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. Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
Speaker 4: I mean legitimate.
Speaker 3: He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 3: it will be different.
Speaker 1: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 2: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 2: on him.
Speaker 1: Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 5: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3: Welcome to elan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: It's Tuesday, December sixteenth. I'm your host, David Popadopolis. This week,
Speaker 3: there's a chill in the air. Well, it's been drafty
Speaker 3: for a while actually, but it's absolutely ice cold right
Speaker 3: now between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, as their feud
Speaker 3: enters that digging up old emails and posting them on
Speaker 3: the internet. Phase we'll examine what AI is put out
Speaker 3: there about Musk, and then take a deeper look at
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's NASA pick Jared Isaacman and what his long
Speaker 3: standing relationship with Elon could mean for SpaceX. Joining me
Speaker 3: are our stalwarts, Dana Hull and Max Chafkin. Dana, Hello,
Speaker 3: Hey Max, David.
Speaker 2: Every time you say the NASA, I think you're gonna
Speaker 2: mention the county executive of NASA county rather than days.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get the pronunciation right. Say it for me, Max, NASA, NASA, NASA, NASA,
Speaker 3: NASA next to Suffolk, which is what These are all
Speaker 3: my never change, These are all my favorite counties. And
Speaker 3: then later on Lauren Grush, our Space reporter, will talk
Speaker 3: to us about the Jared Isaacman selection. Oh and then wait,
Speaker 3: Elon's also building a preschool for kids in Texas. A
Speaker 3: little on that at the end from Dana, and maybe
Speaker 3: time permitting a little mail from the mail bag. We
Speaker 3: start with Open AI and the spat that is now
Speaker 3: building rapidly with Musk and you know, Max, the other
Speaker 3: day I read that Altman said Samueltman, the head of
Speaker 3: Open AI, said that he was quote tremendously sad about
Speaker 3: the feud with Elon, And you know, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 3: sure he is. It can't be cool to be in
Speaker 3: this bruising battle with an old pal of yours. But
Speaker 3: you know, for us here lovers of feud.
Speaker 2: There are so many good feuds going on right now.
Speaker 2: There's Elon and Gary Gensler, there's Elon in the post office,
Speaker 2: and then there's this one.
Speaker 4: Like you said, this.
Speaker 3: One all of a sudden, out of the blue of sorts,
Speaker 3: has become such a fever, has hit such a fevered
Speaker 3: pitch that it not only is appearing on the show,
Speaker 3: but is appearing as our lead segment. So, Max, when
Speaker 3: this trove of messages was revealed the other day by
Speaker 3: open ai, what exactly did they show?
Speaker 2: The messages show what open Ai and Sam Altman have
Speaker 2: contended all along, which is that Elon Musk complaints And
Speaker 2: just to remind people, the complaint is that Elon Musk
Speaker 2: funded this not for profit with the idea that he
Speaker 2: was going to, you know, help the world stave off
Speaker 2: AI apocalypse, and Sam Altman and his colleagues essentially took
Speaker 2: the money and turned it into a for profit company,
Speaker 2: cutting out one Elon Musk. And what the emails show
Speaker 2: is that at various times, according to the emails that
Speaker 2: have been released, And I think you need to be
Speaker 2: a little bit careful when you're talking about this stuff
Speaker 2: because we because obviously this can be selective. We're not seeing.
Speaker 3: Either that the emails are bogus, but that you are
Speaker 3: just that you're seeing.
Speaker 2: A selection of emails that they found and they put
Speaker 2: up on a website. We are not seeing the product
Speaker 2: of discovery. I'm sure if Elon Musk went.
Speaker 3: Through how do we okay? So we're not seeing these
Speaker 3: through court document.
Speaker 4: No, this is just open.
Speaker 2: AI is responding in public and assumedly they've they've already
Speaker 2: responded in court at various times.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk has refiled the suit.
Speaker 3: So you know, can I interupt for a second. How
Speaker 3: common is it when you've got a legal spat in
Speaker 3: court going on, that you are also doing this publicly
Speaker 3: in this way it.
Speaker 2: Happens, I mean, you know, as as you know, like
Speaker 2: a lot of times when companies sue each other, it
Speaker 2: is partly a negotiation, and of course there are different
Speaker 2: way you know, you're you're negotiating for money essentially over however,
Speaker 2: whatever was taken from you, and companies will try to
Speaker 2: negotiate in court. There's a strategy where you like, don't
Speaker 2: talk to the press at all, you let the court
Speaker 2: filings speak for them. But there's also a course of
Speaker 2: strategy where you brief the press at every turn.
Speaker 4: I mean, we've all seen sort of TV.
Speaker 2: Lawyers and and open AI and Elon Musk to some extent,
Speaker 2: are following the latter strategy. Elon is filing these lawsuits,
Speaker 2: but he's also tweeting about it. There he's he's giving
Speaker 2: Sam Altman a nickname.
Speaker 4: Swindley. Sam is the is the nickname he's supplied Dick.
Speaker 2: I've said it a few times, but I think I
Speaker 2: just mostly find it amusing that Elon Musk has adopted
Speaker 2: the Trump affectation of giving people demeaning nicknames.
Speaker 4: So so I just see it as more of that evolution.
Speaker 2: But anyway, the emails show or seem to show that
Speaker 2: Elon Musk first of all, was supportive of the idea
Speaker 2: of making it a for profit company because they were
Speaker 2: all worried that, according to the emails again that they
Speaker 2: were not gonna have enough money to build these massive
Speaker 2: computing clusters. And secondly, they show that Elon Musk had
Speaker 2: a very real fixation this will not come as a
Speaker 2: surprise the listeners of the show, a very real fixation
Speaker 2: on control, on owning a lot of this very eventually
Speaker 2: very valuable company and also being able to control it
Speaker 2: and also naming himself CEO, and when he was thwarted there,
Speaker 2: he tried to kind of merge it with Tesla. Now again,
Speaker 2: this is the open ai story. I think we have
Speaker 2: to assume that the story could be more complicated than
Speaker 2: these emails.
Speaker 4: But that's that's what the email show.
Speaker 1: To Max's point, there's there's court and then there's like
Speaker 1: the court of public opinion. And I think that open
Speaker 1: ai has taken the tack of as we're like responding
Speaker 1: in court, let's also respond publicly on our blog. And
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're putting out these blogs where they're like,
Speaker 1: here's the latest, here's the latest. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's very tactical by Sam Altman and his supporters because
Speaker 1: they have receipts and they're making them. It really kind
Speaker 1: of shows, you know, that Elon is talking out of
Speaker 1: both sides of his mouth. I mean, he wanted it
Speaker 1: to be a for profit company when he was in control,
Speaker 1: and then as soon as he lost control, he's been
Speaker 1: digging them for trying to be for profit. And so
Speaker 1: whoever he's got the servers there at open ai, I mean,
Speaker 1: they've got these emails going back years and they're just
Speaker 1: dribbling them out like bit by bit. This is not
Speaker 1: the only first time that we've seen the emails come out.
Speaker 1: And it's just a reminder to all journalists that like,
Speaker 1: lawsuits are a gold mind, and like you got to
Speaker 1: look at all the you got to look at all
Speaker 1: the appendency appendencies, and you've got to read all the emails,
Speaker 1: and old emails are just great. I love them. If
Speaker 1: you have any, send them to us Elon Inc.
Speaker 2: At Bloomberg, gott Neet. Just just a reminder. It can
Speaker 2: also go the other way, right. You can sort of
Speaker 2: fight a lawsuit by issuing a press release or calling
Speaker 2: a press conference. You can also use a lawsuit to
Speaker 2: generate positive publicity. And I think all along we have
Speaker 2: seen as we've talked about this dispute, we have seen
Speaker 2: it as partly a way for Elon Musk to call
Speaker 2: attention to all the amazing work he is doing at
Speaker 2: x Ai, his ai chatbot competitor, which is very importantly
Speaker 2: a competitor open Ai, to help attract employees. He is
Speaker 2: making a statement with this lawsuit as much as he
Speaker 2: is asking the court to stop open ai from turning
Speaker 2: into a not for profit from turning into a four.
Speaker 3: No help us for a second there and remind us
Speaker 3: where exactly at this point we feel like x Ai
Speaker 3: fits in the constellation of the Musk Empire. It was
Speaker 3: obviously it is perhaps the very newest of all his companies,
Speaker 3: but it seems like one that potentially has a rapidly
Speaker 3: growing valuation.
Speaker 2: Of course, all probably the third most valuable company in
Speaker 2: the empire.
Speaker 3: Boring.
Speaker 2: You're not going to believe this, but the tunneling industry
Speaker 2: is not the growth industry that.
Speaker 3: I'm offended for. The men and women are boring the
Speaker 3: chat because you have a third just but so Tesla
Speaker 3: SpaceX x Ai.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm not saying that's because they've created more
Speaker 2: values to come, but but it's this is just how
Speaker 2: investors are valuing these things. I don't think it's unreasonable
Speaker 2: to think that that value is in the tens of
Speaker 2: billions of dollars because look, they've built a credible chat bot.
Speaker 2: Now I think you can you can quibble with elon
Speaker 2: Musk and I'm sure open Ai would that, just just
Speaker 2: like how much of open AI's business has he replicated,
Speaker 2: how much of open aas customer bases? He replicated but
Speaker 2: he's built this valuable thing. He's also acquired a very
Speaker 2: large cluster of these GPUs, the chips that train AI
Speaker 2: algorithm rhythms. He's he's got, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: players in this industry. And open ai is worth a
Speaker 2: lot of money. So even if it's not worth as
Speaker 2: much as open ai, it could easily be worth you know,
Speaker 2: something like fifty billion dollars at least as far as
Speaker 2: some investors are going to see it. And that is
Speaker 2: interestingly not only like the third would be like the
Speaker 2: third biggest and most valuable company in the Musk Empire,
Speaker 2: but it would probably make it more valuable than good
Speaker 2: old x you know, Twitter, which he bought for forty
Speaker 2: four billion, but which has seen its valuation fall since then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Xai, like they built this massive cluster.
Speaker 4: What are they calling it?
Speaker 1: Colossus? I forget, I forget the naming conventions for but
Speaker 1: like the but the data center that they that they've
Speaker 1: built with all these Nvidia GPUs and Memphis is called Colossus.
Speaker 1: And you know, if this is like a gold rush
Speaker 1: where basically whoever has the most chips or the most
Speaker 1: GPUs wins, I mean, Elon is in the game and
Speaker 1: Sam Altman is his biggest competitor in this race. If
Speaker 1: you look at the constellation of companies SpaceX SO, Tesla,
Speaker 1: SpaceX x AI, then you've got you know, Neuralink.
Speaker 3: Boring and X You've got X last, and you've got
Speaker 3: Boring second or last. Just for the record, I just
Speaker 3: want to say it. I mean to me, I value
Speaker 3: Boring as the most valuable of them all.
Speaker 2: Can I just fly a couple of fun things from
Speaker 2: this emails?
Speaker 3: You have other things from the trophy hit.
Speaker 2: One thing, one thing that comes across. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: there's a proposal to use crypto to fund open ai
Speaker 2: because they need all this money. And and from the
Speaker 2: emails you can conclude that Elon Musk does not see
Speaker 2: that as a very viable approach, which is kind of
Speaker 2: funny because he in public, you know, is is the
Speaker 2: doge father.
Speaker 4: He's always talking about her.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by use crypto to fund open as.
Speaker 4: We an I c O initial Remember this created.
Speaker 3: News if you create a news coin, create a new coin.
Speaker 2: And Elon Musk, at least in private, very much saw
Speaker 2: it that way as as something that we gimmicky, unserious
Speaker 2: or whatever. And and dissuaded or attempted.
Speaker 3: To come out that was from the Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 4: Like in the back and forth, you see it, well right.
Speaker 3: Now with all the coins worth, the zillion dollars that didn't.
Speaker 4: Maybe it would have been the right move.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The other the other thing is, you know what you
Speaker 2: see in this in this back and forth, and I
Speaker 2: think this is going to be like this is a
Speaker 2: real problem, I think for both these guys, because first
Speaker 2: of all, they're both making points that seem somewhat damaging
Speaker 2: to the other, and they both kind of come off
Speaker 2: as people who are talking a big game about the
Speaker 2: sort of higher purposes of what they're doing, but then
Speaker 2: behind the scenes are very concerned with money, which kind
Speaker 2: of undercuts the sense of a higher purpose.
Speaker 3: And I think it.
Speaker 2: Really shows a sort of political clumsiness. And it makes
Speaker 2: me wonder what is going to happen when this kind
Speaker 2: of thing happens in the Trump administration, Because you're gonna
Speaker 2: have the same thing.
Speaker 4: You're gonna have this this like collision of higher goals.
Speaker 2: We're going to try to streamline government, we're gonna we're
Speaker 2: gonna reach the stars or whatever, and then you're gonna
Speaker 2: have the reality that Elon Musk is also very interested
Speaker 2: in getting paid. He is interested in control. You know,
Speaker 2: he's interested in the normal things that business people are
Speaker 2: interested in. And I don't think he has that much
Speaker 2: experience kind of navigating this in public, and so I
Speaker 2: feel like this could be a preview of the awkwardness
Speaker 2: to come over the next you know, four years potentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, indeed, so you see it as a bit of
Speaker 3: a potentially a lose lose here for both Musk and Altman.
Speaker 3: And anyway, it looks like the next step in this case,
Speaker 3: if I'm not mistaken, is a hearing in January. And
Speaker 3: so it'll just keep keep coming up again and again.
Speaker 2: They did manage to squash the beef once at the
Speaker 2: earlier this year. You know, who knows, maybe they'll be
Speaker 2: able to work it out. And you saw Sam Altman
Speaker 2: make some kind of positive comments about Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: Elon Muskin acknowledge those comments.
Speaker 1: Wasn't there's some kind of hug.
Speaker 3: There was a hug, which is all part of the
Speaker 3: reason why Altman is now tremendously sad about it.
Speaker 2: They hugged it out and then Musk refiled the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: So who knows maybe they'll be able to find their way,
Speaker 2: you know, on the porty, on the patio at mar
Speaker 2: A Lago or something and make the.
Speaker 3: Piece any good feud, any truly truly good feud. To
Speaker 3: be a top feud, it's got to be capable of
Speaker 3: overcoming a brief datime.
Speaker 4: For me, it has to have the prospect of physical violence.
Speaker 3: Well, it's true, you're raising good point that we've moved.
Speaker 3: We've drifted pretty far from the initial goal of it all,
Speaker 3: which was to get people in a cage match.
Speaker 1: And now talking about speaking okay, speaking of cage match,
Speaker 1: can we talk about how Meta filed something where they're
Speaker 1: basically supporting Elon in his fight against Open AI. Did
Speaker 1: you see that?
Speaker 3: Miss this?
Speaker 2: I did see that, and I think I mean, it's
Speaker 2: sort of interesting because on you have Mark Zuckerberg donating
Speaker 2: money to Trump. You have an actual potentially a Dayton
Speaker 2: between Zuckerberg and Elon. You know, the original feud actually
Speaker 2: seems to be cooling a little bit. They're both sort
Speaker 2: of on team Trump. They seem somewhat aligned on a
Speaker 2: number of issues, including the need to slow down the
Speaker 2: market leader in AI with Zuckerberg of course, has a
Speaker 2: big AI effort, and also around TikTok. Oh, actually I'm
Speaker 2: wrong about that, not around TikTok because Zuckerberg wol want
Speaker 2: to ban it and Elon has said that.
Speaker 3: But the mind is, if we get a cage match
Speaker 3: coming and Zuckerberg's in the ring and Muska is in
Speaker 3: the ring, they are partner tag team partners rather then
Speaker 3: grappling against one another.
Speaker 1: The enemy of the enemy is my friend, so Mark,
Speaker 1: and we got.
Speaker 3: Zuckerberg and Musk now on one side, we just need
Speaker 3: two other people for them to wrestle.
Speaker 4: I team partner for Sam Alman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone preferably a little bit larger than listeners.
Speaker 4: Elon Ink at Bloomberg dot net. Send us your ideas
Speaker 4: and we will consider.
Speaker 3: To be Sam Altman's tag team partner. Okay, We're now
Speaker 3: joined by Lauren Grush, who covers all things space for
Speaker 3: us here at Bloomberg. Hey, Lauren, Hi, guys. Okay, Lauren,
Speaker 3: real simple question to get us started here. Tell us
Speaker 3: who is Jared Isaacman.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Jared has become something of a really interesting figure
Speaker 5: in both the space world and the SpaceX world. So
Speaker 5: prior to twenty twenty one, I had no idea who
Speaker 5: he was, and now I know him quite well, or
Speaker 5: at least know of him quite well. He's a billionaire.
Speaker 5: He's the founder of Shift for payments, which you might
Speaker 5: recognize when you were swiping your credit card at various
Speaker 5: restaurants or buying gifts. It's a payment liaison system. And
Speaker 5: when he took his company public, he became a billionaire
Speaker 5: and decided he wanted to invest in SpaceX, and so
Speaker 5: he called them up and he floated the idea of actually,
Speaker 5: you know, flying on one of their rockets one day,
Speaker 5: and then that kind of snowballed, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: he had booked an entire flight for him and three
Speaker 5: other people on a SpaceX Dragon and became the first
Speaker 5: to fly the an all civilian crew to orbit. And
Speaker 5: ever since then he's become something of a central figure
Speaker 5: at SpaceX, where he kind of serves as this financial accelerator,
Speaker 5: if you will, because he funded this program called LARIS,
Speaker 5: which is a research and development program where they try
Speaker 5: to advance human spaceflight at SpaceX, and they flew the
Speaker 5: first of those missions this year, called Polaris Dawn. And
Speaker 5: you might have seen that he was the first to
Speaker 5: perform a commercial spacewalk in newly designed SpaceX spacesuits. So
Speaker 5: Jared's definitely become intric you know, intimately involved with SpaceX
Speaker 5: in some very interesting ways.
Speaker 3: How shocking was it for you when you saw Trump
Speaker 3: pick him to lead NASA going forward? I mean from Afar,
Speaker 3: I think the way it struck me and perhaps others is, man,
Speaker 3: this really feels like it's got Elon's fingerprints written all
Speaker 3: over at this pick.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah. I definitely was a little surprised. I had
Speaker 5: heard his name from like an offhand source was like,
Speaker 5: maybe him, and I was like, I don't think so.
Speaker 5: Because of that research and development program. I was telling
Speaker 5: you about the Polaris program. It actually constitutes three flights.
Speaker 5: So the Polaris Dawn flight was just the first and
Speaker 5: the third one is going to culminate with the first
Speaker 5: crude flight of Starship. And from my understanding, Jared wants
Speaker 5: to be on those flights. I mean, he hasn't said
Speaker 5: I don't think they right.
Speaker 3: So the head of the head of NASA is going
Speaker 3: to be going up into space. That's kind of cool.
Speaker 5: I mean, we can get into that. I'm he recently
Speaker 5: said that Polaris might be on a bit of a
Speaker 5: pause at the moment while we figure all this out.
Speaker 5: But I did wonder, you know, could the NASA administrator
Speaker 5: go into space?
Speaker 3: While I likely mac this is going to be a
Speaker 3: new president. If you're going to run NASA, you got
Speaker 3: to get up there yourself.
Speaker 4: Objectively cool, I think we can all agree.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: It would be even cooler if Trump himself would go
Speaker 2: up there too, But I think it's like the next
Speaker 2: best thing. But I feel like, you know, we've been
Speaker 2: talking about these kind of appointments that Elon Musk has
Speaker 2: had a hand in, and this one looks like you
Speaker 2: and Lauren are saying out of the box, Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: this is this is my guy. I mean I I looked,
Speaker 2: and I do think you can make a pretty an
Speaker 2: interesting case for his qualifications. Right, he's not tradition, he's
Speaker 2: not conventionally qualified, but he does seem like he's qualified
Speaker 2: in other ways, right as somebody who's who actually has
Speaker 2: had experience in business, who has who knows the private industry.
Speaker 2: But it really does feel like a big point against
Speaker 2: him is he's like hopelessly conflicted. I mean, he this guy,
Speaker 2: he is pretty much an investor. Now, maybe not a
Speaker 2: profit motivated investor, but like an investor in SpaceX. I
Speaker 2: don't know how other companies there. It's gonna it's gonna
Speaker 2: be very easy for them to argue that they're not
Speaker 2: going to get a fair.
Speaker 3: So Lauren has do we actually know beyond putting up
Speaker 3: financing for that Polaris program, is he an equity investor
Speaker 3: in SpaceX? And if so, do we know if he
Speaker 3: plans to divest and get out of that position?
Speaker 5: I asked and did not get a response. I mean,
Speaker 5: he's definitely invested his money into these programs. Whether or
Speaker 5: not he holds shares, I think is still an open question.
Speaker 5: But presumably if he did. You know, we've had NASA
Speaker 5: administrators who've held stock before in contractors that NASA employees
Speaker 5: or you know, does business with, and they've had to
Speaker 5: divest those shares. So presumably if he did have SpaceX shares,
Speaker 5: he would divest them when it comes to the conflict
Speaker 5: of interest. You know, that was kind of my biggest
Speaker 5: thought when I first heard it. You know, I talked
Speaker 5: with Lori Garver, who was the former deputy administrator for
Speaker 5: NASA under Obama and She talked about how they were
Speaker 5: very cognizant of trying to maintain a separation between the
Speaker 5: political side versus the contracting and the procurement side of things.
Speaker 5: She said that they went so far as to not
Speaker 5: even be briefed on decisions that were, you know, being
Speaker 5: made about contracting, just to make sure that there wasn't
Speaker 5: even an, you know, optically a thought that they were
Speaker 5: kind of putting their their finger on the scale whether
Speaker 5: or not that is, you know, an enforceable thing they
Speaker 5: can do, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I think I think the question
Speaker 5: is fair that the perceived favoritism is what he's going
Speaker 5: to be up against when he takes takes the role.
Speaker 1: But Lari Garbo was kind of excited about him as
Speaker 1: the pick, right, aren't people within come Yeah, commercial Space
Speaker 1: super like jazz about about Isaacman being nominated? I mean,
Speaker 1: and is there any real opposition to him on Capitol Hill?
Speaker 5: I should I should be clear. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of people are excited about him. He comes with a
Speaker 5: very commercial space friendly mindset. I don't think it's necessarily
Speaker 5: that he's going to be all in on SpaceX. I
Speaker 5: think he what he likes is the way SpaceX operates
Speaker 5: and the fact that they move so quickly and that
Speaker 5: they try to you know, be more efficient and cut
Speaker 5: costs and lower the price of getting to space. What
Speaker 5: he very much does not like is the slow, unmotivated contractors.
Speaker 5: You know, these are you know, his opinions that you know,
Speaker 5: rely on cost plus contracts that don't seem to have
Speaker 5: much incentive to move quickly, are constantly delayed and late.
Speaker 5: And I shall say, you know, SpaceX also is late,
Speaker 5: but comparatively, they do move more quickly than their rivals.
Speaker 5: And so he's very clear that he doesn't like this
Speaker 5: old way of doing business that NASA is very used
Speaker 5: to and very much embraces, you know, the government getting
Speaker 5: more bang for its buck when it's working with these
Speaker 5: private companies. And I think a lot of people are
Speaker 5: really excited about or in the.
Speaker 3: Piece you had on him the other day, which was
Speaker 3: quite good, you noted how he publicly ISAA mean. Isaacman
Speaker 3: doesn't say all that much about Musk, but he has made,
Speaker 3: as you're alluding to here, comments about some SpaceX big rivals.
Speaker 3: He's had issues with some of the ways you know,
Speaker 3: Boeing's doing things and even Bezos's Blue Origin. But then
Speaker 3: he gave a quote the other day that I thought
Speaker 3: was really interesting about how he views competition and whether
Speaker 3: he will treat SpaceX favorably. And the quote was, I
Speaker 3: don't want SpaceX to ever give up the edge, and
Speaker 3: the only way they're going to keep that edge sharp
Speaker 3: is by feeling like somebody is coming up right behind them.
Speaker 3: So he at least is saying here to us like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to keep all the biggest players
Speaker 3: in the game. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that's a noble sentiment that he expressed.
Speaker 5: But the problem is, I'm not sure it's really based
Speaker 5: in reality in the sense that, yes, I think everybody
Speaker 5: wants there to be competition with SpaceX, real competition with SpaceX.
Speaker 5: The problem just is there isn't. Really, there's no one
Speaker 5: that's on their level right now. There just isn't. And
Speaker 5: maybe Blue Origin will catch up, maybe ULA will get
Speaker 5: its act together and start launching more frequently, but the
Speaker 5: issue just is that there is no one comparable at
Speaker 5: the moment, and so if we are going to be
Speaker 5: redirecting resources to go with the more efficient company, I
Speaker 5: mean it's safe to assume those contracts are going to
Speaker 5: go to SpaceX, so, you know, I think it's nice
Speaker 5: to say that. And you know, Gwyn Shotwells.
Speaker 3: Actually asked this of the head of SAX.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sorry, President and CEO was asked, you know, about competition,
Speaker 5: and she even openly admitted she's I think it's going
Speaker 5: to be really hard to catch us on launch because
Speaker 5: they are just the by by far, the most prolific
Speaker 5: launch provider right now, and developing rockets is really tough,
Speaker 5: and it's SpaceX kind of leads the charge. I mean,
Speaker 5: they could probably you know, undercut other people's prices at
Speaker 5: this point, making it you know, more desire to go
Speaker 5: at them. So I think it's just going to be
Speaker 5: a really tough for someone to be a comparable competitor
Speaker 5: that you have others.
Speaker 3: Very good, Lauren, Well listen, assuming mister Isaacman takes over there.
Speaker 3: You will be back on soon to let us know
Speaker 3: how that's going. And in the meantime, happy holidays to you.
Speaker 5: Thank you as well.
Speaker 3: Now, Dana, you snuck out on us this morning a
Speaker 3: fascinating little piece about a preschool that Elon is building.
Speaker 3: Tell us about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I guess the big picture is you know,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is a man of many interests. We focus
Speaker 1: here at Elon Inc. On his companies and his ascendant
Speaker 1: political empire, but he's also quite interested in education. In
Speaker 1: the early days of SpaceX, they had a kind of
Speaker 1: quasi private school running within SpaceX called at Astra that
Speaker 1: his older children went to. When the pandemic happened, that
Speaker 1: that school kind of wound down. But now that SpaceX
Speaker 1: is sort of building out US facilities in Texas and
Speaker 1: Elon has all these companies in Bastrip outside of Austin,
Speaker 1: he is yet again building a Montessori based preschool called
Speaker 1: at Astra, and it's pretty close to completion. I got
Speaker 1: some records from the Texas state agency that regulates childcare facilities.
Speaker 1: There's all this back and forth. They've got the permit,
Speaker 1: and it's not clear to me whether this school is
Speaker 1: open to the general public or whether it's primarily for
Speaker 1: the children of either Elon himself or his employees. It
Speaker 1: seems likely that it's in his employees. But this is
Speaker 1: just a reminder that this guy has a lot of interests.
Speaker 1: Education is clearly one of them. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that is fascinating to me is that if you look
Speaker 1: at his political Action Committee, the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: money was donated by Elon himself, but it also got
Speaker 1: outside donations, including from Betsy Devas, the former Education secretary,
Speaker 1: and some of her relatives, and so there's some kind
Speaker 1: of Betsy Devas Elon Musk alignment around education.
Speaker 3: Danna remind me and the rest of the uninitiated out there,
Speaker 3: what makes a Montessori school a Montessori school A and B?
Speaker 3: Why the name at astra?
Speaker 1: So I'm personally a big fan of Montessori. My own
Speaker 1: kid went to a Montsauri elementary school, and it's a
Speaker 1: philosophy named after Maria Montessori, the Italian kind of educator
Speaker 1: and innovator. And the big thing is multiage classrooms, the
Speaker 1: ideas that children learn best from their peers and the teachers.
Speaker 1: It's not like the teacher standing in front of the
Speaker 1: room lecturing like the kids. It's very play based. The
Speaker 1: kids learned from each other, the teachers there more as
Speaker 1: a guide and it's all the rage and Maria Montesssori
Speaker 1: kind of developed this philosophy in the era between World
Speaker 1: War One and wor Warshio and Italy. But now there
Speaker 1: are Montessori preschools all over the United States, hugely popular
Speaker 1: in the tech world. Larry Ellison basically has a Montessori
Speaker 1: preschool on the island of Lunai, and Elon has hired
Speaker 1: the same private educational company that helps to run Larry's
Speaker 1: preschool to help run his in Texas. At Astra means
Speaker 1: to the stars in Latin.
Speaker 2: I have so many questions here, Okay, so Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and Dani correct me if I'm wrong. He has put
Speaker 2: a ton of money into the foundation that is building
Speaker 2: this thing, right, more like more than one hundred million dollars, more.
Speaker 1: Than one hundred million dollars. Yeah, and he wants to
Speaker 1: build a university at some point too.
Speaker 2: So okay, I'm just seeing like a very large gap
Speaker 2: between the one hundred million dollars and the like one teacher,
Speaker 2: one assistant teacher.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is just step one.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but I get My point is this does
Speaker 2: not feel like the most serious effort, and I think that,
Speaker 2: of course, I think part of why this is happening
Speaker 2: is because Elon Musk, as Dana says, actually has real
Speaker 2: ideas here. He's done this once before. He definitely we
Speaker 2: know from following him, you know, has very strong ideas
Speaker 2: about the failings of you know, kind of like the
Speaker 2: modern education system or whatever. But also he has this
Speaker 2: gigantic foundation that has to give away five percent of
Speaker 2: its money every year, and that amount of money has
Speaker 2: gone up quite a lot. So it's like it seems
Speaker 2: like part of what's going on is there's an interest.
Speaker 2: The other part is he needs to do something with
Speaker 2: this money which is just in Tesla stock that keeps appreciating.
Speaker 2: And it just doesn't seem they've thought that hard about this.
Speaker 2: If you're telling me he wants to remake the education
Speaker 2: system and then also he's going for the number one
Speaker 2: fad in childhood education, doesn't it seem I don't know, Like,
Speaker 2: isn't he supposed to be like dewokeifying the schools? Like
Speaker 2: reading dan As story, I'm seeing a lot of play
Speaker 2: you know, play base.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It sounds a little sounds a little uh progressive to me.
Speaker 1: So to David's point, I think that the preschool's step
Speaker 1: the preschool is step one. Step two is he's going
Speaker 1: to build a university also in Texas, and we just
Speaker 1: haven't seen, we haven't seen like exactly how that's going
Speaker 1: to take take shape. But he's got to two projects.
Speaker 1: There's the Musk Foundation, and the Musk Foundation has given
Speaker 1: money to the other project, which is called the Foundation,
Speaker 1: and the the Foundation is all about schooling. He was
Speaker 1: gonna do preschool through college, and I think this preschool
Speaker 1: and batch strip is step one. There's also another at
Speaker 1: Astra that's being built near Brownsville that also seems to
Speaker 1: be a daycare facility, maybe for SpaceX workers down there.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I think at some point we'll see
Speaker 1: a K twelve school take shape and then eventually a university.
Speaker 1: And all this is happening in parallel with Musk's own
Speaker 1: children as they start to age. And then you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Musk's orbit also have young
Speaker 1: kids and so and there are.
Speaker 3: A lot of Musk children. Yeah, the man alone, the
Speaker 3: Musk family alone, You could fill up at Astra easy,
Speaker 3: just with the Musk kids. Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, no, you need a pretty big building at this point.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, very good. It's one to walk for us there, Dana.
Speaker 3: So Max, we're gonna we're gonna wrap every so briefly here.
Speaker 3: We're going to dig into the mail bag because we
Speaker 3: got another bumper sticker idea that we kind of thought
Speaker 3: was at least I did. I don't know about you.
Speaker 4: I think we haven't seen this.
Speaker 3: That's going to be a reparation surprise. Okay. So Melicia,
Speaker 3: a listener in Pennsylvania, wrote in to say that she
Speaker 3: has apparently created and put on her modeless a couple
Speaker 3: of stickers, and these are These are the two stickers.
Speaker 3: The first one is I thought Nicola made it. She's
Speaker 3: pretty good. And then the second one, I don't know where.
Speaker 3: I don't know by the way I'm the bumper. I'm
Speaker 3: not exactly sure where each is going. It's not entirely
Speaker 3: clear to me. But the second one says, make this
Speaker 3: car not embarrassing again.
Speaker 4: So wow, I love.
Speaker 2: It could be confusing to people who are aware that
Speaker 2: there's a company called Nikola that has had something of
Speaker 2: a bumpy road but very very clever Nikola Tesla. Of course,
Speaker 2: that the person who Tesla is named after, but not folks, Melissa,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Nikola Tesla did not design the Tesla.
Speaker 3: She's going to be disappointed, Well, she apparently is disappointed.
Speaker 3: It has been for a while.
Speaker 2: But that's a great bumper sticker. Little what I got
Speaker 2: to say, make this car not embarrassing again. That is
Speaker 2: that's that's pretty clever. I haven't seen that before. You know,
Speaker 2: we've seen iterations on that, but the the kind of
Speaker 2: use of the Trump slogan, you know, that's Melissa, I
Speaker 2: think you might be honest with you just onto something.
Speaker 3: I think that one could potentially take off. We are
Speaker 3: still waiting, by the way, for Elon Inc. Bumper sticker ideas.
Speaker 3: I mean, in the meantime as we wait for them.
Speaker 3: The placeholder one I've come up with max for now,
Speaker 3: and this isn't quite it, but I think some iteration
Speaker 3: of this might be. Okay, we got we have to
Speaker 3: ruminate on. This is in support of the pod.
Speaker 2: I feel like we need to get those printed and
Speaker 2: then anyone who sends in a bumper.
Speaker 4: Sticker idea, we will.
Speaker 2: We will send you a bumper sticker with our name
Speaker 2: on it to promote our podcast.
Speaker 3: Right, but we gotta we gotta keep working on that.
Speaker 3: That's gonna come. Oh and by the way, the other
Speaker 3: thing to send in, if you might be so kind
Speaker 3: to Elon incoplenberg dot net is just more feud ideas.
Speaker 2: Is I'm open to all feuds they can be having
Speaker 2: to do with Doge, they can have to do with companies.
Speaker 2: They can even have to do with Elon Musk and
Speaker 2: other fictional characters or in fictional characters.
Speaker 3: I'll take it off and bumper stickers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Max, Elon inink at Bloomberg Dotet.
Speaker 3: I got it excellent, Max, Dana, thanks as always, thanks
Speaker 3: for having us.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Musa Rakus
Speaker 3: is our editor and Rayhan Harmanci is our senior editor.
Speaker 3: The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan
Speaker 3: Blake Maple's Handles Engineering and Emma Sanchez fact checks. Our
Speaker 3: supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elon Inc. Theme is
Speaker 3: written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugi Eira.
Speaker 3: Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
Speaker 3: is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as
Speaker 3: always to our supporters Joel Webb and Bradstone. I'm David Pappadopolis.
Speaker 3: If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
Speaker 3: it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.