Ryan Mac

Ryan Mac covers Elon Musk for "The New York Times." He and his colleague Kate Conger wrote the definitive book on Musk's purchase of Twitter, "Character Limit." This is the real inside story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
We welcome Welcome back, Bob left the podcast. My guest
today is Ryan Mack, co author of the book Character Limit,
How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter? Ryan, what does the average
person not know about Elon Musk?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Oh Man? Where to start? Gosh, so much, especially in
the last couple weeks days that he's been in the news,
But I don't know. One of the things that I've
found very interesting is explaining to people how much power
he has now, especially with this position he has close

(00:47):
to the White House. But even before then, you know,
he's you know, one of the most successful menstionneurs of
his time. He controls these major companies in Tesla and SpaceX,
and in some ways he is the second most important
person in the White House next to Donald Trump. Now,
so yeah, we can get into all that, but there's

(01:08):
a lot to unpack.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Well, why don't we start there, because that's what's happening
right this second. He is working with the Department of
Government Efficiency. You know a lot of people say, oh,
the guy cut all these people at Twitter, It's gonna
be great. What might we anticipate in his work there?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's actually kind of crazy reporting out what happened at
Twitter and seeing almost the exact same playbook being talked
about with this Department of Government Efficiency. I think first
of all, what should be made clear is that we
really don't know what this DOGE is. Obviously it's a
reference to a meme cryptocurrency, which is the abbreviation of

(01:55):
Department of Government Efficiency. But we don't know what this
is gonna do. They've talked about it, you know, cutting
two trillion dollars, you know, Elon and Vivek Ramaswami his
co head of this department, making decisions over hiring and firing.
But what they've talked about, we've compared to what we

(02:16):
reported on it in Twitter. You know, for example, at Twitter,
he cut more than at this point eighty percent of
the staff then, you know, compared to when he what
he when he took over, that's thousands of jobs. You know,
if he applies that to the federal government, that's tens
of thousands of jobs that could be that could be removed.

(02:37):
You know. He slash costs kind of ruthlessly at Twitter
as well, cutting things from rent payments to janitorial services,
to food services, to systems that help make the website run.
And we could see that kind of kind of slash
and burn technique play out in the government to an

(02:59):
extent we've ever seen before. So, you know, we have
to talk very generally about what he's saying he's doing.
And of course Elon is someone that makes a lot
of promises, but the precedent has been kind of set
with what he did at Twitter.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Let's start from the beginning. What is your gig? What
is your purview with The New York Times?

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Sure, so, I'm a I'm a reporter on our tech desk.
We have people around the world who cover the technology industry.
On that desk, I do what we call accountability accountability reporting,
you know, a lot of investigative work, a lot of
deeper dives into the movers and shakers of the industry.

(03:44):
I've covered Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg in the past. I've
covered Jack Dorsey, and I've covered Elon not only in
this job but in previous gigs. I've worked at BuzzFeed
News before this, at Forbes magazine as well, and my
rem at The Times is to, you know, find these stories,
dig deeper into these guys, and you know, report out

(04:08):
these monumental business decisions or happenings in the industry. So,
you know, two and a half years ago, when Elon
decided to buy Twitter, I was one of a couple
of reporters that was thrown head on into covering this
kind of unprecedented transaction, this transaction of one man, you know,
the world's richest man worth two hundred billion dollars at

(04:30):
the time, buying a whole company for forty four billion dollars,
and one thing led to another. I was teamed up
with Kate Conger, my co author now in the book,
and we were reporting two or three stories a day
to the point where we couldn't fit everything into the
pages of The New York Times. And you know, that's
where we got this book and kind of continued it

(04:52):
from there. But at the Times these days, I effectively
cover Elon full time. You know, there he is someone
that is incredibly powerful, incredibly interesting, and I'm one of
a couple of reporters where are dedicated to, you know,
following him and understanding what he's up to, whether that's
a Tesla or SpaceX or now in the White House.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, let's go back a step. How did you get
the gig at the New York Times?

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Gosh, I guess I have to start from the very beginning.
Go for it, Let's do it. Coming out of college, I,
you know, in college, didn't really know what I wanted
to do.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
And where'd you go to college?

Speaker 2 (05:36):
I went to Stanford, to Stanford, and like a good
immigrant son, you know, son of immigrants, I was on
the med school track and looking to become a doctor
and realizing that the life sciences weren't necessarily for me.
But I was always doing the school paper in school
and having a lot of fun with it and realizing,

(05:58):
you know, maybe I could pursue this as a profession.
You know, I started doing internships while in school. I
worked for the half Moon Bay Review in half Moon Bay, California.
I worked at the Orange County Register, my hometown paper
where I grew up in Orange County. I ended up
working for The Times as an intern and in Bloomberg,

(06:21):
and eventually, you know, you know, what the heck, I'll
give this a shot. And after school I went to
Forbes worked there for five and a half years as
a staff writer on the magazine covering Silicon Valley. I
was based in San Francisco, so it made it a
lot easier and actually at Forbes, I started on this

(06:43):
thing called the Wealth Team, which is the team that
puts together these kind of Forbes ritualists, you know, the
Forbes billionaires, the Forbes four hundred riches, Americans, And actually
it's a great place to start. As a cub reporter,
you are essentially doing these calculations that ever one sees
of you know, so and so is worth billions of dollars.

(07:04):
But behind the scenes, as reporters, you are doing the
nitty gritty of those calculations. You are tallying up SEC
documents and looking at the financial filings. You are valuing
things like megayachts and wine collection and art. You're talking
to you know, some of these people talk to us
and like, you know, say, you know, I'm actually up

(07:25):
this year. You're missing my picasto that I just bought,
or you know that that wine collection is too low
for me. Actually it should be higher because the price
of burgundy went up. So as a twenty two year
old reporter who was making peanuts thirty five thousand dollars
a year talking to the richest people in the world,

(07:47):
it was kind of surreal for me. And actually that's
where I developed kind of my early network, my rolodex.
As a reporter, you know, you're as good as your
sources and the people you talk to, and it was
kind of a start for me, kind of a because
you know, you're that young, you don't usually get introduced
into those circles. And from there I kind of built

(08:09):
a platform, you know, I moved off that team. I
was able to generate my own story ideas, did a
lot of profiles of CEOs and those types. I actually
covered music briefly with zach O Maalley Greenberg at Forbes,
who was a business music business guy, and kind of
learned from him as well. And uh yeah, moved to

(08:31):
BuzzFeed a couple of years later, kind of pivoted a
little bit to do more investigative type reporting, where I
reported quite a bit on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and
won some awards there and ended up at the Times
three and a half years ago.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Now, so, okay, are you just working at BuzzFeed and
The Times calls you also BuzzFeed took an ax to
their news department, So how did the transition happen?

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Very very sad. Yeah, because BuzzFeed, if you remember that
kind of optimist era of digital media. Right, you have BuzzFeed,
you have Vox, you have all these startups popping up
with the promise that they could figure out, you know,
how to put things online better than the legacy publications.

(09:19):
And you know, ultimately what we learned is that they
were at the whims of these tech platforms. These giants,
right and Facebook, you know, love that content initially and
then didn't like it so much and turn off the spigot,
and that's what caused the collapse. But in that kind
of heyday, which I kind of joined towards the end of,
you know, the venture capital fueled digital media revolution, it

(09:42):
was great. You had these amazing resources to pursue these
long term stories. You know, you didn't have to deal
with the nitty gritty day to day coverage your news cycle.
I could kind of pull out and do a three
month investigation into Facebook or Google or I covered a
lot of Peter Tiel, for example. It was a billionaire

(10:04):
who was on the Facebook board. And I kind of
built my name on those stories. And BuzzFeed had the
resources to do that and gave the opportunity to kind
of mid career or early to mid career reporters like myself.
So it was a great place to work, super collegial.
Everyone is like friends and sharing each other's work, you know,

(10:27):
and just an amazing place to be a great energy. Unfortunately,
what we learned is that that model wasn't a great business,
you know, And when this bigot was turned off by
the digital platforms, there were layoffs and quite a few
until the point where the news division is effectively dead.

(10:47):
I left before the very very end of BuzzFeed News Buzzy.
The New York Times saw my work and liked it
and recruited me. But yeah, that's that's kind of how
that played out.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Okay. At this late date, in the wake of the election,
the New York Times the paper of record irrelevant of the truth.
It is seen as more of a left wing publication
in light of the election and the election of Trump.
Has there been any wee valuation or adjustment at the

(11:21):
Times in general?

Speaker 2 (11:24):
You know, I don't want to speak for the paper.
I've only been there for three and a half years.
I know that the paper has focused so much on independence,
you know. Obviously there's a perception of bias one or
the other. I mean, you could talk to progressives, for example,
that I think the paper is actually conservative, but I
think above all it's this idea of editorial independence that

(11:45):
the paper values more than most. And honestly, you know,
that could sound like me blowing smoke up people's asses,
but in reality, you know, there is no political bent
to the paper that I've experience, and you know, on
my desk, you know, I'm I cover technology. There's no

(12:07):
remit to go after whatever, report on certain targets, whatever.
But you know, we for me, it's always been about
interrogating power. That that for me has kind of been
my north star, regardless of political affiliation. And you know,
I think my career has kind of proven that that
I have focused on the powers, the titans of industry,

(12:28):
you know, the powers that be, you know, the richest
people in the world, the people that control these platforms,
that control these companies that shape our daily lives. And
that's how I hope I continue to report, you know,
and and you know, I think that's that's kind of okay.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Point in time. The mainstream media is a pejorative. Yeah,
what do people not understand about The New York Times? Hm?

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Hm, you know, that's a that's a good question. I mean,
the mainstream media has it's it's so easy to criticize, right,
And my world of looking at social media and seeing
people that criticize the New York Times, particularly like when
when I'll use Elon Musk as an example, right, who says,

(13:17):
you know, you shouldn't get your your news from the
New York Times or the wash Journal or the Washington Post.
Everything is actually going to be on X. You know
you could X is the news source. You are the
news source because it's it's people feeding X. Well, a
lot of that news comes from mainstream media. You know
that that we're the ones reporting it that is then

(13:38):
aggregated into those tweets or or or shared in those videos.
And I think that's the kind of uh, shortsightedness. I
think in all this that like when when I when
I cover social media, for example, when people talk about
social media replacing newspapers or CNN or whatever, a lot

(14:00):
of what they draw from is is what we work
on every day. You know that information couldn't come out
without a reporter at the New York Times calling someone
up and writing up a story which then gets aggregated
or pulled out into a tweet or put on TikTok,
for example. And it's that ecosystem that I think people
don't understand. And yeah, it's it's it's kind of sad

(14:26):
because Elon Musk and Lynda Akarino, the CEO of X
now it's called X because that's what they've changed the
name to have made this kind of antagonistic point that
like X is actually the replacement for the New York
Times or for whatever fill in news source. You know.
But the last two decades of Twitter I have shown that,

(14:49):
you know, the platform has been super reliant on news
generators and reporters, and to alienate them seems pretty shortsighted.
And not to understand that that ecosystem seems kind of
absurd to be.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Okay, so you're working at the New York Times, can
you literally follow anything you want? Or do they say
stay on this.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
It's a bit of give and take. You know, I'm
hopefully you know, if I wake up one morning, I'm
editor is like, you know, we should pay more attention
to this. I'll definitely listen. You know, It's it's not
completely me generating everything, but there's also a give and take.
And if I say, like, look, we should be paying

(15:44):
attention to this more. I think this is undercovered. I
have that freedom, and it's a it's a nice place
to be in your career. I don't necessarily have a
beat at the company. You know, we have we have
reporters that cover Tesla. We have reporters that cover X. Kate,
my co author, covers X on a full time basis.
We have reporters that cover Google and you know, name

(16:06):
whatever company. I help those reporters, I'll supplement them. But
if there's a deep dive that we need to go
into or you know understand you know, musk relationship with
the White House, for example, which is something we've been
trying to do over the last couple weeks to months,
you know, the deploy me on that and I'll kind
of shift my resources and my efforts to that kind

(16:28):
of story.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
So you've been covering starting and forwards, you and covering
the wealthy, forgetting people who inherit their wealth, people who
make their wealth. What similarities to all these people have.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
That's something I've always thought about, and I don't think
there is one unique characteristic. You know, it's actually really funny.
I've I've I have been around them. I guess I've
been around them more relative, more around more rich people
relative to the average person. But there's all types, you know,
there's all types of people I can like there. For example,

(17:07):
some folks do not want to talk to us about
their wealth at all. You know, they would they would
hang up the phone as soon as I called, never
return my emails, that kind of thing. Some people want
to get down to the every last detail. You know,
you miss this. I think my holding over here in
these stocks and you know, I'm actually up by one
hundred million over here and down, and it's it's like

(17:28):
it was like such an exercise in egos in a way,
and you start to realize that, like it's gonna sound
like weird, but like, you know, they're normal people like us,
you know it. They have the same hang ups or
you know, same motivations in some ways, same fears. And

(17:54):
that's actually really like it took me a while to
understand that, Like there wasn't like one gene, for example,
that causes you to become super wealthy. I think there's
a lot of luck at play, a lot of where
you start in life. Sure there's things like hard work
and that kind of thing and effort, but Yeah, there's

(18:17):
there's no one characteristic that I could ascribe to, or
else I would have followed that and made myself a
billionaire myself.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Okay, we live in an era where money is everything,
and people who have money are seen in comp usually
they made the money in one specific vertical, and people
who have made money there's a conception by the hoyploy
that these people are experts in all areas. Having covered
these people, are they experts in all areas or are

(18:49):
they just super smart in the one area they're in
and they're as blind as the next person in another area.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Well, I've read your review of our books. I think
we're aligned on this. But one of the findings of
our book. Let's let's talk about Elon specifically here, right,
I mean a generational entrepreneur like that that I'm not
going to deny that by any means. He brought in
the electric car revolution. He foresaw this industry to privatize

(19:18):
space and get things into into orbit, which now he
has a virtual monopoly with the US government and getting
things into space, you know, to see that and be
successful in that not once but twice, because there's a
lot of credit at the same time, it doesn't necessarily
make him, you know, smart in another area. He is

(19:41):
not a epidemiologist, you know, when he was making comments
about COVID, for example. He is not by any means
an expert in social media and how to run a
social media platform, which I think is in some ways
the original sin when he bought Twitter, right, it's this

(20:01):
idea that he had been so successful in these other
areas that, you know, how hard could it be. This
is a social media company. It's you know, in his view,
servers and a website. You know, you're just plugging it
in and letting it go and keeping it online. How
hard could that be compared to you know, developing autopilot

(20:24):
or making a rocket land on a ship in the
middle of the ocean. And I think that is the
original sin because what he didn't realize is social media
isn't a tech problem. It's actually a human problem. You are,
it's a societal problem. It's a social problem. You're connecting
people online and figuring out ways for them to communicate

(20:47):
without killing each other or you know, causing huge disturbances
and making everyone feel at least most people feeling like
they're welcome to exhibit and express themselves, and yeah, so
I mean that that kind of central understanding which powered
our book is one that I come back to a

(21:08):
lot that oftentimes there are people that are very successful
that think because they've reached such success in one area,
they can be successful in another, and oftentimes that's not
the case.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Okay, when Elong makes the offer to buy Twitter to
what did we were you on the Elong beat?

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Hmmm? I started covering him, like really covering him in
twenty eighteen at BuzzFeed. There were some issues at his factories.
This is a period of turmoil for him, and there
were some kind of investigative stories, and he was a
subject I would return to every now and then, but

(21:52):
it wasn't by any means like my main focus. And
by the time he made the offer for Twitter in
April of twenty ti twenty two, I don't think I
had written a single story on him for The Times
I had joined gosh, I think the year prior, year
and a half prior, I hadn't written about him for
The Times, but they had known my pastwork and covering him.

(22:18):
There's actually a trial we can talk about that I
was kind of in some ways involved with with him,
but at the times. You know, they saw my past
work and they're like, Okay, this is a pretty monumental event.
That's actually take some time and understand how serious this is,
because what you have to remember is when he actually
made the bid, people didn't know if he was serious.

(22:38):
You know, it was he made a reference to a
weed joke, you know, for fifty four twenty fifty four
to twenty per share was his offer amounted to forty
four billion dollars. His offer letter was pretty thin when
he when he made the offer, it wasn't clear if
he was going to go through. And then obviously he
tried to pull out of it a couple weeks later later.

(23:02):
But they had me spend a lot of time trying
to interrogate whether or not this thing was going to happen,
and you know, what was the mindset and what was
the thinking. So I started to dig in and work
closely with Kate. And when he finally did take over
the company after all the kind of legal wrangling in
October twenty twenty two, it was kind of all hands

(23:24):
on deck. You know, it was two or three stories
a day. You know, it was, oh my gosh, he's
laying off people over in this part of the company,
or he stopped paying rent over here. At one point
we heard the janitorial services were cut, so like I'm
in a toilet paper in the offices. But everything was
like a fire. Every day. We'd wake up when we
have two or three things to report on about his takeover.

(23:46):
And since then, it's kind of hasn't stopped. You know,
it's led from one thing and the other into the book,
into our coverage of him now as a political figure,
and that kind of that roller coaster hasn't stopped.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Okay, there's a legendary story before you were at the
New York Times where a reporter Drove Tesla wrote a
review Elon mark Back said, hey, there's data. I checked
the data in the car and he contradicted you're reporting.
Are you hearing from Elon? You or Kate or somebody

(24:21):
else saying you got it wrong.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Actually, I've had a couple interactions with Elon, so we
can start from beginning, and actually I know that anecdote,
and what I would say about that is like fighting
against the media has been core to Elon's beliefs since
he started his companies. You know, you guys, remember there
was a lot of doubt about his companies, particularly Tesla,

(24:48):
where he in some ways relied on the media to
get at his message. He was very big on getting
on magazine covers and in stories, to the point where
we were talking to folks used to work with him,
and he'd be up at three am reading like some
obscure Belgian blog, you know, trying to understand like every
piece of coverage was near and dear to him. He

(25:09):
had a Google, earned his own name. He cared so much,
you know. And on the other hand, he battled with
the media anytime they got something wrong. And so that
story you reference actually is very telling, and it was
it kind of in some ways proved his belief that
there was this kind of media force against him and

(25:31):
against his success, and he was out to kind of
prove them wrong, which in some ways you can see
the line that's drawn to the Twitter acquisition. In terms
of my interactions with him throughout my career, I don't
think he's ever denied a story I've reported. My famous

(25:55):
run in with him was that when I was at
BuzzFeed in twenty eighteen, and do you remember when those
kids got caught in the cave and time of course, man,
the whole bit exactly. So for the listeners, like, you know,
cave rescuer gets involved, a British guy living in Thailand.
Elon then gets involved. It's like this crazy thing. He

(26:17):
builds a submarine to get these kids out of this
winding underwater cave. They don't end up using the submarine,
but Elon gets a lot of press out of it,
and one of the rescuers goes on CNN and says, like,
you know, that didn't work, like he can stick that
sub up his butt, you know, and you know kind
of was like it was a complete distraction and he

(26:39):
didn't help at all. And in return, Elon calls this
guy a pedo guy you know, on Twitter, and it
was like this kind of I mean, those reactions now
were kind of part and parcel of who he is
on Twitter, but at that point in time, it was
kind of a insane accusation to call someone a pedophile
on Twitter with no basis. So in that process I

(27:04):
ended up emailing Elon asking him why he thought this
guy was a pedophile. Elon emails me back with this
kind of screed. Bear in mind I'd never really talked
to him. The screed of why this guy was a
quote child rapist who had a twelve year old bride.
Since she's trying to get me as a reporter at
BuzzFeed to write a story about this guy being a pedophile,

(27:30):
we actually didn't did not end up doing that. We
reported it out a little more, and it turns out
that Elon was kind of making all this up and
trying to get a reporter to dump this out into
the world, and so we ended up publishing Elon's email
in full, to kind of show his state of mind,
you know, to show that he was willing to destroy
someone's reputation and to show that this, you know, was

(27:57):
kind of a typical behavior for anyone, much less us
someone who runs, you know, a major company in Tesla.
Fast forward that that that cave Rescuer ends up suing Elon.
Elon tries to depose me in court to for the case.
But you know, that was a that was a crazy

(28:19):
interaction in my career and one of the times that
I've ever gotten to interact with them.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
So, Okay, a lot of these people can push back
very hard, accurately or inaccurately. I've dealt with some reporters
who laugh I know in my own particular cases, sometimes
you know, you hold your ground, but you shake when
these people push back. Do you ever feel any personal

(28:44):
anxiety where you say, no, I'm a reporter, I'm getting
it right. I work for the New York Times, Or
sometimes you say, well, shit, do I really have it right?

Speaker 2 (28:55):
That? That's I think about that every day. And you know,
as a reporter, the worst thing that can happen is
for you to get something wrong, especially in such a
key story where the people that you're reporting on have
unlimited resources to challenge you or to possibly sue you,
or you know, one of the biggest scoops in my

(29:16):
career was finding out that Peter Teele was funding the
Gawker case, the whole cloaging Gawker case that took out Gawker.
You know, I broke that story, and you know, I
was a cub reporter at Forbes, a younger reporter at Forbes,
and before we publish, you know, there was a doubt
in my mind that flash. You know, I was so
solid on the reporting, it's spent months doing it, but

(29:39):
was like, you know what if that point zero zero
one percent chance is right? You know what if I've
been duped the whole time into reporting this out what happens,
you know, and like that that feeling never goes away.
And I think being paranoid in some ways as a
reporter helps you because that will lead you to make
the next call, right, You'll be like, actually, you know

(29:59):
I have sources. Maybe I'll go for six or seven,
or maybe I'll make that extra send that extra email.
You know, It's helped in my career that I've been
supported by major publications that have great resources, in Forbes,
in the New York Times. But you know that that
fear stays with you. And I don't know, I could

(30:21):
be eighty years old and you know, have worked the
New York Times for fifty years. I'd be worried if
that fear wasn't part of me still, you know, because
you always want to have a little bit of paranoia,
I guess. And yeah, when when when it's someone like Elon,
you gotta you gotta do everything by the book, You gotta,

(30:43):
you gotta, you gotta be so solid on your reporting.
And I've always led with that, you know, my I yeah,
I've always relied on the reporting and the like you know,
my source saying and everything like that, and yeah, but
you know, if someone tries to intimidate us at the

(31:04):
same time, like, I'm not going to back down. You know,
if we know something is right, we're gon we're gonna
go with it. And it's kind of that weird balance.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Okay, it's a summer of twenty twenty two. Yeah, elon
trying to wiggle out. We know there's gonna be a
case in the Delaware Court. You're in the New York Times.
I agree with you one hundred percent. New York Times
has boots on the ground everywhere, whereas all these other
people's just opinion at the source. Do you think, hey,

(31:46):
this is going to close based on the history of
the Delaware Court? And to what degree are you penetrating
the company in terms of sources such that when the
case goes down, you're prepared.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
You're doing everything. You You're calling the people on the deal.
You're calling the lawyers, the bankers, the pr people, you know,
people who you might think might be in the room.
You know, these are very high level conversations too, So
when you're talking about sourcing, you're talking about C suite level.
You know, those are the people that are having conversations,

(32:19):
and what we realize is that on the Twitter side
of things, they had no idea what to expect from Elon.
You know, they had some meetings about what it would.
Bear in mind as he was backing out, there were
still some meetings that were going on between him and
the company over there was a calculat there was that
bot argument, for example, and there were they were trying

(32:40):
to assuage him concerns about bots because the company was
bound by it's pretty sure your duty to make this
deal happen, right, which is why they sue the company.
But you know, gosh, that was it was a crazy period.
Kate was ready to go to Delaware and and spend
like weeks there. I was having to read up on

(33:03):
chancery court, which I knew very little about until that,
until that kind of moment. But that's kind of the
beauty of reporting, right, Like you're thrown into the deep
end of these weird situations you might have never been
in before, you might have never thought about the court
of chancery, and suddenly you're making calls to trial lawyers

(33:24):
who have you know, practiced there or represented other companies
who're trying to find comparisons to maybe legal precedents that
I played out similar to this, where you know the
court has compelled someone to buy a company like that.
What did you think did you think it? Did you
think it was going to happen at that time?

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Absolutely? Because of the Delaware Court. It blew my mind.
All these people. You know, I got a book up
my ass about Kara Swisher anyway, Oh no, no, no,
no, no no, there's law involvement that happened to be a
lawyer or whatever. And if you know anything about why
all this stuff is in Delaware. But let's go back
to your story. You're saying, you're yeah, will everybody talk

(34:03):
to you? And to what degree is the fact that
you're writing for the New York Times to your advantage
or disadvantage?

Speaker 2 (34:12):
It goes both ways, actually, and I've been on both
sides of it. When I was at BuzzFeed, I used
to think, you know, those reporters of the New York Times,
they must get everything handed to them on a silver
platter because they're the New York Times. Who wouldn't want
to talk to them? And then now being on this
side of things, there are instances where people are like, sorry,
you guys are too big, Like I'm worried about my reputation.
I want this information to be out there, but like

(34:33):
in a smaller setting. And so it's kind of funny
seeing that play out in a way. That being said,
when you're at the New York Times, you know, it
carries the gravitas that has the name, the rename recognition.
When you call someone, they're not asking you to spell
out you know what do you who does that mean? BuzzFeed?

(34:55):
Can you spell that for me? You know, you're at
the New York Times, You're like, oh, okay, I get it.
You know, you know where you're coming from. But in
those moments, it's it's it's kind of you kind of
have to be lucky, and sometimes people don't want to
talk to you at all. You bear in mind, you know,
the people around the Twitter deal are especially on the
Twitter side, are scared. Are scared shit lists. You know,

(35:19):
they don't want to ruin the deal. They don't want
to say anything to report that could scupper this, this
monumental deal, this payout for shareholders and whatever. But in
writing a book, what I found is that oftentimes after
the fact, if you say, you know, actually my book
is going to come out in a year or two
years time. You know, people might be open to talking

(35:41):
to you for that because it's going to be past
the period where it's sensitive for them. You know, this
is something that is for history in a way. It's
not just a daily story, and so we use that
to our advantage for the book. You know, some people
that that didn't talk to us for these stories in
the New York Times came back to us or towards
the very end of the process they were like, actually,

(36:02):
I want to make this one thing very clear and
just the specific thing. But it ended up being very helpful.
So you get all types. I'll say it. In the moment,
it's quite hard to get people to speak immediately, but
if you give them a little time, if you work
on them a little bit, you keep reminding them there's
always a chance. And I've learned that kind of perseverance

(36:25):
is kind of the you know, one of my most
important traits as a reporter.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Okay, I dealt with the press a lot, calling me
for stuff. Yeah, like being on television news like the
classic story of the Today Show. They provide you a
limo there, but not back. You're just fodder. You're just
hit and run. I've had a lot of people forget
a lot of times. You know, music is a you know,
a lot of these papers have already fired all the

(36:51):
music people. You know. This is a lot of times
I'll put some junior person who's ignorant on the issue.
But if you get a reporter from an publication, a
lot of times they're aggressive. And most people who deal
with the press deal with the press and frequently what
is your style?

Speaker 2 (37:11):
I tend not to be aggressive, largely because I am
not a beat reporter, like I don't have to file
tomorrow about you know, the news of the day that
happened at Facebook or Twitter or you know X you
know or Google. I have time to like build relationships,
and any good reporter is doing that. And everyone has

(37:34):
their own style. But I've never found the kind of
you know, give me the information before everyone else, or
some people use kind of like a bullying you know,
why why did you talk to the Washington Posts over there,
Wall Journal and not to me? Next time? I want
you to come to me first. I've never found that
works for me. Some people it works great, and it

(37:56):
makes them really dogged reporters. My style is to talk
to people NonStop. You know, if I think the worst
thing for someone to feel like is for someone to
feel used in a way. And I don't know, maybe
the social engineering is like the wrong word here, but

(38:16):
something lighter than that. But I want to make people
feel like they can talk to me about anything, and
so you know, it's not just me checking in for
information when I need it. You know, I'm talking to
them about their holidays or you know, what do you
have for Thanksgiving? And you know, how is your Christmas break?
You know, how is your soccer team doing. I'm building

(38:37):
those relationships. I'm meeting people for drinks to the point
where when it comes to talking about something that is
relevant to my reporting, it feels natural for them to
talk to me about it. And that isn't like a
unique finding like that could a banker could do that
or a lawyer. You know, it's just a relationship building

(38:58):
and people building. And it took me a long time
to realize that. You know, I wasn't the biggest chatterbox
in college and I still am not. But like, you
don't ever want to make people feel like you're just
pumping them for information, and then you'll never sty'll never
see you again, and you know I and that just
feels weird and not human to me anyway, So I

(39:19):
guess yeah, playing the human card is actually is actually
pretty important to me.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Okay, let's talk about the deal now. The first thing
that is striking in the book that comes back to
haunt Elon is he makes a deal with no due diligence.
Tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
It's one of the it's one of the crazier things
about this whole thing. You know, these mergers or takeovers
take months, sometimes years to close, and that's because bankers
and lawyers are haggling over every small detail. They're running
their fine tooth combs through every legal filing and findancial

(40:00):
filing and making sure everything is up to standard. And
in this case, Elon wanted to bouldoze a deal through
in days as fast as he could. After the after
the after his offer letter. Remember he was on the board,
he had bought this this chunk of the company. He

(40:20):
was on the board because Twitter brought him in to
be closer to them. He ended up kind of getting
into a fight with the CEO and offering to buy
the company kind of in this huff, right, and right
after that, he wants the deal to close immediately, so
much so that he tells his his bankers and his lawyers,
you know, we don't need to I don't need to

(40:41):
look at the books here, I don't need any non
public information. I don't need to sign an NDA to
get that non public information. I just want the company,
and you're gonna You're going to force that deal through
for me, so I have that company by the end
of the month. And that's what he did. There was
no diligence. You remember when he steps on stage at

(41:02):
the TED conference in I think it was a Vancouver
in the day after his offer letter comes out, he
makes all these grand pock proclamations. You know, he says
he's going to get rid of the bots, He's going
to say free speech, and that was said without any
understanding of the business. So yeah, there was no there

(41:24):
was no looking under the hood effectively, and that was
one of the major quirks of this deal that caused
him a lot of problems down the line. Basically immediately
as soon as soon as the merger agreement assigned.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Is that evidence of how Elon works, and he's impulsive.
Let me move forward. Worry about the repercussions after.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Totally. I mean, I'll reference something he said about the
Department of Government efficiency. He said something to the effect of,
you know, if something we cut and it goes wrong,
just put it back. You know, it's not like I'm
gonna learn about this and what this thing does. I'm
gonna cut it. See if something breaks, something some people suffer,
and if it's enough pain, then I'll just put it back.

(42:11):
And this kind of impulsiveness is how he's operated through
his whole career. It's very gut instinct, it's very primal
in some ways, and it served him well. You know,
he's going to look back on his successes. Is net worth,
you know, he's worth more than three hundred billion dollars.
He has two major companies. He's gonna be like, what

(42:33):
this has served me so well throughout my life. You know,
why why shouldn't I do things this way? And in
this case, in the Twitter case obviously came back to
bite him because he doesn't do the due diligence. He
signs the merger agreement and then he starts to get
really cold feet and tries to find ways to back out.
You know, he starts to name issues around bots, for example,

(42:58):
and you know that's kind of the source of his pain.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Now with this deal, Okay, since you cover Elon in general,
let's go to Tesla for a second. So we have
the Tesla self driving. They're the first movers in that area.
He gets rid of light ar relying solely on cameras.
The competitors go to lightar. Okay, Meanwhile, the government is

(43:25):
investing for crashes. Is he doubling down based on his
personality saying fuck you? Well, do you think he really
evaluates a cameras are enough or is he convinced himself
cameras are enough?

Speaker 2 (43:39):
I think in these beliefs, he's convinced himself. I think
it's very key to understanding he's not just saying things right,
he fundamentally believes them. And the thing with lightar is
that he believes that cars should see like humans do,
and and and cameras will be enough, and cameras are
much cheaper than a light r you know that being said,
look at the progress of where Tesla is relative to Weimo.

(44:04):
For example, Wemo actually has cars on the streets that
are taxing people around with no drivers, and Tesla is
still kind of making these half promises about full self driving.
Oh actually it's not full self driving. You have to
be engaged with the driver. And he's kind of jerked
people around on the meeting of Autopilot. You know, he

(44:26):
had that Robotaxi event a couple months ago. I'm sure
you saw it right where he had. You know, it's
a staged event. You're on a literally on a movie
set in Burbank, driving people around these pretend cities on
these supposedly autonomous vehicles. And he's selling that to people
as if it's like the next revolution, when if you

(44:48):
walk over to Hollywood you can find a Waimo, you know,
going up and down the street with no driver. So yeah,
I mean, I think the one thing understand a boy
Elon is that one of his superpowers, if not his
most super important superpower, is his ability as a salesman,
his ability to sell you on a mission and a vision.

(45:10):
And people love that, you know, because you know, we
can we can debate whether or not he hits his
his his goals or his his projections. You know, he said,
for example, we get to Mars by twenty twenty five.
I don't think that's going to happen. But you know,

(45:31):
you look at this robotax event and me as a report,
I'm like, I'm very skeptical, like this is. But you
have people that are screaming and cheering and posting online.
You know, they're loving the robots that are serving the
beers and everything, and you're like, wow, he really has
sold this to people. People really believe him on this stuff,
and I don't. Uh, yeah, I don't know. It's it's

(45:54):
it's an interesting quality that he has.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
So okay. You also say that he has these advisors
that he trusts in the deal. They really have no
portfolio that have no expertise in this area whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Aside from having large Twitter followings. You know, he's yeah,
he's in the room with some of these venture capitalists,
people that have had good careers in technology, have built
massive fortunes investing, but in terms of running a social
media company something to the scale of Twitter, which few
companies are. You know, there's Facebook, there's Instagram, Reddit, But

(46:41):
these guys don't have an understanding of this, and they
again view this as a technical problem as opposed to
a people problem. And so he's taking advice from people
of his same background of the same ilk you know,
like David Sachs, Jason kalakhanis of these investors that have
put money into this deal. He at one point takes

(47:03):
advice from his own biographer, Walter Isaacson, and he and
also in that process decides to fire people that have
worked at the company for years studying this stuff and
working on it, largely because he believes they're inept or
they're too woke or whatever. And that's I think that Hubris.

(47:25):
Again we talk about these kind of gut decisions that
he makes, but that is what has hampered him throughout
the deal and throughout the takeover to the point where
the company is, you know, valuation wise is crashed. It's
advertising as crashed, the user numbers have crashed.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Yeah, but even his lawyer, you know, even the people,
you know, the the he's not using blue chip people
even to make the deal.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Yeah. Alex Alex Spiro, who is his I'm sure you've
come across me as a is a big celebrity lawyer.
He represented Megan the Stallion and Robert Kraft. He's a
Jay Z's lawyer and actually becomes Elon's lawyer in the
Pedal Guy case where he defends them successfully against deformation,
ends up being one of the kind of lead lawyers

(48:16):
on this deal, and also someone who ends up like
somewhat leading the legal department in the early days of Twitter.
You know, this is a trial lawyer. This isn't you know.
He may be wildly successful, but does he have the
expertise to understand what it means when an FTC consent
decree comes in from the FTC? Does he understand what

(48:39):
happens when the EU demands information? And does he have
international law expertise to under like to grasp that. I
don't think so, you know. And Elon fired a lot
of the people or got or encouraged them to leave,
folks that have kind of specialized in these areas and
working in it for their whole careers. And again, that's

(49:00):
just kind of one of the wilder things of this,
of this whole thing. There was really no transition in
place to understand how Twitter operated when he took over
the company. There were a handful of meetings, but there
wasn't like a transition plan. There wasn't like, Okay, these
these people work over here. I understand that this is
how the advertising business works. Let me understand that that

(49:22):
came after he took over the company and after he
laid off hundreds and thousands of people, and that has
fundamentally damaged to the company.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Okay, let's since you mentioned let's stay with the FTC
for one second. There was the lawsuit where Elon said
he was going to take the company private. This is Tesla. Okay,
the government sued him. He made an agreement that he's
been bitching about ever since, trying to overturn. You make
a point that there are certain deals with the FTC.

(49:55):
The FTC keeps asking for compliance and they don't imply.
Does this basically say, if you're one of these guys,
you have these balls, the real rules really don't apply.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
So the yeah, so the the the UH funding secured
stuff that that Tesla take private, that was the that
was the securities in the Change Commission sec But that
that case, I feel like he is where he draws
his understanding of how unaccountable he is. There is nothing
that can hold him accountable. And I'll explain why, which

(50:32):
is in twenty eighteen, he tweets that he has the
money to take Tesla private funding secured. It has at
four hundred and twenty dollars a share. He's going to
take Tesla private, take it off the public market where
it's not doing well because he's not hitting his numbers
with the Model three rollout, and he says, screw it.
You know, I don't need the public market. I have
my private investors. You know, he didn't have that money,

(50:52):
so I was going to come from Saudi Arabia wasn't coming.
And the SEC sues him because he puts out a
statement that manipulates the markets and offers a false promise
to investors. YadA YadA. They sue him. He fights it,
briefly settles what is what is he? What does he

(51:15):
have to pay for that? You know, he personally pays
a twenty million dollar fine. Testa pays a twenty million
dollar fine. He's no longer able to be chairman, whatever
that means. But what is a for What does forty
million dollars mean to someone who's worth one hundred billion dollars?
You know it it's a parking ticket for you and me.
And his fundamental understanding of that that he could either

(51:39):
fight something or simply pay the fine is crucial to
how he operates now because when you get to something
like operating Twitter and complying to an FDC consent decree,
He'll be like, you know, I don't care about that,
Like what are they going to do to me? Like
are they going to They're not going to take the
company away from me. They'll levy a fine. What is
the fine going to be? Tens of millions dollars? Hundreds

(52:01):
of millions of dollars? You know, I'm now worth two
hundred billion dollars. And not only that, I'm going to
fight on every level using the legal system to really
clog this process up. Right now, he is being asked
to sit for a deposition by the SEC in a
in a related securities cases. He's simply not showing up

(52:23):
to his depositions, you know, and he's flaunting the SEC.
He had a tweet the other day which is a
play on something. He's kind of childish thing he said,
but he says, the SEC stands for you know, the
E stands for Elons, So you know S, you know,
suck Elon's blank. You know that's what the s. You

(52:44):
know that that was his tweet the other day, And
you start to realize that in some ways he's he's
blown past the gravitational pool of accountability. You know, he
is so rich, he has so many resources. The government
is so reliant on him with that, you know, he
doesn't care, and that I think is a crucial understanding

(53:06):
understanding how he operates.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Okay, to make the deal. It's not all his own money.
He raises some Silicon Valley money, raises some Wall Street money.
Anybody who followed this closely knew that was a bad deal.
Why did they put the money in and it's been
proven to be a bad deal. They can't lay the
money off.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, he raised what was publicly just goes about seven
billion dollars of external capital, not including the debt, which
we can talk about later, which is kind of a
millstone around the company's neck. But the external this external
venture capital. Some of it came from Qatar, for example.
Some of it came from Kingdom holding the Saudi Prince,

(53:53):
who is effectively overseen by MBS Mohammed bin Salman, who
rolled over his steak from he already owned past Twitter share,
so he just rolled over his investment about two billion
dollars into into Elon's deal. But a lot of these
were blue like leading venture Capital from the Silicon Valley.
We're talking about Siquoy Capital, Andreas and Horowitz, you know,

(54:17):
and these and these firms believe in him as an entrepreneur,
you know, they they see him as a generational talent.
He has done so much with SpaceX and with Tesla
that they're just going to take a punt on this
Twitter deal. And even if it's a money loser, they're
still close to him. They've they've it's it's especially buying

(54:37):
loyalty in a way where on his next deal they
might come to him. And so I think about this
message that we reported in the book from Mark Andreesen,
the head of Andresen Horowitz, who was offered to invest
I think to initially two hundred million dollars. The number
changed after but the emails, the messages came out. He's like,
you know, two hundred million. Sure, we don't even need
to do dilig just whatever he wants, he gets the check.

(55:01):
And that's the level of influence he has over these people.
And if you actually think about this deal, yes, it
individually it's a money loser for the Sequoia Capitals of
the world, for the and recent Horowitz of the world,
but these same firms invested in this ai company that
Elon spun up off of the data from Twitter Xai.

(55:23):
And yes, it's funny money, but that company was recently
valued at fifty billion dollars in a private venture round.
So you know, if you're looking at the plus minuses
here Twitter goes down, it's now about eight to nine
billion dollars if you believe Fidelity's valuation of the company.
But he's been able to create xai out of zero

(55:44):
zero to fifty and so you're like, you know, maybe
they have a point. You know, maybe they've they've gained
the system enough where they understand that just being close
to Elon begets more wealth.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
And what about the banks that loan them the money?

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Do they think that? Yeah? Those that's where it gets.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Rough.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
You know. I have to look back on the actual
debt that was raised. I think it was gosh, I'm
off top of mad, like twelve thirteen billion dollars. It
amounts to a billion dollars in interest payments alone a year,
and those I mean, it's it's it's it's the worst

(56:27):
deal since the Financial crisis for these banks. These banks
are whole, They weren't able to sell on this debt,
and they're holding these this horrible you know, this horrible debt.
You know, it's just like they're getting crushed by it.
These are the Morgan Stanley's, the Moral Think Bank of
America had some of the debt Mizuno as well, and

(56:51):
for them, I think the calculus is is somewhat even similar.
You know, maybe we take this hit, really ugly hit
on our books from this this Twitter deal. But let's
say SpaceX goes public in the next couple of years,
we want to be on that i PO. You know,
that's a that's a billion dollar i PO for us

(57:12):
and so and you know what happens with Neuralink and
Boring Company. You know, they're probably doing the plus minus
calculation and thinking, actually, they will still come out on top,
even if even if Twitter is a historically bad deal.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Okay, one of the reasons he wanted to buy what
was then called Twitter was because of content moderation. Okay,
he felt it was too tight. He comes in and
he immediately blows out everybody involved in content moderation.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
It.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Uh yeah, he's he's he doesn't hide what he wants
to do, you know. Uh, he was mad about the
Babylon Bee being suspended, if that that that kind of
right wing satirial satirical account. He was upset with Trump
not being on the platform, even though he technically didn't
like Trump. He thought it was a bad implication for

(58:09):
free speech whatever, you know, and we'll talk about what
he means by free speech. But yeah, well, actually, actually
what happened was he tried to play nice with some
of the content moderation folks. You remember this guy Yoel Roth.
We ended up like severely harassing on the platform, to
the point where Roth had to sell his home because

(58:31):
he was being chased in real life by this online harassment.
They were trying to get along. Elon was taking advice
from this guy Yoel Roth ahead of Trust and Safety.
Yoel eventually resigns, I think in the two or three
weeks after the deal closes, and then kind of all

(58:52):
hell breaks loose. He goes after you Wel he continues
to fire Trust and Safety people. But yeah, content moderation
for Elon was one of his big bugaboobs begaboos, and
like it still is to this day. You know, he's
he still thinks that Twitter was or the previous administration

(59:12):
was influenced by progressive woke wokeism or whatever, and that
everything flowed from that, and uh yeah, now you kind
of that's that's kind of how you can understand or
the content that's on Twitter now these days.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Okay, it's not only the United States of America. There's
been the recent thing with Brazil.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Yeah, is he just.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Flying naked or is this is it at some point
with no content moderation team in place? Is it gonna
ultimately impact Twitter just as a business negatively in a
huge way. I Mean, we had the situation in Brazil
and the person said, I'm standing up for everybody else

(59:59):
who will stand up?

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Yeah, So a couple of things there. There is still
a little bit of content moderation. There's automated processes in
place that at at X there's still people. There's there's
still some humans in the building. He's gotten rid of
a lot of them, but there's still some around with
content moderation. A couple there's there's a couple things you
have to understand, which is that advertisers have been driven

(01:00:23):
away by the lack of content moderation, right like it's
a It's caused major brands to leave or spend less money,
because why would they want their content to be next
to a white nationalist who's been let back on the platform.
Why would they want it next to tweets about Nazism
or you know, videos of violence, which are somewhat commonplace

(01:00:48):
on the platform. Now, the Brazil situation is very interesting
to me, and it goes back to Elon's political alliances
around the world. Elon was friends with Jayra Bolsonaro, the
previous president in Brazil who was voted out essentially and

(01:01:08):
replaced by the leftist president. But in doing you know,
and then there were they had their own kind of
January sixth moment where supporters of Bolsonaro storm government buildings
in Brazil, which led to these decisions by the courts
down in Brazil to essentially demand that Twitter ex remove

(01:01:33):
these voices that caused for people to question the election
and cause this kind of unrest. You know, we can
debate whether or not it's good for any government body
to get involved in online speech, but that was the
law of the land in Brazil, and Elon decided to
fight that in part because he was aligned with, you know,

(01:01:55):
the old president, and he made a huge think about
this to the point where X was pulled out of
the country for a couple of weeks and then ultimately folded.
You know, he complied with the orders and now the
platform is back in the country. He'd loved to make
if you analyze this case, he loved to make himself.

(01:02:17):
He loves to make himself kind of the free speech
advocate or seen as the free speech advocate. But let's
compare this to what's happening in India, for example, where
he's very close with the Prime Minister there in Arender Modi.
The Modi government has demanded that Twitter sensor content regularly.
I think of something like a documentary that was put
up by the BBC about Modi himself. It was put

(01:02:38):
on YouTube and shared across platforms. You know, Twitter complied
with those takedown orders. There was no standing up for
free speech in that case by Elon and opposing that
that government takedown requests. He complied very easily. He's complied
with government takedown requests in Turkey, for example, where he's
aligned with Erdawan. So this kind of free speech mantra

(01:03:04):
that he purports is very selectively applied and really depends
on the market who he's aligned with. As well as
his own kind of personal interests.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Okay, since we're doing a three D view on Elon. Yeah,
just one thing, a little lose gravel here. He makes
all these deals with these other car companies that they
can use his superchargers. Then he wipes out his complete
supercharger team. What was going on there?

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Your guess is as good as mine. He was He
often he sometimes does this where he decides like there
needs to be a kicking the ass for a part
of his company, and he'll like severely jolt it, you know.
And again we go back to that idea of if
I if I break it, I can always bring him back.
I can always reintroduce it. And actually he did that.

(01:04:03):
He fired his whole supercharging team and they actually ended
up bringing a lot of them back, which he's done
this throughout his career. But if you're if you're GM,
if you're Chevy, if you're even Rivian, you know you're
you're probably raising your eyebrows and being like, damn, we really,
you know, do we want to reevaluate this relationship? We

(01:04:25):
got in bed with our main competitor and he is
completely erratic and we don't know why he did it.
Still like was it because he one day he woke
up and was like, actually, you know what, I don't
think I want my competitors to use my Like why
would I give away my secret sauce? You know, let
them build their own they you know, this is that's capitalism.

(01:04:46):
I should be able to control my own chargers. But
this kind of erratic nature and you know, unexplained decisions
are part and parcel of him. Uh and it is
it is fascinating to watch it play out over and
over again as a reporter. But yeah, if i'm if

(01:05:07):
I'm Mary Bara a GM, I'm I'm watching this with
with Rai's eyebrows and wondering what's going on and just
always seems like a master of five alarm fire with him.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Okay, so he'sh Twitter, he starts bringing people in. If
you don't tell him what he wants to hear, he
immediately gets rid of you. So is this also a
characteristic of his that he surrounds himself with the y
s people can hear a contrary opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
So it's a bit more nuanced. Actually in the book
we go into this a little bit, but one on
one he can actually be receptive to criticism and as
long as you have the domain expertise, you have the
numbers to back it up, the details. You know, if
he asks you a question, you're able to answer it.
And I the what we talked about. He likes to

(01:06:04):
break things down to what he called first principles, like
how do things operate? And if you're able to explain
things to him in those first principles, he'll appreciate that.
But what he doesn't tolerate is being criticized in a
group setting or being made to look like he is
dumb in a group setting. Essentially, we opened the book

(01:06:26):
with this with this instance. Actually was well, this is
a one on one thing, so it's kind of contradictory
to what I said, But of this instance of a
data scientist challenging him on why he tweeted out that
conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. Do you remember that, yes? Yeah,
So Paul Pelosi was attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband on far

(01:06:49):
right media. It became this kind of rumor that he
was attacked by a jilted lover, and Elon actually shared
that came within days after the his acquisition. He shared
that conspiracy theory essentially and this data scientist who's already

(01:07:09):
going to quit, manages to get a one on one
meeting with Elon and tell him. He goes in the
meeting with the hope that he could maybe change him
or change his perspective. And this is a data scientist
who had studied misinformation and how it spreads on social platforms.
And he says, like, look, I can't believe you would

(01:07:30):
believe you know, you're in like the top tenth percentile
of folks who would fall for something this ridiculous, Like
how could you believe that you really need to like
understand online sources better and like how information flows and
really be more skeptical of what you read online. And
like they get into a shouting match. Elon says, fuck you,

(01:07:51):
you know, and the guy was going to quit anyway
with like you know, fires him, and you start to
realize that, yes, he doesn't he doesn't like to be
challenged very often. And there are other scenes of the
book where he fires people on the spot as well.
And we go back to, you know, operating on gout instinct.

(01:08:15):
It's worked for him in the past, It's worked for
him at Tesla. You know, he has worked people to
the bone, and if they don't get the things he
wants done for him, he'll just find the next person
who will. And he's built these major companies off those techniques,
and he has simply applied those to Twitter. And you
see that over and over again in the book.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Okay, he starts taking cost cutting to an extreme level.
You talk about getting rid of janitorial services. You talk
about him actually ripping out a server. Is this like
an emotional thing that he is setting. Let me put
it differently, is he setting an example or he's for

(01:08:58):
a guy who's worth two hundred north of two hundred billion.
Is he really trying to save every bedding?

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
We had this bit of reporting even before Twitter at
Tesla and one it was during the the I think
the model why ramp up, you know, one of the
crossover SUVs whatever, And he decides to motivate people by
removing the cereal from the offices and the factories. This

(01:09:26):
free cereal that people get, it's the only free food
that they get. And everyone's just lays like up in arms.
They're like, you're gonna starve the people in the factory
who are working for you, who like literally rely on
this for breakfast. And sustenance. And what are you saving here?
You're saving how much are Lucky charms? You know, mass
produce Lucky charms, you know, a thousand couple thousand bucks.

(01:09:49):
But it's for him, it's proving a point, right, it's
if I can endure this pain, you can endure this pain,
and I am willing to cut whatever we need to
cut to make this company successful, whether that's lucky charms,
whether that's servers, whether that's toilet paper, which I keep

(01:10:09):
referencing but actually happened. They didn't have toilet paper the
offices for a bit. But it's like a it's a
psychological thing, almost right. And what he believes is he's
going to be the one enduring this pain as well.
He'll be the one sleeping at the factory if he
can not eat and be on the factory line or

(01:10:30):
be on the factory floor. And if he can sleep
in the office, which he did set up be set
up a bed in one of the conference rooms, then
you like individual employees should be able to tolerate that
pain too. Now on the flip side of that, you know,
I talk to a lot of people about this, and
it does motivate a certain amount of people. But then
these people start to realize, like the upside for them,

(01:10:52):
like what is it in Like what do they get?
They get a couple shares, they get a good salary,
but his upside is, you know, millions of shares that
could increase in value. So he's the one seeing the
upside from the enduring of pain by these folks. And
whereas you know, the individual contributor to the individual employee

(01:11:13):
isn't seeing the same kind of payoff. I guess he
would argue, you know, he's made many people at Tesla millionaires,
but you know, the cutting has always been a part
of him and his identity, and it's something he's now
taking into to the White House.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Okay, he doesn't pay all these severance fees, etc. What
is the status of the people were owed money, both
in terms of severance, any stocked payouts, even people are
owed money for office space. Are those people continuing to
be stiffed or did anybody ever get paid?

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
So there've been a series of lawsuits that have been filed.
When we talk about the employees, there's thousands of employees
that are currently awaiting arbitration. A lot of them had
arbitration clauses in their contracts. So they're fighting essentially to
get that severance paid to them, which is being overseen

(01:12:15):
by a couple of different legal firms. But Elon has
not relented. He has not signaled that he's just going
to simply settle and pay these things. He's going to fight,
which ultimately may cost him more, or you know, maybe
his calculation is that some people would simply give up
and forget about it. He's taking the same tact with

(01:12:38):
the four executives that he fired in like literally the
minutes after taking over, he fired the CEO, chief legal officer,
General counsel, and chief financial officer. That was literally his
first action upon taking over the company in October twenty
twenty two. And all these these four executives were do
golden parachutes on a change of on a transfer power, which, uh,

(01:13:02):
you know, any kind of merger or anything, they would
do these golden parachutes, which amounted to about I think
it's around one hundred and twenty million dollars total for
all four of them combined. So he's he's fired them
for cause, which allowed him to say, actually, you know,
I fired you for cause, Therefore you don't deserve your
golden parachutes or you're you're not, I don't have to

(01:13:23):
pay you those And of course those executives sued.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
And.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
You know, now they're paying millions of dollars to lawyers
to litigate that, and eventually they'll probably be a settlement
where those executives get tired and they maybe don't get
their full package, but they you know, they get some
part of it. And that's kind of his strategy. You know,

(01:13:50):
with rent as well, he stopped paying rent just you know,
just didn't write the checks and continued to occupy the
buildings until the real estate companies were forced to come
to table and negotiate with him. We often think about
like too big to fail, and we use that with banks.
Obviously the financial crisis. There's a quality of Elon. There's

(01:14:17):
a quality of that to Elon as well. You know,
this idea that he is too big that people have
to play on his terms. He's not going to simply
do things because he signed a contract or because he's
legally obligated to. But he can bend the rules and
get people to play on his playing field if he
wants to, and he's done that constantly with Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Okay, changes the name of the company, puts up a
huge sign which breaks the law, and has to take
it down. Is he aware that he's breaking laws and
regulations or is he just doing whatever he's doing because
he's blind to the rest of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
I think he just simply doesn't care. I mean his lawyer,
we had we quote his lawyer in the book. You know,
Elon does not care about FTC consent decrees. Now that
applies to building permits, it applies to whatever rules governed signage.
In San Francisco, the company, the city sent inspectors to

(01:15:25):
inspect the so called Twitter hotel in the building where
he built these hotel rooms for employees to stand because
he didn't want to pay for out of time employees
to stay in hotels, so they would sleep in conference
rooms on mixshift beds and shower in the office and
that kind of thing. So the city set investigators and
like you know, they continued to operate and have people

(01:15:47):
stay there. He just doesn't care, you know. And that
is a again going back to accountability. That's just a
key understanding that he has. He is bigger than any
law or any regulator or any agency.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
If we pull the lens all the way back. Those
of us who were active on Twitter and we're aware
of the changes he made, expected a the service to
go down. There were a couple of hiccups, but nothing
significant and for the whole thing to collapse on some level.
It has not collapsed. So on some level do we say, hey,

(01:16:29):
by cutting the vast majority of employeing and costs, he.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Was right, You're right in that it hasn't collapsed, but
there's been some pretty severe outages. Australia in December twenty
twenty two was without it for a couple of days.
You know, he's taking down a lot of the tools
that oversee content moderation that have allowed you know, there

(01:16:54):
the bought problem is still a major issue, you know,
and there were there were a lot of tools that
he took out that were overseeing that. When we talk
about cuts, it's not just the platform itself, it's the
people that also oversee advertising and what happened with advertising
at the company. It's completely cratered. So yes, I think

(01:17:15):
at the time, all these speculator all the speculation about
Twitter collapsing after he did all the layoffs, I think
was a bit premature, and Twitter over the years had
built up a pretty robust infrastructure to keep itself online.
You know, obviously we all remember the days of the

(01:17:36):
fail well and you know those error messages that we
we get or during big events like the Super Bowl,
the site crashing or not the super Bowl, but the
World Cup and stuff like that. But by and large,
it's it's a bit a pretty robust system that Eleono
has been able to take over, and so it stayed online.
That being said, you know, it doesn't guarantee that it's

(01:17:59):
going to stay online forever. And who knows. I reserve judgment,
I guess, is what I'll say to that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
Okay, he has this vision of turning what is now
called next into a universal payment system, you know, akin
to what they have in China, in light of what
you were talking about self driving cars, et cetera. Is
this complete fantasy? He says? You know, that's what he
wanted to do with PayPal. Legend is that's why he

(01:18:27):
was squeezed out. Should we pay any heed to that?

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Elan is a man that makes big, big promises. That's
been his whole career. He's going to get humans to Mars.
He's going to defeat climate change. He is going to
build the everything up, and that's what he has pitched
to investors. That's why he was in our book. We
go over as some of the projections that he had

(01:18:54):
for three years from now, five years from now, ten
years from now, and some of those numbers were, you know, fantastical,
you know, they were just fantasy looking at it now.
And he sold investors on this idea that he could
build the weed Chat of the US, you know, a
place where you could watch videos, you would hail your cab,

(01:19:18):
you would order your food, you would have your bank.
And by and large, that vision has not been achieved.
You know, they've been still working on those money transmitter
licenses in all those states. You know, there's really you
can't pay for anything with X at this point in time.
But yeah, it's it's again these promises that he continues

(01:19:42):
to make, and that's how he's operated as companies. It's
always on this idea of a vision, this mission that
we need it to and for for X, that mission
has been the everything app mean, by the way, he
hasn't mentioned that very recently. If you notice how we
talked about it, he doesn't really talk about payments anymore.
He doesn't talk about the everything app so maybe that

(01:20:05):
was a convenient message for him to raise capital at
the time. But yeah, I guess that's kind of a
wait and see moment still as well.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Okay, let's talk about Linda Yakarno. So we read all
about this stuff. I'm into a small conference where she
was spoke very unimpressive, a sales lady at best. You know,
the news was all about how much power she would
be given. I mean, I got to meet the woman

(01:20:42):
for three minutes to know you're not going to put
her in control? What was going on in with you?
Linda yak Arino.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
Lynda Yakarino has passed over for the head job at
Mbcuniversal and was very successful what she did there. You know,
she's a big advertising person, pretty highp executive. It worked
a way up, but kind of saw the writing on
the wall when she didn't get the gig and had
always been angling for a top job. Her politics aligned

(01:21:16):
with Elon. You know, she was involved with some Trump
councils on the first Trump administration, and her Twitter feed
was pretty obviously right leading. There were a lot of
engagements with right wing accounts and that kind of thing,
and she saw an opportunity, so they began a conversation.

(01:21:37):
Remember Elon had that very bizarre period in December twenty
twenty two where he had a lot of self doubts
of whether he wanted to run the company, and he
tweeted out that thing about, you know, should I still
be CEO of Twitter. It's this dark moment in the book,
and it's I think one thing you realize about Elon
is this very human He goes through these very up

(01:21:59):
and down and in that point in time, our reporting
put him in like a very dark place. You know,
he had a lot of self doubts, and so there
was kind of some public chatter about, you know, maybe
he's looking for someone to like take the burden off.
And so Linda Yakarino comes in and they start to
have those conversations. She interviews him at a conference and

(01:22:19):
ads conference where they have decent rapport on stage, and
a couple months later she's named as the CEO. You know,
I think anyone looking at that company knows who calls
the shots. But also Linda oversees a lot of the
aspects of the business that Elon just has no care for,
and that particular part is advertising because Twitter, despite what

(01:22:44):
Elan has said about subscriptions and despite what he has
said about wanting to develop new revenue streams, is supremely
dependent on advertising, and so Linda is there to do
that but also carry his message. So you often get
this very weird dynamic where she has to speak out

(01:23:05):
of both sides of her mouth, or she has to
pairt what Elon says, and uh, yeah, it's it's it's
fascinating watching her and what she says online.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Okay, then you have the famous meeting with the advertisers
where Elon basically says, fuck you, we don't need you.
What's the status of advertising today on X?

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
So? I think you're referencing the deal Book conference where
he goes yes as go fuck yourself. Yes, he says,
Bob Igers in the audience, that kind of thing, you know,
just that that from I often forget about that moment,
but like I also now remember where I was for it,
and to think that felt like a decade ago now.
But the status of advertising on X is it's still declining.

(01:23:58):
We get kind of piecemeal numbers. Obvious they don't they
don't have to report those anymore. But I guess some
numbers internally in the US, for example, that it's it's
still declining after year over year, after a pretty bad
year in the in the previous twelve months, it's still declining.
And so Elon has wanted to put out this message

(01:24:20):
that actually advertisers are returning, but you should, we should
all be kind of skeptical about what returning means. Does
that mean they're returning and spending five dollars? You know,
what's the actual spend is actually the main question. And
like you can often I pay attention a lot to
what's on the Explore page that that on the training topics.

(01:24:43):
You see that not right? So that big like banner
ad is about a five hundred, it's anywhere from tw
hundred fifty to fi hundred thousand dollars a day to
take over that page and run that banner ad, and
it's often very empty. You know, that used to be
a place where artists promoted their new albums, or there
were movie promotions, or if there was a new Apple

(01:25:03):
you know, whatever, iPhone launch or whatever, they would take
over that space. And that goes empty a lot of
the time. And that just speaks to where the platform
is at with advertisers being very queasy about the content
and the people that remain on.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
X okay. A month or two ago, Tim Cooked very publicly,
Tim Apple very publicly said, oh, yeah, we're advertising on
x So you'd talk about Andreese and Horowitch, talk about
Morgan Stanley, these people looking to the future. To what
degree are other companies afraid of Elong?

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
Oh completely? You know Cook got in a fight with
Elon very famously and then had to like invite him
to headquarters to like smooth it over. And that was
over the thirty percent fee in the app store, right,
And you know, I think these these even the top

(01:26:07):
of the top, the Top Sea, Sundar Pichai, Sasha Nadella,
Reid Hoffmann, they don't want to be seen on the
other end of a shotgun blast from Elon Musk. You know,
it creates a huge headache for you. And on some level,
you know, like if he tweets value, you're just gonna
have millions of people coming after you and denigrating you,

(01:26:30):
and you know, a just criticizing you. And I think
all of them believe that it's just easier to play
nice with him. And so when Tim Cook says we're
still advertising on X. It's interesting, right, like they still
could be advertising an X, but what is the amount?
You know, how does that compare in the past. And

(01:26:52):
bear in mind that these companies are also very they
have to do it's best for their business as well,
and so if they are trying to break out of
the duopoly of Google and Facebook and online advertising, you know,
X offers a pretty reliable place, I guess, or at
least an alternative. And that's not new to Elon. That's

(01:27:14):
how it's always been. That's why Twitter was able to
survive as a kind of alternative to the kind of
two giants. But when when Tim Cook says something like that,
it definitely feels like a very placating move, right, it's
a it's a it's an olive branch to Elon.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Okay, you follow this very closely. What's the long term
maybe not that long term, not immediate, but short term
prognosis with X? Do they miss the debt payments? Is
it essentially like truth social it is gonna live forever?
Relevant to the economics, what's gonna happen here?

Speaker 2 (01:27:56):
I don't think they miss the debt payments. I wouldn't
be surprised if elon Treasury Finance members some negotiation that
probably that's actually already happened that there's been reporting on
that X will operate as long as elon Ce's fit.
You know, it's his favorite toy. He's created the thing
that he wants the most. It's it's essentially his echo chamber, right.

(01:28:18):
It's the place where he's now become the most followed user,
he's the most engaged with account. This wasn't his intent
when he bought the company, but he's been able to
use it to leverage UH and get the presidential candidate
he's wanted into the White House. So for him, it's
been a you know, absent all the discussion about finances

(01:28:40):
and everything. It's been a great success, and he's shaped
it in a way. He's driven away the reporters that
used to thrive on there, the news outlets that used
to thrive on there, the people used to criticize them,
and recreated it to become this place where his favorit.
People have the blue check marks, they've bought them. They're

(01:29:02):
elevated in his replies. They're the ones being shared on
the for you page, the algorithmically curated page, and yeah,
I think you could be happier in some ways. You know,
his net worth has never been higher. You know, he's
now worth three hundred and twenty three twenty five billion
dollars give and take on any given day. So we

(01:29:25):
talk about the financial problems that Twitter has had, but
again in the plus minus column, like he's he's on,
he's up, you know, and uh so, Yeah, I think
I think X continues to exist forever, for however long
he wants it to.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
If Elon doesn't buy Twitter, Elon doesn't put money into
the election process, does Trump win?

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
Oh man, I gotta get my DeLorean out. I don't know.
It's a bad place to be in a reporter to
make these kinds of predictions. Yeah. Maybe, maybe maybe. If
he doesn't buy Twitter, he doesn't become so steeped in

(01:30:18):
right wing culture. You know, after he buys Twitter, he
becomes really invested in immigration and starts pushing effectively the
great replacement theory. He starts caring about voter fraud and
you know, the thing that it has been talked about
ad nauseum on Fox News, And he starts engaging with

(01:30:41):
folks like Tucker Carlson and that kind of stuff. So
I view that process as radicalizing him towards Trump, because
you have to remember he was never a Trumper. He
supported Ron de Santis in as late as May twenty
twenty three. You remember that Twitter space he had where

(01:31:01):
he DeSantis launched his you know, his disastrous but he
launched his his presidential campaign on x with Elon, but
owning Twitter, engaging in that sphere really pushed him further
and further to the right, to the point where he
arrived on Trump's doorstep and they began a fast and

(01:31:26):
aggressive relationship that kind of continues to this day.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
Okay, is this bro man that's going to continue? Really? Elon?
Although South African is a classic American one man job,
what do we know? Trump is uneducated, stupid, and impulsive.
So therefore, seeing over the overall landscape and being manipulative,
what you see is what you get. What we learned

(01:31:51):
with Trump is hey, barring you know, are worst fears.
He's constrained by the government. Also, he may not agree
with Elon on certain things. Also, Elon likes to move fast,
the government moves at a glacial piece. To continue would

(01:32:11):
absolutely require compromise on Elon's part. Is that going to happen,
or is Elon going to jump the rails at some
point say you know this is just fucked up. You
don't know what you're doing. I gotta I gotta lead.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
I thinks a big question. I think Trump does want
Elon to break some of that those processes, right, That's
why he's brought him in for the Department of Government
Government Government Efficiency, Right. I think it's more analyzing it
on a kind of one to one relationship standpoint as
opposed to anything policy related, like can their egos exist

(01:32:51):
in the same space for however long? We've already started
to see reports about folks around Trump tiring of the
amount that that that Elon has spent at the president's
side in mar A Lago. That's the big question, you know.
I wish I was in the game of predictions, but
historically they have tended not to get along well with

(01:33:14):
other people that have similar egos, similar desires to take
control and be the leader. In my opinion, though, and
this is complete speculation, I think both of them are
aware of that, and they understand that like they're being

(01:33:34):
watched in this way, and so to do things as
they've always done them might not be the way to go.
But who knows. I mean, these guys make split decisions,
especially Elon, and one day you could wake up and
find himself on the other side of Trump's good list

(01:33:55):
or bad list, and it may lead to fireworks, but
hopefully were there to report it out.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
Okay, So for two years Elon has been heavily invested
in x miyor to him becoming very right wing when
the lefties were still gun home on buying Tesla's question was,
and this was an issue for the stock who's running
the ship? He's so busy at X. Is the real

(01:34:24):
story that he's just a figurehead and these companies run
by themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:34:30):
It's actually really interesting that he's developed these kind of
deep benches at these companies, and that's largely because he's
at Tesla and SpaceX has been able to shape them
from the ground up. You know, Tesla, he was an
early investor that took over at SpaceX he founded, but
he was able to mold these companies and put in
place the people he wants to oversee, you know, at

(01:34:54):
SpaceX rocket manufacturing or design. So all these people are
very very familiar with how he works and what we've
heard from people at these companies, is he's kind of
the troubleshooter. If there's a major problem that's happening at
Tesla or SpaceX, let's say in twenty eighteen, for example,
on the on the factory line manufacturing Model threes, you

(01:35:16):
know he'll get in and try and problem solve very
aggressively and spend all his time on that problem until
it's fixed. And so actually, if you think about it,
like people call elon the sun in these companies, and
you don't want to get too close to sunny get burned.

(01:35:37):
So like if he is, if he's working with you
on your part of the company or whatever project you're
you're probably fucked. Like you're probably in there, you're probably
in deep shit, right. You don't want to be in
that position. You don't want to be in the same
room with him. And so, by and large, these companies,
when there is no crisis, he's run themselves. SpaceX has

(01:35:58):
a very strong number too, and when shot well he
had he has other vps around him as well that
run that company and know about way more about rocket
science or manufacturing than he does, and he defers to them.
Same thing at Tesla with X, he didn't have that right.
This wasn't a company he built up from the ground up,

(01:36:20):
and so when he came in and fired everyone, there
was really no one he could trust. He couldn't he
couldn't leave and like let this thing operate week to week.
So that's kind of what explains why he spent so
much time there when after he took over, and explains
why he eventually hired Linda Ekerino. But that's that's just

(01:36:41):
an understanding of how it operates. So x is I
guess getting there to the point where it can maybe
be a little more self sustainable and he's not spending
all his time there. But yeah, that's just that's how
he works.

Speaker 1 (01:36:52):
Okay. Steve Jobs the legendary entrepreneur before Elon Musk. It's
been well documented that the other Steve Wozniak was the
brilliant engineer, and Steve Jobs was an incredible marketer and
an incredible trends spotter. What is Elon's expertise? Is he

(01:37:15):
really that great an engineer?

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
As I said earlier, he's he's a great salesman. He's
a great person in pushing people towards a vision and
motivating them, collecting them in a room and getting him
marching in the same direction. And that's for the causes
of making humanity multiplanetary. It's for the causes of electrifying

(01:37:41):
cars and bringing up and bringing about the ev revolution.
And it's funny because Jobs and Musk are often talked
talked about as having this quote reality distortion field, right,
this ability to you know, if it's not real in
real life, they able to make it happen. You know,

(01:38:03):
no one saw the iPhone before Steve Jobs, no one
saw self landing rockets before Elon, And they're able to
push people and the boundaries to get them working towards
these once impossible goals. And you know, I think I
think that's it's borrowed from Star Trek. I'm not a Treky,

(01:38:24):
but I think the reality distortion field is a Star
Trek thing. But we've talked to so many people that
say that about someone like Elon right, like that he
has that ability to make people believe. And you see
that quality not just that his companies, but outside his companies.
You talk about the Robotaxi event. Again, he got people
believing in this thing that's not even real. You know,

(01:38:48):
that is on a movie set you know, farrying people
around from fake city to fake city on a movie set.
And when we talk about like his greatest quality as
an entrepreneur, I think that that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
Okay, But is he a good engineer?

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
Uh? I guess it depends. Yeah, he's given himself the
chief engineer title. I think at some of his companies,
I don't know enough about his day to day at
Tesla and SpaceX. At Twitter, for example, he is not
in the code, he is not tweaking the algorithm. In fact,

(01:39:32):
what we reported is he barely even uses as a
computer that you know, he had. He had to have
an assistant that set up his computer for him whenever
he needed to really use a computer. But he views
everything on his iPhone. Presentations have to be delivered to
him so it's readable on a you know, whatever the
size screen of an iPhone is, and from there he's

(01:39:53):
able to dictate his vision and you know, tell people
and direct them. But I don't think he's doing much
engineering these days, particularly at Twitter or X.

Speaker 1 (01:40:04):
Okay, my dealings with Walter isaacs in have been relatively minimal,
but I got to bug up my ass based on
that dealing and the reverence this guy gets so he
writes a book on Elon. People who are not don't
follow this space, and we rave and then everybody follows

(01:40:25):
this space. Said this guy drank the kool aid. And
then reading your book where Elon literally asked Walter Isaacs
in advice, whether consciously what this will do for the
book or not, that compromises the entire reporting. But as
a reporter, I'm sure you've read the book. What do
you say about Isaacs in book?

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):
I've read the book, and I'll say this, I really
loved the I read the Steve Jobs book cover to cover.
I loved it. You know, I learned so much about him.
But then I started to realize is that there are
issues with these kind of great man biographies. Right, You're
starting with this premise that these are great men and

(01:41:14):
that they can be forgiven in some instances because they
are such great men because have done such great things.
And I think as a reporter, like leading with that
is uncomfortable for me, particularly because I view my job
as having to interrogate power. Like Yes, on one hand,
I can understand that he's built great companies, but on

(01:41:36):
the other hand, if he is harming, if people are
getting hurt in his factories if he is breaking the law, like,
it's my job to report that and expose that and
show that and understand that there are costs to being
this supposed great man. And I think, you know, with
the Isaacson case, we'll just let a reporting do the talking.

(01:41:59):
You know, our reporting showed that he was providing advice
to Elon on Twitter Blue, the subscription service. He was
telling him that a lot of people will use a service,
how we should you know, he should price it low
because it's going to be such a game changer. He
was giving Elon advice on labeling. You know, there was

(01:42:20):
that kind of tiff with NPR and whether or not
it should be labeled as state sponsored media, and apparently
Isaacson got involved with that as well. And as a reporter,
that's just not a place I want to be in,
I don't, you know. I want my I want my subject. Yes,
I want to be in the room with my subject
if they allow me to. But I'm not going to
compromise my integrity as reporter. I don't want to be

(01:42:44):
an advisor to him by any means. And I think
that's the trap that he fell into, you know, Elon
is extremely influential. He he he has a gravitational pull.
We see this with all the people that come to
kind of kiss his ring, and you know a lot

(01:43:04):
of people described it as a king's court, and you
kind of if you guess, if you're around it long enough,
you fall into that. And we see that time and
time again in our book with Walter, and I think
that caloused your judgment when it comes to reporting. I
think one of my main issues with his book is

(01:43:25):
that he took Elon for face value on a lot
of reporting. You know, as a reporter, you want to
get multiple perspectives. And so for example, Elon's daughter has
come out as trans daughter and said, you know, you've
written about me a lot in your book, but you
never reached out to me to get my perspective, and

(01:43:46):
you just took my dad's and they don't have a
very good relationship effect. Elon has said that his daughter
is dead to him. So he simply took Elon's perspective
about the trans daughter and ran with it. And I
don't think that's good reporting. You know, that would that
would never fly in a basic reporting one in one class,

(01:44:08):
and yeah, that's that's kind of my view on it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:12):
Okay, starlink, we have the issue in the Ukraine War,
we read about the plethora of satellites. No one has
ever made satellite communications profitable. What's the future of starlink
and to what degree do we have to fear Elon
Musk's actions on the world stage.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
Starlink is another source of his power and one that
ah gosh, I mean, it makes him so influential. You
think about the Ukraine War and him essentially controlling the
communications and pipes for the Ukraine defense effort as he

(01:44:58):
simultaneously is calling for a cease fire and end of
the war and an appeasing of putin right, it's kind
of just nuts, Like we haven't really never seen this,
and I think starlink only will get more powerful, like
because Elon has a virtual monopoly on getting things into space,
at least in the private industry, Like he controls how

(01:45:20):
those satellites get up and he knows that and it
gives him a lot of power. I think of the
hurricanes that just hit, you know, the Southeast, and how
FEMA was reliant on starlink and getting communications to that region,
and Elon is is literally criticizing FEMA on on X

(01:45:45):
he is shitting on the federal government, He's shitting on Biden,
and yet FEMA has to play ball with him because
he controls Starlink like it's an incredible position to be in,
and I think Starlink will become more and more a
source of his power. I think I saw today in
the news that they had signed a contract with T

(01:46:06):
Mobile to provide I guess calling service, So you know,
we start to see more of those deals overseas. It's
quite influential as well. And yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely
an underrated part of his empire.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
Okay, and the Boring Company, which he never really took
that seriously, but we almost never hear about it. Neuralink,
he had his press conference. Are those businesses or those hobbies?

Speaker 2 (01:46:44):
I mean their businesses in the sense that they've raised
venture capital and they employ people, and you know, Neuralink
had its first patient that got something implanted. It's very
very developmental early stages. The Boring Company, I guess it
built that tunnel in Vegas that you know, shuttles people

(01:47:05):
mile cars can drive through it, but there hasn't been
very much from that from that company either, I would
say those are not his main focuses. You know, obviously
he'll dip into uralink stuff when they have an announcement
or things like that. But when we talk about those
kinds of teams that he's built up from the ground up,

(01:47:27):
those companies are good examples of that where they kind
of self operate without him. He'll dip in when he
needs to, and when there's a big announcement he can
draw attention to it. But it certainly adds to his lore,
right Like he he's the man that runs six companies ostensibly,
and it gives him a great legend. And oftentimes I

(01:47:49):
get asked, you know, does how is he able to
do this? Like I can't even do my own job,
how can you do six and like run all these companies? Well,
the truth is, like there's more to it, and he
certainly loves to profit off this this image. But it's
not like he is. He is going into New orlank
every day and working on that from a nine to five.

Speaker 1 (01:48:12):
So what have you learned now that the book is out?

Speaker 2 (01:48:20):
Hmmm. So we end our book in March when he
meets Donald Trump for the first time in a long
time and they go in there at Florida, at the
home of Nelson Pelts, the activist investory tried to take
over Disney recently, and it was purposeful one. We couldn't
get We couldn't continue the book forever, and we wanted

(01:48:43):
a clean kind of cut to understand. You know, I
think people understand like from that moment on is when
he when he you know, really got in better of
the Trump. But when we ended the book, I do
not think we could have predict did the extent which
with which with with which he would support Donald Trump.

(01:49:06):
You know, there is a different world in which I
thought it would have been a much more quieter support.
He would have maybe announced his endorsement a couple of
days before the election, and he would not have done
by any means what we saw happen, you know, which
is to pour two hundred million dollars into his campaign

(01:49:27):
and to literally go to rallies in Pennsylvania and stuff
for him and have this charity whatever lottery giveaway to
people who register to vote for him. That was unfathomable
to me, and I'd like, that wasn't even on the
cards for me. And what I've learned from that is

(01:49:49):
just his convictions, and what when you have that much money,
what you're able to do about those convictions. You know,
he spent two hundred million dollars on Donald Trump's campaign,
and that seems like a really smart bet considering what
he'll get out of that. You know, he'll be able
to appoint people that he wants the government. He might
he has the influence an ear of the president, and

(01:50:15):
so that two hundred million dollars looks incredibly cheap, where
whereas that's unfathomable. You know, who else could do that
in the world. And so yeah, I've learned, I've learned
how that works, I guess, or how that looks, and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:31):
So well, I'm actually also interested in what you learn personally.
You write a book, you're with your co author we
both work at the New York Times, comes out on
a major publisher, It comes out relative to your expectations
and feedback. What did you learn.

Speaker 2 (01:50:51):
About writing a book or moving through the.

Speaker 1 (01:50:54):
World there or writing this book? Yeah, writing this book,
in this book coming out, what do we learn? Let
me throw on a couple of things. Yeah, sure, sure, sure,
everybody's focused on their life. You're leading up to publication, date.

(01:51:15):
In your world, this is the most important thing since
your status, of the writer's subject matter of the book,
the publisher. There's a lot of ink media coverage around
its publication, then the media moves on. Okay, there's been
a lot of people have written books recently. I had

(01:51:37):
to listen to Kara Swisher write about her and talk
about her fucking book for over a year, came out,
was gone within like a week, and really no one
bought it. And there are a lot of other people
like that. Okay, your book certainly has a higher pedigree,
more interest. Do you find you're getting continued feedback? Do

(01:51:57):
you find that you're hearing from people that you didn't
used to hear from. Do you find that you're being criticized?
Are you stunned that the world has moved on what
has been your emotional experience in addition to what has
been incoming.

Speaker 2 (01:52:14):
So I've been surprised because we've had a renewed interest
in our book after the election, because more people want
to understand what he's going to do with government, how
we operate, and people can read about that about in
like what he did with Twitter. So we just came
back from a tour of Europe actually to where we
talked about the book. We spoke at web Summit and Lisbon,

(01:52:35):
we did some events in London. So on that level,
I honestly thought I talked to a lot of authors
who are like, you know, enjoy it while you can,
because a week later, like, people aren't gonna talking about
your book. That's just the natural progression of things. And
for us to be continuing to talk to people two
and a half months out of publication, to people like yourself,

(01:52:57):
has been an incredible privilege. And so I'm just trying
to kind of ride that wave and enjoy it and
kind of impart the knowledge that we've learned about him too.
You know, people that are interested.

Speaker 3 (01:53:15):
Well, Ryan, this has been incredibly edifying. You're a very
sharp guy. You're on the case. There's certainly a movie
unspooling in front of us. I know you will be
reporting on it. I want to thank you so much
for taking this time to speak with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:53:33):
Thanks so much, Bob. I want to say this has
been an honor. I know I've read you for so long.
You're such a time in the industry, So thank you
so much.

Speaker 3 (01:53:39):
Having man till next time, This is Bob left st