The trouble began days before the biography was even published.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
CNN had a story summarizing an excerpt of Walter Isaacson\u2019s Elon Musk<\/em><\/a> <\/em>that claimed Musk had shut down SpaceX\u2019s satellite network, Starlink, to prevent a \u201cUkrainian sneak attack\u201d on the Russian navy. The Washington Post <\/em>followed it up, publishing the excerpt<\/a> where Isaacson claimed Musk had essentially shut down a military offensive on a personal whim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This reporting did not pass the smell test to me, and I said so at the time<\/a>; I wondered about the sourcing. One of the things that anyone covering Elon Musk for long enough has to reckon with is that he loves to tell hilarious lies. For instance:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The thing you learn after a while on the Musk beat is that his most self-aggrandizing statements usually bear the least resemblance to reality. Musk says a lot of stuff! Some of it is exaggeration, and some isn\u2019t true at all. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson\u2019s sweeping 670-page biography has an intense amount of access to the man at its center. The problem is the man is Elon Musk, a guy who in 2011 promised to get us to space in just three years<\/a>. In reality, the first SpaceX crew launched into orbit<\/a> almost a decade later. Sure, access is the appeal of the biography \u2014\u00a0but access gives Musk gets lots of chances to sell his own mythology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I wanted to know if Isaacson had done his homework<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n So when I opened the Musk biography, I wanted to know if Isaacson had done his homework. The first thing I did was flip to the back, where the author lists his sources for the Ukraine thing. They are: interviews with Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, and Jared Birchall (Musk\u2019s body man); emails from Lauren Dreyer; and text messages from Mykhailo Fedorov, \u201cprovided by Elon Musk.\u201d Other sources are news articles, one of which was about SpaceX curbing Ukraine\u2019s use of drones<\/a>. Crucially, though, this article says nothing about Ukrainian submarines \u2014\u00a0instead, it\u2019s primarily about aerial vehicles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0In his book, Isaacson writes:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Throughout the evening and into the night, he [Musk] personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within a hundred kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n That final sentence is arresting, isn\u2019t it? I could find no support for it in any of the news articles that Isaacson listed as sources for this chapter. There is <\/em>a Financial Times<\/em> story that confirms some Starlink outages during a Ukrainian push<\/a> against the Russians, but it says nothing about drone subs or washing ashore harmlessly. A New York Times <\/em>article confirms Musk doesn\u2019t want Starlink running drones but says nothing about drone subs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What could the possible source for this sentence be? In the following paragraph, Isaacson quotes text messages from Fedorov, who had \u201csecretly shared with him [Musk] the details of how the drone subs were crucial\u201d to the Ukrainians. Not very secret now, I suppose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Musk disputed Isaacson\u2019s account on Twitter: \u201cSpaceX did not deactivate anything,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,\u201d he went on, though he did not specify which government\u2019s authorities<\/a>. \u201cIf I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson caved immediately<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Tremendous statement. \u201cTo clarify\u201d obfuscates what\u2019s going on: is Isaacson saying his book is wrong? Surely that is what this means since \u201cfuture editions will be updated\u201d to correct it<\/a>. The Post<\/em> corrected its excerpt<\/a>, anyway. \u201cThe Ukrainians thought\u201d \u2014\u00a0which Ukrainians, and how did Isaacson know their thinking? In his listed sources, we have only the text messages of one Ukrainian, who, for diplomatic purposes, may be obscuring what he knows. \u201cThey asked Musk to enable it for their drone attack\u201d is an entirely different account than the one given in the book, which says Musk shut off <\/em>existing coverage rather than approving extended coverage; what could possibly be the source here? And of course, the last sentence \u2014 \u201cMusk did not enable it because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war\u201d \u2014 is simple boot-licking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are dealing with not one but two unreliable narrators: Musk and Isaacson himself<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson \u201cclarified\u201d further in another tweet. \u201dBased on my conversations with Musk, I mistakenly thought the policy to not allow Starlink to be used for an attack on Crimea had been first decided on the night of the Ukrainian attempted sneak attack that night,\u201d he wrote on Twitter<\/a>. \u201cHe now says that the policy had been implemented earlier, but the Ukrainians did not know it, and that night he simply reaffirmed the policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There was a way to find out what\u2019s true here, and it would have been to interview more sources, both Ukrainian and US military ones. Isaacson chose not to. Musk\u2019s word was good enough for him \u2014\u00a0and so, when Musk contested the characterization, Isaacson rolled over.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I am lingering here because it highlights a major problem with Isaacson\u2019s biography. We are dealing with not one but two unreliable narrators: Musk and Isaacson himself. After all, just before issuing his clarification, Isaacson had been touting a walk through the SpaceX factory with CBS\u2019s David Pogue<\/a> to promote his book.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson writes a specific kind of biography. There is even a \u201cgenius\u201d boxed set of his biographies that includes Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and \u2014 somewhat incongruously \u2014 Steve Jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One way to keep Musk\u2019s myth intact is simply not to check things out<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Having made a pattern of writing biographies of important men \u2014\u00a0and one important woman, Jennifer Doudna of CRISPR fame \u2014 Isaacson is now in the position of a kind of kingmaker. To keep up his pattern, everyone he writes about implicitly is branded a genius.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One way to keep Musk\u2019s myth intact is simply not to check things out. Within the first three paragraphs of the book, Isaacson describes a wilderness survival camp Musk attended, where \u201cevery few years, one of the kids would die.\u201d This is a striking claim! I flipped to the \u201cnotes\u201d section to see if Isaacson had interviewed any of Musk\u2019s schoolmates. He hadn\u2019t. There are no news articles backing it up, either. So what is the source? Presumably one or more of the Musks \u2014 Elon is quoted directly as saying the counselors told him not to die like another kid in a previous year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Arguably the entire Musk family has an interest in presenting Elon Musk as preternaturally tough and also as using his tough childhood as an excuse for his continuing bad behavior. There are some weird choices as a result.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson writes that Musk\u2019s \u201cblood boiled if anyone falsely<\/strong> implied he had succeeded because of inherited wealth or claimed he didn\u2019t deserve to be called a founder of one of the companies he helped start.\u201d The bolding on \u201cfalsely\u201d is mine because Isaacson had earlier detailed Errol Musk, Elon\u2019s father, giving Elon and Kimbal Musk \u201c$28,000 plus a beat-up car he bought for $500\u201d to help them start Zip2. Maye, Elon\u2019s mother, contributed another $10,000 and \u201clet them use her credit card because they had not been approved for one.\u201d Certainly Musk got started with family money. Is the problem about the meaning of \u201cinherited wealth\u201d?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Skipping how dependent Musk is on Texas is a howler<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s another strange choice. \u201cOver the years, one criticism of Tesla has been that the company was \u2018bailed out\u2019 or \u2018subsidized\u2019 by the government in 2009.\u201d This is not quite right. Over the years, the criticism has been that Tesla<\/a> has gotten a great deal of assistance<\/a> from state, federal, and local governments<\/a>, sometimes screwing them in the process, as demonstrated by the Buffalo Gigafactory. By one estimate, Tesla alone has gotten more than $3 billion in loans and subsidies from state and local governments<\/a>. While Isaacson gives a detailed accounting of Tesla\u2019s $465 million in loans from a DOE program, he skips all the rest of the assists Musk has gotten over the years \u2014\u00a0goodies that have inspired jealousy from the likes of Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then there\u2019s this description of Neuralink, Musk\u2019s brain implant company: \u201cThe idea for Neuralink was inspired by science fiction, most notably the Culture<\/em> space-travel novels by Iain Banks.\u201d Maybe so, but there\u2019s actual science fact<\/em>: brain-machine interfaces had been implanted in humans as early as 2006<\/a>, something Isaacson doesn\u2019t mention. Musk certainly didn\u2019t come up with the idea; brain-machine interfaces already existed. Nor does Isaacson mention the gruesome allegations about Neuralink\u2019s test subjects<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But I want to get to the real big one: Musk\u2019s politics. This is a recurring theme for Isaacson, and his perspective is bewildering.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Musk\u2019s dependence on taxpayer largess plays a role here; skipping how dependent Musk is on Texas is a howler. Musk has often donated in ways that will benefit him in Texas<\/a>, where he has a substantial operation. So writing a sentence like \u201cMusk has never been very political\u201d when Musk has donated more than $1 billion to politicians<\/a> in the last 20 years is odd.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, I personally view Musk as a political nihilist,<\/a> willing to say whatever he needs to say to get taxpayer money. But it\u2019s undeniable that he\u2019s spent decades palling around with libertarian-to-far-right types (most famously Peter Thiel and David Sacks, who is inexplicably described as \u201cnot rigidly partisan\u201d despite coauthoring a noxious book with Thiel that, among other things, suggested date rape wasn\u2019t real<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you know these details, Musk looks like a dolt<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n These long-standing right-wing ties belie the notion advanced by Isaacson that the real cause of Musk\u2019s right-wing pivot is his daughter, Jenna; I found these sections of the book difficult to read, as they essentially amount to victim blaming. In Isaacson\u2019s telling, \u201cJenna\u2019s anger made Musk sensitive to the backlash against billionaires.\u201d She stopped speaking to her father in 2020 and transitioned without telling him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I wonder, though Isaacson doesn\u2019t, if she didn\u2019t tell him because she was afraid to. Musk found out from a member of his security detail \u2014\u00a0and it\u2019s revealing to me that none of the people around Musk who knew, including Grimes, wanted to break the news. It\u2019s not unusual for queer people to hide from parents they suspect will reject them;\u00a0there is a reason many gay and trans people have \u201cfound families<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Musk tweets, \u201cTake the red pill,\u201d in 2020, Isaacson notes that it\u2019s a reference to The Matrix<\/em> but does not add that The Matrix<\/em> is a movie made by two people who later came out as trans. In fact, The Matrix<\/em> itself is a trans story \u2014\u00a0in the \u201990s, prescription estrogen was literally a red pill<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> Isaacson includes Ivanka Trump\u2019s reply (\u201cTaken!\u201d) but not that of Matrix<\/em> creator Lilly Wachowski: \u201cFuck both of you<\/a>.\u201d If you know these details, Musk looks like a dolt \u2014 sort of a problem for a biographer trying to write a Great Man book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Similarly, Isaacson falls flat on racial issues \u2014\u00a0the existence of apartheid in Musk\u2019s youth is barely mentioned. It\u2019s a strange omission; Musk\u2019s maternal grandfather was the chair of the national council of the Social Credit Party, which was openly antisemitic. Haldeman\u2019s beliefs are characterized by Isaacson as \u201cquirky conservative populist views,\u201d which\u2026 led him to immigrate to Pretoria, South Africa, which was ruled by the racist apartheid regime.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Justine Musk and Amber Heard are both disparaged<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One of the other things Isaacson doesn\u2019t mention is the alleged racist working conditions at Tesla\u2019s Fremont factory<\/a>. Recently, a former Tesla worker was awarded millions for racist abuse at work<\/a>. This does seem relevant to Musk\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Also relevant: how Isaacson treats Musk\u2019s exes. Justine Musk and Amber Heard are both disparaged. Of Justine Musk, Elon\u2019s mother said, \u201cShe has no redeeming feature.\u201d Kimbal Musk, Elon\u2019s brother and sometimes business partner, is quoted as saying, \u201cThis is the wrong person for you.\u201d We don\u2019t hear Justine\u2019s side of the story, except via a magazine article she published during her divorce, \u201cI Was a Starter Wife<\/a>.\u201d It makes me wonder: is Justine under a non-disclosure agreement? Did she sign something with a non-disparagement clause, like Tesla founder Martin Eberhard<\/a>? Isaacson spoke to her \u2014 so why did she have nothing to say?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Similarly, Amber Heard is described by Kimbal as \u201cso toxic,\u201d by Grimes as \u201cchaotic evil,\u201d and by Musk\u2019s chief of staff as \u201cthe Joker in Batman\u2026 <\/em>She thrives on destabilizing everything.\u201d Heard is even blamed for Musk\u2019s misbehavior \u2014 including \u201cfunding secured\u201d in 2018. Even so, Heard\u2019s response is muted enough (\u201cI love him very much,\u201d she says. \u201cElon loves fire and sometimes it burns him.\u201d) that I wonder if she, too, is NDA\u2019d. By not even bringing up this possibility, Isaacson\u2019s story is inherently skewed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson does have time for a lot of Steve Jobs comparisons, which, after a while, begin to feel like product placement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The workers at Musk\u2019s companies, generally, don\u2019t interest his biographer much. Isaacson begins describing the 2018 Fremont production push from Musk\u2019s perspective: \u201cMusk had come to realize that designing a good factory was like designing a good microchip.\u201d During the production surge, Musk began walking the floor, barking questions at workers, and \u201cmaking decisions on the fly.\u201d He decided that safety sensors were \u201ctoo sensitive, tripping when there was no real problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In this chapter, Isaacson cites stories where rank-and-file workers complained about being pressured to take shortcuts and work 10-hour days. \u201cThere was some truth to the complaints,\u201d Isaacson writes. \u201cTesla\u2019s injury rate was 30 percent higher than the rest of the industry.\u201d Leave aside the risible \u201csome truth.\u201d There is a very obvious question that Isaacson had the access to explore: how did Musk\u2019s meddling with the safety sensors, the seat-of-the-pants fixes changes to the manufacturing process, and general \u201cproduction hell\u201d affect that injury rate? He chose not to. The injuries among Tesla\u2019s workers aren\u2019t mentioned further.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson does have time for a lot of Steve Jobs comparisons, which, after a while, begin to feel like product placement for his other book. In the index, Jobs is listed as showing up on 20 pages. You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking Jobs was an important part of Musk\u2019s rise, based on the index alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s impossible to escape the conclusion that Musk views everyone around him as disposable. The biography teems with mentions of Musk firing people on the spot, demanding to have things his own way even when it is stupid and expensive, and being unable to tolerate even the slightest dissent. \u201cWhen Elon gets upset, he lashes out, often at junior people,\u201d Jon McNeill, the former president of Tesla, says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The later chapters aren\u2019t very revealing<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou definitely realize you\u2019re a tool being used to achieve this larger objective and that\u2019s great,\u201d says Lucas Hughes, who worked as a financial analyst at SpaceX and was one of the junior people Musk lashed out at. \u201cBut sometimes tools get worn down and he feels he can just replace that tool.\u201d Musk believes that \u201cwhen people want to prioritize their comfort and leisure they should leave,\u201d Isaacson writes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The later chapters aren\u2019t very revealing. Isaacson is bought in on Musk\u2019s vision of AI and his hinky Tesla Bot<\/a>. The biographer has swallowed Musk\u2019s hype here wholesale. But I remember the days of the \u201calien dreadnought,<\/a>\u201d the promises for swappable batteries that never materialized, and the countless other things Musk said that turned out to be, at best, exaggeration. In 10 years, the big revelation that Musk switched off the Ukrainian internet access during a battle may not be the most embarrassing thing Isaacson has committed to the page.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isaacson wraps up the book by ponderously wondering if Musk\u2019s achievements are possible without his bad behavior:\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n This seems to me to be the wrong set of questions. Here are some other ones: If Musk were more receptive to criticism, would his companies be in better shape? If Musk cared more about the team around him, what else could he have accomplished by now? Is achieving the specific vision Musk has for the world worth the injuries he\u2019s inflicted on his workforce? Do we \u2014 the readers of Isaacson\u2019s book \u2014 want this particular man\u2019s vision of the future at all?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While Isaacson manages to detail what makes Musk awful, he seems unaware of what made Musk an inspiring figure<\/a> for so long. Musk is a fantasist, the kind of person who conceives of civilizations on Mars. That\u2019s what people liked all this time<\/a>:\u00a0dreaming big, thinking about new possible worlds. It\u2019s also why Musk\u2019s shifting political stance undercuts him. The fantasy of the conservative movement is small and sad, a limited world with nothing new to explore. Musk has gone from dreaming very, very big to seeming very, very small<\/a>. In the hands of a talented biographer, this kind of tragic story would provide rich material.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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