Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Sarah Holder, a new host of The Big
Speaker 1: Take podcast. Today, I'm excited to share an episode from
Speaker 1: one of our sister shows, Elon Inc. Every week it
Speaker 1: takes you inside Elon Musk's tech empire and the drama
Speaker 1: that always seems to be swirling around the founder himself.
Speaker 1: This week, what Musk's alleged drug use might mean for
Speaker 1: his businesses. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2: 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. Well, he's a legitimate
Speaker 3: super genius.
Speaker 4: I mean legitimate.
Speaker 2: He says.
Speaker 5: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 5: be different. He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 6: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 6: on him.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 6: Anything he does he's fascinating people.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 7: Where we discussed Elon Musk's vast corporate empire, his latest
Speaker 7: gambits and antics, and how to make sense of it all.
Speaker 7: I'm your host Joel Weber, sitting in for David Papa Uplass.
Speaker 7: It's been the talk of the town, so to speak,
Speaker 7: for these last few days. On Saturday night, The Wall
Speaker 7: Street Journal dropped his story detailing Elon Musk's alleged drug
Speaker 7: use over the past few years and discussed how it
Speaker 7: has or hasn't impacted his businesses.
Speaker 8: After a report from The Wall Street Journal claimed legal
Speaker 8: drug use was the cause of some of Elon Musk's
Speaker 8: questionable behavior, and executives are concerned about the impact on
Speaker 8: his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.
Speaker 7: Musk has admitted to drug use before, and of course
Speaker 7: smoked weed with Joe Rogan that one time during a
Speaker 7: taping of Rogan's podcast, so this wasn't exactly news, but
Speaker 7: the anecdotes raise important questions like this impact Musk's status
Speaker 7: as a federal contractor, especially given how much business SpaceX
Speaker 7: does with the US government, And we'll dig into another
Speaker 7: headache for Musk and SpaceX. Last week, the National Labor
Speaker 7: Relations Board issued a complaint over the twenty twenty two
Speaker 7: firings of SpaceX employees who were critical of Musk's tweeting.
Speaker 7: SpaceX has since sued the NLRB in an attempt to
Speaker 7: halt the case to discuss this and more, will convene
Speaker 7: Lauren Grush, Bloomberg's expert on all things SpaceX.
Speaker 6: Hi, Lauren, Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 7: Dana Hole, the world's most tenacious tesla reporter, Hi, Dana,
Speaker 7: good morning. And Max Chafkin, senior reporter at Bloomberg Business Week. Hello, Okay, Lauren,
Speaker 7: I'm going to start with you. What did this article
Speaker 7: say and was there anything newsworthy in here for you?
Speaker 9: I would say the biggest things that stood out to
Speaker 9: me of having covered SpaceX and this saga for some
Speaker 9: time was an all hands meeting that occurred in twenty
Speaker 9: seventeen in which some executives were concerned about Elon's behavior.
Speaker 6: Apparently he was slurring, and.
Speaker 9: About fifteen minutes into the all hands Gwynn shot Well,
Speaker 9: the president of SpaceX, supposedly had to step in and
Speaker 9: take over the all hands meeting. And then I think
Speaker 9: most of the article referred to or reference the twenty
Speaker 9: eighteen Joe Rogan podcast incident, which I think a lot
Speaker 9: of people are familiar with, in which Elon Musk, you know,
Speaker 9: openly smoked something on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Speaker 6: It's thought to be marijuana.
Speaker 9: And that was a little more direct and that we
Speaker 9: all saw that happen, But that one was well documented
Speaker 9: at the time.
Speaker 6: There was a lot of fallout from that. SpaceX or NASA,
Speaker 6: you know, got concerned.
Speaker 9: They did an audit of SpaceX and Boeing's safety cultures
Speaker 9: in the wake of that incident.
Speaker 7: Okay, you mentioned what happened on the Rogan podcast. We're
Speaker 7: just going to play that episode so that everybody can
Speaker 7: hear what went down.
Speaker 4: So is that a joint a ciga?
Speaker 7: It's no, okay, it's marijuana inside of a tobacco.
Speaker 6: Okay, So it's like pot tobacco pod.
Speaker 3: You never had that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I tried one once.
Speaker 7: Come on, man, you probably can't because stockholders, right, I mean,
Speaker 7: it's legal, right.
Speaker 4: I think we call that a blunt Dana.
Speaker 7: So, Dana, how do you feel like this Wall Street
Speaker 7: journal reporting and story compares to the incident that Elon
Speaker 7: waded through when he was on that Rogan podcast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, the timing of this is very interesting to me.
Speaker 5: You know, twenty eighteen, Elon's companies were in a very
Speaker 5: precarious position. SpaceX had not yet flown astronauts to the
Speaker 5: space station. Tesla was struggling to ramp up the Model three,
Speaker 5: and the guy was like exhausted trying to keep both
Speaker 5: businesses afloat. It was like a really precarious time. And
Speaker 5: then the Joe Rogan thing was just like the stupid
Speaker 5: thing he could have done. Five years later, he's like
Speaker 5: the richest man in the world. Both companies are doing great.
Speaker 5: SpaceX is the dominant launch provider. Tesla is like the
Speaker 5: best selling ev maker in the world, next to BYD.
Speaker 3: From where I.
Speaker 5: Sit, like Musk amplifying anti Semitism had a far more
Speaker 5: severe market impact in terms of like stockholders being upset,
Speaker 5: pension funds writing letters, the stock actually moving than like
Speaker 5: this story about drug use. And I mean, I hate
Speaker 5: to be to break it to like the school marms
Speaker 5: and the audience, but a lot of people in tech
Speaker 5: and finance do drugs like a lot. It is a
Speaker 5: thing like and it's and I'm not trying to excuse
Speaker 5: the behavior, but you know, like Steve Jobs openly talked
Speaker 5: about how doing LSD like helps him become this creative genius.
Speaker 5: And I think that for Musk's fans, the fact that
Speaker 5: he is running all these companies while potentially being on
Speaker 5: drugs is like another sign of how he's this like
Speaker 5: incredible genius and blah blah blah, and it just sort
Speaker 5: of feeds into his aura.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there's you know, things that you've used before
Speaker 4: that had.
Speaker 7: Been known the ambients, the cannabis, but max LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine,
Speaker 7: some of which are you know, ketamine in particular. He
Speaker 7: seems to have a prescription to help him do his
Speaker 7: thing with. But aren't those isn't that a different nature
Speaker 7: of drug use when we were going into some illegal
Speaker 7: territory either.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think kind of what Dan is getting at,
Speaker 2: like none of this is outside of the norm in
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley, and.
Speaker 4: If the Silicon valties in Texas.
Speaker 2: As described by the Wall Street Journal, which is a
Speaker 2: handful of isolated incidents. Rogan he smoked a doobie on
Speaker 2: the Rogan podcast. He like takes some ketamine. There was
Speaker 2: a party at Art Basel. It isn't that much. And
Speaker 2: I think they're really like two possibilities here. One is
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is doing a lot of weird stuff online
Speaker 2: and we talk about it all the time, and some
Speaker 2: of this stuff is damaging. And one way to talk
Speaker 2: about that, if you are a Tesla board member or
Speaker 2: SpaceX board member or a critic is to blame something
Speaker 2: like drug use. The other possibility is maybe there's more
Speaker 2: to this story that was unreported, and like that's kind
Speaker 2: of what Dana is hinting at. Like, I guess that's
Speaker 2: the other possibility, But as it exists now, it just
Speaker 2: doesn't seem all that damning.
Speaker 7: I'm going to bring up his response, which he posted
Speaker 7: on X on Monday. Whatever I'm doing, I should obviously
Speaker 7: keep doing it. And then he responded to himself a
Speaker 7: little bit later or actually just another user, and said,
Speaker 7: if drugs actually helped improve my net productivity over time,
Speaker 7: I would definitely take them.
Speaker 4: So let's see, he is a.
Speaker 7: Drug user and is using them a lot. How does
Speaker 7: this go over with his people?
Speaker 3: I mean, the way you read that, it's funny.
Speaker 2: It sounds like he said as he took a long
Speaker 2: drag from a healthy joint.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he's we should also proviso like
Speaker 2: it is not good to violate federal contracting rules if
Speaker 2: you are a federal contractor. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: it's very hard to see the US government taking any
Speaker 2: kind of serious corrective action because, of course, as we've
Speaker 2: talked about many times, they need SpaceX and and people
Speaker 2: are not necessarily calling into question rockets. And also newsflash,
Speaker 2: not a huge surprise that Elon Musk is not respecting laws, norms,
Speaker 2: or regulations.
Speaker 7: Dana, do you think there's any version of key man
Speaker 7: risk here? Key Man risk being a term that we
Speaker 7: talk about in corporations a lot around corporations, right if
Speaker 7: if there is a CEO who can no longer do
Speaker 7: his job or her job, perhaps the company that puts
Speaker 7: the company at risk, do you think that there's any
Speaker 7: version of this that key man risk plays out over
Speaker 7: this scenario.
Speaker 5: Well, so you know, Tesla and their regulatory filings always
Speaker 5: talk about key man risk. I mean they always say
Speaker 5: we are highly dependent on the services of Elon Musk,
Speaker 5: who is not our full time CEO and runs several
Speaker 5: other companies. And so yeah, I will like roll over
Speaker 5: if like the next you know, ten if the ten
Speaker 5: K says and like, our CEO is a drug addict
Speaker 5: and there's a key man risk that he might go
Speaker 5: to rehab and we'd be without like a CEO. I
Speaker 5: mean that would be amazing. Elon is just not a
Speaker 5: typical CEO, And I think that the trap that a
Speaker 5: lot of journalists frankly fall into is like we're trying
Speaker 5: to like establish these norms for him when he has
Speaker 5: broken all the norms and been wildly successful at it.
Speaker 5: And investors care about one thing, and that is the
Speaker 5: return on their money. Like since he smoked pot on
Speaker 5: the Joe Robins Show, which we all know was like
Speaker 5: a big deal that really like hurt his reputation, hurt
Speaker 5: his standing with NASA, caused this big fear, Like the
Speaker 5: stock has returned I didn't even check. I don't know,
Speaker 5: like what like twelve hundred percent. I mean, so like
Speaker 5: fundamentally his the investors are like that they are used
Speaker 5: to him being a weird guy.
Speaker 2: I love that Dana is a four twenty friendly money
Speaker 2: manager over here saying ever since he started smoking weed,
Speaker 2: his the performance has improved.
Speaker 5: You know, that's not to say that the I mean,
Speaker 5: clearly it seems like the board has concerns, So you know,
Speaker 5: I would love to know more about, like what exactly
Speaker 5: were the concerns. But I mean, obviously I'm not trying
Speaker 5: to be like, do drugs.
Speaker 3: Drugs are great.
Speaker 5: But I'm just saying that, like a lot of people
Speaker 5: in power use drugs, and a lot of people in
Speaker 5: power also use alcoholic as though.
Speaker 2: If the financial performance turns around, then the story changes completely.
Speaker 2: And Danis Strander wrote a story about this the other
Speaker 2: day and made the point that, like this is going
Speaker 2: to wind up in shareholder lawsuits, and and by going
Speaker 2: around talking about how fun it is to mix red
Speaker 2: wine and ambient you're.
Speaker 3: Essentially giving ammunition to.
Speaker 2: Critics if the stock ever takes a dive. Right now,
Speaker 2: we've got a great Now, anyone who wants to explain
Speaker 2: why companies aren't performing well, if they stop performing well,
Speaker 2: has a great story to tell.
Speaker 5: I mean, you'd have to really prove that it was
Speaker 5: because of the drug use. You'd have to like prove that,
Speaker 5: like he made a critical decision that was bad for
Speaker 5: the company because he was on drugs at the time.
Speaker 7: Lauren, I want to bring it back to you because
Speaker 7: if there were one company that seems like it might
Speaker 7: have to deal with this a little bit more than
Speaker 7: anybody else, it would probably be SpaceX because of the
Speaker 7: federal contracts the company has. And one thing that's different
Speaker 7: now than in the broken episode was that, as I
Speaker 7: think Dana alluded to earlier, this is how the US
Speaker 7: gets astronauts to the International Space Station. So what might
Speaker 7: happen in unfold at SpaceX or between SpaceX and you know,
Speaker 7: any sort of drug testing that might have to go down.
Speaker 9: Well, I think you kind of pointed out there's two
Speaker 9: key things that I want to bring attention to and
Speaker 9: why it's different now and why I think the response
Speaker 9: will be different.
Speaker 6: Back in twenty.
Speaker 9: Eighteen, SpaceX hadn't launched people yet, so there was still
Speaker 9: concern about whether or not this was a good idea
Speaker 9: using commercial companies to actually launch astronauts in the International
Speaker 9: Space Station.
Speaker 6: And so when he took.
Speaker 9: That drag, you know, they were thinking, Okay, maybe we
Speaker 9: do one last gut check in terms of this space
Speaker 9: the safety culture at these companies.
Speaker 6: So that was really what prompted it.
Speaker 9: Now, SpaceX has proven that it can safely deliver astronauts
Speaker 9: to and from the International Space Station on a routine basis,
Speaker 9: so giving up that capability is going to be extremely difficult.
Speaker 9: The other thing that I think is different is that
Speaker 9: we saw him take the hit on the Joe Rogan podcast,
Speaker 9: Like we had direct evidence that he did that, Whereas
Speaker 9: with this Wall Street Journal story, they're referencing that twenty
Speaker 9: seventeen all hands meeting and they even said in the
Speaker 9: story it could.
Speaker 6: Not be determined if the reason for his slurring was.
Speaker 9: Drugs, and SpaceX did post what appears to be the
Speaker 9: all hands that was referenced in the Wall Street Journal article,
Speaker 9: And having covered Elon for a long time, I watched
Speaker 9: that video and it seemed pretty standard awkward public speaking
Speaker 9: Elon to me. But I you know, I can't determine
Speaker 9: what was going on before he took the stage in
Speaker 9: that video. But point being, I don't think we have
Speaker 9: a direct piece of evidence as we did with the
Speaker 9: Joe Rogan podcast to prompt another substantial audit like NASA
Speaker 9: did back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 7: Is it clear if Elon has ever taken a drug
Speaker 7: test and or passed or failed a drug test?
Speaker 3: Max they've said he has.
Speaker 2: I think our assumption is that he has and he's passed.
Speaker 2: If I'm wrong, please correct me, Janna.
Speaker 5: He's tweeted that he has, right, he tweeted that he
Speaker 5: like was tested randomly tweeted or x x absord x
Speaker 5: that he's okay, okay, randomly drug tested at SpaceX for
Speaker 5: three years and always passed with flying colors. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't know how. I don't know when
Speaker 5: the most recent test was. I have no idea.
Speaker 7: Okay, now we're going to focus on SpaceX and some
Speaker 7: dueling stories that involve the National Labor Relations Board. The
Speaker 7: NLRB issue to complaint about SpaceX and labor situation there
Speaker 7: and is scheduled to hear that case in March. SpaceX
Speaker 7: has since sued the NLRB, saying the agency is unconstitutional
Speaker 7: and the suit should be dismissed. All of this relates
Speaker 7: to a story that Lauren Grush broke for The Verge
Speaker 7: before she joined Bloomberg. So Lauren, we're going to start
Speaker 7: with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So that was a very intense week back in twenty
Speaker 9: twenty two. Basically I was going home for the day,
Speaker 9: which is when you get your best tips, you know,
Speaker 9: and someone leaked to me that there was an internal
Speaker 9: letter going around within SpaceX and it was a letter
Speaker 9: posted to their Microsoft Teams channels, and that it was
Speaker 9: pretty critical of Elon and they were saying, you know,
Speaker 9: I think the line that I kept pulling for stories
Speaker 9: was that he was a frequent source of embarrassment for
Speaker 9: the company, and that they were calling on SpaceX to
Speaker 9: distance itself from his public comments that they should be
Speaker 9: better about sexual harassment.
Speaker 4: How did the company respond?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so it was the letter was up for about
Speaker 9: a day and a half before they pulled it down
Speaker 9: from the team's channels. And then after we published our report,
Speaker 9: I started to hear that a bunch of the people
Speaker 9: associated with the letter were getting fired. And then Gwynn
Speaker 9: Shotwell sent out an email to the company, really really
Speaker 9: peculiar email in my opinion, because it was basically saying
Speaker 9: that these rogue employees I don't remember the exact text,
Speaker 9: but it was like these rogue employees were distracting all
Speaker 9: of their coworkers and harassing them by telling them to
Speaker 9: sign on to this letter. You know, it is a
Speaker 9: really very aggressive email, painting a negative picture of the employees.
Speaker 9: And so it was a saga that ended very quickly
Speaker 9: because they swiftly fired the employees.
Speaker 6: And then after that I spoke with some.
Speaker 9: Of the employees who were involved and they told me,
Speaker 9: you know, how many people actually sign on to the
Speaker 9: letter before it was taken down? It was hundreds of
Speaker 9: employees but then yeah, after they were fired, they were discussing,
Speaker 9: you know, whether that was actually a lawful move for
Speaker 9: them to be terminated because they were simply expressing concerns
Speaker 9: about their workplace conditions.
Speaker 7: And shotwell, chief operating officer for SpaceX, what is the
Speaker 7: most recent news then that's come out, because that was
Speaker 7: everything that went down, there was twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: So here we are now twenty twenty four.
Speaker 7: National Labor Relations Board files this complaint, which is technically
Speaker 7: its first move. What does that complaint say and how
Speaker 7: has SpaceX responded?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so essentially it confirms what the employees were thinking,
Speaker 9: is that they were illegally fired for voicing concerns about
Speaker 9: their workplace conditions. And given the fact that Elon Musk
Speaker 9: is the CEO of the company, you know, what he
Speaker 9: says and does and be considered, you know, affecting people's
Speaker 9: workplace and how they performed that job. And then not
Speaker 9: very long after the complaint was issued, SpaceX sued the
Speaker 9: And this is the part where it gets a little wonky,
Speaker 9: but essentially they were saying that the way that the
Speaker 9: NLRB is structured is unconstitutional, and so they're trying to basically.
Speaker 6: Get out of it. But what was really.
Speaker 9: Interesting about that lawsuit is SpaceX alleges that, you know,
Speaker 9: the letter was a source of distraction for SpaceX employees,
Speaker 9: and that the employees who were fired were fired for
Speaker 9: violating various company policies. They didn't go into detail about it,
Speaker 9: but that's that is their defense. That's the biggest defense
Speaker 9: I've seen from SpaceX since this whole thing went down.
Speaker 7: Louren, as best as you can tell, what's the vibe
Speaker 7: within SpaceX right now?
Speaker 9: I think the vibe, to be honest, is that everybody's
Speaker 9: kind of putting their heads down and working. You know,
Speaker 9: this was probably the first time I had seen employees
Speaker 9: within the company openly speaking about Elon, and it sadly
Speaker 9: confirmed a lot of their fears, which is that if
Speaker 9: you do that, you'll get fired. And so I think
Speaker 9: the vibe within the company is that they're just.
Speaker 6: Not going to do that anymore.
Speaker 9: You know, if they do, I will be surprised and
Speaker 9: will happily report on it. But yeah, I think it
Speaker 9: confirmed most people's suspicions that, you know, you can't speak
Speaker 9: up against the boss or you'll be in trouble.
Speaker 5: The reaction is also just sort of classic in that
Speaker 5: now SpaceX is suing the NRB basically saying that what
Speaker 5: they're doing is like unconstitutional overreach and really going like
Speaker 5: guns blazing at the agency itself, which is, you know,
Speaker 5: another sort of tactic that Elon has never shied away
Speaker 5: from using. He thinks that regulation is run amok and
Speaker 5: there's too many rules, and they're going to really go
Speaker 5: all out after this agency.
Speaker 2: And I gotta say, I do think talking about these
Speaker 2: two stories kind of in tandem is instructive.
Speaker 3: You mean the drug use plus one hundred percent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because one hand, you know, there's this kind of
Speaker 2: like divide where where there's like the weird stuff Elon
Speaker 2: tweets and the stuff weird stuff he says, and then
Speaker 2: the stuff he actually does. And I really think we
Speaker 2: spend probably and not just us, but investors and everybody,
Speaker 2: spend probably too much time talking about the says versus
Speaker 2: the does.
Speaker 3: And he you know, here we have some.
Speaker 2: Like legitimately bad behavior, right, we have credible allegations of
Speaker 2: sexual harassment. There was also an earlier allegation made by
Speaker 2: some SpaceX interns of sexual harassment at the company. Yes,
Speaker 2: and the response, yeah, And the response was you know,
Speaker 2: basically to shut it down to dictatorial. It's it's basically
Speaker 2: the opposite of what Elon Musk says he is. You know,
Speaker 2: you had you had employees who seem to be and
Speaker 2: maybe I'm maybe I'm putting too much on them, but
Speaker 2: and Lauren can correct, but seem to be raising number
Speaker 2: one legitimate questions in a way that doesn't doesn't seem
Speaker 2: from the outside to be not constructive.
Speaker 3: It seems like they were attempting to address this real issue.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and they were and they were squashed, right,
Speaker 2: And that's concerning. And I'd say I'd argue more concerning
Speaker 2: from like a perspective of safety and.
Speaker 3: All the things, all the reasons you might be worried about.
Speaker 3: Elon must drug use.
Speaker 2: This should concern you because, like what happens if there's
Speaker 2: a legitimate if there's a door faull not to you know,
Speaker 2: make the Boeing comparison, but right there's the doors falling
Speaker 2: off of these Boeing jets. You know what happens if
Speaker 2: there's a similar safety problem you have employees calling attention
Speaker 2: to it. You want to have reporting mechanisms. You don't
Speaker 2: want to have a company that just shuts down any dissent.
Speaker 2: It's really bad at any company, and it seems especially
Speaker 2: bad at a company like SpaceX and Dan.
Speaker 7: If there is one thing that sort of linked thematically
Speaker 7: some of Elon's company, it would seem to be labor
Speaker 7: relations and sort of the poor state of them. There's
Speaker 7: SpaceX and X obviously when it went through the transition
Speaker 7: from Twitter Tesla. We've had multiple in the l R
Speaker 7: stories there. What about the other ones in his universe,
Speaker 7: you know, the neuralink and the boring. Is there anything
Speaker 7: else out there?
Speaker 5: Well, I guess I would just say that I think
Speaker 5: that fundamentally a lot of employees really take pride in
Speaker 5: their work, particularly engineers. I mean, these are mission driven companies.
Speaker 4: That have within Eons companies in Elons companies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean these are mission driven companies and people
Speaker 5: are really drawn to the mission, and people really like
Speaker 5: working there in general, and they wear the SpaceX jackets
Speaker 5: and the Tesla ball caps and like there's just like
Speaker 5: an enormous amount of pride. I think you have to
Speaker 5: separate out like working for the company and working for Elon,
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean these are not unionized workforces, and
Speaker 5: like any effort to unionize or criticize your leader is
Speaker 5: like completely shut down, like almost instantly, which is what
Speaker 5: we've seen at all of his companies. I mean, I
Speaker 5: can't speak to Neuralincoln boring, but like you can't criticize
Speaker 5: the boss basically.
Speaker 9: I also think the through line through these two stories
Speaker 9: is kind of like the double standard of when Elon's
Speaker 9: antics are a problem and when they aren't. You know,
Speaker 9: when he smoked pot, you know, everyone was very upset
Speaker 9: because there is a very clear clause in NASA contracts
Speaker 9: that stays that you're supposed to have a drug free workforce.
Speaker 6: But I think what.
Speaker 9: SpaceX tried to do after that was say, oh, you know,
Speaker 9: this wasn't a big deal. You know, look see we
Speaker 9: have a totally.
Speaker 6: Drug free workforce. It's totally fine.
Speaker 9: But then when you call out behavior about sexual harassment
Speaker 9: and making light of sexual harassment, then they say, oh,
Speaker 9: you can't do that. You know, Elon is SpaceX and
Speaker 9: SpaceX is Elon. That was something that one of the
Speaker 9: vice presidents said.
Speaker 6: So it's like.
Speaker 9: There's the moving goalpost of when we are allowed to
Speaker 9: be upset about Elon's behavior and when you can't criticize
Speaker 9: him at all.
Speaker 7: Now for our final segment of the week, Feud of
Speaker 7: the Week, Max Chapkin, Do you know who the feud
Speaker 7: with between Elon?
Speaker 2: Oh man, it's my favorite other billionaires professional wrestlers not
Speaker 2: named Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Cuban, who's kind of like the
Speaker 2: original in some ways, like a pioneer of the trolling,
Speaker 2: you know, billionaire category.
Speaker 4: But I think Elon took that to new heights. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: So what is the feud with Mark Cuban?
Speaker 2: Okay, So, so Elon Musk has been you know, for
Speaker 2: whatever reason.
Speaker 3: We can debate, you know, going on and on and
Speaker 3: on and on and on and.
Speaker 2: On about you know, the woke mind virus and the
Speaker 2: and the evils of diversity in the workplace. Again, this
Speaker 2: is probably a potential problem for some of the companies arounds,
Speaker 2: but let's leave that aside. Mark Cuban chimed in and
Speaker 2: offered was really like just a kind of bland, i'd say,
Speaker 2: kind of conventional wisdom y defense of diversity, equity and
Speaker 2: inclusion in companies. Mark Cuban saying essentially, hey, like this
Speaker 2: allows us to to you know, overcome some of our
Speaker 2: biases to hire from from more diverse pools of people
Speaker 2: get considered new perspectives.
Speaker 3: It also should say.
Speaker 2: Mark Cuban a big time libertarian, right, you know, too
Speaker 2: much for Elon Musk, and he's basically essentially spent the
Speaker 2: next few days, you know, calling Mark Cuban a racist cringe,
Speaker 2: you know, essentially using Mark Cuban as a punchline for
Speaker 2: his conservative followers. Which let's be honest, it's not that
Speaker 2: hard to do that with Mark Cuban. I mean, there
Speaker 2: is a lot that is obnoxious and cringe and so
Speaker 2: on about Mark Cuban. So so it's kind of like
Speaker 2: easy pickens. And we have what essentially is like a
Speaker 2: professional wrestling match between two billionaires.
Speaker 7: Which you know, we've we've seen this unfold before. How
Speaker 7: has Cuban responded so far?
Speaker 2: He's continued to offer sensible And I can't believe I'm
Speaker 2: saying this because again, like this is a guy who
Speaker 2: you know, is famous for getting fined by the NBA
Speaker 2: and is you know, a shark tank judge, Like I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be careful, but it has not always behaved like
Speaker 2: the most serious figure, but has generally attempted to like
Speaker 2: defend DEI in libertarian friendly ways and is essentially just
Speaker 2: getting shouted down by you know, Elon and his his buddies,
Speaker 2: and it seems like both are kind of riding the
Speaker 2: engagement wave on this.
Speaker 7: Okay, Dana, I'm gonna ask for an impartial view of
Speaker 7: feud of the weeks? How does this one rink compared
Speaker 7: to other feuds of the week that Elon Musk has had.
Speaker 5: I would call it a mid level feud.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, like a simmering five. Like is it
Speaker 4: reached like rolling boil yet? Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think what's interesting to me is that, Okay, you
Speaker 5: have to remember that Tesla is currently being sued by
Speaker 5: the EEOC and the State of California for anti black
Speaker 5: racism at its factory in California. And you know, Tesla
Speaker 5: has an incredibly diverse workplace, and the company releases first
Speaker 5: ever DEI report in twenty twenty. Now, the DEI stuff
Speaker 5: is always part of the annual impact report. So you
Speaker 5: have this company that has made in enormous strides in
Speaker 5: terms of DEI as a corporation, and now the CEO
Speaker 5: is basically crapping all over DEI saying that it's reverse racism.
Speaker 5: So I just really wonder, like, is Tesla going to
Speaker 5: have a DEI report for twenty twenty three or not, Like,
Speaker 5: is that work being dismantled? Like what exactly are they
Speaker 5: doing at the company level here?
Speaker 3: It's easy to sort of laugh.
Speaker 2: This is like two you know, billionaires barking at each
Speaker 2: other loudly Texas billionaires. Yeah, but if you're if you
Speaker 2: are like a person of color at one of these companies,
Speaker 2: like it would feel pretty bad to have to like
Speaker 2: have you know, basically a very pretty sensible explanation of
Speaker 2: like why it makes sense to not hire an exclusively
Speaker 2: white male workforce, and to just have that kind of
Speaker 2: laughed off. Like this kind of thing is like it
Speaker 2: isn't good for sort of regulatory reasons, but also just
Speaker 2: for like morale reasons and so on.
Speaker 3: It strikes me as not great.
Speaker 9: I also want to point that, if you know, given
Speaker 9: my experience with SpaceX and when I know about SpaceX,
Speaker 9: it does fly in the face of at least past
Speaker 9: experience because they do have DEI efforts. They have women's
Speaker 9: groups within the company that they celebrate. You know, Gwynn
Speaker 9: has also spoken publicly about trying to do better in
Speaker 9: terms of boosting diversity within the company. So I don't
Speaker 9: know if that's going to change, but I at least
Speaker 9: know past efforts that SpaceX have tried to, you know,
Speaker 9: make that a priority.
Speaker 2: A som branding to this feud of the way, I
Speaker 2: will say, I think it's like Dan is right, It's
Speaker 2: like a mid tier feud. This is not like, this
Speaker 2: is not your like you know, Michelin Star eleven course
Speaker 2: tasting menu of feuds.
Speaker 3: This is like I mean.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean like solid midweek date night. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like a farm to table restaurant. It's like it's
Speaker 2: pretty good, but like not, you know, nothing, nothing out
Speaker 2: of the ordinary.
Speaker 7: Max Chafkin, Lauren Grush, Dana Hole, thanks so much for
Speaker 7: joining us on Eloning.
Speaker 5: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Great to be here.
Speaker 7: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 7: Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors.
Speaker 4: The idea for this.
Speaker 7: Very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maple's Handles Engineering,
Speaker 7: and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocut. Our
Speaker 7: supervising producer.
Speaker 4: Is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 7: That Elon and theme is written and performed by Taka
Speaker 7: Yazazawa and Alex Segura. Saige Bauman is the head of
Speaker 7: Bloomberg Podcast and our executive producer.
Speaker 4: I'm Joel Webber.
Speaker 7: David Pappadopoulos will finally be back next week. If you
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Speaker 4: See you next week.