Kara Swisher on the Radicalization of Elon Musk | The Ezra Klein Show

Summary

In this episode of The Ezra Klein Show, Kara Swisher breaks down the drastic transformation and radicalization of Elon Musk over the years. Swisher delves into how Musk transitioned from a conventional climate-concerned entrepreneur to a controversial figure wielding significant influence within the U.S. government. Their discussion covers Musk's evolving political stance, his strategic maneuvers within government sectors, and the broader implications of his actions on society and future governance. The conversation also touches on the cultural shifts in Silicon Valley and the increasing inclination towards authoritarian attitudes among tech leaders.

Highlights

• Elon Musk's role in the U.S. government has expanded beyond tech, now affecting various federal agencies. 🌐
• Musk's trajectory includes a pivot from Obama-era liberal to a figure embracing far-right ideologies. 🏁
• The podcast highlights Musk's dramatic approach to challenges, both in business and politics. 🎬
• Despite potential legal ramifications, Musk boldly challenges norms to push his agenda. 💼
• This episode examines the broader tech culture's shift towards authoritarian tendencies. 📲

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk has significantly expanded his influence within the U.S. government, showing involvement in numerous agencies as a central figure. 🚀
• The conversation explores Musk's ideological shift from a climate-focused entrepreneur to someone entangled with right-wing politics. 🔄
• Kara Swisher describes Musk's consistent penchant for drama and being at the center of attention. 🎭
• Musk's tactics often involve breaking norms and testing boundaries, similar to former President Trump. 🤔
• There's an underlying narrative of Musk pursuing ultimate power and control, not just in business, but within government structures. ⚖️

Overview

In a riveting discussion, Kara Swisher joins Ezra Klein to unravel the enigma of Elon Musk's radical evolution over recent years. Once a champion of green tech under the Obama administration, Musk's transformation into a figure meddling with far-right politics and governmental disruption is dissected. Swisher paints a picture of a man who now uses his vast influence to reshape federal structures to his advantage.

The dialogue further delves into Musk's tactics and mindset, comparing them to Trump's playbook of breaking norms and seizing control through dramatics. Musk's interactions within the federal government exhibit a penchant for chaos and a preference for being the center of the storm, mirroring his actions at Twitter and broader tech ventures.

Swisher and Klein also address how Musk's actions reflect a larger movement within Silicon Valley, where there's a growing flirtation with authoritarian ideologies among tech leaders. This shift marks a substantial departure from previous industry norms, raising questions about the future direction of tech power and policy worldwide.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Overview The chapter titled "Introduction and Overview" discusses Elon Musk's involvement in a government department focused on efficiency, specifically named the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge. Initially, the department's mandate seemed limited to modernizing federal technology and software to enhance efficiency and productivity. However, recent developments suggest that Musk's role has expanded significantly beyond this initial scope, indicating his involvement in broader governmental efforts.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Elon Musk's New Role in Government The chapter discusses Elon Musk's new involvement with the United States government, where he and his team have gained access to 11 federal agencies, with their influence expanding. The government is offering buyouts to employees, and mass firings and furloughs are happening as a result of Musk's control, notably over USAID. The situation is being compared to a raid on the government, raising questions about allegiance to Musk and prompting concerns about his plans and motivations.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Kara Swisher on Elon Musk's Playbook This chapter explores the evolution of Elon Musk's political and ideological stance over the years. Initially portrayed as a conventional Obama-era liberal concerned about climate change and space exploration, Musk's transformation into a right-wing figure and meme enthusiast is discussed. The chapter delves into what might have led to his shift, including his actions aimed at influencing elections and his critical view of the federal government, positing that these changes could have significant implications for the future of civilization.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Understanding Elon Musk's Strategies The chapter delves into the influence that Elon Musk has gained over the government and explores the strategies he employs in this regard. Cara Swisser, a renowned tech reporter who has covered Musk extensively, is featured in this discussion. Cara's perspective is shared, highlighting her expertise as the host of popular podcasts such as 'On with Cara Swisser' and 'Pivot' with Scott Galloway. The chapter touches on the intersection of tech CEOs like Musk becoming influential political figures. The segment also provides contact information for Ezra's show via email.
• 12:00 - 18:00: Elon Musk's Radicalization and Twitter Influence The chapter focuses on Elon Musk's increasing radicalization and the influence he wields through Twitter. The narrator begins with a light-hearted exchange about previous interactions on various shows, highlighting a past suggestion to start podcasting. The conversation then pivots to the main topic, exploring how Elon Musk's actions and statements on Twitter have impacted public perception and discourse. This sets up a discussion on the complexities of his role and the broader implications of his social media presence.
• 18:00 - 24:00: Masculine Virtues and Silicon Valley Culture The chapter delves into the portrayal of certain masculine virtues within the culture of Silicon Valley, using metaphors to highlight the impact of these traits. It discusses the metaphorical use of a 'one-man wrecking ball' or 'junkyard dog' as descriptors, suggesting a strong, disruptive presence being utilized effectively to achieve certain ends. The narrative suggests this disruption is not merely clumsiness but a strategic move, aligning with some modern political narratives, particularly in the context of Trump's administration, albeit explored with humor and critical observation.
• 24:00 - 30:00: Twitter's Acquisition and Political Power This chapter discusses Twitter's acquisition and its implications for political power. The dialogue highlights a pattern of behavior from high-profile business people as they navigate acquisitions, particularly focusing on dramatic tactics. It suggests that their strategies are not only crafted for corporate environments but are also scaled for political arenas, impacting government levels significantly. The conversation implies a consistent playbook used to exert influence and control, although it's adapted over time.
• 30:00 - 36:00: Trump and Elon Musk's Relationship This chapter delves into a critical period in Elon Musk's life, reflecting on his deep concerns for Tesla's future. It highlights Musk's emotional state during a New York Times interview where he appeared to cry, showcasing his intense connection and belief in Tesla as a pivotal company for humanity's survival. The narrative captures a moment of vulnerability and determination, painting a picture of Musk as driven and, at times, dramatic in his worldview about Tesla's impact on the human race.
• 36:00 - 42:00: Potential Risks and Implications The chapter delves into the character's perception of themselves as the central figure in any situation, emphasizing the dramatic nature of their worldview. This outlook is significantly inspired by video games, viewing life as a scenario where they alone are the main player, and everyone else serves secondary or supporting roles (NPCs). The narrative explores how this person sees themselves as the hero or most important figure in various contexts, sometimes through manipulation or self-engineering, drawing parallels to the concept of the 'founder role' despite not being the originator.
• 42:00 - 44:00: Conclusion and Reflections This chapter delves into the persona of a founder who leverages public relations to reshape their narrative, often casting themselves in a heroic light. The discussion highlights the founder’s tendency to dramatically emphasize the stakes, portraying challenges as potential catastrophes requiring their intervention. This language use is illustrated as a strategy to underscore the founder's indispensability and heroism in overcoming supposedly disastrous situations.

Kara Swisher on the Radicalization of Elon Musk | The Ezra Klein Show Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so at the beginning Elon musk's Department of government efficiency or Doge do what is Doge going to do seem to have ended up with a fairly narrow mandate you can look at the Trump executive order creating it and it says the purpose is modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity in the last couple weeks it's become clear that musk's role is a whole lot larger than that Elon Musk right now involved in almost every
• 00:30 - 01:00 agency and corner of the United States government offering all federal employees a buyout to resign musk and his team have access at least 11 agencies and the count is growing every day Elon Musk seized control of usaid people getting fired people getting furled in droves they are raiding the government we don't pledge allegiance to Elon Musk what's the plan what's the plan and as I've watched all this unfold I've been wondering how Elon Musk has
• 01:00 - 01:30 evolved in the way he has how did he go from conventional Obama era liberal worried about climate change and who wanted to go to Mars to right-wing conspiratorial meme Lord working to elect the far ring Germany the future of civilization could hang on this election and Shred the federal government in the United States yes what led to this transition this Evolution for Elon Musk and and what
• 01:30 - 02:00 actual strategies is he bringing to the government that he now seems to have quite a lot of control over to talk about all this I want to invite Cara swisser on the show Cara is one of the Great Tech reporters of the age he's been covering musk for many many years along with many of the other Tech CEOs who become such key political figures now she's of course a host of The Great podcast on with Cara swisser and pivot which she co-hosts with Scott Galloway as always my email Ezra Clan showmy times.com
• 02:00 - 02:30 [Music] Caris Wisher welcome back to the show thank you I've never been here but you've been on my show before I have not yes you have we're we're going I'm going to go I'm going to go back and show your rece you oh that's cuz I suggested you do podcasting you've done rather well I would say a master class in interviewing from Cara swisser it was called wow I must have forgotten it I can't it was such a seminal moment well it's good to see you good to see you how do you describe the role Elon Musk has been playing in the
• 02:30 - 03:00 federal government in the first weeks of Donald Trump's second term well a little more a little more strongly than the New York Times did um you know they're sort of treating it like isn't this an interesting person walking through I think he's a you know he's a oneman wrecking ball really then he's being used by Trump for that purpose he's you know there's lots of ways you could use metaphors you could say junkyard dog he's the one sort of taking all the flak going in and breaking things but and you could be funny and call it wreck and Ralph I don't think it's particularly funny or the right way way to do it or
• 03:00 - 03:30 constitutionally sound um but that that's the kind of thing he's going in there like he does with his companies and doing the exact same thing he's got he's got a series of moves that he makes every single time and he's doing them RIT large on the federal government walk me through the moves what is his Playbook well they've it's changed and morphed over the years but always drama always a massive amount of drama centered on him that's tends to be the thing he does when he's in his he can be very dramatic in a very like poignant way like one time we were there was a
• 03:30 - 04:00 period where he was very worried about the fate of Tesla if you remember and he was he was sleeping on the floor there and he gave a really he actually gave an interview to the New York Times where he seemed to cry he he seemed very emotional and at one point when we were talking he he this was I think off camera he said if Tesla doesn't survive the human race is doomed which I felt was a little dramatic you know and I thought wow this is what man in his 40
• 04:00 - 04:30 who thinks that he's the center of the universe and so it always has that element of drama like it has to be that and he has to be at the center um I think he's greatly informed by video games uh and so that's he's sort of someone described him to me as Ready Player One um and everybody else is an NPC which is a non-player character so he always has to be the hero or the person um who who matters the most and sometimes he's he does and sometimes he's engineered it so you know just like getting the founder role when he's not
• 04:30 - 05:00 actually the founder or rewriting history or using PR to to make himself the founder so he understands the hero's journey kind of thing really rather well um he also it has to the stakes have to be very high and if it doesn't work we're doomed kind of thing so he uses language like that of Doom um he tends to overstate the problems when most companies have problems but everything is a disaster here and I'm here to fix it um or everything sucks and everybody previously is criminal or evil pedophile
• 05:00 - 05:30 is a word he likes to use a lot but he uses the terms like evil and um in one tweet he called yoel Roth who was head of trust and safety at Twitter who he did like until he quit and then he became evil uh in one tweet he called him evil and I was seething with hate which is really dramatic and ridiculous I'm not seething with hate very trumpan yeah yeah that kind of thing I think he means it though I think Trump sometimes is just doing it for show you know showman a reality show kind of thing so
• 05:30 - 06:00 there's a story that musk tells it's sort of dramatic story it's him against the evildoers but there's also mechanics right he has people lieutenants fan out to key to key points one thing we're seeing right now with what musk is doing in the federal government is an identification of of Choke points of information and money the treasury uh payment system the office of personnel management which is a place where musk is installed uh trusted AIDS and they're using that as a way to Fan out across the federal Workforce so tell me a bit beneath a story musk tells the the grand
• 06:00 - 06:30 narrative when he takes things over and and what he's brought from that to to the federal government what does he actually have the people under him do what is the theory of action well he has people around him that are just enablers they all they're sort of all these Silicon Valley people do and all his minions and they're minions they're all lesser than he is in some fashion and they all look up to him they're typically younger they laugh at his jokes you know sometimes when he apologizes for a joke which is not very
• 06:30 - 07:00 often um he said people around me thought it was funny well they all do because they're like to be in the room is is to watch it happen I was when he was being interviewed at code once he had a couple of them there and he's told a really bad joke and they all went like that and I was like that's not funny I was like I'm sorry did I miss the joke and you know they looked at me like I had three heads and what they do is it's that hard to figure out choke points right this is where we need to be and then they go into it in this way that is uh you know violating of typical rules
• 07:00 - 07:30 and I don't mean necessarily laws although I suspect many laws may have been broken here um but not caring about breaking laws and so they go in sort of full force and question let me see your code let me why can't we get in we're getting in we have the law we have Federal Marshals you know let's see what they'll do and that is a really big quality that he has let's let's say things and wait for them to sue us or um wait for them to stop us they won't stop us and again very much like Trump the
• 07:30 - 08:00 people don't stop you we just operate on a set of you know polite rules in society and they just Barrel right through them I want to zoom in on that breaking of rules because I think something musk understands Trump has understood in in different ways is it at high levels of society the recourse for breaking a law breaking a rule is legal you don't get frog marched out typically what happens is somebody sues you they need to have standing it works us way through the courts you have lawyers as well and it moves slowly
• 08:00 - 08:30 and so a lot of law following and Rule following is just a Norm at that level follow the laws and you follow the rules if you don't you can move much faster than the courts are likely to move right they can fire all these people many of them potentially illegally given Civil Service protections and what they're going to sue over the course of six to n months or four years and maybe get some back pay right corporations do this against people organizing unions all the time they do but as an Insight that a lot of what has constrained other
• 08:30 - 09:00 executive branches is not actually a constraint Because by the time the legal system catches up you've already achieved what you want to achieve that's correct it's a pretty profound Insight yeah it is and if he gets caught he's some he's willing to pay right like he's willing to go toe-to-toe legally and I think what a lot of people are is I don't want to fight this guy he has unlimited money right like you have to think twice if you're going I mean you know journalists have to think twice um
• 09:00 - 09:30 you know it's very similar to these these media companies settling you know CBS has done nothing wrong in this Kamara situation yet they're going to pay um it's pretty clear that meta did nothing wrong with Trump and yet you're going to pay you do it to make it go away or you don't do it at all because of the exhaustion and he understands that he understands that he can wear them down and and so it is true if you go if you blow lights you mostly get away with it right like you don't always get caught or if you don't pay bills or
• 09:30 - 10:00 in his in his business life let's blow up 90 Rockets cuz the 91st will work and that's his attitude towards pretty much everything I can tell although to be fair to him it led to some amazing Rockets it it did but who else gets to like look and then he insults NASA which is not allowed to break to blow up Rockets NASA can't blow up Rockets because then they they blow up one rocket that's the end of it right and so it's a real advantage to be able to blow up rockets and then keep going you know
• 10:00 - 10:30 that that Thomas Edison quote there's a famous quote that they all Quote back to me that I I have not failed I found 10,000 ways that don't work whatever and then then you eventually get to it and so it's very it's part of the the ethos of tech is that there's no such thing as failure there's only it didn't work that time and I'll get the right one next but but this gets to I think the the deeper question here because there all these tactics and strategies but towards what when he's blowing up Rockets he is trying to make make rockets at work in a
• 10:30 - 11:00 certain way and eventually he did and and I think the world frankly is better off for him doing it Tesla had many failures but really did make better electric cars and anybody else made and and help the electric vehicle transition happen what does he want now though what is this all in service of what is the the vision in your view that he's trying to effectuate with all this power that he now wields in the in the government it's not money money is not money is not I hate to say this I hate it but it's not that important to many of them right
• 11:00 - 11:30 you know that it's not money some of them really like money that's for sure but it's not money it's the power that money brings and its power to decide and you know I think it started off was it started off I have some good ideas and I'd like to put them into place and now it's I have all the ideas on every topic and therefore what I say goes it's a very king-like attitude towards things right or the you know that that philosopher they like of that we should have a functional CEO running our country that gets to decide everything and screw
• 11:30 - 12:00 Congress screw screw the courts we should have a king essentially a CEO that has unlimited power he also does have a really weird sense of mortality in a in a way that he wants to be legendary Right he again go back to video games but I think he wants the glory of it he has those images in his head and that's not by a way of excuse It's by way of explanation right that this is how he looks at himself is on a grand journey of the hero hero he's not
• 12:00 - 12:30 a hero by the way let me be clear but but I think this gets it what to me is one of the the mysteries of musk because the idea is that he seems committed to have changed uh you know Peter teal who is contemporary you know they co-founded PayPal together but but teal has always been pretty far right you go back to things he was writing at Stanford musk you go back to say the Obama era he's a kind of standard Obama era liberal he has a series of companies that are solving problems that are important to Obama liberal those survive off of
• 12:30 - 13:00 obamaa policies from government contracts to electric vehicle subsidies right loan guarantees uh you know Tesla saved by an Obama loan guarantee and I mean and even in in 2017 he joins an Advisory board with Trump on for for Trump and then he gets back off of it when Trump pulls out of the Paris climate Accords so you have someone who is running public private Partnerships working endlessly with a government working on things like climate change and within a very compressed
• 13:00 - 13:30 matter of years moves very very far to the right so I agree that he wants power for his ideas but it has always been a little bit mysterious to me what led to the the the Striking radicalization you're right and during Obama he was supportive when he joined that we texted a lot during that period he was on the Trump thing and he he was like they're trying to do an anti-gay thing I'm going to get in there and stop them like he was very much I need to be here to change Trump's mind I can only I can change it kind of kind of thing he
• 13:30 - 14:00 wasn't anti-trump but he certainly wasn't prot Trump I can tell you that he was very much in the in the he's kind of a con man school of thought with him around covid I saw a lot of changes you know around I I talk to him quite a lot and people give me a hard time for having done that I I get it but he wasn't that off the Beaten Track before um I mean he was he was megal lont icle he was typical of a tech person but doing more interesting things um but there was a real shift during Co I noticed it um he got very
• 14:00 - 14:30 upset he got very like overly upset and overly dramatic look if if you think your company is critical for the future of the human race and then California closes it down because of Co you start to you get in that mode that's one I I I defin he was very he sort of got very unreasonable and in one interview I did with him he started saying only a few thousand people or whatever I don't remember precisely were going to die from covid and he had read all the studies and he knew and I didn't he's never liked unions or the government or regular that's that goes way back for all these
• 14:30 - 15:00 people and so it became more profound during Co this idea I think the issues around his trans daughter seemed to have affected him quite profoundly I've noticed that in a number of tech people who have trans children the second thing I think the Wall Street Journal has correctly reported on is his use of ketamine and Other Drugs so I think that was another thing um that seem to have changed him that's but although I you know they all use drugs all I know a lot of people use ketamine they don't tend to turn that far correct but I think he
• 15:00 - 15:30 was doing it himself he was like the world's expert right it was also staying up late at night he has this weird proclivity to be up at 3: in the morning and and obsessively he's got an obsessive personality you know we all have that element to us but he's got it in Spades and the one thing that I think people I keep saying this to people and I said it at the time when he when when Biden did not invite him to that EV Summit and invited Mary Bara instead and treated him shabby he was very upset
• 15:30 - 16:00 like very I talked to him a lot about it or he texted me and other people did too other people noticed it too and this was a summit that Biden had and he couldn't invite uh him uh because of the Union issues he was very varant anti-union so they didn't invite him and he was very upset like personally upset like wounded almost and I I even went as far as to call stett who works for Biden and I said boy have you made a mistake that you should have you should bear hug this guy I wouldn't be he's really mad and
• 16:00 - 16:30 you know Steve vered is a nice guy and he's like oh you know it's the unions he should understand he's a big boy and I was like no he's not a big boy the Bing people are all very relational for them to have missed what a relational snub like this could do to somebody with his ego is it's a mistake at the kind of politics they were supposed to be so good at well the thing is you know in again a lovely guy I actually ran into him at a movie premiere for Wicked and he goes guess you were right I'm like guess so you know he this the way he takes slights is really
• 16:30 - 17:00 strange I'd seen it in action sort of petty anger and slight slights and that one really stuck hard and they kept the Biden people kept tweaking him and I found that to be a m you know I mean you could be like so what I'm like why would you do that he actually does deserve the he does deserve the accolades around Tesla right so why not just give him that and I never understood why they wouldn't despite the Union there's a factor you haven't mentioned here which
• 17:00 - 17:30 is Twitter mhm so the Wall Street Journal has a a piece from years ago where it's just tracking his number of tweets year by year 2012 2013 2014 you begin to see it really explode 2016 2017 it gets really big 2018 and I mean then he's really Off to the Races yeah and there's a lot going on in his use of of Twitter and obviously he eventually buys Twitter and we'll talk about that but clearly he becomes very influenced by some quite radically write subcultures
• 17:30 - 18:00 on Twitter something some the part of Twitter he ends up falling into whether he looks for it or just gets into it I don't know what the Chicken and the Egg is here but he doesn't become a normal Republican he doesn't become a in some ways a normal Maga Republican he's not like like Steve Bannon or something no he falls into a sort of world of Twitter anons and let start off with joking stuff like he liked all those memes dank memes he loves dank memes I it's Ed he's he's I always felt when I you know him so much better than I do I don't know him very well at all but I always felt
• 18:00 - 18:30 when I left his presence a couple times I have been around it and this was years ago before he was you know who he is now I would tell people he was the smartest 15-year-old boy in the world yeah that's a very good way to put it yeah and so he got really into the memes and and this was always a real door into a a dark right Wi on that particular it always is you know I have experiences with my own son like he loves dank memes like he always sends me dank memes or whatever and you can follow down it and I think that's what
• 18:30 - 19:00 attracted him to Twitter for for sure and then it took off into a a much more a darker place that it the other things impacted it but you know he's an addictive personality clearly like whether it's to work or hardcore is one of his favorite words which is I find to be hustle porn um you know so he he's attracted to addiction and so his Twitter use is you can watch it like you can you can see it it's it's it's Manic and he's a manic person and I think it's again not
• 19:00 - 19:30 an expl not an excuse but an explanation he has a manic personality so there there's also a reality that in a way that is unusual among people of his class he's really good at it good at social media good at social media in the way young people are not in the way you know Barack Obama is right you get I don't think he's good the way my my kids are cringe they're always like cringe fair enough but there is an official voice of social media right The Voice Mark Zuckerberg used to have before he
• 19:30 - 20:00 became an Elon Musk imitator online the voice that you know you would get from Obama or Bill Gates yeah and musk isn't in that voice he's constantly responding to small follower accounts and he really does build up an attentional power that he didn't have before it he he begins to really trade in this coin of attention he loves attention he loves attention but but he's you know he uses it to drive meme coins he begins I think to understand in a way other people don't cuz he's experimenting with it what you
• 20:00 - 20:30 can turn attention into right what set him apart from sort of the other people who superficially looked like him that made him uh temperamentally suited to to doing that well his manic nature right it's a it's got a manic addictive quality to it and he does have a sense of humor it's not my sense of humor and people will hate me for saying this but it can be rather Charming right like when he was on Saturday Night Live look I know I sometimes say or post strange things but that's just how my brain works to anyone I've offended I just
• 20:30 - 21:00 want to say I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship did you think I was also going to be a chill normal dude he was so awkward that it was charming and other people again are going to say Cara loves him but I don't care go watch it it is I don't just just the way do you really have all these people in your life who are surprised that when you brought you made them oh yes oh my God so exting I have to tell you sometimes the left is so ridiculously censorious it's kind of like I don't want to use censorious
• 21:00 - 21:30 that's not they're just like skish I don't want to use they're not censoring in any way um but yes I get a lot of like you made him like you didn't know it well I didn't know how he was treating his kid I'm sorry I didn't know that and had I known I would have also it didn't make him the car company was successful because the cars were I was covering him as a car manufacturer look that that silon Val's it's I'm I'm not going to make an excuse silon valy has a million people like him he was very typical except he was doing more interesting things than other people so getting back to to always good at it I think the people that are very good and
• 21:30 - 22:00 I once wrote a column about in the times when I was writing for the times about the two people I thought were very good which is AOC and Trump right they're genuine to themselves right you or Kim Kardashian's another person who's like this you don't have to like any of these people but boy are they good at channeling themselves as an image online and it feels genuine it feels like them doing it and it is them doing it it feels like it's their voice if that makes sense people love when someone that famous reacts to
• 22:00 - 22:30 them and then it creates a sensation around them right and so then you get a lot of acolytes oh my God Elon Musk responded to me and he feeds off of that too um and again he combines the humor initially combined humor with that or insights right to interesting things and then it very quickly Twisted into stuff he doesn't know anything about and he just pontificates and that's his favorite thing is to say all manner of of nonsense sense and inaccuracies about
• 22:30 - 23:00 things he doesn't know what he's talking about I remember being at code years ago and you all had musk on the stage and and he he sort of talked through that he believed in the simulation hypothesis which is a hypothesis that you should expect that a officially Advanced civilization will begin running simulations of the world there will be more simulations and there will be base realities and so by a simple matter of arithmetic we are Liker to be living in a simulated world than than the real world and and musk said you know he bought this and and thought there's a
• 23:00 - 23:30 pretty L chance there's a nonzero chance and it it fascinated him again well that's what I was going to get at not the simulation I think people can make too much of whether or not that that idea matters but he has a mind has always I think had a mind that is attracted to unusual ideas that that the the things that most people believe are probably wrong what you can and can't do what isn't isn't true and I mean he has been proven right a number of times you know in very very big profound ways you know now he's the richest man in the
• 23:30 - 24:00 world I mean he's has the most attention in the world right from from where you start to end up there that's going to change your psychology right and one thing that then seems true though is that he doesn't just get attracted to unusual ideas but he gets more conspiratorial as I watch him on Twitter and I'm curious how you understand that dimension of him well you know Kevin Roose did a great thing about that you know you go down this Rabbit Hole it really is it can really be you know did you know this or you know everybody is
• 24:00 - 24:30 subject to it with with the way social media works that's that's a mind of of Technology people they're like this could happen we could go to the Moon right you have to have that element to you if you're going to do very difficult things and so you have to start with that personality and therefore anything every single thing is open to question why do we do it this way why do we do it this way and it's a personality trait I like but what it happens is when you start to get out to Ukraine or you know vaccines or whatever they have to
• 24:30 - 25:00 question everything and posit themselves I call I always joke about it with my wife oh we yet another bold truth teller right like I'm so tired of them like I'm here to boldly tell you the truth without any actual information or reporting and so he he's attracted to that that idea like the simulation like why can't we live on Mars not everybody does that and I think when it starts from that it starts off from a good place but often in the social media world as Kevin correctly put out in that
• 25:00 - 25:30 podcast he did is it goes down into the the the the sort of conspiracy theory Avenue really quickly but it's a a very specific kind of conspiracy theory he gets into so you have him um you know he responds to someone who tweets that Jews quote have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them and musk replies you have you have said the actual truth um in July of 2024 just before it came out in support of Trump pq's Democrats of quot trying to import as many illegal
• 25:30 - 26:00 voters as possible and in this way I think what is going on with him is a little bit distinct from uh a lot of the people who superficially have similar politics because I think he's really bought into a lot of great replacement theory yes a lot of so a lot of people in Silicon Valley let me say he's not alone no he's not he's got a cut like this Curtis yarvin stuff they they've all sort of been taken by these very it's almost religious if you think about it right and so one of the things that I
• 26:00 - 26:30 think it goes back to and I hate to say this is sad little boy wasn't loved enough as a child is searching for meaning right is searching for love searching for and again not an excuse because I think he's he's been become a terrible person and he should get therapy but um when there's easy answers like that oh this is why you're so unhappy oh this is why the world is the way it is these right-wing conspiracies do scratch an itch for these people it's a religion it's their answer to the world well I mean it's also a politics
• 26:30 - 27:00 so musk South African Peter teal uh spent much of his child in South Africa David Sachs is South African and there's a very distinctive experience there is to being somebody you know born in or who lived in South Africa you know during AP partti MH and also then sawthe dismantled saw South Africa change I've never quite known myself how much wait to put on this interpretation
• 27:00 - 27:30 but but it seems relevant it seems interesting ke musk and Sachs who are you know three of the most significant figures in the Silicon Valley Embrace of Trump have this yeah very very distinctive political experience of watching South Africa's white minority move from being in control of the country to a frightened minority in the country I mean there is that element to a lot of these people and the same thing with silicon people again when you merge that with the ideas around Silicon
• 27:30 - 28:00 Valley which is highly male highly we have all the answers why are these silly people in our way and and with the South African thing I don't know like I don't know what happened there that created this group of people but you can you could say that about people who come from Russia or China or you know there's an element of a whole bunch of people who uh immigrated from India uh so you know they they bring with them the the whatever culture has there and with South Africa you can go one of two ways
• 28:00 - 28:30 right you can go the AAL Fugard way or you could go in this more like I this way of longing for past times I guess in some fashion so musos and buys Twitter it's a sort of unusual acquisition he tries to get out of it while it's happening but but he does buy it and he comes in and he immediately does this huge cutting just like slashing right through it and people talk about this as as headcount reduction they talk about it as cutting waist they talk about it
• 28:30 - 29:00 as cutting bone but what I think when you look back on it now what it both was in reality and also and you would know more about this than me but what it becomes culturally in Silicon Valley is the reassertion of control that's right of a CEO over an annoying and overly empowered absolutely liberal employe CEOs loved it yeah talk a little bit about not exactly just what he did but what the cultural effect of what he did was on his cohort well I think what was really interesting is a lot of these
• 29:00 - 29:30 guys you know can I use this on the CH have Tiny Dick Energy I don't know what else to say they just they won't they want to be big swinging dicks and they won't do it right they won't go there because they're worried about what people will say or everyone sort of watching each other and this guy goes in and just does it Silicon Valley the the employees run the show like they really do they like to get their lunches they like to get their cars their dry cleaning they like to speak up and by the way they started it like Google starting with having the employees talk
• 29:30 - 30:00 back every Friday what do you think was going to happen right they're going to the kids Facebook having a Friday meeting where Mark Zuckerberg answers employee questions I hear you and they all create the um internal chat software right slack teams where it allows employees to be speaking in a way that they can sort of organize that speech even without unions right they gave power to their employees and I'm I had a discussion I don't think it was Mark where I was like now they're talking back I'm like what did you think they were going to do you indulge and you indulge children for long enough and
• 30:00 - 30:30 give them sugar all day long they're going to become terrible people like you know what I mean and so that they that they were surprised by this is what happened when they when they created these cultures I'm always surprised by so they have all these employees that annoy them so they let them say whatever they wanted and then they said whatever they wanted and then they were annoyed by them saying whatever they wanted and they found it you know very hard to push back because you know is at a premium in Silicon Valley so you have to kind of let everybody be
• 30:30 - 31:00 themselves right and they got it got annoying for a lot of these people cuz they had effective control over things but with musk when he did it you could see everybody in Silicon Valley they wanted to be him oh he gets to do that I don't get to do that I have to like listen to my diversity Equity inclusion people like G I hate those people like you know but he doesn't have to he can do whatever he wants and when he did that and cut people they wanted to do that too this feels to me like part of the co era radicalization
• 31:00 - 31:30 that happened to the Silicon Valley CEO class that you know something happening during covid during the the rise of various reckonings of me too of black lives matter I really think it has a lot to do with rise of slack and teams and things like that I think it's a very underrated dimension of what changed the relationship slack is irritating between the bosses and their employees it feels to me like a lot of the CEOs just hated their employees and what radicalized them was that they had lost control of their companies right and they wanted
• 31:30 - 32:00 that control back and that as much as anything feels to me like the theory musk is importing now to the government it's not he's talked about cutting spending and cutting waste what he's trying to get for Trump or for him is control right it's sort of the rid me of this annoying priest kind of thing like rid me of this these people again it's like a king thing the the way they set up their companies is a kingship right Mark Zuckerberg has complete control he can't be fired he's there for Life dictator for life or whatever the joke
• 32:00 - 32:30 you want to make um and so they like that but it's not in practice it doesn't work that way because he's got reporters annoying him like irritating reporters he's got um you know he's got his staff he's got to like least give a nod to diversity or else he gets shamed and he doesn't have the he doesn't have the fortitude that musk has in that regard and so they themselves are trying to assert themselves in sort of what they consider a man right this is the definition of what a man is a lot of them were not considered manly when they
• 32:30 - 33:00 were in high school or you know sort of Revenge of the Nerds kind of thing so they are trying to hold on to all these kind of manly cosplaying I guess you know with Mark it's the stupid chain and the t-shirt which good luck it's fine I think it looks ridiculous but fine he likes it or the MMA like I can feel like a man like they hold on or I'm going to hydrofoil or I'm going to do work out I'm going to show off my muscles there that's what Bezos is doing like here's my muscle here's my pretty fiance kind
• 33:00 - 33:30 of thing um they have they they're trying to sort of Cosplay a version of a man that that I think it seems pathetic to me but I think it gives them great comfort what one of the Rosetta Stones to me of the intellectual shift happening among this class was I forgot now exactly when this was but when musk and Zuckerberg were talking about having a fight in a cage right and and this is all I mean this has its own funny sub themes where ridiculous Zuckerberg is taking it all
• 33:30 - 34:00 incredibly earnestly and musk is clearly mocking him the whole time totally and so there's like a whole dynamic where like they don't have the cage match which Zuckerberg would win but actually musk wins because what he was doing was making fun of Mark Zuckerberg but they don't they didn't like each other just to be clear they didn't like each other but then there's a third here so there's an allen and Company conference one of his big CEO Tech conferences and Andre is asked about it and he ends up sending out his answer on his substack and he basically says I think it's great if
• 34:00 - 34:30 they fight because we've lost all the masculine virtues of the Greeks and if it was good enough for the Greeks it's good enough for us and one of the things happening it seems to me in the right-wing intellectual subculture these guys are increasingly part of but also among them is a sense that the world has feminized and that the masculine Virtues Of aggression of combat of conflict of Daring of risk of just making decisions and and to hell with it has been diminished and that the thing that is
• 34:30 - 35:00 needed is some kind of correction that that modernity is going off the rails because we're becoming womanly and and and soft and I guess this class of VCS and Tech Founders is going to you know show us our way back well they don't like women to start with come on they don't like them to start with so this is not shouldn't be a surprise that don't like the ladies like kind of thing well they intellectualized it is what I think becomes interesting here what's interesting about what you're saying and it's absolutely true let's sorry they don't have women in their midst I I
• 35:00 - 35:30 wrote a piece once say the men and no the men and no women in Facebook and Mark got hurt by it and I was like what I'm just putting up pictures of your management I don't know what to tell you like you hired them they they're very fixated on what a man is and what how to behave and what's really interesting especially Mark andreon I mean if he could jog like 10 feet I'd be surprised right like talking about the manly virtues give me a break I mean some when he said that I'm like I could beat him up in 5 seconds like I don't even understand where this comes from um but they uh now he's going to challenge me
• 35:30 - 36:00 to a fight whatever um so uh so it's it's a it's a concept of what a man is that is not what a man is but they've decided it is now of all these people Elon didn't cosplay a lot like that like he didn't except now he's starting to wear the cowboy hats and that that whole nonsense that he's doing but he actually didn't as much as they did and now they sort of take all his their cues from his aggression which is kind of interesting yeah that that was the thing I was going to sort of get out with Zuckerberg too
• 36:00 - 36:30 when I think back on that fight they were going to have and and Zuckerberg for a minute seemed to be positing himself as the Elon foil right the you know he you know he would challenged him to a fight he was having threads Elon had X and now you see Zuckerberg copying him I mean the way he engages on threads the way Elon engages on Twitter yeah Zuckerberg is such a beta he's such I love saying that he there is this deep way in which musk seems to have reset the culture or at least been the signal
• 36:30 - 37:00 that allowed a lot of the people who weren't quite ready to come out and say how they been feeling themselves to move he he led a lot of the flood towards Trump of of of tech leaders and you know now is like showing oh you can actually turn this into political power in a way that I think nobody quite realized you could do directly I mean Peter teal I think you know For Better or Worse gets a lot of credit for he supported Trump early he made his bets but teal didn't try to wield the power himself teal makes bets and watches them pay off or not but musk is going in and showing oh
• 37:00 - 37:30 it could just be you you could not only have all this power as a technology CEO you could be one of the most important celebrities in the world and you could be functionally Shadow president like oh you didn't figure this out I figured it out yeah Zuckerberg hid from the attention right Zuckerberg never liked the he liked the ACT ACC claim but he never liked the [ __ ] that went with it right and so that's why he didn't push all the way through right and that was interesting and musk does have these guts to do that like I'm going to do it
• 37:30 - 38:00 no matter what what if I get attacked in fact I eat my attackers for breakfast right I love my attack come and get this is Trump's personality too I mean the thing they seem to me to be is temperamentally actually quite similar it takes a very unusual personality to be Shameless at that level yeah the amount of genuine hatred you need to absorb you know there's a decision they they both made that you know if you want to really wield power you have to be willing to be hated and one of the things most of us are not willing to do is to be truly hated and most CEOs are
• 38:00 - 38:30 not willing to be truly hated it seems like bad business if nothing else that disinhibition is to me Central to to their Alliance well they do care though underneath they Trump wants nothing more than have the New York Times love him like you can feel it right like you can you know that the sense of victim people say this I don't buy it anymore maybe he did once I don't buy it anymore I do I think they both care quite a bit of what people think I think they care almost too much what people think and so I
• 38:30 - 39:00 think it fuels their rage in a lot of ways I think they will never not there is a little piece of them that is never not going to care about what people think of them and they become more and more emboldened by that it it fuels it's the it's the center of their Rocket Fuel I think I mean there there might be certainly truth to that it's rocket fuel for them I I just think that at a certain point you lose the belief that these people are even friends you still want to have and and that's I think what real radicalization is absolutely
• 39:00 - 39:30 radicalization I think often takes just the normal pluralistic given and take we allans together off the table it becomes an allout war and and I do think Trump and in a very and in a different way but in some ways a more I think intellectualized way musk uh now see this as as allout war and you have to gain he control if you don't I mean he was on on Rogan's show saying you know that there would be no more elections if if Trump didn't win this time I mean musk is really gone into the civilizational battle right he clearly
• 39:30 - 40:00 believes in some level of great replacement Theory he's now trying to get the farri right afd elected in in Germany try to get labor out of power in in theuk chance he said that the other day and this to me gets it a way that I'm curious if you think he's changed for a very long time the line of musk was that everything is backwards from his belief that eventually the humanity needs to be a interplanetary species he does think that and well I'm sure he does think that but he sure seems to be more concerned with the demographic
• 40:00 - 40:30 balance of the United States and a handful of northern European countries well look at all his children like he he manifests himself by having so many children and um and seemingly not spending time with them except for one right um he wants to he wants to have children not necessarily be a parent which I think is an interesting thing to Plum at some point um so what is a goal that now motivates him do you really believe it's still the interplanetary thing or is it a view that that these countries are losing their cultures and if you lose those cultures
• 40:30 - 41:00 then everything is lost I do think it does manifest from the need to get off this planet I do I do I think that's the everything that is the one consistent thing since I met him which is this idea that Civilization is doomed and therefore we need to get off this planet I think at their heart they do believe the version of themselves is the greatest version of man right which would be a white guy Supreme kind of thing I I think they
• 41:00 - 41:30 actually believe that at their heart um and so you're going to see that manifested in these statements that he makes all the time which are very clearly like I forget what he said but essentially we need more South Africans here in this country or something like that and he's always sort of pulling in that direction I have never heard him express any kind of what I would cons I've heard different CEOs Express racism his is a different kind it's more around social engineering and the idea that the best people are being replaced I think
• 41:30 - 42:00 that's really where he lives which is also racist of course so to you the synthesis of these positions is that musk is still motivated by the desire to become interplanetary but he just believes that we are corroding the civilizational virtues and genius that you would need to do that by with Dei and the woke mind virus everything is in the way of our getting somewhere else because the Lesser people are in charge or the Lesser people people you know he talk he does talk about this a lot of like at one point he
• 42:00 - 42:30 was tweeting about cesarian sections right did you see that tweet where he said if you have a cesarian you have a better brain because your brain comes out better because you're not going through the vaginal Canal this whole thing he was talking about and you know I've had a cesarian so I sort of was like sit down sir like you don't know what you're talking about but um but he was very that was a really interesting thing everyone sort of it passed people by but I was like oh he thinks you have to like preserve the like he's sort of eugenics almost like you know what I
• 42:30 - 43:00 mean like the it was such a weird thing for him to go down that Avenue um but he has these theories about human brains and development obviously he's involved with neuralink um so he's always been interested in the idea of machine people merging together that's certainly an area he's that hasn't been plumbed enough his neuralink stuff and so if you put all this together and and bring it back to the government it it sounds to me like if I what you're saying here what you have is someone who in order for Humanity to
• 43:00 - 43:30 achieve its long-term goals you need people like Elon Musk in control right of a federal government that is responsive to people like Elon Musk purged of the forces that were not responsive that slow down a person like Elon Musk in a polity that isn't infected by these modern Progressive ideas of equity of consensus of doing all these things that are just slow and
• 43:30 - 44:00 burdensome and Regulatory and soft and and don't allow for the risk and the daring allow you to blow up 90 Rockets um and and so that sort of that is that your view of like the the put it all to together that he's trying to functionally make the federal government something that can be effectively controlled by people like him to get to the the the goals he wants to get to yeah I think he thinks they're in the way this you know this goes back to Peter teal Peter teal is everyone's like oh they want to reform it I go no no no they want to burn it down like and start again like that is if you read if you
• 44:00 - 44:30 spend time reading Peter teal that is what he's saying right he democracy doesn't work it's it doesn't work we're going to start with something else and so they don't want and that is sort of the ethos of you know move fast and break things right which is a software term they want to break they don't want to build they want to break and they can't build until you break and that's a disruption think of all the words they use it's all about like destruction like and it's not creative destruction it's
• 44:30 - 45:00 let's wipe the Slate clean and then we will build the civilization we want and let us let us show you the way of how we can get back to Glory kind of thing and like it's just that that it's that theory but they but they sort of burnish it with this techno utopianism that is really techno authoritarianism if you if you break it down that they know best and and that that if we just listen to them the world will be a better place for everybody to to try to be generous to it as a theory of governmental reform which uh I know you like to do that I I
• 45:00 - 45:30 I try I think democracies work pretty [ __ ] well but go ahead so musk said regulations basically should be default gone not default there default gone if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation we can always add it back in and and so if you take the view that you know we have a longtime stable government it is uh there's a lot of crust a lot of bureaucracy that the theory here which I guess is also Theory from Twitter is like yes you rid it you turn things off you turn them back on
• 45:30 - 46:00 you cut hugely and if it's a problem then you go fix a problem later but but better to cut deeper and then be able to rebuild in a cleaner way than to cut not deep enough you know to only get a quarter Loaf and politics is normally does not go that far in reform uh it's very very hard to reform institutions and there are real problems from that I mean San Francisco Works quite poorly much of the federal government you know leave leaves something to be desired so is there a to be made here for musm that
• 46:00 - 46:30 that he is doing what you know normal political reformers won't do and taking risk in order to do it but this is actually the only way to actually create a federal bureaucracy that is not quite so sclerotic no I think it's not not at all I think I'm a reform person right obviously everything's not going to happen at once there is an ease to tearing it all down isn't there and it has to be a willing to sacrifice people right we're going to sacrifice this
• 46:30 - 47:00 group of people this young these young women these young they don't care about that and one of the things I say over and over again they're like I have a lot of people like how can they do this how can they do this I'm like they don't care they don't care for you they don't think about you you're nothing and I remember one time we were musk was very the earliest person to talk to me about ai ai has been around forever but he was really concerned about the the impact of AI on the humanity that was another thing he was the first person to raise those alarms to me at least um when he
• 47:00 - 47:30 started open AI with Sam and the rest of them first he was like AI is going to kill us it's going to get like ter the Terminator idea right it's going to become self-aware and 20 whatever and then it's going to turn around and bomb us and kill us and start again right and we got to stop that that was his theory next time I saw him um he thought it was I thought he could came up with a much more sophisticated idea of it which was they're not going to kill us they're going to treat us like house cats right we're house cats and they they're fine with us here and they're going to build
• 47:30 - 48:00 everything around us but we're not in danger we're in dangered in the way house cats are as long as they like house cats were fine like they don't think of us as anything more then the next time I saw him he had he had evolved into this idea that AI was more like building highways the way we build highways across the country and humanity is a is a bunch of anels and we go across antill without thinking when we're building roads we don't know that the ants were are there we just do it I thought the the progression was really
• 48:00 - 48:30 interesting to me that he that's how he was looking at it and to me that's how he I he was expressing how he operates these things are anils I don't I don't have to think about them because we never think about them and so to me that was a really interesting progression of first the first one cares about what happens to humanity the last one doesn't I like that progression of metaphors because very classically what you put into the metaphor reveals what you can and not see out of the metaphor and I think the the dominant comparison for
• 48:30 - 49:00 what musk is doing is Twitter where he came in and you know used in in some ways a very similar Playbook to to cut through it and take control of it but during that period Twitter broke down terribly it's advertising collapsed it's still a much jankier platform than it used to be I mean it has things it didn't have before like rock but the search doesn't work one thing that just strikes me when I look at what Trump is outsourcing to musk right now mhm is I wonder if they have really thought about the risk they're taking on no because
• 49:00 - 49:30 I've never seen an Administration come in and so completely own everything bad that might happen that the federal government does or is supposed to regulate in the coming years if you imagine something like the terrible plane crash that happened uh just recently happening in a year when uh pushed retirements have happen have come through the FAA and you know musk had already pushed the administrator of the FAA to to be on leave or resign you would get a lot more blame for that but
• 49:30 - 50:00 bad things happen all the time the federal government is supposed to stop financial crisis and and on and on and on they're coming with this axe to the government pushing indiscriminate resignations reassigning people pushing out very talented career staff anything that goes wrong they are truly going to own yes but they won't they will not they will not they will say it is not them it was we're cleaning up from the
• 50:00 - 50:30 previous right they will not take control because one e you think they care about consequences one of the messages in my I think they care about power they don't care about the consequences of damage they do not care they don't anticipate it you're right about Twitter it's a lesser business the only way he's getting advertisers is by threatening them like they're just doing these lawsuits and um and and of course these advertisers are going to go back just to to acquest to him right yeah I mean now he has power right not a way to pay off Tesla's not a Better Business
• 50:30 - 51:00 than what it was cuz they haven't innovated the cars that that stock may be going up but the sales are going down because the cars aren't as good they just aren't so he doesn't care about the actual thing these people don't care about the actual thing they care about laying waste to it and then we'll build something better but I don't know what they're going to build better if you press them and a lot of these like same thing with the media that goes with it it's never about Solutions is it it's about how everything sucks and we have to get rid of it they never tell you what their replacement is for any of it
• 51:00 - 51:30 because they don't have any you know they don't have a theory of of building they have a theory of Destruction you know is Trump just with the water thing he just like we got to get the water flow what a disaster that was what he just did like in California he's wasting yeah opening reservoirs for no reason fight fires gone and then the whole group of people going mhm sir well done I'm like are you [ __ ] like who is not standing there among the media going are you [ __ ] kidding me with this like not going well sir people say I'd be
• 51:30 - 52:00 like are that's why they don't let me in the white house I'm like are you [ __ ] kidding me that was a disaster like what you just did you idiot I I think back to to Twitter on on the control question because musk buys Twitter he breaks a lot of Twitter he breaks the business of Twitter clearly he's overpaying at $44 billion and so I would have told you you know a year ago 18 months ago that didn't work out but what he did actually do is he made Twitter a channel for him personally that's right and he turned
• 52:00 - 52:30 all of its attention and influence into something he could control and I don't know if the power he's getting out of that or will get out of that is worth 44 billion dollar I don't think I don't think it's exactly the way to measure it but I actually think it's worth more than that I don't think it would be possible for musk to play this role in both domestic and now International politics if he didn't do that we don't know how to Value attention the best investment he made except except for investing in Trump that 280 million let
• 52:30 - 53:00 me tell you the only person when he bought it we were all sort of like what in the world why is he paying so much what an idiot right everybody was saying that that was sort of the well he was too he tried to get out of it on the was over stupid right because he wasn't anticipating what he could use it for right he didn't realize he had a really big gun there right he thought it was a knife or whatever the only person who called me was Mark Cuban and he says Carrie he's not buying it like maybe doesn't know he's doing this but he when he goes in a room internationally as uh
• 53:00 - 53:30 as the head of Tesla or starlink I mean he gets a meeting just like the head of GM or locked gets right and and world leaders Etc when he goes in as the owner of Twitter he has enormous power globally from from an influence point of view he goes this is not a US play this is a global play and I was like huh I think Mark was 100% right he bought it and it gave him an he Twitter guy and also Tesla and also but he gets an no
• 53:30 - 54:00 one else has that right and maybe back in the day rert Murdoch right I guess and that's what he's done but like bigger better stronger more influential um ruber Mar would never think of sitting with Trump cutting this stuff well Murdoch didn't want to be the main character of his own platforms but he is kind of rert Murdoch now right I totally who likes to do [ __ ] I've said the same thing I think it's the the absolute correct comparon but that I think then brings us to the government which is he may not know what he wants to build
• 54:00 - 54:30 after but what I think that the at least a Twitter experience probably taught him is if you break it you can control it you can make it a vehicle for you right and if it's filled with the old people who were in it and they're unafraid and they have power and they're are power centers then you're opposed I don't know what if even he knows what he wants to do with the government but the degree to which he wants everybody to see that it is him doing it I I thought it was so telling that in the email they sent out to federal employees for S trying to
• 54:30 - 55:00 tell them you could get money and do nothing until September if you would just retire that he gave it the same subject line as the email I sent out to Twitter employees during that buyout he wanted everybody to know it was him exactly right he wants to be the main character of the whole thing as you said at the beginning you you said that right I thank God you said that because like all the media is like look at this interesting thing I'm like he wants you to know it's a signature it's me Fredo I know it was you Fredo know like he totally wanted people everything he does he wants you to know because again he is
• 55:00 - 55:30 a desperate attention sponge and he just needs constant constant why would you stay up at night talking to people you know named cat turd why why I'm not a psychologist but boy does he have a big old hole right in the center of himself and so what what I think is very telling about both of these people is they do not have solutions they only tell us what the problem is and they don't have a vision you even Ronald Reagan had a vision like they all have PE what is your vision what what do you want to make except get out of my way and let me
• 55:30 - 56:00 do what I want to do that's really the vision that I can tell I haven't heard what they want to make at all he does seem a bit you know there's this idea of the sinine eater uh in fantasy novels I forget exactly where it comes from but but you know it's the the character that consumes sin and then can be purged right you can Purge that figure and then the the the sins are are gone it's a sort of sacrificial character Jesus I think and in a way um it musk I wonder a
• 56:00 - 56:30 bit about that in terms of the the pain of the administrative war that that Trump and and the people around him wanted to do I mean when I think about when this starts to go bad assuming this starts to go bad musk taking so much credit for it all makes him so usefully sacrificial totally when the people on musk who are more careful and quiet the Susie WS is the Russ votes the the r to them who you know are not have you noticed they're all leaking we don't have control of him yeah there's a lot
• 56:30 - 57:00 of leaking already that we can't control musk such that the moment he becomes more liability than asset you can get rid of him he's like well he went too far right Elon Musk got out of control that wasn't us MH I don't know that it happens and you know he has leverage he can bring to a fight like that but it doesn't seem impossible that it happens and you can see people setting up that Escape Route as we speak utterly tr's life is full of those people and now he's got the greatest one ever Michael
• 57:00 - 57:30 Cohen was that like the fixer right so there's always a fixer in Trump's life Who does these things who's willing to go to the mat and for for their B for the boss right which he likes to be called apparently um so musk is that RIT large it's just that he's much more protected because he's so wealthy he has so much means that he almost is more powerful than he's not a minion he's like a super minion or something how real do you think the affection between the two of them is well Donald Trump is like he has what
• 57:30 - 58:00 three emotions ABC like I don't think he's very complexes in that regard um I did think they were going to fight and I know he's irritating to Trump you you hear that from a lot of people and I think it's absolutely true he probably is irritating at the same time Trump loves money right so really that seems that's at the heart of him I I think he's useful I think Donald Trump finds him useful and he is useful to Donald Trump he's useful Junkyard Dog and so I think he'll and and he has a lot of
• 58:00 - 58:30 money so if he has a cudgel against these Senators he's going to give me money to you know to to take you out like I've got a bank a bank that never ends essentially he also knows he needs him to hold on to power because what does it look like when they fight what does that look like you don't want Elon Musk outside the tent that's a really bad place for Elon mus to be and angry because he's shown he has an ability to fight back at people um so ultimately it could go on for a while and he could do
• 58:30 - 59:00 more and more outlandish things and behave in more and more outlandish ways he Trump has an endless capacity for you know oh did he say a racist thing I don't care like you know so I think you could go on for a very very long time I've been struck though to see Trump already talking about trying to make clear that that Elon is under his control I told he said quote Elon can't do and won't do anything our approval and we'll give him the approval where appropriate where not appropriate we
• 59:00 - 59:30 won't and then there's this endless leaking from inside the administration that nobody's actually in control of him Trump is not paying attention to what he's doing right and no he's not totally not I think both things are actually true that Trump could say no to him but actually Trump doesn't care and so the danger for both of them in in a strange way is that musk who is hyper empowered and is has a very very almost endless appetite for risk takes a risk that blows up for all of them what could what could that be what is he like detonate a nuclear
• 59:30 - 60:00 bomb you break the you break the government and things are going to break I mean you have to have a very I'm not saying you do but but you have to have a very dim view of government to believe that if you get rid of this many talented people in it that when bad things begin to happen in the world and they happen constantly on every I mean there was a pandemic in Trump's first uh in in his first term but Trump in his first term had this real interesting capacity to always seem like he was out side of the state that he in theory ran that's right he spoke as if you know he
• 60:00 - 60:30 he was up in the balcony jeering at the Opera he was watching and that always gave him this this strange you know ability to separate himself from how a government that he didn't like work that was the whole political utility of the deep state but this they've torched that I mean I know they could they they might still try to claim it but when you do this kind of uh bulldozer tactic and it's this public and you are
• 60:30 - 61:00 absorbing all this risk and pushing these people out then when things break and people go back and they look and they say well a bunch of the people here they they actually took the buy out they they they took your fork in the road Elon I could be wrong it could all work out great for them but the taking they're taking a lot of risk you think you see you're operating on the they they care about the pain they don't care they won't take responsibility for it if you heard Mark Zucker take responsibility for I think Trump cares about pay though I mean look at how quickly he backed off on his tariffs of Canada and Mexico when
• 61:00 - 61:30 the markets began to move right you know you can you can lose midterm elections really badly and then all of a sudden the investigations are coming for you right which is probably what will happen right that's that's the like likely a scenario here I mean one of the things that he's got to keep musk around for that is the money on these things to manipulate things to to to Really flood the Zone with all kinds of money and efforts to win that midterms but they again they don't care he has done the damage as long as he destroys it and you can't come back is what they're doing in
• 61:30 - 62:00 musk mind my guess is that he thinks this is the only way to do it is to get rid of everything they're hoping you focus so much on the destruction that you're not going to notice you're living in a destroyed place and I know you think there's bigger implications but you won't you'll see they they'll be all over the they'll be so all over the place it'll be hard to figure out what actually has been destroyed or to feel a sense of anger what's going to happen is people are going to feel a sense of just neoism right I I think I think that's
• 62:00 - 62:30 what's going to happen I mean that I I do think that's often the the emotion that they are attempting to provoke I want to ask you before we end a question about the the broader silon Valley uh Tech culture here you've had this big almost herd-like movement towards this uh I forgot what you called it a techno uh a techno authoritarian tarianism yeah and it's been so fast and so intense among the the leaders the the sort of cultural leaders of Silicon Valley the people with like the biggest uh social
• 62:30 - 63:00 media accounts and they're all at the you know the the the Trump inauguration do you see a counterforce when you think of the cultural currence there is it all just moving this direction are the employees moving this direction are the people coming up like what is the contrarian bet in terms of this intellectual culture which I mean was very different 10 years ago than where it is now when everybody you know was Pro Obama they weren't Pro Biden I can tell you that were not pro Biden and they hated but they hated Donald Trump in in 2016 with the exception of teal so it moves very fast and so whenever it
• 63:00 - 63:30 moves as fast and as far as it has now it sort of makes me wonder where it's going to be in four years I'm curious if you have a sense of who you're watching as signals of that yeah there's a few people Reed Hoffman was just on the podcast this week I sense fear in him right he's he funded the EEG Carol thing you know he's a very lovely person and he's very like even-handed all the time almost to a fault um you know I don't think he's going to be as aggressive and he certainly was right but he's got to be thinking what do I do I'm very exposed right you have a Mark Cuban who
• 63:30 - 64:00 I think presents a different alternate he's claims to me he doesn't want to run for president I I think he has a real opening right of like oh come on this is not the way we are I don't think everyone's moved there I think most of the there's these loud Mouse like uh musk and David saxs and um and that gang and even Peter's not that loudmouth these days which is interesting I find interesting um but there you have the loud mouthe and but I don't think everyone is on this ticket like if you noticed you didn't see Tim Cook in the
• 64:00 - 64:30 front row that with the greatest Feast of Engineering in history was somehow he didn't have to be in that picture right I have never thought Silicon Valley was liberal I thought they were uh utilitarian I guess um I thought they sort of were tolerant socially but didn't really care didn't think about it much I I think these people just want to do their business I I don't think they support Trump I think they it's like a vig right whether you're Bob Iger whether you're anybody you got to pay the vi or you don't have a choice right now I don't think there there's a deep
• 64:30 - 65:00 well of support for Trump I think it's just there's a bunch of loud mouse that have that and everyone else just shakes their head so when that's the case there tends to be a counterveiling force of these guys are Shakedown artists right when say as you say disaster will come and this will be a big [ __ ] mess they will line up in that direction because it's it's good for them and for their shareholders so whatever it takes for shareholders to do better they will if Trump tanks the stock market if Trump tanks this they'll be on the opposite
• 65:00 - 65:30 side instantly because they have no real values they just don't you know Elon has more values than most of them in a weird way even though they're warped and twisted um so I think they'll just go whatever way the financial markets go that's my feeling I think it's a good place to end always a final question what are three books You' recommend to the audience oh God interesting I I can't one of them I I should I can't say well there's a memoir coming out from a very well-known
• 65:30 - 66:00 media person that once it publishes you should read I'm reading it right now and I can't say who it is because he gave it to me on the on the slide I think it's wonderful um I love the book Northwoods by Daniel Mason um which came out last year uh which is about a house the history of a house and the people who lived in it and it's haunting me I think it's the most beautiful book and I love Daniel Mason I'm reading the piano tuner right now I'm reading all his stuff um but this book just it's about one of the things that comforts me in this very difficult time um you know I have four
• 66:00 - 66:30 kids I'm gay person it's nerve-racking right now I thought this was all over and here we are again um but it gives gives me Comfort that we're all being dead someday like I know it sounds crazy but life goes on over the period and so I really like that book um and then uh I I recently interviewed him and I think he's terrific um uh Tim Snider uh I think he's a really important uh person talking about where tyranny goes and stuff like that I think it's I read a
• 66:30 - 67:00 lot more non-fiction I should read more fiction and I'm sorry I'm going to give one more Geraldine Brooks uh who is a wonderful writer she won um I think the is the pet or whatever her book she's she's mostly done fiction she's written a book about the death of her husband that is incredible Tony Horwitz who is a friend of mine geraldine's a friend of mine um he he wrote Confederates in the attic and it's a beautiful rumination on mortality and history I don't just a wonderful book Caris Wisher thank you very much okay good
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