You’ve probably already heard about the Ukraine/Russia controversy surrounding Walter Isaacson’s new book about Elon Musk. (If not, you can click this link.) But there’s a lot more in the book apparently, which is discussed here in this piece by Matt Pearce in the LA Times:
Musk is already one of the most well-known and extensively covered leaders in American corporate life (and one of its most unavoidable figures on the service he has renamed X). Isaacson’s biography is a Musk agonistes: a portrait of a (largely) self-made, emotionally volatile entrepreneur from South Africa who has a tortured relationship with his father and an addiction to crises of the self-inflicted variety.
Musk is tormented, erratic and rude, over and over again
Musk’s moods are variously described as cycling through “light and dark, intense and goofy, detached and emotional, with occasional plunges into what people around him call ‘demon mode’”; he’s “childlike, almost stunted,” “a drama magnet,” “not bred for domestic tranquility”; he has “a craving for storm and drama” and “erratic emotional oscillations.” Multiple people describe him as having undiagnosed Asperger’s. At one point, Musk calls himself bipolar. His volatile emotional states are the biggest constant in a book that zigzags from cars to rockets, tunneling to AI, solar energy to neural implants.
Isaacson repeatedly likens Musk to his estranged father, Errol Musk, also reportedly prone to volatile moods, abrasive behavior, credit-grubbing, flimflammery and conspiracy theories. Elon’s mother, Maye, said Errol “hit her” before the pair divorced, something that Errol denied. Musk cut off his father after Errol had a child with a woman Elon considered his half-sister — Jana — whom Errol had raised as his stepdaughter since she was 4. In an email Errol wrote to Elon for Father’s Day in 2022, he called Joe Biden a “freak, criminal, pedophile president” and that in South Africa, “with no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees.”
Nothing Elon Musk says in the book is as jarring as his own father’s sometimes bizarre and racist comments. But elsewhere, Elon’s own frequent lack of empathy is bolstered by ample evidence. During the first dance at his wedding with his first wife, Justine, he whispered to her, “I am the alpha in this relationship.” In 2016, he accused journalists of “killing people” (by discrediting self-driving technology) after they asked questions about the first drivers to die in Tesla Autopilot accidents. He was briefly estranged from his brother, Kimbal, after the latter — who once helped rescue Tesla financially — asked for help with his own restaurants. Elon replied that they were doomed, and “I think they should die.”
It’s natural for a reader to wonder whether trying to decarbonize the auto industry or avoid humanity’s extinction justifies the chaos, the bullying, the poor labor standards — the trouble. Isaacson weighs in on the subject only at the end of his book: “Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness? The times he’s an a—? The answer is no, of course not.”
Then, a few paragraphs later, the needle on Isaacson’s moral compass wobbles: “But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? … Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”
And they can be incredibly destructive too, as Musk is showing himself to be. Please…
The two Elon Musks, before and after 2018’s Tesla ‘production hell’ (or Amber Heard, or his daughter’s transition)
The year 2018 was an inflection point in the perception of Musk as a public figure, one that foreshadowed his pandemic evolution in 2020 from moderate Democrat to trolling conservative. When a group of children were trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk tweeted that one rescue diver who dismissed his offer to build a submersible was a “pedo guy.” (Musk later apologized, but not easily.) On Joe Rogan’s podcast, he smoked marijuana, risking his status as a U.S. government contractor. He shot a Tesla Roadster into space.
Behind the scenes, the summer of 2017 through the fall of 2018 encompassed the most “hellacious” period of Musk’s life, Isaacson writes: “Musk went through periods when he oscillated between depression, stupor, giddiness, and manic energy.” Isaacson traces Musk’s tailspin to the news of his father’s relationship with his stepdaughter — as well as his own stormy relationship with the actor Amber Heard, who had recently gone through a tumultuous divorce with the actor Johnny Depp.
Heard “drew [Musk] into a dark vortex” around 2017, Isaacson writes, “that lasted more than a year and produced a deep-seated pain that lingers to this day. … His brother and friends hated her with a passion.”
There were plenty of other stressors that didn’t involve a public figure who’s already taken enough public bludgeoning after the Depp-Heard defamation trial. One of the biggest was the “production hell” at Tesla in 2018, when the survival of the company (and Musk’s reputation) hinged on meeting a seemingly impossible production target for the Tesla Model 3. Musk prowled the factory in a “frenzy of insanity,” he recalled later, “getting four or five hours’ sleep, often on the floor. I remember thinking, I’m like on the ragged edge of sanity.”
What gave his turmoil a political bent was his daughter Jenna’s gender transition around 2020, followed by her decision to cut ties with him. Musk blamed this on her becoming “a full communist” as a result of her progressive education at a Los Angeles private school, Crossroads. This is around the time “woke mind virus” worked its way into his vocabulary.
There’s more and it all points to Elon Musk being a very, very unstable, fucked up human being who has no business having any power over our politics (much less national security.) At this point I’m just hoping for a total breakdown — which may be imminent.