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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, what drives Elon Musk.
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Basu, Narrating: Walter Isaacson has spent the past two years shadowing the richest man in the world. He's zigzagged from the factory floor at Tesla to the desert for SpaceX rocket test launches to weekly meetings about a future city on Mars all to write his latest book, a biography of Elon Musk.
Isaacson had two rules when he took on this project.
Walter Isaacson: I said, "If I do this book, I don't want to do it just based on a few interviews. I want to be by your side for two years. I just want to see you in operation the way no biographer has ever been as up close or intimate to anybody else."
Basu, Narrating: And rule number two was…
Isaacson: You don't get to read the book in advance. You have no control over it. I was somewhat surprised when he said, "Sure. Let's go."
Basu, Narrating: The book, called "Elon Musk," is out now. If you're listening in the Apple News app, stick around after the episode to hear an excerpt. It falls in line with Isaacson's biographies of other innovators, people like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Jennifer Doudna, who pioneered CRISPR, genetic editing technology.
I was eager to talk to Walter Isaacson about what he learned about Elon, having spent so much time examining his personal and professional life up close and what to make of his influence, his reach, his power. I started by asking Walter how he would describe Elon Musk.
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Isaacson: Well, I think that Musk is one of the most important innovators of our time, but he's also absolutely crazy, uh, infuriatingly crazy half the time. And so, what I tried to do in this book is show the roots of the demons that are dancing around in his head, but also show how he turned some of those demons into drives. And in terms of changing the world, he's, more than any other person, brought us into the era of electric vehicles and then power walls and also created a company that's the only one that can take American astronauts from the U.S. and send them into space or into orbit or to recreate the internet in low Earth orbit. So, he's really changed our world. I think he'll do so with artificial intelligence now and maybe, uh, with social media. But I wanted to show how the craziness was part of it. Elon Musk has a lot of faults, but they're woven into his fabric.
Basu: Hm. Would you say that he's the most faulty character that you've had to examine in this way in your studies, in your biographies?
Isaacson: Yeah, I would think so. I mean, uh, he is faulty in the way of not having empathy and can be really rough on people and also having, uh, severe mood swings, which means he can get himself into a really dark space. That said, Claire Boucher, one of his girlfriends, the artist known as Grimes, says, you know, "I don't like being around him when he's in demon mode, but demon mode is what gets things done."
Um, there's not really one Elon Musk, and he has multiple personalities and modes and moods, and they switch rather rapidly. So, you could be with him for a while, and he'd be giddy, and we'd be looking at Monty Python, old clips on his phone. Then he'd get into sort of a serious engineering, hardcore focus and spend about an hour trying to figure out the materials of a valve on the Raptor engine for Starship. And then he might be in somewhat inspirational mode, talking about the need for humans to go to Mars and other planets. But far too often, at least once every couple of days, you'd watch a storm cloud coming over him. And his face would get really dark. His eyes would get really cold, and he would be deep, angry and resentful. He was never yelling and screaming, but he would just coldly chew out the people in front of him for something. And then, I realized that it's what his father did to him when he was a kid.
Basu: Hm. Yeah, actually, you write quite a bit about his childhood, and it seems like there's a lot of connections to be drawn there. What were the early years of Elon Musk's life like, and what do you want people to take away from reading about them?
Isaacson: Well, he knew pain and learned how to survive it. And weirdly enough, learned how to like it. There were times when his life was going well later in life, you know, like three or four years ago, when his car company had become the most valuable. I said, "You must be feeling good." He said, "I don't like it when I feel good. I like to have drama and turmoil in my life." And that's where he shakes things up. At that point, he decided okay, I'm going to secretly start buying Twitter stock. But as a kid, he was lonely and scrawny and beaten up all the time in the schoolyard. But the scars from that were not as bad as when he came home. At one point, he had been beaten up so badly he was in the hospital for a few days. But his father made him stand in front of him for an hour and a half while his father berated him, told him he was stupid and told him it was his fault, the fight, and took the side of the person who beat him up. And so, you sometimes see those demons coming out in Musk now, where he can just get very cold and brutal that way.
Basu: And does Musk himself see those connections? Does he see his father's behavior and patterns in what he chooses to do sometimes today?
Isaacson: His mother said to me at the beginning of this process, Maye Musk… She said, "The danger for Elon is that he becomes his father." And so, yeah, he talks about it. He gets it, but he goes into a really quiet mode whenever he's talking about his father.
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Basu, Narrating: When he was growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk took refuge in books, particularly science fiction like Isaac Asimov's "Robot" series, X-Men comic books and Douglas Adams' "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Walter Isaacson says these stories shaped his worldview.
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Isaacson: I think what he took from science fiction, probably a little bit of a populist resentment, which unfortunately infects him now, I think, when he goes and posts on his social media platform. But mainly, it was the adventure of space, and in the case of Asimov in particular, it was the fear that robots could leave us behind, that artificial intelligence could be harmful to humanity rather than helpful to humanity. And he said the people who darted around trying to save the world, they were wearing their underpants on the outside, and they looked ridiculous. But at least they were trying to save the world. So, I think it gave him a sense of epic quest.
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Basu, Narrating: That sense of quest-seeking and risk-seeking seems to be something that ran in the Musk family.
Isaacson: His grandfather was killed doing stunt piloting on an airplane. All of his family were these weird, adventurous risk takers who tried to find lost cities in the African deserts and things like that. And I think he believed that the United States, for example, used to be a nation very much of risk takers.
Elon embraced risk at his early startups, going for broke at X.com, an early online banking service that merged with PayPal, and Zip2, a kind of online Yellow Pages directory. At both companies, Elon began to hone what would become his hallmark management style, work hard, exaggerate results, play hardball.
Isaacson: Well, his first two companies were very successful, you know, a hundred million dollars or so each when he sold them. And he, instead of buying a whole lot of yachts or whatever, he decided he was going to put all of his chips back on the table, other than a very fancy car he bought himself. And he kept saying, "I always want to go to the next level of game. I want to put all my chips back in and risk them all."
Fast forward a couple of decades, and Elon is now running 6 companies, most of which are developing critical tech of the future. There's SpaceX, Neuralink, which is working on computer implants for the brain. This summer, it got a green light for its first human trial. The tunnel-building Boring Company, which recently won approval to expand its network under Las Vegas. XAI, founded this year, is working on artificial intelligence. There's X.com, formerly known as Twitter. And of course, Tesla, his electric car and sustainable energy company. Now, these companies get a lot of attention for how innovative and cutting-edge they are. But there've also been big problems like at Tesla where there have been numerous allegations of lax safety on the factory floor, sexual harassment, racial harassment and union busting by Elon himself, all allegations Musk and Tesla deny.
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Isaacson: To some extent, any boss is responsible for the atmosphere. And so, he has an atmosphere in which he really expects people to work "all in," as he puts it. A fierce intensity is our operating principle. So, it's not one of these nurturing, psychologically safe, we're going to be careful with you workplaces. On the other hand, it's sometimes very inspired. You walk the factory line, there's a lot of music. There's a lot of excitement. There's sort of a drumbeat of, you know, hardcore music and people laughing. So, it's a complicated thing where his own personality, which can be kind of manic and sometimes kind of dark, I think translates into various parts of his companies.
Basu: Yes, but there's also some true dangers to the way that he seems to want to be operating. I mean, in your book, you talk about how you were present for certain conversations where there are certain regulations around how something is supposed to be performed on the factory floor. But for the sake of speed, Elon would say I think we should remove this requirement, remove this regulation, not do it according to code. Is that right?
Isaacson: Absolutely. It's both a bad and a good thing. If you can keep it in balance, it may work because he has a set of five rules when he's doing manufacturing. And rule one is question every regulation. If there's any specification or requirement, question who put it there and why. He wants to go back to what he calls the first principles of physics and test whether that makes sense. And then, he'll challenge it sometimes.
Basu: Did you challenge him about this kind of thinking? 'Cause I think that, you know, once you look at the rate of serious injury at Tesla in 2018, it was quite a bit higher than the previous year's industry average. Did you confront Elon with this kind of data and ask him what he thinks are the consequences of moving fast?
Isaacson: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't say confront him. I'd ask him questions like what are you doing? Why are you doing it that way? And 2018, it was just a horrible year. And for him, very bad and things… He went into almost a bipolar depression, and he's forcing them to get out 5,000 cars per week. Otherwise, he says Tesla is going to go bankrupt. And sometimes, he doesn't get enough pushback.
Basu: Hm. Let's move on to what's happened at Twitter since he acquired it. I keep saying Twitter. I realize it's now called X.com, but it's very hard to change some of those old habits.
Isaacson: Well, if it makes you feel better, he still calls it Twitter.
Basu: Does he really? [CHUCKLES] Privately?
Isaacson: Up until about a month or so ago when I finished my reporting, he'll catch himself like you, and he'll go, "Twitter. I guess I should be calling it X, right?"
Basu: [CHUCKLES] Well, at his insistence, I guess so, right? Uh, it very much seems like you were trailing him in that first week that he spent at Twitter headquarters. Is that right?
Isaacson: Yeah, and it was like you said about 2018 in the Tesla factory or some other times is he got into this very almost manic… I don't mean that in a technical or medical way. But just push for hardcore intensity. And he goes in the Twitter headquarters, and it is the opposite work environment than the one he usually likes. It's a great work environment. It has yoga studios and artisanal coffee bars and sort of quiet rooms, and you can take mental health days, and they tell him we really care about everybody's psychological safety. And he has that raspy laugh, and he says, "Psychological safety? That's not my thing. I want people to always feel pushed and always feel intense, and that this hardcore intensity is what we've got to do." And he fires 85% of the people. I, of course, you know, gasping in some ways, I said, "What are you doing?" And thought the whole platform would disappear the next morning. And it was not a pretty sight, but even as he goes ripping out the servers with his own hands using pliers from Home Depot because they tell him it would take six months to get rid of these servers, he's trying to show them that you gotta be hardcore. Balance is not one of Elon Musk's strengths. He sort of goes all in one way or the other.
Basu: Yeah. Well, intensity is one thing, but the content on the platform has certainly been under a lot of scrutiny. I mean, several civil rights and anti-hate speech groups have noted that there has been a steep rise in hate speech and particularly anti-Semitic hate speech on the platform. Elon has threatened to sue or is suing some of these groups. What do you see happening in this fight? And what does Elon see or tell you that he sees happening in this fight?
Isaacson: Here's where I think the problem is. Is that not just you have more fringe speech, but it gets amplified, and sometimes he amplifies it personally. He will engage with people who are on the extremes, on the fringes. He will descend down these rabbit holes of dark, almost conspiratorial thinking, and he will, especially late at night, you know, hit the like button or engage with somebody on the fringes. And so, for me, I think that's where the problem is. In the playground and, uh, when he was at wilderness camp as a little kid, he said he was always beaten up, but he finally learned to punch people in the nose really, really hard. And that even though they'd beat him up, he at least had punched him in the nose hard. There are times at night, when he's doing that punch in the nose hard reactions, and he does that particularly when people are trying to get advertisers to boycott X.com.
Basu: What do you think he's thinking about as we head into an election year? And the type of the type of platform that X.com is and what he wants it to be heading into an election year?
Isaacson: I can be with him on a nice, calm afternoon, and he'll say I want everybody on this platform. We've got to get the Democrats and Republicans. And he'll say I want to do these town halls or these Spaces, they're called. And I want everybody on it. And then, when he's in an angrier mood, he's kind of retweeting things from Ron DeSantis or hosting Ron DeSantis. So, he has put his thumb on the scale. He has moved, in the past three years, from being somebody who raised money for Barack Obama, supported Joe Biden, to be somebody who is more pugilistic and populist. And there are times he puts his thumb on the scale of what used to be Twitter, and it helps, uh, people of that mindset, the Tucker Carlson mindset I'll call it, come to the fore.
Basu: Is there anyone that he seems to really trust the opinion of and rely on, especially when he flies into these kind of angry bouts, the sort of demon mode, as you've described it?
Isaacson: You know, when he's in an angry, dark place, it's really hard for anybody to reach him, whether it's, you know, Grimes, or his friends, Antonio Gracias, or you know, many others, Ken Howery. And it's hard to get through to him, and they just almost wait until the mood passes. And it was a little bit like his father, had those almost Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde mood swings. Now, when he's in a regular headspace, whether it's Gwynne Shotwell, who is the president of SpaceX, or there's all sorts of people at Tesla, Drew Baglino, Franz von Holzhausen who really can turn him around, can push back on him. But I think there are times when he gets dark where everybody just has to catch their breath and wait, and then they learn how to get him out of that and say okay. I mean, you talk about 2018, which was the roughest period for him and when they were having problems because he was just pushing the factory so hard. There were times when he was lying on the floor of the factory in Fremont, California. And he would be in a place where he'd have the lights off. And John McNeill, who was then sort of president of Tesla, would have to try to rouse him. And it would just be hard to get him out of these trances. Now I think he's a little bit mellower, but he still goes into these intense periods.
Basu: Hm. You know, one thing I wanted to ask you about was, uh, [CHUCKLES] the several instances, it seems, that you were in the room for some meetings about Elon Musk's ambitions to get humans to Mars and the very serious conversations that they're having about, for example, what kind of government there should be on Mars.
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Basu: Can you just tell me some of those stories? I mean, what are… What's happening in those meetings? What are those meetings like?
Isaacson: Well, those are the opposite side of the dark modes that come on sometimes. And that's mainly where his head is, being almost super visionary, and I mean that in sort of a wild and crazy way, which is in the middle of some big crisis, he will still hold a meeting that he does every week called "Mars Colonizer" where they're discussing what clothing they're going to have for people on Mars when they form a colony, what type of government they're going to have, and you almost pinch yourself and say, "Wait a minute. I'm sitting here with grownups, and they're all talking about what we're going to wear when we live on Mars." And there's many, many times a week where things get intense, and he'll flash forward to, "What's it going to be like when we have robo taxis, self-driving cars? How are they going to get into parking lots? Are people going to own cars? Are they just going to summon them?" So, he will go into this thing where he looks deep into the future and talks about the importance of getting humanity to Mars. And I would think okay, is he just pontificating? But after a while, I realized that when he's in those moods, he's earnest and believes it.
Basu: Hm. Is it some kind of some kind of escapism on his part? Some kind of coping mechanism, you think?
Isaacson: I think it's both escapism and it's trying to keep himself motivated. And there'll be times when I was walking in the dark late one night by the rocket launch pad, which wasn't going fast enough. And he… I wouldn't be talking to him. I'd just be watching. And he'd be talking to himself. "We've got to get humanity to Mars. We've got to get humanity to Mars." Now, I came to believe that some of these mantras, which is getting us into the era of sustainable energy, moving us to the era of electric vehicles, and then self-driving, and getting us to Mars, he'll just sit there and talk to himself and then the people around him, and he is deeply earnest and committed to those missions.
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Basu, Narrating: Whether we make it to Mars or not, Elon Musk is already the dominant force in space, thanks to his satellite internet service, Starlink. At this point, more than half of all active satellites are Starlink's. It's one of the few ways to get internet access in remote places, areas cut off after natural disasters and war zones. In fact, Elon's control over Starlink satellites has been a big point of contention in the Russian war in Ukraine. Several U.S. senators have asked the Defense Department to clarify whether Musk actively restricted Ukraine's satellite access at several points during the war. Musk claims he hasn't made any new restrictions, but he did turn down a specific request from Ukrainian officials. Either way, Musk choosing to act or not act here has huge geopolitical consequences. I asked Walter should one person have this much power?
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Isaacson: He doesn't think he should have that much power. As he said to me, "Why am I in this war? I made this so people could chill and watch Netflix." But let me raise that one more level, as you got to say, no, he shouldn't have that much power. But you have to ask how did it come about? Why is it that the major communication satellites that the U.S. government and Defense Department have to send to high earth orbit… Boeing can't do it. NASA can't do it. There's only one company, you know, with his Falcon Heavy, that can get these things into high Earth orbit. Likewise, why is he the only one who's been able to make a communication system in low Earth orbit, Starlink, that the Russians, when they did the horrible invasion of Ukraine, within 24 hours had knocked out every other communication satellite except Starlink. And that's when Musk rushes to the aid of the Ukrainians and sends Starlink over. We don't want somebody like that to have total power. And it's almost like why I wrote this book, which is other people should be doing this, should be able to figure out how to make rockets that work, how to make communication satellites that work.
Basu: But what does Elon think should be the checks on his power?
Isaacson: I think that's why he decided to turn over control over a portion of Starlink and to create a new type of Starlink called Starshield, which is a military version, to the U.S. government. He believes that it's not something he should be deciding how should this be used around the world.
Basu: Hm. Hm. Would you describe him as the most powerful person in the world?
Isaacson: Oh, no. I mean, I would think that he may be the most influential and, to some extent, powerful private citizen. And I think that's because in terms of consequential things he's done, when all the other auto companies had given up on the idea of electric vehicles, he's pushed it. And likewise, he's pushed us into the era of commercial space travel. He's the only one who's been able to make rockets that can boost things in orbit and then land upright and be reused quickly. That's something that hasn't been able to be done before, so that makes him consequential and perhaps powerful. But as he knows, he's gotta listen more, I think, to regulators, certainly cooperate with the U.S. government when it comes to military things. And he's doing that. I mean, this past few weeks, he's been visiting the FAA, went in front of the Democrats in the Senate to talk about the need for a new regulatory agency to do artificial intelligence and to talk to the Pentagon about how he's going to supply things that other contractors can't make.
Basu: Hm. What do you see as some of his biggest weaknesses or limitations?
Isaacson: I think sometimes he's really bad at getting negative feedback, especially when he's in a defensive mood where he's dark, and you have to almost watch the really smart people around him navigate that, which is give him a lot of data. Give him a lot of data. Show him all the facts. For example, he resisted doing what's going to be a huge product, this inexpensive car, Tesla, that would be a 25,000 car or less, that'll be a global car because he said I want to make it a robo-taxi with no steering wheel. I want to make it self-driving. And they all say that's fine. That's really visionary. But you know what? We're not going to be there in the next two or three years. We got to make also a version that's just an inexpensive global car. And they, one night, I watched them give him all the data, all the data, and then he just sits there for a long time and says, "Okay, we're going to go for it, and we'll make a factory that'll be able to make both cars." And he gets the pushback he needs, but in my personal opinion, not as fast and not as open enough to people saying, "You're crazy. You're wrong. Stop doing that."
Basu: Mm. I mean, I will say that some of the criticism of your book has been that people have said maybe you haven't been sufficiently critical of Elon's ego, of his brashness, of his disregard for things like complaints about racism and safety and hate speech on his platform. What is your response to some of the criticism?
Isaacson: I think if you actually read the book, you'll see, uh, I'm pretty, uh, vivid in describing the problems of his ego, the problems of his impulsiveness, also the dangers of his risk taking, but I try to do it as a story. Uh, you know, we got a lot of people doing hot takes in 140 characters, and they're extreme when they're oh, the guy's racist, or the guy is a superhero, or the guy walks on water. Everybody's got hot takes these days. I actually respect readers enough to say I'm gonna tell you the story, and I'm gonna show you some of this really ego-driven thing that can be a problem. I'm also going to show you why the battery cell works better than any other. And I'm going to let you process all of these tales without being one of those writers that has to give you a hot take and a hot opinion after every paragraph.
Basu: Hm. Hm. Has Musk read the book since it's come out? I know you said he didn't read it ahead of time.
Isaacson: I do not know whether he's read it. I have not heard anything directly from him about having read the book.
Basu: I wonder if you think that there are any lessons that Elon Musk can learn from the other great innovators you have written about. [CHUCKLES] You've written about Einstein. You've written about da Vinci. What can Musk learn from their stories?
Isaacson: Well, first of all, I think if he ever does read this book, I actually think he could learn a lot about himself because even though he's very self-aware and very transparent, this notion of him being dark, combative, and sometimes dangerous and reckless… I think he would absorb that and process it. And it would be interesting to see what happens. In terms of lessons from other people, you know, people say do you have to be this hard charging or this much of an [CENSORED EXPLETIVE] to be successful? I've tried to write a variety of books because I don't think biographies are how-to books. I've written about Jennifer Doudna most recently, the woman who brought us into the era of gene editing by being one of the inventors of CRISPR, which can edit our DNA. She's about as easygoing and delightful and collaborative of a person you'll meet. I'm in her lab at all times just like I was on the factory floor with Musk. And I show the joys of collaboration. Likewise, years ago, I did Benjamin Franklin. His superpower was that he could get along with everybody and bring them together. On the other hand, somebody like Leonardo da Vinci, tortured by all the misfit nature of his childhood. I think the lesson from all of them is that we all have a few demons dancing around in our head. And we have to harness those demons, and we also have to protect against the dangers that can come from succumbing to those demons. And that's true, whether it's Leonardo or almost anybody I've written about, but it's true two orders of magnitude greater with Elon Musk.
Basu: Hm. A last question for you. What do you think Elon Musk wants his legacy to be? And then what do you think his legacy will in fact be?
Isaacson: I'm going to say three things, if you don't mind, which is he's had since childhood, since he was sitting in the corner of the bookstore, lonely and reading sci-fi and comic books, three missions he felt. One was space exploration. He thought we had lost. We'd gone to the moon 50 years ago, and suddenly we've lost that ability to be adventuresome in space. Number two, he believes that we have to save this planet by having sustainable energy. And his way is ever since he wrote a paper in college, it's solar energy being used with solar roofs with his power walls and then his Tesla cars. And then, third is artificial intelligence can either be this huge boon to humanity, or it could really endanger us. And people are talking about that a lot now in the past six months, but he's been talking about it for 20 years. And he wants to find ways to have our minds and our machines in sync, in alignment as he calls it. That is what he hopes will be his legacy, and I fear, you know, he's made a mistake, in my opinion, by leaping in and buying Twitter. You know, he'll be known for his tweets instead of focusing on what were his three missions when he was a kid.
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Basu: Walter, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for the book, and I appreciate it.
Isaacson: Thank you.
Basu, Narrating: You can find Walter Isaacson's book, "Elon Musk," on Apple Books. We'll include a link for you on our show notes page. And if you're listening in the Apple News app, we have an excerpt teed up for you to hear next.
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