Speaker 1: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 2: controlled by one man.
Speaker 3: Starting his own artificial intelligence company.
Speaker 1: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 2: He says.
Speaker 4: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 4: be different. He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 5: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 5: on him.
Speaker 1: Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 2: Anything he does is fascinating the people.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 3: The show where we analyze the latest from Elon Musk's
Speaker 3: business empire. I'm Max Chafkin, sitting in for our normal host,
Speaker 3: David Popotopolis, who is off for the holidays, probably driving
Speaker 3: his Chevy Colorado around somewhere upstate.
Speaker 1: So in instead we plan something special.
Speaker 3: We're gonna look back at the year in Elon Musk
Speaker 3: and look forward to all that's to come in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four. We're talking about the biggest stories, the weirdest stories,
Speaker 3: the funniest stories, all of it. And full disclosure, we're
Speaker 3: recording this episode on December thirteenth, so if between now
Speaker 3: and when it airs, you hear of the name of
Speaker 3: Elon Musk's university or some other strange thing happens, you'll
Speaker 3: know why we didn't cover it. Okay, to do this,
Speaker 3: we've got a special guest, PJ Vote. He's a host
Speaker 3: of the search Engine podcast, which answers a burning question
Speaker 3: each week, and earlier this year, search Engine did a
Speaker 3: great episode trying to understand what had happened to Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: You should check it out if you haven't listened to it.
Speaker 3: And we're so happy to have PJ here with us today. PJ,
Speaker 3: Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: We're also joined by Sarah Fryar, Bloomberg's Big Tech editor. Hey, Sarah,
Speaker 3: always the pleasure, and Rayhan Harmansi, who regular listeners will
Speaker 3: know as an editor on this show.
Speaker 1: Rayhon, thank you for being here.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this was clearly a huge year for Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: We had some ups and downs for Tesla, many many
Speaker 3: rocket launches, We had brain chips and advertiser boycotts, and
Speaker 3: a very curious obsession with the letter X that I'm
Speaker 3: sure we'll talk about. And so we're here to look
Speaker 3: back on all of that and hopefully take stock of it.
Speaker 3: And I want to start by asking everyone on our
Speaker 3: panel to give me a one word verdict on how
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three was for Elon Musk. Sarah Fryar, give
Speaker 3: me an adjective.
Speaker 6: Oh my goodness, explosive, PJ, hysterical.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say unstable.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Magnus, our producer, asked me like a week
Speaker 3: ago what I thought, and without really thinking I said great.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if that was just like a normal
Speaker 3: like if someone asks you how you're doing, you say great,
Speaker 3: even if you're doing very poorly. But I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about defending that idea, and I think if I were
Speaker 3: going to defend that Elon had a great year, I
Speaker 3: would say number one, Tesla stock doubled, Number two, Elon
Speaker 3: became a lot more famous than he'd been, and number
Speaker 3: three he got the Walter Isaacson Biographer of Genius treatment.
Speaker 3: So by those standards, I think it was a really,
Speaker 3: really good year. But what I want to do today
Speaker 3: is talk about what each of us thought was the biggest,
Speaker 3: the most important story of twenty twenty three in Elon
Speaker 3: Musk's world. And let's start with you, Raehan. What did
Speaker 3: you think was the biggest story of the year for Elon.
Speaker 4: I think the biggest story, and I'm going to be
Speaker 4: borrowing from our colleague Dana Hall, who is not.
Speaker 1: With us today.
Speaker 4: I think it's Tesla's price cuts. I mean, starting in January,
Speaker 4: I think maybe as much as half a dozen times
Speaker 4: this year, Elon cut the price of Tesla. And you know,
Speaker 4: it had some moments where it seemed like the stocks
Speaker 4: were going to be very affected by this, but as
Speaker 4: of now, Tesla's share prices have rebounded and his market
Speaker 4: share is still over sixty percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Elon talked about these price cuts in detail during an
Speaker 3: earnings call in early January, and let's like just listen
Speaker 3: to a little bit of that tape just to get
Speaker 3: a sense of what was going on.
Speaker 7: Basically, price really matters. I think there's the vast number
Speaker 7: of people that wanted to buy a Tesla car but
Speaker 7: can't afford it, and so these price changes really make
Speaker 7: a difference for the average consumer, and sometimes for those
Speaker 7: people who are well, you know, have a lot of money,
Speaker 7: they sort of forget about how important affordability is.
Speaker 3: Wow, that feels like a long time ago, at least
Speaker 3: to me. You know where the big issue was like
Speaker 3: how many teslas are people going to buy? And we
Speaker 3: hadn't really gotten into all these allegations of bad behavior
Speaker 3: and craziness on social media. But Sarah just catch us
Speaker 3: up a little bit and remind us what was going
Speaker 3: on back then. How did Elon Musk start twenty twenty three.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that Musk was in this position
Speaker 6: of feeling like he was on top of the world,
Speaker 6: like he's the new king of the playground, or however
Speaker 6: Walter Isaacson calls it in his book Owning X being
Speaker 6: in charge of the discourse as you will, And it's
Speaker 6: all gotten a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1: And it's like super popular too.
Speaker 3: I mean, because there's later in that Earnings call someone
Speaker 3: brought up because even back then, right, Elon Musk has
Speaker 3: got a little crazier in the last couple of months
Speaker 3: in terms of his Twitter presence, But even then was
Speaker 3: he was doing some pretty edgy things and somebody said, hey, Elon,
Speaker 3: don't you think this might be hurting your reputation?
Speaker 1: Of these might hurt demand? And here's what he said.
Speaker 7: Let me check my Twitter account. So I've got one
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty seven million followers, and it continues to
Speaker 7: grow very rapidly. That suggests that I'm reasonably popular, and
Speaker 7: I might not be popular by with some people, but
Speaker 7: for the vast majority of people, the follow account speaks
Speaker 7: for itself on most interactive accounts social social media account
Speaker 7: I think maybe in the world, certainly on Twitter, and
Speaker 7: that's actually predated the Twitter acquisition, So I think Twitter
Speaker 7: is actually incredibly powerful tool for driving demand for Tesla.
Speaker 1: So PJ, that's how popularity works, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a discrete number. There's no other numbers. It's
Speaker 2: not how people feel about you. It's just that many
Speaker 2: people are theoretically paying attention to you on the social
Speaker 2: media website which you have purchased and driven into the ground.
Speaker 2: I find his worldview it's weird. He's forced himself into
Speaker 2: our imaginations and into our conversations in such a The
Speaker 2: only sort of public figure who has done this before
Speaker 2: is Trump, where every conversation sort of pulls towards him,
Speaker 2: whether you want it to or not. I still find
Speaker 2: him psychologically very interesting, and this is one of the
Speaker 2: facets where he really both doesn't seem to distinguish often
Speaker 2: between good attention and bad attention, and Also he's someone
Speaker 2: who you know, we all are aware that social media
Speaker 2: pulls on our minds in ways that we might not
Speaker 2: always particularly like this is the most extreme case of it.
Speaker 2: And the person who is most badly affected by the product,
Speaker 2: or most publicly badly affected by the product, decided he
Speaker 2: wants to down and run the product is such a
Speaker 2: crazy thing.
Speaker 6: This is really just an engineer mindset. It's the number
Speaker 6: went up. Yes, how could I be failing?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: You know, one hundred and sixty six million is what
Speaker 6: it's at now, based on that Elon Musk has had,
Speaker 6: as Max puts it, a great year.
Speaker 3: I can't believe we're now we're settling on this. I
Speaker 3: thought I might take it be controversial. The thing for
Speaker 3: me in this is the tone, right, it's like the weird,
Speaker 3: especially comparing those two clips, like the first one where
Speaker 3: it's like very the affect is like very sort of
Speaker 3: laid back. He can barely get a word out, and
Speaker 3: this is this like extremely like swaggering.
Speaker 1: Let me check my Twitter account.
Speaker 3: It's so like you said, PJ, just like psychologically kind
Speaker 3: of wild. And also he's up to like one hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty six million since then, It keeps going up.
Speaker 4: I mean, the number does keep going up. But it's
Speaker 4: interesting though, because, like you know, I mean, Max, you
Speaker 4: wrote about this, a lot of people were thinking that
Speaker 4: because of increasingly strange public postings, Tesla would take a hit.
Speaker 4: He was too distracted. But their strategy of cutting price,
Speaker 4: I mean, it cut into their profit margins, but it
Speaker 4: seems to be working. And so you're left with this
Speaker 4: feeling of like Elon's publicly doing one thing on one hand,
Speaker 4: and then on another hand, it's not a total failure,
Speaker 4: and I think that's what is confusing. Over and over
Speaker 4: and over again.
Speaker 6: Well, people thought that X would die or Twitter would
Speaker 6: die in his hands, and in some ways it has.
Speaker 6: It's just not the same platform people were used to,
Speaker 6: but people are still going there if they're still talking
Speaker 6: about the happenings of the day, and it's definitely a
Speaker 6: bit more depressing, but it's not making as much money.
Speaker 1: He was like, not the most full throated.
Speaker 6: I'm just saying it didn't die. I'm consistently surprised that
Speaker 6: it is hung on and continued to stay marginally relevant.
Speaker 6: Maybe we'll see it's death in twenty twenty four. It
Speaker 6: is surprising how after the Twitter acquisition, all these insiders
Speaker 6: were telling me, telling our colleagues Kurt and Ed, like,
Speaker 6: this is gonna all break, Like you can't just lay
Speaker 6: off or accept the resignation of seventy five percent of
Speaker 6: the staff and expect Twitter to still operate. It's held
Speaker 6: together with duct tape and it's going to die. And
Speaker 6: it hasn't died.
Speaker 1: So, PJ, you're a user, right, I assume.
Speaker 2: I actually retired from Twitter about a month ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, but I was.
Speaker 2: A very very very very very very enthusiastic user up
Speaker 2: until that point. And really my feeling was there have
Speaker 2: probably been things I didn't love about the site that
Speaker 2: I noticed less pre Elon, and that he just sort
Speaker 2: of like turned all the knobs all the way to
Speaker 2: the right, Like you know, it's like a social media
Speaker 2: website that's built for conflict. It's built for like the
Speaker 2: collapse of context. You notice that less when it's not
Speaker 2: being set to fight mode, but desires. It's interesting, Like
Speaker 2: I do think one of the things that's confounding about
Speaker 2: Elon is that you kind of never know. And I
Speaker 2: feel like this happened a few times this year where
Speaker 2: he will do something that is counter to the conventional
Speaker 2: wisdom of how a CEO should behave, how a human
Speaker 2: being should behave, how an Internet user should behave, And
Speaker 2: maybe eight times out of ten you could say, I
Speaker 2: know how this is gonna go.
Speaker 1: This is terrible, this is obvious.
Speaker 2: I not at all. A billionaire could tell you not
Speaker 2: to do that, and eight times out of ten you'll
Speaker 2: be right, and then two times out of ten you'll
Speaker 2: be wrong, And it's very confusing.
Speaker 1: One of the things.
Speaker 2: I'm not a software engineer, but I remember people saying,
Speaker 2: if you destroy the headcount of this company, the service
Speaker 2: itself will break. The service shook. It was rickety.
Speaker 1: If you'd made me.
Speaker 2: Make a money bet when you cut that many engineers,
Speaker 2: will the website even load? I wouldn't think the actual like,
Speaker 2: let alone the user experience. The fact that the website
Speaker 2: is running at all right now is not what I
Speaker 2: predict and I was relatively certain.
Speaker 1: So why did it survive though?
Speaker 3: Is it just because we just don't we overestimate the
Speaker 3: like how many software engineers are required.
Speaker 6: It was definitely an overstaffed company. I think it was
Speaker 6: a place where a lot of things didn't happen because
Speaker 6: people were indecisive about how to make them happen. That
Speaker 6: was partially Jack Dorsey's leadership. The culture that he instilled
Speaker 6: was a more philosophical leadership, and they just weren't that efficient.
Speaker 6: At Twitter. It was more about like, how do we
Speaker 6: remain good stewards of this site that is so powerful
Speaker 6: that we don't even know what to do with it?
Speaker 6: And now it's different.
Speaker 3: So clearly, Sarah, for you, I'm guessing Twitter X this
Speaker 3: is maybe the story of the year. I want to
Speaker 3: drill down on that a little bit and talk about
Speaker 3: one of my favorite characters of the year, Linda Yakarino.
Speaker 3: First all, let's listen to at a little Linda. I
Speaker 3: feel like she's been one of one of the kind
Speaker 3: of the bright spots.
Speaker 1: In the year of Elon.
Speaker 6: It's a comic relief.
Speaker 1: Well that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 3: I think another way, and maybe the way I was
Speaker 3: thinking about when I was getting ready for this show
Speaker 3: was Linda as Elon's most important defender, which I think
Speaker 3: really comes out in the clip we're about to listen to,
Speaker 3: which was from the Code conference in September.
Speaker 1: And who's kidding who?
Speaker 7: I don't care what the structure is at Meta, But
Speaker 7: who wouldn't want Elon Musk sitting by their side running product?
Speaker 1: Rayhon's making a face.
Speaker 4: I guess if you want a job, you probably don't
Speaker 4: want Elon bust sitting by your side running product. I
Speaker 4: mean Linda has emerged though in a really Trump like way,
Speaker 4: like I think I was talking to Maxwell this before,
Speaker 4: like the way that like when sort of respected figures
Speaker 4: have entered Trump's orbit or his cabinet, there's a moment
Speaker 4: where you're like, are they going to you know, stand
Speaker 4: up to him? And then you very quickly realized like,
Speaker 4: oh no, no, no, no, you didn't go here to stand up
Speaker 4: to him. You came here to be a supplicant. And
Speaker 4: then there's often a break after that. And I think
Speaker 4: we just don't really know what Linda's breaking point is.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we assumed right that it was going
Speaker 3: to be like a mooch kind of situation.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, like forty days.
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, Sarah, I mean, did you think
Speaker 1: she'd make it this for?
Speaker 6: I think I said six weeks when we were talking
Speaker 6: about it when she joined, and really, you know, that
Speaker 6: wasn't any indication of how I thought about her character
Speaker 6: or her skills or anything. It was literally just looking
Speaker 6: at at the history of Musk and top executives at Twitter,
Speaker 6: where some of them seem to last like a matter
Speaker 6: of days, a matter of hours. It was really quite
Speaker 6: a tumultuous time. And she has also exceeded my expectations
Speaker 6: in standing by him. And the comic relief part is
Speaker 6: just honestly, her Twitter feed, it is the most basic
Speaker 6: and almost like has this like sense of obliviousness over
Speaker 6: her owner's actions. She talks about you know, yay football
Speaker 6: and Jay Pumpkins, spice lattes, and just everything that is
Speaker 6: generically acceptable to say, she says it, and with emoji fanfair.
Speaker 2: She's tweeting from an alternate reality, which Twitter is a
Speaker 2: normal social media company that posts like Ana Dyne sort
Speaker 2: of ten people in a copywriting room wrote something they
Speaker 2: thought would appeal to a very bland, millennial copy like like,
Speaker 2: there's some alternate reality where Twitter is even more normal
Speaker 2: than it was pre acquisition, and she's in that reality.
Speaker 2: She just happens to also be in our reality where
Speaker 2: Twitter's becoming whatever Twitter's becoming.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like six red high heeled emojis like
Speaker 4: fashion week, and then a new kind of Twitter ad
Speaker 4: which really is giving like Spencer's gifts kind of like
Speaker 4: it's like.
Speaker 1: You didn't see the one.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if something that's okay to talk about.
Speaker 1: There was one. It's probably not okay. Yeah, okay, let
Speaker 1: me see if I could.
Speaker 2: Do this, like in a family friendly there is a
Speaker 2: Twitter ad. No machine could have predicted that this is
Speaker 2: where this ends, which is like not that I'm on Twitter,
Speaker 2: but let's say that I jump back on every once
Speaker 2: in a while and you just listen and don't talk.
Speaker 2: It was seeing this ad for a device that you
Speaker 2: could use after your sexual partner and fall asleep to
Speaker 2: extract semen from their contracept device in the trash and
Speaker 2: impregnate yourself. This was what the ad was saying the
Speaker 2: device was for. If I had more time and more lives,
Speaker 2: I would find out what is actually going on with
Speaker 2: that company, because I don't think that that's a business model,
Speaker 2: like non consensual pregnancy is not really a business model.
Speaker 2: Like they are doing a good job of jitting up
Speaker 2: attention for what reason I don't know, but those are
Speaker 2: the advertisers they're working for or that they're working with.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile in it's like.
Speaker 8: It's all that's what our tweets are like next to
Speaker 8: and it's I mean that, and of course lots and
Speaker 8: lots and lots of other things, but I have to say,
Speaker 8: and I don't want to be a bummer at all,
Speaker 8: but like.
Speaker 4: I feel like my enjoyment of Linda's tweets took a
Speaker 4: real dive when Elon went further into like anti Semitic amplification.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it.
Speaker 4: Really was made me mad because I had been had
Speaker 4: been such a consistent source of joy to see the
Speaker 4: like twenty football emojis, you know, like next to the
Speaker 4: semen ad. I don't know, but I mean it does
Speaker 4: seem like at this point like she is in it
Speaker 4: to win it.
Speaker 6: She did, by the way, tweets saying that she wishes
Speaker 6: that groc the Ai chat bought was around to explain
Speaker 6: the birds and bees to her kids. She said that, yeah,
Speaker 6: that is one of her top cringe tweets. That is
Speaker 6: just so indicative of her company cheerleading combined with let's
Speaker 6: call it optimism.
Speaker 3: All right, PJ, your biggest story of the year, my
Speaker 3: biggest So the editor of your show was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to come up with the biggest story.
Speaker 2: Please don't pick something recent. And I was trying to
Speaker 2: challenge myself to not pick something social media based, because
Speaker 2: I feel like sometimes with Elon, social media as a
Speaker 2: distraction relative to not that it's.
Speaker 1: Not a big deal, but a lot of other things happened.
Speaker 2: So he sad in thought, and I was like, I
Speaker 2: think it's both recent and social media based.
Speaker 1: I feel like inviting.
Speaker 2: Alex Jones back on Twitter was when all the Elon
Speaker 2: news from this year burns off of my memory to
Speaker 2: replace be replaced by thirty other things he does in December.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna remember that, Sarah, what do you think.
Speaker 6: I would forget that? I mean, I feel like it's harsh. Well,
Speaker 6: I just think it's probably the most predictable thing he's
Speaker 6: done this year, because he every once in a while
Speaker 6: he needs to inject a dose of hey everyone, please
Speaker 6: remember that I am mister free speech. And he brings
Speaker 6: back all of the people that were banned before. And
Speaker 6: there's got to be a list of the top names
Speaker 6: that have ever been banned from social media, and he's
Speaker 6: just gonna check off all those boxes based on who
Speaker 6: tells him to act. I was very unsurprised, and you know,
Speaker 6: it was as disappointing as you would as you would
Speaker 6: expect it to be.
Speaker 3: All Right, Well, I think Pj's kind of onto something
Speaker 3: because it was last year when Elon Musk was sort
Speaker 3: of hanging out with Kanye West and seeming to kind
Speaker 3: of accommodate Kanye's over anti semitism, and he got into
Speaker 3: exchange with Alex Jones where he said, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to let Alex Jones back because of what he did
Speaker 3: to those parents.
Speaker 1: You know, I lost a child.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk lost a child, a young kid, and he empathized,
Speaker 3: and I think that was a moment where he really
Speaker 3: seemed human, and it seemed like a human reaction. It
Speaker 3: seemed almost not exactly a bright spot for Elon Musk's
Speaker 3: relationship with X, but at least a human one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And to Sera's point, it wasn't as if I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Eli, like this is so out of
Speaker 2: step with where you've been going. I think it was
Speaker 2: a combination of that. It had been a line that
Speaker 2: he'd drawn that hadn't seemed about pleasing whatever strange audience,
Speaker 2: and he's trying to please at any given moment, and
Speaker 2: also that when he said he would never let Jones
Speaker 2: back on the platform, the other thing he said was
Speaker 2: that he had had a child who died, and that
Speaker 2: he related to the idea that victimizing parents who had
Speaker 2: lost children was just like even in his sort of
Speaker 2: very selective understanding of the free speech he wants to
Speaker 2: defend and very enthusiastic love of provocation, that there were
Speaker 2: places he wouldn't go, the idea that eventually, of course,
Speaker 2: he goes to those places.
Speaker 1: I guess you're right.
Speaker 2: It does feel. It just felt like, okay, this is
Speaker 2: really you can fully call it at this point, like
Speaker 2: we know what website, this is always going to be,
Speaker 2: we know who is going to be here, we know
Speaker 2: what kind of conversations are going to happen, and also
Speaker 2: like whatever the next stage is the problem with being
Speaker 2: edgy all the time is you have to go further,
Speaker 2: Like you can't just flirt with anti semitism. People get
Speaker 2: used to it, So then you have to be baldly
Speaker 2: anti semitic and like in the urge to just like
Speaker 2: always keep pushing, you end up in some very dark
Speaker 2: places very quickly. And I think that's what sucks about
Speaker 2: Elon and what's so complicated about Elon is both that
Speaker 2: in some ways he's a person who's invented really important
Speaker 2: and socially powerful things. He's also a person with some
Speaker 2: of the worst opinions of anyone who thinks publicly at all.
Speaker 2: And he's someone who, like you're watching, I don't know,
Speaker 2: there's this argument about whether he's getting worse or just
Speaker 2: revealing himself or whatever, But you're watching something seem to
Speaker 2: happen in public in a way that's just like everyone's
Speaker 2: had it with like some random uncle or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're watching it.
Speaker 2: With someone with tremendous power and who's it is being
Speaker 2: fed directly into this machine that we're all seck And
Speaker 2: it's such a strange modern nightmare.
Speaker 4: I wonder you guys think, is he trying to drive
Speaker 4: people off of X? Is there anything vaguely strategic about this?
Speaker 4: Like it seems like it doesn't benefit him, But on
Speaker 4: the other hand, he's worked hard to make sure like
Speaker 4: journalists want like he wants a certain kind of person there.
Speaker 6: I think it's strategic in the sense that the folks
Speaker 6: who are cheering him on are cheering him on quite loudly,
Speaker 6: and when you are somebody who provides a home for
Speaker 6: the extreme and they give you that sort of feedback.
Speaker 6: I mean looking at how he framed bringing Alex Jones
Speaker 6: back on the platform as the voice of the people,
Speaker 6: like the people who follow me voted for this. He
Speaker 6: wants to be a people pleaser. He thinks about his
Speaker 6: Twitter following in terms of his popularity in his constituency. Really,
Speaker 6: and I think that that is a potentially damaging echo
Speaker 6: chamber when you start to believe that the Internet is
Speaker 6: real life. We've seen that happen to regular people, and
Speaker 6: now we're seeing it happen to the richest man of
Speaker 6: the world.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to try something new. It's a segment
Speaker 3: we're calling what is Elon Musk talking about? And it's
Speaker 3: going to work like a contest. I am going to
Speaker 3: play a clip of Elon must saying something, and the
Speaker 3: three of you are gonna have to guess what is
Speaker 3: the subject of these comments, and if you get it right,
Speaker 3: I will award you one point for doing so.
Speaker 1: All right, let's hear the first clip.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't find the actual cyber truk, so if they
Speaker 4: did have a spaceship and it came here thirty thousand
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, yeah, we'd would definitely find it evidence of it.
Speaker 9: Well not, I mean, if it's one spaceship, maybe not.
Speaker 9: But if it was a lot of them, sure.
Speaker 1: That is the origin myth of the Dogon tribe.
Speaker 3: Right, all right, Rayhon, there's a theory that Elon is
Speaker 3: responding to, and I would like you to guess what
Speaker 3: that theory is.
Speaker 4: I have to confess I'm not up on my like
Speaker 4: alien you know, kind of like archaeology or something like.
Speaker 4: I mean, I do appreciate the idea that if it
Speaker 4: was one, it would be hard to find, but if
Speaker 4: it's many, certainly we would certainly we would have evidence
Speaker 4: of it. You know, I can't I don't think I
Speaker 4: can get a point here, Sarah.
Speaker 6: What do you think is your responding to the theory
Speaker 6: that we are actually from a different planet?
Speaker 1: Yeh wait, so we're aliens.
Speaker 3: I think the idea is that there was I'm not
Speaker 3: actually you know what, I'm gonna confess that I don't
Speaker 3: know the entire specifics of the theory, but the idea.
Speaker 3: This was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and there was,
Speaker 3: first of all, I loved this. This might have been
Speaker 3: my favorite Elon moment of the year, just because there's
Speaker 3: something just wonderful about forcing a very powerful person to
Speaker 3: sit through conspiracy, to like have to weigh in on
Speaker 3: every conspiracy on the Internet and be like, so, you know,
Speaker 3: richest man in the world, what do you think about
Speaker 3: the ancient Aliens theory? And so, yes, this is the
Speaker 3: theory that says that, like the Sphinx and the Great
Speaker 3: Pyramids are much older than people thought. And what happened
Speaker 3: is the Aliens came and there was a very advanced
Speaker 3: civilization that built these megalithic things, and they were wiped
Speaker 3: out by some kind of calamity and then we all
Speaker 3: kind of went back to the you know, to Neolithic times.
Speaker 2: On a reporting trip last year at an airport, I
Speaker 2: happened run into Coolio, the deceased rapper, who was a
Speaker 2: wonderful man to get to speak to, but he was
Speaker 2: a big proponent of the ancient Aliens theory and was
Speaker 2: sort of like gently chastising me for not reporting it out.
Speaker 1: Which is really funny.
Speaker 3: I mean, I haven't watched the Secrets of Is It
Speaker 3: Skinwalker Ranch. Skywalker's Skywalker Ranch is where they do the
Speaker 3: special effects.
Speaker 1: For Star Wars.
Speaker 3: There's like a very popular History Channel show on this,
Speaker 3: but I and also a lot of YouTube videos that
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan seems to be very familiar with.
Speaker 6: So yeah, open your eyes. The evidence is all around.
Speaker 2: I was told to do my research. I honestly think
Speaker 2: and like more more than we have time for today.
Speaker 2: But I think that there again, someone with more time
Speaker 2: than any of us have, maybe it's me should figure out. Like,
Speaker 2: at some point we had something called the History Channel
Speaker 2: which showed history, and then at another point they were like
Speaker 2: ancient Aliens documentaries all the time, and for a certain
Speaker 2: late night stoner personality, you're like, well, it's on the
Speaker 2: History Channel. And I think the preponderance of people in
Speaker 2: America who believe that the Sphinx was built by aliens,
Speaker 2: and the History Channel realizing that documentaries are expensive to make,
Speaker 2: I think those things shake hands in a historically cultural way.
Speaker 3: So credit where due here. Elon Musk was very skeptical
Speaker 3: of this theory and repeatedly through cold water on it,
Speaker 3: And I would say, you know, unlike many of his
Speaker 3: other kind of very out there things, stayed firmly with
Speaker 3: the scientific consensus on the question of ancient aliens.
Speaker 1: All right, so I guess Sarah gets that point. I win.
Speaker 2: Why is Rogan asking him about cyber trucks in the
Speaker 2: middle of the Ancient Aliens club?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, PJ. Excellent question.
Speaker 3: Basically, they were having this extended debate over whether the
Speaker 3: lack of evidence for the ancient aliens, the idea of
Speaker 3: an advanced civilization prior to the Neolithic Age, was a
Speaker 3: problem for that theory, and Rogan was sort of positing,
Speaker 3: like was trying to like drill down on, like, well,
Speaker 3: how much evidence would there actually be if you left
Speaker 3: a cyber truck awkward?
Speaker 1: And that's that was how we got there.
Speaker 2: I see, I see.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, it doesn't make that much sense.
Speaker 3: So but I think we should just move on and
Speaker 3: go to the go to the next clip.
Speaker 9: Now again, and you look at the surface of the
Speaker 9: look at the look at the Pacific, and say what
Speaker 9: percentage of the Pacific consists of whale? Like He'll give
Speaker 9: you a big picture and like point out all the
Speaker 9: whales in this picture. I'm like, I don't see any whales.
Speaker 9: It's like basically zero percent.
Speaker 1: All right, PJ. I don't know if you heard the well.
Speaker 2: At first I thought he said cervix, but he said survey.
Speaker 2: He definitely said survey.
Speaker 1: I'll read it just for clarity.
Speaker 3: If you look at the surface, look at the Pacific,
Speaker 3: meaning the Pacific Ocean, and say what percentage of the
Speaker 3: Pacific consists of whale, whales, the mammal marine mammals. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then he says, you know, I could, I could
Speaker 3: give you a picture point out all the whales.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't see any whales. It's basically zero percent.
Speaker 3: So this comment about Pacific being nearly zero percent whale
Speaker 3: was in response to a question about what topics.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I want to get this right. I don't
Speaker 2: just want to let me try to work this out.
Speaker 1: I can give you a hint if you want. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: So it's a topic that's very much been in the
Speaker 3: news in the in the tech world, and it's it's
Speaker 3: a question that sort of transcends both technology and government.
Speaker 2: Who should it's artificial intelligence? You s about artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: and correct? Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: All right, So PJ gets half a point and the
Speaker 3: other half of the if you want the full point,
Speaker 3: you have to guess how we got from AI regulation
Speaker 3: to the percentage of wales and the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 2: Well, the metaphor seems to be about how there can
Speaker 2: be a lot of something, even if it's a small
Speaker 2: percentage of something else. And there could be a lot
Speaker 2: of something even if you can't see it. But that's
Speaker 2: as far as my mind can reach to Elon's mind.
Speaker 4: Right, if we don't regulate, we are facing in extermination events.
Speaker 1: That is not correct, Sarah.
Speaker 6: The largest mamble, yeah, is easily hidden almost in the sea,
Speaker 6: and so the insights of AI are there's going to
Speaker 6: be so much content that it'll be difficult to find
Speaker 6: the gems.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a quarter of a point
Speaker 1: for that one. His point was that.
Speaker 3: SpaceX follows a lot of rules, including the rule about
Speaker 3: not hitting whales with rocket debris.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm glad they do.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he was not in favor of all regulation,
Speaker 2: but I feel like that's a good rule. No.
Speaker 3: Actually, his point was that the rule was unnecessary because.
Speaker 1: There's so few whales.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you look at the ocean, very few whales.
Speaker 3: All right, let's let's hear the last clip.
Speaker 5: I've got my pandeted walrust move that's what it is. Well,
Speaker 5: you know like Walrush doesn't need mash Lush. I forgot
Speaker 5: this even right because it's really big. You don't want
Speaker 5: to go wrestling at Wolrus.
Speaker 1: PJ buzzed first.
Speaker 2: So I mean this is this is Whenam and Zaiber
Speaker 2: were talking about fighting in the octagon. God, what a
Speaker 2: dumb What a dumb world we decided to have.
Speaker 1: We could have had so many other worlds. Okay, I
Speaker 1: think that's enough.
Speaker 3: So I think if I'm keeping this straight, we had
Speaker 3: a point and a half for PJ, a point in
Speaker 3: a quarter for Sarah and Rayhan.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, zero points for you, Robed. Let's move on.
Speaker 3: We talked about the biggest stories of the year. We
Speaker 3: talked about I think we hit most of the the
Speaker 3: big moments. Let's talk about the stories that maybe didn't
Speaker 3: get as much attention as as we.
Speaker 1: Thought should have.
Speaker 3: Sarah, what was your most underrated Elon Musk story of
Speaker 3: the year.
Speaker 6: I think it has to be Starlink, just because what
Speaker 6: we saw with Musk's power is this is this incredib
Speaker 6: evolution to the point where because he has this tool
Speaker 6: to provide Internet connectivity, he is essentially a diplomat to
Speaker 6: countries that needed countries that are in war. We saw,
Speaker 6: you know, discussions around whether whether it should be used
Speaker 6: in Gaza. It's been used in Ukraine, and the starlink
Speaker 6: connection with musk as like the gatekeeper to that connectivity
Speaker 6: could could open up a lot of more interesting tensions
Speaker 6: for him around the world, especially as he's also like
Speaker 6: weighing in on all these global conflicts via his commentary
Speaker 6: on X and runs. You know, multiple businesses that require
Speaker 6: consumers in all of these countries. So I just think
Speaker 6: starlink is fascinating.
Speaker 3: PJ, what's your what story did we not spend enough
Speaker 3: time talking about in twenty twenty three?
Speaker 2: I mean, to be fair, I think if it ends up,
Speaker 2: mattering will matter much more in twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 2: the place that reported on this was Bloomberg. But I
Speaker 2: think neuralink could end up being a really big deal.
Speaker 2: I think that if Elon, for all of his false
Speaker 2: contradictions and as strange as we feel about the amount
Speaker 2: of power he has, if neuralink works and he invents
Speaker 2: something that in the near term can let paraplegic people
Speaker 2: walk again, and then in the further term could be
Speaker 2: a computer that you put into your brain, and if
Speaker 2: that technology is beneficial and important enough that we have
Speaker 2: to decide, as actually Vance asked in Bloomberg correctly, and
Speaker 2: I believe on this podcast, do we trust Elon Musk
Speaker 2: to put a computer in our brain? I just find
Speaker 2: that to be a fascinating question and a fascinating problem.
Speaker 2: And like, you know, the thing about him is he
Speaker 2: really has been at ground zero of so many transformative technologies,
Speaker 2: to the degree that now if there's something that he's
Speaker 2: looking at that feels a little bit sci fi, but
Speaker 2: there's reporting saying that he's pretty close to break through,
Speaker 2: I'm inclined to take the technology at least very seriously.
Speaker 3: It's funny, you guys are all of your picks are
Speaker 3: sort of in a way better than mine, which was
Speaker 3: just the stock price, because I feel like, although we
Speaker 3: did talk a lot about about it, I feel like
Speaker 3: the money is the thing that kept all of these antics,
Speaker 3: all this weirdness, all this stuff going, and like the
Speaker 3: total like flip from Elon Musk being like down and
Speaker 3: out to being again, what you know, the richest person
Speaker 3: in the world, Like it seems like it partly is
Speaker 3: what enabled you know, all of this.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: So we talked a lot about what happened in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, and I want.
Speaker 1: To look ahead a little bit, Sarah, what do you.
Speaker 3: Think is going to be the story we're going to
Speaker 3: be talking the most about in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6: Well, I think the one that I'm going to be
Speaker 6: keeping an eye on closely is just the finances at
Speaker 6: X because it seems like something's going to give at
Speaker 6: some point. They're burning money. They have this tremendous amount
Speaker 6: of debt, by the way, the debt that Musk took
Speaker 6: on from the acquisition, the forty four billion dollar acquisition
Speaker 6: from banks, the thirteen billion that's actually on X's balance sheet.
Speaker 6: It's not his money to repay. The company has to
Speaker 6: repay it. And advertising dollars are are cratering. Just reported
Speaker 6: that the company is projecting maybe optimistic two point five
Speaker 6: billion in revenue for the year, which is way down.
Speaker 6: You know, a normal quarter this year was around six
Speaker 6: hundred million in revenue. Normal quarter last year was more
Speaker 6: than a billion. So does X have to restructure the debt?
Speaker 6: Do they go bankrupt? What happens? And I actually explore
Speaker 6: this with our with our credit team today and It
Speaker 6: just reminded me that if he does decide to restructure
Speaker 6: the debt, if he does go bankrupt, he loses all
Speaker 6: the equity goes away. So all those friends that put in,
Speaker 6: you know, say, if Larry Elson is still a billion
Speaker 6: dollar equity investor in X, it just goes poof if
Speaker 6: they restructure the debt. So that's something that Musk will
Speaker 6: have to grapple with if it gets that dire.
Speaker 3: Okay, so lots of tensions around X. Let's talk about
Speaker 3: the feud between Elon Musk and Bob Iger or maybe
Speaker 3: a one sided feud. But Sarah, where do you think
Speaker 3: that goes next year?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 6: Man, I mean Elon and Bob Iiger. If X does fail,
Speaker 6: it's going to be like he's going to be completely
Speaker 6: blamed on the advertisers. So Disney will be the entity
Speaker 6: that took your favorite social network if it is your favorite,
Speaker 6: away from you and the feud continues or they get
Speaker 6: back in good graces and billionaires move on.
Speaker 4: It's just occurring to me that Ron DeSantis should be
Speaker 4: what Elon is afraid of becoming. Given like at every stage,
Speaker 4: like you don't go against Disney, you just don't do it.
Speaker 3: You know, Tell it to Earth, Rayhan, tell it to Earth.
Speaker 3: All right, PJ, you brought this up earlier, or I
Speaker 3: guess you guessed it correctly. Elon and Mark Zuckerberg Anna,
Speaker 3: are we gonna see a makeup or a breakup?
Speaker 1: Or are we gonna see a cage fight?
Speaker 2: I don't think we're gonna see a cage fight.
Speaker 1: It's so disappointing. I feel like my.
Speaker 2: Read was Mark Zuckerberg figured out that arguing with Elon
Speaker 2: was not a great look. That like, initially, maybe it
Speaker 2: was like, oh, isn't it cool that Mark Zuckerberg's physically fit?
Speaker 2: And then isn't it cool that Mark Zuckerberg is like
Speaker 2: being a little dramatic, and isn't it cool that he
Speaker 2: looks like the grown up? And eventually sort of everyone
Speaker 2: clocks that two middle aged men are talking about an octagon,
Speaker 2: and like, I think he's figured out to just not
Speaker 2: do that. So I don't think the fight reignites, because
Speaker 2: I think Zuckerberg's smart enough to stay away and Elon
Speaker 2: is so punch drunk on targets. I'll find somebody.
Speaker 4: Else that seems right. I think that, like, I think
Speaker 4: Zuckerberg is just like loving threads right now and like
Speaker 4: the emergence of a rival short form social media, so
Speaker 4: I think that in his octagon he's already won.
Speaker 3: Well, I've been the long time you know, age fight
Speaker 3: promoter of this on this podcast, and I have to
Speaker 3: concur and with with great disappointment because I did, I
Speaker 3: did want to bet on Elon for that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you did bet on Elon?
Speaker 1: I did?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: What was the thinking?
Speaker 3: The thinking is size, it's you know, it's we heard it,
Speaker 3: the wall was out.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I just think, like, like you know, Elon might want
Speaker 3: it a little bit more than Mark Zuckerberg. I'm just
Speaker 3: not sure that as I, as I say it out loud,
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound that good to be talking myself out
Speaker 3: of it as we speak. Okay, that seems like a
Speaker 3: great place to wrap up. Thanks for listening to Elon Inc.
Speaker 3: And thanks to our panel Sarah, Rayhan and PJ.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Thanks, thank you, and listeners, please check out pj's podcast.
Speaker 1: It's called search Engine. It's really great.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong, Naomi Shavin, and
Speaker 3: Rayhan Hamansi, our senior editors. The idea for this show
Speaker 3: also came from Rayhan Blake Maple's handles engineering, and we
Speaker 3: get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our supervising producer
Speaker 3: is Magnus Hendrickson. Thanks a bunch to BusinessWeek editor Joel Weber,
Speaker 3: and to Soer Sadi and to Angel Rekio. The Elon Inc.
Speaker 3: Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sigierra.
Speaker 3: Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast and our
Speaker 3: executive producer.
Speaker 1: I'm Max Schafkin.
Speaker 3: David Popadopoulos is off for a couple of weeks. He'll
Speaker 3: be back in the new year.
Speaker 1: If you want to give us a holiday gift, leave us.
Speaker 3: A rating, a review. We really appreciate it. Happy holidays, everybody,
Speaker 3: See you soon.