Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Worst case scenario if our planet falls apart, we can
Speaker 2: all go to Mars with the other man that we
Speaker 2: love and trust.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, You are right, check it out, Doc Mega.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but seriously, I run the country now, and it's
Speaker 4: gonna be like one of my rockheads. You know, that's
Speaker 4: super cool and super fun. But this slideshads a good
Speaker 4: blow up and everybody dies.
Speaker 3: Ha ha, I'm Doc Mega. See in the White House,
Speaker 3: US say, us say, well.
Speaker 2: 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, legitimate.
Speaker 5: He says.
Speaker 1: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 1: be different.
Speaker 6: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 5: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 5: on him.
Speaker 6: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 4: I think anything he does, he's fascinating the people.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Elon Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: That was from Saturday Night Live, sending up Elon Musk's
Speaker 6: big week in politics. Today is Tuesday, November twelve. I'm
Speaker 6: your host, Max Chafkin, standing in for David Papadopoulos. It's
Speaker 6: hard to believe that the election was only a week ago.
Speaker 6: It feels to me anyway like Elon Musk has been
Speaker 6: vice president for years, which is only slightly a joke,
Speaker 6: because Musk's role in this election has been staggering. Today,
Speaker 6: we're going to break that down in multiple ways. We
Speaker 6: are joined by our regulars, Sarah fryar head a Big
Speaker 6: Tech coverage Hello, Sarah, Hello, Dana Hull are one and
Speaker 6: only Elon Musk reporter, Hey, Dana.
Speaker 1: Elon belongs to all of us, Hey, Hey.
Speaker 6: And then later on we'll be joined by a new guest,
Speaker 6: Tom Maloney, a member of Bloomberg's wealth team, who will
Speaker 6: come and talk to us about Musk's money before we
Speaker 6: get there. Just to catch people up if you weren't
Speaker 6: following this on Twitter or on the news or wherever else.
Speaker 6: Elon has basically been camped out in mar A Lago
Speaker 6: for the week. He went there for the victory party
Speaker 6: and Dan I think he actually did leave briefly to
Speaker 6: go to Texas, but more or less, he's with Trump
Speaker 6: now right. He's at the right hand of the soon
Speaker 6: to be president of the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he briefly went home to Austin, but
Speaker 1: then he went back and there's all these photographs of him,
Speaker 1: like sitting around with Trump at the golf course and
Speaker 1: hanging out with the whole extended Trump clan, and he
Speaker 1: posted something about how like it was a great first
Speaker 1: day of the transition team, Like he is totally camped
Speaker 1: out there and like talking to foreign leaders.
Speaker 6: Sarah, what is going on with this aspect of kind
Speaker 6: of like the Elon Musk transition era or whatever, Like
Speaker 6: these family photos. There was a family photo on election night,
Speaker 6: I believe, posted by Kai Trump, who's Trump's granddaughter, where
Speaker 6: like all the Trump's are there, but there's no Millenia
Speaker 6: and no JD Vance And then there's Elon Musk.
Speaker 5: Is Elon trying to what do we take away from this?
Speaker 7: He's getting his money's worth. I mean, I think we've
Speaker 7: always known that Donald Trump is a bit of a
Speaker 7: favor operated president, and Elon Musk just gave him the
Speaker 7: biggest favor of all, helping him score the presidency and
Speaker 7: giving him the full support of a media organization in
Speaker 7: x And that is loyalty that Trump recognizes, and it
Speaker 7: is going to be very powerful. It's going to make
Speaker 7: that whole forty four billion Twitter acquisition worth it if
Speaker 7: he can maintain the relationship. So now it's really important
Speaker 7: that Musk, I guess, continued to show up for Trump
Speaker 7: and continue to stay on his side because there's a
Speaker 7: lot at stake. There's the government contracts, there's influence over
Speaker 7: over future policy, there's influence over foreign policy. He may
Speaker 7: have a hand in picking the Senate majority leader. This
Speaker 7: is this is a key moment for Elon Muskin and
Speaker 7: honestly for Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: Elon's foreign policy, as far as I could tell ahead
Speaker 6: of the election, is sort of twofold. He's he's a peacenick,
Speaker 6: I guess like he's He has made comments about not
Speaker 6: wanting to have too many wars happen, and he's also
Speaker 6: very much in favor of maximizing the contracts that are
Speaker 6: given to his companies. Dana, were you surprised by this
Speaker 6: call with Zelenski, the president of Ukraine, especially given Musk's
Speaker 6: all separate relationship with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.
Speaker 1: Not really, I mean the sense that I got was that,
Speaker 1: like Trump and Elon were probably just like hanging out
Speaker 1: and world leaders recalling and like, so Trump put them
Speaker 1: on speaker and sort of let them know that Elon
Speaker 1: was there in the room. That could be wrong, but
Speaker 1: that's like, that's my assumption, And no, I think it's
Speaker 1: like very very normal Elon. I mean, Elon is like
Speaker 1: a transnational actor, right, he has relationships with foreign governments
Speaker 1: on his own, independent of our State Department, and he
Speaker 1: talks to foreign leaders all the time. So like these
Speaker 1: are people that Musk also knows. I think it's just
Speaker 1: where it's unprecedented for government to sort of operate this way.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've never had a corporate CEO or a
Speaker 1: billionaire like literally right there like side by side with
Speaker 1: the President elect, helping to shape the transition team and
Speaker 1: like taking all these calls with foreign leaders in such
Speaker 1: a stark way before. So that's what's really striking. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't surprise me that the Trump patched Elon in
Speaker 1: or that Elon.
Speaker 6: Is doing this. Yeah, I believe we've also seen reports
Speaker 6: of calls with the leader of Turkey as well as
Speaker 6: I think, Dana, you sent me a news story this
Speaker 6: morning about a Serbia right kind of a near East portfolio,
Speaker 6: I guess for now, Sarah. You mentioned also domestic politics,
Speaker 6: Elon sort of created a poll, I guess, to see
Speaker 6: who should be the Senate majority leader.
Speaker 7: We're talking about a man who sees no boundaries between
Speaker 7: his companies. He mix and matches talent where he needs
Speaker 7: it to go, whether that's a SpaceX or boring or X.
Speaker 7: He has certain people that he really trusts, and certain
Speaker 7: people who are as allies and certain people who are
Speaker 7: as enemies, and he doesn't really see the silos of like,
Speaker 7: this is the team for boring companies. So I'm you know,
Speaker 7: cannibalizing that if I take them to neuralink, whatever thing
Speaker 7: is on fire, he turns his attention to. And so
Speaker 7: this is a moment for him to just go into
Speaker 7: launch mode really with the US government.
Speaker 6: Okay, so in the next couple of months, there's going
Speaker 6: to be this jockeying among all these people who who
Speaker 6: want to have influence in the White House, and I
Speaker 6: feel like we're maybe already seeing a little bit of that.
Speaker 5: Jocking.
Speaker 6: Howard Lutnik went on CNN and he described Musk's role
Speaker 6: in the you know, in the new administration in what
Speaker 6: I would say are kind of narrow terms. He said, Oh,
Speaker 6: he's going to write some software and then give us
Speaker 6: that software. He's gonna he's not going to be part
Speaker 6: of the government. He's not going to be making decisions.
Speaker 6: What do you make of that? Like, and do you
Speaker 6: think is that how Elon understands it? Is that actually
Speaker 6: what he's going to do what's happening right now?
Speaker 7: Also, it just is so imagine you could just write
Speaker 7: software and give it to the government and say here
Speaker 7: you go, Now your government's fixed. Like, that's just not
Speaker 7: how the government works, and that's not how Elon works.
Speaker 7: What I imagine might happen is We've talked about this before,
Speaker 7: but the Department of Government Efficiency, the DOGE leadership type
Speaker 7: of job that Trump is thinking of giving Musk would
Speaker 7: really allow him to be in charge of slash and
Speaker 7: burn the way he was at X. I imagine him
Speaker 7: going into these agencies and saying, who are your most
Speaker 7: productive people? Who can you afford to lose? Send me
Speaker 7: a list of your accomplishments this week and every week.
Speaker 7: You know, how many lines of code have you written?
Speaker 7: Like that sort of thing that he did it X
Speaker 7: and replicating it for the US government to the extent
Speaker 7: that the law allows him to.
Speaker 1: I think one question I have is just about the
Speaker 1: epics of it all. Like today, John Paulson, who a
Speaker 1: lot of people had been floating to be Treasury Secretary,
Speaker 1: basically came out and he said, like, I'm ecstatic that
Speaker 1: Trump is in office, but my complex financial obligations would
Speaker 1: prevent me from holding an official position and President Trump's
Speaker 1: administration at this time. So Paulson is basically a no
Speaker 1: for Treasury secretary.
Speaker 6: So I love that. Imagine having such complex financial arrangements.
Speaker 1: No one has more complex financial arrangements than Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: He runs six companies. SpaceX is an annoy ormous government contractor,
Speaker 1: Tesla is a huge beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 1: So like, that's my big question, Like is this doge
Speaker 1: thing just an advisory role that allows him to keep
Speaker 1: all of his companies, And in that sense, if it's
Speaker 1: only advisory, like what is the actual remit or does
Speaker 1: he actually have like a job job in the government,
Speaker 1: And in which case does he have to abide by
Speaker 1: ethical rules or are those ethical rules about to go
Speaker 1: out the window.
Speaker 6: I mean, my take is that he's definitely not going
Speaker 6: to join the administration. I feel like Trump has said it.
Speaker 6: Lutnick said it the other day. You know, Trump has
Speaker 6: said repeatedly on the on the stump during the campaign,
Speaker 6: like he doesn't have enough time to do this. And
Speaker 6: I think you're right, Dan, and like it's not just
Speaker 6: because it would be complicated in the John Paulson sense,
Speaker 6: although who knows what's behind that complication. It's that Elon
Speaker 6: Musk doesn't want to right the whole point. And I
Speaker 6: think he's made as clear of like joining the administration
Speaker 6: or taking on an advisory role is so it can
Speaker 6: help his companies. It's not like he doesn't want to
Speaker 6: give that the That's the whole point of this is
Speaker 6: my reading. But I do think it makes you wonder
Speaker 6: how long could this last? And like should we already
Speaker 6: be on Like, you know, Elon Musk Trump feud watch.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna see some real tests of Musk's
Speaker 1: power this week, right, Like who is the Senate majority
Speaker 1: leader going to be? Like Musk has thrown his weight
Speaker 1: behind Scott, who's like not particularly popular among the Senate.
Speaker 1: So like is the non Maga wing of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party going to try to be like a check and
Speaker 1: balance to that and similarly, like a least stephonic right,
Speaker 1: like Musk was saying, Oh, she's great, but she should
Speaker 1: really stay in the house, But she's not staying in
Speaker 1: the house, like she's just been nominated to be the
Speaker 1: delegate to the un So like Musk isn't getting everything
Speaker 1: that he wants, even though he's being very public about
Speaker 1: what he wants. And so it'll just be interesting to see,
Speaker 1: like behind the scenes within the Republican Party, like what
Speaker 1: efforts are ma to kind of be a check on
Speaker 1: what seems to be his unbridled power right now.
Speaker 7: It would be hard if you're a politician and you
Speaker 7: have to be feeling the whiplash of Trump's leadership already,
Speaker 7: right he changes his mind based on who he talked
Speaker 7: to last, he tweets about it or posts about it,
Speaker 7: and then the whole government has to shift to be
Speaker 7: loyal to something like that and then simultaneously be loyal
Speaker 7: to Elon Musk, who has similar behavioral characteristics of you know,
Speaker 7: being very strong minded about what he thinks is the
Speaker 7: best way to do things that seems very difficult. And
Speaker 7: also the idea that Musk is is very much in
Speaker 7: the spotlight you know, on stage pictured with Trump. For
Speaker 7: how long is Trump going to be able to seed
Speaker 7: the spotlight to Elon Musk?
Speaker 6: Okay, So huge week for Elon in politics and there's
Speaker 6: gonna be lots for us to talk about in the
Speaker 6: weeks to come.
Speaker 5: But it was.
Speaker 6: Also a huge week for Elon's bank account. And to
Speaker 6: break that down, we have the perfect guest, Tom Maloney,
Speaker 6: a member of Bloomberg's wealth team who has been crunching
Speaker 6: the numbers on Elon Musk's wealth and is coming to
Speaker 6: talk about it.
Speaker 5: Tom, Thanks for being on Eloni. Thanks bys Tom. How
Speaker 5: wealthy is Elon Musk?
Speaker 2: He's worth more than three hundred and thirty billion, so
Speaker 2: he's very near he's wealthiest ever, which was about three
Speaker 2: hundred and forty billion. About two thirds of that comes
Speaker 2: from Tesla stock and options, and then a big chunk
Speaker 2: of that comes from SpaceX that's valued about two hundred
Speaker 2: and ten billion earns forty two percent of that then XII, Twitter,
Speaker 2: Neuralink boring company kind of around the rest of that album.
Speaker 6: So were you on the well team, were you guys
Speaker 6: like preparing for what happened last week? I mean, and
Speaker 6: if people don't know the Tesla stock went up like crazy.
Speaker 6: I think was around forty up to forty percent as
Speaker 6: of yesterday, I believe as a Monday, and that sent
Speaker 6: Musk's wealth up, I don't know, from the election night
Speaker 6: to now, what's the game been.
Speaker 2: More than seventy billion. And just to put that in context,
Speaker 2: seventy billion is the net worth of Charles Koch, who's
Speaker 2: the twenty second richest person on the planet, and Musk
Speaker 2: has out of that in a week.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I found this really interesting just because, like before
Speaker 6: the election, and you know, we've been telling this story
Speaker 6: over several years of all the problems at Twitter. He's
Speaker 6: possibly lost I don't know, twenty or thirty billion dollars
Speaker 6: Sarah right on on the acquisition of Twitter. But it's
Speaker 6: like he made it all back in three days.
Speaker 7: It's wild And this is what we were talking about
Speaker 7: when he acquired Twitter, right, Like, this is really not
Speaker 7: about the money now.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: If you look at Twitter and you look at what
Speaker 7: it makes and what it does and how big it
Speaker 7: is and how it's shrinking, there's no way that's worth
Speaker 7: forty four billion, And that's exactly what financial analysts looking
Speaker 7: at as But you know, our colleague Kurt Wagner how
Speaker 7: to call him this week, forty four billion looks cheap
Speaker 7: if you're Elon Musk and you have as much money
Speaker 7: as he does to gain this level of influence over
Speaker 7: the US government and the future of policy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think we need to start. I mean, and
Speaker 6: I feel like if you've been listening to this podcast
Speaker 6: for a year, you are not going to be surprised.
Speaker 6: But like, there aren't like what six companies, and I
Speaker 6: guess now a seventh company with America Pack. There's like
Speaker 6: one Elon Musk conglomerate. And Twitter is the media arm
Speaker 6: of the Elon Musk conglomerate, right, Dana.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, one hundred percent. And like we need
Speaker 1: to stop kind of thinking of it as like this
Speaker 1: failing business that has alienated advertisers and is losing users
Speaker 1: left and right. Like it has served it is serving
Speaker 1: its purpose as a megaphone for Musk his politics for
Speaker 1: now the Trump administration, I mean, for every you know,
Speaker 1: journalists and epidemiologists and climate scientists who's like leaving X
Speaker 1: to go join Blue Sky. A lot of Republicans are
Speaker 1: now using it because it really it is like the
Speaker 1: media arm of the Republican Party, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: become what truth Social set out to be a while ago.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think your framing is totally right.
Speaker 6: Max.
Speaker 1: This is the media wing of ELIN Inc.
Speaker 6: Tom, have you started thinking about or is it worth
Speaker 6: starting to think about an exit for Twitter? And when
Speaker 6: you guys are thinking about valuation of Twitter, like, how
Speaker 6: much is it worth if Tesla's valuation goes up forty
Speaker 6: percent just based on kind of like the magic of
Speaker 6: having President elec Donald Trump, Like, what does that do
Speaker 6: to Twitter's valuation?
Speaker 5: How does that affect his net worth? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Look, that's a good question. Could he tenant into a mainstalk?
Speaker 2: I mean you look at Trump media and technology, right,
Speaker 2: It's got truth Social, which is made like a million
Speaker 2: dollars lost quota. It's financially it's terrible, and yet it's
Speaker 2: valued at something like seven or eight billion dollars. So Twitter,
Speaker 2: by that comparison should be with multiple multiple times of that.
Speaker 6: One of the things that Elon said right up right
Speaker 6: before the election, and he reiterated it in a tweet
Speaker 6: this morning was the idea that America pack is going
Speaker 6: to continue putting money into politics. And I think part
Speaker 6: of why he's doing that is because it's a way
Speaker 6: to you know, create some leverage over what's happening in
Speaker 6: the White House right now. Tom, Like, can he just
Speaker 6: spend a couple hundred million dollars every couple of years
Speaker 6: without without incident or like, at what point do those
Speaker 6: liquidity problems that we've talked about with Elon Musk, the
Speaker 6: fact that like most of his net worth is in
Speaker 6: Tesla stock and options, when does that start to become
Speaker 6: a problem.
Speaker 2: Like, I think a couple hundred million is pretty easy
Speaker 2: for him to come up with. I mean, he ran
Speaker 2: into problems when he bought Twitter, and that's when he
Speaker 2: had to sell a bunch of Tesla shes. There were
Speaker 2: margin calls, there were problems with his margin loan that
Speaker 2: was you know, forty four billion dollars and that was
Speaker 2: a big purchase, right and that was a struggle for him.
Speaker 2: But coming up with half a billion dollars a year
Speaker 2: at this point, that's that's pretty straightforward. We don't know
Speaker 2: much about liquidity at this point. He's margin loan with
Speaker 2: Tesla stock has come down a lot. They limited that
Speaker 2: to three and a half billion after the Twitter fiasco.
Speaker 2: He could probably borrow against SpaceX. That's a private company,
Speaker 2: so it's a little bit trickier in terms of liquidity,
Speaker 2: but for private companies, it's probably the most liquid one
Speaker 2: in the world, or at least right up there. So
Speaker 2: he has ways of raising money, and certainly coming up
Speaker 2: with that sort of money I think is very easy
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 6: How do you think about what SpaceX is worth and
Speaker 6: how much what this stuff that we've heard about and
Speaker 6: talked about and that Dana and I on the on
Speaker 6: the Citizen Elon podcast which is all about the election
Speaker 6: that we've talked about, like, how do you figure out
Speaker 6: how that's going to be how much that's going to
Speaker 6: be worth to Elon?
Speaker 2: I mean, from a perspective evaluation, we only care about
Speaker 2: what it's worth now. But if you're asking what is
Speaker 2: going to drive his wealth in the future, I mean
Speaker 2: you've got to think SpaceX and XAI is where the
Speaker 2: most potential is, especially with Tesla. But it's worth versus
Speaker 2: you know what its revenue is and how many cars
Speaker 2: it's selling. It's it's hard to imagine the trajectory it's
Speaker 2: on now kind of continuing indefinitely, and it's come down
Speaker 2: a lot in the past. I mean, Mosca is the
Speaker 2: only person in the world who's lost more than two
Speaker 2: hundred billion at some point as well. So he's always
Speaker 2: had a volatile fortune and that's because of Tesla SpaceX though,
Speaker 2: So that's a company that is a huge amount of
Speaker 2: potential and XAI, even if that was worth as much
Speaker 2: as open Ai, then that would boost his fortune by multiples,
Speaker 2: you know, he would add another one hundred billion or
Speaker 2: something to his fortune.
Speaker 6: Did SpaceX's value also go up overnight when Trump got elected?
Speaker 2: No, well we don't. We look at when it was
Speaker 2: last valued, So that was back in June when it
Speaker 2: did a fundraising at two hundred and ten billion. Do
Speaker 2: I think it's worth that now, No, I think it's
Speaker 2: probably worth substing.
Speaker 6: But in terms of the Bloomberg model, which is what
Speaker 6: you're citing exactly, the big appreciation is just.
Speaker 5: In his Tesla shares.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing most of it he's added about the seventy
Speaker 2: bills that he's added in the last week comes from
Speaker 2: his Tesla sches. This year he's added about one hundred billion,
Speaker 2: and I think the rest of that comes from XII
Speaker 2: and SPICEX.
Speaker 6: Sarah, just stepping back a minute from Elon Musk and
Speaker 6: just looking at the world of Silicon Valley, how do
Speaker 6: you think this is going to be processed by like
Speaker 6: the other you know, want to be oligarchs in the
Speaker 6: tech industry, the people who you know, there are a
Speaker 6: lot of people who really look up to Elon, Like
Speaker 6: are people just seeing this as like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: this his bet paid off, Like now I need to
Speaker 6: somehow either get close to Trump or get get into politics,
Speaker 6: or like how is this playing kind of in the
Speaker 6: wider world of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 7: I think there's sort of two camps that I see.
Speaker 7: There's the the people who are now going very silent
Speaker 7: because they don't want to ruffle Elon's feathers or Truan's
Speaker 7: feathers or you know, try to make any waves and
Speaker 7: they want to stay in good graces just for being technologists.
Speaker 7: And then then there are people that are clearly trying
Speaker 7: to angle to to have to think about like how
Speaker 7: Elon got what he got, and I'm sure that we'll
Speaker 7: see a lot more trying to replicate that success for
Speaker 7: their businesses. I do think that there might be a
Speaker 7: backlash to all this culturally, Like I think that there
Speaker 7: was already you know, and I think you and I
Speaker 7: were talking about this yesterday, Max, like the era of
Speaker 7: like tech optimism about growth and designing the future, and
Speaker 7: we were just seeing a lot of like cultural backlash
Speaker 7: to the idea of Musks so close to the government
Speaker 7: and like what that might mean for all of us.
Speaker 7: And then there are people that hope that his proximity
Speaker 7: to Trump means that Trump's climate policies won't be as
Speaker 7: much of a disaster.
Speaker 1: I love the theory that like Musk isn't actually right
Speaker 1: wing Mega, He's just like pretending to be right wing
Speaker 1: magass so he can sort of trojan horse it and
Speaker 1: like get into the government and then can vince Musk
Speaker 1: that they's trojanhorsing it and is going to convince Trump
Speaker 1: that electric vehicles are great, windmills aren't so bad, solar
Speaker 1: energy is the future, and I mean, if that came
Speaker 1: to pass, that would be remarkable. I don't believe in
Speaker 1: that theory personally, but that is a theory.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's totally runs counter
Speaker 6: to almost everything he said and Trump said over the
Speaker 6: last year. Right, all right, Dana, we are going to
Speaker 6: let you go and get back to the important business
Speaker 6: of reporting on on the crazy things that are happening.
Speaker 5: I'll see you soon. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Take care.
Speaker 6: So Sarah brought up this idea of a tech lash,
Speaker 6: and I think we actually got a preview this week
Speaker 6: and we're going to talk about it for our semi
Speaker 6: regular feud segment few to the week, and this one
Speaker 6: stars cultural icon Olivia Rodrigo against I guess guys who
Speaker 6: want to go to space?
Speaker 5: Let's give a listen the guests my vig.
Speaker 8: Okay, this is a very odd specific question that I
Speaker 8: ask guys on first dates. I always ask them if
Speaker 8: they think that they would want to go to space,
Speaker 8: and if they say yes, I don't date. I just
Speaker 8: think if you want to go to space, you're a
Speaker 8: little too full of yourself. I think it's just weird.
Speaker 6: Uh, Sarah, she's talking about Elon Musk, right, Oh?
Speaker 7: Absolutely. I mean I think that this is a theme
Speaker 7: I've also seen in it is. It's really not just
Speaker 7: Elon Musk. It's this idea of like men who are
Speaker 7: so disconnected from human connection and how to actually develop
Speaker 7: human connection. They're so deeply invested in this Musk world
Speaker 7: and like the Manisphere. I've seen other kind of tech
Speaker 7: lash cultural tweets like this and memes where people are like, oh,
Speaker 7: if you suggest that I use chat GBT to solve
Speaker 7: a problem on the first date, Like, I'm you know,
Speaker 7: you're not going to get a second date.
Speaker 5: I think this is really bad for Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: I mean, I know this is not obviously you know,
Speaker 6: this isn't a ROBOTAXI you know, crashing or something. This
Speaker 6: isn't this isn't a rocket failing to launch. But this
Speaker 6: seems like the canary in the coal mine that could
Speaker 6: pretend what Sarah is talking about tom a you know,
Speaker 6: monumental tech lash, a tech lash where basically all the
Speaker 6: cool people decide that like Elon Musk and anybody like
Speaker 6: him doesn't belong in their community.
Speaker 5: I mean, what do you make of this?
Speaker 6: How are you incorporating this into the Bloomberg billionaires model?
Speaker 2: I feel like Musk has always wanted to be cool
Speaker 2: but has always been on the outside, and this is
Speaker 2: just kind of more of the same. Right, So is
Speaker 2: this really going to change his trajectory in any way?
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just one more blow and he's going
Speaker 2: to just continue with his quest to go to space
Speaker 2: and hopefully he'll make more like minded people on Moss.
Speaker 6: So Sarah, again, I don't want to make too much
Speaker 6: of this, but in a more in a more serious sense,
Speaker 6: like do you think that this could like slow things
Speaker 6: down culturally? I mean, I think we probably need to
Speaker 6: get ready for some version of, you know, resistance to
Speaker 6: point zero, and maybe a resistance that's more directed at
Speaker 6: tech guys than the last one was.
Speaker 7: I mean, just look at the reasons that people voted
Speaker 7: for Trump on a macro scale, Like people are unsatisfied
Speaker 7: with how expensive everything is, how difficult life is, how
Speaker 7: much childcare costs.
Speaker 5: You know, when people are.
Speaker 7: Dissatisfied with the state of their lives and their spending
Speaker 7: power and their futures, they vote for the alternative. And
Speaker 7: in a moment like that, saying well, let's just go
Speaker 7: to space, is it's like, well, let's just forget about
Speaker 7: fixing the stuff that is broken on Earth and stop
Speaker 7: trying to do anything about it and instead invest in
Speaker 7: some future that is very expensive and who knows if
Speaker 7: it'll work.
Speaker 2: Fine words, Tom, No, but I gotta say I've always
Speaker 2: kind of wanted to go to space. So I feel
Speaker 2: a little bit hurt by Rigo's comments.
Speaker 5: Sarah, what do you think is going to space a
Speaker 5: a red flag?
Speaker 6: No? I don't.
Speaker 7: I mean, I don't think so.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 7: I mean like I'm a tech reporter, right, Like I
Speaker 7: think innovation is cool, but I also think that there
Speaker 7: are other problems that people on Earth probably want to
Speaker 7: be solved first or in conjunction with that.
Speaker 6: Let's leave it there. We'll be paying attention to those
Speaker 6: problems in the Weisa come, Sarah, Tom.
Speaker 5: Thanks for being on Elon Inc.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 6: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Maserakas is
Speaker 6: our editor and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor. The idea
Speaker 6: for this show also came from Rayhan Blake Maple's Handles
Speaker 6: Engineering and Emma Sanchez fact checks. Our supervising producer is
Speaker 6: Magnus Henrickson. The Elin is written and performed by Taka
Speaker 6: Yazuzawa and Alex Sigierra. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
Speaker 6: and Sage Bauman is the head.
Speaker 5: Of Bloomberg Podcast.
Speaker 6: A big thanks to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone.
Speaker 6: I'm Max Chafkin. If you have a minute rate and
Speaker 6: review our show. It'll help other listeners find us, and
Speaker 6: we will see you next week.