Speaker 1: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 2: controlled by one man. Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.
Speaker 3: He says, He's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 3: it will be different. He'll vote Republican. There is a
Speaker 3: reason the US government is so reliant on ed Elon.
Speaker 2: Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 3: Anything he does, he's fascinating to people.
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Max Schafkin here with another episode of Elon Inc.
Speaker 1: We have something special for you today. It is an
Speaker 1: interview with Kurt Wagner. Kurt is a social media reporter
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg. You heard him on this podcast before, and
Speaker 1: he has a new book. It's called Battle for the Bird,
Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and the forty four billion dollar
Speaker 1: Fight for Twitter Soul. Kurt is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: writers at bloom and he really is the go to
Speaker 1: journalist on this topic. And I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: really great to just go deep on this one specific
Speaker 1: part of Elon Musk's empire. I've sort of imagined this
Speaker 1: conversation in three parts. The first part is going to
Speaker 1: be essentially the man crush that set this whole thing off.
Speaker 1: The second part is going to be we're gonna get conspiratorial.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about why this happened, and there's some
Speaker 1: really kind of crazy things. And the last part is
Speaker 1: gonna be some really smart analysis on where this is going.
Speaker 1: Kurt is here with me now, Kurt Wagner, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Elon Inc.
Speaker 3: Hi'm Max. I am thrilled to be here. Thanks for
Speaker 3: doing this. It's fun.
Speaker 2: It's nice to see you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the book, you Know, is in large part
Speaker 1: focused on this relationship between Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey,
Speaker 1: the founder of Twitter. But before we get there, I
Speaker 1: just want to talk about why it matters. Like, like
Speaker 1: we sort of spend a lot of time in this
Speaker 1: podcast and outside in the media you see a lot
Speaker 1: of people sort of making fun of the ways that
Speaker 1: Twitter has kind of gone downhill, But like, why does
Speaker 1: a site still matter?
Speaker 2: Like why is it important?
Speaker 1: In your mind?
Speaker 3: I think when Twitter was at its best, it was
Speaker 3: the go to place for literally all breaking news, right Like,
Speaker 3: if something happens on the streets of New York, the
Speaker 3: first thing you do, literally is pull out Twitter. And
Speaker 3: try and figure out like what's going on right here,
Speaker 3: and that ultimately attracted like every journalist in the world. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it attracted celebrities, that attracted politicians. And even though we've
Speaker 3: seen Twitter change under Elon, I think that a lot
Speaker 3: of the kernels of that are still the case, right,
Speaker 3: And like Twitter is a place where news sort of happens.
Speaker 3: It's like one of the rare places online where like
Speaker 3: literally if someone tweets something, it becomes like a global headline.
Speaker 3: And we saw that very clearly for four straight years
Speaker 3: with the President Donald Trump, as you remember. So I
Speaker 3: just feel like this this service is unique in that way,
Speaker 3: and that it's like a newsmaker's service. And even under Elon,
Speaker 3: I feel like that's still happens. You know, quite a bit.
Speaker 1: You talked about just this thing being like where the
Speaker 1: news happens. It's not quite that anymore, right, It's something
Speaker 1: like it's like that, but more right wing.
Speaker 2: It's like that. But with Alex Jones, how do you
Speaker 2: see that evolution?
Speaker 3: The biggest change for me has been the lack of
Speaker 3: Like Twitter was very a quick way to get the news,
Speaker 3: and now I feel like it's not quick anymore because
Speaker 3: you don't really know who anybody is. Right, Like before
Speaker 3: with the verification system, you could like open it up,
Speaker 3: you'd immediately see like, Okay, these people, these blue check
Speaker 3: people are talking in my feed, and I can sort
Speaker 3: of believe with some level of confidence these are people
Speaker 3: who I at the very least might want to hear from, right,
Speaker 3: Like they're real people, they probably have a position of
Speaker 3: some authority, and that has changed.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Basically, if you have eight dollars, you're a blue check
Speaker 3: person now. And so when you open the feed in
Speaker 3: like a breaking news environment and you're surrounded by like
Speaker 3: all these blue checks who are spouting off, you have
Speaker 3: no idea who they are. You have to pause and
Speaker 3: do your own research. And so for me, the biggest
Speaker 3: difference is, like it is not nearly as reliable as
Speaker 3: a news service as it was two years ago. And
Speaker 3: considering that was what Twitter was best at, like that
Speaker 3: was the thing that Twitter was, that's a huge problem.
Speaker 1: So Twitter's founder, I guess, co founder Jack Dorsey, he
Speaker 1: was a He's he was running the company at the
Speaker 1: time this all went down. YEA. One reason I think
Speaker 1: this book is really interesting and relevant to this podcast
Speaker 1: is because in certain ways, it's like the story of
Speaker 1: it's just partly the story of Jack's sort of obsession
Speaker 1: relationship with Elon Musk, and and also the way maybe
Speaker 1: all of us put things on this person name Nelon
Speaker 1: Bus And I just want to.
Speaker 2: Let's just like talk about how did his like, when
Speaker 2: did he get so into Elon? Like, like, when did
Speaker 2: he become this?
Speaker 1: When did Elon become a source of interest to Jack Dorsey,
Speaker 1: you know, famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if I could pinpoint the moment the
Speaker 3: admiration kicked in, but we know that it was several
Speaker 3: years before Elon took over because Jack used to refer
Speaker 3: to Elon as his favorite tweeter quite regularly.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: There's several interviews where people say who do you love
Speaker 3: to follow, and he'd be like Elon Musk, he really
Speaker 3: pushes the envelope, right, And it's like one way of describing,
Speaker 3: you know, getting yourself into legal disputes with the SEC.
Speaker 2: But like, I think that, but wait, what is it
Speaker 2: about those tweets?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 3: I think he thought that Elon like was unfiltered, right,
Speaker 3: And I think there's I think if you ask Jack
Speaker 3: like you've heard him perhaps talk about Twitter as this
Speaker 3: global consciousness, right, Like Twitter is the global consciousness, It's
Speaker 3: it's the collective way that people think. And for Elon
Speaker 3: it was a very unfiltered thought process. As we've learned,
Speaker 3: it's just sort of like what comes into his brain
Speaker 3: shows up on his Twitter feed. And to Jack Dorsey,
Speaker 3: I think he like wished that everyone would be that
Speaker 3: free with their thoughts on Twitter, and so he saw
Speaker 3: Elon as sort of this like famous example of what
Speaker 3: he wanted everyone else to be doing on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's funny how there are certain people. Elon must be
Speaker 1: one of them who are just like intuitively understand this
Speaker 1: thing and maybe understand the nature of celebrity when twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four or whatever.
Speaker 2: So you talk about this kind of like Jack has
Speaker 2: this is on this quest.
Speaker 1: Essentially he's still running the company, but he's got he's
Speaker 1: got this Elon specific quest, which is like essentially what
Speaker 1: to get Elon to show up and give a talk
Speaker 1: to the company, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this happens first in twenty eighteen. He tries
Speaker 3: to get Elon to come to what's called one Team,
Speaker 3: which was like Twitter's like company wide off site and
Speaker 3: at the last minute, Elon bails because he's like literally
Speaker 3: sleeping on the factory floor building. I believe it's the
Speaker 3: Tesla three at the time, the Model three. So he
Speaker 3: doesn't show up, and everyone's like, oh bumber, you know,
Speaker 3: would have loved to hear from from Elon. Now fast
Speaker 3: forward two years, it's twenty twenty and Jack get him
Speaker 3: show up. He shows up on FaceTime in front of
Speaker 3: the whole company, and it's just like really interesting exchange.
Speaker 3: You know, imagine five thousand employees sitting in this convention hall.
Speaker 3: They're like looking up at the stage. Jack Dorsey's standing
Speaker 3: up there literally holding his iPad, and on the screen
Speaker 3: he is face timing with Elon Musk, who shows up
Speaker 3: in his Occupy Mars T shirt. I believe he's like
Speaker 3: at SpaceX's facility and they have this conversation and like
Speaker 3: Jack you can tell, is like he very much likes
Speaker 3: Elon and he wants to flatter Elon, and he makes
Speaker 3: some joke about hey, like would you love to run
Speaker 3: the company someday? Like ha ha haa, and everyone sort
Speaker 3: of chuckles, and Elon spends his brief moment in front
Speaker 3: of the whole company just complaining about bots, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: how do you know who's like what's a botnet versus
Speaker 3: what isn't? Are these like short sellers or are these
Speaker 3: like real people? Blah blah blah. And he complains and
Speaker 3: about bots, and then Jack Dorsey ends the thing and
Speaker 3: he's like, we love you, we love what you're doing.
Speaker 3: And it ends right, and like in the moment, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: if you're a Twitter employee, maybe that's like kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Doune done done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's like a movie level like foreshadowing, right,
Speaker 3: because you fast forward two years and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: like Jack was like, hey do you want to run
Speaker 3: the company? Guess what he's asking Elon? Like, hey do
Speaker 3: you want to run the company? What's Elon complaining about?
Speaker 3: He's complaining about bots? Right, Like these things came back around,
Speaker 3: which is one of the reasons I put in the book.
Speaker 3: I just thought it was like such a remarkable scene
Speaker 3: two years ahead of the acquisition.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's move on to the takeover, which
Speaker 1: it is just so weird in retrospect. I want to
Speaker 1: walk through this acquisition and talk about, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of what you learned in reporting. The book but I
Speaker 1: think just to kind of set the scene here, I
Speaker 1: want to take everyone back to April twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: the Ted Conference. Elon Musk, innovator, World's richest man is asked,
Speaker 1: you know what he's doing, and this is what he says. So, Elon,
Speaker 1: a few hours ago, you made an offer to buy Twitter.
Speaker 5: Why how do you know?
Speaker 1: Little bird tweeted in my ear or something?
Speaker 5: I don't know. By the way, have you seen the
Speaker 5: movie Ted about the bear?
Speaker 1: I have?
Speaker 5: I have? Why make that off?
Speaker 4: So well?
Speaker 5: I think it's very important for that it'll be an
Speaker 5: inclusive arena for free.
Speaker 4: Speech where all.
Speaker 5: So yeah, Twitter has become kind of the de facto
Speaker 5: town square. So it's just really important that people have
Speaker 5: the both the reality and the perception that they are
Speaker 5: able to speak freely within the bounds of the low.
Speaker 1: So yeah, super super interesting, totally very mature, totally normal.
Speaker 1: This is great timing, right, Kurt Elon Musk, he's a genius.
Speaker 1: He's got an intuitive sense of business timing right. This
Speaker 1: was perfect April twenty twenty two for this moment.
Speaker 3: If you're gonna overpay for a social network, April twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two was the best time to ever do that. No,
Speaker 3: his timing, of course, as we know now was was disastrous.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: I mean, like he comes in, he essentially forces the
Speaker 3: board into this deal, right, he gives them this incredible offer.
Speaker 3: What he may or may not know behind the scenes
Speaker 3: is like the company has set these very lofty targets
Speaker 3: around user growth and revenue that they're not coming close
Speaker 3: to hitting. They're thinking about doing a second or a
Speaker 3: very large round of layoffs, like the business is not
Speaker 3: in a good shape. And here comes Elon the White night,
Speaker 3: like completely overpaying for Twitter. And so the board jumps
Speaker 3: at this, right, and they're like, wow, this is an
Speaker 3: incredible exit for this company. That kind of solves a
Speaker 3: bunch of these problems that we're that were predicting or
Speaker 3: preparing to deal with. And then and shortly after that,
Speaker 3: you know, inflation goes through the roof, and you know,
Speaker 3: there's a war going on in Europe that starts to
Speaker 3: just spook a bunch of people and spook sort of
Speaker 3: just the financial market markets globally, and his own net
Speaker 3: worth takes this huge hit. Like within weeks, we're talking
Speaker 3: tens of billions of dollars of Elon's own net worth
Speaker 3: that are just disappearing. And so you fast forward, you
Speaker 3: start kind of mid April, and you fast forward one month,
Speaker 3: and his whole mindset around this acquisition is already changing
Speaker 3: because he's now walked into this really overpriced thing and
Speaker 3: he's realizing, oh, my timing was absolutely terrible.
Speaker 1: Maybe that we joke acquisition price was not as funny
Speaker 1: as I thought it was at the time.
Speaker 3: Fifty four to twenty didn't slit past a lot of people.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So one of the things again, this was like it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of hard to overstate. I mean, Elon stands
Speaker 1: and even even those of us covered have gotten used
Speaker 1: to the idea that has happened. So it was sort
Speaker 1: of like hard to imagine why this happened. Why does
Speaker 1: this guy who who has basically dedicated his life, by
Speaker 1: his own account, to you know, making humanity a multiplanetary species,
Speaker 1: to saving the Earth from global warming? Like, why does
Speaker 1: he suddenly start worrying about is Twitter going to ban
Speaker 1: Scott Adams or something, or like like is cat turn
Speaker 1: being demonetized? Anyway, he gets really into this and the
Speaker 1: book offers a variety of theories and they're all so
Speaker 1: fun So I just wanted to sort of go through
Speaker 1: a couple of them with you right now, starting with
Speaker 1: I think what is like the Elon Musk fficial version
Speaker 1: of the story, which is essentially he had too much
Speaker 1: money in his bank account and he needs somewhere to
Speaker 1: put it.
Speaker 3: That's right. This is the theory that was sort of
Speaker 3: outlined in Walter Isaacson's recent book about Elon Musk was
Speaker 3: that he, you know, like like all of us rich
Speaker 3: guys are max you and I know, when you just
Speaker 3: have too much money, we got to go spend it
Speaker 3: on something frivolous, right, And so this would be the
Speaker 3: equivalent of maybe a less rich person going and buying
Speaker 3: like a vacation home or a yacht or but for Elon,
Speaker 3: it was Twitter, right. And so this is what Walter
Speaker 3: sort of says in his book is that he just
Speaker 3: didn't want his money to sit in a bank account.
Speaker 3: He wanted to do something with it, and Twitter was
Speaker 3: like his favorite thing to use, and so that became
Speaker 3: the target for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's also that he really liked it.
Speaker 1: I get sort of related to the Jack Dorsey thing, like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is like my favorite you know, wait to spend
Speaker 1: my time. So do what you love, as they say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this for him was like a personal
Speaker 3: like favorite product that he very much loved to use,
Speaker 3: and so the idea of owning it, I guess sounded
Speaker 3: really cool when you have more money than you know
Speaker 3: what to do with.
Speaker 1: And the next thing, the next one I want to
Speaker 1: talk about, is this text message that he gets from
Speaker 1: Tallula Riley, who is his two times ex wife. Elon
Speaker 1: does everything bigger than most people, so they've actually been
Speaker 1: married and divorced twice, and she sort of makes us
Speaker 1: a suggestion to him with respect to Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yes she does.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: The super quick backstory here is that Twitter had spended
Speaker 3: account from the Babylon Bee, which is like a satire site.
Speaker 3: I guess that was making jokes about trans people quite frankly,
Speaker 3: and you know they're they're off color jokes that not
Speaker 3: a lot of people find very funny, but there are
Speaker 3: people who do, and Tulula Riley, I guess is one
Speaker 3: of those people. And she was upset that the account
Speaker 3: had been suspended, and so she texts her ex husband
Speaker 3: and says, you know, and I'm looking at this now.
Speaker 3: She says, can you buy Twitter? And then delete it please.
Speaker 3: America is going insane. And then a few minutes later
Speaker 3: she goes, or can you buy Twitter and make it
Speaker 3: radically free?
Speaker 2: S be fair, we've all had that Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we all want Elon to buy Twitter or our
Speaker 3: ex spouses to buy Twitter. But you know, here she
Speaker 3: is basically saying, can you buy this and make it
Speaker 3: radically free speech? In a few minutes after that, Elon
Speaker 3: texts back and says, maybe buy it and change it
Speaker 3: to properly support free speech. Now you'd think this is
Speaker 3: maybe just the kind of like fun banter between two
Speaker 3: people who used to have a relationship, but you know,
Speaker 3: in the world of Elon, this leads to like less
Speaker 3: than twenty four hours, him tweeting to all of his
Speaker 3: followers saying like, does there need to be a new platform?
Speaker 3: And when people say yes, then a day after that
Speaker 3: it's well, now he's suddenly gonna buy shares and try
Speaker 3: and join the board of Twitter. Right, And so you
Speaker 3: can see how this one like kernel of a conversation
Speaker 3: perhaps led Elon down this path towards, you know, wanting
Speaker 3: to turn Twitter into this free speech place. And it
Speaker 3: all maybe starts with like the Babylon b which I
Speaker 3: find to be quite interesting and sort of hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a back, There's a whole interesting kind of
Speaker 1: side alley we could go down around Elon and comedy.
Speaker 1: He you know, the Babylon B is kind of a
Speaker 1: competitor to the Onion. He at one point had tried
Speaker 1: to take over the Onion. He got worried it was
Speaker 1: too woke. And so it does seem like somewhat plausible
Speaker 1: that he could have been feeling very sympathetic to the
Speaker 1: Babylon B and wanted to commit this forty four billion
Speaker 1: dollar act to resolve it. I want to come back
Speaker 1: to the suggestion that he was trying to kill Twitter
Speaker 1: in a second. In a second, but before we get there,
Speaker 1: the third theory, yeah, is that Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Speaker 2: And this is new. This is this is breaking news, folks.
Speaker 2: This is in Kurt's book that he did this, Because.
Speaker 1: Now I'm reading a little bit into Kurt's book here,
Speaker 1: But what kurtz book reports is that before buying Twitter,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was sending complaints privately to Jack Dorsey and
Speaker 1: Paragua Argerwall. We talked about one of those complaints just now,
Speaker 1: but also complaining about this Twitter account that's following his plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so at Elon Jet you may be familiar with
Speaker 3: if you followed the World of Elon. It's literally an
Speaker 3: account that tracks the whereabouts of his private plane, when
Speaker 3: it takes off, when it lands, where it takes off,
Speaker 3: where it lands. And Elon was very unhappy with this
Speaker 3: for you know, I guess obvious reasons. He didn't like
Speaker 3: the idea of his location being out there publicly, and
Speaker 3: so he complained to Perogue in January of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: asking it for the account to be removed, and Parogue
Speaker 3: essentially ignored him right or certainly didn't take his complaints
Speaker 3: and do anything with it. And so what was interesting
Speaker 3: about that timing is that at the very end of
Speaker 3: January twenty twenty two was when Elon Musk started buying
Speaker 3: shares of Twitter. And you could imagine, and I don't
Speaker 3: think this is that huge of a stretch that you know,
Speaker 3: he wants this account removed. They're not doing it for him.
Speaker 3: What could you do if you had more money than
Speaker 3: you knew what to do with, Well, you could become
Speaker 3: a shareholder in that company and try and use your
Speaker 3: position as a shareholder to sort of pressure them to
Speaker 3: take this account down or whatever. And there are people
Speaker 3: involved in the deal that I've spoken to believed that
Speaker 3: this was a real motivation for him. Now, whether he
Speaker 3: intended for it to snowball in the way that it did,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but there are people who definitely thought
Speaker 3: elon Jet was sort of the genesis of this stock
Speaker 3: purchase that he started to do.
Speaker 1: Well. I do think it's believable because as we know
Speaker 1: later on, he takes action, right he bans the He
Speaker 1: bans the creator of elon Jet for a time, and
Speaker 1: in fact bans anyone who anyone who speaks of elon jet.
Speaker 1: If you link to outside, you know, instances of this account,
Speaker 1: you would also get banned, and including he banned a
Speaker 1: New York Times journalists, So it's.
Speaker 2: Clear this was a fixation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did. And he created an entire new policy
Speaker 3: at Twitter on a whim about like doxing someone's real
Speaker 3: time location and how elon Jet basically violated that policy.
Speaker 3: And now elon Jet does exist, but it's like a
Speaker 3: twenty four hour delay, so basically you can find out
Speaker 3: where Elon flew yesterday versus like where Elon is flying
Speaker 3: right now. So this became a thing that he changed
Speaker 3: and took action on once he took over. So to
Speaker 3: your point, Max, I do think it's like, it's not
Speaker 3: that crazy of an idea that this all started with
Speaker 3: the Elon jet account.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I want to fly the business jet
Speaker 1: that is this podcast to talk about the actual process
Speaker 1: of reporting this book. You've been covering Twitter for how long?
Speaker 1: I mean, like fifteen years? How long has it been, Kurt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, eleven or twelve years? Yeah, it's been a very
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 2: You have all these sources.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, how did they process all this craziness
Speaker 1: that's happening, Like world's richest man is like going to
Speaker 1: take over their company and save Western civilization or something
Speaker 1: in the process.
Speaker 3: I think when Elon first showed up, there was actually
Speaker 3: this feeling that, you know, this is cool, this is good.
Speaker 3: The richest man in the world, who has more money
Speaker 3: than he knows what to do with, could do anything
Speaker 3: he wants, and what he wants to do is work
Speaker 3: on Twitter, And to a lot of people who worked there,
Speaker 3: that was sort of encouraging in the very least, validating
Speaker 3: to what they were doing and building. I think it
Speaker 3: didn't take very long for them to realize that Elon
Speaker 3: was not a good cultural fit for what Twitter had built,
Speaker 3: and that his management style was so unpredictable and so
Speaker 3: at odds with what they were used to that it
Speaker 3: was not really the vibe that they were hoping. I
Speaker 3: think if Elon had stayed as a Boor member and
Speaker 3: just simply like maybe advised, I think people would have
Speaker 3: been actually pretty excited about that. But I think the
Speaker 3: takeover itself went sideways quite quickly.
Speaker 2: So what was the breaking point?
Speaker 3: So there was a meeting in June of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: so quick on the timeline. Elon Musk arrives in late March,
Speaker 3: early April, He's acquired the company on paper. By the
Speaker 3: end of April, he starts to sort of bad mouth
Speaker 3: the company shortly after that. You know, we talked about
Speaker 3: how he realized his timing was terrible. He's sort of
Speaker 3: like getting cold feet about this deal. But there was
Speaker 3: still this like all employee Q and A that had
Speaker 3: been scheduled with Elon for mid June, right, and so
Speaker 3: at this point Elon is still supposed to be buying
Speaker 3: the company. These are people who are sitting down and
Speaker 3: thinking they're hearing from their future boss, right, and so
Speaker 3: there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of anticipation.
Speaker 3: And he shows up late. He shows up sort of
Speaker 3: a little disheveled his life.
Speaker 2: This is an in person meeting, it is on this is.
Speaker 3: On video because everyone is still basically working remotely at
Speaker 3: this point. But he shows up late. He shows up
Speaker 3: like his collar is like splayed open, his hair is
Speaker 3: sort of like messed up. There's like some random guy
Speaker 3: that no one knows who it is, who's like working
Speaker 3: in the background behind him, and it goes terribly quite frankly,
Speaker 3: like he rambles for like eight or nine minutes at
Speaker 3: the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Kurt, by the way, we have a clip to play
Speaker 1: I think of this meeting. Let's listen to it quickly.
Speaker 4: I mean right now, the costic seed the revenue. So
Speaker 4: that's just that's not that's not a great situation to
Speaker 4: the end, and so there'd have to be some rationalization
Speaker 4: of the headcount expenses to have revenue be greater than
Speaker 4: their cost. Otherwise twitter ismply not not viable or you
Speaker 4: can't grow, you know. But like anyone who's like this
Speaker 4: obviously like a signifaan courtur leader should have nothing to
Speaker 4: worry about.
Speaker 1: So, Kurt, where did this come from? By the way,
Speaker 1: this this audio that we just heard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was this from a source of mind who
Speaker 3: was at the company at the time, who shared it.
Speaker 3: So this was there were a lot of journalists pretty
Speaker 3: tuned into this meeting, as you can imagine, at the time,
Speaker 3: there were a lot of employees that were happy to
Speaker 3: help get this out there.
Speaker 1: It sounds kind of brutal in some of the ways
Speaker 1: that all meetings like this are. I guess you're not
Speaker 1: the you know, you know, it's not in person, there's
Speaker 1: like a weird quality. But again, reading the description of
Speaker 1: this in your book, it felt heightened. You mentioned we
Speaker 1: didn't hear it, but I guess he eventually started talking
Speaker 1: about the aliens.
Speaker 2: Is that is that right?
Speaker 5: That's right?
Speaker 3: How he had never seen proof of aliens. That was
Speaker 3: mostly how the conversation ended. So that was a bit
Speaker 3: of an odd note for people who were not used
Speaker 3: to talking about aliens during work meetings.
Speaker 1: Let's go forward a bit and I want to talk
Speaker 1: about where this thing that is Twitter now called x
Speaker 1: that has you know, sort of how dramatically has changed
Speaker 1: since then, and also like what it means for the business,
Speaker 1: which of course what you know, what you're covering now
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: First of all, I just want to just like give
Speaker 2: us a little teeny.
Speaker 1: Taste of kind of the next beat of this story,
Speaker 1: which is, to my mind, you know, November twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I think you know where this is going, Kurt, But
Speaker 1: Elon Musk doing some really great sales work from the
Speaker 1: stage of the deal Book conference in New York City.
Speaker 5: If somebody going to try to blackmail me with advertising,
Speaker 5: blackmailing with money?
Speaker 2: So how, Kurt, how does Twitter make money these days?
Speaker 3: You funny that you should ask Max. They actually make
Speaker 3: money from advertisers and you know, the people who Elon
Speaker 3: was speaking to when he was on stage at deal Book.
Speaker 1: Do you think, though, there's any chance that in the
Speaker 1: same way that like with cable news, you know, for
Speaker 1: many and TV news right for many years, there was
Speaker 1: kind of like one style of TV news was very objective,
Speaker 1: and then it with the advent of cable, it bifurcated
Speaker 1: or eventually bifurcated where you had like kind of like left.
Speaker 2: Networks and right wing networks.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think that could happen with with
Speaker 1: like with social media, I mean that has been like
Speaker 1: kind of the bet of a bunch of entrepreneurs, none
Speaker 1: of whom have done it very well, but also none
Speaker 1: of whom are Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Like, is there like a multi billion dollar right wing
Speaker 2: social network? Is that possible?
Speaker 3: I'm not super confident that that's possible, only because I
Speaker 3: feel like we've seen, you know, a version of that
Speaker 3: with true social right Like if Donald Trump can't necessarily
Speaker 3: make a purely like conservative right wing social network work
Speaker 3: at at scale, then I don't know why Twitter and
Speaker 3: Elon would necessarily be able to do that. I think
Speaker 3: it's very possible that there's several of these networks that
Speaker 3: show up. Like I can speak anecdotally, like if I
Speaker 3: go to Threads, which is the new sort of like
Speaker 3: Twitter clone that Meta owns, and you talk like negatively
Speaker 3: about Elon over there, your engagement's great. Like if you
Speaker 3: want to go get followers on Threads, just go over there,
Speaker 3: talk about how much you hate Elon Musk, and you're
Speaker 3: probably going to be a very popular person. So you know,
Speaker 3: you could see where these things start to diverge, and
Speaker 3: like there's networks for differing beliefs or differing viewpoints, but
Speaker 3: it's hard to imagine them getting to the scale that
Speaker 3: you would need for this to become like a massive
Speaker 3: thing the way that Twitter was.
Speaker 2: So what do you think is the most Elon likes
Speaker 2: to say that?
Speaker 1: What does he like to say the most likely outcome
Speaker 1: is the funniest outcome? Or what do you think is
Speaker 1: the most likely outcome for this story? For the sort
Speaker 1: of Elon Musk Twitter story.
Speaker 3: Until very recently, I actually thought the most likely outcome
Speaker 3: was going to be bankruptcy, quite frankly, because I thought
Speaker 3: that this company was losing money quite consistently, and I
Speaker 3: didn't know if Elon had the patients or stomach to
Speaker 3: just continually pay out a pocket for this thing to
Speaker 3: keep operating. Now I kind of started to subscribe to
Speaker 3: this XAI idea, which is like, if he can figure
Speaker 3: out a way to use the data associated with Twitter
Speaker 3: to make money with something that's not Twitter, it really
Speaker 3: takes the pressure off of, you know, the advertising business,
Speaker 3: which they clearly aren't doing well. So I kind of
Speaker 3: feel like it's going to continue to exist because it's
Speaker 3: hard for me to imagine Elon admitting defeat right saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I thought I could do this thing, but look, I
Speaker 3: ran it into the ground. Does not strike me as
Speaker 3: something that we're ever gonna hear him admit to or say.
Speaker 3: And so then you say, okay, well, what's the other alternative.
Speaker 3: It's that it gets subsumed by something else. And I
Speaker 3: think Tesla is not gonna take over Twitter. SpaceX certainly isn't,
Speaker 3: but an AI company. If this is a real thing,
Speaker 3: maybe it would be a it would be a logical,
Speaker 3: you know, product within that.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like Twitter this thing that has some
Speaker 1: kind of specialness to it in terms of, like like
Speaker 1: you said, like we talked about the beginning, this sort
Speaker 1: of like a heartbeat of the world's information. It's like,
Speaker 1: what is happening right now? It really even if even
Speaker 1: if you can criticize it and still feel like this
Speaker 1: thing is important and special, it'd be sad if it
Speaker 1: goes away. Does that feel like a tragedy to you?
Speaker 1: If Twitter becomes just like a way to train bots?
Speaker 2: Have we lost something.
Speaker 1: Here during this period and is there any hope of saving,
Speaker 1: of reclaiming or at least preserving some of what is
Speaker 1: actually really good about this thing today?
Speaker 3: I do think it's sad, and I think that Twitter
Speaker 3: at its best was one of the most entertaining places
Speaker 3: you could go on the Internet. And actually, I think
Speaker 3: I would have said that this is completely gone, except
Speaker 3: for I don't know if you were on Twitter or
Speaker 3: I keep calling Twitter, or maybe I should call it X.
Speaker 3: I was on X during the super Bowl and I
Speaker 3: actually kind of got a glimpse of like what old
Speaker 3: Twitter used to be, Like, like being X during the
Speaker 3: super Bowl was fun for me, and maybe those moments
Speaker 3: will crop up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. It's like, on one hand, I'm sad.
Speaker 1: It's like you were like we were like a junkie
Speaker 1: and like we're getting this like really cut down version
Speaker 1: of the old high and we're still still into it.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, I think you're right. There's something
Speaker 2: there is just something.
Speaker 1: You can criticize social media and feel like it's bad
Speaker 1: and it can be a vehicle for all sorts of
Speaker 1: the ingrandizement of billionaires, but it does have a magic
Speaker 1: to it, and I think that's maybe a good place
Speaker 1: to leave things. Kurt Wagner, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being here on Elon Inc. Battle for the Bird is
Speaker 1: out now. You can read an excerpt at Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: You should also go buy the book from your local bookseller.
Speaker 2: Kurt, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: And looking forward to seeing you next time as a
Speaker 1: panelist on this show.
Speaker 3: This was awesome, Max, thank you so much. I love
Speaker 3: chatting with you and getting the chance to talk about
Speaker 3: the book, So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's end it there. Thanks for listening to Elon Inc.
Speaker 1: And thanks to Kurt Wagner once again. The book is
Speaker 1: called Battle for the Bird and it's on sale now.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 1: Rayhan Harmansi are our senior editors.
Speaker 2: The idea for.
Speaker 1: This very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering,
Speaker 1: and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and thank you as always
Speaker 1: to Joel Weber. The Elon Inc. Theme is written and
Speaker 1: performed by Taka Yazzawa and Alex Seguiera. Sage Bauman is
Speaker 1: the head of Bloomberg Podcasts and our executive producer. I'm
Speaker 1: Max Chaffman. If you have a minute, rate and review
Speaker 1: this show, they'll help new listeners find us and we
Speaker 1: will really appreciate it, and we will see you next week.