Elon Musk: by Walter Isaacson

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CNN had a story summarizing an excerpt of Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk that claimed Musk had shut down SpaceX’s satellite network, Starlink, to prevent a “Ukrainian sneak attack” on the Russian navy.

It debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending September 16, 2023. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. Remember when Musk said, “ I might pump but I don’t dump,” and then Tesla sold 75 percent of its Bitcoin? He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time.

Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk, published Monday, delivers as promised — a comprehensive, deeply reported chronicle of the world-shaping tech mogul’s life, a twin to the author’s similarly thick 2011 biography of Steve Jobs. With Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson offers both an engaging chronicle of his subject’s busy life so far and some compelling answers.

Isaacson followed Musk for the next two years, visiting his SpaceX and Tesla factories and attending board meetings. One of the greatest biographers in America has written a massive book about the richest man in the world. Musk found out from a member of his security detail — and it’s revealing to me that none of the people around Musk who knew, including Grimes, wanted to break the news. There is one person we do know is under an NDA: a flight attendant who says Musk propositioned her in 2016.Musk’s word was good enough for him — and so, when Musk contested the characterization, Isaacson rolled over.

Based on my conversations with Musk, I mistakenly thought the policy to not allow Starlink to be used for an attack on Crimea had been first decided on the night of the Ukrainian attempted sneak attack that night,” he wrote on Twitter. The first thing I did was flip to the back, where the author lists his sources for the Ukraine thing. Presumably one or more of the Musks — Elon is quoted directly as saying the counselors told him not to die like another kid in a previous year. As the people closest to him will attest, he lacks empathy — something that Isaacson describes as a “gene” that’s “hard-wired. Is achieving the specific vision Musk has for the world worth the injuries he’s inflicted on his workforce?The biography teems with mentions of Musk firing people on the spot, demanding to have things his own way even when it is stupid and expensive, and being unable to tolerate even the slightest dissent. He really said he’d replace the rear seats with thrusters, and journalists spent time trying to figure out what the fuck that meant.