How the Elon Musk biography exposes Walter Isaacson

The difficulty started days earlier than the biography was even printed.

CNN had a narrative summarizing an excerpt of Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk that claimed Musk had shut down SpaceX’s satellite tv for pc community, Starlink, to forestall a “Ukrainian sneak assault” on the Russian navy. The Washington Publish adopted it up, publishing the excerpt the place Isaacson claimed Musk had basically shut down a army offensive on a private whim.

This reporting didn’t move the scent check to me, and I mentioned so on the time; I puzzled concerning the sourcing. One of many issues that anybody masking Elon Musk for lengthy sufficient has to reckon with is that he loves to inform hilarious lies. As an illustration:

• “Funding secured.” Bear in mind when Elon Musk pretended he was going to take Tesla personal and had all the pieces so as, after which whoopsie, that was in no way true?
• Tesla share gross sales. After all, there’s the time in April 2022 when he offered Tesla shares and mentioned he had no additional gross sales deliberate, adopted by him promoting extra Tesla shares in August 2022, when he mentioned he was achieved promoting Tesla shares. He offered extra shares in November 2022.
• Tesla and Bitcoin. Bear in mind when Musk mentioned, “I would pump however I don’t dump,” after which Tesla offered 75 p.c of its Bitcoin?
• The staged 2016 Autopilot demo video. Within the demo video, which options the title card “The automotive is driving by itself,” the automotive was not driving by itself, Tesla’s director of Autopilot software program mentioned in a deposition. Musk himself requested for that replicate.
• The batteries in Teslas will probably be exchangeable. Refueling your EV will simply be a battery swap that may occur sooner than pumping gasoline.
• The time he mentioned Teslas may fly. I’m not making this up. He actually mentioned he’d change the rear seats with thrusters, and journalists hung out making an attempt to determine what the fuck that meant.

The factor you be taught after some time on the Musk beat is that his most self-aggrandizing statements normally bear the least resemblance to actuality. Musk says a whole lot of stuff! A few of it’s exaggeration, and a few isn’t true in any respect.

Isaacson’s sweeping 670-page biography has an intense quantity of entry to the person at its heart. The issue is the person is Elon Musk, a man who in 2011 promised to get us to house in simply three years. In actuality, the primary SpaceX crew launched into orbit nearly a decade later. Certain, entry is the attraction of the biography — however entry offers Musk numerous probabilities to promote his personal mythology.

So once I opened the Musk biography, I wished to know if Isaacson had achieved his homework. The very first thing I did was flip to the again, the place the creator lists his sources for the Ukraine factor. They’re: interviews with Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, and Jared Birchall (Musk’s physique man); emails from Lauren Dreyer; and textual content messages from Mykhailo Fedorov, “offered by Elon Musk.” Different sources are information articles, certainly one of which was about SpaceX curbing Ukraine’s use of drones. Crucially, although, this text says nothing about Ukrainian submarines — as an alternative, it’s primarily about aerial autos.

 In his e book, Isaacson writes:

All through the night and into the evening, he [Musk] personally took cost of the state of affairs. Permitting the usage of Starlink for the assault, he concluded, could possibly be a catastrophe for the world. So he secretly instructed his engineers to show off protection inside 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. In consequence, when the Ukrainian drone subs bought close to the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they misplaced connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.

That last sentence is arresting, isn’t it? I might discover no assist for it in any of the information articles that Isaacson listed as sources for this chapter. There is a Monetary Occasions story that confirms some Starlink outages throughout a Ukrainian push in opposition to the Russians, but it surely says nothing about drone subs or washing ashore harmlessly. A New York Occasions article confirms Musk doesn’t need Starlink working drones however says nothing about drone subs.

What might the attainable supply for this sentence be? Within the following paragraph, Isaacson quotes textual content messages from Fedorov, who had “secretly shared with him [Musk] the main points of how the drone subs have been essential” to the Ukrainians. Not very secret now, I suppose.

Musk disputed Isaacson’s account on Twitter: “SpaceX didn’t deactivate something,” he mentioned. “There was an emergency request from authorities authorities to activate Starlink all the best way to Sevastopol,” he went on, although he didn’t specify which authorities’s authorities. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX can be explicitly complicit in a serious act of warfare and battle escalation.”

Isaacson caved instantly:

To make clear on the Starlink challenge: the Ukrainians THOUGHT protection was enabled all the best way to Crimea, but it surely was not. They requested Musk to allow it for his or her drone sub assault on the Russian fleet. Musk didn’t allow it, as a result of he thought, in all probability appropriately, that might trigger a serious warfare.

Great assertion. “To make clear” obfuscates what’s occurring: is Isaacson saying his e book is mistaken? Certainly that’s what this implies since “future editions will probably be up to date” to appropriate it. The Publish corrected its excerpt, anyway. “The Ukrainians thought” — which Ukrainians, and the way did Isaacson know their pondering? In his listed sources, now we have solely the textual content messages of 1 Ukrainian, who, for diplomatic functions, could also be obscuring what he is aware of. “They requested Musk to allow it for his or her drone assault” is a completely completely different account than the one given within the e book, which says Musk shut off present protection slightly than approving prolonged protection; what might probably be the supply right here? And naturally, the final sentence — “Musk didn’t allow it as a result of he thought, in all probability appropriately, that might trigger a serious warfare” — is straightforward boot-licking.

Isaacson “clarified” additional in one other tweet. ”Primarily based on my conversations with Musk, I mistakenly thought the coverage to not enable Starlink for use for an assault on Crimea had been first selected the evening of the Ukrainian tried sneak assault that evening,” he wrote on Twitter. “He now says that the coverage had been applied earlier, however the Ukrainians didn’t realize it, and that evening he merely reaffirmed the coverage.”

There was a solution to discover out what’s true right here, and it might have been to interview extra sources, each Ukrainian and US army ones. Isaacson selected to not. Musk’s phrase was adequate for him — and so, when Musk contested the characterization, Isaacson rolled over.

I’m lingering right here as a result of it highlights a serious drawback with Isaacson’s biography. We’re coping with not one however two unreliable narrators: Musk and Isaacson himself. In spite of everything, simply earlier than issuing his clarification, Isaacson had been touting a stroll by way of the SpaceX manufacturing facility with CBS’s David Pogue to advertise his e book. 

Isaacson writes a particular form of biography. There may be even a “genius” boxed set of his biographies that features Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and — considerably incongruously — Steve Jobs. 

Having made a sample of writing biographies of vital males — and one vital lady, Jennifer Doudna of CRISPR fame — Isaacson is now within the place of a form of kingmaker. To maintain up his sample, everybody he writes about implicitly is branded a genius. 

One solution to preserve Musk’s fable intact is solely to not examine issues out. Inside the first three paragraphs of the e book, Isaacson describes a wilderness survival camp Musk attended, the place “each few years, one of many youngsters would die.” This can be a putting declare! I flipped to the “notes” part to see if Isaacson had interviewed any of Musk’s schoolmates. He hadn’t. There aren’t any information articles backing it up, both. So what’s the supply? Presumably a number of of the Musks — Elon is quoted immediately as saying the advisors instructed him to not die like one other child in a earlier 12 months. 

Arguably your complete Musk household has an curiosity in presenting Elon Musk as preternaturally powerful and in addition as utilizing his powerful childhood as an excuse for his persevering with unhealthy habits. There are some bizarre decisions because of this.

Isaacson writes that Musk’s “blood boiled if anybody falsely implied he had succeeded due to inherited wealth or claimed he didn’t need to be referred to as a founding father of one of many corporations he helped begin.” The bolding on “falsely” is mine as a result of Isaacson had earlier detailed Errol Musk, Elon’s father, giving Elon and Kimbal Musk “$28,000 plus a beat-up automotive he purchased for $500” to assist them begin Zip2. Maye, Elon’s mom, contributed one other $10,000 and “allow them to use her bank card as a result of they’d not been accredited for one.” Definitely Musk bought began with household cash. Is the issue concerning the which means of “inherited wealth”?

Right here’s one other unusual selection. “Through the years, one criticism of Tesla has been that the corporate was ‘bailed out’ or ‘sponsored’ by the federal government in 2009.” This isn’t fairly proper. Through the years, the criticism has been that Tesla has gotten a substantial amount of help from state, federal, and native governments, typically screwing them within the course of, as demonstrated by the Buffalo Gigafactory. By one estimate, Tesla alone has gotten greater than $3 billion in loans and subsidies from state and native governments. Whereas Isaacson offers an in depth accounting of Tesla’s $465 million in loans from a DOE program, he skips all the remainder of the assists Musk has gotten through the years — goodies which have impressed jealousy from the likes of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

Then there’s this description of Neuralink, Musk’s mind implant firm: “The concept for Neuralink was impressed by science fiction, most notably the Tradition space-travel novels by Iain Banks.” Possibly so, however there’s precise science reality: brain-machine interfaces had been implanted in people as early as 2006, one thing Isaacson doesn’t point out. Musk actually didn’t provide you with the concept; brain-machine interfaces already existed. Nor does Isaacson point out the ugly allegations about Neuralink’s check topics.

However I wish to get to the actual large one: Musk’s politics. This can be a recurring theme for Isaacson, and his perspective is bewildering.

Musk’s dependence on taxpayer largess performs a task right here; skipping how dependent Musk is on Texas is a howler. Musk has usually donated in methods that may profit him in Texas, the place he has a considerable operation. So writing a sentence like “Musk has by no means been very political” when Musk has donated greater than $1 million to politicians within the final 20 years is odd.

Now, I personally view Musk as a political nihilist, keen to say no matter he must say to get taxpayer cash. But it surely’s simple that he’s spent many years palling round with libertarian-to-far-right sorts (most famously Peter Thiel and David Sacks, who’s inexplicably described as “not rigidly partisan” regardless of coauthoring a noxious e book with Thiel that, amongst different issues, steered date rape wasn’t actual). 

These long-standing right-wing ties belie the notion superior by Isaacson that the actual reason for Musk’s right-wing pivot is his daughter, Jenna; I discovered these sections of the e book tough to learn, as they basically quantity to sufferer blaming. In Isaacson’s telling, “Jenna’s anger made Musk delicate to the backlash in opposition to billionaires.” She stopped talking to her father in 2020 and transitioned with out telling him. 

I ponder, although Isaacson doesn’t, if she didn’t inform him as a result of she was afraid to. Musk came upon from a member of his safety element — and it’s revealing to me that not one of the individuals round Musk who knew, together with Grimes, wished to interrupt the information. It’s commonplace for queer individuals to cover from mother and father they believe will reject them; there’s a cause many homosexual and trans individuals have “discovered households.” 

When Musk tweets, “Take the crimson capsule,” in 2020, Isaacson notes that it’s a reference to The Matrix however doesn’t add that The Matrix is a film made by two individuals who later got here out as trans. In truth, The Matrix itself is a trans story — within the ’90s, prescription estrogen was actually a crimson capsule. Isaacson consists of Ivanka Trump’s reply (“Taken!”) however not that of Matrix creator Lilly Wachowski: “Fuck each of you.” If you recognize these particulars, Musk seems to be like a dolt — type of an issue for a biographer making an attempt to put in writing a Nice Man e book.

Equally, Isaacson falls flat on racial points — the existence of apartheid in Musk’s youth is barely talked about. It’s an odd omission; Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. was the chair of the nationwide council of the Social Credit score Social gathering, which was overtly antisemitic. Haldeman’s beliefs are characterised by Isaacson as “quirky conservative populist views,” which… led him to immigrate to Pretoria, South Africa, which was dominated by the racist apartheid regime. 

One of many different issues Isaacson doesn’t point out is the alleged racist working circumstances at Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing facility. Not too long ago, a former Tesla employee was awarded tens of millions for racist abuse at work. This does appear related to Musk’s politics.

Additionally related: how Isaacson treats Musk’s exes. Justine Musk and Amber Heard are each disparaged. Of Justine Musk, Elon’s mom mentioned, “She has no redeeming characteristic.” Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother and typically enterprise companion, is quoted as saying, “That is the mistaken individual for you.” We don’t hear Justine’s facet of the story, besides through {a magazine} article she printed throughout her divorce, “I Was a Starter Spouse.” It makes me surprise: is Justine beneath a non-disclosure settlement? Did she signal one thing with a non-disparagement clause, like Tesla founder Martin Eberhard? Isaacson spoke to her — so why did she don’t have anything to say?

Equally, Amber Heard is described by Kimbal as “so poisonous,” by Grimes as “chaotic evil,” and by Musk’s chief of workers as “the Joker in Batman… She thrives on destabilizing all the pieces.” Heard is even blamed for Musk’s misbehavior — together with “funding secured” in 2018. Even so, Heard’s response is muted sufficient (“I really like him very a lot,” she says. “Elon loves hearth and typically it burns him.”) that I ponder if she, too, is NDA’d. By not even mentioning this chance, Isaacson’s story is inherently skewed.

The employees at Musk’s corporations, usually, don’t curiosity his biographer a lot. Isaacson begins describing the 2018 Fremont manufacturing push from Musk’s perspective: “Musk had come to comprehend that designing manufacturing facility was like designing microchip.” Throughout the manufacturing surge, Musk started strolling the ground, barking questions at staff, and “making choices on the fly.” He determined that security sensors have been “too delicate, tripping when there was no actual drawback.” 

On this chapter, Isaacson cites tales the place rank-and-file staff complained about being pressured to take shortcuts and work 10-hour days. “There was some fact to the complaints,” Isaacson writes. “Tesla’s damage price was 30 p.c increased than the remainder of the trade.” Go away apart the risible “some fact.” There’s a very apparent query that Isaacson had the entry to discover: how did Musk’s meddling with the protection sensors, the seat-of-the-pants fixes adjustments to the manufacturing course of, and basic “manufacturing hell” have an effect on that damage price? He selected to not. The accidents amongst Tesla’s staff aren’t talked about additional.

Isaacson does have time for lots of Steve Jobs comparisons, which, after some time, start to really feel like product placement for his different e book. Within the index, Jobs is listed as exhibiting up on 20 pages. You’d be forgiven for pondering Jobs was an vital a part of Musk’s rise, primarily based on the index alone.

It’s unimaginable to flee the conclusion that Musk views everybody round him as disposable. The biography teems with mentions of Musk firing individuals on the spot, demanding to have issues his personal method even when it’s silly and costly, and being unable to tolerate even the slightest dissent. “When Elon will get upset, he lashes out, usually at junior individuals,” Jon McNeill, the previous president of Tesla, says. 

“You undoubtedly notice you’re a instrument getting used to realize this bigger goal and that’s nice,” says Lucas Hughes, who labored as a monetary analyst at SpaceX and was one of many junior individuals Musk lashed out at. “However typically instruments get worn down and he feels he can simply change that instrument.” Musk believes that “when individuals wish to prioritize their consolation and leisure they need to go away,” Isaacson writes.

The later chapters aren’t very revealing. Isaacson is purchased in on Musk’s imaginative and prescient of AI and his hinky Tesla Bot. The biographer has swallowed Musk’s hype right here wholesale. However I keep in mind the times of the “alien dreadnought,” the guarantees for swappable batteries that by no means materialized, and the numerous different issues Musk mentioned that turned out to be, at greatest, exaggeration. In 10 years, the large revelation that Musk switched off the Ukrainian web entry throughout a battle is probably not probably the most embarrassing factor Isaacson has dedicated to the web page.

Isaacson wraps up the e book by ponderously questioning if Musk’s achievements are attainable with out his unhealthy habits: 

Would a restrained Musk accomplish as a lot as a Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he’s? Might you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electrical autos with out accepting all facets of him, hinged and unhinged? Generally nice innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty coaching.

This appears to me to be the mistaken set of questions. Listed below are another ones: If Musk have been extra receptive to criticism, would his corporations be in higher form? If Musk cared extra concerning the workforce round him, what else might he have completed by now? Is attaining the particular imaginative and prescient Musk has for the world well worth the accidents he’s inflicted on his workforce? Can we — the readers of Isaacson’s e book — need this specific man’s imaginative and prescient of the longer term in any respect?

Whereas Isaacson manages to element what makes Musk terrible, he appears unaware of what made Musk an inspiring determine for thus lengthy. Musk is a fantasist, the form of one who conceives of civilizations on Mars. That’s what individuals appreciated all this time: dreaming large, enthusiastic about new attainable worlds. It’s additionally why Musk’s shifting political stance undercuts him. The fantasy of the conservative motion is small and unhappy, a restricted world with nothing new to discover. Musk has gone from dreaming very, very large to seeming very, very small. Within the palms of a gifted biographer, this sort of tragic story would supply wealthy materials.

Correction 11:00AM ET: The unique model of this mischaracterized Musk’s donations — he has donated greater than $1 million, no more than $1 billion. We remorse the error.