November 15, 2021 • 28 mins
How Silicon Valley capitalism is as much about narrative as the bottom line. In 2008 when Tesla Motors launched their first car, the completely electric Roadster, Tesla was a great story. Something genuinely new. An engineering marvel. Elon Musk as CEO was an even better story. He had already disrupted banking and aerospace. Now the automobile industry. That same year, the superhero film Iron Man was released. Its creators turned to Musk to help shape this version of the character of Tony Stark, a billionaire arms dealer who believes everything is achievable through technology, and private enterprise. Musk was on the cover of countless magazines, under headlines like “Elon Musk AKA Tony Stark, Wants to Save the World.” He was becoming a celebrity, on a superhero scale.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. All right, okay, so getting in it's really really low. Yeah.
So what you want to do is actually a friend
of mine. One's a Tesla Roadster black like the Batmobile,
kind of slide out. Okay, who Welcome to the Evening Rocket.
(00:39):
A special report on the relationship between science fiction and
Silicon Valley and the world of Elon Musk. I'm Jill Lapoor,
was the ignition. Yeah, all right, you want to go? Yeah, alright,
let's go. This episode is called iron Man and it's
about the Tesla. I decided to go for a ride.
(01:01):
So what I like it? Off? The car? Is it?
I really do? I feel like I'm driving a piece
of art? Yeah? Who. A century ago, in the early
days of the automobile, petrol powered cars won the battle
against electric cars. In nineteen ninety six, a few years
(01:26):
before Tesla got started, GM developed an electric car called
the EV one. California had just adopted a new zero
emissions law. But then after California revised that law, GM
seized its fleet of evs, all of them. Grieving owners
held funerals for their cars. Some might say that to
(01:48):
be here gathered today to mourn the loss of a
car would be going too far. We are here to
say goodbye to more than a car. It is difficult
to know what to say at a time like this,
To be honest with you, I consulted my Rabbi's manual
(02:09):
and there was absolutely meling in it for the burial
of the car. So when Tesla came up with the Roadster,
these people who'd held those funerals, these people went nuts.
The roadster was sleek and fast, It had a range
of something like two hundred miles. True, it cost about
one hundred thousand dollars, but that was supposedly part of
the plan. Make electric cars sexy, sell a bunch to
(02:32):
very rich people, and use that money to build a
more affordable car. Hollywood A listers signed up, as Musk
told NPR George Clooney, there's the founders of Google, LARRYN. Sergay,
what's the name of Lee Flee fla chollieps about a
car Tesla when it launched. That first car Tesla was
(02:53):
a great story, something genuinely new and not some ethereal
thing like Facebook, a physical thing, an engineering marvel. But
Musk was a better story. Young, handsome, dashing Thomason meets
Henry Ford meets Elvis Presley with a little Dick cavit
(03:14):
tossed in debonair. He'd already disrupted banking and aerospace, now
the automobile industry. He wasn't just selling cars to celebrities.
He had become one or no where. He was becoming
something more. Here's how he talked about himself. Then, what
I'm good at is, well, I think I'm good at
(03:37):
inventing solutions to problems. Things seem barely obvious to me
that are clearly not obvious to most people. So, and
I'm not really trying to do it or anything. I
just just seemed like, I don't know, It's just like
to see the truth of things, and others seemed less
able to do so. Elon Musk was becoming a superhero.
(04:09):
Time on the Evening Rocket How Elon Musk became Iron
Man CEO of Tessa Motors. He's the real life Tony Stark.
This guy, please welcome. Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur
as superhero is an interesting historical turn, one more way
in which Musk's brand of capitalism is tied to science fiction.
(04:33):
But this episode, I want to be gained by taking
a look at iron Man's origins with the US military
during the Cold War. Oh oh, what is the most breathtaking,
most sensational superhero of all? Iron Man? Marvel Comics introduced
iron Man in nineteen sixty three during the Vietnam War.
(04:55):
Rich handsome, known as a glamorous playboy, constantly in the
company of beautiful a daring women. Look, there's Tony Stark.
He's the dreamiest thing side of work cuts. Yes, Anthony
Stock has both a sophesticut and as scientist, a millionaire
(05:18):
bachelor as much at home in a laboratory as an
high society Stark travels to Vietnam to test some new
tech in the jungle, he trips and sets off an
explosive and wakes up in captivity to a communist. Heated
by a fellow captive and elderly physicist, he sets to
work building a device to save his life. I've done
(05:41):
extensive work with transistors. I can design them in any
size to perform any function. In the world of iron Man,
you take technology on faith it works. But this man
who seems so fortunate, who's envied by millions, is so
destined to become the most tragic figure Earth. Stanley, who
(06:04):
created the character, said later that comic book readers hated
the Vietnam War, so he created a superhero who was
a military contractor on a kind of a dare. So
he said, I'm going to come up with a character
who represents everything everybody hates it. I'm going to shove
it down their throats. But earlier he told a different story.
(06:26):
In nineteen sixty three, Lee said most Americans thought that
what was going on between North and South Vietnam was
a pretty straightforward good versus evil story, and would have
thought of Tony Stark as the good guy. Here. Still,
Tony Stark was a tragic figure, invincible but trapped in
a machine of his own making. In two thousand and eight,
(06:51):
Marvel reimagined that tragedy, who would have brought out what
would become some of the highest grossing Marvel superhero movies
of all time, The Iron Man franchise, produced by Paramount
and starring Robert Downey Jr. Tony Stark's fusionary us. Today,
Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry
(07:15):
by ensuring freedom and protecting America and her interests around
the globe. The Ironman films were written by a guy
named John Favreau. While Favreau was developing the character of
Tony Stark, he met with Elon Musk. At age four,
he built his first circuit board, at age six, his
first engine, and at seventeen he graduated Sola cum laude
(07:37):
from MIT. Musk received delivery of the very first Tesla roadster.
In February two thousand and eight, John Favreau bought a
Tesla two. The first Iron Man movie hit theaters three
months later iron Man in the Tesla roll out, it
was like a double feature. Boy Wonder grows up to
save the world by building new machines and revels in
(07:59):
his own celebrity sick if I take a picture with you? Yes,
that's very cool. This too, seems to come from Musk's backstory.
Back in nineteen ninety nine, after Musk made his first
millions from x dot com and PayPal, he was already
keen to become a celebrity. I like to only cover
Rolling Start better. After Iron Man came out, Musk was
(08:23):
on the cover of Rolling Stone. The headline read Elon
Musk Ak a Tony Stark wants to save the world.
Musk and Stark even look alike. Black jeans, black T shirt,
maybe a blazer, same haircut, a little stubble. In the
movie Reboot, Stark Industries is manufacturing weapons to be used
not fighting communists in Vietnam, but fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.
(08:47):
Tony Stark is super flashy. Tell you what, throw a
little hot rod red in there. Yes, I should helping
keep a low profile. If Elon Musk influenced Tony Stark,
pretty soon, Tony Stark seems to have begun to influence
Elon Musk before Iron Man Musk and interviews was modest.
(09:08):
The things that worry me are we going to make
a mistake, Our own foolishness, our own errors can hurt us.
There's a reason why there's an adeomatic expression about rocket
science being hard. It really is really hard. If you
are not a musketeer. If you've always scratched your head
at what people could possibly find appealing about Elon Musk,
listen to some of these early interviews. He's a smart,
(09:30):
fascinating person with interesting, if grandiose ideas well. I think
what I'd like to do is help solve some important problems.
So I think, in a small way, helped build the Internet,
and then with respect to the global waring problem that
the transition from away from oil and other hydrocommence to
(09:51):
to something which is clean and sustainable. I hope to
have an impact there. And then with respect to space,
I hope to have an impact in helping make humanity
a multiplanet species. But after Iron Man, Elon Musk seemed
to become more like Tony Stark, flash you brashure. In
twenty ten, in the second Iron Man movie, he had
(10:13):
a cameo as himself, how are you Those Merlin engines
are fantastic. Thank you? Yeah, good idea for electric jet.
You do, then we'll make it work. Elon Musk became
a character in the Marvel universe and on the celebrity circuit.
It seems sometimes as if Musk was resisting this role.
(10:34):
For instance, in an appearance on The Colbert Report on
Comedy Central, people have called you the real Tony Stark.
You're trying to do good things and you're a billionaire.
I mean, yeah, that seems a little bit like either
superhero or super villain. You have to choose one. You're
trying to do useful things. After a while, though, he
(10:55):
settled into the role. Okay, I am Iron Man, But
eventually you can transforms into an earthlike planet. How would
you do that? You'd warm it up, dropped the nuclear
weapons over the poles. Was a super villain. Still, I
think there's another way to look at this transformation. Maybe
(11:16):
Elon Musk becoming Tony Stark had been Tesla's plan all along.
Science fiction as a business strategy, you have to drive it.
I'm not really a car person. I'm more of a
bicycle person. Ye, put on the brake and push d okay.
But when I went for a ride in my friend's roadster,
(11:38):
I'll admit I was super excited to take a turn
at the wheel. Yeah it is. Yeah, Well, did you
ride go carts as a kid. Yes, it's like a
riding a go cart high end. I think I don't
really really want Yeah, driving the roadster was a blast.
But I wanted to learn more about Tesla's history, so
(12:01):
I called up Ed Niedermeyer, a longtime auto industry analyst
an author of Ludicrous, The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.
I think a lot of the very earliest investment in
Tesla was not really an investment in Tesla it was
an investment in Elon Musk. Musk didn't start the company.
The earliest news stories about Tesla didn't even mention him
(12:21):
or else. They talked about him only as an early investor.
Musk seems to have said about making sure stories about
Tesla were stories about him. In two thousand and six,
on the Tesla website, he posted the Secret Teslomotors master Plan,
a clever manifesto that explained the company's strategy build sports car,
(12:42):
use that money to build an affordable car, Use that
money to build an even more affordable car. While doing above,
also provide zero emissions electric power generation options. But it
was also a very canny bit of self puffery. Call
it the secret Elon Musk master Plan. He introduced himself
this way, my day job is running a space transportation
(13:02):
company called SpaceX. But on the side, I am the
chairman of Teslomotors. And in two thousand and eight, when
both Tesla and iron Man made the debuts, Musk left
the conventional mold of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind. He
moved to Los Angeles, which is also where Tony Stark lives.
In two thousand and nine, one of the guys who
(13:23):
started Tesla sued Musk for, among other things, slander and libel.
He said that Musk set out to rewrite history by
claiming he'd founded or created the company. The suit was
later settled out of court in a resolution that acknowledged
five co founders of Tesla, including Musk. Meanwhile, though Musk's
pr stunts generated just the buzz the company needed. A
(13:48):
big part of Silicon Valley is not just making money.
Another big part of it is the idea of changing
the world and making things cool. The reality is that
the reason Tesla is here today is because Elon Musk
is a remarkable storyteller. In some ways, what Musk was doing.
A man becoming a brand is an old game. Colonel
(14:09):
Sanders is Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lloyd Grossman is his line
of sauces, and then there's this guy Trump. Steaks are
the world's greatest steaks, and I mean that in every
sense of the word. But Musk did something different. Musk
as Tesla was irreverent, and he was witty, ironic, whip smart.
The cheekiness of Musk's online persona was new then, even
(14:33):
if this voice has since become ubiquitous online. Tesco's sassy
Twitter personality say Musk was sassy and messianic all at once.
Not the greatest steak in the world, but the steak
that will save the world. Niedermeyer has gotten a lot
of harassment for writing about Tesla. I've been labeled by
the fans and the company itself as a hater or
(14:55):
you know, someone with potentially nefarious motivations for writing about
Tesla the way that I do. The reality is I
wanted the book to capture what I saw as the
complexity underneath this very polarized discourse about it online. And
I think that, you know, a lot of that polarization
has been a conscious strategy. It's absolutely not a coincidence
(15:17):
that this very polarized culture has has sprouted up around Tesla,
and that the fan culture, you know, people call it
a cult. I think that Musk knows that if you
can force people to either love him and trust everything
he says implicitly, or hate him and think he's a
con man, more people will break his way, and so
polarization is the strategic advantage to him. Musks fifty five
(15:42):
million followers on Twitter. He has sued his critics he
has damned the media. His Twitter followers tend to gang
up on his critics, especially when those critics are women.
Musk is always getting into Twitter spats. It's strange. Why
is this billionaire online all the time, tweeting belligerently about
mostly nothing? What does he need it? Ed? Niedermeyer has
(16:03):
a theory. Musk's fans need him to promise the impossible,
and Musk needs them to give him adulation even if
he doesn't actually deliver on the impossible. He needs them
to tend and nurture and grow again. What I think
ultimately is the most important thing about Tesla, which is
(16:25):
the narrative and the image. For Niedermeyer, this relationship is
a consequence of the sort of speculative capitalism that involves
more speculation than capital. It's a natural outgrowth of the
venture capital culture of betting on the jockey and not
the horse. You know, for a venture capital investor, you
don't always have to build a really sustainably profitable business.
(16:48):
What you have to do is make sure that at
some point down the road, you can pass your investment
off to someone who thinks it's worth a lot of money.
Tesla almost went bankrupt in two thousand and eight, the
year iron Man came out. In two thousand and nine,
it received a four hundred and sixty five million dollars
loan from the US government. It raised two hundred and
twenty six million it's IPO in twenty ten, and in
(17:11):
twenty thirteen paid back its government loan ten years early.
In twenty twenty, it had its first profitable year. But
for Niedermeyer, the story of Tesla, which is one of
engineering virtuosity and against the odd success, is also a
story of procarity for Tesla and for Musk. Even as
the richest man in the world, when he you know
(17:32):
in those days that he is, his position has always
been incredibly precarious. And it's because fundamentally, you know a
lot of why he's there. It's not just the narrative,
but but also it's his risk tolerance. Is an incredibly
risk tolerant person. And you can look at a lot
of different decisions the company's made and see that, and
you know, with risk comes roared, but risk is also
(17:55):
risky as far as risk goes. The striking thing about
Tesla to me is how Musk describes it as a
company out to save the planet from existential risk by
it avert human extinction. This year, on Earth Day, President
Biden was at the White House sharing a smut on
(18:16):
how to avert climate disaster. Well. Elon Musk was at
the launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying NASA astronauts to
the International Space Station. The astronauts drove to the launch
site in Teslas. They each o their own SUV with
license plates that read Reduce, recycle, and reuse. A key
(18:39):
story for Musk as a brand is that he's saving
the planet and saving humans from extinction. But is he
Elon Musk is a really difficult one to parse. He's
been very open and saying that, you know, colonizing space
is in a sort of a survival strategy, which I
(19:02):
think is a thought that has a weird amount of
currency out there in the world, and when you think
about it, you know, in my view, just just makes
no sense whatsoever. Elizabeth Colbert is a New Yorker staff
writer who want appealed Surprise for her book The Sixth Extinction.
There are a lot of these tech billionaires who are
(19:23):
interested in space obviously, as you know, and who obviously
also see it as a big business, and it's hard
to pull that apart too. How much of this, you know,
sort of space exploration hype I'm going to call it,
is on behalf of very potentially very profitable businesses. And
how much of it is really this kind of sci
(19:44):
fi um, you know, escape from Earth fantasy. I really
don't know. So then why do you call it hype? Well,
I mean, Elon Musk is constantly telling us, you know,
when we're going to colonize Mars. But if you ask
any person seriously involved in space exploration, are we colonizing
(20:06):
Mars the way Elon mu is constantly proclaiming that we will,
and within a very short time frame, they will say
absolutely not. There's absolutely no way that's happening. So then
there's this other line of thought that I confess myself
totally perplexed by, which comes from the people who talk
(20:27):
about human extinction scenarios, and their calculation is sure, they're
suffering here on Earth, but if we don't go to
other planets, then humans will become extinct when our planet dies.
And so against your global suffering of people enduring poverty
(20:50):
and disease, we count the untold numbers of our human
descendants whose human potential will be lost if we don't
go like it's almost a kind of extraterrestrial economics. Have
you encountered that existential risk argument species that we have
in the fossil record eventually does go extinct. I'm not
(21:13):
really predicting, you know, human extinction here, but if you
look at the record, it's it's pretty much one hundred percent,
you know, over time. So the idea that humans Homo
sapiens are going to be around for the end of
the planet Earth as a habitable planet, that's so crazily
at odds with as I say, what we know about
(21:35):
the history of life, so so embedded in that is
this notion of humans as completely separate, completely divorced from
evolutionary history and facing the shining future on other planets.
And you know, that is a really interesting idea. It's
(21:56):
not one that I find very plausible. I called Colbert
to ask her about Tesla, but we ended up talking
a lot about SpaceX, since it can be difficult to
pull these two visions of the future apart. What struck
me most talking with Colbert were her observations about the
internal contradictions of Muscism. Earlier this year, Musk announced that
(22:16):
Tesla would accept bitcoin from people to pay for their Tesla's,
and the Tesla itself had purchased one point five billion
dollars worth of bitcoin. The price of bitcoin jumped. Musk
has been an incredibly avid proponent of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoins a
terribly energy intensive cryptocurrency. Bitcoin mining nowadays is using a
(22:39):
roughly one hundred and thirty terror watt hours of electricity
per year, and that's roughly the energy consumption of a
country like Sweden. So you know, the internal inconsistencies here,
I think prevent him from being a particularly good spokesman
for environmental causes. Just doesn't suggest that his ultimate goal
(23:03):
is really driving carbon emissions down. The day I talked
to Colbert, she'd just published a piece in The New
Yorker about Tesla's bitcoin polluting. Days later, must announced that
he changed his mind. You could no longer buy a
Tesla with bitcoin. Still, a lot of commentators pointed out
that there really was no excuse for Musk's decisions to
accept bitcoin in the first place. How could he not
(23:26):
have known that bitcoin is mostly mined in China and
mostly on servers fueled by coal. A writer for The
Washington Post ask had must been on a multi year
news fast. In any case, the essential tenant of Muskism remained,
every problem can be solved with technology. It's a reigning
philosophy of iron Man, too, the motto of Stark Industries.
(23:50):
Everything is achievable through technology, better living, robust health. Everything
can also be wrecked through technology. Elizabeth Colbert's new book
Under a White Sky asks whether we have engineered ourselves
so deeply into so many problems, especially climate change, that
at this point the only way forward is to try
to engineer ourselves out of them. Stopping carbon emissions is essential,
(24:15):
but it's not going to be enough. Maybe we need
to invent machines that can eat carbon. Environmentalism used to
be largely anti tech, but it's not anymore because maybe
there's no longer a choice. I don't think there is
really a sort of anti tech environmentalism these days. But
there are different strains, and Elon Musk is the avatar
(24:38):
of the strain that says, well, humans can just do
anything that we put our minds to. We can colonize mores,
we can succeed or two out of the atmosphere. There's
there are no geophysical limits here that we can't overcome. Unfortunately,
I think that's just not true. We approached Tesla for
a response to several points raised in the series, but
(25:00):
at the time of this recording, we haven't received a reply.
I loved driving the Tesla Roadster, but as I say,
I'm not much of a car person. I'm more of
a bicycle person. So is HG. Wells, who once wrote
cycle tracks will abound in utopia. Alas utopias never coming,
(25:21):
I'll settle for sustainability. And sustainability will require more than
just switching out every petrol powered car for an electric car.
They only need to be fewer cars and more bicycles,
pedestrians and public transit, and more renewable energy. But Tesla
is pioneering that too. Beyond producing electric cars and making
(25:43):
them thrilling, Tesla has done a whole lot for renewable energy,
especially with its battery technology. After all, the last part
of the company's secret master plan had always been provide
zero emission electric power generation options. In twenty seventeen, after
a statewide power outage in South Australia, Tesla won a
(26:03):
bid to design a battery system for this date and
promise to install it in a hundred days. As Musk
explain at a press conference, this is going to be
the largest matter translation in the world by a significant margin.
We actually insisted in doing the contract that we'd be
held to the one hundred days or it's free. This
system will be three times more powerful than any system
(26:24):
on Earth. This is not like a minorphoora into the frontier.
This is like going three times further than anyone's gone before.
Tesla delivered in sixty three days. The system's still working
fantastically well for South Australians. Energy is cheaper and more reliable. Somehow,
this sort of thing never gets the Iron Man treatment.
(26:45):
It's not sexy. It didn't involve Hollywood or celebrities. It
didn't turn on Reddit, it didn't end in a Twitter feud.
It wasn't even a science fiction fantasy, and it did
not save the planet. It was a smart renewable energy
partnership that went well. There was really this opportunity to
make a significant statement about renewable energy to the world,
(27:06):
to show that you can really do a heavy duty,
large scale, utility level battery system, and that South Australia
was up with a challenge a public minded infrastructure project.
It might just be the most significant thing Tesla has
(27:26):
ever done. Next time on the Evening Rocket will blast
off to a different past to the science fiction vision
of the future that Silicon Valley left behind. The Evening
(27:49):
Rocket was written and read by New Gillipour for the BBC.
The Evening Rocket was produced by viv Jones. Oliver Riskin
Cuts was the researcher. The editor was Hugh Levenson. The
commissioning editor was Dan clark I. Oonah Hammond was production coordinator.
Mixing by Graham put a foot In, original music by
Corntith for Pushkin. It was produced by Sophie Crane mckibbon
(28:10):
and Jake Gorski, who also did the mix and sound design.
Production support from Ben Nattapafrick. Our executive producer is Neil o'bell.
Our operations team includes Danielle Lakhan, Maya Kanig and Carly Mgliori.
Thanks also to John Schnar's, Jacob Weisberg, Maggie Taylor, Heather Faine,
Nicole Moreno and Eric Sandler.
Pushkin. All right, okay, so getting in it's really really low. Yeah.
So what you want to do is actually a friend
of mine. One's a Tesla Roadster black like the Batmobile,
kind of slide out. Okay, who Welcome to the Evening Rocket.
(00:39):
A special report on the relationship between science fiction and
Silicon Valley and the world of Elon Musk. I'm Jill Lapoor,
was the ignition. Yeah, all right, you want to go? Yeah, alright,
let's go. This episode is called iron Man and it's
about the Tesla. I decided to go for a ride.
(01:01):
So what I like it? Off? The car? Is it?
I really do? I feel like I'm driving a piece
of art? Yeah? Who. A century ago, in the early
days of the automobile, petrol powered cars won the battle
against electric cars. In nineteen ninety six, a few years
(01:26):
before Tesla got started, GM developed an electric car called
the EV one. California had just adopted a new zero
emissions law. But then after California revised that law, GM
seized its fleet of evs, all of them. Grieving owners
held funerals for their cars. Some might say that to
(01:48):
be here gathered today to mourn the loss of a
car would be going too far. We are here to
say goodbye to more than a car. It is difficult
to know what to say at a time like this,
To be honest with you, I consulted my Rabbi's manual
(02:09):
and there was absolutely meling in it for the burial
of the car. So when Tesla came up with the Roadster,
these people who'd held those funerals, these people went nuts.
The roadster was sleek and fast, It had a range
of something like two hundred miles. True, it cost about
one hundred thousand dollars, but that was supposedly part of
the plan. Make electric cars sexy, sell a bunch to
(02:32):
very rich people, and use that money to build a
more affordable car. Hollywood A listers signed up, as Musk
told NPR George Clooney, there's the founders of Google, LARRYN. Sergay,
what's the name of Lee Flee fla chollieps about a
car Tesla when it launched. That first car Tesla was
(02:53):
a great story, something genuinely new and not some ethereal
thing like Facebook, a physical thing, an engineering marvel. But
Musk was a better story. Young, handsome, dashing Thomason meets
Henry Ford meets Elvis Presley with a little Dick cavit
(03:14):
tossed in debonair. He'd already disrupted banking and aerospace, now
the automobile industry. He wasn't just selling cars to celebrities.
He had become one or no where. He was becoming
something more. Here's how he talked about himself. Then, what
I'm good at is, well, I think I'm good at
(03:37):
inventing solutions to problems. Things seem barely obvious to me
that are clearly not obvious to most people. So, and
I'm not really trying to do it or anything. I
just just seemed like, I don't know, It's just like
to see the truth of things, and others seemed less
able to do so. Elon Musk was becoming a superhero.
(04:09):
Time on the Evening Rocket How Elon Musk became Iron
Man CEO of Tessa Motors. He's the real life Tony Stark.
This guy, please welcome. Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur
as superhero is an interesting historical turn, one more way
in which Musk's brand of capitalism is tied to science fiction.
(04:33):
But this episode, I want to be gained by taking
a look at iron Man's origins with the US military
during the Cold War. Oh oh, what is the most breathtaking,
most sensational superhero of all? Iron Man? Marvel Comics introduced
iron Man in nineteen sixty three during the Vietnam War.
(04:55):
Rich handsome, known as a glamorous playboy, constantly in the
company of beautiful a daring women. Look, there's Tony Stark.
He's the dreamiest thing side of work cuts. Yes, Anthony
Stock has both a sophesticut and as scientist, a millionaire
(05:18):
bachelor as much at home in a laboratory as an
high society Stark travels to Vietnam to test some new
tech in the jungle, he trips and sets off an
explosive and wakes up in captivity to a communist. Heated
by a fellow captive and elderly physicist, he sets to
work building a device to save his life. I've done
(05:41):
extensive work with transistors. I can design them in any
size to perform any function. In the world of iron Man,
you take technology on faith it works. But this man
who seems so fortunate, who's envied by millions, is so
destined to become the most tragic figure Earth. Stanley, who
(06:04):
created the character, said later that comic book readers hated
the Vietnam War, so he created a superhero who was
a military contractor on a kind of a dare. So
he said, I'm going to come up with a character
who represents everything everybody hates it. I'm going to shove
it down their throats. But earlier he told a different story.
(06:26):
In nineteen sixty three, Lee said most Americans thought that
what was going on between North and South Vietnam was
a pretty straightforward good versus evil story, and would have
thought of Tony Stark as the good guy. Here. Still,
Tony Stark was a tragic figure, invincible but trapped in
a machine of his own making. In two thousand and eight,
(06:51):
Marvel reimagined that tragedy, who would have brought out what
would become some of the highest grossing Marvel superhero movies
of all time, The Iron Man franchise, produced by Paramount
and starring Robert Downey Jr. Tony Stark's fusionary us. Today,
Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry
(07:15):
by ensuring freedom and protecting America and her interests around
the globe. The Ironman films were written by a guy
named John Favreau. While Favreau was developing the character of
Tony Stark, he met with Elon Musk. At age four,
he built his first circuit board, at age six, his
first engine, and at seventeen he graduated Sola cum laude
(07:37):
from MIT. Musk received delivery of the very first Tesla roadster.
In February two thousand and eight, John Favreau bought a
Tesla two. The first Iron Man movie hit theaters three
months later iron Man in the Tesla roll out, it
was like a double feature. Boy Wonder grows up to
save the world by building new machines and revels in
(07:59):
his own celebrity sick if I take a picture with you? Yes,
that's very cool. This too, seems to come from Musk's backstory.
Back in nineteen ninety nine, after Musk made his first
millions from x dot com and PayPal, he was already
keen to become a celebrity. I like to only cover
Rolling Start better. After Iron Man came out, Musk was
(08:23):
on the cover of Rolling Stone. The headline read Elon
Musk Ak a Tony Stark wants to save the world.
Musk and Stark even look alike. Black jeans, black T shirt,
maybe a blazer, same haircut, a little stubble. In the
movie Reboot, Stark Industries is manufacturing weapons to be used
not fighting communists in Vietnam, but fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.
(08:47):
Tony Stark is super flashy. Tell you what, throw a
little hot rod red in there. Yes, I should helping
keep a low profile. If Elon Musk influenced Tony Stark,
pretty soon, Tony Stark seems to have begun to influence
Elon Musk before Iron Man Musk and interviews was modest.
(09:08):
The things that worry me are we going to make
a mistake, Our own foolishness, our own errors can hurt us.
There's a reason why there's an adeomatic expression about rocket
science being hard. It really is really hard. If you
are not a musketeer. If you've always scratched your head
at what people could possibly find appealing about Elon Musk,
listen to some of these early interviews. He's a smart,
(09:30):
fascinating person with interesting, if grandiose ideas well. I think
what I'd like to do is help solve some important problems.
So I think, in a small way, helped build the Internet,
and then with respect to the global waring problem that
the transition from away from oil and other hydrocommence to
(09:51):
to something which is clean and sustainable. I hope to
have an impact there. And then with respect to space,
I hope to have an impact in helping make humanity
a multiplanet species. But after Iron Man, Elon Musk seemed
to become more like Tony Stark, flash you brashure. In
twenty ten, in the second Iron Man movie, he had
(10:13):
a cameo as himself, how are you Those Merlin engines
are fantastic. Thank you? Yeah, good idea for electric jet.
You do, then we'll make it work. Elon Musk became
a character in the Marvel universe and on the celebrity circuit.
It seems sometimes as if Musk was resisting this role.
(10:34):
For instance, in an appearance on The Colbert Report on
Comedy Central, people have called you the real Tony Stark.
You're trying to do good things and you're a billionaire.
I mean, yeah, that seems a little bit like either
superhero or super villain. You have to choose one. You're
trying to do useful things. After a while, though, he
(10:55):
settled into the role. Okay, I am Iron Man, But
eventually you can transforms into an earthlike planet. How would
you do that? You'd warm it up, dropped the nuclear
weapons over the poles. Was a super villain. Still, I
think there's another way to look at this transformation. Maybe
(11:16):
Elon Musk becoming Tony Stark had been Tesla's plan all along.
Science fiction as a business strategy, you have to drive it.
I'm not really a car person. I'm more of a
bicycle person. Ye, put on the brake and push d okay.
But when I went for a ride in my friend's roadster,
(11:38):
I'll admit I was super excited to take a turn
at the wheel. Yeah it is. Yeah, Well, did you
ride go carts as a kid. Yes, it's like a
riding a go cart high end. I think I don't
really really want Yeah, driving the roadster was a blast.
But I wanted to learn more about Tesla's history, so
(12:01):
I called up Ed Niedermeyer, a longtime auto industry analyst
an author of Ludicrous, The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.
I think a lot of the very earliest investment in
Tesla was not really an investment in Tesla it was
an investment in Elon Musk. Musk didn't start the company.
The earliest news stories about Tesla didn't even mention him
(12:21):
or else. They talked about him only as an early investor.
Musk seems to have said about making sure stories about
Tesla were stories about him. In two thousand and six,
on the Tesla website, he posted the Secret Teslomotors master Plan,
a clever manifesto that explained the company's strategy build sports car,
(12:42):
use that money to build an affordable car, Use that
money to build an even more affordable car. While doing above,
also provide zero emissions electric power generation options. But it
was also a very canny bit of self puffery. Call
it the secret Elon Musk master Plan. He introduced himself
this way, my day job is running a space transportation
(13:02):
company called SpaceX. But on the side, I am the
chairman of Teslomotors. And in two thousand and eight, when
both Tesla and iron Man made the debuts, Musk left
the conventional mold of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind. He
moved to Los Angeles, which is also where Tony Stark lives.
In two thousand and nine, one of the guys who
(13:23):
started Tesla sued Musk for, among other things, slander and libel.
He said that Musk set out to rewrite history by
claiming he'd founded or created the company. The suit was
later settled out of court in a resolution that acknowledged
five co founders of Tesla, including Musk. Meanwhile, though Musk's
pr stunts generated just the buzz the company needed. A
(13:48):
big part of Silicon Valley is not just making money.
Another big part of it is the idea of changing
the world and making things cool. The reality is that
the reason Tesla is here today is because Elon Musk
is a remarkable storyteller. In some ways, what Musk was doing.
A man becoming a brand is an old game. Colonel
(14:09):
Sanders is Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lloyd Grossman is his line
of sauces, and then there's this guy Trump. Steaks are
the world's greatest steaks, and I mean that in every
sense of the word. But Musk did something different. Musk
as Tesla was irreverent, and he was witty, ironic, whip smart.
The cheekiness of Musk's online persona was new then, even
(14:33):
if this voice has since become ubiquitous online. Tesco's sassy
Twitter personality say Musk was sassy and messianic all at once.
Not the greatest steak in the world, but the steak
that will save the world. Niedermeyer has gotten a lot
of harassment for writing about Tesla. I've been labeled by
the fans and the company itself as a hater or
(14:55):
you know, someone with potentially nefarious motivations for writing about
Tesla the way that I do. The reality is I
wanted the book to capture what I saw as the
complexity underneath this very polarized discourse about it online. And
I think that, you know, a lot of that polarization
has been a conscious strategy. It's absolutely not a coincidence
(15:17):
that this very polarized culture has has sprouted up around Tesla,
and that the fan culture, you know, people call it
a cult. I think that Musk knows that if you
can force people to either love him and trust everything
he says implicitly, or hate him and think he's a
con man, more people will break his way, and so
polarization is the strategic advantage to him. Musks fifty five
(15:42):
million followers on Twitter. He has sued his critics he
has damned the media. His Twitter followers tend to gang
up on his critics, especially when those critics are women.
Musk is always getting into Twitter spats. It's strange. Why
is this billionaire online all the time, tweeting belligerently about
mostly nothing? What does he need it? Ed? Niedermeyer has
(16:03):
a theory. Musk's fans need him to promise the impossible,
and Musk needs them to give him adulation even if
he doesn't actually deliver on the impossible. He needs them
to tend and nurture and grow again. What I think
ultimately is the most important thing about Tesla, which is
(16:25):
the narrative and the image. For Niedermeyer, this relationship is
a consequence of the sort of speculative capitalism that involves
more speculation than capital. It's a natural outgrowth of the
venture capital culture of betting on the jockey and not
the horse. You know, for a venture capital investor, you
don't always have to build a really sustainably profitable business.
(16:48):
What you have to do is make sure that at
some point down the road, you can pass your investment
off to someone who thinks it's worth a lot of money.
Tesla almost went bankrupt in two thousand and eight, the
year iron Man came out. In two thousand and nine,
it received a four hundred and sixty five million dollars
loan from the US government. It raised two hundred and
twenty six million it's IPO in twenty ten, and in
(17:11):
twenty thirteen paid back its government loan ten years early.
In twenty twenty, it had its first profitable year. But
for Niedermeyer, the story of Tesla, which is one of
engineering virtuosity and against the odd success, is also a
story of procarity for Tesla and for Musk. Even as
the richest man in the world, when he you know
(17:32):
in those days that he is, his position has always
been incredibly precarious. And it's because fundamentally, you know a
lot of why he's there. It's not just the narrative,
but but also it's his risk tolerance. Is an incredibly
risk tolerant person. And you can look at a lot
of different decisions the company's made and see that, and
you know, with risk comes roared, but risk is also
(17:55):
risky as far as risk goes. The striking thing about
Tesla to me is how Musk describes it as a
company out to save the planet from existential risk by
it avert human extinction. This year, on Earth Day, President
Biden was at the White House sharing a smut on
(18:16):
how to avert climate disaster. Well. Elon Musk was at
the launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying NASA astronauts to
the International Space Station. The astronauts drove to the launch
site in Teslas. They each o their own SUV with
license plates that read Reduce, recycle, and reuse. A key
(18:39):
story for Musk as a brand is that he's saving
the planet and saving humans from extinction. But is he
Elon Musk is a really difficult one to parse. He's
been very open and saying that, you know, colonizing space
is in a sort of a survival strategy, which I
(19:02):
think is a thought that has a weird amount of
currency out there in the world, and when you think
about it, you know, in my view, just just makes
no sense whatsoever. Elizabeth Colbert is a New Yorker staff
writer who want appealed Surprise for her book The Sixth Extinction.
There are a lot of these tech billionaires who are
(19:23):
interested in space obviously, as you know, and who obviously
also see it as a big business, and it's hard
to pull that apart too. How much of this, you know,
sort of space exploration hype I'm going to call it,
is on behalf of very potentially very profitable businesses. And
how much of it is really this kind of sci
(19:44):
fi um, you know, escape from Earth fantasy. I really
don't know. So then why do you call it hype? Well,
I mean, Elon Musk is constantly telling us, you know,
when we're going to colonize Mars. But if you ask
any person seriously involved in space exploration, are we colonizing
(20:06):
Mars the way Elon mu is constantly proclaiming that we will,
and within a very short time frame, they will say
absolutely not. There's absolutely no way that's happening. So then
there's this other line of thought that I confess myself
totally perplexed by, which comes from the people who talk
(20:27):
about human extinction scenarios, and their calculation is sure, they're
suffering here on Earth, but if we don't go to
other planets, then humans will become extinct when our planet dies.
And so against your global suffering of people enduring poverty
(20:50):
and disease, we count the untold numbers of our human
descendants whose human potential will be lost if we don't
go like it's almost a kind of extraterrestrial economics. Have
you encountered that existential risk argument species that we have
in the fossil record eventually does go extinct. I'm not
(21:13):
really predicting, you know, human extinction here, but if you
look at the record, it's it's pretty much one hundred percent,
you know, over time. So the idea that humans Homo
sapiens are going to be around for the end of
the planet Earth as a habitable planet, that's so crazily
at odds with as I say, what we know about
(21:35):
the history of life, so so embedded in that is
this notion of humans as completely separate, completely divorced from
evolutionary history and facing the shining future on other planets.
And you know, that is a really interesting idea. It's
(21:56):
not one that I find very plausible. I called Colbert
to ask her about Tesla, but we ended up talking
a lot about SpaceX, since it can be difficult to
pull these two visions of the future apart. What struck
me most talking with Colbert were her observations about the
internal contradictions of Muscism. Earlier this year, Musk announced that
(22:16):
Tesla would accept bitcoin from people to pay for their Tesla's,
and the Tesla itself had purchased one point five billion
dollars worth of bitcoin. The price of bitcoin jumped. Musk
has been an incredibly avid proponent of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoins a
terribly energy intensive cryptocurrency. Bitcoin mining nowadays is using a
(22:39):
roughly one hundred and thirty terror watt hours of electricity
per year, and that's roughly the energy consumption of a
country like Sweden. So you know, the internal inconsistencies here,
I think prevent him from being a particularly good spokesman
for environmental causes. Just doesn't suggest that his ultimate goal
(23:03):
is really driving carbon emissions down. The day I talked
to Colbert, she'd just published a piece in The New
Yorker about Tesla's bitcoin polluting. Days later, must announced that
he changed his mind. You could no longer buy a
Tesla with bitcoin. Still, a lot of commentators pointed out
that there really was no excuse for Musk's decisions to
accept bitcoin in the first place. How could he not
(23:26):
have known that bitcoin is mostly mined in China and
mostly on servers fueled by coal. A writer for The
Washington Post ask had must been on a multi year
news fast. In any case, the essential tenant of Muskism remained,
every problem can be solved with technology. It's a reigning
philosophy of iron Man, too, the motto of Stark Industries.
(23:50):
Everything is achievable through technology, better living, robust health. Everything
can also be wrecked through technology. Elizabeth Colbert's new book
Under a White Sky asks whether we have engineered ourselves
so deeply into so many problems, especially climate change, that
at this point the only way forward is to try
to engineer ourselves out of them. Stopping carbon emissions is essential,
(24:15):
but it's not going to be enough. Maybe we need
to invent machines that can eat carbon. Environmentalism used to
be largely anti tech, but it's not anymore because maybe
there's no longer a choice. I don't think there is
really a sort of anti tech environmentalism these days. But
there are different strains, and Elon Musk is the avatar
(24:38):
of the strain that says, well, humans can just do
anything that we put our minds to. We can colonize mores,
we can succeed or two out of the atmosphere. There's
there are no geophysical limits here that we can't overcome. Unfortunately,
I think that's just not true. We approached Tesla for
a response to several points raised in the series, but
(25:00):
at the time of this recording, we haven't received a reply.
I loved driving the Tesla Roadster, but as I say,
I'm not much of a car person. I'm more of
a bicycle person. So is HG. Wells, who once wrote
cycle tracks will abound in utopia. Alas utopias never coming,
(25:21):
I'll settle for sustainability. And sustainability will require more than
just switching out every petrol powered car for an electric car.
They only need to be fewer cars and more bicycles,
pedestrians and public transit, and more renewable energy. But Tesla
is pioneering that too. Beyond producing electric cars and making
(25:43):
them thrilling, Tesla has done a whole lot for renewable energy,
especially with its battery technology. After all, the last part
of the company's secret master plan had always been provide
zero emission electric power generation options. In twenty seventeen, after
a statewide power outage in South Australia, Tesla won a
(26:03):
bid to design a battery system for this date and
promise to install it in a hundred days. As Musk
explain at a press conference, this is going to be
the largest matter translation in the world by a significant margin.
We actually insisted in doing the contract that we'd be
held to the one hundred days or it's free. This
system will be three times more powerful than any system
(26:24):
on Earth. This is not like a minorphoora into the frontier.
This is like going three times further than anyone's gone before.
Tesla delivered in sixty three days. The system's still working
fantastically well for South Australians. Energy is cheaper and more reliable. Somehow,
this sort of thing never gets the Iron Man treatment.
(26:45):
It's not sexy. It didn't involve Hollywood or celebrities. It
didn't turn on Reddit, it didn't end in a Twitter feud.
It wasn't even a science fiction fantasy, and it did
not save the planet. It was a smart renewable energy
partnership that went well. There was really this opportunity to
make a significant statement about renewable energy to the world,
(27:06):
to show that you can really do a heavy duty,
large scale, utility level battery system, and that South Australia
was up with a challenge a public minded infrastructure project.
It might just be the most significant thing Tesla has
(27:26):
ever done. Next time on the Evening Rocket will blast
off to a different past to the science fiction vision
of the future that Silicon Valley left behind. The Evening
(27:49):
Rocket was written and read by New Gillipour for the BBC.
The Evening Rocket was produced by viv Jones. Oliver Riskin
Cuts was the researcher. The editor was Hugh Levenson. The
commissioning editor was Dan clark I. Oonah Hammond was production coordinator.
Mixing by Graham put a foot In, original music by
Corntith for Pushkin. It was produced by Sophie Crane mckibbon
(28:10):
and Jake Gorski, who also did the mix and sound design.
Production support from Ben Nattapafrick. Our executive producer is Neil o'bell.
Our operations team includes Danielle Lakhan, Maya Kanig and Carly Mgliori.
Thanks also to John Schnar's, Jacob Weisberg, Maggie Taylor, Heather Faine,
Nicole Moreno and Eric Sandler.
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