Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 3: controlled by one man.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 4: He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 4: it will be different.
Speaker 1: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 4: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 4: on him.
Speaker 3: Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 3: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Elon, Inc, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: It's Tuesday, October fifteenth, and I'm your host, Max Chafkin.
Speaker 2: This week, in the wake of an more or less
Speaker 2: successful or not super successful Robotaxi launch, we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about a mini flood of Elon news stories.
Speaker 2: We had a big win for SpaceX, as well as
Speaker 2: some legal trouble. There's the question of whether those really
Speaker 2: cool Optimist robots at the event were just people using
Speaker 2: remote controls. Then we'll turn the mic over to tech
Speaker 2: reporter and author Kurt Wagner, who had a great talk
Speaker 2: with Ryan Mack and Kate Conger about their new book
Speaker 2: on Twitter character limit. Okay, to break down the news,
Speaker 2: we have a real who's who of Elon reporters. Lauren
Speaker 2: Grush is joining us from Austin. She covers SpaceX for Bloomberg. Hey, Lauren, Hey, guys.
Speaker 2: Ed Ludlow, tech reporter, host of Bloomberg Technology is coming
Speaker 2: live to us from San Francisco. Ed, how you doing?
Speaker 5: Very good?
Speaker 2: Hello, And of course, our old friend and Bloomberg's official
Speaker 2: Elon Musk reporter Dana Hall beaming in from the Bay Area. Hello, Dana,
Speaker 2: Hi Max. All right, Lauren, let's start with you. SpaceX
Speaker 2: did something pretty impressive this week. It caught one of
Speaker 2: it's big starship Rockets, and what the script says, and
Speaker 2: I'm not making this up with giant chopsticks, and I'm
Speaker 2: hoping you can explain what that means and what exactly happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I feel like it takes a lot to surprise me
Speaker 6: at this point, just because I cover space so regularly,
Speaker 6: but this was one of those feats where I was
Speaker 6: actually very taken aback. It was a pretty stunning achievement.
Speaker 6: So if for anyone who follows SpaceX just casually, you
Speaker 6: probably know that they consistently land their Falcon nine rockets
Speaker 6: after launch, where they come back, they reignite their engines
Speaker 6: and then they land on landing legs. But with this
Speaker 6: it was a whole new type of recovery for their
Speaker 6: Starship rocket. So Starship is their vehicle that they hope
Speaker 6: to send to the Moon in Mars. It's quite massive,
Speaker 6: the most powerful, the largest rocket ever built, and essentially
Speaker 6: the booster portion which propels Starship to space, came back
Speaker 6: to Earth and rather than land on landing legs, it
Speaker 6: ignited its engines to slow itself down, and then two
Speaker 6: giant arms attached to the launch tower that it launched
Speaker 6: from protruded outward and caught the booster as it came
Speaker 6: down with these grid fins that are protruding from the booster.
Speaker 6: So you kind of have to watch the video to
Speaker 6: really get the full effect. I don't think I can
Speaker 6: describe it as well as the video shows it, but
Speaker 6: it was a pretty masterful feat. And I'll be honest,
Speaker 6: you know, I think there are a lot of skeptics,
Speaker 6: including myself, that were a little unsure about whether or
Speaker 6: not they could pull this off. But I watched it
Speaker 6: with my own two eyes. It was pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, aren't these things called something like Mecca?
Speaker 1: Mecca was Mechazilla?
Speaker 6: Yes, you know, SpaceX always loves to have a good
Speaker 6: funny name for the things that they built. So the
Speaker 6: Mechzilla chopsticks are the nicknames for these two arms that
Speaker 6: stick out of the launch tower.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Elon Musk course has away with nicknames and names
Speaker 2: and also very good at these kind of you know,
Speaker 2: show stopping demonstrations. But Lauren, like, why is this impressive
Speaker 2: and like, what does it tell us about SpaceX's progress
Speaker 2: with this very large rocket.
Speaker 6: Well, I think for me it was impressive just because
Speaker 6: the booster, which is called super heavy, is just so
Speaker 6: massive and you know, logically just doesn't make sense in
Speaker 6: my brain. The fins that stick out of it can
Speaker 6: are enough to hold up this massive booster in mid
Speaker 6: air basically. But really, the more impressive side of it
Speaker 6: is that Starship has been advertised as being fully reusable.
Speaker 6: So the Falcon nine, you know, it gets a lot
Speaker 6: of attention for being reusable, but it's only partially reusable.
Speaker 6: The upper portion of it actually doesn't survive or come
Speaker 6: back to Earth. And so this is a key step
Speaker 6: because you know, if Starship is going to be fully reasonable,
Speaker 6: you have to save both parts that part of the
Speaker 6: test flight. Starship did also survive its re entry through
Speaker 6: Earth's atmosphere, at least mostly. I did see some burn
Speaker 6: through of you know, the fins, but it did make
Speaker 6: it back more or less intact.
Speaker 2: All right, ed put this in a context of SpaceX
Speaker 2: in general. A lot is happening with SpaceX. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of progress with Starlink. I mean, what kind
Speaker 2: of year has this company had are they having right now?
Speaker 3: So always challenging because of Elon Musk, because they are
Speaker 3: intensely followed by regulators and state officials and federal officials.
Speaker 3: But the easiest thing for anyone who wants to follow SpaceX,
Speaker 3: or has to follow SpaceX to do is take at
Speaker 3: face value the bigger picture goal. I'm never going to
Speaker 3: be able to put rocket science as poetically to you
Speaker 3: as Lauren Grush does, But if you look at each
Speaker 3: mission Starship just gone and say, okay, the goal was
Speaker 3: to catch the booster, and the secondary goal was to
Speaker 3: have Starship fall through Earth's atmosphere and not disintegrate, you
Speaker 3: have to accept that the longer term and bigger picture
Speaker 3: goal is to get mankind or humankind to being an
Speaker 3: InterPlaNet tree species and get humankind to Mars. And it's
Speaker 3: the kind of thing where your journalist and you're sitting
Speaker 3: with your editors, your dear friend Donah Hole or you know,
Speaker 3: the head of Bloomberg Television, and you sit in front
Speaker 3: of them and you say that and they just cannot
Speaker 3: accept it. But that's true.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's move from deep space and Mars down to Earth.
Speaker 7: Dana.
Speaker 2: There's a bit of a fight going on right now
Speaker 2: between Elon Musk and some local officials in California over
Speaker 2: some of these launches, over the sort of plans for
Speaker 2: an expansion of these launches from I believe the Vanderberg
Speaker 2: Air Force Base, which is in California. What's going on
Speaker 2: with this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I feel like a bit much has been
Speaker 1: made about this. The California Coastal Commission, which oversees California's
Speaker 1: very beloved and pristine coast like it's worried about the
Speaker 1: number of launches. But SpaceX, to be clear, they want
Speaker 1: to launch a lot, and they've got multiple launch pads.
Speaker 1: They've got Bokachika, they've got Vandenburg and California they've got
Speaker 1: the launch pad in Florida, and so like last week,
Speaker 1: the Coastal Commission said that they were like worried about
Speaker 1: giving SpaceX more launches because of like issues with labor rights.
Speaker 1: This is like a non binding rebuttal like it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually change anything, but Elon Musk is very upset about it.
Speaker 1: He said that SpaceX is going to sue the Coastal
Speaker 1: Commission today apparently we haven't seen an actual lawsuit, but
Speaker 1: it sort of plays into the larger narrative that Elan
Speaker 1: has been pushing, which is that he is a victim
Speaker 1: of law fair and that these pesky regulators, whether at
Speaker 1: the federal government or in California, are like constantly kind
Speaker 1: of trying to take him down, and that like we'll
Speaker 1: never get to Mars without with all this government bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: And so it kind of like plays into this narrative
Speaker 1: that he has really been on for quite some time.
Speaker 1: You know, ultimately, I'll be curious to see if SpaceX
Speaker 1: actually sues and on what grand.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move to robots. Ed you wrote a
Speaker 2: story for Bloomberg, I believe, yesterday about these wonderful looking,
Speaker 2: these very impressive optimist robots. People at this Tesla event
Speaker 2: on Thursday could not believe it. The robots had different voices,
Speaker 2: they were cracking jokes, even spoke Spanish. But it appears,
Speaker 2: and according to your reporting, that there was a catch.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did not go to the event. I tried very
Speaker 3: hard to, but I was not invited. Many people at
Speaker 3: the event could not believe that the Optimius robots were real,
Speaker 3: that they were really doing this autonomously. Some people did
Speaker 3: suspect that they might have had some help, and some
Speaker 3: people did ask the robot if it was having some help,
Speaker 3: and there was some confusing posts on X So I said,
Speaker 3: we have to confirm this, so I phoned everyone that
Speaker 3: I know, and what we reported is that, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: these Optimist spots were helly operated in the interactions they
Speaker 3: had with the guests at the event.
Speaker 2: And teller operated means remote control.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, there were remotely controlled. So there were Tesla's
Speaker 3: staff in a warehouse essentially not off site, but away
Speaker 3: from the festivities, controlling their movement and I believe their
Speaker 3: voice as well, though that is a point of contention. Specifically,
Speaker 3: we're talking about things like pouring drinks, and we're talking
Speaker 3: about games of rock, paper, scissors, and high fives. However,
Speaker 3: there were parts of the Optimus robot's function on the ground,
Speaker 3: which I'm told by sources was autonomous, but it's limited
Speaker 3: to walking around, which is still a very impressive feat,
Speaker 3: although there are other robotics companies that have achieved that historically.
Speaker 3: And dancing, so, for example, there are clips out there
Speaker 3: where members of the audience are like doing dances and
Speaker 3: the Optimus bot mimics the dance, and my understanding from
Speaker 3: sources is yes, that is something the Optimist did of
Speaker 3: its own artificially intelligent volition. There's one important point that
Speaker 3: I added to my reporting late late in the evening
Speaker 3: after the story was published, which is this was a
Speaker 3: classic Elon Musk thing. Basically, three weeks ago before the event,
Speaker 3: he decided he wanted to have the robots at the event,
Speaker 3: and so he told the team that's in charge of Optimus,
Speaker 3: make this happen, and they were all like, we cannot
Speaker 3: make this happen. There isn't enough time. The Optimist robot
Speaker 3: isn't ready, and so teleoperation or remote control was the
Speaker 3: only option.
Speaker 2: My favorite thing about this story is imagining there were
Speaker 2: like fifty Optimist robots or something, and imagining fifty individual
Speaker 2: Tesla employees in little phone booths somewhere on that soundstage,
Speaker 2: you know, having to play rock paper scissors with all
Speaker 2: these like car influencers. Dan, what are we even talking
Speaker 2: about here? What is opt I thought this was a
Speaker 2: cyber cab event. Why are we even talking about this?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the fact that the cyber cab event
Speaker 1: itself was so lackluster is probably why the robots came out,
Speaker 1: Because when they announced the event, they called it we Robot,
Speaker 1: which is like nod to Isaac Asimov. And I was
Speaker 1: telling everyone internally like oh yeah, like okay, this is
Speaker 1: not just about the robotexie. This is clearly also about optimists.
Speaker 1: And this is all part of like Musk's whole thing
Speaker 1: of positioning Tesla as not a car maker, but as
Speaker 1: an AI and robotics company. That's where the future is.
Speaker 1: And you know optimists right now, like a couple of
Speaker 1: them work in the Fremont factory. They like sort batteries.
Speaker 1: I mean eventually they'll probably be put to work digging
Speaker 1: tunnels on Mars. He was sort of pitching optimists as
Speaker 1: like your buddy, like that you could hire optimists to
Speaker 1: mow your lawn and babysit your kids and be.
Speaker 3: Your friend, well babysitster in some ways.
Speaker 2: Lauren, You know, my impression here is that we're seeing
Speaker 2: some stuff that just sounds very unserious, right, like kind
Speaker 2: of a blown demo or maybe a muff demo over promises.
Speaker 2: You see people sort of criticizing this event, saying Elon
Speaker 2: Musk is attracted. On the other hand, of course, SpaceX
Speaker 2: had this wonderfully successful demonstration almost at the exact same time.
Speaker 2: Do you any sense of what is going on, like
Speaker 2: why we're seeing what feels like a bit of a
Speaker 2: divergence between the two companies.
Speaker 6: I've always said that when it comes to SpaceX, it's
Speaker 6: just a type of technology really can't fake, you know,
Speaker 6: and I'm not trying to insinuate that there is any
Speaker 6: faking going on, but you know, when it comes to
Speaker 6: launching rockets, like it's a very visible medium and you
Speaker 6: can see in real time they all have to work
Speaker 6: as predicted or else you get some very explodey reactions.
Speaker 6: So I think it's just more of kind of a
Speaker 6: forcing function that when you launch rockets there really is
Speaker 6: no room for error or faking, and so they have
Speaker 6: to get it working correctly. You know, I think that's
Speaker 6: kind of been my thesis, But I can't really speak
Speaker 6: to why there's a little more smoke and mirrors. I
Speaker 6: guess at the Tesla side of things than the SpaceX
Speaker 6: of things.
Speaker 3: He isn't often right on the timeline, but in many
Speaker 3: cases he gets there in the end.
Speaker 2: Dana final word here.
Speaker 1: My big take was like Elon is just bored of
Speaker 1: building cars. That just seemed very obvious to me. He
Speaker 1: didn't talk about the business case for the ROBOTAXI, he
Speaker 1: didn't talk about the potential for Tesla to ever make
Speaker 1: a cheaper car. But Mars and getting to Mars has
Speaker 1: been like his overriding mission since he was like a kid,
Speaker 1: Like that is like the reason why he founded SpaceX.
Speaker 1: And so you're always going to see SpaceX pushing the
Speaker 1: envelope and really being like the gold standard for what
Speaker 1: is possible and what is achievable. And I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: like when SpaceX was first trying to land rockets on
Speaker 1: drone ships and they would miss and miss and miss,
Speaker 1: and then they finally nailed it, and that was like
Speaker 1: a big thing. And so they're constantly pushing the envelope,
Speaker 1: whereas with Tesla, they're way behind Weimo in terms of
Speaker 1: actually having like an operational license to run driverless cars
Speaker 1: as a robotaxi service in a city like San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and frankly, they're way behind like Boston Dynamics in terms
Speaker 1: of robotics. And so it's just wild to see the Tesla,
Speaker 1: which is this company that really ushered in the electric
Speaker 1: vehicle era, now trying to push robotics as this thing
Speaker 1: that they're gonna slay in when they're behind the competition.
Speaker 2: Let's end it there, Lauren dana Ed, thank you for
Speaker 2: being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Thank you, Take care.
Speaker 2: And now over to Kurt Wagner's interview with Kate Conger
Speaker 2: and Ryan Mack, two New York Times reporters who recently
Speaker 2: came out with a book called Character Limit, How Elon
Speaker 2: Musk Destroyed Twitter. It details the acquisition of Twitter and
Speaker 2: the first year at the company. Kurt, of course, wrote
Speaker 2: his own book on the subject, Battle for the Bird,
Speaker 2: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and the forty four billion dollar
Speaker 2: Fight for Twitter Soul. Kurt's book covers the twisty lead
Speaker 2: up to the acquisition. Character Limit covers the messy aftermath,
Speaker 2: so it's an ideal pairing. And with that preamble, here's
Speaker 2: Kurt interviewing Kate Conger and Ryan Mack.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's welcome to Elon, Inc. The authors of the
Speaker 4: recent book Character Limit. Ryan Mack and Kate Conger from
Speaker 4: The New York Times.
Speaker 5: Welcome guys, Hey, Kurt, thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 7: We're really excited to talk to you.
Speaker 4: I feel like I know the story as well as
Speaker 4: most should, and I learned a ton from what you
Speaker 4: guys put together. I think one of the things I
Speaker 4: still sort of don't really know the answer to, even
Speaker 4: though we're two years later, is like, did Elon really
Speaker 4: want to buy Twitter? Did he sort of fall into
Speaker 4: this thing almost unintentionally? Like what drove him? I guess
Speaker 4: I'm curious what your best theory is for why he
Speaker 4: felt he needed to own this platform.
Speaker 5: I think of Elon, I think of someone who gives
Speaker 5: himself missions, and he likes to give himself like a
Speaker 5: higher reasoning or a higher calling for doing the things
Speaker 5: he does, whether that's getting people to Mars or electrifying
Speaker 5: cars and helping the environment. You know, there's always something
Speaker 5: more beyond the sense of business reason, I guess, and
Speaker 5: we could see in his text messages, you know he
Speaker 5: was he was annoyed with the Babylon Bee, he was
Speaker 5: annoyed with Trump being the platformed, the free speech thing.
Speaker 5: But at the end of the day, like Twitter was
Speaker 5: his like favorite thing in the world. He spent hours
Speaker 5: and hours every day on it. He was It's where
Speaker 5: he cultivated his community. He loved talking to people on there,
Speaker 5: he loved brawling, he loved trolling. And in the same
Speaker 5: way you know, Steve Balmer might buy the Clippers or
Speaker 5: Jeff Bezos might buy a yacht, you know, Elon must
Speaker 5: bought a company, and that is is kind of how
Speaker 5: we understand it's his favorite toy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the book is full of anecdotes, full of color,
Speaker 4: full of stories of course of Elon. I'm wondering if
Speaker 4: you both have maybe a favorite that you'd want to
Speaker 4: call out, Like, is there something that stands out from
Speaker 4: your reporting?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I think for me, I think a lot about Elon's
Speaker 7: own narrative of himself. And you know, he's explain that
Speaker 7: in many many interviews and his authorized biography, But he
Speaker 7: often talks about himself as someone who was a victim
Speaker 7: of abuse from both his father and his classmates when
Speaker 7: he was young, and how formative that was for him,
Speaker 7: and how you know, being deprived of that kind of
Speaker 7: love and affection and sort of unconstrained kindness when he
Speaker 7: was a child drove him to be someone who is
Speaker 7: very disciplined and who had to prove his worth right
Speaker 7: and wanted other people to prove their worth to him.
Speaker 7: I think that's really interesting, and I think it's you know,
Speaker 7: really tragic as well, especially now as we see him
Speaker 7: kind of playing out these patterns of abuse and hardship
Speaker 7: against his own family and the people who are close
Speaker 7: to him. And I see that especially in the book.
Speaker 7: There's this section where he is planning to have another
Speaker 7: child with Grimes via surrogate. They've picked out a name
Speaker 7: for the baby, Valkyrie, and at the same time, he
Speaker 7: is in secret from Grimes having children with one of
Speaker 7: his employees at Neuralink, chevon Zillas, and those children Chavon's
Speaker 7: children are born prior to the baby with Grimes. He
Speaker 7: names one of those children Valkyrie and basically steals the
Speaker 7: name from his child with Grimes and applies it to
Speaker 7: this other child. You know, and then Grimes finds out
Speaker 7: obviously is very heartbroken, writes a whole song about the
Speaker 7: experience and talks about sort of a mother's pain and
Speaker 7: being robbed of the name that she's chosen for her daughter.
Speaker 7: But it really I think portrays Elon as someone who
Speaker 7: views even the people who are closest to him as interchangeable.
Speaker 7: Their names can be interchanged, their bodies can be interchanged,
Speaker 7: their skills can be interchanged, and he doesn't hold back
Speaker 7: from doing harm because of the hurt it might cause
Speaker 7: to other people.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a pretty crazy story there, Ryan. Do
Speaker 4: you have one that comes to mind for me?
Speaker 5: The one thing that stands out that we've reported on
Speaker 5: is on Twitter Blue launch day. You know, he's got
Speaker 5: this plan to sell the badges. It's going to reinvigorate
Speaker 5: the company, is going to make so much money off
Speaker 5: the sale of these badges. And he goes into the
Speaker 5: meeting room and he's talking with the product folks and
Speaker 5: the engineers in the room, and they really have a
Speaker 5: lot of concerns. This is going to upend what people
Speaker 5: understand about verification. They're concerned about what happens in emergency
Speaker 5: situations when let's say, I don't know, if some fire
Speaker 5: department announces there's an oncoming hurricane or tornado warning or
Speaker 5: something like that, what does that mean? And he basically
Speaker 5: says to them in a quote like you know, we're
Speaker 5: going to be shooting from the hip in real time,
Speaker 5: and everyone just has their hands on their heads and
Speaker 5: they're like, people could really get hurt so much to
Speaker 5: the point where an engineer who's calling in says like,
Speaker 5: at what point do we shut off this? Like when
Speaker 5: do we know that we've hit a real problem? And
Speaker 5: Elon responds to him when someone dies or someone gets
Speaker 5: really hurt, that's when we're going to, you know, stop
Speaker 5: what we're doing. And I was just like, that's that's
Speaker 5: not a responsible way to launch a product. It's extremely dangerous.
Speaker 4: Both of your anecdotes here like have similar themes, right,
Speaker 4: which is that to your point, he's not really taking
Speaker 4: other people into account. How does he justify that or
Speaker 4: do you feel like you know how he justifies that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think Elon's thought process is sort of one
Speaker 7: that's common in Silicon Valley, but he takes it to
Speaker 7: a new extreme. But it's this idea of long termism
Speaker 7: where whatever harm I might do in the present is
Speaker 7: worth it if I've done something that fifty one hundred
Speaker 7: years down the road is going to have an immense
Speaker 7: impact for all of humanity. And I think Elon really
Speaker 7: thinks that way, and a lot of other folks in
Speaker 7: Silicon Valley do as well. You know, we've seen this
Speaker 7: a lot with self driving and with the gig economy,
Speaker 7: where there are these justifications of like, it's okay if
Speaker 7: you know a child gets run over by a self
Speaker 7: driving car or there's some kind of mishap that happens
Speaker 7: in a ride hail, because fifty one hundred years down
Speaker 7: the road, we will have saved far more lives through
Speaker 7: preventing drunk driving or preventing human error in cars.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's very clear how I think probably you
Speaker 4: both feel about how the Twitter experiment has gone. Right.
Speaker 4: The subtitle of your book is how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter.
Speaker 4: There have been many missteps, I think we could probably
Speaker 4: all agree in the past two years. Is there one
Speaker 4: that's maybe been the biggest problem for you know, the
Speaker 4: biggest mistake that he's made. Ryan, you mentioned Blue Verify
Speaker 4: That to me actually may maybe top of my list
Speaker 4: in terms of just like eroding value and trust in
Speaker 4: this company.
Speaker 5: For me, it would be the fundamental Hubris. He came
Speaker 5: in with the confidence and the lack of understanding of advertising.
Speaker 5: You know, he bought an advertising social you know social
Speaker 5: network based on advertising that where it draws ninety percent
Speaker 5: of its business from and to alienate advertisers almost from
Speaker 5: day one. I think on day one he had that
Speaker 5: like very conciliatory, like he wrote a very good note
Speaker 5: and it was like, you know, my ownership is not
Speaker 5: going to drive you away. I'm not going to have
Speaker 5: more misinformation. I'm not going to have more hate. And
Speaker 5: from that day on, it's gone downhill and he's scared
Speaker 5: people and advertisers away to the point where he is
Speaker 5: suing advertising groups for not advertising on X And like
Speaker 5: that is I think like an original sin for me
Speaker 5: if I'm analyzing the deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it sounds so sort of obvious or basic, but
Speaker 4: like the lack of understanding of the main core business
Speaker 4: I think has struck a lot of people as a
Speaker 4: surprise when he came in. Kate, was there something for you?
Speaker 7: Yeah? You know, I think if I try to get
Speaker 7: Elon pilled for a second and really believe in him
Speaker 7: as an entrepreneur. You know, what I see is the
Speaker 7: technical prowess, right, the things that he's been able to
Speaker 7: do with Tesla and SpaceX, and I see a lack
Speaker 7: of innovation with X, and I think that that is
Speaker 7: something that a lot of people expected from him. You know,
Speaker 7: search is often broken. So much of my reporting work
Speaker 7: is deep diving back into historic tweets, and that's very
Speaker 7: hard to do on the platform. It often does not work.
Speaker 7: The technology for spaces is now quite degraded, and when
Speaker 7: he tried to host former President Trump for a conversation,
Speaker 7: they couldn't get it going for forty five minutes. We've
Speaker 7: heard from him about how he wants to include payments,
Speaker 7: how he wants to include video, how he wants to
Speaker 7: kind of cannibalize audience from TikTok. None of those things
Speaker 7: are happening, and so I think if you look at
Speaker 7: it from a pro Elon perspective, the innovation is quite disappointing.
Speaker 4: How much of this do you pin on sort of
Speaker 4: his network of advisors, right, because I think one of
Speaker 4: the great parts about your reporting in the book is
Speaker 4: just how often he's listening to people who may not
Speaker 4: be experts in the advice that they're giving and in
Speaker 4: some cases reacting to anonymous Twitter users, right like advice
Speaker 4: or feedback from you know, random account with four thousand followers.
Speaker 7: I think that is a factor. But ultimately, you know,
Speaker 7: he is the decision maker on things. He loves to
Speaker 7: be in the weeds and to be very hands on
Speaker 7: with product and from you know, the most random details
Speaker 7: we heard from people who are talking to him about
Speaker 7: the exact pixel placement of something on the screen, or
Speaker 7: the fact that he didn't want the copy that went
Speaker 7: to the app store to have a comma in it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: When we were writing the book, there is a day
Speaker 7: Ryan came over to me and he'd been interrupting me
Speaker 7: all day and I was like, leave me alone. He's like,
Speaker 7: you have to look at this. And it was because
Speaker 7: Elon had seen a tweet from a Nicki minaj Stan
Speaker 7: account that was complaining about the look of the official
Speaker 7: badges that he was planning to give to governments and
Speaker 7: to fire departments, emergency services, transit authorities, things like that.
Speaker 7: They said it looked bad, and he brought the tweet
Speaker 7: to people at Twitter and like, we have to take
Speaker 7: this down because this Nicki Minaj fan account doesn't like
Speaker 7: it and they think it looks dumb.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a bad And I was like, I
Speaker 4: couldn't believe it was crazy the amount of influence that
Speaker 4: some random Twitter user can have on this company.
Speaker 5: It's so strange because we think of Elon as kind
Speaker 5: of the alpha, like the decision maker. And in the
Speaker 5: book there's plenty of examples where he has this small
Speaker 5: circle of advisors. I think of people like David Sachs
Speaker 5: or Jason Kalakanis where he'll listen to them despite their
Speaker 5: lack of expertise, and that happened over and over again
Speaker 5: throughout the book, and I don't know it just it
Speaker 5: kind of shows that there was very little planning in this,
Speaker 5: in this takeover, and he was just kind of soliciting
Speaker 5: advice from everywhere, including Twitter itself.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, and especially now what we see X
Speaker 4: has become right. I think I wrote a newsletter right
Speaker 4: after the debate a few weeks ago, and I think
Speaker 4: I call it sort of just an extension. It's like
Speaker 4: truth social but X right, it's whatever two point zero
Speaker 4: or something. It really does feel at times like it
Speaker 4: is so politically charged. Politically polarizing. Do you both feel like,
Speaker 4: is are we ever going to go back to maybe
Speaker 4: a world in which politics is like a secondary or
Speaker 4: even further down priority for X. Like where do you
Speaker 4: see this moving forward from a content perspective.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think the comparison to truth Social is apt.
Speaker 7: You know, truth Social is a platform that's all about
Speaker 7: one man, and X is increasingly a platform that's all
Speaker 7: about a different man. It's so funny because I think
Speaker 7: the wisdom of Twitter for a long time was you
Speaker 7: never want to be the main character on Twitter. But
Speaker 7: Elon does want to be the main character on X
Speaker 7: and he often successfully is that. So he really has
Speaker 7: made the platform about himself and I don't see his
Speaker 7: politics taking a back seat at this point. He's really
Speaker 7: thrown himself all into this political crusade.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, he just passed two
Speaker 5: hundred million followers and I just opened up the for
Speaker 5: you page just to see what it looked like. And
Speaker 5: he's within the first five tweets or posts every time,
Speaker 5: like he is the one that drives whatever people are
Speaker 5: talking about on the platform.
Speaker 7: Well, I would say too, it's not just like a
Speaker 7: ViBe's approach you know, researchers have documented that the platform
Speaker 7: has shifted significantly to the right, not necessarily because they're
Speaker 7: more right wing users joining, but because more left wing
Speaker 7: users are leaving, you know, And we've also seen really
Speaker 7: significant growth in reach for accounts that he's brought back.
Speaker 7: So like the Alex jones Is of the world that
Speaker 7: he's reinstated on the platform have been able to grow
Speaker 7: their presence really significantly and you know, grow their voice,
Speaker 7: grow their agenda that they're pushing, and so that has
Speaker 7: really changed the tenor of the platform. It's not just
Speaker 7: like I'm opening up my feed and this is what
Speaker 7: I'm seeing based on who I follow, but it is
Speaker 7: sort of like a network.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, listen on an Elon question, I'm curious
Speaker 4: how you're for both of you, how your feelings about
Speaker 4: Elon changed through the reporting of your book. Right, I'm
Speaker 4: sure you both followed him closely enough to maybe come
Speaker 4: in with at least some sense of who he was
Speaker 4: and the type of leader he is, the type of
Speaker 4: technologisty is, et cetera. What I imagine all the interviews
Speaker 4: and the research and the things that went into writing
Speaker 4: the book probably changed that perspective. Over time, and I'm
Speaker 4: curious where how it changed it and where you feel
Speaker 4: sort of about Elon Musk.
Speaker 7: I think it disillusioned me a little bit on the
Speaker 7: idea that he has this sort of grand plan. I
Speaker 7: think because you know, I didn't cover him as closely
Speaker 7: as Ryan did prior to the takeover. I was just
Speaker 7: covering Twitter, and he kind of came into that space.
Speaker 7: But you know, I think because there's this big mythos
Speaker 7: around him that he's created of being this self made
Speaker 7: businessman with sort of all these ingenious ideas, I was
Speaker 7: interested in seeing some of that come to fruition. And
Speaker 7: it was interesting to me and I think surprising to
Speaker 7: me to realize how little of a plan he had
Speaker 7: for any of these things. I mean, we talked earlier
Speaker 7: about his decision to make the acquisition, to make the offer,
Speaker 7: and how that was not thought through. His decision to
Speaker 7: launch Twitter Blue and paid verification was not thought through.
Speaker 7: You know. The layoffs when he took over the company
Speaker 7: were absolute mayhem and a chaos, and it was just
Speaker 7: people like scrambling to assemble lists in Google docs, and
Speaker 7: people begging to be put on the layoff list and
Speaker 7: begging to be taken off and people trying to, you know,
Speaker 7: save coworkers who were in the States on a visa
Speaker 7: and needed to continue their employment. Like there was no
Speaker 7: rhyme or reason to any of that. And I think
Speaker 7: to see that over and over again really was revealing
Speaker 7: of how little strategy comes with some of these decisions.
Speaker 4: Ryan went about you for me.
Speaker 5: I've been covering him since about twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: and we all remember twenty eighteen when he does the
Speaker 5: funding Secured tweet and the pedal Guy tweet and ends
Speaker 5: up being sued by the SEC. He ends up being
Speaker 5: sued by the cave rescuer he called the pedophile, and
Speaker 5: he comes out of both things almost scott free. The
Speaker 5: SEC find him personally twenty million dollars. He's found not
Speaker 5: liable for damages in the pedro Guy trial in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: and I think he comes out of that just with
Speaker 5: this realization that he's untouched. You know that there is
Speaker 5: no accountability, There's no way of holding someone that rich accountable,
Speaker 5: Like what is a twenty million dollar fine to someone
Speaker 5: who's worth a quarter of a trillion dollars now? And
Speaker 5: we spent two years reporting this book and this, you know,
Speaker 5: reputation destroying incident with the buying of this company, the
Speaker 5: destruction of its value. It's done nothing to him, you know,
Speaker 5: It's it's he's just as rich. He has a new
Speaker 5: AI company that he's built off the corpse of this,
Speaker 5: this social network that is that is now valued at
Speaker 5: twenty eight billion dollars. He has more government regulators looking
Speaker 5: at him than ever, but there's nothing that will hold
Speaker 5: him accountable. And I think that realization has only grown
Speaker 5: through the years, and as we've reported this book, as
Speaker 5: we've reported more on him, to the point where he
Speaker 5: is he's just a character that is just so unique,
Speaker 5: Like there is no one else like him, no one
Speaker 5: else richer than him, and no one else that has
Speaker 5: as much power as him like he is. He's untouchable.
Speaker 5: I don't know what that means for us the society,
Speaker 5: but you know, it's just that's what it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, a little bit of a bleak way to end,
Speaker 4: but it was a great conversation. The book is called
Speaker 4: Character Limit. It's obviously full of great detailed, great color.
Speaker 4: You guys did a wonderful job, So Ryan Mack and
Speaker 4: Kate Conger, thank you both. For being on elon Ek.
Speaker 5: Thanks Kurt, Thank you Kurt.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 2: Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. The idea for this
Speaker 2: very show also came from Rayhun. Blake Maples handles engineering,
Speaker 2: and Bill Elstrom fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 2: The Elonik theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa
Speaker 2: and Alex Sagiera. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
Speaker 2: and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Big
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