultimately impact Twitter just as a business negatively in a
Speaker 1: huge way. I Mean, we had the situation in Brazil
Speaker 1: and the person said, I'm standing up for everybody else
Speaker 1: who will stand up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a couple of things there. There is still
Speaker 2: a little bit of content moderation. There's automated processes in
Speaker 2: place that at at X there's still people. There's there's
Speaker 2: still some humans in the building. He's gotten rid of
Speaker 2: a lot of them, but there's still some around with
Speaker 2: content moderation. A couple there's there's a couple things you
Speaker 2: have to understand, which is that advertisers have been driven
Speaker 2: away by the lack of content moderation, right like it's
Speaker 2: a It's caused major brands to leave or spend less money,
Speaker 2: because why would they want their content to be next
Speaker 2: to a white nationalist who's been let back on the platform.
Speaker 2: Why would they want it next to tweets about Nazism
Speaker 2: or you know, videos of violence, which are somewhat commonplace
Speaker 2: on the platform. Now, the Brazil situation is very interesting
Speaker 2: to me, and it goes back to Elon's political alliances
Speaker 2: around the world. Elon was friends with Jayra Bolsonaro, the
Speaker 2: previous president in Brazil who was voted out essentially and
Speaker 2: replaced by the leftist president. But in doing you know,
Speaker 2: and then there were they had their own kind of
Speaker 2: January sixth moment where supporters of Bolsonaro storm government buildings
Speaker 2: in Brazil, which led to these decisions by the courts
Speaker 2: down in Brazil to essentially demand that Twitter ex remove
Speaker 2: these voices that caused for people to question the election
Speaker 2: and cause this kind of unrest. You know, we can
Speaker 2: debate whether or not it's good for any government body
Speaker 2: to get involved in online speech, but that was the
Speaker 2: law of the land in Brazil, and Elon decided to
Speaker 2: fight that in part because he was aligned with, you know,
Speaker 2: the old president, and he made a huge think about
Speaker 2: this to the point where X was pulled out of
Speaker 2: the country for a couple of weeks and then ultimately folded.
Speaker 2: You know, he complied with the orders and now the
Speaker 2: platform is back in the country. He'd loved to make
Speaker 2: if you analyze this case, he loved to make himself.
Speaker 2: He loves to make himself kind of the free speech
Speaker 2: advocate or seen as the free speech advocate. But let's
Speaker 2: compare this to what's happening in India, for example, where
Speaker 2: he's very close with the Prime Minister there in Arender Modi.
Speaker 2: The Modi government has demanded that Twitter sensor content regularly.
Speaker 2: I think of something like a documentary that was put
Speaker 2: up by the BBC about Modi himself. It was put
Speaker 2: on YouTube and shared across platforms. You know, Twitter complied
Speaker 2: with those takedown orders. There was no standing up for
Speaker 2: free speech in that case by Elon and opposing that
Speaker 2: that government takedown requests. He complied very easily. He's complied
Speaker 2: with government takedown requests in Turkey, for example, where he's
Speaker 2: aligned with Erdawan. So this kind of free speech mantra
Speaker 2: that he purports is very selectively applied and really depends
Speaker 2: on the market who he's aligned with. As well as
Speaker 2: his own kind of personal interests.
Speaker 1: Okay, since we're doing a three D view on Elon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just one thing, a little lose gravel here. He makes
Speaker 1: all these deals with these other car companies that they
Speaker 1: can use his superchargers. Then he wipes out his complete
Speaker 1: supercharger team. What was going on there?
Speaker 2: Your guess is as good as mine. He was He
Speaker 2: often he sometimes does this where he decides like there
Speaker 2: needs to be a kicking the ass for a part
Speaker 2: of his company, and he'll like severely jolt it, you know.
Speaker 2: And again we go back to that idea of if
Speaker 2: I if I break it, I can always bring him back.
Speaker 2: I can always reintroduce it. And actually he did that.
Speaker 2: He fired his whole supercharging team and they actually ended
Speaker 2: up bringing a lot of them back, which he's done
Speaker 2: this throughout his career. But if you're if you're GM,
Speaker 2: if you're Chevy, if you're even Rivian, you know you're
Speaker 2: you're probably raising your eyebrows and being like, damn, we really,
Speaker 2: you know, do we want to reevaluate this relationship? We
Speaker 2: got in bed with our main competitor and he is
Speaker 2: completely erratic and we don't know why he did it.
Speaker 2: Still like was it because he one day he woke
Speaker 2: up and was like, actually, you know what, I don't
Speaker 2: think I want my competitors to use my Like why
Speaker 2: would I give away my secret sauce? You know, let
Speaker 2: them build their own they you know, this is that's capitalism.
Speaker 2: I should be able to control my own chargers. But
Speaker 2: this kind of erratic nature and you know, unexplained decisions
Speaker 2: are part and parcel of him. Uh and it is
Speaker 2: it is fascinating to watch it play out over and
Speaker 2: over again as a reporter. But yeah, if i'm if
Speaker 2: I'm Mary Bara a GM, I'm I'm watching this with
Speaker 2: with Rai's eyebrows and wondering what's going on and just
Speaker 2: always seems like a master of five alarm fire with him.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he'sh Twitter, he starts bringing people in. If
Speaker 1: you don't tell him what he wants to hear, he
Speaker 1: immediately gets rid of you. So is this also a
Speaker 1: characteristic of his that he surrounds himself with the y
Speaker 1: s people can hear a contrary opinion.
Speaker 2: So it's a bit more nuanced. Actually in the book
Speaker 2: we go into this a little bit, but one on
Speaker 2: one he can actually be receptive to criticism and as
Speaker 2: long as you have the domain expertise, you have the
Speaker 2: numbers to back it up, the details. You know, if
Speaker 2: he asks you a question, you're able to answer it.
Speaker 2: And I the what we talked about. He likes to
Speaker 2: break things down to what he called first principles, like
Speaker 2: how do things operate? And if you're able to explain
Speaker 2: things to him in those first principles, he'll appreciate that.
Speaker 2: But what he doesn't tolerate is being criticized in a
Speaker 2: group setting or being made to look like he is
Speaker 2: dumb in a group setting. Essentially, we opened the book
Speaker 2: with this with this instance. Actually was well, this is
Speaker 2: a one on one thing, so it's kind of contradictory
Speaker 2: to what I said, But of this instance of a
Speaker 2: data scientist challenging him on why he tweeted out that
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. Do you remember that, yes? Yeah,
Speaker 2: So Paul Pelosi was attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband on far
Speaker 2: right media. It became this kind of rumor that he
Speaker 2: was attacked by a jilted lover, and Elon actually shared
Speaker 2: that came within days after the his acquisition. He shared
Speaker 2: that conspiracy theory essentially and this data scientist who's already
Speaker 2: going to quit, manages to get a one on one
Speaker 2: meeting with Elon and tell him. He goes in the
Speaker 2: meeting with the hope that he could maybe change him
Speaker 2: or change his perspective. And this is a data scientist
Speaker 2: who had studied misinformation and how it spreads on social platforms.
Speaker 2: And he says, like, look, I can't believe you would
Speaker 2: believe you know, you're in like the top tenth percentile
Speaker 2: of folks who would fall for something this ridiculous, Like
Speaker 2: how could you believe that you really need to like
Speaker 2: understand online sources better and like how information flows and
Speaker 2: really be more skeptical of what you read online. And
Speaker 2: like they get into a shouting match. Elon says, fuck you,
Speaker 2: you know, and the guy was going to quit anyway
Speaker 2: with like you know, fires him, and you start to
Speaker 2: realize that, yes, he doesn't he doesn't like to be
Speaker 2: challenged very often. And there are other scenes of the
Speaker 2: book where he fires people on the spot as well.
Speaker 2: And we go back to, you know, operating on gout instinct.
Speaker 2: It's worked for him in the past, It's worked for
Speaker 2: him at Tesla. You know, he has worked people to
Speaker 2: the bone, and if they don't get the things he
Speaker 2: wants done for him, he'll just find the next person
Speaker 2: who will. And he's built these major companies off those techniques,
Speaker 2: and he has simply applied those to Twitter. And you
Speaker 2: see that over and over again in the book.
Speaker 1: Okay, he starts taking cost cutting to an extreme level.
Speaker 1: You talk about getting rid of janitorial services. You talk
Speaker 1: about him actually ripping out a server. Is this like
Speaker 1: an emotional thing that he is setting. Let me put
Speaker 1: it differently, is he setting an example or he's for
Speaker 1: a guy who's worth two hundred north of two hundred billion.
Speaker 1: Is he really trying to save every bedding?
Speaker 2: We had this bit of reporting even before Twitter at
Speaker 2: Tesla and one it was during the the I think
Speaker 2: the model why ramp up, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: crossover SUVs whatever, And he decides to motivate people by
Speaker 2: removing the cereal from the offices and the factories. This
Speaker 2: free cereal that people get, it's the only free food
Speaker 2: that they get. And everyone's just lays like up in arms.
Speaker 2: They're like, you're gonna starve the people in the factory
Speaker 2: who are working for you, who like literally rely on
Speaker 2: this for breakfast. And sustenance. And what are you saving here?
Speaker 2: You're saving how much are Lucky charms? You know, mass
Speaker 2: produce Lucky charms, you know, a thousand couple thousand bucks.
Speaker 2: But it's for him, it's proving a point, right, it's
Speaker 2: if I can endure this pain, you can endure this pain,
Speaker 2: and I am willing to cut whatever we need to
Speaker 2: cut to make this company successful, whether that's lucky charms,
Speaker 2: whether that's servers, whether that's toilet paper, which I keep
Speaker 2: referencing but actually happened. They didn't have toilet paper the
Speaker 2: offices for a bit. But it's like a it's a
Speaker 2: psychological thing, almost right. And what he believes is he's
Speaker 2: going to be the one enduring this pain as well.
Speaker 2: He'll be the one sleeping at the factory if he
Speaker 2: can not eat and be on the factory line or
Speaker 2: be on the factory floor. And if he can sleep
Speaker 2: in the office, which he did set up be set
Speaker 2: up a bed in one of the conference rooms, then
Speaker 2: you like individual employees should be able to tolerate that
Speaker 2: pain too. Now on the flip side of that, you know,
Speaker 2: I talk to a lot of people about this, and
Speaker 2: it does motivate a certain amount of people. But then
Speaker 2: these people start to realize, like the upside for them,
Speaker 2: like what is it in Like what do they get?
Speaker 2: They get a couple shares, they get a good salary,
Speaker 2: but his upside is, you know, millions of shares that
Speaker 2: could increase in value. So he's the one seeing the
Speaker 2: upside from the enduring of pain by these folks. And
Speaker 2: whereas you know, the individual contributor to the individual employee
Speaker 2: isn't seeing the same kind of payoff. I guess he
Speaker 2: would argue, you know, he's made many people at Tesla millionaires,
Speaker 2: but you know, the cutting has always been a part
Speaker 2: of him and his identity, and it's something he's now
Speaker 2: taking into to the White House.
Speaker 1: Okay, he doesn't pay all these severance fees, etc. What
Speaker 1: is the status of the people were owed money, both
Speaker 1: in terms of severance, any stocked payouts, even people are
Speaker 1: owed money for office space. Are those people continuing to
Speaker 1: be stiffed or did anybody ever get paid?
Speaker 2: So there've been a series of lawsuits that have been filed.
Speaker 2: When we talk about the employees, there's thousands of employees
Speaker 2: that are currently awaiting arbitration. A lot of them had
Speaker 2: arbitration clauses in their contracts. So they're fighting essentially to
Speaker 2: get that severance paid to them, which is being overseen
Speaker 2: by a couple of different legal firms. But Elon has
Speaker 2: not relented. He has not signaled that he's just going
Speaker 2: to simply settle and pay these things. He's going to fight,
Speaker 2: which ultimately may cost him more, or you know, maybe
Speaker 2: his calculation is that some people would simply give up
Speaker 2: and forget about it. He's taking the same tact with
Speaker 2: the four executives that he fired in like literally the
Speaker 2: minutes after taking over, he fired the CEO, chief legal officer,
Speaker 2: General counsel, and chief financial officer. That was literally his
Speaker 2: first action upon taking over the company in October twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. And all these these four executives were do
Speaker 2: golden parachutes on a change of on a transfer power, which, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, any kind of merger or anything, they would
Speaker 2: do these golden parachutes, which amounted to about I think
Speaker 2: it's around one hundred and twenty million dollars total for
Speaker 2: all four of them combined. So he's he's fired them
Speaker 2: for cause, which allowed him to say, actually, you know,
Speaker 2: I fired you for cause, Therefore you don't deserve your
Speaker 2: golden parachutes or you're you're not, I don't have to
Speaker 2: pay you those And of course those executives sued.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: You know, now they're paying millions of dollars to lawyers
Speaker 2: to litigate that, and eventually they'll probably be a settlement
Speaker 2: where those executives get tired and they maybe don't get
Speaker 2: their full package, but they you know, they get some
Speaker 2: part of it. And that's kind of his strategy. You know,
Speaker 2: with rent as well, he stopped paying rent just you know,
Speaker 2: just didn't write the checks and continued to occupy the
Speaker 2: buildings until the real estate companies were forced to come
Speaker 2: to table and negotiate with him. We often think about
Speaker 2: like too big to fail, and we use that with banks.
Speaker 2: Obviously the financial crisis. There's a quality of Elon. There's
Speaker 2: a quality of that to Elon as well. You know,
Speaker 2: this idea that he is too big that people have
Speaker 2: to play on his terms. He's not going to simply
Speaker 2: do things because he signed a contract or because he's
Speaker 2: legally obligated to. But he can bend the rules and
Speaker 2: get people to play on his playing field if he
Speaker 2: wants to, and he's done that constantly with Twitter.
Speaker 1: Okay, changes the name of the company, puts up a
Speaker 1: huge sign which breaks the law, and has to take
Speaker 1: it down. Is he aware that he's breaking laws and
Speaker 1: regulations or is he just doing whatever he's doing because
Speaker 1: he's blind to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: I think he just simply doesn't care. I mean his lawyer,
Speaker 2: we had we quote his lawyer in the book. You know,
Speaker 2: Elon does not care about FTC consent decrees. Now that
Speaker 2: applies to building permits, it applies to whatever rules governed signage.
Speaker 2: In San Francisco, the company, the city sent inspectors to
Speaker 2: inspect the so called Twitter hotel in the building where
Speaker 2: he built these hotel rooms for employees to stand because
Speaker 2: he didn't want to pay for out of time employees
Speaker 2: to stay in hotels, so they would sleep in conference
Speaker 2: rooms on mixshift beds and shower in the office and
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. So the city set investigators and
Speaker 2: like you know, they continued to operate and have people
Speaker 2: stay there. He just doesn't care, you know. And that
Speaker 2: is a again going back to accountability. That's just a
Speaker 2: key understanding that he has. He is bigger than any
Speaker 2: law or any regulator or any agency.
Speaker 1: If we pull the lens all the way back. Those
Speaker 1: of us who were active on Twitter and we're aware
Speaker 1: of the changes he made, expected a the service to
Speaker 1: go down. There were a couple of hiccups, but nothing
Speaker 1: significant and for the whole thing to collapse on some level.
Speaker 1: It has not collapsed. So on some level do we say, hey,
Speaker 1: by cutting the vast majority of employeing and costs, he.
Speaker 2: Was right, You're right in that it hasn't collapsed, but
Speaker 2: there's been some pretty severe outages. Australia in December twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two was without it for a couple of days.
Speaker 2: You know, he's taking down a lot of the tools
Speaker 2: that oversee content moderation that have allowed you know, there
Speaker 2: the bought problem is still a major issue, you know,
Speaker 2: and there were there were a lot of tools that
Speaker 2: he took out that were overseeing that. When we talk
Speaker 2: about cuts, it's not just the platform itself, it's the
Speaker 2: people that also oversee advertising and what happened with advertising
Speaker 2: at the company. It's completely cratered. So yes, I think
Speaker 2: at the time, all these speculator all the speculation about
Speaker 2: Twitter collapsing after he did all the layoffs, I think
Speaker 2: was a bit premature, and Twitter over the years had
Speaker 2: built up a pretty robust infrastructure to keep itself online.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously we all remember the days of the
Speaker 2: fail well and you know those error messages that we
Speaker 2: we get or during big events like the Super Bowl,
Speaker 2: the site crashing or not the super Bowl, but the
Speaker 2: World Cup and stuff like that. But by and large,
Speaker 2: it's it's a bit a pretty robust system that Eleono
Speaker 2: has been able to take over, and so it stayed online.
Speaker 2: That being said, you know, it doesn't guarantee that it's
Speaker 2: going to stay online forever. And who knows. I reserve judgment,
Speaker 2: I guess, is what I'll say to that.
Speaker 1: Okay, he has this vision of turning what is now
Speaker 1: called next into a universal payment system, you know, akin
Speaker 1: to what they have in China, in light of what
Speaker 1: you were talking about self driving cars, et cetera. Is
Speaker 1: this complete fantasy? He says? You know, that's what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do with PayPal. Legend is that's why he
Speaker 1: was squeezed out. Should we pay any heed to that?
Speaker 2: Elan is a man that makes big, big promises. That's
Speaker 2: been his whole career. He's going to get humans to Mars.
Speaker 2: He's going to defeat climate change. He is going to
Speaker 2: build the everything up, and that's what he has pitched
Speaker 2: to investors. That's why he was in our book. We
Speaker 2: go over as some of the projections that he had
Speaker 2: for three years from now, five years from now, ten
Speaker 2: years from now, and some of those numbers were, you know, fantastical,
Speaker 2: you know, they were just fantasy looking at it now.
Speaker 2: And he sold investors on this idea that he could
Speaker 2: build the weed Chat of the US, you know, a
Speaker 2: place where you could watch videos, you would hail your cab,
Speaker 2: you would order your food, you would have your bank.
Speaker 2: And by and large, that vision has not been achieved.
Speaker 2: You know, they've been still working on those money transmitter
Speaker 2: licenses in all those states. You know, there's really you
Speaker 2: can't pay for anything with X at this point in time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's it's again these promises that he continues
Speaker 2: to make, and that's how he's operated as companies. It's
Speaker 2: always on this idea of a vision, this mission that
Speaker 2: we need it to and for for X, that mission
Speaker 2: has been the everything app mean, by the way, he
Speaker 2: hasn't mentioned that very recently. If you notice how we
Speaker 2: talked about it, he doesn't really talk about payments anymore.
Speaker 2: He doesn't talk about the everything app so maybe that
Speaker 2: was a convenient message for him to raise capital at
Speaker 2: the time. But yeah, I guess that's kind of a
Speaker 2: wait and see moment still as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about Linda Yakarno. So we read all
Speaker 1: about this stuff. I'm into a small conference where she
Speaker 1: was spoke very unimpressive, a sales lady at best. You know,
Speaker 1: the news was all about how much power she would
Speaker 1: be given. I mean, I got to meet the woman
Speaker 1: for three minutes to know you're not going to put
Speaker 1: her in control? What was going on in with you?
Speaker 1: Linda yak Arino.
Speaker 2: Lynda Yakarino has passed over for the head job at
Speaker 2: Mbcuniversal and was very successful what she did there. You know,
Speaker 2: she's a big advertising person, pretty highp executive. It worked
Speaker 2: a way up, but kind of saw the writing on
Speaker 2: the wall when she didn't get the gig and had
Speaker 2: always been angling for a top job. Her politics aligned
Speaker 2: with Elon. You know, she was involved with some Trump
Speaker 2: councils on the first Trump administration, and her Twitter feed
Speaker 2: was pretty obviously right leading. There were a lot of
Speaker 2: engagements with right wing accounts and that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and she saw an opportunity, so they began a conversation.
Speaker 2: Remember Elon had that very bizarre period in December twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two where he had a lot of self doubts
Speaker 2: of whether he wanted to run the company, and he
Speaker 2: tweeted out that thing about, you know, should I still
Speaker 2: be CEO of Twitter. It's this dark moment in the book,
Speaker 2: and it's I think one thing you realize about Elon
Speaker 2: is this very human He goes through these very up
Speaker 2: and down and in that point in time, our reporting
Speaker 2: put him in like a very dark place. You know,
Speaker 2: he had a lot of self doubts, and so there
Speaker 2: was kind of some public chatter about, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: he's looking for someone to like take the burden off.
Speaker 2: And so Linda Yakarino comes in and they start to
Speaker 2: have those conversations. She interviews him at a conference and
Speaker 2: ads conference where they have decent rapport on stage, and
Speaker 2: a couple months later she's named as the CEO. You know,
Speaker 2: I think anyone looking at that company knows who calls
Speaker 2: the shots. But also Linda oversees a lot of the
Speaker 2: aspects of the business that Elon just has no care for,
Speaker 2: and that particular part is advertising because Twitter, despite what
Speaker 2: Elan has said about subscriptions and despite what he has
Speaker 2: said about wanting to develop new revenue streams, is supremely
Speaker 2: dependent on advertising, and so Linda is there to do
Speaker 2: that but also carry his message. So you often get
Speaker 2: this very weird dynamic where she has to speak out
Speaker 2: of both sides of her mouth, or she has to
Speaker 2: pairt what Elon says, and uh, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: fascinating watching her and what she says online.
Speaker 1: Okay, then you have the famous meeting with the advertisers
Speaker 1: where Elon basically says, fuck you, we don't need you.
Speaker 1: What's the status of advertising today on X?
Speaker 2: So? I think you're referencing the deal Book conference where
Speaker 2: he goes yes as go fuck yourself. Yes, he says,
Speaker 2: Bob Igers in the audience, that kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 2: just that that from I often forget about that moment,
Speaker 2: but like I also now remember where I was for it,
Speaker 2: and to think that felt like a decade ago now.
Speaker 2: But the status of advertising on X is it's still declining.
Speaker 2: We get kind of piecemeal numbers. Obvious they don't they
Speaker 2: don't have to report those anymore. But I guess some
Speaker 2: numbers internally in the US, for example, that it's it's
Speaker 2: still declining after year over year, after a pretty bad
Speaker 2: year in the in the previous twelve months, it's still declining.
Speaker 2: And so Elon has wanted to put out this message
Speaker 2: that actually advertisers are returning, but you should, we should
Speaker 2: all be kind of skeptical about what returning means. Does
Speaker 2: that mean they're returning and spending five dollars? You know,
Speaker 2: what's the actual spend is actually the main question. And
Speaker 2: like you can often I pay attention a lot to
Speaker 2: what's on the Explore page that that on the training topics.
Speaker 2: You see that not right? So that big like banner
Speaker 2: ad is about a five hundred, it's anywhere from tw
Speaker 2: hundred fifty to fi hundred thousand dollars a day to
Speaker 2: take over that page and run that banner ad, and
Speaker 2: it's often very empty. You know, that used to be
Speaker 2: a place where artists promoted their new albums, or there
Speaker 2: were movie promotions, or if there was a new Apple
Speaker 2: you know, whatever, iPhone launch or whatever, they would take
Speaker 2: over that space. And that goes empty a lot of
Speaker 2: the time. And that just speaks to where the platform
Speaker 2: is at with advertisers being very queasy about the content
Speaker 2: and the people that remain on.
Speaker 1: X okay. A month or two ago, Tim Cooked very publicly,
Speaker 1: Tim Apple very publicly said, oh, yeah, we're advertising on
Speaker 1: x So you'd talk about Andreese and Horowitch, talk about
Speaker 1: Morgan Stanley, these people looking to the future. To what
Speaker 1: degree are other companies afraid of Elong?
Speaker 2: Oh completely? You know Cook got in a fight with
Speaker 2: Elon very famously and then had to like invite him
Speaker 2: to headquarters to like smooth it over. And that was
Speaker 2: over the thirty percent fee in the app store, right,
Speaker 2: And you know, I think these these even the top
Speaker 2: of the top, the Top Sea, Sundar Pichai, Sasha Nadella,
Speaker 2: Reid Hoffmann, they don't want to be seen on the
Speaker 2: other end of a shotgun blast from Elon Musk. You know,
Speaker 2: it creates a huge headache for you. And on some level,
Speaker 2: you know, like if he tweets value, you're just gonna
Speaker 2: have millions of people coming after you and denigrating you,
Speaker 2: and you know, a just criticizing you. And I think
Speaker 2: all of them believe that it's just easier to play
Speaker 2: nice with him. And so when Tim Cook says we're
Speaker 2: still advertising on X. It's interesting, right, like they still
Speaker 2: could be advertising an X, but what is the amount?
Speaker 2: You know, how does that compare in the past. And
Speaker 2: bear in mind that these companies are also very they
Speaker 2: have to do it's best for their business as well,
Speaker 2: and so if they are trying to break out of
Speaker 2: the duopoly of Google and Facebook and online advertising, you know,
Speaker 2: X offers a pretty reliable place, I guess, or at
Speaker 2: least an alternative. And that's not new to Elon. That's
Speaker 2: how it's always been. That's why Twitter was able to
Speaker 2: survive as a kind of alternative to the kind of
Speaker 2: two giants. But when when Tim Cook says something like that,
Speaker 2: it definitely feels like a very placating move, right, it's
Speaker 2: a it's a it's an olive branch to Elon.
Speaker 1: Okay, you follow this very closely. What's the long term
Speaker 1: maybe not that long term, not immediate, but short term
Speaker 1: prognosis with X? Do they miss the debt payments? Is
Speaker 1: it essentially like truth social it is gonna live forever?
Speaker 1: Relevant to the economics, what's gonna happen here?
Speaker 2: I don't think they miss the debt payments. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be surprised if elon Treasury Finance members some negotiation that
Speaker 2: probably that's actually already happened that there's been reporting on
Speaker 2: that X will operate as long as elon Ce's fit.
Speaker 2: You know, it's his favorite toy. He's created the thing
Speaker 2: that he wants the most. It's it's essentially his echo chamber, right.
Speaker 2: It's the place where he's now become the most followed user,
Speaker 2: he's the most engaged with account. This wasn't his intent
Speaker 2: when he bought the company, but he's been able to
Speaker 2: use it to leverage UH and get the presidential candidate
Speaker 2: he's wanted into the White House. So for him, it's
Speaker 2: been a you know, absent all the discussion about finances
Speaker 2: and everything. It's been a great success, and he's shaped
Speaker 2: it in a way. He's driven away the reporters that
Speaker 2: used to thrive on there, the news outlets that used
Speaker 2: to thrive on there, the people used to criticize them,
Speaker 2: and recreated it to become this place where his favorit.
Speaker 2: People have the blue check marks, they've bought them. They're
Speaker 2: elevated in his replies. They're the ones being shared on
Speaker 2: the for you page, the algorithmically curated page, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you could be happier in some ways. You know,
Speaker 2: his net worth has never been higher. You know, he's
Speaker 2: now worth three hundred and twenty three twenty five billion
Speaker 2: dollars give and take on any given day. So we
Speaker 2: talk about the financial problems that Twitter has had, but
Speaker 2: again in the plus minus column, like he's he's on,
Speaker 2: he's up, you know, and uh so, Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I think X continues to exist forever, for however long
Speaker 2: he wants it to.
Speaker 1: If Elon doesn't buy Twitter, Elon doesn't put money into
Speaker 1: the election process, does Trump win?
Speaker 2: Oh man, I gotta get my DeLorean out. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a bad place to be in a reporter to
Speaker 2: make these kinds of predictions. Yeah. Maybe, maybe maybe. If
Speaker 2: he doesn't buy Twitter, he doesn't become so steeped in
Speaker 2: right wing culture. You know, after he buys Twitter, he
Speaker 2: becomes really invested in immigration and starts pushing effectively the
Speaker 2: great replacement theory. He starts caring about voter fraud and
Speaker 2: you know, the thing that it has been talked about
Speaker 2: ad nauseum on Fox News, And he starts engaging with
Speaker 2: folks like Tucker Carlson and that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 2: I view that process as radicalizing him towards Trump, because
Speaker 2: you have to remember he was never a Trumper. He
Speaker 2: supported Ron de Santis in as late as May twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. You remember that Twitter space he had where
Speaker 2: he DeSantis launched his you know, his disastrous but he
Speaker 2: launched his his presidential campaign on x with Elon, but
Speaker 2: owning Twitter, engaging in that sphere really pushed him further
Speaker 2: and further to the right, to the point where he
Speaker 2: arrived on Trump's doorstep and they began a fast and
Speaker 2: aggressive relationship that kind of continues to this day.
Speaker 1: Okay, is this bro man that's going to continue? Really? Elon?
Speaker 1: Although South African is a classic American one man job,
Speaker 1: what do we know? Trump is uneducated, stupid, and impulsive.
Speaker 1: So therefore, seeing over the overall landscape and being manipulative,
Speaker 1: what you see is what you get. What we learned
Speaker 1: with Trump is hey, barring you know, are worst fears.
Speaker 1: He's constrained by the government. Also, he may not agree
Speaker 1: with Elon on certain things. Also, Elon likes to move fast,
Speaker 1: the government moves at a glacial piece. To continue would
Speaker 1: absolutely require compromise on Elon's part. Is that going to happen,
Speaker 1: or is Elon going to jump the rails at some
Speaker 1: point say you know this is just fucked up. You
Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing. I gotta I gotta lead.
Speaker 2: I thinks a big question. I think Trump does want
Speaker 2: Elon to break some of that those processes, right, That's
Speaker 2: why he's brought him in for the Department of Government
Speaker 2: Government Government Efficiency, Right. I think it's more analyzing it
Speaker 2: on a kind of one to one relationship standpoint as
Speaker 2: opposed to anything policy related, like can their egos exist
Speaker 2: in the same space for however long? We've already started
Speaker 2: to see reports about folks around Trump tiring of the
Speaker 2: amount that that that Elon has spent at the president's
Speaker 2: side in mar A Lago. That's the big question, you know.
Speaker 2: I wish I was in the game of predictions, but
Speaker 2: historically they have tended not to get along well with
Speaker 2: other people that have similar egos, similar desires to take
Speaker 2: control and be the leader. In my opinion, though, and
Speaker 2: this is complete speculation, I think both of them are
Speaker 2: aware of that, and they understand that like they're being
Speaker 2: watched in this way, and so to do things as
Speaker 2: they've always done them might not be the way to go.
Speaker 2: But who knows. I mean, these guys make split decisions,
Speaker 2: especially Elon, and one day you could wake up and
Speaker 2: find himself on the other side of Trump's good list
Speaker 2: or bad list, and it may lead to fireworks, but
Speaker 2: hopefully were there to report it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for two years Elon has been heavily invested
Speaker 1: in x miyor to him becoming very right wing when
Speaker 1: the lefties were still gun home on buying Tesla's question was,
Speaker 1: and this was an issue for the stock who's running
Speaker 1: the ship? He's so busy at X. Is the real
Speaker 1: story that he's just a figurehead and these companies run
Speaker 1: by themselves.
Speaker 2: It's actually really interesting that he's developed these kind of
Speaker 2: deep benches at these companies, and that's largely because he's
Speaker 2: at Tesla and SpaceX has been able to shape them
Speaker 2: from the ground up. You know, Tesla, he was an
Speaker 2: early investor that took over at SpaceX he founded, but
Speaker 2: he was able to mold these companies and put in
Speaker 2: place the people he wants to oversee, you know, at
Speaker 2: SpaceX rocket manufacturing or design. So all these people are
Speaker 2: very very familiar with how he works and what we've
Speaker 2: heard from people at these companies, is he's kind of
Speaker 2: the troubleshooter. If there's a major problem that's happening at
Speaker 2: Tesla or SpaceX, let's say in twenty eighteen, for example,
Speaker 2: on the on the factory line manufacturing Model threes, you
Speaker 2: know he'll get in and try and problem solve very
Speaker 2: aggressively and spend all his time on that problem until
Speaker 2: it's fixed. And so actually, if you think about it,
Speaker 2: like people call elon the sun in these companies, and
Speaker 2: you don't want to get too close to sunny get burned.
Speaker 2: So like if he is, if he's working with you
Speaker 2: on your part of the company or whatever project you're
Speaker 2: you're probably fucked. Like you're probably in there, you're probably
Speaker 2: in deep shit, right. You don't want to be in
Speaker 2: that position. You don't want to be in the same
Speaker 2: room with him. And so, by and large, these companies,
Speaker 2: when there is no crisis, he's run themselves. SpaceX has
Speaker 2: a very strong number too, and when shot well he
Speaker 2: had he has other vps around him as well that
Speaker 2: run that company and know about way more about rocket
Speaker 2: science or manufacturing than he does, and he defers to them.
Speaker 2: Same thing at Tesla with X, he didn't have that right.
Speaker 2: This wasn't a company he built up from the ground up,
Speaker 2: and so when he came in and fired everyone, there
Speaker 2: was really no one he could trust. He couldn't he
Speaker 2: couldn't leave and like let this thing operate week to week.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of what explains why he spent so
Speaker 2: much time there when after he took over, and explains
Speaker 2: why he eventually hired Linda Ekerino. But that's that's just
Speaker 2: an understanding of how it operates. So x is I
Speaker 2: guess getting there to the point where it can maybe
Speaker 2: be a little more self sustainable and he's not spending
Speaker 2: all his time there. But yeah, that's just that's how
Speaker 2: he works.
Speaker 1: Okay. Steve Jobs the legendary entrepreneur before Elon Musk. It's
Speaker 1: been well documented that the other Steve Wozniak was the
Speaker 1: brilliant engineer, and Steve Jobs was an incredible marketer and
Speaker 1: an incredible trends spotter. What is Elon's expertise? Is he
Speaker 1: really that great an engineer?
Speaker 2: As I said earlier, he's he's a great salesman. He's
Speaker 2: a great person in pushing people towards a vision and
Speaker 2: motivating them, collecting them in a room and getting him
Speaker 2: marching in the same direction. And that's for the causes
Speaker 2: of making humanity multiplanetary. It's for the causes of electrifying
Speaker 2: cars and bringing up and bringing about the ev revolution.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because Jobs and Musk are often talked
Speaker 2: talked about as having this quote reality distortion field, right,
Speaker 2: this ability to you know, if it's not real in
Speaker 2: real life, they able to make it happen. You know,
Speaker 2: no one saw the iPhone before Steve Jobs, no one
Speaker 2: saw self landing rockets before Elon, And they're able to
Speaker 2: push people and the boundaries to get them working towards
Speaker 2: these once impossible goals. And you know, I think I
Speaker 2: think that's it's borrowed from Star Trek. I'm not a Treky,
Speaker 2: but I think the reality distortion field is a Star
Speaker 2: Trek thing. But we've talked to so many people that
Speaker 2: say that about someone like Elon right, like that he
Speaker 2: has that ability to make people believe. And you see
Speaker 2: that quality not just that his companies, but outside his companies.
Speaker 2: You talk about the Robotaxi event. Again, he got people
Speaker 2: believing in this thing that's not even real. You know,
Speaker 2: that is on a movie set you know, farrying people
Speaker 2: around from fake city to fake city on a movie set.
Speaker 2: And when we talk about like his greatest quality as
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur, I think that that's it.
Speaker 1: Okay, But is he a good engineer?
Speaker 2: Uh? I guess it depends. Yeah, he's given himself the
Speaker 2: chief engineer title. I think at some of his companies,
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about his day to day at
Speaker 2: Tesla and SpaceX. At Twitter, for example, he is not
Speaker 2: in the code, he is not tweaking the algorithm. In fact,
Speaker 2: what we reported is he barely even uses as a
Speaker 2: computer that you know, he had. He had to have
Speaker 2: an assistant that set up his computer for him whenever
Speaker 2: he needed to really use a computer. But he views
Speaker 2: everything on his iPhone. Presentations have to be delivered to
Speaker 2: him so it's readable on a you know, whatever the
Speaker 2: size screen of an iPhone is, and from there he's
Speaker 2: able to dictate his vision and you know, tell people
Speaker 2: and direct them. But I don't think he's doing much
Speaker 2: engineering these days, particularly at Twitter or X.
Speaker 1: Okay, my dealings with Walter isaacs in have been relatively minimal,
Speaker 1: but I got to bug up my ass based on
Speaker 1: that dealing and the reverence this guy gets so he
Speaker 1: writes a book on Elon. People who are not don't
Speaker 1: follow this space, and we rave and then everybody follows
Speaker 1: this space. Said this guy drank the kool aid. And
Speaker 1: then reading your book where Elon literally asked Walter Isaacs
Speaker 1: in advice, whether consciously what this will do for the
Speaker 1: book or not, that compromises the entire reporting. But as
Speaker 1: a reporter, I'm sure you've read the book. What do
Speaker 1: you say about Isaacs in book?
Speaker 2: I've read the book, and I'll say this, I really
Speaker 2: loved the I read the Steve Jobs book cover to cover.
Speaker 2: I loved it. You know, I learned so much about him.
Speaker 2: But then I started to realize is that there are
Speaker 2: issues with these kind of great man biographies. Right, You're
Speaker 2: starting with this premise that these are great men and
Speaker 2: that they can be forgiven in some instances because they
Speaker 2: are such great men because have done such great things.
Speaker 2: And I think as a reporter, like leading with that
Speaker 2: is uncomfortable for me, particularly because I view my job
Speaker 2: as having to interrogate power. Like Yes, on one hand,
Speaker 2: I can understand that he's built great companies, but on
Speaker 2: the other hand, if he is harming, if people are
Speaker 2: getting hurt in his factories if he is breaking the law, like,
Speaker 2: it's my job to report that and expose that and
Speaker 2: show that and understand that there are costs to being
Speaker 2: this supposed great man. And I think, you know, with
Speaker 2: the Isaacson case, we'll just let a reporting do the talking.
Speaker 2: You know, our reporting showed that he was providing advice
Speaker 2: to Elon on Twitter Blue, the subscription service. He was
Speaker 2: telling him that a lot of people will use a service,
Speaker 2: how we should you know, he should price it low
Speaker 2: because it's going to be such a game changer. He
Speaker 2: was giving Elon advice on labeling. You know, there was
Speaker 2: that kind of tiff with NPR and whether or not
Speaker 2: it should be labeled as state sponsored media, and apparently
Speaker 2: Isaacson got involved with that as well. And as a reporter,
Speaker 2: that's just not a place I want to be in,
Speaker 2: I don't, you know. I want my I want my subject. Yes,
Speaker 2: I want to be in the room with my subject
Speaker 2: if they allow me to. But I'm not going to
Speaker 2: compromise my integrity as reporter. I don't want to be
Speaker 2: an advisor to him by any means. And I think
Speaker 2: that's the trap that he fell into, you know, Elon
Speaker 2: is extremely influential. He he he has a gravitational pull.
Speaker 2: We see this with all the people that come to
Speaker 2: kind of kiss his ring, and you know a lot
Speaker 2: of people described it as a king's court, and you
Speaker 2: kind of if you guess, if you're around it long enough,
Speaker 2: you fall into that. And we see that time and
Speaker 2: time again in our book with Walter, and I think
Speaker 2: that caloused your judgment when it comes to reporting. I
Speaker 2: think one of my main issues with his book is
Speaker 2: that he took Elon for face value on a lot
Speaker 2: of reporting. You know, as a reporter, you want to
Speaker 2: get multiple perspectives. And so for example, Elon's daughter has
Speaker 2: come out as trans daughter and said, you know, you've
Speaker 2: written about me a lot in your book, but you
Speaker 2: never reached out to me to get my perspective, and
Speaker 2: you just took my dad's and they don't have a
Speaker 2: very good relationship effect. Elon has said that his daughter
Speaker 2: is dead to him. So he simply took Elon's perspective
Speaker 2: about the trans daughter and ran with it. And I
Speaker 2: don't think that's good reporting. You know, that would that
Speaker 2: would never fly in a basic reporting one in one class,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that's that's kind of my view on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, starlink, we have the issue in the Ukraine War,
Speaker 1: we read about the plethora of satellites. No one has
Speaker 1: ever made satellite communications profitable. What's the future of starlink
Speaker 1: and to what degree do we have to fear Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's actions on the world stage.
Speaker 2: Starlink is another source of his power and one that
Speaker 2: ah gosh, I mean, it makes him so influential. You
Speaker 2: think about the Ukraine War and him essentially controlling the
Speaker 2: communications and pipes for the Ukraine defense effort as he
Speaker 2: simultaneously is calling for a cease fire and end of
Speaker 2: the war and an appeasing of putin right, it's kind
Speaker 2: of just nuts, Like we haven't really never seen this,
Speaker 2: and I think starlink only will get more powerful, like
Speaker 2: because Elon has a virtual monopoly on getting things into space,
Speaker 2: at least in the private industry, Like he controls how
Speaker 2: those satellites get up and he knows that and it
Speaker 2: gives him a lot of power. I think of the
Speaker 2: hurricanes that just hit, you know, the Southeast, and how
Speaker 2: FEMA was reliant on starlink and getting communications to that region,
Speaker 2: and Elon is is literally criticizing FEMA on on X
Speaker 2: he is shitting on the federal government, He's shitting on Biden,
Speaker 2: and yet FEMA has to play ball with him because
Speaker 2: he controls Starlink like it's an incredible position to be in,
Speaker 2: and I think Starlink will become more and more a
Speaker 2: source of his power. I think I saw today in
Speaker 2: the news that they had signed a contract with T
Speaker 2: Mobile to provide I guess calling service, So you know,
Speaker 2: we start to see more of those deals overseas. It's
Speaker 2: quite influential as well. And yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely
Speaker 2: an underrated part of his empire.
Speaker 1: Okay, and the Boring Company, which he never really took
Speaker 1: that seriously, but we almost never hear about it. Neuralink,
Speaker 1: he had his press conference. Are those businesses or those hobbies?
Speaker 2: I mean their businesses in the sense that they've raised
Speaker 2: venture capital and they employ people, and you know, Neuralink
Speaker 2: had its first patient that got something implanted. It's very
Speaker 2: very developmental early stages. The Boring Company, I guess it
Speaker 2: built that tunnel in Vegas that you know, shuttles people
Speaker 2: mile cars can drive through it, but there hasn't been
Speaker 2: very much from that from that company either, I would
Speaker 2: say those are not his main focuses. You know, obviously
Speaker 2: he'll dip into uralink stuff when they have an announcement
Speaker 2: or things like that. But when we talk about those
Speaker 2: kinds of teams that he's built up from the ground up,
Speaker 2: those companies are good examples of that where they kind
Speaker 2: of self operate without him. He'll dip in when he
Speaker 2: needs to, and when there's a big announcement he can
Speaker 2: draw attention to it. But it certainly adds to his lore,
Speaker 2: right Like he he's the man that runs six companies ostensibly,
Speaker 2: and it gives him a great legend. And oftentimes I
Speaker 2: get asked, you know, does how is he able to
Speaker 2: do this? Like I can't even do my own job,
Speaker 2: how can you do six and like run all these companies? Well,
Speaker 2: the truth is, like there's more to it, and he
Speaker 2: certainly loves to profit off this this image. But it's
Speaker 2: not like he is. He is going into New orlank
Speaker 2: every day and working on that from a nine to five.
Speaker 1: So what have you learned now that the book is out?
Speaker 2: Hmmm. So we end our book in March when he
Speaker 2: meets Donald Trump for the first time in a long
Speaker 2: time and they go in there at Florida, at the
Speaker 2: home of Nelson Pelts, the activist investory tried to take
Speaker 2: over Disney recently, and it was purposeful one. We couldn't
Speaker 2: get We couldn't continue the book forever, and we wanted
Speaker 2: a clean kind of cut to understand. You know, I
Speaker 2: think people understand like from that moment on is when
Speaker 2: he when he you know, really got in better of
Speaker 2: the Trump. But when we ended the book, I do
Speaker 2: not think we could have predict did the extent which
Speaker 2: with which with with which he would support Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: You know, there is a different world in which I
Speaker 2: thought it would have been a much more quieter support.
Speaker 2: He would have maybe announced his endorsement a couple of
Speaker 2: days before the election, and he would not have done
Speaker 2: by any means what we saw happen, you know, which
Speaker 2: is to pour two hundred million dollars into his campaign
Speaker 2: and to literally go to rallies in Pennsylvania and stuff
Speaker 2: for him and have this charity whatever lottery giveaway to
Speaker 2: people who register to vote for him. That was unfathomable
Speaker 2: to me, and I'd like, that wasn't even on the
Speaker 2: cards for me. And what I've learned from that is
Speaker 2: just his convictions, and what when you have that much money,
Speaker 2: what you're able to do about those convictions. You know,
Speaker 2: he spent two hundred million dollars on Donald Trump's campaign,
Speaker 2: and that seems like a really smart bet considering what
Speaker 2: he'll get out of that. You know, he'll be able
Speaker 2: to appoint people that he wants the government. He might
Speaker 2: he has the influence an ear of the president, and
Speaker 2: so that two hundred million dollars looks incredibly cheap, where
Speaker 2: whereas that's unfathomable. You know, who else could do that
Speaker 2: in the world. And so yeah, I've learned, I've learned
Speaker 2: how that works, I guess, or how that looks, and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So well, I'm actually also interested in what you learn personally.
Speaker 1: You write a book, you're with your co author we
Speaker 1: both work at the New York Times, comes out on
Speaker 1: a major publisher, It comes out relative to your expectations
Speaker 1: and feedback. What did you learn.
Speaker 2: About writing a book or moving through the.
Speaker 1: World there or writing this book? Yeah, writing this book,
Speaker 1: in this book coming out, what do we learn? Let
Speaker 1: me throw on a couple of things. Yeah, sure, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: everybody's focused on their life. You're leading up to publication, date.
Speaker 1: In your world, this is the most important thing since
Speaker 1: your status, of the writer's subject matter of the book,
Speaker 1: the publisher. There's a lot of ink media coverage around
Speaker 1: its publication, then the media moves on. Okay, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of people have written books recently. I had
Speaker 1: to listen to Kara Swisher write about her and talk
Speaker 1: about her fucking book for over a year, came out,
Speaker 1: was gone within like a week, and really no one
Speaker 1: bought it. And there are a lot of other people
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, your book certainly has a higher pedigree,
Speaker 1: more interest. Do you find you're getting continued feedback? Do
Speaker 1: you find that you're hearing from people that you didn't
Speaker 1: used to hear from. Do you find that you're being criticized?
Speaker 1: Are you stunned that the world has moved on what
Speaker 1: has been your emotional experience in addition to what has
Speaker 1: been incoming.
Speaker 2: So I've been surprised because we've had a renewed interest
Speaker 2: in our book after the election, because more people want
Speaker 2: to understand what he's going to do with government, how
Speaker 2: we operate, and people can read about that about in
Speaker 2: like what he did with Twitter. So we just came
Speaker 2: back from a tour of Europe actually to where we
Speaker 2: talked about the book. We spoke at web Summit and Lisbon,
Speaker 2: we did some events in London. So on that level,
Speaker 2: I honestly thought I talked to a lot of authors
Speaker 2: who are like, you know, enjoy it while you can,
Speaker 2: because a week later, like, people aren't gonna talking about
Speaker 2: your book. That's just the natural progression of things. And
Speaker 2: for us to be continuing to talk to people two
Speaker 2: and a half months out of publication, to people like yourself,
Speaker 2: has been an incredible privilege. And so I'm just trying
Speaker 2: to kind of ride that wave and enjoy it and
Speaker 2: kind of impart the knowledge that we've learned about him too.
Speaker 2: You know, people that are interested.
Speaker 3: Well, Ryan, this has been incredibly edifying. You're a very
Speaker 3: sharp guy. You're on the case. There's certainly a movie
Speaker 3: unspooling in front of us. I know you will be
Speaker 3: reporting on it. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 3: for taking this time to speak with my audience.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Bob. I want to say this has
Speaker 2: been an honor. I know I've read you for so long.
Speaker 2: You're such a time in the industry, So thank you
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 3: Having man till next time, This is Bob left st