However the 688-page tome, for which Isaacson spent two years shadowing Musk, additionally fills in another particulars about Musk’s life and profession which have garnered much less consideration. Listed here are among the questions in regards to the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO that the ebook solutions, or at the very least sheds mild on — and which Musk has not disputed, at the very least thus far.
Did Musk’s father personal an emerald mine?
Musk’s picture as a self-made innovator who bootstrapped his approach to Silicon Valley riches has been challenged at occasions by experiences that his father, Errol Musk, was the rich proprietor of an emerald mine in South Africa.
Musk has repeatedly denied the declare. However Isaacson experiences that Errol Musk did as soon as swap a small non-public airplane for a share of the emeralds from three “small” black-market mines in Zambia. Errol Musk offered the emeralds to jewelers, raking in some $210,000, however the mines went bankrupt within the Eighties and little of the cash ever made its approach to Elon or his siblings. Elon Musk’s mother and father did make investments some cash in his first start-ups, although not a decisive quantity.
Why did Musk have Tesla purchase Photo voltaic Metropolis?
In 2016, Tesla shareholders had been queasy about Musk’s plan to accumulate SolarCity, a debt-laden solar-panel firm run by his cousins, during which Musk had a big private stake. Musk floated the concept of a futuristic “photo voltaic roof” to assist justify shopping for the corporate.
Whereas Musk could have believed within the concept at first, the corporate struggled to execute his imaginative and prescient. That turned an issue for Musk in 2021, when Tesla shareholders sued him over the SolarCity acquisition. Isaacson experiences that Musk made the photo voltaic roof his high precedence — till he gained the lawsuit, after which “his fervor to resolve the issue receded.”
Is Musk constructing a “glass home” in Texas?
Musk has denied experiences within the Wall Road Journal that he’s constructing a glass home in Texas and that Tesla was presumably going to pay for it. However Isaacson experiences what is likely to be a nugget of fact to the allegation: Musk purchased a horse farm throughout the river from Tesla’s Giga Texas manufacturing unit and started working with architect Lord Norman Foster, who designed Apple’s futuristic headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., on plans to construct a home there. At one level Musk prompt that it ought to resemble a “shard of glass” popping out of the water, accessible from the shore by a tunnel. However Isaacson says Musk later described it as “extra an artwork challenge than a home” and opted to “postpone constructing it.” The ebook doesn’t handle allegations that Musk or another person at Tesla could have misused firm funds to accumulate the glass for the construction.
What number of offspring does Elon Musk have, and with whom?
Isaacson’s ebook reveals that Musk and his typically girlfriend Grimes secretly had a 3rd baby in June 2022, named Techno Mechanicus Musk, or Tau for brief. Tau is Musk’s third baby with Grimes and brings the tally of Musk’s recognized youngsters to 11. Two of these are the twins he fathered with one among his workers, Neuralink govt Shivon Zilis, as Insider first reported final yr — and which the pair stored from Grimes, who thought of Zilis a good friend. Isaacson experiences Zilis’ being pregnant was through in vitro fertilization, with Musk because the sperm donor. “As a result of Neuralink is a privately owned firm,” he writes, “it’s unclear how the evolving guidelines surrounding office relationships utilized.”
Musk has justified his giant brood by warning of an “underpopulation disaster” as educated ladies have fewer youngsters. Zilis tells Isaacson that Musk “actually desires good individuals to have children,” a stance that may very well be characterised as a type of eugenics.
Why did Musk purchase Twitter?
Isaacson’s ebook depicts Musk’s determination to purchase Twitter as impulsive, and pushed extra by his psychological demons than logic. At varied factors, he theorizes that Musk wished to “personal the playground” after being bullied in class; that Musk’s life was going too easily on the time and he craved a brand new disaster; and that he made the choice to purchase the corporate outright slightly than merely becoming a member of its board whereas he was in a “manic temper,” pulling an all-nighter on a go to to Oracle chairman Larry Ellison’s Hawaiian island.
Musk expressed remorse on the transfer on a number of events, in line with the ebook. In a November 2022 assembly with a Tesla design group that was engaged on the corporate’s concept for self-driving “robotaxis,” a “drained and dejected” Musk stated of the Twitter acquisition: “I don’t know why I did it. The decide principally stated I’ve to purchase Twitter or else, and now I’m like, okay, [expletive].”
Why did Twitter botch the Ron DeSantis presidential announcement?
Within the ultimate days of 2022, after Musk had laid off most of Twitter’s workers, the positioning started crashing totally for a lot of customers. It continued to undergo occasional glitches and outages over the subsequent a number of months, and in Might 2023 a high-profile Twitter Areas interview involving Musk and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was derailed by repeated crashes.
Isaacson’s ebook factors to Musk himself because the offender. Towards workers’ warnings, Musk had insisted on transferring whole banks of servers from an information middle in Sacramento to 1 in Oregon to save cash. After they wouldn’t do it over the Christmas vacation, Musk and a carful of family and friends determined to drive to Sacramento and begin transferring the racks themselves.
They managed to maneuver the servers to Portland, Oregon, however Twitter was “destabilized” for months afterward, and the crash that plagued the DeSantis announcement was one of many outcomes. Musk admitted to Isaacson in March 2023: “Looking back, the entire Sacramento shutdown was a mistake.”
Why did Bari Weiss cease contributing to the “Twitter Information?”
Musk employed journalists Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi to comb by means of the corporate’s inside information for proof that Twitter had gone too far in suppressing conservatives’ speech. As they tweeted their findings in December 2022, Musk cheered them on. However he publicly broke with Weiss after she criticized him for banning different journalists, together with The Washington Submit’s Drew Harwell, a transfer she discovered incompatible together with his claims to be a “free speech absolutist.”
Isaacson fills within the backstory. Weiss had irked Musk in one among their first conferences by asking how Tesla’s enterprise pursuits in China would possibly have an effect on the way in which he managed Twitter. “Musk received aggravated,” Isaacson writes. When she persevered, “Musk stated that Twitter would certainly need to watch out in regards to the phrases it used concerning China, as a result of Tesla’s enterprise may very well be threatened. China’s repression of the Uyghurs, he stated, had two sides.”
Then, when Weiss was engaged on her Twitter Information installment targeted on how the corporate suppressed some customers’ tweets with out telling them, she discovered that Musk had accomplished that himself to an account that tracked the whereabouts of his non-public jet. Weiss discovered that “hypocritical” and spoke out when Musk banned the account and started suspending journalists who reported on the ban. Musk promptly lower her entry to the Twitter Information.
Why did Musk go to the World Cup in Qatar?
Elon Musk isn’t recognized to be a soccer fan, so there was shock when he was photographed on the World Cup ultimate in Qatar in December 2022 alongside Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and various Qatari leaders. Isaacson reveals that Musk agreed to look on the World Cup ultimate as a part of a cope with a Qatar-based funding fund to assist bankroll his buy of Twitter to the tune of $375 million.
