“Elon Musk: ‘Aren’t You Entertained?’”, 2002-10-07 (; backlinks):
The Tesla chief Elon Musk talks to Roula Khalaf about moving to Mars, saving free speech via Twitter—and why ageing is one ‘problem’ that should not be solved…Why does a serious guy with serious ideas indulge in silly Twitter games that could also cost his followers dearly? “Aren’t you entertained?” Musk roars with laughter. “I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble… I don’t know, I find it vaguely therapeutic to express myself on Twitter. It’s a way to get messages out to the public.”
…I had asked over dinner whether his original offer had been a bad joke. “Twitter is certainly an invitation to increase your pain level”, he says. “I guess I must be a masochist…” But he makes no secret that his interest in the company has never been primarily financial: “I’m not doing Twitter for the money. It’s not like I’m trying to buy some yacht and I can’t afford it. I don’t own any boats. But I think it’s important that people have a maximally trusted and inclusive means of exchanging ideas and that it should be as trusted and transparent as possible.” The alternative, he says, is a splintering of debate into different social-media bubbles, as evidenced by Donald Trump’s Truth Social network. “It [Truth Social] is essentially a rightwing echo chamber. It might as well be called Trumpet.”
…He scoffs when I inquire if there are other children he has fathered—“I’m pretty sure there are no other babies looming”—and he dismisses the wild rumours that he has bought a fertility clinic to support his production of babies.
[Note: Musk had more children after claiming this, including 1 who may have already been in gestation (Grimes’s third child) at the time of this interview.]
…There are some topics that amuse Musk, eliciting prolonged laughter, and other questions that are met with deliberate silence before he speaks. The longest silence follows my question about China and the risk to Tesla’s Shanghai factory, which produces 30%–50% of Tesla’s total production. Musk has been an admirer of as well as an investor in China. But he is not immune to the gathering US-China tensions or the risk of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Musk says Beijing has made clear its disapproval of his recent rollout of Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite communications system, in Ukraine to help the military circumvent Russia’s cut-off of the internet. He says Beijing sought assurances that he would not sell Starlink in China.
Musk reckons that conflict over Taiwan is inevitable but he is quick to point out that he won’t be alone in suffering the consequences. Tesla will be caught up in any conflict, he says, though, curiously, he seems to assume that the Shanghai factory will still be able to supply to customers in China, but not anywhere else. “Apple would be in very deep trouble, that’s for sure…” he adds, not to mention the global economy, which he estimates, with precision, will take a 30% hit.
It may be Musk’s realisation that business decisions can no longer be made without regard to security and geopolitics—or perhaps it’s simply an arrogant belief that he has all the answers—that now leads him to offer his own solutions to the world’s most complex geopolitical problems. “My recommendation… would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy. And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.” I doubt his proposal will be taken up.
…I find X exactly where I left him, in his car seat, but he’s more cheerful after his nap. He is cooing as he watches videos of rockets on his iPad while his dad discusses rockets with his team. Suddenly, I notice that the car is driving itself, as if to dispel the doubts I had expressed about Tesla’s self-driving prospects. “It can get to the airport without intervention”, says Musk. Alarmed, I put my seatbelt on. Musk could be a magician, but he could also be wrong.
View HTML: