Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter
by Zoë Schiffer · 13 Feb 2024 · 343pp · 92,693 words
Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Schiffer, Zoë, author. Title: Extremely hardcore : inside Elon Musk’s Twitter / Zoë Schiffer. Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2023048761 (print) | LCCN 2023048762 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593716601 (hardcover) | ISBN
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” 71. “The Stakes” 72. “Zero Sum” Conclusion ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES ABOUT THE AUTHOR _146181130_ INTRODUCTION “This App Makes Zero Fucking Sense” On February 12, 2023, Elon Musk sat on his private jet, fuming. He was flying home from the Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, but his mind wasn’t on the game
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wint, Twitter post, May 22, 2012, 5:46 p.m., twitter.com/dril/status/205052027259195393. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT INTRODUCTION damp sock puppet: Elon Musk, Twitter post, January 2022, 10:24 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1486767109275328516. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the engineer, Yang: Per source’s
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request, I am using only his first name. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “This is a battle”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, November 28, 2022, 8:41 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597405399040217088. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT fled the platform: Alexander
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Times, February 11, 2020, latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-11/musk-tesla-fans. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT an army of Elon Musk fans: “Matt Levine on Elon Musk: Chief Twit & ‘Meme Lord,’ ” On with Kara Swisher, Spotify, October 2022, open.spotify.com/episode/0W0GzlE4j8iHBEdNo5HAKH. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “
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I suspect that the Thai govt”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, July 4, 2018, 10:02 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1014509856777293825. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Construction complete in about 8
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hours”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, July 7, 2018, 2:39 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015666557458964480. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “to make complimentary public statements
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/lin-woodlawyer-closely-tied-to-trumppermanently-banned-from-twitter-after-claiming-capitol-siege-was-staged/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Am considering taking Tesla”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, August 7, 2018, 12:48 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT he did not respect
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Washington Post, April 7, 2022, washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-twitter-employee-outcry. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT retweeted a Hitler meme: Elon Musk, Twitter post, January 30, 2022, 1:52 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1487861173626101760. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I keep forgetting that
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you’re still alive”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, November 14, 2021, 6:29 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1459891238384115722. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Employees were not pleased:
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April 13, 2022, Exhibit B, sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/ 000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I made an offer”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, April 14, 2022, 7:23 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1514564966564651008. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “No one believes this is
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on-musks-twitter-offer-190442334.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Prince Alwaleed bin Talal: Kateryna Kadabshy and Brandon Sapienza, “Billionaire Prince Alwaleed Rejects Elon Musk’s Twitter Bid,” Bloomberg.com, April 14, 2022, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/billionaire-prince-alwaleed-rejects-musk-s-twitter-bid?sref=
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Exchange Commission, November 5, 2013, sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/ 000119312522120474/d310843ddefa14a.htm. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Free speech is the bedrock”: “Elon Musk to Acquire Twitter,” Securities and Exchange Commission, exhibit 99.1, sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/ 000119312522117720/d319190dex991.htm. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
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playing a game”: Dewayne Perkins, Twitter post, April 21, 2022, 9:20 p.m., twitter.com/DewaynePerkins/status/1517312377573679105. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Elon Musk was able”: Dividend Hero, Twitter post, April 25, 2022, 7:58 a.m., twitter.com/HeroDividend/status/1518559997478813700. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Can
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Elon R. Musk, X Holdings I, Inc., Complaint, in the United States District Court for the State of Delaware, documentcloud.org/documents/22084462-twitter-v-elon-musk-complaint. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “The longer the merger transaction”: Rebecca Kern, “Judge Sets Expedited Twitter v. Musk Trial for October,” Politico,
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20, 2022, washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/20/musk-twitter-acquisition-staff-cuts/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT a coffee, microwaved please: Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I saw [Musk] as the guy”: Esther Crawford, Twitter post, July 26, 2023,
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IN TEXT “Who’s critical?” they asked: Zoë Schiffer, Casey Newton, and Alex Heath, “Extremely Hardcore,” New York, January 17, 2023, nymag.com/intelligencer/article/elon-musk-twitter-takeover.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “We envisioned a world”: Amir Shevat, “Developer Platforms Are All About Trust, and Twitter Lost It
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2022, pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/16/5-facts-about-twitter-lurkers. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, November 1, 2022, 10:16 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587498907336118274. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I wasn’t really thinking
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, Twitter post, November 5, 2022, 11:59 a.m., twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/1588969361976741888. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I just killed it”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, November 9, 2022, 11:38 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590383366213611522. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I predict that over time
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post, November 9, 2022, 8:12 p.m., twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1590512775385976832. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Musk claimed impressions on hate speech: Elon Musk, Twitter post, December 2, 2022, 1:53 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598752139278532610. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT an article that cited
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, theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-saw-revenue-drop-35-in-q4-sharply-below-projections. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “until there is high confidence”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, November 21, 2022, 8:11 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1594861031670820864. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Apple has mostly stopped
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, 2022, macrumors.com/2022/11/20/phil-schiller-deactivates-twitter-account. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT private data of Twitter Blue subscribers: Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “This is the attitude”: Jay Peters, “Geohot Resigns from Twitter,” The Verge, December 20, 2022, theverge.com/2022/
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12/20/23519922/george-hotz-geohot-twitter-internship-resigns. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Sure, let’s talk”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, November 16, 2022, 3:23 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592976585858351105. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The hacker believed: “Transcript for
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Beckett, Twitter post, May 23, 2023, 12:57 a.m., twitter.com/dajobe/status/1660872612837466112. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “This will be awesome”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, December 2, 2022, 3:48 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598781280015073281. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT potentially explosive front-page story
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Binder, Twitter post, December 24, 2022, 10:48 a.m., twitter.com/MattBinder/status/1606723471475605505. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Same doxxing rules apply”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, December 15, 2022, 6:12 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603573725978275841. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “You’re a citizen”: NowThis
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, 2022, cnn.com/2022/09/12/tech/twitter-data-center-california-heat-wave/index.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Even after I disconnected”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, December 24, 2022, 7:15 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1606624671100997634. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT PART III: MAIN CHARACTER
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post, July 31, 2022, 9:40 p.m., twitter.com/AlexanderMcCoy4/status/1553918627581149185. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The CEO had 124 million followers: Elon Musk, Twitter profile, web.archive.org/web/20230102031613/twitter.com/elonmusk. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the typical daily view count: Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy
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February 14, 2023, 12:11 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1625407245218648065. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “The ‘source’ of the bogus Platformer”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, February 17, 2023, 5:05 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1626523188149764096. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT explosive report detailing alleged privacy
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Twitter post, April 14, 2023, 8:19 p.m., twitter.com/SFBARTalert/status/1647031817889783812. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, May 3, 2022, 3:35 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1521574200183566338. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “I made peace”: Esther Crawford
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Houghton, Twitter post, March 7, 2023, 9:42 a.m, twitter.com/danielhoughton/status/1633115945534214145. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT video call with Thorleifsson: Elon Musk, Twitter post, March 7, 2023, 5:58 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633240643727138824. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT In contrast, Meta employees: Mark
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Division, July 3, 2023, fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/akveqdzngvr/EMPLOYMENT_TWITTER_ARBITRATION_complaint.pdf. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Should be fixed now”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, February 17, 2023, 6:06 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1626538656487059460. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “the whole Sacramento shutdown”:
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Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the sixth major outage: Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, “How a Single Engineer Brought
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, “ ‘Sometimes Things Break’: Twitter Outages Are on the Rise,” The New York Times, February 29, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/02/28/technology/twitter-outages-elon-musk.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “employees who purchased shares”: Zoë Schiffer, “The Secret List of Twitter VIPs Getting Boosted over Everyone Else,” Platformer
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Twitter post, May 13, 2023, web.archive.org/web/20230513210815/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/165742240175425946. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “The choice is”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, May 13, 2023, 12:27 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657422401754259461. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “What Wikipedia did”: Jimmy Wales
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on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, US House of Representatives, “The Weaponization of the Federal Trade Commission: An Agency’s Overreach to Harass Elon Musk’s Twitter,” March 7, 2023, judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Weaponization_Select_Subcommittee_Report_on_FTC
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TEXT “Twitter is essentially following”: Charlie Warzel, “Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network,” The Atlantic, May 23, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT an “uncancelable” free speech alternative: Todd Spangler, “Parler Shut Down by New Owner: ‘A
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Tucker Carlson, Twitter post, May 9 2023, 4:42 p.m., twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1656037032538390530. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “On this platform”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, May 9 2023, 7:31 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1656079504778092544. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT David Sacks, Musk’s longtime
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Boreing, Twitter post, June 1, 2023, 8:59 a.m., twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255339309531139. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “This was a mistake”: Elon Musk, Twitter post, June 1, 2023, twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1664324213023424531. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT people who’d seen the tweet: Daniel Chaitin, “ ‘What
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Times, June 29, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/06/29/technology/twitter-ceo-linda-yaccarino.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT start sharing ad revenue: Elon Musk, Twitter post, February 3, 2023, 11:21 a.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1621544497388875777. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Gigi Hadid deleted: Alyssa
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Crawford, Twitter post, July 1, 2023, 4:90 p.m., twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/1675235246365880321. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “the reason I set”: Elon Musk (Parody), Twitter post, July 1, 2023, 3:21 p.m., twitter.com/ElonMuskAOC/status/1675268446089773056. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “effects on advertising”: “
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8, 2023, washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/08/israel-hamas-disinfo-musk-twitter-x/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT his preferred news-vetting methodology: Elon Musk, Twitter post, February 21, 2023, 3:30 p.m., twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1628175431315644419. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “This is an old
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Ben Goggin “Inside X’s Community Notes, Fact-Checks on Known Misinformation Are Delayed for Days,” NBC News, October 10, 2023, nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/elon-musk-x-fact-check-israel-misinformation-rcna119658. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT EU regulators opened an inquiry: European Commision, “The Commission Sends Request for Information
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance · 18 May 2015 · 370pp · 129,096 words
PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT 7 ALL ELECTRIC 8 PAIN, SUFFERING, AND SURVIVAL 9 LIFTOFF 10 THE REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR 11 THE UNIFIED FIELD THEORY OF ELON MUSK EPILOGUE APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2 APPENDIX 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALSO BY ASHLEE VANCE CREDITS COPYRIGHT ABOUT THE PUBLISHER 1 ELON’S WORLD
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DO YOU THINK I’M INSANE?” This question came from Elon Musk near the very end of a long dinner we shared at a high-end seafood restaurant in Silicon Valley. I’d gotten to the restaurant
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to make his judgment. A split second later, we shook hands and Musk drove off in a red Tesla Model S sedan. ANY STUDY OF ELON MUSK must begin at the headquarters of SpaceX, in Hawthorne, California—a suburb of Los Angeles located a few miles from Los Angeles International Airport. It
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-down shops, and run-down eateries surround huge, industrial complexes that appear to have been built during some kind of architectural Boring Rectangle movement. Did Elon Musk really stick his company in the middle of this dreck? Then, okay, things start to make more sense when you see one 550,000-square
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between good and evil is anything but amazing. A boy who takes these fantasies seriously is more remarkable. Such was the case with the young Elon Musk. By the middle of his teenage years, Musk had blended fantasy and reality to the point that they were hard to separate in his mind
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. South Africa, by contrast, presented far less opportunity for an entrepreneurial soul. As Kimbal put it, “South Africa was like a prison for someone like Elon.” Musk’s opportunity to flee arrived with a change in the law that allowed Maye to pass her Canadian citizenship to her children. Musk immediately began
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set out to prove his point with what would end up being even more dramatic results. 5 PAYPAL MAFIA BOSS THE SALE OF ZIP2 INFUSED ELON MUSK WITH A NEW BRAND OF CONFIDENCE. Much like the video-game characters he adored, Musk had leveled up. He had solved Silicon Valley and become
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fit. “I came very close to dying,” Musk said. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you.” 6 MICE IN SPACE ELON MUSK TURNED THIRTY IN JUNE 2001, and the birthday hit him hard. “I’m no longer a child prodigy,” he told Justine, only half joking. That
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, and invitations to the usual characters had been mailed out. What stunned Robert Zubrin, the head of the group, was the reply from someone named Elon Musk, whom no one could remember inviting. “He gave us a check for five thousand dollars,” Zubrin said. “That made everyone take notice.” Zubrin began researching
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the size of a six-car garage. The two men were fiddling around with the eighty-pound engine when Garvey mentioned that a guy named Elon Musk might be stopping by. The amateur rocketry scene is tight, and it was Cantrell who recommended that Musk check out Garvey’s workshop and see
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interest in what Straubel was selling. Investors dealt him one rejection after another for months on end. Then, in the fall of 2003, Straubel met Elon Musk. Harold Rosen had set up a lunch with Musk at a seafood restaurant near the SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles and brought Straubel along to
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would be their first milestone and give them something physical to show off, which could aid a second round of funding. Eberhard and Tarpenning had Elon Musk’s name in the back of their heads as a possible lead investor from the outset. They had both seen him speak a couple of
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ideas of a big man who shook up industries and did things his own way. Downey heard some rumblings about a Hughes-like figure named Elon Musk who had constructed his own, modern-day industrial complex about ten miles away. Instead of visualizing how life might have been for Hughes, Downey could
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the willingness to spend vast sums of money on spaceships and electric cars, which came across as a combination of daring, flamboyant, and downright flabbergasting. “Elon Musk has been called ‘part playboy, part space cowboy,’ an image hardly dispelled by a car collection that has boasted a Porsche 911 Turbo, 1967 Series
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—poof—it’s gone. Only a cynical dullard could come away from witnessing this feeling anything other than wonder at what man can accomplish. For Elon Musk, this spectacle has turned into a familiar experience. SpaceX has metamorphosed from the joke of the aeronautics industry into one of its most consistent operators
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Tesla’s share price and that General Motors, among other automakers, pulled together a team to study the Model S, Tesla, and the methods of Elon Musk. It’s worth pausing for a moment to meditate on what Tesla had accomplished. Musk had set out to make an electric car that did
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went on sale, Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, raised its sales forecast, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor. Elon Musk had built the automotive equivalent of the iPhone. And car executives in Detroit, Japan, and Germany had only their crappy ads to watch as they
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was the willingness to charge after its vision without compromise, a complete commitment to execute to Musk’s standards. 11 THE UNIFIED FIELD THEORY OF ELON MUSK THE RIVE BROTHERS USED TO BE LIKE A TECHNOLOGY GANG. In the late 1990s, they would jump on skateboards and zip around the streets of
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and asking if they needed any help managing their computing systems. The young men, who had all grown up in South Africa with their cousin Elon Musk, soon decided there must be an easier way to hawk their technology smarts than going door-to-door. They wrote some software that allowed them
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much government funding and too many incentives to create a viable market. Much of this criticism was fair. It’s just that there was this Elon Musk guy hanging around who seemed to have figured something out that everyone else had missed. “We had a blanket rule against investing in clean-tech
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to prove that the technology could work. Some people had their fun with all of this. “Billionaire unveils imaginary space train,” teased Valleywag. “We love Elon Musk’s nutso determination—there was certainly a time when electric cars and private space flight seemed silly, too. But what’s sillier is treating this
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well, that would be the case. If my wife and I have a bunch of kids, she would probably stay with them on Earth.” EPILOGUE ELON MUSK IS A BODY THAT REMAINS VERY MUCH IN MOTION. By the time this book reaches your hands, it’s quite possible that Musk and SpaceX
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in 1995 for his doctorate work in physics. “Based on the information you provided, we are unable to locate a record in our office for Elon Musk,” wrote the director of graduate admissions. When asked during the case to produce a document verifying Musk’s enrollment at Stanford, Musk’s attorney declined
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and the fees associated with transactions are low. These are all good things. Why aren’t they doing this? It’s mad.” APPENDIX 3 From: Elon Musk Date: June 7, 2013, 12:43:06 AM PDT To: All <All@spacex.com> Subject: Going Public Per my recent comments, I am increasingly concerned
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one shaped like a rocket. In 2011, he also received a lot of grief from the Wall Street Journal for having a high-end camp. “Elon Musk, chief executive of electric-car maker Tesla Motors and co-founder of eBay Inc.’s PayPal unit, is among those eschewing the tent life,” the
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, Stanford, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose, San Francisco CREDITS COVER DESIGN BY ALLISON SALTZMAN COVER PHOTOGRAPH © BY ART STREIBER/AUGUST COPYRIGHT ELON MUSK. Copyright © 2015 by Ashlee Vance. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted
Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World
by Anna Crowley Redding · 1 Jul 2019 · 190pp · 46,977 words
older, going through a divorce, had five kids, and was running two impossibly challenging companies, and whom she now loved very much. Meet the Musks Elon Musk and Talulah Riley at the 2012 Environmental Awards. (Photo by Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com.) NAME: Talulah Riley DATE OF BIRTH: September 26, 1985 HOMETOWN
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Elon and his critics and the media filled into Elon’s Twitter feed. That snowballed into more bad coverage. Headlines read: ELON MUSK’S MEDIA MELTDOWN; ELON MUSK LASHES OUT AT MEDIA, AGAIN; ELON MUSK’S SILLY WAR WITH THE MEDIA; and more. While tweeting, Elon proposed a solution: Pravduh, an online rating of journalists
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P. Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space. New York: Smithsonian Books, 2007. Bloomberg Risk Takers. “Elon Musk: How I Became the Real ‘Iron Man.’” 10 June 2014. YouTube video, 44:59. youtu.be/mh45igK4Esw. Boring Company. “The Chicago Express Loop.” www.
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“The Boring Company Information Session.” Los Angeles, 17 May 2018. YouTube video, 57:55. youtu.be/AwX9G38vdCE. _____. Interview by Alison van Diggelen. “An Evening with Elon Musk.” Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA, 23 Jan. 2013. YouTube video, 1:16:51. youtu.be/AHHwXUm3iIg. _____. Interview by Chris Anderson. “The Future We’
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: ‘Everything Feels like the Future but Us.’” Guardian (Manchester, England), 18 May 2017. www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-musk. Zhao, Helen. “California Workplace Safety Agency Opens Probe into Tesla.” CNBC, 18 April 2018. www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/california-workplace-safety-agency
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.ag/03j. ENDNOTES 1. Vance, Elon Musk, p. 31. 2. Vance, p. 32. 3. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 4. Elon Musk, interview by van Diggelen. 5. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 6. Friend, “Plugged In.” 7. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 8. Vance, p. 24. 9. Vance, p. 33. 10. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 11. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 12. Elon Musk, interview by Neil deGrasse Tyson. 13
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. Vance, p. 38. 14. Vance, p. 38. 15. Vance, p. 38. 16. Elon Musk
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, interview by Neil deGrasse Tyson. 17. Vance, p. 37 18. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 19. Vance, p. 37. 20. Vance, p. 37. 21. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 22. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 23. Strauss, “Elon Musk
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.” 24. Junod, “Elon Musk
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.” 25. Junod, “Elon Musk.” 26. Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk, interview by Jeff Skoll. 27
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. Friend, “Plugged In.” 28. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 29. Belfiore, Rocketeers
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, p. 171. 30. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 31. Elon Musk, interview by Neil deGrasse Tyson. 32. Elon Musk, interview
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by Tyson. 33. Vance, Elon Musk, p. 46.
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34. Vance, p. 50. 35. Vance, p. 48. 36. Vance, p. 47 37. Vance, p. 77. 38. Vance, p. 53. 39. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 40. Elon Musk, interview by Khan. 41. Elon Musk, interview by Khan. 42. Elon Musk, interview
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by Khan. 43. Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk, interview by Jeff Skoll. 44. Musk and Musk, interview. 45. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 46. Junod, “Elon Musk.” 47. Musk and Musk, interview by Jeff
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Skoll. 55. Musk and Musk, interview by Jeff Skoll. 56. Musk and Musk, interview by Jeff Skoll. 57. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 58. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 59. Junod, “Elon Musk.” 60. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 61. Vance, p. 96 62. Vance, p. 95. 63. Kimbal Musk, interview
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by Susan Adams. 64. Musk and Musk, interview by Jeff Skoll. 65. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 66. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 67. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 68. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 69. Elon Musk, interview
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by Sal Khan. 70. Elon Musk, interview by Sarah Lacy. 71. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 72. Junod, “Elon Musk.” 73. Elon Musk, interview by Sarah Lacy. 74. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 75. Elon Musk, interview by
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Sal Khan. 76. Junod, “Elon Musk.” 77. Elon Musk, interview by
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Sal Khan. 78. SpaceX.com/about 79. Elon Musk,
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interview by Sarah Lacy. 80. Shotwell, interview by Chris Anderson. “SpaceX’s Plan to Fly.” 81. Junod, “Elon Musk.” 82. Paris Productions, “EV1 Funeral.” 83. Elon Musk
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, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 84. Elon Musk
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, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 85. Elon Musk, interview by
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Alison van Diggelen. 86. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 87. Elon Musk,
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interview by Sarah Lacy. 88. Elon Musk, interview by Kevin Rose. 89. Elon Musk, interview by Sarah Lacy. 90
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’s High Speed Innovation.” 91. Vance, p. 148. 92. Rive, “Turning Toward the Sun.” 93. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 94. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 95. Elon Musk, interview by Joe Rogan. 96. Urban, “The Elon Musk Post Series.” 97. Gaiman, “What Was He Like?” 98. Vance, p. 140. 99. Justine Musk
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p. 210. 117. Tesla Inc., www.tesla.com/autopilot. 118. Elon Musk, interview by Kevin Rose. 119. Elon Musk, interview by Sarah Lacy. 120. Elon Musk, interview by Sarah Lacy. 121. Elon Musk, interview by Sarah Lacy. 122. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 123. Elon Musk, “@rileytalulah.” 124. Elliott, “Elon Musk to Divorce.” 125. Tesla Motors Inc., “Tesla Model X Reveal.”
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126. Oremus, “Romney Decides.” 127. Robertson, “Tesla Repays $465 Million.” 128. Bloomberg, “Elon Musk.” 129. Elon Musk, interview
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by Chris Anderson. 130. Elon Musk, interview
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by Alison van Diggelen. 131. D’Angelo, “SpaceX Makes History.” 132. Campbell, “SpaceX’s Successful Landing.” 133. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 134. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 135. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 136. Tarpenning, “Tesla’s High Speed Innovation.” 137. National Geographic, “
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Exclusive: Watch Elon Musk.” 138. Chang, “First Private Craft.” 139. Elon Musk, interview by Alison van Diggelen. 140. Shotwell, “SpaceX’s Plan to Fly.” 141. Shotwell
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365. 146. Elon Musk, interview by Chris Anderson. 147. Elon Musk, interview by Chris Anderson. 148. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 149. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 150. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 151. Elon Musk, interview by Chris Anderson. 152. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 153. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 154. Elon Musk, interview by
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Joe Rogan. 155. Brooks, Spaceballs. 156. Elon Musk, interview
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158. Emanuel, “Boring Company Chicago O’Hare.” 159. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 160. Elon Musk, interview by Sal Khan. 161. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 162. Elon Musk, interview by Chris Anderson. 163. Elon Musk, “The Boring Company Information Session.” 164. Vance, p. 43. 165. Strauss, “Elon Musk.” 166. Paine, Do You Trust This Computer? 167.
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? 173. Elon Musk, interview by Joe Rogan. 174. Neuralink, www.neuralink.com. 175. Elon Musk, interview by Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi. 176. Elon Musk, interview by Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi. 177. Elon Musk, interview by Chris Anderson. 178. CBS News, “Tesla CEO Elon Musk.” 179. Wong, “Tesla Factory Workers Reveal Pain.” 180. Elon Musk, “What’s actually amazing.” 181. Elon Musk, “Am
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considering taking Tesla.” 182. Elon Musk, interview by Chris Anderson. 183. Elon Musk, interview
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BIT Your Backyard Pyramid Dig In Extra Loopy Ad Astra Chapter 13 DANGER Cyborg XPRIZE Chapter 14 PRODUCTION HELL The Future Chapter 15 GENIUS BOY Elon Musk Bibliography Endnotes Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK An Imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC 120 Broadway, New York,
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac · 17 Sep 2024
daily, lurked and only read tweets, but Musk tweeted freely, a stream-of-consciousness that blended juvenile jokes with audacious bets on his own companies. Elon Musk @elonmusk I love Twitter 9:50 AM Dec 21, 2017 5.8K 34K 168K @redletterdave You should buy it then 9:51 AM Dec
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Tesla struggled through a difficult period that Musk called “Production Hell,” its leader published another tweet that would haunt him legally for years to come. Elon Musk @elonmusk Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. 9:48 AM Aug 7, 2018 5.6K 20K 79K he wrote, offering
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platform. Skip Notes * That reporter was one of this book’s authors, Ryan Mac, who was then a senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed News. Elon Musk emailed him several times, unilaterally declaring that his messages were “off-the-record,” which in journalism parlance means that the information provided may not be
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leadership and praying he would stay. Even some tech leaders stood up for Dorsey. “Just want to say that I support @Jack as Twitter CEO,” Elon Musk tweeted. * * * >>> Several Twitter employees came home from Houston after OneTeam feeling incredibly ill. Maybe the aches and chills were caused by the constant
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led all-hands meeting. Others began updating their résumés. Later, one engineer would create a widely shared internal document titled “Reasons Not to Work for Elon Musk,” with two dozen bullet points of the billionaire’s character failings, among them his early COVID denial, extreme wealth, and online bullying. The pushback
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the company’s financial performance. Bitter responses flooded the channel. “A lot lower stock,” one worker responded. “It’d get to not be owned by Elon Musk,” another said. “Not owned by a fucking moron?” an engineer chimed in. Despite their disgust, the chattering employees understood that his $44 billion offer
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Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman and QAnon endorser whose Twitter account was suspended in early 2022 for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccine. “Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter,” she said. * * * >>> The far right had plenty of reasons to celebrate Musk’s acquisition. In him, they saw a leader who
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Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference with his wife, Vineeta, on July 7, 2022. Twitter chairman Bret Taylor negotiated the sale of the company to Elon Musk. Twitter board member and Silver Lake managing partner Egon Durban invested in Twitter in 2020, rescuing Dorsey from an activist investor who wanted to push
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. Musk and then-girlfriend Claire Boucher, better known as the singer Grimes, pose together during a 2018 event at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Elon Musk and Steve Davis, the chief executive of the Boring Company, at an event for the tunneling start-up in May 2018. Jared Birchall, a former
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Those people included current and former employees for Twitter, X, Tesla, and SpaceX; lawyers, bankers, and other associates who worked for both sides during Elon Musk’s negotiations to buy Twitter; as well as friends and acquaintances of Musk, Jack Dorsey, and other Twitter executives. Some of those interviews were conducted
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, 2022. washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-twitter-employee-outcry. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the Tesla chief flew to Lanai: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT He had a call with Agrawal to discuss engineering: Twitter, Inc. v.
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Musk, Elon (@elonmusk). “.” Twitter, April 11, 2022. polititweet.org/tweet?account=44196397&tweet=1513373170333487104. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “ideas worth spreading”: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Act II Chapter 14: “Bring the cattle” “not like the other kids in the
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. sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312522202163/d283119ddefm14a.htm. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT offered him $13 billion in debt financing: Hirsch, Lauren. “Elon Musk Details His Plan to Pay for a $46.5 Billion Takeover of Twitter.” New York Times, April 21, 2022, sec. Business. nytimes.com/2022/04
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al. 2022-0613-KSJM (Delaware Court of Chancery 2022). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The more he stewed, the angrier he became: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “It’s critical to have the right leaders”: Isaac, Mike. “Twitter Fires
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/edgar/data/1318605/000095017022000796/tsla-20211231.htm. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT he was unsure if he should push through with his acquisition: Isaacson, Elon Musk, 463. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The reams and reams of data: Twitter, Inc. “Schedule 14A.” sec.gov. SEC. 2022. sec.gov/
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Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000114036122014049/ny20001921x3_def14a.htm. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Spiro and Birchall frantically texted: Isaacson, Elon Musk. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Twitter’s stock dropped nearly 10 percent: Roumeliotis, Greg, and Sheila Dang. “Musk Says $44 Billion Twitter Deal
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23126733-letter-decision-granting-stay. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT he’d pay Dorsey the full price of $54.20 per share: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The Wall Street Journal reported that MBS sought: Stancati, Margherita, Benoit Faucon,
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2022. twitter.com/Parissa_S/status/1585773993583206401. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the deal’s closing fees had made Morgan Stanley millions: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Act III Chapter 29: Code Reviews It was fifteen times smaller than Twitter’
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s engineering staff: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Print out 50 pages of code you’ve done in the last 30
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days”: Schiffer, Zoë, Casey Newton, and Alex Heath. “Inside Elon’s ‘Extremely Hardcore’ Twitter.” The Verge, January 17, 2023. theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 30: Lords and Peasants compliance department was told to eliminate 27 percent
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IN TEXT Chapter 33: The Snap The group held occasional meetings to give guidance: O’Reilly, Lara, and Lindsay Rittenhouse. “In Closed-Door Meeting, Elon Musk Tells 100 Top Ad Execs That He Will Improve Brand Safety on Twitter and That He Will Personally Oversee Its New Video Product.” Business Insider
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, November 23, 2022. businessinsider.com/elon-musk-meets-to-reassure-twitter-advertisers-on-brand-safety-video-2022-11. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT days of rest, the monthly no-meeting, recharge
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/billdmccarthy/status/1591066507152609281. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 38: Fired for Shitposting He flew home that weekend to Austin to brood: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. Simon & Schuster. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT flashing a thumbs-up in a selfie with Musk: Brynaert, Ron. “On October 26, Luke Simon
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, Nikki McCann. “Elon Brings One of America’s Most Prominent Nazis Back to Twitter.” Rolling Stone, December 2, 2022. rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-twitter-reinstates-neo-nazi-andrew-anglin-account-1234640390. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”: Li, David K., and Colin
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debt-11674669412. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT using his Tesla shares to back new margin loans: Scigliuzzo, Davide, Sonali Basak, and Paula Seligson. “Elon Musk’s Bankers Consider Tesla Margin Loans to Cut Risky Twitter Debt.” Bloomberg.com, December 8, 2022. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-08/musk-bankers
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Protest over Sudden Layoffs.” The Guardian, January 12, 2023, sec. Technology. theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/12/twitter-janitors-new-york-city-protest-layoffs-elon-musk. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the stench of the bathrooms overwhelmed: Hays, Kali. “A Malodorous Musk: Twitter Employees Beg for Toilet Paper and
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statue and a $25,000 espresso: Ortutay, Barbara. “Twitter Auctions Off Blue Bird Memorabilia, Pricey Furniture.” AP News, January 18, 2023. apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-san-francisco-business-204237cbfdc7a2bb11d3457f6de6c19e. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “overtly sexual or pornographic material”: Apple.com, Developer. “App Review Guidelines.” developer
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.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Musk showed up at the $5 billion Apple Park: Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 40: “I’m Rich, Bitch!” During the first month of Musk’
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/5ef14997-982e-4f03-8548-b5d67202623a. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “There is not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists”: ElectricTonde. “Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces @Katienotopoulos’ Dec 16, 2022 with Banned Journalists.” Youtube, December 17, 2022. youtube.com/watch?v=SZgC6wvBsZ4. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN
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with F.T.C. Chair about Twitter but Was Rebuffed.” New York Times, March 30, 2023, sec. Technology. nytimes.com/2023/03/30/technology/elon-musk-ftc-chair.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Among them was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman: Alba, Davey. “Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor
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-child-sex-abuse.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT By early February, the agency had sent twelve letters: Tracy, Ryan. “FTC Twitter Investigation Sought Elon Musk’s Internal Communications, Journalist Names.” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2023, sec. Tech. wsj.com/articles/twitter-investigation-ftc-musk-documents-db6b179e. GO TO
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cuts. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 43: Endorsements the European Union, which was set to roll out: Financial Times staff. “EU Tells Elon Musk to Hire More Staff to Moderate Twitter.” Financial Times, March 7, 2023. ft.com/content/20141fb1-d8f7-4c9e-a0d0-ded1ac8c7947. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN
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to launch its Starlink: Fernholz, Tim. “How Turkey Is Using Starlink to Win a Tesla Factory.” Quartz, September 18, 2023. qz.com/turkey-erdogan-elon-musk-starlink-spacex-tesla-1850849958. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Twitter had faced immense pressure from Narendra: Lyons, Kim. “Police in India Raid Twitter Offices
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/technology/yaccarino-twitter-ceo-musk.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The billionaire showed up unshaven and spoke off-the-cuff: “Linda Yaccarino Interviews Elon Musk—April 18, 2023.” youtube.com, April 20, 2023. youtube.com/watch?v=ypZNWjPpOuI. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT At the time, she
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, 2023. bsky.app/profile/elonjet.net/post/3kfaifcseto2c. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT suggesting that the Pizzagate conspiracy theory “is real.”: Sardarizadeh, Shayan. “Elon Musk has now deleted the tweet that promoted the pizzagate conspiracy theory. pic.twitter.com/JFWcny7RlR.” Twitter, November 28, 2023. twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1729595410220499250. GO
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, 206, 435 activist groups and, 294, 320, 392 Digital Services Act and, 244 at Facebook, 92 at Twitter, see Twitter, content moderation at; Twitter under Elon Musk, content moderation at see also misinformation and disinformation Conway, Kellyanne, 65–66 Cook, Tim, 366, 420 Costolo, Dick, 11, 17, 20–21, 42, 149
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, 179, 205, 250, 434 SpaceX, see SpaceX Tesla, see Tesla Motors X.com (bank), 29–31, 415 Zip2, 29, 207 see also Twitter under Elon Musk; X Chappelle show incident, 375 children of, 95, 100, 124, 197, 204–5, 213, 256, 279, 289, 290, 364, 376–78, 427 COVID pandemic and
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Twitter shares of, 102, 103, 105–8, 110–11, 115, 125–26, 129, 136, 138, 175, 217 Twitter under ownership of, see Twitter under Elon Musk Ukraine war and, 102–3, 184, 332 Unsworth accused of pedophilia by, 23–29, 47, 114, 135–36 wealth of, 6, 34, 39, 96, 101
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236, 248, 382 privatization in, 123, 125, 128, 164, 216, 236 resignation of directors following, 247 Turkey and, 400 Twitter operations following, see Twitter under Elon Musk Twitter’s “just say yes” defense in, 155–67, 253–54 Twitter’s poison pill strategy in, 127, 129, 138, 141, 146, 148, 209,
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in, 247–48, 258 welcome box for Musk in, 256 Zatko’s allegations and, 226–27, 228 Musk’s ownership of, see Twitter under Elon Musk Musk’s shares in, 102, 103, 105–8, 110–11, 115, 125–26, 129, 136, 138, 175, 217 Musk’s threat to build competitor to
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of, 135, 217, 285–86, 297, 311 violent imagery on, 410–11 Williams as CEO of, 15–17 Williams as chairman of, 14 Twitter under Elon Musk and accounts promoting competitors, 382–83 advertising on, 271, 281, 291–92, 297, 301, 313, 320, 345, 350, 364, 406–8 for Apple, 365,
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194 WPP, 289 X X, 8 “everything app” vision for, 8, 230, 262, 401, 415, 415 Twitter rebranded as, 415–16 see also Twitter under Elon Musk xAI, 435 X.com (bank), 29–31, 177, 240, 415 X Holdings, 415 Xinhua News Agency, 404 Y Yaccarino, Linda, 301, 410–12, 417–
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by Tim Higgins · 2 Aug 2021 · 430pp · 135,418 words
: Hitandrun Media @ Début Art Cover design by John Fontana Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Higgins, Tim (Journalist), author. Title: Power play : Tesla, Elon Musk, and the bet of the century / Tim Higgins. Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020048532 (print) | LCCN 2020048533 (
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Red Tidings Epilogue A Note from the Author Acknowledgments Notes PROLOGUE THE BEGINNING On a breezy night in March 2016 at the Tesla design studio, Elon Musk took the stage in front of a crowd of supporters. Dressed like a James Bond villain, in a black jacket with the collar up,
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have not gone bankrupt: Ford—and Tesla. * * * — So you’d pretty much have to be delusional to enter such a competition; which some think Elon Musk is. But he hasn’t shrunk from the challenge. Instead he has willed himself and his company to where the lofty visions of Silicon Valley
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his hubris be his undoing? Amid the controversial figures to have emerged from Silicon Valley in recent years, you couldn’t help but wonder: Is Elon Musk an underdog, an antihero, a con man, or some combination of the three? PART I A REALLY EXPENSIVE CAR CHAPTER 1 THIS TIME COULD
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deferred to his colleague. CHAPTER 5 MR. TESLA “Elon is the perfect investor,” Martin Eberhard had confided to a colleague during the honeymoon period with Elon Musk. In the early days, Musk seemed to think highly of Eberhard too, showering him with praise. “The number of great product people in the
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time for new leadership. Their conflict pointed at yet another rift taking shape. When Eberhard had brought his idea for an electric sports car to Elon Musk, they had seemingly shared a vision for what the company might become. But with each hard-won milestone, the company’s—and Musk’s—
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their normal pay of between $200,000 and almost $2 million. CHAPTER 8 EATING GLASS When he was a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk’s mother called him Encyclopedia after his reading habits and ability to absorb information. “We could ask him anything,” she’d later write. “Remember,
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own statement that the ruling was “consistent with Tesla’s belief in a team of founders, including the company’s current CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk, [and] Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel, who were both fundamental to the creation of Tesla from inception.” In private, some cautioned circumspection. Michael Marks,
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invented in house. Straubel and his team packed their bags for a frustrated return to San Carlos. * * * — “I don’t have time for this,” Elon Musk bellowed. “I’ve got to launch the fucking rocket!” And with that he stormed out of the glass conference room at SpaceX, abruptly ending a
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. Tesla’s weekly sales of Roadsters numbered in the handful. Zak Edson, director of product planning, was presenting the results at Tesla’s headquarters as Elon Musk looked over the figures. “Sales suck,” Musk said. “They don’t just suck—sales suck monkey dick.” The group tried to swallow their laughter.
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estate business, he was accustomed to unsolicited offers, typically from local shopping centers. Brown persisted, though, and one of her emails caught his attention: “Elon Musk would like to speak to you about the things you did at Apple. Please give me a call.” Blankenship called, was greeted by Brown, and
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was a jolt compared to the pleasant weather in Hawthorne, California, where he had set up the automaker’s vehicle engineering operations to be near Elon Musk’s desk at SpaceX headquarters. Rawlinson and Musk faced twin challenges that called for close coordination. They were engineering a car from the ground
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influence the company’s culture, would play a larger role in the success of the company than even the money would. When Akio Toyoda and Elon Musk celebrated an arrangement that included the two automakers working together on electric cars, the details remained far from complete. The idea was that the
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learned and poured it straight into the Model S. * * * — Tucked away in a complex of industrial buildings next to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Elon Musk opened a new design studio for Tesla. He picked an old airplane hangar that had been converted into a basketball gym a few years earlier
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the former Lexus factory manager who had served as a cultural bridge during the acquisition of the Fremont factory, and his deputy, Dag Reckhorn, whom Elon Musk hired for his experience working with aluminum. They had spent months haggling over what pieces of machinery Tesla would buy from Toyota and what would
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, would later write about his experience: “What would have been deemed as unacceptable by any carmakers was seen as part of an ongoing process by Elon Musk who believed, rightly so, that the user experience of driving a truly innovative automobile would outweigh minor defects that will be eventually corrected.” * * * — As
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on road trips. A similar network of so-called Supercharger stations was being deployed across major interstate highways in the U.S. Now, aboard Elon Musk’s private jet in 2013 on the way to Los Angeles, Straubel thought through the ramifications of his boss’s next ambitions for Tesla. Ever
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to produce billions of batteries, it needed to enter a market where millions of buyers might help boost its sales. With George Blankenship’s departure, Elon Musk turned sales and service over to Jerome Guillen, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, who had already proven himself
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kind of flexibility Tesla would need in the future if it wanted to move beyond its niche. * * * — On a breezy March night in 2016, Elon Musk, Doug Field, Jon McNeill, and the other senior leadership stood backstage at the Tesla design studio, where hundreds of customers and supporters waited for a
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we just became a real car company,” he wrote. What should have been a time of celebration quickly turned into the ugliest public spectacle in Elon Musk and Tesla history. CHAPTER 26 TWITTER HURRICANES As Tesla workers wearily marked their production milestone at Fremont, Musk landed in Portugal just in time
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Fossi continues to write about Tesla, he would sue him and drag Rahr into it. The next day, Fossi announced he was retiring his blog: “Elon Musk has won this round. He has silenced a critic.” * * * — As the Twitter winds swirled, Tesla’s executives kept their heads down. They had met
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months trying to get the Model 3 out—nearly missing his brother’s wedding, spending his birthday on the factory floor. The resulting headline read “Elon Musk Details ‘Excruciating’ Personal Toll of Tesla Turmoil.” It described him as emotional, having “choked up multiple times” during the interview. He talked of his
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there were a million Nikola Teslas? he asked. Musk said things would have advanced very quickly. Right, Rogan added, but there’s not a million Elon Musks. “There’s one motherfucker,” Rogan said. “Do you think about that?” Musk checked his phone. “You getting text messages from chicks?” Rogan asked. No,
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of April 2020 proved wrong. Months later, he announced on Twitter that he had tested positive. A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR Popular myth is that Elon Musk, sleeping on the factory floor, willed Tesla into being. His determination and stubbornness surely played a big part in the company’s rise and
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me—dogged reporters who have covered Tesla over the years and blazed a trail for me to follow. Ashlee Vance wrote the definitive biography of Elon Musk. Dana Hull, Lora Kolodny, Kirsten Korosec, Edward Niedermeyer, Alan Ohnsman, Susan Pulliam, Mike Ramsey, and Owen Thomas are among those journalists who broke some
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by the author. “Why the fuck”: Michael V. Copeland, “Tesla’s Wild Ride,” Fortune (July 21, 2008), https://fortune.com/2008/07/21/tesla-elon-musk-electric-car-motors/. He suggested being vague: Details taken from emails between the men reviewed by the author. Musk fired them: Michael V. Copeland, “Tesla
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by author. “If this is true”: Michael V. Copeland, “Tesla’s Wild Ride,” Fortune, July 21, 2008, https://fortune.com/2008/07/21/tesla-elon-musk-electric-car-motors. He calculated that the cost: Tim Watkins’s declaration filed with California court on June 29, 2009. “Martin seems to be focused
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complained: Author interviews with people involved with the funding plan. “We either do this”: Author interviews with Tesla workers at the time. Reclaiming the narrative: Elon Musk, “Extraordinary times require focus,” company blog (Oct. 15, 2008). “I actually talked a close friend”: Owen Thomas, “Tesla Motors Has $9 Million in the
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https://play.acast.com/s/howididit/investorjasoncalacanis-howiwasbroke-thenrich-thenbroke-andnowhave-100million. There were other: Ibid. “Elon, looks like”: Ibid. but, as Musk: Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 157. Musk suspected the delay: Ibid. To stoke their competitive juices: Ibid
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Justine Musk, “I Was a Starter Wife,” Marie Claire (Sept. 10, 2010), https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife. The practical effect: Elon Musk, “Correcting the Record About My Divorce,” Business Insider (July 8, 2010), https://www.businessinsider.com/correcting-the-record-about-my-divorce-2010-7. Looking for
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Jonathan Gol, et al., “Valor and Tesla Motors,” University of Chicago case study (2017), https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/faculty/steven-kaplan/research/valortesla.pdf. “Elon Musk would like”: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, “From Gap to the Electric Car: Tesla’s George Blankenship,” Green Car Reports (Nov. 24, 2010), https://www.greencarreports.com
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Tesla manager. “What would have been deemed”: Philippe Chain and Frederic Filloux, “How Tesla Cracked the Code of Automobile Innovation.” “They presented a better face”: Elon Musk’s appearance recorded by C-Span (Sept. 29, 2011), https://www.c-span.org/video/?301817-1/future-human-space-flight. CHAPTER 15 If Tesla
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,” Consumer Reports (July 2013), https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2013/07/tesla-model-s-review/index.htm. Musk’s relationship with Blankenship: Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 216. “For Tesla to succeed”: Author interview with Blankenship. He had
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quietly reached: Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk, 217. CHAPTER 16 But their innovations: Author interviews with people familiar with Akerson’s thinking. The first fire occurred: Tom Krisher and Mike Baker, “Tesla
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same-london-club-weeks-after-miami-sighting/. “Lack of sleep”: Author interview with former Tesla executive. Among the first: Tim Higgins and Dana Hull, “Want Elon Musk to Hire You at Tesla? Work for Apple,” Bloomberg Businessweek (Feb. 2, 2015). Many knew that Musk: Interviews with Tesla employees at the time,
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“You are now working”: Charles Duhigg, “Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla’s Production Hell,” Wired (Dec. 13, 2018), https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/. If a critical workstation: Author interviews. Musk told him to: Claim laid out in a federal lawsuit against Tesla filed in
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taken on June 4, 2019. Wheeler’s team calculated: Presentation presented to the Tesla board of directors, dated July 24, 2016. “We are going to”: Elon Musk deposition taken on Aug. 24, 2019. “Latest feedback from major”: Emails reviewed by the author. It wasn’t foolproof: Author interviews with Tesla engineers. They
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. “He’s always pitching”: Video of interview posted on Business Insider’s website on Feb. 21, 2018: https://www.businessinsider.com/jim-chanos-tesla-elon-musk-truck-video-2018-2. He thought: Details from Martin Tripp deposition taken as part of litigation between him and Musk. She kept a schedule: Sarah
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over the Weekend as He Was ‘Scrounging for Investors,’ ” Business Insider (Aug. 13, 2018), https://www.businessinsider.com/azealia-banks-claims-to-be-at-elon-musks-house-as-he-sought-investors-2018-8. “Don’t they have something”: Email exchange reviewed by the author. From LA: Liz Hoffman and Tim Higgins
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Pennsylvania: Author interviews with former Tesla executives. They were warmly received: Author interviews with Tesla managers from that period. Bloomberg Businessweek: Matthew Campbell et al., “Elon Musk Loves China, and China Loves Him Back—For Now,” Bloomberg Businessweek (Jan. 13, 2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-13/china-loves
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-tsla-how-long-will-that-last?sref=PRBlrg7S. He proposed an idea: Author interview with a Tesla manager familiar with the trip. “Traffic is driving”: Elon Musk said on Twitter (Dec. 17, 2016), twitter.com/elonmusk/status/810108760010043392?s=20. As things dragged into 2018: Bruce Einhorn, et al., “Tesla’s
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www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-seeks-rent-savings-amid-coronavirus-crunch-11586823630. “Over the past week”: Jeremy C. Owens, Claudia Assis, and Max A. Cherney, “Elon Musk vs. Bay Area Officials: These Emails Show What Happened Behind the Scenes in the Tesla Factory Fight,” MarketWatch (May 29, 2020), https://www.marketwatch.com
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/story/elon-musk-vs-bay-area-officials-these-emails-show-what-happened-behind-the-scenes-in-the-tesla-factory-fight-2020-05-29. “Frankly this is the final
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”: Tim Higgins, “Tesla Files Lawsuit in Bid to Reopen Fremont Factory,” Wall Street Journal (May 10, 2020), https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-threatens-authorities-over-mandated-tesla-factory-shutdown-11589046681. “I will be on the line”: Rebecca Ballhaus and Tim Higgins, “Trump Calls for California to Let
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Circle,” The Wall Street Journal, (Feb. 19, 2021), https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tesla-made-it-to-the-winners-circle-11613739634. “This is very”: Elon Musk told author in an email on May 7, 2020. “I’ve never met”: Scarlet Fu, “Chanos Reduces ‘Painful’ Tesla Short, Tells Musk ‘Job Well
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Done,’ ” Bloomberg News (Dec. 3, 2020), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/tesla-bear-jim-chanos-says-he-d-tell-elon-musk-job-well-done?sref=PRBlrg7S. What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date
Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson · 11 Sep 2023 · 562pp · 201,502 words
to own the playground. 1 Adventurers Winnifred and Joshua Haldeman Errol, Maye, Elon, Tosca, and Kimbal Musk Cora and Walter Musk Joshua and Winnifred Haldeman Elon Musk’s attraction to risk was a family trait. In that regard, he took after his maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, a daredevil adventurer with strongly held
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Sunday in January 2002, while they were working in a rented warehouse on their amateur engine, Garvey mentioned to Mueller that an internet millionaire named Elon Musk wanted to meet him. When Musk arrived accompanied by Justine, Mueller was shouldering the suspended eighty-pound engine as he tried to bolt it
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, they were bestowed with outsized capabilities in math and science, but without the demons and harshness of their father and grandfather. Being the sons of Elon Musk was difficult, but they were “stoics,” as Musk called them. He discussed with Kai, then sixteen, the possibility of leaving high school and coming
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sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world. With Grimes and Maye after the launch Acknowledgments Elon Musk allowed me to shadow him for two years, invited me to sit in on his meetings, indulged scores of interviews and late-night conversations, provided
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. Senior manager, Tesla Energy. Tom Mueller. Founding employee and engine designer, SpaceX. Andrew Musk. First cousin of Musk. Christiana Musk. Wife of Kimbal Musk. Elon Musk. Errol Musk. Father of Musk. Griffin Musk. Son of Musk. James Musk. First cousin of Musk. Justine Musk. First wife of Musk and mother of
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Grimes), Peter Thiel. Tom Junod, “Triumph of His Will,” Esquire, Dec. 2012 (includes the quip about having no navel). 1. Adventurers: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Maye Musk, Kimbal Musk, Tosca Musk, Errol Musk, Jared Birchall. Joseph Keating and Scott Haldeman, “Joshua N. Haldeman, DC: The Canadian Years,” Journal of the
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House Preparatory School, Glenashley Senior Primary School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School; Neil Strauss, “The Architect of Tomorrow”; Emily Lane Fox, “How Elon Musk’s Mom (and Her Twin Sister) Raised the First Family of Tech,” Vanity Fair, Oct. 21, 2015; Andrew Smith, “Emissary of the Future,” The
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Telegraph (London), Jan. 8, 2014. 4. The Seeker: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, Maye Musk, Errol Musk, Peter Rive. Elon Musk, The Babylon Bee podcast, Dec. 21, 2021; Tad Friend, “Plugged In,” The New Yorker, Aug. 17, 2009; Maureen Dowd, “Blasting
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Talk, Apr. 2017; Davenport, Space Barons; Berger, Liftoff. 15. Rocket Man: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Adeo Ressi. Amit Katwala, “What’s Driving Elon Musk?,” Wired, Sept. 8, 2018; Anderson, “Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars”; Levine, “Entrepreneur Elon Musk Talks about His Background in Physics”; Junod, “Triumph of His Will.” 16. Fathers and Sons: Author’s
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, “I Was a Starter Wife”; Junod, “Triumph of His Will”; Strauss, “The Architect of Tomorrow.” 17. Revving Up: Author’s interviews with Tom Mueller, Elon Musk, Tim Buzza, Mark Juncosa. Jeremy Rosenberg, interview with Tom Mueller, KCET Public Radio, May 3, 2012; Michael Belfiore, “Behind the Scenes with the World’s
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University, June 14, 2021; Chad Anderson, “Rethinking Public-Private Space Travel,” Space Policy, Nov. 2013. 20. Founders: Author’s interviews with Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Ben Rosen. Michael Copeland, “Tesla’s Wild Ride,” Fortune, July 9, 2008; Drake Baer, “The Making of Tesla,” Business Insider, Nov. 12,
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2014; Higgins, Power Play; Vance, Elon Musk. 21. The Roadster: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel, Kimbal Musk, Michael Moritz, John Doerr, Alan Salzman, Jessica Switzer, Mickey Drexler. Baer, “The Making of
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“Batteries Included,” Wired, Aug. 1, 2006; Matthew Wald, “Zero to 60 in 4 Seconds,” New York Times July 19, 2006; Copeland, “Tesla’s Wild Ride”; Elon Musk, “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan,” Tesla blog, Aug. 2, 2006; interview with Martin Eberhard, Watt It Takes podcast, Sept. 2021; Higgins, Power Play; Vance
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, Elon Musk; Niedermeyer, Ludicrous. 22. Kwaj: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, Hans Koenigsmann, Tim Buzza. Berger, Liftoff. Berger reported the scramble to replace the faulty capacitors. 23. Two Strikes: Author
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May 22, 2007; Brian Berger, “Pad Processing Error Doomed Falcon 1,” SpaceNews, Apr. 10, 2006; Berger, Liftoff. 24. The SWAT Team: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard, JB Straubel, Antonio Gracias, Tim Watkins, Deepak Ahuja. Zak Edson, “Tesla Motors Case Study: Sotira Carbon Fiber Body Panel Ramp, May–Oct 2008
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”; Gene Bylinksy, “Heroes of U.S. Manufacturing: Michael Marks,” Fortune, Mar. 20, 2000; Higgins, Power Play. 26. Divorce: Author’s interviews with Justine Musk, Elon Musk, Maye Musk, Kimbal Musk, Antonio Gracias. Justine Musk, “I Was a Starter Wife”; Justine Musk, TEDx Talk, Jan. 26, 2016; Justine Musk, “From the Head
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, Drew Baglino. John Markoff, “Tesla Motors Files Suit against Competitor over Design Ideas,” New York Times, Apr. 15, 2008; Chris Anderson, “The Shared Genius of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs,” Fortune, Nov. 27, 2013; Charles Duhigg, “Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk,” Wired, Dec. 13, 2018; Chuck Squatriglia, “First Look at Tesla’s
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Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 15, 2009; Garver, Space Pirates; Berger, Liftoff; Davenport, Space Barons. 34. Falcon 9 Liftoff: Author’s interviews with Tim Buzza, Elon Musk, Lori Garver. Brian Vastag, “SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule Docks with International Space Station,” Washington Post, May 25, 2012; Garver, Space Pirates; Berger, Liftoff; Davenport, Space
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Barons. 35. Marrying Talulah: Author’s interviews with Talulah Riley, Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, Bill Lee, Navaid Farooq. Hermione Eyre, “How to Marry a Billionaire,” The Evening Standard (London), Apr. 10, 2012. 36. Manufacturing: Author’s interviews
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with Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Franz von Holzhausen, Dave Morris, JB Straubel. Angus MacKenzie, “Shocking Winner: Proof Positive That America Can Still Make (Great) Things,” Motor Trend, Dec
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Wander (Public Affairs/Harvard Business Review, 2021); Explorers Club 2014 dinner video, https://vimeo.com/119342003; Amanda Gordon, “Scene Last Night: Jeff Bezos Eats Gator, Elon Musk Space,” Bloomberg, Mar. 17, 2014; Jeffrey P. Bezos, Gary Lai, and Sean R. Findlay, “Sea Landing of Space Launch Vehicles,” Patent application US8678321B2, June
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Trung Phan, Twitter thread, July 17, 2021; Davenport, Space Barons; Berger, Liftoff; Fernholz, Rocket Billionaires. 38. The Falcon Hears the Falconer: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Sam Teller, Steve Jurvetson, Antonio Gracias, Mark Juncosa, Jeff Bezos, Kiko Dontchev. Calia Cofield, “Blue Origin Makes Historic Reusable Rocket Landing in Epic Test Flight
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Chancery Court, “Memorandum of opinion in re Tesla Motors stockholder litigation,” C.A. No. 12711-VCS, Apr. 27, 2022; Austin Carr, “The Real Story behind Elon Musk’s $2.6 Billion Acquisition of SolarCity,” Fast Company, June 7, 2017; Austin Carr, “Inside Steel Pulse,” Fast Company, June 9, 2017; Josh Dzieza,
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Jared Birchall. Joe Kernen, Donald Trump interview, CNBC, Jan. 22, 2020; Barbara Jones, “Inter-galactic Family Feud,” Mail on Sunday, Mar. 17, 2018; Rob Crilly, “Elon Musk’s Estranged Father, 72, Calls His Newborn Baby with Stepdaughter ‘God’s Plan,’ ” The National Post (Canada), Mar. 25, 2018; Strauss, “The Architect of Tomorrow
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.” 45. Descent into the Dark: Author’s interviews with Jon McNeill, Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, Omead Afshar, Tim Watkins, Antonio Gracias, JB Straubel, Sam Teller, James Musk, Mark Juncosa, Jon McNeill, Gage Coffin. Duhigg, “Dr. Elon & Mr.
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Musk.” 46. Fremont Factory Hell: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Sam Teller, Omead Afshar, Nick Kalayjian, Tim Watkins, Antonio Gracias, JB Straubel, Mark Juncosa, Jon McNeill, Sam Teller, Lars Moravy, Kimbal Musk, Rodney Westmoreland. Musk
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Securities Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District California, motion filed Apr. 22, 2022; David Gelles, James B. Stewart, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Kate Kelly, “Elon Musk Details ‘Excruciating’ Personal Toll of Tesla,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 2018; Dana Hull, “Weak Sauce,” Bloomberg, Apr. 24, 2022; Jim Cramer, Squawk on
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Off in Domestic Bliss,” New York Times, July 25, 2020. 50. Shanghai: Author’s interviews with Robin Ren, Elon Musk. 51. Cybertruck: Author’s interviews with Franz von Holzhausen, Elon Musk, Dave Morris. Stephanie Mlot, “Elon Musk Wants to Make Bond’s Lotus Submarine Car a Reality,” PC Magazine, Oct. 18, 2013. 52. Starlink: Author’
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from the FAA before December Launch,” The Verge, June 15, 2021. 58. Bezos vs. Musk, Round 2: Author’s interviews with Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson. Christian Davenport, “Elon Musk Is Dominating the Space Race,” Washington Post, Sept. 10, 2021; Richard Waters, “Interview with FT’s Person of the Year,” Financial Times, Dec
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split-adjusted prices for the stock. 68. Father of the Year: Author’s interviews with Shivon Zilis, Claire Boucher (Grimes), Tosca Musk, Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, Maye Musk, Christiana Musk. Elon Musk interview with NPQ, Winter 2014; Devin Gordon, “Infamy Is Kind of Fun,” Vanity Fair, Mar. 10, 2022; Ed Felsenthal, Molly Ball,
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S. Quietly Paying Millions to Send Starlink Terminals to Ukraine,” Washington Post, Apr. 8, 2022; Yaroslav Trofimov, Micah Maidenberg, and Drew FitzGerald, “Ukraine Leans on Elon Musk’s Starlink in Fight against Russia,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2022; Mehul Srivastava et al., “Ukrainian Forces Report Starlink Outages During Push against Russia
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,” Financial Times, Oct. 7, 2022; Volodymyr Verbyany and Daryna Krasnolutska, “Ukraine to Get Thousands More Starlink Antennas,” Bloomberg, Dec. 20, 2022; Adam Satariano, “Elon Musk Doesn’t Want His Satellites to Run Ukraine’s Drones,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 2023; Joey Roulette, “SpaceX Curbed Ukraine’s Use of Starlink
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,” Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2022. Errol Musk often copied me on his emails to his son. 76. Starbase Shake-up: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Sam Patel, Bill Riley, Andy Krebs, Jonah Nolan, Mark Juncosa, Omead Afshar, Jake McKenzie, Kiko Dontchev, Jared Isaacman, Sam Patel, Andy Krebs, Claire Boucher
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Birchall, Alex Spiro, Antonio Gracias, Robert Steel, Blair Effron, Ari Emanuel, Larry David, Joe Scarborough. 79. Optimus Unveiled: Author’s interviews with Franz von Holzhausen, Elon Musk, Steve Davis, Lars Moravy, Anand Swaminathan, Milan Kovac, Phil Duan, Tim Zaman, Felix Sygulla, Anand Swaminathan, Ira Ehrenpreis, Jason Calacanis. 80. Robotaxi: Author’s
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Birchall, Alex Spiro, Michael Grimes, Antonio Gracias, Brad Sheftel, David Sacks, Parag Agrawal, Tejas Dharamsi, Ro Khanna. 83. The Three Musketeers: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, James Musk, Andrew Musk, Dhaval Shroff, Ben San Souci, Chris Payne, Thomas Dmytryk, Yoni Ramon, Ross Nordeen, Kayvon Beykpour, Ben San Souci, Alex Spiro,
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Tiffany Hsu, “Two Weeks of Chaos,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2022. 84. Content Moderation: Author’s interviews with Yoel Roth, David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Elon Musk, Jared Birchall, Yoni Ramon. Cat Zakrzewski, Faiz Siddiqui, and Joseph Menn, “Musk’s ‘Free Speech’ Agenda Dismantles Safety Work at Twitter,” Washington Post, Nov.
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22, 2022; Elon Musk, “Time 100: Kanye West,” Time, Apr. 15, 2015; Steven Nelson and Natalie Musumeci, “Twitter Fact-Checker Has History of Politically Charged Posts,” New York Post
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Magazine, Jan. 17, 2023; Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, “Inside the Twitter Meltdown,” Platformer, Nov. 10, 2022. 87. All In: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Jared Birchall, Larry Ellison, Alex Spiro, James Musk, Andrew Musk, Ross Nordeen, Dhaval Shroff, David Sacks, Yoni Ramon. Gergely Orosz, “Twitter’s Ongoing Cruel Treatment
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of Software Engineers,” Pragmatic Engineer, Nov. 20, 2022; Alex Heath, “Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Done with Layoffs and Ready to Hire Again,” The Verge, Nov. 21, 2022; Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, “The Only Constant at
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David Sacks, Yoni Ramon Larry Ellison, employees at Apple. Schiffer, Newton, and Heath, “Extremely Hardcore.” 89. Miracles: Author’s interviews with Shivon Zilis, Jeremy Barenholtz, Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Ross Nordeen. Ashlee Vance, “Musk’s Neuralink Hopes to Implant Computer in Human Brain in Six Months,” Bloomberg, Nov. 30, 2022. 90. The
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Twitter Files: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowles, Alex Spiro, Ross Nordeen. Matt Taibbi, “Note from San Francisco,” TK News, Substack, Dec. 29, 2022; Matt Taibbi, Twitter File
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26, 2022; Freddie Sayers and Jay Bhattacharya, “What I Discovered at Twitter HQ,” unherd.com, Dec. 26, 2022. 91. Rabbit Holes: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Claire Boucher (Grimes), Kimbal Musk, James Musk, Ross Nordeen, Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowle, Yoel Roth, David Zaslav. Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz, “Musk Blamed
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a Twitter Account for an Alleged Stalker,” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2022; Drew Harwell, “QAnon, Adrift after Trump’s Defeat, Finds New Life in Elon Musk’s Twitter,” Washington Post, Dec. 14, 2022; Yoel Roth, “Gay Data,” University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation, Nov. 30, 2016. 92. Christmas Capers: Author’s
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: Martin Schoeller/August Page 347 Top: Courtesy of SpaceX Bottom: Courtesy of Jehn Balajadia Page 353 Left: Courtesy of Blue Origin Right: Courtesy of Elon Musk Page 358 Top left: Courtesy of Andy Krebs Bottom left: Courtesy of Lucas Hughes Right: Nic Ansuini Page 376 Left: Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo
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right: Courtesy of Twitter Bottom left: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Bottom right: Duffy-Marie Arnoult/WireImage/Getty Images Page 532 Top: Courtesy Elon Musk/Twitter Bottom: Courtesy of Maye Musk Page 546 Top: Courtesy of Christopher Stanley Page 561 Top: Courtesy of Neuralink Bottom: Courtesy of Jeremy Barenholtz
Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul
by Kurt Wagner · 20 Feb 2024 · 332pp · 127,754 words
s history, including senior executives, managers, and board members. As of December 2023, many former employees were still in active legal disputes with Twitter or Elon Musk, which impacted their willingness to go on the record. I also benefited from several years of additional reporting on Twitter well before I ever decided
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appropriate. Twitter’s social and cultural influence was prominent enough for years to merit inclusion with the other tech giants. By mid-2022, the year Elon Musk bought the company, Twitter had almost 240 million daily users, a small fraction of the global population, but tweets were virtually everywhere. TV networks displayed
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and Elon both lead with their hearts, and they will be an incredible team.” Shortly after Dorsey’s tweets, everything went sideways. * * * Jack Dorsey texted Elon Musk personally to thank him for joining Twitter’s board. “Absolutely,” Musk replied. “Hope I can be helpful!” “Immensely,” Dorsey assured him. “Parag is an incredible
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Doc just four hours later; his access to the document was immediately cut off without any further explanation. Day one was officially over. * * * Working for Elon Musk typically means moving so fast that everything else, including showers, meals, and most definitely sleep, is considered secondary and dispensable. Working nights and weekends is
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“Quite the day!” Musk tweeted close to midnight that evening. “Some epically funny tweets. ” The next morning, Twitter suspended the subscription offering until further notice. * * * Elon Musk’s first all-hands meeting as Chief Twit happened on the same day that brand imposters were running wild, and employees were alerted less than
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Was Reportedly on the Shortlist to Be the Next Commissioner of the NFL,” Business Insider, June 15, 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/fired-twitter-cfo-elon-musk-deal-period-pulled-mental-muscles-2022-10. and in the elevators: Niketa Patel (@Niketa), “Love that this is in the elevator at @TwitterNYC today!!!#
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believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” Twitter, March 25, 2022, 12:34 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344. “The consequences… vote carefully”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.” Twitter, March 25, 2022, 1:26 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status
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Shareholders,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, April 6, 2023, https://www.sec.gov/education/smallbusiness/goingpublic/officersanddirectors. “Given that Twitter… What should be done?”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be
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done?” Twitter, March 26, 2022, 10:51 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777261654605828. “Is a new platform needed?”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Is a new platform needed?” Twitter, March 26, 2022, 10:54 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267. Dorsey: Yes a new platform
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https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922041911/tm2211482d1_sc13g.htm. it was estimated that Musk saved himself well over $150 million: Reed Albergotti, “Elon Musk Delayed Filing a Form and Made $156 Million,” Washington Post, April 6, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/06/musk-twitter-sec/. “Excited
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I, Inc., and X Holdings II, Inc., Exhibit H, 16. The more time he spent… in the midst of an all-nighter: Isaacson, Elon Musk, 451. “Is Twitter dying?”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Most of these ‘top’ accounts tweet rarely and post very little content. Is Twitter dying?” Twitter, April 9, 2022, 6:32 a
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Twitter, April 10, 2022, 8:13 p.m., https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201. CHAPTER 13: @ELONMUSK He raced dirt bikes… undeniably brilliant: Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (New York: Ecco, 2015), 33–39. He had a photographic memory… question thrown his way: Vance
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Billionaires Index: Larry Ellison,” Bloomberg, accessed June 13, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/lawrence-j-ellison/?sref=dZ65CIng. invested $1 billion: Twitter, Inc., Elon Musk Form 13D (filed May 5, 2022), 2–3, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922056055/tm2214608-1_sc13da.htm. “My Plan B… 0
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clarifying”: Twitter, Inc. v. Elon R. Musk, X Holdings I, Inc., and X Holdings II, Inc., Exhibit H, 30. “Suspending the Twitter account… incredibly inappropriate”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.” Twitter, April 26, 2022, 2:56
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p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519073003933515776. a meme claiming that Twitter had “left wing bias” and mocked an appearance: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “[image].” Twitter, April 27, 2022, 11:06 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519377424437243904. her account was quickly flooded with criticism: Kurt
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/news/articles/2022-04-29/musk-s-tesla-stock-sales-top-8-billion-with-latest-filings?sref=dZ65CIng. “No further TSLA sales planned after today”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” Twitter, April 28, 2022, 6:25 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519850299757846530. “Ultra Genius…
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with-latest-filings?sref=dZ65CIng. Musk’s net worth shrank: Brian Chappatta, Tom Maloney, Jack Witzig, Pei Yi Mak, and Andrew Heathcote, “Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Elon Musk,” Bloomberg, accessed June 13, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-musk/?sref=dZ65CIng. largest one-year jump since 1981: “Consumer Prices up
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process and see what they discover.…” Twitter, May 13, 2022, 6:47 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525291586669531137. “Twitter legal… this actually happened”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened.” Twitter
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10:03 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526246899606601730. he even “offered to buy her a horse”: Rich McHugh, “A SpaceX Flight Attendant Said Elon Musk Exposed Himself and Propositioned Her for Sex, Documents Show. The Company Paid $250,000 for Her Silence,” Business Insider, May 19, 2022, https://www.businessinsider
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written before they even talked to me.” Twitter, May 19, 2022, 10:19 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1527519328245059592. “Jack off the board!”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Jack off the board!” Twitter, May 26, 2022, 10:00 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1529869999803965446. only included one character: a
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/mayra-flores-capitol-riot-qanon-kfile/index.html. “y’all told me… a DRINK?”: Project Veritas, “Leaked Internal Slack Messages Show Twitter Employees Reaction to Elon Musk’s #TwitterAllHands Call,” YouTube, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvYF4HpitEU. CHAPTER 15: TWITTER V. ELON R. MUSK quietly slipped in the back
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Trial Looms,” Bloomberg, September 13, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/twitter-shareholders-approve-elon-musk-s-44-billion-buyout?sref=dZ65CIng. “What is so illuminating… Elon Musk’s phone”: Charlie Warzel, “Elon Musk’s Texts Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius,” Atlantic, September 30, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology
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Count Me Out,” YouTube, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GhhVHpPR_M. Their client wanted to revive the original deal: Twitter, Inc., Letter from Elon Musk Lawyers (filed October 3, 2022), https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922105787/tm2227435d1_ex99-s.htm. CHAPTER 16: LET THAT SINK IN “Entering
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printing”: Casey Newton, “Elon Takes Over Twitter,” Platformer, October 28, 2022, https://www.platformer.news/p/elon-takes-over-twitter. “Let the good times roll”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “let the good times roll.” Twitter, October 28, 2022, 5:09 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585966869122457600. he would investigate whether it
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was being shadow-banned: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “I will be digging in more today.” Twitter, October 28, 2022, 4:41 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585959864454459393. pledged to
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form a “content moderation council”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council
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October 28, 2022, 11:18 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586059953311137792. “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.” Twitter, October 28, 2022, 2:21 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk
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/status/1586105918143406080. “Comedy is now legal on Twitter”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.” Twitter, October 28, 2022, 2:16 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586104694421659648. he wanted to cut
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cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Twitter, October 31, 2022, 10:16 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144. “lords & peasants system”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for
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://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-30/musk-posts-then-deletes-tweet-spreading-conspiracy-theory-on-pelosi-attack. “Twitter obviously cannot… welcoming to all”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Dear Twitter Advertisers.” Twitter, October 27, 2022, 6:08 a.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728. roughly 90 percent of Twitter’s
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1, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/01/ad-giant-ipg-advises-brands-to-pause-twitter-spending.html. “Freedom of speech” or “Political ‘correctness’ ”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Advertisers should support: Freedom of speech Political ‘correctness.’ ” Twitter, November 2, 2022, 1:09 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587899771091566595. “massive
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drop in revenue”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we
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, November 4, 2022, 7:28 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880. “A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Thank you. A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues.” Twitter, November 4, 2022, 4:37 p.m., https://
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moderation staff experiencing the least impact.” Twitter, November 4, 2022, 3:19 p.m., https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657228462317568. Musk finally addressed the layoffs: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3
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@LillyPad.” Twitter, November 10, 2022, 1:09 p.m., https://twitter.com/LillyPad/status/1590813806275469333. Musk tried to adjust Twitter’s policies on the fly: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “To be more precise, accounts doing parody impersonations. Basically, tricking people is not ok.” Twitter, November 10, 2022, 5:56 p.m., https://
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://www.reuters.com/technology/major-ad-firm-omnicom-recommends-clients-pause-twitter-ad-spend-verge-2022-11-11/. “Quite the day!… Some epically funny tweets”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Quite the day!” Twitter, November 10, 2022, 11:30 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590970255064854529. Twitter suspended the subscription offering until
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a clear and honest discussion.” Twitter, December 2, 2022, 3:48 p.m., https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1598826588367470592. flew back to the Bay Area: Elon Musk Jet (@elonmuskjet), “Landed in Oakland, California, US. Apx. flt. time 4 Hours : 15 Mins.” Instagram, December 2, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/p/ClsWLItIvNL/.
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/news/articles/2022-12-16/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-mastodon-journalists-covering-musk?sref=dZ65CIng. “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.” Twitter, December 15, 2022, 7
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:09 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603587970832793600. “My commitment to free speech… personal safety risk”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk
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://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922056055/tm2214608-1_sc13da.htm. Musk had agreed to attend the match as part of the investment: Isaacson, Elon Musk, 461. met briefly with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Dalton Bennett, Samuel Oakford, Gerrit De Vynck, and Monique Woo, “From Jared Kushner to
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and should be reversed.” Twitter, December 18, 2022, 2:37 p.m., https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1604606914372984832. at first he tried to defend it: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Exactly. Twitter should be easy to use, but no more relentless free advertising of competitors. No traditional publisher allows this and neither will Twitter
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.” Twitter, December 18, 2022, 1:26 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604588904828600320. “Policy will be adjusted… no spam rule”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Policy will be adjusted to suspending accounts only when that account’s *primary* purpose is promotion of competitors, which essentially falls under the no
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deserve it.” Twitter, December 18, 2022, 5:29 p.m., https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604650028999405568. Musk’s jet took off for the United States: Elon Musk’s Jet “Tracking,” “Took off from Doha, Ad-Dawhah Municipality, QA,” Facebook, December 18, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/ElonJet/posts/pfbid025GvRHacGZgVvk88KnRV4Rt8Cy7BvvBu4WAUfXchu75VBM9VSXiJifJyT7dSvw5tMl. 57.5 percent
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—were in favor of Musk stepping down: Elon Musk, (@elonmusk), “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.” Twitter, December 18, 2022, 3:20 p
Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
by Jacob Silverman · 9 Oct 2025 · 312pp · 103,645 words
government power, personal and private interests. In about five months on the campaign trail and six months in office as a “special government employee,” Elon Musk enacted an extraordinary degree of disruption, becoming a dominant political force during what I believed to be America’s slide into authoritarianism. The MAGA-tech
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Chinese invasion. In short, he spoke like a full-blooded Republican, and he developed the requisite alliances. Silicon Valley figures with right-wing sympathies—especially Elon Musk and David Sacks—loved him. It seemed to me this was a step-change in American politics. Once, corporate titans built libraries, museums, and universities
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transphobic, bigoted, and wackily conspiratorial. Part of this book’s project is to explain how and why that happened.  As this book’s subtitle implies, Elon Musk is at the heart of this right-wing radicalization overtaking America’s business class. During the 2020 election cycle, Musk sounded, at least in public
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homelessness and criminal justice reform. They funneled money to right-wing politicians and bloggers trying to breathe life into the phony bigotry of race science. Elon Musk and his venture-capitalist buddies led a political revolt that at times included a rejection of basic democratic governance. On X, Musk expressed his
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than about some vague menacing notion of “wokeness,” with each viral story about overwrought identity politics adding fuel to a fire that only grew on Elon Musk’s X. Along with directing huge flows of investment money, often solicited from Middle Eastern dictatorships—such as the Saudi cash which helped with
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catalyze an authoritarian shift that was years in the making. 3 Tech Libertarians Embrace the Security State This new political reality didn’t start with Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or the 2016 election. Beyond the personal computer and smartphones, the history of Silicon Valley is just as much the history
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friends and business partners. (Women are typically underrepresented at this echelon of the tech-finance power structure.) Three of the key figures in this book—Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks—spent parts of their youth in apartheid South Africa, where they belonged to the privileged white minority in one
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about class involving people who, since they stand atop the economic pyramid, don’t wish to acknowledge its existence. This became practically a tic for Elon Musk, who despite his incredible wealth, adopted the same mantle of false populism worn by Donald Trump and other social-media-addicted billionaires. They may
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course, only one person’s attention really mattered, and the biotech mogul turned political firebrand got it. The top reply to the post was from Elon Musk, who had this to say: “True.” Fiery political-media operative Andrew Breitbart was famously devoted to the idea that “politics is downstream of culture.”
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the royal family, like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Through his Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed had interests in businesses like Lyft and Snapchat. And until Elon Musk came along, he was Twitter’s largest outside shareholder. In March 2018, six months before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, MBS visited the United
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successful encounter. Oprah would get a tweeted photo of herself with the crown prince; the meeting with “prominent political donors” would go unphotographed. With Elon Musk, MBS would tour a Hyperloop model—a proposed rapid-transport system using pressurized pods—and offer the following “key message”: “This is a very exciting
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prophet of urban decline, describing a formerly thriving city undone by crime- and drug-loving Democrats. With his sizable following on X, his friendship with Elon Musk, and his popular podcast All-In, which he hosted with fellow tech investors Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg, Sacks became a tech celebrity
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Working Model The political battles playing out in San Francisco would mirror ones playing out in Miami, Austin, and nationally during the 2024 presidential election. Elon Musk’s ruthless purge of Twitter’s staff and David Sacks’ reactionary campaigns against liberal Democrats would be replicated in various political arenas—including, eventually, the
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to shape their public image, maintain advantages in business, keep privileged information secret, or to exercise control over others. The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk required partygoers to sign NDAs at events where he allegedly consumed drugs like LSD and ketamine.5 Similar stories abound for entertainment-industry celebrities engaging
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was deserved and virtuous not because of some specious notion of hard work or innovation but because they were leading humanity to a brighter future. “Elon Musk is projected to become world’s first trillionaire,” posted Doge Designer, one of the Musk-centered accounts that the billionaire frequently quoted. “He said
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On May 24, 2023, Florida governor Ron DeSantis officially announced his entry into the race for the Republican presidential nomination in that disastrous appearance on Elon Musk’s Twitter Spaces discussed earlier. Spaces is an audio chat space where masses of people could listen to speakers and digitally raise their hands to
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Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In this heady atmosphere, US tech executives styled themselves as hardened national-security experts. Helberg was one of them. So were Elon Musk and David Sacks, especially with their interest in Ukraine. In Musk’s case, it was at least partly a financial interest, with his Starlink
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the SEC’s crackdown on crypto fraud and securities law violations were unacceptable breaches of norms. It wasn’t just venture capitalists, tech executives, and Elon Musk who were putting their wealth behind Trump. The libertarian-minded cryptocurrency industry was dominating that cycle’s political giving. The industry’s super PACs were
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future of infinite abundance. One of his popular mantras went: “We wanted flying cars, we got 140 characters.” (Thiel’s friend and PayPal colleague Elon Musk fixed that issue by doubling X’s character limit.) The éminence grise of the powerful network of investors and executives known informally as the PayPal
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and shell companies could be traced to their ultimate beneficiaries. My attention kept returning to X’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, which started long before Elon Musk acquired the company and persisted under his ownership. It was about more than Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the major company shareholder and billionaire Saudi industrialist
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interest of self-preservation and avoiding expensive legal settlements, would never acknowledge its own negligence or potential liability. Twitter might have become X, buttressed by Elon Musk’s militant devotion to free speech, but the Saudi government ownership and influence remained—indeed, appeared more prominent than ever. The new company’s army
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bad information, AI-generated fakes, and bad-faith hysteria about crime and migrants; infiltrated by authoritarian foreign governments; presided over practically 24/7 by Elon Musk—this ridiculous, debauched platform was one of the most powerful media tools that a power-hungry mogul could ever have in his political arsenal. And
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trans youth and the healthcare programs that served them.18 Musk’s ability to disrupt Americans’ lives would be vast. It sounded like Shadow President Elon Musk. We had never seen the American plutocracy operate quite like this. The richest person in the world spent the homestretch of the 2024 presidential
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dismissed as an aberration, but a second victory, after everything that had happened, would signal that something fundamental had changed in the political firmament. Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Marc Andreessen watched the election returns come in alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago.3 Musk left early, already certain that Trump
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an unmitigated triumph. “Trump will fill his top ranks with billionaires, former CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists,” Axios reported two days after the election. “Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Joe Lonsdale and other tech leaders are helping pick staff and drive policies to quickly expand AI, crypto and other business
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frontiers.”8 They had unfettered power and influence. They were going to make so much money. The stock market and cryptocurrencies surged. Elon Musk’s estimated worth passed the $300 billion mark.9 According to one calculation, the world’s ten richest people added $64 billion to their
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away licenses from media organizations they resented. They wanted to prosecute advertisers for engaging in a supposed criminal conspiracy by choosing not to advertise on Elon Musk’s X. They wanted an end to all regulatory and legal investigations that might harm their interests. They wanted personal liberty, so they elected
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the presidency. Other members of Thiel’s network would find jobs throughout the administration and the military and intelligence apparatus. His companies would surely prosper. Elon Musk, Thiel’s friend and former PayPal colleague, was acting as the potential dictatorial CEO figure that Curtis Yarvin had forecast as an American savior who
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Lago, receiving high-level briefings, advising on presidential appointments, and sitting in on calls with world leaders. Trump’s family took to calling him Uncle Elon. Musk vowed that his America PAC would stay in business, spending big in the midterm elections and supporting challengers to Republican politicians who were not sufficiently
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Trump and Musk. Offering them his polite support, Ramaswamy officially bowed out of the administration to run for governor in his home state of Ohio. Elon Musk was the shadow president—or perhaps simply the president, at least until his 130-day term as a “special government employee” was up. Perhaps
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rut of societal stagnation, decline, corruption, and mistrust. But we would have to find a way to build that world. For now, we live in Elon Musk’s. Acknowledgements Thank you to Liz and the kids, Harry, Scott, Loretta, Gary, Rachel, the ghosts of my grandparents, Adam Chandler, Tomasz Hoskins and
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. Finally, with special gratitude, thank you to those who cannot be named. Notes introduction 1 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/world/europe/elon-musk-roman-salute-nazi.html 2 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-wealth.html 3 https://www.oilandgas360.com/edenver22-strive
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Is2MyuUfz9h-KyqnILRrcCL9A7N-RM0VFyG7Bp 11 https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/15/twitter-journalists-suspended-musk/ 12 https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/business/elon-musk-nazi-jokes/index.html 13 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/musk-holocaust-public-workers-union-1235296401/ 14 https://www.france24.com/en/live
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25 https://apnews.com/article/twitter-musk-texas-mall-shooting-misleading-claims-c297797d1eb0f708cc84d05e0735d8cc 26 https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/05/16/george-soros-elon-musk-adl/ 27 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1724908287471272299?s=20 28 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1527748229470646272 29 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1527774704018280448 30
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california-for-texas/ 4 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-stanford-undergraduate-and-the-mentor.html 5 https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e1 6 https://ciceroinstitute.org/issues/homelessness/ 7 https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/banning-street-camping-gets-people 8 https://nypost.com/
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school-vouchers/ 21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcDiN5gIrNo 22 https://fortune.com/2024/11/09/timothy-mellon-net-worth-top-donor-trump-campaign-elon-musk/ 23 https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/vivek-ramaswamy-flip-flops-tiktok-rcna105062 24 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-
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teslas-fremont-car-factory-blockbuster-racism-lawsuit-to-go-before-a-jury-next-year/ 13 https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/03/tesla-racism-lawsuit-elon-musks-firm-to-pay-3-2-million-after-137-million-award-tossed/ 14 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854791544374804784 15 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
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mean-hardship-for-americans-rcna177807 26 https://x.com/PirateWires/status/1856517841916145756 https://archive.ph/hTScX 27 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/14/politics/elon-musk-doge-trump/index.html 28 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-announces-musk-and-ramaswamy-will-lead-outside-advisory-group-department-of-government-efficiency
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nbcnews.com/business/economy/economy-if-trump-wins-second-term-could-mean-hardship-for-americans-rcna177807 30 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/14/politics/elon-musk-doge-trump/index.html 31 https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/musk-putin-secret-conversations-37e1c187 32 https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1579941475613229056?lang=
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(CFTC) here, here, here conspiracism/conspiracy theories here, here, here, here and the Cicero Institute here and Joe Lonsdale here and Maguire here and Elon Musk here, here and Sovereign Citizen here and Twitter here, here, here conspiracy and Sam Bankman-Fried here, here, here, here and James Beeks here and
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, here, here DeSantis, Ron here, here and the “1776 Returns” document here and CBDCs here on cryptocurrency here and Disney here homeless law here and Elon Musk here, here and David Sacks here and Twitter here digital currencies here, here, here, here disinformation here, here, here, here, here Disney here, here,
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, René here Glacier Ventures here Google here and AI here, here and defense tech here governance here government contracts here, here, here, here, here and Elon Musk here Palantir here Qwest here Gracias, Antonio here, here, here, here Grants Pass (OR) here Great Replacement Theory here, here Greenberg, Joel here Greene,
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Marjorie Taylor here Griffin, Ken here, here GrowSF here, here Groypers here, here Hamilton family here Harris, Kamala here, here, here, here Elon Musk on here Hashemi, Nader here, here Helberg, Jacob here and defense tech here, here and national security here and TikTok here, here and Donald Trump
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to Florida here and PayPal here racism here, here, here, here anti-white here and the Great Replacement Theory here Jean-Marie Le Pen here Elon Musk on here and the “Nextdoor Election” here and South Africa here Tesla lawsuit here Raichik, Chaya here Ramaswamy, Vivek here, here, here on assassination
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Valley Bank (SVB) here Singh, Nishad here Snailbrook (TX) here Solano County (CA) here Soros, George here, here, here, here and Duran here, here Elon Musk on here and Vivek Ramaswamy here Soros Foundation here South Africa here Southern District of New York’s District Attorney’s Office here, here Sovereign
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assassination attempts here and cryptocurrency here, here Bitcoin here, here, here and the Hill and Valley Forum here meeting with tech industry executives here and Elon Musk here, here and David Sacks here and Saudi Arabia here and the SEC here and Peter Thiel here, here, here, here, here, here and
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
by Eric Berger · 2 Mar 2021 · 304pp · 89,879 words
Goulash Index Photo Section About the Author Copyright About the Publisher Prologue September 14, 2019 A fat, red sun sank into the Texas horizon as Elon Musk bounded toward a silvery spaceship. Reaching its concrete landing pad, Musk marveled up at the stainless steel, steampunk contraption looming above, which shone brilliantly in
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tank that had fed propellant to a Raptor rocket engine. “It’s in remarkably good shape considering we had an inferno in there,” he said. Elon Musk traveled a long road to reach these plains rolling down to the Gulf of Mexico. In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX with the intention of eventually
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SpaceX had only just begun to cut metal on its first rocket. Although its inaugural launch remained a few years away, the firm’s founder, Elon Musk, had already taken the first step toward Mars. He understood he would go nowhere without the right people. So interview by interview, Musk sought out
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employee number fourteen at SpaceX. The story of SpaceX begins toward the end of the year 2000, on the other side of the United States. Elon Musk was driving on the Long Island Expressway with a friend and fellow entrepreneur named Adeo Ressi, shortly after PayPal’s board of directors had ousted
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right person, but, he said, “Nobody who seemed to be good would join, and there was no point in hiring somebody who wasn’t good.” Elon Musk assumed the role of chief engineer himself. He also liked Cantrell, thinking the smooth-talking engineer could serve as the chief of business development for
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, harsh, reflective, and a stickler for the finest details of rocket science. But most of all, he channeled a preternatural force to move things forward. Elon Musk just wants to get shit done. The engineers sitting in those seats around the conference table had to possess a certain amount of mania, too
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feed the engine. They had nicknamed their booster “BFR,” short for Big Fucking Rocket. In January 2002, Garvey told Mueller that an internet millionaire named Elon Musk wanted to come by and meet him that weekend, and see their amateur engine. Mueller didn’t think much of it until Musk and his
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phone and called Mango at his desk in Alabama. To Mango, the call came out of nowhere. After the caller identified himself as someone named Elon Musk, he proceeded to explain in his slightly foreign accent that he was a millionaire who had sold his interest in PayPal and gotten into the
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suffered a similar fate, limping along for a few years before selling its intellectual property rights to SpaceDev, a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corporation. When Elon Musk showed up at Vandenberg a decade later, some of the Air Force graybeards thought they knew pretty much what to expect from this private company
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no tables, so everyone just sat in a circle,” he said. “It was a beautiful night, and a sad night.” In moments of high tension, Elon Musk often tries to break the stress with laughter. Musk has a rollicking wit. He will say something funny, realize it is funny, and iterate on
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not quite quench her thirst for making a difference. Deep inside, Shotwell knew she had more to offer the world. So the idea of selling Elon Musk’s unproven rocket, and working for someone regarded as a demanding boss, did not faze her. “I knew the business by then,” she said. “I
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Boeing, did, too. They now had a monopoly on national security launches for the next decade, along with guaranteed profits. Everyone was happy—except for Elon Musk. He sued in U.S. District Court to stop the merger, arguing that SpaceX should be allowed to compete for these missions. While it was
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of its biggest rivals in the launch industry, gone against the Air Force with the proposed United Launch Alliance merger, and protested a NASA contract. Elon Musk was not walking on eggshells on the way to orbit. He was breaking a lot of eggs. This, of course, made life difficult for Shotwell
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and stylish clothes. And it was her time to show the good old boys how it was done. | 6 | Flight Two March 2006–March 2007 Elon Musk recognized the extraordinary demands he placed on SpaceX’s early hires. He therefore decided to reward employees who spent the majority of 2004 traveling to
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, with a shiny Falcon 1 rocket in tow—transfixed Dunn. This was the future. He knew what he must do. He would go and help Elon Musk build rockets to change the world. Only by early 2005, SpaceX was nearly three years old. The company was already preparing for its first launch
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of them stripped. The warm water beckoned. | 11 | Always Go to Eleven September 2008–May 2020 After sinking six years and $100 million into SpaceX, Elon Musk finally had a real rocket. Only a handful of countries had ever built a liquid-fueled booster and launched it into orbit before. With the
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Ocean. For eight years, the company had scrabbled to make ends meet, struggling to put rockets into orbit, and nearly dying on several occasions. For Elon Musk and SpaceX’s rapidly growing workforce that night, those failures were behind them. Overhead, their rocket soared among the stars. Below, waves dashed against the
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Mars,” he said. “Not even close,” I replied. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Not even close. It’s a goddamn outrage.” This is the passion that fires Elon Musk, and impels him to drive his teams forward every single day. Decisions in his world come down to a simple calculus: Will this get humans
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SpaceX had done. The chief executive of United Launch Alliance, Tory Bruno, sent Shotwell flowers in congratulations. They have proven to be quite a pair, Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell. She understood the industry he wanted to change. And when he pushed for that change, she helped guide him and stood by
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did not believe the Mars stuff in the beginning. “I kind of ignored it,” she said. “I wasn’t even bought in.” She is today. ELON MUSK, Founder And what of the ringmaster? Since the early years of his rocket company, Musk has ascended from semi-anonymous dot-com millionaire status to
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2016 to build machines that can interface directly with the human brain, and he formed a company to dig tunnels beneath congested cities. In short, Elon Musk had a lot on his mind when I nudged his memories back to the tiny island of Omelek. He wanted to help. Musk understands the
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telling the story in full, or to allow an author free rein inside SpaceX to speak with employees about the company’s formative years. But Elon Musk wanted me to talk to everyone for this book. And he meant it. “It was a high-drama situation,” he said of launching rockets from
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from those who toiled on Kwaj to make the impossible possible. For this experience I have many people to thank. The list must start with Elon Musk. When I first proposed this book idea in early 2019, he eagerly agreed. His message to me was that I should talk to everyone. With
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if it was not. I love you; and this book is for you, for always believing in me. Key SpaceX Employees from 2002 to 2008 ELON MUSK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Mary Beth Brown, assistant TOM MUELLER, VICE PRESIDENT OF PROPULSION Jeremy Hollman, director of propulsion development Dean Ono, director of in-space
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David Giger, Flight One mission manager BOB REAGAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF MACHINING OPERATIONS BRANDEN SPIKES, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Timeline 2002 MAY 6 SpaceX founded by Elon Musk OCTOBER 31 First gas generator full-duration test-firing (Mojave, California) 2003 MARCH 11 First Merlin engine thrust chamber firing (McGregor, Texas) MAY 31 SpaceX
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) Bigej Island, just south of Omelek, is where the SpaceX team would sometimes stop for a swim on their way home from work. (Hans Koenigsmann) Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, tours Cape Canaveral with President Barack Obama in 2010. (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Gwynne Shotwell, right, was instrumental in making the
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Omelek. (Hans Koenigsmann) A C-17 aircraft flies by Omelek Island during the Flight One campaign after delivering an emergency shipment of LOX. (Tim Buzza) Elon Musk, center top, with the Flight One launch team and Air Force officials prior to launch. (Tim Buzza) Collecting the wreckage after Flight One. (Hans Koenigsmann
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) A solemn Elon Musk surveys debris collected after Flight One. (Hans Koenigsmann) Kestrel engine with its expanded nozzle. (Hans Koenigsmann) Zach Dunn poses with a Merlin 1C rocket engine
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the plane: Flo Li supports Zach Dunn as they work furiously after the Falcon 1 first stage implodes midflight. (Ron Gargiulo) The moment of truth: Elon Musk and Tom Mueller watch Flight Four from the Command Van. (SpaceX) It wasn’t all hard work: Departing Omelek on the Peregrine Falcon, it’s
The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos
by Christian Davenport · 20 Mar 2018 · 390pp · 108,171 words
(or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Davenport, Christian, author. Title: The space barons : Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the quest to colonize the cosmos/Christian Davenport. Description: First edition. | New York : PublicAffairs, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN
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headquarters outside Los Angeles on this evening just before Christmas 2015 cheered it just as their rivals at Blue Origin had done—and then some. Elon Musk watched the rocket reappear from outside on a causeway. Then, he sprinted back into the control room to see the image of the rocket standing
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step in a race that was only just beginning. TIMELINE September 2000 Jeff Bezos founds Blue Operations LLC, the precursor to Blue Origin. March 2002 Elon Musk incorporates Space Exploration Technologies. December 2003 First powered flight of SpaceShipOne. December 2003 Musk shows off the Falcon 1 rocket in Washington, DC. September 2004
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it. “Well, you’re talking to the man who owns it,” the city manager said. Cantrell told him that he worked for a man named Elon Musk, who had made a lot of money on the Internet and had started a company called Space Exploration Technologies. Never heard of him, the city
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culture. Imagine rough—well, it’s rougher than that. Kids gave Elon a very hard time, and it had a huge impact on his life.” Elon Musk fled South Africa after high school when he was seventeen. First, he went to live with relatives in Canada, where he enrolled in Queen’s
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hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight—to send a signal about the importance of what he planned to accomplish. The same day that Elon Musk was parading his Falcon 1 rocket down Independence Avenue in Washington, DC, Rutan was getting ready for the first powered flight of the spaceplane he
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participants had to get along. They were trying to figure out how to start a new industry. At least they had a place to meet. Elon Musk had graciously offered to host the meeting at SpaceX’s El Segundo factory. Even though he was still far from being a household name, he
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of the program, but because it was already well under development. Walker, the program manager, had never heard of the company SpaceX, or its founder, Elon Musk. But once he saw Musk’s plan to develop a rocket that could launch extremely inexpensively, he wanted to know more about this Internet tycoon
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ridiculously long; the work, challenging. It was great for young, energetic, and brilliant workaholics, but not so great for those seeking a “work-life balance.” Elon Musk was demanding and known to yell at employees on the middle of the factory floor. A former executive at Lockheed who got to know Musk
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eccentric billionaire who had started a space company from scratch with absolutely no experience with rockets, but talked about colonizing Mars—a wild card named Elon Musk, who was now on an improbable, but epic, roll. THE FALCON 9 had flown successfully. And SpaceX was moving ahead with developing a more robust
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NASA administrators in Houston. At SpaceX’s headquarters just outside of Los Angeles, employees broke into raucous applause, chanting their boss’s name, “We love Elon!” Musk was now developing a cultlike following, and SpaceX had swelled to more than two thousand employees with an average age of thirty, with $4 billion
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it!” THE F-1 TEAM wasn’t the only space-related award of the evening. The president of the Explorers Club had become fascinated with Elon Musk, and what he was accomplishing in space, and had decided to present him with a special President’s Award. As an image of Musk in
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injured. And it was only a test, one that SpaceX stressed “was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test.” Elon Musk even had coined an acronym for such spectacular failures: RUD, or rapid unscheduled disassembly. But it was also a reminder that for all the advancements
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-Be-with-You ritual, a curbside tent party with costumed storm troopers, Han Solos and Yodas. Behind the locked doors, their Yoda was getting ready. Elon Musk wanted to get the details right. This was his big moment, and he wasn’t going to rush it. For months, he’d been teasing
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. With the Ansari X Prize, Allen had been at the vanguard of the commercial space movement, which was now dominated by his fellow billionaire tycoons—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Branson, all of whom were pushing ahead with their own plans, showing it could be done. Allen wanted back in the game
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were gone. A race past even their own imaginations, deep into the cosmos, to a point in the beyond where there was no finish line. Elon Musk unveils the version of the Dragon spacecraft designed to fly astronauts at an event at SpaceX’s headquarters, 2014. Courtesy of NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis. Jeff
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front of SpaceShipOne after Binnie successfully flew the spacecraft in 2004, winning the Ansari X Prize. Copyright © Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC; courtesy of Scaled Composites. Elon Musk gives President Barack Obama a tour of SpaceX launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, 2010. Courtesy of NASA/Bill Ingalls. Paul Allen speaks as
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airplane ever flown. It is designed to “air launch” as many as three rockets. Copyright © Stratolaunch Corporation. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The four billionaires featured in this book—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Paul Allen—all run multiple companies and have huge demands on their time. So, I’m grateful that all of
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the dozens of interviews I conducted for this book, my research depended on many texts, a few of which merit specific mention: Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, and Julian Guthrie
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Announce That It Is Ceasing All Business Operations Effective October 23, 2000.” “Our parents had no idea”: Tom Junod, “Elon Musk: Triumph of His Will,” Esquire, November 14, 2012. “I thought the Internet”: Elon Musk, “The Future of Energy and Transport,” Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, November 14, 2012. “Well, I don’t think
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you’ll be coming back”: Elon Musk, “Stanford University Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders” lecture, October 8, 2003. “The online financial payment system”: Ibid. Given the size of the rock: https://www.youtube.com/
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watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o. “We were both interested”: Junod, “Elon Musk.” “Because, of course”: Elon Musk, “Mars Pioneer Award” acceptance speech, 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention, August 4, 2012. “I just did not want Apollo”: Pat Morrison Q
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& A with Elon Musk, “Space Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2012. As a winged spaceplane: Elon Musk, Stanford lecture. Space was still the exclusive: For more on SpaceX’s early days, see Ashlee Vance
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, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” Ecco, May 19, 2015. On March 14, 2002, Musk founded: Ibid. At the dawn of the
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Conflicts?” Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2004. “We do everything”: Ibid. “Northrop wasn’t expecting us”: Ibid. As a kid in South Africa: Ashlee Vance, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” Ecco, May 19, 2015, 40. “I’ve never heard”: Renae Merle, “U.S. Strips Boeing of
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York Times, February 5, 2006. The failures were so frequent: Vance, Elon Musk, 124. “I tell folks”: Sandra Sanchez, “SpaceX: Blasting into the Future—A Waco Today Interview with Elon Musk,” Waco Tribune, December 22, 2011. Early on, Musk pegged: Megan Geuss, “Elon Musk Tells BBC He Thought Tesla, SpaceX ‘Had a 10% Chance at Success
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, 1985. Branson’s version of space: Paul Allen, Idea Man (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011), 243. 7. THE RISK “The United States is a distillation”: Elon Musk, “Mars Pioneer Award” acceptance speech, 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention, 2012. As a guidebook pointed out: David Goodman, Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast
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had always had a bit: Kerry A. Dolan, “How to Raise a Billionaire: An Interview with Elon Musk’s Father, Errol Musk,” Forbes, July 12, 2015. His maternal grandparents: “Tesla and SpaceX: Elon Musk’s Industrial Empire,” Segment Extra, “Elon Musk on His Family History,” 60 Minutes, March 30, 2014. “There is something particularly”: Fay Goldie
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Orbit,” Reuters, July 14, 2009. Looking back on it: Michael Griffin, NASA Oral History Project, January 12, 2013. “I’m going to watch”: Carl Hoffman, “Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune on a Mission Beyond Earth’s Orbit,” Wired, May 22, 2007. “This was a pretty nerve-racking”: Tariq Malik, “SpaceX’s
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. “We wanted to keep”: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/the-making-of-the-apollo-11-mission-patch. And when the NASA officials: “Tesla and SpaceX: Elon Musk’s Industrial Empire,” 60 Minutes, March 30, 2014. Goddard was derided: “Apollo 11: How America Won the Race to the Moon,” Associated Press, August 21
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don’t”: Marcia Dunn, “PayPal Millionaire’s Rocket Making 1st Test Flight,” Associated Press, June 3, 2010. “A dramatic launch failure”: Andy Pasztor, “Space Pioneer Elon Musk Faces Big Risks with Upcoming Launch,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2010. Eventually a reporter: Andy Pasztor, “Amazon Chief’s Spaceship Misfires,” Wall Street Journal
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Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Competitive Procurement,” US Government Accountability Office, March 4, 2014, http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/661330.pdf. “Musk is”: Aaron Mehta, “Elon Musk on Russian Assassins, Lockheed Martin, and Going to Mars,” Defense News, June 10, 2014, http://intercepts.defensenews.com/2014/06
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-russian-assassins-lockheed-martin-and-going-to-mars/. “Our toughest competitor”: Ibid. “SpaceX is trying to cut”: Christian Davenport, “ULA Chief Accuses Elon Musk’s SpaceX of Trying to ‘Cut Corners,’” Washington Post, June 18, 2014. 208 “It’s kind of the best”: Joel Achenbach, “Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin
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a NASA slide showed: Jeff Foust, “Progress Anomaly Strains Space Station Supply Lines,” SpaceNews, April 28, 2015. “The vast majority of people”: Christian Davenport, “Hearing Elon Musk Explain Why His Rocket Just Blew Up Shows Why He’s Such an Intense CEO,” Washington Post, June 20, 2015. 13. “THE EAGLE HAS LANDED
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, “The Inside Story of How Billionaires Are Racing to Take You to Outer Space,” Washington Post, August 19, 2016. As Musk once said: Carl Hoffman, “Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune on a Mission Beyond Earth Orbit,” Wired, May 22, 2007. SpaceX compared it to: “X Marks the Spot: Falcon 9 Attempts
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/2014/12/16/x-marks-spot-falcon-9-attempts-ocean-platform-landing. “Well, at least we got close”: Christian Davenport, “After SpaceX Sticks Its Landing, Elon Musk Talks About a City on Mars,” Washington Post, December 22, 2015. “It really quite dramatically”: Ibid. The National Transportation Safety Board: NTSB press release, “Lack
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, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 77–78. 14. MARS “Essentially what we’re saying”: Christian Davenport, “Elon Musk Provides New Details on His ‘Mind Blowing’ Mission to Mars,” Washington Post, June 10, 2016. “So,” he said, “how do we figure out”: “Making Humans
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suddenly: Christian Davenport, “Implication of Sabotage Adds Intrigue to SpaceX Investigation,” Washington Post, September 30, 2016. But it was also all a bit: Christian Davenport, “Elon Musk on Mariachi Bands, Zero-G Games, and Why His Mars Plan Is Like ‘Battlestar Galactica,’” Washington Post, September 28, 2016. If Musk were going to
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: Opportunity Nears to Reassess Launch Vehicle and Ground Systems Cost and Schedule,” US Government Accountability Office, July 2016. “His job is to provide”: Christian Davenport, “Elon Musk Offers Glimpse of Plans to Deliver Humans to Mars,” Washington Post, September 27, 2016. “There’s so much interest”: Christian Davenport, “Why Investors Are Following
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