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This is a special book to me for its subject (Elon Musk) and its biographer (Walter Isaacson). Elon is perhaps one of the most fascinating guys who ever walked on this planet and nobody writes better than Walter Isaacson.

Elon Musk
When was the last time a dyslexic person founded 5 of the world's leading companies in diverse industries and manages them all exceptionally well at the same time while being the richest man in the world? He popularized electric cars to ultimately replace combustion engines - with Tesla. He's not a rocket scientist, but he developed his own rockets and is serious about sending a man to Mars. He is one of the biggest manufacturers of solar panels. He bought Twitter so that people can exercise free speech. He pioneered online banking with PayPal. There is no stopping this guy! And unlike most billionaires, he's cool and smokes weed on a podcast - definitely not your stiff executive type on a 3-piece suit.

Walter Isaacson
I love writing and I love the writing style of Walter Isaacson. I read his book about Kissinger and I remember dissecting his long sentence into its anatomy to see why it worked so brilliantly. When I read his book, it's always with a dictionary. He doesn't really use high falluting words, but precise and accurate not-your-everyday-word to make his point. With his book, I expand my vocabulary and my writing improves.

Elon Musk and his biographer, Walter Isaacson at Vanity Fair

Joshua and Winnifred Haldeman
(p 11) Elon got his daredevil character from his grandfather (motherside), Joshua Haldeman, Joshua was a hardcore adventurer - hobo, stowaway, cowboy, chiropractor, handyman, etc. He was against the Jew's control of money in the economy, and believed that governments should be ran by technocrats and not politicians. He took up ballroom dancing where he met his future wife, Winnifred Fletcher. They both learned to fly airplanes.

Disgruntled over his perceived control of the Canadian government, he took his family to South Africa, then an apartheid regime. He lost his life while flying. Elon was only 3 then and never knew his grandfather from whom he took much of his risk-taking genes from. Maye, Elon's mother, got the genes and passed it on to Elon.

Errol Musk
Errol was Elon's Dad - a wheeler/dealer and hustler who was also an engineer, politician and pilot. He was from South Africa and made money in the emerald business.

Their Marriage
Errol Musk and Maye Haldeman (Elon's beautiful Mom) dated as teenagers. They married and Maye got pregnant immediately, thwarting her plan to move out of a mistake - the marriage.

Lonely and determined
(p 16) On June 28, 1971, Elon Musk was born. He cried a lot, ate a lot and slept little. At 3, Elon's genius became apparent and was sent to nursery school where everyone else was much older. It was a mistake as Elon was tuning out. When Elon retreats into focused thinking (when his brain is computing), his sensory organs stop functioning - can't hear, can't see, etc. Elon didn't know how to make friends - he lived a very lonely life. He dreaded being alone. When he wanted something, he could not be detered - he was uncompromising. He could also be spacey, oblivious to what's going on. Elon was bad at picking up social cues, often believing that people mean what they say - he could read body language. He had no empathy - a character so vital in society.

The Divorce
(p 18) Errol was abusive to his wife. He hit her and called her "boring, stupid, and ugly". When Elon was 8, they divorced. Errol continued to give her a hard time. Maye raised the kids by herself in dire straits.

The move
(p 21) At age 10, Elon moved in with his father - big mistake! He realized then just how horrible his father was. 4 years later, Kimbal joined him. It's not clear why, but maybe because they needed a swashbuckling father then than an overworked, distracted and vulnerable mother. One time, Errol brought the kids to Hong Kong, left them in a hostel for 2 days with 50 dollars fending off for themselves.

A confederacy of cousins
(p 22) To be closer to her boys in Pretoria, Maye moved to Johannesburg where her sister also lived with her 3 boys (Peter, Lyndon, and Russ Rive). The 5 cousins would hang out and have fun with the consenting Maye who was less strict than her sister. They would go to concerts unsupervised and have close calls - stabbings, brawls, shootings, etc. Even in those early days, Elon displayed fearlessness in making difficult decisions - like telling off a bunch of bigger boys to keep quiet in a movie house. Elon would also be the most competitive.

The student
(p 23) Elon was a good student but nothing more. He was slow to finish class work. He'd rather play video games than put effort into something he found meaningless...like some school subjects. He loses himself in books sometimes going for 9-hour reading stretches. Being a know-it-all, he was annoying to the other kids. He showed fascination at interstellar travel at that early stage.

Existential crisis
(p 26) Maye used to take Elon to Sunday school, but he asked too many (sensible) questions, "People cannot walk on water!". He was in search of scientific explanations instead of defaulting to religious explanations. He began asking philosophical questions even science could not explain (What's the meaning of life?) - thus his teen-age existential crisis. He took refuge in the writings of Nietzsche but his confusion turned into despair. He doesn't recommend deep philosophical reading for a teen-ager. Reading science fiction saved the day for him - he actually got obsessed with space travel and A.I. This was the genesis for Elon's SpaceX company.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide
(p 27) Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy influenced Elon the most. It kindled in him the Simulation Hypothesis about reality. His take-away was to be smart enough to ask the right questions (instead of getting an answer from a wrong question).

Blastar
(p 27) The 2 brothers and the 3 cousins were avid players of Dungeons and Dragons. As a Dungeon master, Elon displayed gentleness and patience - not his default personality. They participated in a tournament and won, even though they were the youngest. Elon remarked that the contest Dungeon master was an idiot for being too obvious.

At 11, Elon got his first computer - a real treat during that time. During that time, educational programs weren't invented yet - only games. Elon played space video games and was good at it. He learned BASIC, Pascal and C++ programming. He entered and won programming contests. At some point, he developed his own computer games and monetized it.

Jekyll and Hyde
(p 31) At 17, due to Errol's abuses and wild mood swings, Elon left his Dad and left South Africa. Elon also took this from his Dad. Elon could be Mr. Cool one moment and turn dark and threatening the next. Errol applies his engineering to fruitcake theories like formulating randomness. Nobody understands him, but he believes in his own bullshit. Hearing Errol's mind-blowing rants was a mind-fuck for the kids/cousins. Elon exhibits a lot of Errols's dark side...he can't help it and is often reminded by his wife/s.

A one-way ticket
(p 32) Failing to immigrate to the US, Elon successfully moved to Canada. His father's parting words at the airport, "You’ll never be successful.”

Immigrant
(p 35) Elon arrived Montreal with $4000 and a list of his mother's relatives. He was surprised that in Canada, people don't just rob and kill you, unlike South Africa. He later moved to Saskatchewan for his cousin and then to Vancouver 6 weeks later. He found a job paying $18/hour, much higher than the usual $5/hour, but it was tough and risky.

I just realized, from NY, I also immigrated to Canada in 1989, same as Elon. I was 30 and Elon was 18. We obviously made different choices in life, but I can console myself for not having a 155 IQ, unlike Elon.

Maye and Tosca
(p 36) Maye and Tosca soon moved to Canada as well, but settled in Toronto. Elon followed suit while Kimbal stayed in Pretoria to finish his studies. They all stayed in a 1-bedroom apartment. Times were hard and everyone worked menial jobs. Elon worked as an intern for Microsoft. At some point, they were able to move to a 3-bedroom apartment and purchase a computer for Elon. He had no friends or social life in Toronto.

Elon and I were in Toronto at the same time. Wow! I somehow wish I met him when he was still a virtual unknown.

Industrial relations
(p 38) Addressing his social handicap, he enrolled in 1990 at Queen’s where there were more girls. There, he met his lifelong friend, Navaid Farooq, who was half Pakistani and Canadian. Together, they would play board and computer games, discuss philosophical questions and explore obscure history. They were both lonely guys in search of a friend. At Queen's Elon struggles with Industrial Relations - dealings between workers and management.

Strategy games
(p 38) In video game playing, Elon was convincing in his negotiations and threats. He loved strategy games (board and computer) involving resource management, high-level tactical maneuvering, and supply-chain logistics. This is where he honed his tactical skills and strategic thinking for business - Elon was wired for war. Elon was good at reverse-engineering the rules of a strategic game so he wins every time.

Bank trainee
(p 39) Elon and Kimbal would call people that interested them the most from reading a newspaper. Usually, they get invited for lunch. It's also good networking where Elon was hired to be a part of a strategic team for Nova Scotia Bank.

Elon realized that banks are dumb and he was smarter. It was hard for him to work for someone stupid or someone not as smart as him. This paved the way for his creation of the online bank, PayPal.

I know what it's like to have someone stupid as a boss. I had one.

Physics
(p 42) Elon found Queen's boring and moved to the University of Pennsylvania to study physics and business. He deemed them a good combination. Elon will apply engineering while working for himself. He made friends with Robin Ren, the only guy smarter than him in physics. At that early point, Elon would already be musing about travel to Mars, rocket propulsion, electric cars, and green energy.

Party animal
(p 43) Elon became friends with a party animal, Adeo Ressi. Adeo pulled him out of his geek shell into the wild world of partying. They rented a house that they used to host parties at $5/pax to a crowd of 500, paying the month's rent. Despite the party vibe, Elon wasn't immersed in it. He would be sober the entire time looking after things. He was still an outsider looking in even though it was his party.

Summer intern
(p 46) After UofPenn, ambitious students are usually drawn to Wall Street in NY or the tech-craze of Silicon Valley on the West. Elon didn't think bankers and lawyers make a real contribution to society so he chose the West - .com bubble, venture capitalists and instant wealth through technology. He worked as an intern where he indulged his passion for electric vehicles, space, and video games. In another company he applied to, he was able to solve a complicated problem that baffled the executives. He impressed all of them. Even though Elon could make decent money developing video games, he didn't think it was the best use for his talents.

King of the road
(p 46) In the 70s, whiz kids could tinker with appliances and computers. But the 80s brought about sealed equipment - you couldn't open it up and tinker with it. Thus, in the 90s, the tinkers defaulted to software and coding instead of hardware. But Elon had a panache for both hardware and software - he was able to combine them both. Case in point was when he converted his BMW from 4sp to 5sp transmission just by reading, researching and logical deduction - but it broke down a few times.

Elon also observed that the robotic baggage-handling system of the Denver airport was a mess because it was overly automated and was more complicated than the designers thought. He was keen on noticing the engineering mistakes on systems he observed - and applied the lessons on his manufacturing whether it's electric cars, rockets, or boring equipment.

The internet wave
(p 47) He thought deep about what can possitively influence humanity - and this would be his thrust. It boiled down to the internet, space travel and green energy.

Elon was on a rush about the internet - it would not wait until he graduated. He had to choose - PhD or the internet. Peter Nicholson of Scotiabank advised that the internet revolution was a once in a lifetime opportunity but the PhD will always be there.

Map quests
(p 51) Realizing the shortcomings of NyNex's vision of an online yellow pages, he and Kimbal decided to develop one themselves by merging the business directory with a map database - they were perhaps the first humans to do it on the internet (by today's standards, it's very common). They named their program Zip2 and had it patented. Mohr Davidow, a VC, invested $3M, gave Elon and Kimbal $30,000 each for a car and had their visas fixed. Elon bought his dream car, 1967 Jaguar E-type but it broke down every week.

1967 Jaguar E-type

Not long after, the VC brought in the grown-ups to manage the company. Elon was pushed aside as a technology officer. He realized that he cannot do what he wants in the technology department unless he was also CEO (this lesson stayed with him, so even when he had multiple mega companies, he stayed as CEO concurrently). He should not give up control. Zip2 took off and newspapers, an unexpected market, became its biggest customers. At the end of the day, Elon felt that VCs and professional managers cannot make a great company because they lack the creativity and insight of the founders (like him).

Hardcore
(p 53) Elon was hardcore, working all day and all night, resting only to play video games. He also demanded the same from employees. He would correct his employees publicly or correct their 'stupid codes', oblivious about human connections and loss of loyalty. Time and again, his lack of the empathy gene got the better of him - like Steve Jobs. Kimbal was no exception to Elon. They both physically fought over strategy, names and slights. They would wrestle each other to the ground in full view of their employees.

The millionaire
(p 54) When Compaq Computer offered $307 million in cash for Zip2, Elon walked away with $22M. His bank account grew from $5K to $22M in a wink - he was 27. He bought an 1800 sqf condo and a $1 million McLaren F1. In 3 years, from sleeping on an office floor, he now owns a million dollar car. He became a celebrity but it didn't really get inside his head. At the core, he wanted to build more companies.

Romance drama
(p 57) Justine Wilson and Elon met at Queen's when Elon was a sophomore. They dated. To Justine, Elon would not take no for an answer. They moved in together in Palo Alto before the sale of Zip2. Justine was anti-social - nobody seemed to like her...not Kimbal, not Maye, not Farooq, not Elon's friends. They would always argue or fight. When Zip2 was sold, Elon proposed.

The wedding
(p 58) The wedding was almost canceled because there was no lawyer to notarize the prenup. Getting married without the prenup worried Elon which sparked a fight on wedding night in full view of the family. Others were relieved thinking the wedding would be canceled. But it pushed through just the same.

An all-in-one bank
(p 61) Instead of living life as a gallivanting millionaire, Elon invested his Zip2 money into X.com, an online banking company that addresses all the shortcomings of NoviaScotia bank, where he previously worked as an intern. X would be his go-to name for his companies and even his kid.

Elon's hard-driving way to his employees nearly caused a rebellion where co founder and key people asked Elon to step down. Elon replies essentially that he was built that way - a given that cannot change. The rebels quit but Elon forged through, partnering X.com with Sequoia Capital and becoming the darling start-up guy in Silicon Valley.

Elon made a public announcement to launch X.com on Thanksgiving weekend, an insane deadline for him and everyone else. Everyone was pushed to the limit. Elon was a stern taskmaster. It was brutal. Engineers came home at 2 am and called to show up early for work. It produced resentment. But in the end, the deadline was met and the staff received joyous bonus on the ATM.

Elon introduced many innovations to the industry - simple interface, ease of signing (ask as few information as possible), members signing up friends, and paying through email.

Max Levchin and Peter Thiel
(p 62) Max Levchin and Peter Thiel were co-founders of PayPal, a fierce competition to X.com for peer-to-peer money transfer. Thiel was a cool risk mitigator while Elon was an intense risk-taker. In the attrition, both realized it was better to merge than kill each other in Mortal Kombat. At the negotiation table, looking serious, Elon said X.com owns 90% of the new business while PayPal gets 10%. It was so absurd people didn't know what to make of the remark. Elon was just messing with them. While on his McLaren, Elon tried to impress Thiel by flooring the accelerator. The car spun around but no one got hurt. Elon thought he impressed Thiel as a risk taker. Thiel however, saw Elon as reckless. Elon was trying to scuttle the merger but his higher ups warned him not to. The deal went through with a 50-50 sharing, X.com being the merger name with PayPal was the brand. To show that adult supervision is no longer needed, Elon fired Harris to become the CEO.

PayPal
(p 64) PayPal's electronic payment system was a big success but Elon was unhappy. He wasn't contented developing niche companies no matter how successful. He wanted to develop new innovative industries by scuttling inefficient and archaic ones. What he had in mind was a social-media company with banking services (this was the genesis of Twitter, now X.com).

Elon teamed the engineers with the product managers - they work together. One gets to feel the impossibility of the other (like teaming architects and engineers - some engineers complain that architects like drawing fiction on a paper that cannot be built). But who leads the team? The engineers or the designers? For SpaceX, engineers led the team.

Arm wrestling with Levchin
(p 64) Thiel slowly faded from the action leaving Levchin to counter-balance Elon. After an argument on what OS to use (Elon wanted Windows while Levchin wanted Unix), Elon offered to settle the issue by arm wrestling. Resolving a software-coding disagreement by arm wrestling? That's Elon. He lost but still had his way.

The earnest Levchin didn't know what to make of Elon. Intense maniacal genius? Calculating risk taker or reckless craze? Goofball humorist? Elon was a picture of irony. But from time to time, he is impressed by Elon's sharpness and knowledge beyond what Levchin thought to be his expertise.

Street fight
(p 68) Levchin found Elon dismissive, to the point he thought about quitting. His friends rallied behind him, urging him to fight back with them behind him, as they all felt the same frustration. They plotted to dethrone Elon with Thiel as the temporary CEO. This was carried out with the blessing of Michael Moritz and the board while Elon was on his honeymoon. Upon learing this, Elon sunk into deep sadness. He put all his money in PayPal, worked his ass off, and postponed his honeymoon, and in return, he gets sacked behind his back, not given the chance to voice his side. Elon promptly returned and reconvened his loyalists to strategize the next moves. Reid Hoffman (a Thiel loyalist), out of respect for Elon, agreed to hear him out despite instructions of Thiel to everyone not to give Elon an audience. Elon was unable to reverse Hoffman. Elon gracefully stepped down as CEO and discouraged his loyalists to launch a revolt. Elon remained the largest shareholder and a board member - just no longer CEO. Elon rubs people the wrong way. In the last 3 years, he has been voted out twice. He tried to repair his relationship with Thiel and Levchin.

Risk seeker
(p 70) Elon's PayPal colleagues were unanimous that Elon was a risk taker which was unlike most managers who were risk mitigators. Elon thrived on seeking risk and see how far he can push it, sometimes with almost catastrophic results (like the McLaren incident). Elon displayed this again by playing poker with sharper guys. But he kept betting all and losing all. But in the one instance he won, he took the entire lot. This has been the hallmark of Elon's business behavior as exhibited in SpaceX and Tesla, contrary to Silicon Valley's best business practice. People came to a point wondering that maybe Elon understands risk better than anyone else.

In 2002, Paypal went public and Ebay bought it, earning Elon $250M. Elon talked to Levchin asking him why he turned against Elon in that coup? Elon patched things up with the coup plotters saying had he stayed, he'd still be slaving away at PayPal.

Malaria
(p 71) After the ouster, Elon took a long deserved vacation in Rio and South Africa with Justine and Kimbal. Upon his return to Palo Alto, he realized he caught malaria and came to hours of dying over a wrong prognosis. Had he died, PayPal would have collected $100,000,000 for a keyman life insurance.

Flying
(p 74) During his sabbatical after his ouster, Elon learned how to fly and eventually bought a Soviet military training jet where he played Top Gun. He learned aerodynamics experiencially. At some point, he got bored flying.

Red planet
(p 74) After recovering from malaria, Elon got fascinated with space and came to conclude that he can build a rocket. Dismayed learning that NASA had no plan to go to Mars, he attended a meeting by the Mars society and read manuals on rockets. He became public about his plans to colonize Mars and make humanity a space-faring species - to the eye-roll of his friends and colleagues. Elon starts off with the goal (no matter how absured, eg colonize Mars) and then reverse the process on how to go about it.

Why?
(p 75) Building rockets to colonize Mars by a 30-year old enterpreneur was absurd. But Elon gave 3 reasons why:

1. technology doesn't spontaneously progress. It can stop or ever backslide. History taught us this. Elon would not have it that way if he can help it. He'll be the catalyst to make progress happen.
2. suvival of man and his consciousness. Earth could be hit by an extinction-level asteroid and that could be the end of the only intelligent life in this universe.
3. Elon is an adventurer and he cannot resist this adventure.

Elon passes off his vision (no matter how absurd) as a mandate from heaven.

Los Angeles
(p 76) Because the aerospace industry was in Los Angeles, Elon moved there from Palo Alto. He hosted many gatherings of rocket engineers. He toyed with the idea of sending mice to Mars, then sending a green house to Mars, and even went to Russia to buy rockets to go to Mars.

Russia
(p 79) Elon went to Russia to buy cheap rockets (decommissioned missiles) but nothing came from it. Instead, he decided he will build the rockets himself, send man to Mars and eventually colonize Mars. Man now becomes a multi-planetary species.

First principles
(p 80) Elon realized that the current mode of building rockets was enormously high compared to the cost of its raw materials - 50x more, giving it a high ïdiot index. This motivated him to design and build the rocket themselves.

SpaceX
(p 80) When Elon's friends knew that he was creating a rocket company, they intervened to discourage him, showing reels upon reels of exploding rockets. Elon was unwavering. Elon became the chief engineer since none of his choices could make it. His guiding metric was cost per pound of paylad to space. Thus he created the SpaceX company and announced to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2010 - this was in 2002

Baby Nevada
(p 83) In May 2002, just as Elon launched SpaceX company, Justine gave birth to Nevada, their first born. At 10 weeks, he died. Elon shut down and refused to talk about it. He got rid of the baby's belongings so as not to see them. Elon's survival mechanism is to shut down his strong emotions.

Errol arrives
(p 83) When Nevada was born, Elon invited his father Errol to visit. But en route, the baby died. Errol could not be persuaded to return home so he pushed through to see Elon in Los Angeles. Elon asked his father to stay, even if it meant buying a home for him in LA. - to the chagrin of Kimbal. Things got weird. Errol was fancying his 15 year old step daughter so Elon bought Errol a yatch to live in. Meantime, Errol's young wife looked to Elon as the provider of her family - not Errol. It came to a point Elon asked his father to go back to South Africa - his extended family followed suit.

Tom Mueller
(p 86) Tom Mueller was a rocket enthusiast even as a boy. He worked for the aerospace company building rockets. Elon offered him a job at SpaceX as head of propulsion, in charge of designing the rocket’s engines. Playing it safe, Mueller asked 2 years salary on escrow if the company fails. Elon agreed but considered Mueller an employee instead of co-founder - Mueller wasn't risking enough to be co-founder.

Ignition
(p 87) Having hired a few rocket engineers, Elon bought property as headquarters in LA. He teamed together the designers, engineers and manufacturers - the 3 of them work seamlessly as one intelligence instead of 3 separate brains. Elon kept the risk takers - those who never say, "It's impossible". Elon and his team worked long hours and video-gamed until the wee hours. Elon would beat them all at the video games - he was alarmingly too good. Elon also designated names to the rockets and engines - cool names and not just prosaic letters.

Question every cost
(p 90) Aerospace suppliers would overcharge 10x more than auto parts but essentially the same parts. Elon kept the costs down. With his cost-obsession, he deemed it better to vertically integrate - to manufacture the parts in-house instead of sourcing them outside. Quoted parts for $120,000 would cost $5000 if manufactured in-house. Other equipment for car-wash was repurposed for rocket fueling. At some point, SpaceX was making 70% of its materials in-house.

Question all the requirements
He questioned the requirements laid down by NASA and the military in developing rockets - who made the law, why, etc. His only boundary was the law of physics. Everything else was merely 'recommendation'. His engineers were made to question all specs.

Have a maniacal sense of urgency
(p 91) Elon sets unrealistic deadlines even when they weren’t necessary. Mueller would not say no but will simply explain why if it didn't finish on schedule. This maniacal deadline obsession brings out the best in people but if the schedule is clearly impossible, it demoralizes the people - it's a double-edged sword and Elon doesn't realize this. Even if impossible deadlines were not met, the process still took faster than industry standards at a much lower cost.

Learn by failing
(p 91) Elon's rockets and engines were designed iteratively - not building flawless designs but finding out what flaws there are and fixing it fast. They were pushed until they broke - now, they know the limits.

Mojave Desert was too bureacratic for a test site. Elon found an ideal site in Texas. They celebrated the first firing of a Merlin rocket there by serving $1,000 bottle of Rémy Martin cognac on paper cups.

Improvise
(p 93) Elon would encourage off-beat fixes instead of opting for the usual expensive replacements that could take months. Sometimes it fails, but it motivated the engineers not to be afraid to experiment with unorthodox fixes.

Gwynne Shotwell
(p 95) Elon doesn't like to share power. He will inspire, bully and frighten colleages, but not be cozy with them - except Gwynne Shotwell. She was hired in at SpaceX in 2002, became president and is the longest running employee. She is direct, outspoken and assertive but stays in her lane without crossing the line with Elon. She was a cheerleader, extrovert and good with people. She found SpaceX sales people a bunch of losers who didn't know how to sell its services. At 40, she was reluctant to take the VP of Business Development because SpaceX was just a startup and had a mercurial boss. But she accepted because SpaceX had the potential to turn the industry around. Shotwell knew how to deal with Elon because her husband suffered from autism-spectrum disorder commonly called Asperger’s - something Elon had. This means you have no clue about people and no clue how people will respond to your honest but harsh words - no PR whatsoever, no empathy. Shotwell tends to the wounded. She listens hard to Elon and more importantly, she tries to decipher Elon's spoken intentions.

Wooing NASA
(p 96) In 2003 together with Shotwell, they went to the Defense Department to sell a tactical communications satellites for $3.5 million - it was their first sale. When NASA awarded a no-bidding contract to a competitor, Elon sued for corruption and won. SpaceX was the small David defeating a Goliath. But this move may have hurt his relationship with NASA. But his triumph put into question the prevailing practice of "cost-plus" between NASA and its contractors. Cost-Plus means the contractor charges all costs + pre-agreed profit when the project is over. Elon cited that this practice makes contractors increase the cost further, and delay the project. Elon suggest a "outcomes-based" system where contractors are paid for their milestones (encouraging creativity and innovation) on top of their bids.

JB Straubel
(p 100) JB Straubel loved tinkering with cars, loved electric cars and chemistry. He got an idea of using lithium ion as battery for electric cars but couldn't find a funder until he met Elon. Elon met a few EV inventors and developers, being referred to one after another, until he met Martin Eberhard, owner of Tesla Motors. Straubel became co-founder of Tesla and chief technology officer.

Martin Eberhard
(p 101) Eberhard decided that the most environmentally sound car was an electric car. He couldn't convince the Tzero guys to build a production car, so he decided to build one himself. He registered the brand, Tesla and was bent to begin production, but had no funding. After meeting with Elon, Eberhard got a $6.4 million investment with Elon as Chairman of the Board. They would start building a supercharged EV sportscar - Eberhard as CEO, Tarpenning as president, Straubel as chief technology officer, Wright as chief operating officer, and Musk as the chair of the board and primary funder. Years later, they agreed that all 5 of them would be called cofounders.

Cobbling together pieces
(p 105) Tesla was successful largely because it decided to manufacture its key components instead of outsourcing them from several hundred vendors. By being vertically integrated, Tesla controled the supply chain, maintained its quality control and kept its costs down.

In the early days though, Eberhard bought components from all over the world, which was the norm then. The first car had the sporty body made by Lotus, and powertrain by AC Propulsion. Tesla made the electric engine. It performed magnificently and Elon invested $9M more.

Whose company?
(p 106) While their functions and titles were clear - Elon as chair board/investor and Eberhard as CEO, it was still a question of whose company Tesla was. Eberhard argued that it was him who thought of the idea, brought Tarpenning along, registered the company name and looked for funders - Elon was just a board member and investor. Elon argued that he was the one who teamed Eberhard and Straubel together. That until he came along, Eberhard only had a shell of a company - no intellectual property, no employees, no funding, etc. But when Wright was fired, Elon became increasingly involved with Tesla (in addition to SpaceX) with its design and engineering. The heated battle with Eberhard escalated.

Hmmm...why should "whose company is this?" be so ambiguous and important? Isn't the one with the most shares of the company owns the company? In this case, it's Elon. Aren't the functions of a company already defined by the officers' roles?

ChatGPT: Even though company power resides on the share owners and company function resides with the officers (CEO, President, Chari, board, etc.), the founder is associated with the company's mission and vision. He is invested personally and emotionally in a way hired managers are not. He provides networking connections outside the company which may not be possible with hired hands. Especially during the early stages of the company, the founder's intimate knowledge of the company's origins and core strength are crucial. His influence and legacy are important.

Design decisions
(p 107) Although Elon's deal was computer software, he insinuated himself with the industrial design of the Tesla Roadster. He researched every beautiful car that was ever designed and tried to understand why. Elon's design corrections were sound but costly. e.g. creating a larger door meant redoing the chassis, costing a $2M recertification. Elon also changed the car lights (to make it look beautiful like a woman's eyes), widened the seats, door handles, body paneling, etc. No small detail was spared by Elon.

Tesla Roadster

Raising more capital
(p 108) Elon's changes to design and new hire created a need for more capital. After pounding the VCs of Silicon Valley, he got VantagePoint Capital, led by Alan Salzman and Jim Marver to invest $40 million. When the financing was publicly announced, Elon was shocked that he was not named founder, but Eberhard. After this slight, Elon made his rounds of interviews without clearance from the company PR in charge.

Getting credit
(p 109) Elon enjoyed his celebrity but mixed about being on the spotlight. He enjoyed making tweets and interviews on podcasts though.

The unveiling
(p 110) Elon, urinating on his hydrant, intervened in the unveiling event of the Roadster, even getting the PR lady fired. But the news articles gave glowing reviews but only gave credit to Eberhard, relegating Elon's role merely as an investor. This infuriated Elon. He went into a counter offensive by posting an essay on the Tesla website outlining the company strategy, giving a SpaceX factory tour to Robert Downey Jr resulting in a placement of a Tesla and cameo by Elon in the movie Iron Man.

The unveiling shattered the stigma that an electric car is just a glamorized golf cart. Celebrities started buying - George Clooney, Steve Jobs, Schwarzenegger, etc. Tesla was primed to give EVs a marketing facelift.

Catch-22
(p 114) It would have been convenient to launch the SpaceX rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base, just 160 miles south. But the Air Force was too strict about their rules and SpaceX had to be a lower priority to launching spy satellites. Elon had to look for an alternative.

Shotwell scored a $6M satellite launch for Malaysia but the satellite was so heavy it had to be launched along the equator where the earth's rotation was faster and thus can provide added thrust. But the closest one was 4800 miles west at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The facilities were run by the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command under Major Mango. After talking to Major Mango and after visiting Kwaj, Elon decided to make the launch there.

This side of paradise
(p 115) After 4 years, Elon admitted Kwaj was a mistake due to logistics, the heat and the corrosion due to salty air. He should have just waited for Vandenberg Air Force Base to become available. But the trials and tribulations at Kwaf made for an engaging narrative.

The first launch attempt: FAIL
(p 118) The first-ever launch of his rockets, Falcon 1, failed. The team picked up pieces of the wreckage to find out what caused the failure. Elon blew up on Mueller and Mueller dared Elon to fire him. This dark episode gave way to goofy humor - as Elon would have it. He was committed to go the long haul. The failure was caused by a small B-nut that secured a fuel line that a technician, Hollman, removed and reattached the night before. With Elon, every part, every process, and every specification must have a name attached to it. Someone had to be made accountable. When Hollman learned Elon blamed him for the failure, he stormed into Elon's office. He left the company a year later. It was later learned that Hollman was not at fault. The B-nut was found still intact, but it corroded given the salty air of Kwaj.

The second attempt: FAIL
(p 120) After the failure of the first launch, everyone was more careful, scrutinizing every part that goes into production. Elon pulled back on his warp speed for the crew.

The 2nd attempt for Falcon 1 failed again, this time because of the fuel slosh. The team already identified the problem before hand, but considered it 'unlikely' and a low priority. This disregard bit them all hard.

Roadster costs
(p 123) After the unveiling of the Roadster in May 2006, the manufacturing began with a target manufacturing cost of $50,000. But due to Elon's design changes, transmission issues and cost overuns, by November, it was already $83,000. By July 2007 the cost rose up to $110,000. Elon decided it was time to call the SWAT Team.

Antonio Gracias
(p 123) Gracias was only 12 years old when he insisted on owning Apple stocks. His $300 shares is worth close to half a million now. He was enterpreneurial with a knack for making things efficient particularly in the manufacturing process. He was an early investor in PayPal and Tesla with his venture capital firm, Valor Management. He and Elon once cleaned a colleague's vomit inside a limo to help out the poor driver. When Elon was having cost overruns with the Roadster, he deferred to Gracias - Gracias knew how to streamline factory processes and he knew the right guy for the job - Tim Watkins.

Tim Watkins
(p 124) Watkins was a ponytailed British robotics engineer and an eccentric wizard at understanding factories. He made a factory run 24 hours with only 16 hours of labor - he knew exactly how long the machines can run on their own until human intervension is needed. Gracias and Watkins would be the SWAT team to troubleshoot Elon's cost overruns.

The supply-chain problem
(p 125) When the British company manufacturing the carbon fiber paneling canceled the contract due to Elon's difficulty, Elon took Watkins to a company in France, Sotira Composites to take on the work. This problem with the supply chain bothered Elon so he asked Watkins to study the overall supply chain for Tesla. It was a nightmare. Just for lithium batteries alone, they were made in Japan, assembled in Thailand and shipped by boat to the Lotus factory in England for installation on the Roadster chassis. The car body would then be shipped to Palo Alto in California. The lithium batteries alone took a global travel before it ended up on the car showroom 9 months later. It wasn't just logistics but also a cashflow problem since those batteries have to be paid in advance - 9 months earlier. While outsourcing saved money, it hurt the cashflow. There were too many sections in the supply chain that could go wrong and cripple production.

Aggravating the problem was the car design itself which became complex due to Elon's intervention - the body became 40% heavier needing a new chassis which invalidated the crash-test certification previously issued on the original Lotus Elise (the template for the Roadster). At the end of the day, Elon concluded that it would have been a lot better to design the car from scratch on a clean sheet instead of starting off with the Lotus Elise and then making countless modifications.

When Watkins talked to Eberhard to sort out the supply chain for the Roadster, he was shocked to find out that there was no bill of materials. There was no costing for every part that went into the Roadster so the cost to manufacture the car could not be determined. Eberhard argued that he had no CFO to handle the SAP system to automate this. Watkins manually computed this and found out that at the very least, the car cost would be $140,000 - too high for the selling price of $100,000.

Eberhard’s ouster
(p 128) After Elon's trip to England, Eberhard told Elon to look for a CEO replacement. The search was slow and unproductive since Elon couldn't find a suitable one or one willing to be CEO to a 'house on fire'. On a board meeting, when Eberhard couldn't come up with a precise costing for the car, Elon flew the handle and accused Eberhard of lying. Tarpenning took exception to the word, but admitted that they grossly miscalculated on the costings. A few days later, Elon sacked Eberhard even though there was no CEO replacement yet. EVH took it hardly. This began a heated and public disparaging of the other until a legal settlement was made - but Elon continued in spursts.

Michael Marks and the asshole question
(p 129) Elon tapped Michael Marks, a Tesla investor and seasoned CEO who likes vertical-integration in the manufacturing process, to be interim CEO. Things were initially amiable until Marks started steering the company instead of simply going by Elon's dictates. Marks cancelled orders that were not urgent and treated people as people, unlike Elon who has no empathy and thus treats people horribly. Employees were intimidated by Elon so they don't tell him what he needs to know. Their rift pinnacled when Marks suggested farming out the assembly of Tesla. Elon wanted raw materials going in a factory and a complete car coming out on the other end. Elon remarked that Mark's idea was the most stupid thing he's ever heard. Marks, being proud and accomplised, couldn't take it anymore. He soon left but later conceded that Elon was right about vertically integrating manufacturing. Marks began to regard peole like Elon and Steve Jobs as true assholes who get the job done - they come as a bundled package. Another CEO was appointed, Drori, but the board couldn't work with him. He stepped down and soon after, Elon finally took over as CEO while being board chair (Elon as CEO and board chair of Tesla is a conflict of interest regarding corporate governance. The board should provide check and balance to the CEO's management. If the CEO is also chair, then who checks out the CEO's accountability? This said, Elon was able to navigate Tesla's growth to be the #1 seller of EV in the US).

Justine
(p 133) Shortly after the death of Nevada, the Musks had 5 kids through invitro method - twins Griffin / Xavier and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian. Justine and Elon ranged from living in a shanty to a mansion. They had tender moments and were a prized addition to celebrity events. But when they fought, it was also brutal. Justine increasingly felt like a trophy wife, being made-over by Elon for his vanity. Elon didn't intimate to Justine the troubles he had in the company which made Justine unwanted or unneeded. Justine cited that Elon feels nothing for other people - no empathy. He can conceptually think about what people go through, but he cannot feel it. What Elon lacked in empathy, he over compensated by intensity. Justine's peaks and valleys about the relationship morphed into permanent anger because Elon shut her out. It was just a matter of time before the divorce.

This 'no empathy' issue strikes a cord with me. I find such people dangerous to be friends with - this is from a personal experience. I was in Nepal with a close lady friend who invited me to join her sightseeing. She hailed a cab. I already knew she was manic-depressive, but I didn't know she had no empathy - that came later as a surprise. While wandering on our own at the site, she just took off on a cab back to the city without even looking or messaging me. I was left in that place not knowing how to get back and not having enough money to cab it. It wasn't easy finding my way back to the hotel especially with no one speaking English. When I confronted her, she was dismissive and didn't want to talk about it. I erased her out of my life. A few years later, she said "Hi" on Messenger and acted like nothing happened. I avoid such people like a plague.

Talulah Riley
(p 135) Shortly after divorcing Justine, Elon met Talulah Riley, a tall and beautiful actress in London. This was the time 2 rockets failed at SpaceX and a third was scheduled in the next weeks, when Tesla was suffering from a cash flow crisis and when the threat of a market meltdown was looming. He asked for her number and they were inseparable since then. After dating for 2 weeks, they were engaged. The in-laws met but Kimbal suggested they wait a year before getting married - as Elon just got divorced.

3rd Rocket
(p 139) The 3rd launch would have been the last launch if it didn't go well. Elon only had enough money for 3 failed launches. On this one, it actually carried payload - satellites for NASA and the Air Force and the cremated remains of Scotty of Star Trek. Again, the rocket failed. This time, it was the redesigned cooling system for the Merlin engine. During the test at sea level, there was no problem. But in the vacuum of space, the problem became apparent. That was supposed to be it for Elon, but in a news announcement shortly after the crash, he said he will not give up until he sends a rocket to orbit. But Elon already ran out of money, Tesla was bleeding cash and SpaceX had 3 failed rockets plus Justine kept the house from the divorce.

Launching the 4th in 6 Weeks
(p 139) Meeting up with his team the following day, they discussed how to prevent this failure. But everybody was prepared to be chewed up. Instead, it was a cool and sober Musk who told the crew to assemble another rocket from the components still lying around LA and to launch in 6 weeks. After this speech, the feeling of despair in the room to that of exuberance and determination.

Rolling out the Roadster
(p 142) Feb 2008, the first few Roadsters arrived at Tesla HQ from production. Elon took it out for a victory spin in Palo Alto. It was a small triumph and not a guarantee of success. Many budding car manufacturers came to this level and still got bankrupt. In the past 100 years, only Ford was the car company that didn't go through bankruptcy.

Tesla Roadster

It was a bleak episode during that time - the subprime market was crashing causing a severe recession, Tesla's cash flow was in the red and SpaceX hasn't made any successful launch. Elon borrowed money from friends and used customer deposits for operating expenses. Elon even asked Kimbal to put in his last money to meet payroll (Kimbal loaned Elon his last money. Many years later, when Kimbal needed Elon to bail him out, Elon said NO. Kimbal was furious and stormed out telling Elon, "It doesn't work this way!" That moment was also hard for me to forget since I have my own episode when my half-brother told me to 'walk his dog whenever I use his car').

Musk was driven so close to the edge Talullah thought he would go crazy. It came to a point where Elon would have to choose which company to save. In trying to save one, that company might survive. But in trying to save 2, both will die. But to Elon, it was like giving all the food to only one child and letting the other child die. It was unacceptable. He had to give it his all to save both.

Founders to the rescue
(p 145) At the brink of bankruptcy, the co-founders of PayPal (Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, et al), the same people who kicked him out of office, chipped in $20M. Elon was thankful that he didn't give the finger to Thiel and Levshin during his ouster, otherwise this bailout wouldn't happen.

Crunch time
(p 145) Getting the rocket components in LA to Kwaj on a boat would cause delay, so he chartered an Air Force C-17 to haul the components. During the trip, the air pressure dented the rocket parts. Instead of flying it back to LA for repairs, Elon decided to bring it to Kwaj and have it repaired there. There was a sense of surreal optimism with the crew. Elon had to make a hard choice - get the rockets repaired in 5 weeks following the checks and balances he himself instigated, or abandon the checks to repair the rocket in 5 days. He opted for speed. Elon was willing to change directives when the situation changes, and he is willing to take risks no normal person would.

“Fourth time’s a charm!”
(p 147) Elon was in LA watching the 4th launch in Kwaj. The launch was flawless. All 500+ employees were in jubilation (at Boeing, this department would be 50,000). Kimbal cried. Falcon 1 rocket was historic. It was the first ever privately funded and privately produced rocket that was launched into orbit. The stress of the launch was so much Elon nearly felt sick and couldn't feel the joy.

4th launch of Falcon 1 in Kwaj

“ilovenasa”
(p 148) The success of Falcon 1 raised the bar for private rocket firms. NASA put out a bidding to supply crew and cargo to the Space Station. Elon made Shotwell SpaceX president in charge of finances, people and marketing while Elon remains CEO in charge of engineering and product development. Together, they went to NASA and won a $1.6B contract for 12 round-trip missions to the space station.

The successful launch of Falcon 1 and the fat NASA contract was the beginning of good fortune for SpaceX.

Tesla financing, December 2008
(p 150) Tesla didn't even have enough for payroll on Christmas eve, so Elon asked new funding of $20M from his investors. Alan Salzman of VantagePoint Capital, who personally didn't like Elon, was the only one stopping the deal. Without the deal, Tesla would be dead and so would the fate of electric cars. After much bickering and in-fighting, Salzman relented and the deal pulled through. The day was saved, Tesla was saved and the future of electric cars was saved.

Government loans
(p 152) One of the lingering criticisms of Tesla was that it was bailed out by the government under its TARP program. This is not the case. Tesla applied for and received an interest-bearing loan of $465 million from the Department of Energy. They did't even get the money upfront, but had to incur expenses first and present the expenses to get the money. It promptly paid off $12M in interest while rivals who took the loan could not or did not. Ford still hasn't paid its loan, Nissan was able to in 2017 and Fisker went bankrupt.

Daimler investment
(p 152) In Germany, Elon went to Daimler to pitch for an electric car sale. Daimler agreed to visit the company and hear his proposal for an electric Smart car. Elon had a gasoline-powered Smart car in Mexico driven to Tesla where they replaced it with an electric motor and a battery pack. The Daimler people were impressed that a prototype for a Smart electric car was already available and driveable. The performance also impressed them. They contracted with Tesla for battery packs and drive trains. They also invested $50M to Tesla which resuscitated the company.

In a way that SpaceX was saved by the NASA contract and successful launch of Falcon 1, Tesla was saved by the $50M Daimler Benz investment and the $465M government loan. Also, in 2010 (2 years later), Toyota would invest $50M in Tesla. When Tesla went public, it earned another $266. In 2010, Tesla was the hottest company. Elon thought he had to choose which 'baby' to save - Tesla or SpaceX. Now, Elon proved he could save both.

Model S Tesla

Henrik Fisker
(p 155) Daimler's investment of $50M, the investor debt loan of $20M and the gov't loan of $460M gave new life to Tesla. If successful, it could mass-produce a 4-door electric-powered sedan for $60K. Designing a sleek Roadster was easier than designing a functional 4-door design, especially with a battery pack on the floor that would raise the roof. Elon contracted Henrik Fisker to be the designer who explained the difficulties to Elon. After 9 months, Fisker couldn't stand Musk anymore and left.

Franz von Holzhausen
(p 155) Franz was a car designer who had a Euro-cool aura about him. Upon meeting, Elon hired him to head the in-house design studio for Tesla. Franz would be one of the very few who will be Elon's professional and personal partner - kinda Lennon-McCartney. The Tesla design studio for Franz was at the SpaceX location so that Elon can be beside it. Franz needed an assistant so he hired a friend and clay-modeller, Dave Morris. While Franz was apprehensive about the company's viability, Morris was gung ho working for a hardcore like Elon. Eventually, Elon bought an aircraft hangar to be the design studio. He would talk to Franz almost daily and on Fridays, they would spend hours perfecting the Model S design. Elon like the talk over a 3D model so that's what Franz and Morris laid ready on Friday afternoons.

The battery pack
(p 156) Elon wanted the battery pack on the car floor to make it stable but without raising the roof. They shaved millimeters off the battery pack to do this. Elon hired Drew Baglino to be in charge of the battery. Baglino rose up in the Tesla ranks over the years. He knew not to challenge Elon's unworldly deadlines or specs. One challenge of the battery being on the floor was to protect it from rocks or from any piercing. It became battleground with lightweight vs safety. The chief engineer for the Model S, was Peter Rawlinson who addressed the problem by making the battery pack as an integral part of the car's structural framework.

In Elon's system, the designers and engineers worked together as a team. Designers and encouraged to think like engineers and engineers are encouraged to think like designers.

Friendly design
(p 158) Although not really that functional, a flushed door handle was introduced for 'friendliness', as a basis for having a relationship with the car. The designers balked at this, but Elon of course, prevailed. The touchscreen panel for the driver was also an industry first that turned the car industry around. Elon hated stupid government rules and fought consistently with them. The car increasingly became more of an updatable software instead of just hardware. Tesla can globally add software updates on already-bought cars further enhancing its features.

Falcon 9, Dragon, and Pad 40
(p 161) With the NASA contract, Elon needed a bigger rocket, a new launch pad (not Kwaj anymore) and a space capsule. SpaceX used 9 Merlin rockets instead, leased space at the Kennedy Space Center and developed a capsule from scratch. Elon hired Brian Mosdell for fixing up the new place. During new-hire interviews, Elon could go silent for a full minute and go rapid-fire on technical questions. He has a gut-feel for the applicant - thus the hiring of Mosdell. The launch pad was built literally from repurposed scrap - it's cheap. Elon also questioned requirements by the Air Force, usually being successful in revising an outdated requirement and saving more money - like replacing the $2M double crane for something that only cost $300K. The cost-plus system of the competing aerospace contractors milked the aerospace industry. Elon found alternative sources from non-aerospace companies- even just a hardware store. e.g. a $1500 latch was re-sourced using a bathroom latch for $30.

Obama at SpaceX
(p 162) Lori Garver was a long-time NASA veteran who opposed the traditional cost-plus system and wanted the private sector to provide aerospace functions for the government. The success of the 4th launch got Garver promoted to Deputy Adm of NASA but her boss Charlie Bolden was anti-SpaceX and anti-Elon. Congress was also not sold on handing over to the private sector, what was once the Holy Grail of government tradition - the space program. Obama cancelled NASA's Contellation program as it was "over budget, behind schedule, and unexecutable.” There were push-backs as expected, but they were proven wrong as SpaceX has put more man/cargo into space than any other country.

Into orbit…
(p 165) With the 3 failed launches and Obama's initiative to outsource NASA's space program to the private sector, there was a lot of pressure on Falcon 9's launch. Despite an antenna that got wet, the launch went perfect. This validated SpaceX as the most successful private rocket company in the world - just 8 years from its founding. It also validated Obama's decision.

… and return
(p 165) Returning from orbit was also successful with a derring-do decision by Elon the shear off a crack in the engine skirt instead of replacing the entire engine which would haves spelled delays. Despite the success, Elon realized that Mercury, 50 years earlier, had already achieved this success. America was simply catching up with its old self.

SpaceX has repeatedly proven that it was more nimble than NASA especially with Elon's derring-do and high-risk taking that paid off results. This paved the way for SpaceX to be transporting man into orbit. Elon was already prepared for that - by having a window installed on the space capsule.

“I can take a hard path”
(p 168) Elon was manic with Talulah. Once, he sent her 500 roses. They got married in September 2010 in the Scottish Highlands. Talulah was prepared to take the hard path by having Elon as a husband. She finds the child hidden within the man. He would intimate with her beratings from his Dad. He used the same harsh words to other people.

The Orient Express
(p 169) Talulah would throw creative parties that amused Elon. She would have been perfect for him had he chosen stability more than drama and intensity.

Fremont
(p 171) Tesla emerged when globalization was at its peak. Manufacturing was offshored to cut costs. 1/3 of American manufacturing was shipped out. Elon didn't subscribe to this. He wanted to have the feel for manufacturing to allow him to tweak constantly as the need presents itself. To him, the machine (factory) that builds the machine (the car) was equally important - this was also shared by Antonio Gracias.

Steve Jobs and Elon both have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) but they differ too. Jobs is OC with the design of this products but outsourced production and didn't visit his factories in China. Elon on the other hand was obsessed with design, materials, the science and manufacturing. He would spend lots of time on the assembly line getting the feel of what's happening and applying innovation as needed.

Elon bought a mothballed Toyota factory in Fremont for $42M (it used to be worth $1B). He also convinced Toyota to invest $50M in Tesla. Elon redesigned the factory so that the engineers' offices are along the assembly line - they are not insulated from what's happening on the floor. Tesla went public and generated $266M for the company. Just 18 months earlier, Tesla was dying. Now, it's the hottest company.

Production quality
(p 172) The Model S rolled off the assemby line in June 2012. Elon was not happy with the car - the gaps were stark and the paint job sucked. He asked his design chief, Holzhausen, to move to Fremont to be the new production quality control chief. Holzhausen learned how his designs on paper translate to finished products on the assembly line. Instead of blaming production for a flaw, Elon asks what went wrong in the design.

An overriding theme in Elon's management style is 'hardcore'. He is hardcore and expects everyone in his team to be such.

Model S made a historic mark when Motor Trend Magazine picked it car of the year in 2012 - with glowing and superlative review that surprised even Elon. This was a first for an electric car.

The Nevada battery Gigafactory
(p 173) In 2013, Elon delivered the most audacious statement - to build a giant battery factory, bigger than all the world's factories combined. To his people, it was the wackiest Elon proposal ever. They didn't even have a clue how to make a battery.

Tesla partnered with Panasonic. Panasonic will make the battery cells and Tesla will make the battery pack for cars. $2B will be invested by Panasonic while Tesla puts in $3B. Panasonic was reluctant knowing Elon was difficult to deal with. Elon and Straubel created a charade of 'building a factory' - either Panasonic gets on board or be left behind. It worked. Both were invited to Japan by Panasonic. At a formal dinner, Elon behaved his best, impressing and surprising Straubel. Panasonic agreed to have 40% stake, stating that they are too conservative as a 95-year old company, and that they have to adapt Elon's way of thinking to survive in this rapidly changing automobile landscape.

Jeff Bezos
(p 176) Like Elon, Jef Bezos was also a billionaire, a lover of science fiction, reusable rockets, obsessed with colonizing other planets. He built a rocket company, Blue Origin.

Elon and Bezos met in 2004 when Elon invited Bezos to visit SpaceX. As a reciprocity, Bezos invited Elon to Blue Origin. Elon was overtly expressive about things Bezos could and should not do. Bezos thought Elon was too sure of himself when all his rockets have failed. Bezos also submitted a personal review in Amazon of Justine's book. Elon has been curt and brusque for most of it.

Pad 39A
(p 177) With the scuttling of the Space Shuttle, SpaceX moved into high gear in 2011 in bringing cargo and men to the International Space Staion by leasing launch pad 39A - center stage for the moon landing, the last manned moon mission and first Space Shuttle mission. But Bezos competed in bidding for 39A. SpaceX won and Bezos sued. Elon ridiculed Blue Origin for not having enough thrust to put anything into orbit (not enough thrust to escape earth's gravity). Bezos eventually leased launch pad 36. This was symbolic of the space-exploration torch being passed down from a sclerotic NASA to the much nimble mission driven private sector.

Reusable rockets
(p 177) Bezos and Elon both shared the same vision of using reusable rockets. Bezos looked into the software needed while Elon took a deep dive into the rabbit hole of the underlying physics. Elon obsessed with weight reduction of every component of the rocket - a lighter payload will allow better escape velocity from earth's gravity. Stealthily, Bezos applied and received a patent for sea landing of a rocket. Elon was livid saying the notion has been around for half a century. Bezos canceled his patent, but war was considered waged between the billionaire titans.

Grasshopper
(p 180) Elon developed a reusable Falcon 9 prototype named Grasshopper that could 'hop up and down'. In a board meeting, even though a reusable rocket was still a prototype, they were seriously discussing what people on Mars will be wearing. As the board was watching Grasshopper rise 3000 feet and land vertically, the rocket exploded. This began a bad streak for SpaceX and the entire rocket industry. Supply missions to the Space Station by other companies also failed and the crew at the Space Station were running low on food and supplies. The pressure was on for SpaceX to launch successfully on June 2015 - but it failed. This the first failure of a Falcon 9 rocket after operational for 7 years.

Meantime in Nov 2015, Bezos was enjoying some success with his reusable rocket that flew into the space threshold - 62 miles up, and landed successfully vertically - the booster reignited to slow down the descent, legs deployed, hovered to fix its bearings and landed vertically. Bezos gloated and Elon derided the event as a ' suborbital hop', not exactly a full orbit with payload.

Jeff Bezos: "The rarest of beasts—a used rocket. Controlled landing not easy but done right can look easy."
(My thought bubble) Bezos: My dick is bigger!

Elon Musk: "@JeffBezos Not quite ‘rarest.’ SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around."
(My thought bubble) Musk: My dick is harder!

Elon had a valid point. A true reusable rocket is one that can launch into space with cargo (like a satelite) or dock on the Space Station and land back to earth in one piece. This is an accomplishment in greater order of magnitude.

“The Falcon has landed”
(p 181) Just four weeks after Bezos’s suborbital flight, Elon was able to land a redesigned Grasshopper vertically in one piece - by using more liquid oxygen and supercooling it to make it denser and more powerful without increasing mass or size of the rocket. Despite possible glitches, Elon gave the go-ahead. It returned back to earth and landed vertically. Everyone was ecstatic. It was the first-ever that a rocket with payload went into sub-orbit and landed vertically - a fully reusable rocket was born. Bezos tweated a veiled congratulatory note welcoming SpaceX into the rank of Blue Origin. Elon was furious. He has always regarded SpaceX as a bar higher than Blue Origin.

Party Organizer
(p 184) Talulah intentionally didn't have kids with Elon. She planned parties for Elon - wild and wacky parties. But Elon hardly had time to enjoy those. He was consumed by all the trouble shooting he had to do at Tesla and SpaceX. Work was more important for Elon. But since there was too much work, the rest of his life (marriage, socials, etc) was just a distraction. The inattention soon got to Talulah who increasingly hated LA and missed her countryside home in the UK. They divorced in 2012 but she still moved in with him. Then remarried and then divorced.

Neck Injury
During his 42nd birthday celebration, he threw a 350-lb sumo wrestler which damaged in neck disc. He would suffer pain from this injury the rest of his life.

Demis Hassabis
(p 187) Elon met Demis Hassabis, a neuroscientist, video gamer, chess prodigy and AGI researcher who founded DeepMind, a computer-based neural network simulating human thinking. They hit it off. Hassabis talked about the existential threat AI was to humankind. Elon was taken by that and invested $5M to have his finger on AI's development. After all, Elon's obsession to colonize Mars was to thwart the threats to man's existence - asteroid impact, solar flare, civilization collapse, WW III. AI was a curb ball he didn't see coming.

Sounding the Alarm
Elon obsessed about AI's existential threat and discussed this with Larry Page (Google founder), who was dismissive, arguing that even if that happens, it's simply the natural process of evolution. When Google bought DeepMind, Elon was alarmed and sounded the call to reign-in AI. He hosted dinners about the topic and even talked to Obama about it.

Sam Altman
To combat Larry Page's quest for unbridled AI, Elon partnered with Sam Altman to form the now-famous ChatGPT. The vision was to make it open-source so that humanity would have access to the bot's development and ensure it develops in alignment with human values and interests - not like Hal of "2001 Space Odyssey" who went rogue. To gather mega-data, Elon could use Tesla and Twitter's database. Elon also pirated a Google engineer, Ilya Sutskever, which infuriated Larry Page. Both never spoke to each other after that.

AI-related Ventures
Elon's involvement in AI spurred other AI-related companies that eventually came under the Tesla umbrella - a self-driving Tesla, Optimus robots, Neuralink brain chip implant, Dojo and X.AI. Elon's attempt to put OpenAI under Tesla caused Altman to break away and form his own for-profit company. Elon founded his own AI company and pirated staff from OpenAI. This widened the rift between Altman and Elon.

Radar
(p 192) Elon initially wanted to partner with Larry Page (Google) about developing a self-driving car for Tesla. But their dispute over AI was a deal breaker. Google was using radar which was expensive and relies on non-visible elements in developing a self-driving car. Elon wanted to use visual presence only because man has always driven a car based entirely on visual input - first principles. He founded Tesla Autopilot for this project. His car's autopilot would always fail on a highway curve due to faded lane lines. The engineers were baffled and for months, couldn't do anything. Solution? They painted the highway lane divider themselves. Some of his engineers wanted some kind of radar technology to supplement camera vision for safety. Elon relented and allowed radar for fog and rain 'visibility'.

Accidents
(p 193) Autopilot was embellished in the company's marketing effort that drivers felt they didn't have to pay too much attention to what's on the road. This led to fatal accidents. To Elon, the Autopilot was not about eliminating road accidents but minimizing them, allowing for statistical fatalities. Elon barked on why there was so much fanfare from the 2 fatalities from Tesla when there were 1.3 million car fatalities in a year. He maintained that Tesla minimized deaths but of course, there were no empirical data on that.

Promises, promises
(p 194) Elon's grand vision for Tesla's Autopilot was to be fully self-driving without human intervention - not just on the highway but on city streets with pedestrians, commuters, cyclists, etc. With his promises faltering, he finally said that to fulfill a fully self-driving car, AI must also be ready for real-world driving conditions.

Up until the end of the book, April 2023, the FSD (Full Self Driving) was still a prototype and not production as yet. But it held promise because of the new programming approach - neural network instead of rules-based.

SolarCity
(p 197) When Elon's cousins inquired about a business that would help humanity, his 'marching orders' were to build a solar company in the fastest time possible to reach economies of scale. The 2 biggest historical problems were horrible customer experience and too much up-front cost. The company, SolarCity, launched almost in tandem with the launch of the Tesla Roadster. Elon was board chairman.

Buying SolarCity
(p 197) SolarCity was gaining market share through aggressive selling but Elon wanted to focus on product perfection. Tesla wanted to buy SolarCity to integrate a car battery powered by solar panels. The battery in turn would power Tesla and the house (in 2024, Elon would manufacture a portable modular house with solar panels, the Tesla Homes) - it was vertical integration. The Tesla board saw this as Elon bailing out his cousins. The public saw this as Elon enriching himself by buy SolarCity higher than its market price, with Elon being the biggest shareholder. Ultimately, the deal went through marking Tesla not just a car company but an alternative energy company as well. This move also brought a litany of lawsuits vs Elon.

“This is shit”
(p 199) Elon pushed for a solar roof instead of solar panels mounted on a roof. This was revolutionary. With a solar roof powering a battery for household energy use and powering a Tesla in the garage, the energy equation was redefined. The cousins left SolarRoof after a year - it became increasingly difficult to work with Elon.

The Blank Stare
(p 201) Elon was in one of his blank stare moments when he quipped to build city streets underground in tunnels. He was quick to act on it - bought 2 boring machines at $5M each, and dug a 50-ft diameter tunnel, 1 mile long, 40 feet underground, inside Tesla's compound. Elon founded The Boring Company using $100M of his own money. Instead of digging a hole in the ground first to lower down the boring machine, Elon simply had the boring machine point down to dig the hole itself - so no preliminary digging for the boring machine. Time and time again, Elon displayed his non-conformity to existing conventions on how thing ought to be done.

Tesla inside the tunnel

The most this company did was to do a 1.7-mile tunnel in Las Vegas transporting clients in a Tesla-on-a-rail from the airport to the Convention Center. That was it. It was one Elon project that was hyped but didn't really get off the ground.

Trump
(p 204) Elon wasn't political and he wasn't a big fan of Trump. But the 2 met on a few occassions. Elon concluded that Trump being a buffoon during the electoral campaign wasn't an act - Trump was a real buffoon in real life. If you think of Trump simply as a con-man, then all his actions and speeches begin to make sense.

Amber Heard
(p 205) Elon's domestic love life is always characterized by emotional and psychological maelstorm - not your typical Driving Ms. Daisy. This was true with Amber Heard, an actress, who left him damaged to this day. While their relationship deepened, everyone around Elon detested Amber. She was described as creating chaos in her wake, and that she was toxic. They would spend an entire night fighting. They would break up and then resume a tumultuous relationship. Elon often ends up with a beautiful girl but end up damaged with a dark foreboding aura. As Elon himself admits, he's a fool for love.

Errol and Jana
(p 206) Elon hasn't seen his Dad in 14 years. With Elon's visit to So. Africa, he met Errol. It didn't go well. Elon went back to the US. Not long after, Errol got his step daughter, Jana, pregnant. Jana was 30 and Errol, 70. Elon and Kimbal were beyond words.

Are you bipolar?
(p 209) Elon was in alternate states of manic and stupor upon breaking up with Amber and knowing his father got his step-daugther pregnant. 2017-2018 was the most painful time in his life. There were seveal occassions Elon would be found lying on the floor almost catatonic with lights out and couldn't function. He admits to being bi-polar even though he was never diagnosed with it. He never took professional help for it. He simply endured the pain and let his work get the better of him.

“Welcome to production hell!”
(p 209) When Model 3 was launched, with fans, employees and media around, he was blank-faced, depressed, and unresponsive. He tried to hurdle it but eventually turned dark in his speech, telling everyone that in the next 6 months, the company will go into production hell.

Giga Nevada hell
(p 210) For Tesla to survive, it had to produce 5000 cars/week. It wasn't meeting that target so Elon encamped at the factory with his lieutenant fanatics to be the example of what 24/7 means - all hands on deck 24/7. The battery factory must also produce 5000 units/week. But they could only do 1800/week. Elon fired the manager and hired a different one. Elon was a field marshall on the factory floor, rallying everyone to the brink of insanity, sometimes getting 4 hours of sleep on the factory floor. One time when a robot was slowing down the process of sticking fiberglass to insulate the noise, he questioned that requirement and tested it himself and found out it did nothing. So that process was deleted. This requirement-questioning was applied even to the smallest detail including plastic caps for battery prongs. People, some hardworking, but couldn't understand Elon's questions, were fired. It was difficult for his lieutenants to fire staff who were loyal and became friends, over Elon's mindless orders. It might seem like a heroic battle story, but those on the front lines were decimated. People even had to work on Thanksgiving Day.

De-automation
(p 213) Elon started with automation in the assembly lines instead of human workers. It didn't work. If robots were holding up the line, the robots were replaced by humans. Elon eventually learned that he had to wait until the design process is finished, unwise requirements deleted, before introducing automation. In April 2018, the battery factory in Nevada was working better. Elon now had Fremont (car assembly plant) on his radar.

Short-sellers
(p 215) Fremont was only producing 2000 cars/week. With Elon's unrealistic public announcement of 5000/week, investors shorted the stock thinking that the 5000 mark was impossible. Short sellers used drones and inside information to find out the true numbers in real time. Tesla and Elon were attacked online to further drag the company's profile down. To counter the short sellers, Elon went public about not getting paid if Tesla's price/share or value is $650 billion, 5000 cars/week were not met. If he is successful however, he willl receive a $100B paycheck.

Note: In the years to come, Elon meets Bill Gates who encourages Elon to go into green energy philantrophy. But when Elon learned that Gates was short selling Tesla to the tune of $1.5B, he called Gates a hypocrite for betting on a green energy company to fail.

Walk to the red
(p 216) Inside the Fremont factory is the 'war room' where meetings are done, where Elon sleeps, where the production flow is monitored by green/red lights. If the flow is slow, the light is red and Elon makes a walk to that station where he asks pointed questions, "what's the problem?", "who's in charge?", "who can fix this now?". He would question why there are 6 bolts on a gadget when only 2 will do. He questioned all assumptions and factory settings and discarded them if unjustified - first principles. He deleted safety sensors for Tesla and Space X since they were too sensitive and slowing down the production. It could be 2 am and he would still be prowling the factory floor.

Elon was making decisions on the fly. He admits that perhaps 20% of his impromptu decisions will be wrong and will readjust later. But if those decisions are not met, Tesla dies. Those who weren't fired, left, feeling that the constant pressure was compromising safety to meet production goals. Tesla's safety failure rate was 30% higher than the industry.

Lesson: Elon realized that in a factory, there are production patches that should have the optimum density, flow, and process. This prevents choke points or bottle necks that impede the entire production process.

Robot removal
(p 218) Elon learned the hard way that there are certain tasks humans can do better than robots - usually the most simple of tasks. He tested himself if he can do certain things faster than a robot. Eventually, he ordered the removal of every 'unnecessary machine' within 72 hours. With all the improvements, the Model S was being produced at 3500/week, double, but still short of the 5000/week. The short sellers were gloating given their spies and drones.

The tent
(p 218) To beef up production, Elon emulated what was done in WWII to rapidly produce bombers - use the parking lot as an adhoc factory assembly line. This is what he did. In 2 weeks, he had a tented assembly line 1000 feet long and 150 feet wide - no robots, just human builders. He was willing to pay the fine if it violated regulations.

Birthday celebration
(p 219) Despite the frenzied pace and trouble shooting at Tesla, Elon also had to mind the 15th launching of SpaceX for NASA and rushed for Spain to be best man for Kimbal's wedding. It was insane. On July 1, the 5000th Model S rolled out of the assembly line. They made it!

The algorithm
(p 220) Given the production surges at Nevada and Fremont, Elon developed his 'algorithm' that was perused pervasively across the Elon companies.

Elon's Algorithm (in priority sequence)

1. Question every requirement - it doesn't matter if it came from the legal department or safety department, it doesn't matter if the person who made it is smart. The rule is to attach a name to that requirement and question that person - including Elon himself. Then make the requirement less stupid
2. Delete any part or process you can - you can always add them back if it was a mistake. If you didn't add back at least 10%, then you didn't delete enough
3. Simplify and optimize - this comes after Step 2 because it makes no sense simplifying something that should have been deleted to begin with
4. Accelerate cycle time - any process can be speeded up, but follow the priority sequence because you could be accelerating a process that should have been deleted already
5. Automate - this has to be the last when unneccesary process are already deleted and what's left has been simplified and then accelerated. The mistake Elon did was to automate everything before the 'tests' were implemented.

Pedo guy (pedophile guy)
(p 223) Kimbal, while on honeymoon, received an urgent message that Elon was having a meltdown - this lasted from July through October 2018. Odd, but Elon should be celebrating - he produced 5000 Model 3 Tesla in a month, launched rockets delivering heavier payloads and reusing the rockets for SpaceX. These are all milestones that he practically single-handedly achieved. But Elon craved adversity and catastrophies. Celebrating the wins was anti-climactic. He needed his drama.

The Cave
(p 223) Elon read a simple tweet if he would like to assist in the rescue of the Thai boys trapped inside a cave north of Thailand. Feeling a hero to the rescue, he assembled an adhoc team of highly qualified engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to build a mini submarine which he shipped to Thailand. But before it could do the job, rescue scuba divers were able to rescue the boys. One of the divers remarked that Elon was just grandstanding and that the sub wouldn't have worked. Elon ranted online that Unsworth was a pedophile. This caused a series of legal and public relations issues. Kimbal reset his brother by alarming the 'open loop' - Elon was ranting uncontrollably oblivious to consequences, thus the intervention of Kimbal. Lesson: In life, it's good to have a Gimminy Cricket who can point out your blind spots.

Note: After Elon waded inside the flooded cave in Thailand, he hurried to his jet for the opening of his giga factory in China - this globetrotting guy is really bigger than life!

Take private
(p 225) Elon met with Saudi Arabia’s government investment fund who intimated that they have already quietly acquired 5% of Tesla and that they wanted to take Tesla private. This appealed to Elon because he didn't like the heavy regulation of being on the public exchange and didn't like the company value influenced by short-sellers and speculators. Prematurely, before informing the SEC, he publicly announced the privatization of Tesla at $420/share with funds already secured. Immediately, the SEC launched an investigation. The Saudis were taken aback and cautioned themselves. Elon refused to talk to them again for being 'unsupportive'. Elon retracted about the privatization. This caused a flurry of push-backs. Elon was cast as a bi-polar who may not be in a sound state of mind to be making rash and unsupported claim that jeopardizes the interest of the company and its shareholders. The SEC sued Elon for misleading the public investors. To mitigate the backlash, Elon made a deal with the SEC but publicly remarked that there was a gun to his head.

Lesson: Needlessly, Elon made a very costly mistake by being impulsive and making unprocessed and reckless statements with profound ramifications.

Note: Elon had a gunslinger lawyer, Alex Spiro, who was orchestrating behind the scenes, the legal mess Elon put himself into. Spiro will play a bigger role in the future takeover of Twitter.

“Are you OK?”
(p 229) David Gelles, a business reporter at the New York Times, interviewed Musk where Elon intimated that things were not going well, that sometimes he stays in the factory for 3-4 days without coming out, not seeing his kids, etc. Elon revealed his vulnerability which astonished Gelles. When the interview was published, the public began to question Elon's mental soundness and Tesla's price plunged 9%.

The Joe Rogan show
(p 229) As damage control over the PR nightmare that Elon is mentally unsound, he guested at Joe Rogan's podcast. Everything seemed harmless until they both smoked weed on live streaming video. The following day, Tesla's price per share plummeted. He was also investigated by NASA since he was a NASA contractor, doing space flight delivering cargo to the space station.

Flamethrower
(p 230) Also on Joe Rogan, he played around with a plastic flamethrower branded by the Boring Company. He sold all 20,000 at $500/piece in 4 days.

When Elon is in his darkest moments, he flips from angry demon to a wacky goof. His humor ranging from toilet humor (open butt-hole command to open the rear of a Tesla) to mordant (wishing upon a star unless it's a meteorite) to droll (sending a Tesla into space).

Kimbal rupture
(p 232) Kimbal has always been Elon's most loyal friend who would dare tell him uncomfortable truths. But when Elon said yes and then refused a $10M loan for Kimbal's restaurant group on grounds that it wasn't financially sound, Kimbal's growing frustration about his brother reached a climax, reminding Elon that when Tesla's finances were dire, Kimbal was there...unconditionally. Ultimately, Elon loaned out $5M but the relationship caused a rupture. Thought Bubble: Kimbal was too forgiving, but I guess that's what family is all about. I've severed my ties to close people for much less.

JB Straubel exits
(p 232) With his mercurial outburst and impossible demands, Elon lost many of his top executives, some after being loyal for many years. The most symbolic departure was JB Straubel who has been with Elon for 16 years since the inception of electric cars.

Elon, however, is unfazed by all this. He seems incapable to feeling such loss. Maybe it's part of his lack of empathy or lack of feeling altogether. He simply labels it as 'phoning rich', meaning they've become rich and not as hungry anymore to do the wild ride.

Elon had a little hesitation letting JB Straubel go. They continued to be friends in 2019, but Elon had wild swings from being a human to being a robot with a blank stare. Elon remained fond of JB and asked him to be a part of Tesla's board in 2023.

EM+CB
(p 236) In the spring of 2018, reeling from his break up with Amber Heard, Elon met Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, a smart Canadian performance artist, who would eventually bear him 3 children (X [Elon's constant companion and favorite], Y [Why?] and Tau [Techno Mechanicus]). They both shared the same sentiment of how AI could eventually spell an existential end to humanity. They shared many things - Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Lord of the Rings, human cyborgs, etc. She stayed with him during the hellstorm of 2018, but the storm never ended. During a date, Elon stared blankly into space for a few minutes and then borrowed an eyeliner from Grimes from which he drew an engine heat shield to visualize what he was thinking. Elon was never fully out of his work.

Elon and Grimes at the Metropolitan Museum’s annual gala

Rap battle with Azalea Banks
(p 237) Grimes was not a calming influence to Elon. She was asleep daytime, awake at night, distrustful of his household staff, and didn't like his mother. Despite that, she and Elon were a good fit. She brought sweet chaos into his life while Amber brought evil chaos. Grimes invited Banks, an unhinged rapper friend, to stay over at Elon's. Banks posted that Musk was on acid, untrue, which caught the eye of the SEC. Banks was just trouble.

Many shades of Musk
(p 238) Grimes understands the many distinct personalities hidden inside Elon. She edges away or gets close to Elon depending on 'who's driving the car'. There's an Elon she loves and an Elon she avoids. She likes Elon best with his Burning Man vibe, and her bete noire is Elon's dark moments when he dives deep into the storm in his mind. But she knows that Dark Elon is also what gets things done.

Robin Ren
(p 241) Robin Ren was the Shanghai-born physicist who graduated with Elon in 1995 from Penn. They caught-up for lunch 20 years later where Elon invited Ren to come with him to China to help him fix his 'China Problem' about selling more cars. They met with the vice premier and other high officials who told them to manufacture in China if they wanted to sell more cars in China. That was complicated as it meant having Chinese partners - Elon is not good at working with partners. Elon invited Ren to join Tesla. Ren was finally able to convince China to have Tesla manufactured in China without doing a joint venture. It was easier to change that Chinese law than it is to convince Elon to have new partners. A 200-acre factory was put up with low interest rates. In October 2019, cars rolled out of the new factory and 2 years later, nearly half of all Teslas were coming out of China.

200-acre Tesla Shanghai factory

Stainless Steel
(p 244) Franz von Holzhausen has been heading the Tesla Design Department. Elon and him brainstormed on a pickup truck for Tesla, but nothing was inspiring enough. Elon, given his nature to question tradition, realized that pickup trucks have not changed in design and construction materials in so many decades. Inspired by Lotus Esprit and stainless steel's load bearing structure and natural beauty without a paintjob, he decided to radically use stainless steel for a pickup truck. By using a different construction material, the entire design can be altered as well, creating something new and out of the box.

Lotus Esprit was the inspiration for the Cybertruck

Charles Kuehmann, materials engineering chief for both Tesla and SpaceX developed a cold-rolled steel that was both strong and cheap to manufacture for cars and rockets.

Stainless steel acts as an exoskeliton (load-bearing structure is outside, like that of a crab) so there won't be any need for a chassis for structural integrity. It can also redesign the body with straight panels, edges and corners instead of curves - to make it look futuristic.

Cybertruck...like it or hate it

“Don’t resist me”
(p 245) Elon wanted something radical and futuristic and told his people to think along those lines, not in terms of being able to sell it. He wanted the future to look like the future. This new thinking led to the creation of the Cybertruck. It wasn't popular with the team and others secretly designed an alternative model. Elon pushed for a 3-month unveiling of a prototype instead of the industry-practiced 9 months. Everyone had to rally around that time frame, working 24/7.

When it was unveiled, nearly everyone was in disbelief (me too). It just looked too weird - for a pickup truck. To impress the crowd, it sledgehammered with no dent. But when a baseball was thrown on the glass window, it cracked, to Elon's shocked. The presentation was a fail and Tesla's stock plunged 6% the following day. Elon was unfazed.

An internet in low-Earth orbit
(p 247) Elon never forgot his vision to colonize Mars. Weekly fun meetings are held to brainstorm over this. But to fund this expensive project, he would launch revenue-generating projects - one of which was Starlink. He rebuilt the internet on space using his own communications satellites, hoping to get 3% of the global internet market projected at $30B.

To reduce latency, Elon used low-orbiting satellites at 340 miles instead of the conventional 22,000 miles in space. The downside is that a low-orbiting satellite cannot cover as much area, thus more satellites are required. For Elon's project, an estimated 40k satellites are needed.

Mark Juncosa
(p 248) Starlink wasn't producing well - too expensive, too big, too slow. The team didn't have a sense of urgency - a fatal flaw with Elon. He fired the top ranks of Starlink and replaced them with tenured SpaceX engineers headed by its structural engineer, Mark Juncosa. Having the same guy do structural engineering for both SpaceX and Starlink means harmonious crossovers and design consistency. Mark also gets Elon's thinking being a risk-taker and rule-breaker. Juncosa is one of Elon's top lieutenants and trouble shooter.

Improved Starlinks
(p 249) When Juncosa took over Starlink, he threw away the existing designs and started from scratch using First Principles - throwing away pre-existing assumptions until you're down to the barest law of physics. He would constantly ask why it was done that way and then revise the existing models - e.g. why are the antennas on a separate component? Thermal heat? Show the proof or data! Ultimately, he was able to reduce the size and weight of the satellites so that more than double can be put on a rocket being deployed into space. Despite those tight controls, Elon still improved on it - e.g., ideally, they should be dispersing all the satellites at once, but they were individually connected which added mass, weight, cost and complexity. The connections were removed and it worked out fine, no collisions given that the moving spaceship naturally spaced the satellites upon deployment.

By May 2019, the first batch of satellites was launched and Elon tweetted that the tweet was sent through Starlink.

Starlink satellite

Big F Rocket
(p 251) SpaceX with its reliant, efficient and reusable rocket, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy were big money-makers, but Elon didn't want to stop at being rich. He wanted man to be an interplanetary species. He had to build a much bigger rocket that can go to Mars. With this objective, he began to develop the Starship. Despite the turmoil at Tesla and SpaceX, he found time to meet weekly with his 'Mars Team' to brainstorm on the project, part of which was transporting 100 people on a 9-month journey to Mars.

Stainless Steel (SS), again
(p 251) Initially, Starship was being developed with carbon fiber (CF) for its light weight. But it was difficult to develop, slow and expensive. Elon has always had a knack for materials building. Instinctively he asked his engineers to run the numbers if stainless steel is a viable alternative. Turns out, SS was 50% stronger in the cold of space. Besides, SS has a higher melting point which eliminates the heat shield and thus lessens overall weight. SS can be welded in rough environments instead of other materials that required pristine conditions. Elon hired a water tank company who were using SS as building materials. He talked to the workers (not the executives) about optimum thickness of SS for a rocket. Pushing the limits of SS to 4mm, they built the Starhopper, a prototype. Elon was so confident about this new rocket system that he ordered the cancellation of Falcon Heavy. Gwynne Shotwell rushed to dissuade Elon, and he relented. Not too many of Elon's executives were willing to do that. Note: After 3 years, Elon used the Falcon Heavy with 27 rockets for the US military.

Starbase
(p 253) Boca Chica, an alternative launch site that has been neglected was chosen to be the manufacturing site of Starship. Immediately, massive tents were erected and by 2020, the place was employing 500 engineers and workers doing round the clock work. In-house living spaces were constructed, entertainment areas, etc, to make it a self-contained township.

Starbase in Boca Chica

Self-driving Tesla
(p 255) After the turmoil of 2018, Tesla still needed more money. Elon thought of a marketing approach by showcasing a self-driving Tesla to potential investors. Elon has long thought about an autonomous Tesla and kept promising the public its launch 'in a year'...which never took place.

He put his team to the task of producing an autonomous car in an insane amount of time, like he always does. And like most surges, he thought about firing the entire top team, but dissuaded by his top lieutenants. Upon unveiling to the public, he also promised that thousands of RoboTaxis would ply LA next year. The investors didn't buy it and no RoboTaxi rolled off the assembly line until 4 years after.

Tesla Robotaxi that was promised year after year. As of June 7, 2024, not even a prototype has been unveiled.

Austin
(p 259) Fremont wsa running at full capacity of 8000 cars/week and expansion there didn't make sense. Elon chose Austin, Texas, based on gut feel, unlike Jeff Bezos who pandered the next HQ of Amazon to whoever made the best offer. In less than 2 years, the Giga Factory at Austin was complete with 32 feet tall glass walls, 10M square feet floor space, 50% bigger than that of the Pentagon. Only a few structures on the planet would be bigger. Omead Afshar was to run the factory. A similar process was done to choose Berlin as the European factory for Tesla. Altogether, the manufacturing bases of Tesla would be Shanghai, Fremont, Austin and Berlin.

Elon would do his usual rounds, walking inside the factory and grilling the technicians/workers/engineers on the station, "How long to cool steel?", "Is that based on the physics of steel?", "Do the cooling within one minute".

Tesla Giga Factory in Austin, Texas

Giga diecast machine
(p 260) While scrutinizing a die-cast toy version of the Model S, he found that the entire underbody was a one-piece diecast. Traditional underbody chassis was made with hundreds of parts that had to be welded, bonded or rivetted. There were gaps causing rattling and leaks. But nobody questioned this process - until Elon. He asked his executives why they can't do that with the real car. The answer was that there was no such diecast machine big enough to do it. They looked at 6 of the world's biggest diecast manufacturers and an Italian company took the job and especially produced the diecast machine big enough to spew out a whole new integrated diecast underbody in 80 seconds. What used to be a manufacturing nightmare was now easy, fast and cheap to make. Since then, the Cybertruck and Model Y came with a one-piece underbody.

Diecast toy model of the Model S with a one-piece underbody

Toys
(p 260) Elon took to toys for inspiration. He also advocated that to his engineers. He took Lego as an example. By being precise to 10 microns, Lego pieces are interchangeable. Thought Bubble: come to think of it, I am deepening my yoga practice by seeing aspects of yoga as Lego pieces that I can mix and match together towards my desired goal for that session. If I want muscle definition while moving energies around my system, I would do calisthenics, pranayama, bandha and kumbhaka.

Elon told his engineers that precision is a function of caring...not cost. If they can care enough, they can build with precision. Note: While reading up on the Nissan GTR supercar, I learned that creating a supercar was a matter of precision manufacturing, down to the microns. This means precise machining and using high-precision tools as well.

X AE A-12
(p 263) Grimes and Elon had their first born named Baby X. X and Elon were inseparable. They were highly interactive but not cuddly. There was intense bonding but kept their spaces too.

The Kids

1. Saxon - autistic, triplet with Kai and Damian
2. Kai - tall, good looking, hands-on with life's practical problems, athletic, protective of Damian, joins his Dad on rocket launches
3. Damian - introvert, classical-music prodigy, vegetarian, Math and Physics wiz
4. Damian vs Kai - twins, same genetics, same upbringing, same environment, but different personalities. Damian is smarter.
5. Griffin - older than the 3, understands his Dad, most sociable until X came along, gentle unlike Elon, smart in Science and Math
6. Xavier - twin of Griffin but not identical, anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, hates Elon, strong-willed, transitioned to being trans and called herself Jenna. Elon had many trans-issues publicly especially on his tweets. Elon made overtures but Jenna would not have any of that. This was painful for Elon, next to Nevada's death.
   
   Elon founded a school, Ad Astra, for his family and friends. But the kids went outside for high school. Elon blames the high school, Crossroads, for the woke indoctrination of Xavier. In hindsight, he should have just developed Ad Astra all the way to high school.

Elon and his kids

Homes
(p 265) Elon didn't think there was anything wrong about being a billionaire especially if done for the greater good of humanity. Later, he felt that using that wealth to lavish himself was also wrong. He lived in lavish houses but decided to sell it all and not own one. He lived simply in Austin with Grimes at a non-descript cul de sac.

Elon and Kimbal reunited
(p 266) Both Elon and Kimbal had a mild case of Covid that brought them back together, especially after the 'loan' issue. Elon refused to do the Ayahuasca ceremony saying there's a ton of concrete burying his demons and he wasn't ready to unleash them. They bonded and spent memorable moments especially after binge watching the later version of Karate Kid where both related as parents and kids.

Civilians into orbit
(p 269) The Space Shuttle was discontinued in 2011 and since that time, NASA has lost its will, ability and verve to send a man to space. It relied heavily on the Russians to send Americans to the Space Station. This was to change in May 2020 when SpaceX sent 2 NASA astronauts to the Space Station. The first time in 9 years and first time ever that a private company has done this. It was such a celebrated occassion that even Trump and Spence went to see the launch.

Boeing
(p 269) When NASA awarded SpaceX in 2014 for its space program, it also awarded Boeing with 40% more funding. Boeing was not even able to launch an unmanned mission to the Space Station by 2020.

Kiko Dontchev
(p 269) Elon went to the launch site one night and saw only 2 people working. This enraged him. He wanted all hands on deck. So he moved in at the hangar and worked tirelessly, demanding everyone else to do the same. Not finding the launch VP, he called on Kiko Dontchev, an ex-Boeing engineer who defected because he wanted to kick-ass with work, which impressed Elon. Dontchev was promoted to Chief Engineer at the Cape as the shake-up continued.

Kiko Dontchev with Elon

Defiance
(p 271) Elon did things his own way and produced miraculous results. He sent astronauts back to space, mainstreamed electric vehicles and took people off the electric grid. But he also defied the SEC and Covid restrictions which got him in trouble.

Hans Koenigsmann
(p 271) Hans has been with Elon since the early days of SpaceX when launches were still being done in Kwaj - they go back. Hans has been in charge of SpaceX's flight reliability and compliance - not an easy task given Elon's defiance vs authority. During a scheduled launch where the FAA restricted launching, Elon gave a nod of his head to go ahead anyway. The launch was successful but the FAA was pissed. It held an investigation and put a 2-month hold on all tests. Hans had to file a report and he did so without whitewashing anything...that Elon nodded his head to go ahead with the launch. Elon didn't like that. The book didn't say so, but it was inferred that Elon wanted Hans to take the fall. This put Hans in bad light. Elon didn't fire him on the spot but eased him out. Thought Bubble: it is already an established fact that Elon is an asshole. But this episode really showed how much of an asshole he is.

Hans Koenigsmann with Elon....happier times

Goading each other
(p 274) Elon and Jeff Bezos have always had a rivalry about their space obsessions.Though it may look petty squabbling amongst billionaires, this has put the US back into the global arena where it can complete again vs the Russians and Chinese in space initiatives. This rivalry was rekindled when SpaceX got the NASA contract to carry astronauts to the moon. Both are alike in many ways but differ in engineering approach. Bezos want it slow but sure, Elon shoots from the hips with insane deadlines and make corrections later. Bezos tells that Elon is disruptive with his micro-management style which former employees concur with. Elon counters that Bezos doesn't spend enough time with his engineers and doesn't know what's going on on the production floors. When Starlink proposed to lower the altitude of its satellites for lesser latency, Bezos again complained since his Kuiper satellites would be orbiting along this range.

Billionaire jaunts
(p 275) Bezos and Richard Branson, both billionaires, wanted to go into space themselves. Question was, who's doing it first? Branson did 9 days earlier than Bezos. On Branson's launch day, Elon was there with BabyX, to wish him godspeed. Virgin Galactic was launched from a cargo jet and went 53 miles. According to NASA, above 50 miles is already space, but according to most European countries, space begins at the Karman Line at 62 miles up. Bezos reached 66 miles into real space where he enjoyed bragging rights. To rain down on Bezos' parade, Elon remarked that sending a man to space is small potatoes compared to achieving orbit, which is 2 orders of magnitude more difficult - something Bezo's Blue Origin has not achieved yet. Elon always doubted the objectivitity of the mainstream press especially when Bezos bought the Washington Post. But Bezos was actually hands-off on influencing the newspaper. Its space reporter, Christian Davenport, often writes glowing reviews of SpaceX while mentioning the shortfalls of Blue Origin.

Elon of SpaceX and Branson of Virgin Galactic, both space-obsessed billionaires

Mechazilla
(p 278) For the Starship project, Elon wanted rapid reusability of the rockets like a plane taking off, landing, and taking off again. With the current set up, this was not going to happen until they make more powerful rockets cheap and develop a radical new system to deploy rockets fast. Currently, Falcon 9 has landing legs on its booster - this adds weight and therefore decreases payload. Elon mobilized his team to look into using the tower of the launchpad to catch the rocket upon landing (instead of using legs). Originally, Elon envisioned using the towers to stack the rockets before launch. Now, he wants to use the towers to catch the rockets upon returning to land.

It wasn't popular with the engineers. If the tower fails to catch the rocket and crashes, it destroys the tower and it will take months of repair before another launch could be made. Besides, the tower's stacking arms were already too complex as it is.

Just 7 months after that brainstorming, June 2021, the Mechazilla was put in place on the launch pad. Elon twitted that the tower will catch the rocket with its chopstick hands.

The Surge
(p 279) Elon wanted to stack the booster and the 2nd stage quickly in the hopes the FAA would grant a speedy approval of the launch. The urgency was actually pointless since the Starship wouldn't be ready until after 21 months after, In April 2023. He launched another surge - an all-out burst of 24/7 frenzied activity to rattle, shake and move things around. This meant impromptu firings, verbal lacerations and head-to-toe trashing. He has done this at the Nevada battery factory and at the Fremont car assembly plant.

Andy Krebs
(p 280) His eruption began at the launchpad when he saw no one working late Friday night (which should be typical). He unleashed his wrath on the guy working there at the time, Andy Krebs, a civil engineeer in charge of Starbase's infrastructure. As bad timing would have it, it was the first night in 3 weeks that a full shift wasn't in place. Elon chewed him up as he stuttered. Thought Bubble: Of all the good people Elon chewed up as collateral damage, I feel sorry the most for Andy Krebs.

It was 1 am and Elon ordered SpaceX staff from all locations to fly, drive...whatever it takes to get to Starbase. He ordered the stacking done in 10 days. He pulled 500 workers and engineers from all 3 SpaceX locations to work nonstop in Boca Chica. He even delayed Falcon 9 launches and prioritized on Starbase. There was a scramble for logistics - housing, food, etc. There was even a 10-day countdown on the monitors. It was successful. The rockets were stacked after 10 days. But it was all pointless - Starship still couldn't fly and the FAA was not rushed to issue any flight green light. But the entire exercise woke everybody into a heightened state.

Raptor costs
(p 280) The Raptor engine for the Starship was already 2X more powerful than Falcon 9's Merlin engine (making it the most powerful rocket ever built). But it wasn't enough to transport man to Mars. He needs 40 Raptors/Starship and he needs to deploy hundreds of Starships. He needed to mass produce the Raptor. With its present design, it could not, so Elon fired the top brass and took charge of propulsion. He had to reduce the cost of the Raptor from $2m to $200k.

Lucas Hughes
(p 281) To nail down the cost of the Raptor, Elon chewed up its cost analyst, Lucas Hughes. He grilled Lucas for not knowing the Idiot Index (ratio of component cost vs raw material cost) of every component. Lucas knew the cost of every component but didn't know the Idiot Index. Elon leaned harshly on Lucas and threatened to fire him. The following day, Lucas came prepared and showed cost charts factoring in Elon's Algorithm. When asked, Elon showed no remorse for his harsh treatment of Lucas, claiming that Physics doesn't care about hurt feelings, that the important thing is, the rocket works.

Andy Krebs and Lucas Hughes
(p 282) The episodes with Andy and Lucas underscored how low Elon's emotional EQ is. To him, it's not personal. But the person being chewed, of course, it's personal. It's a good thing Gwynne Shotwell is there to balance things out since she cares deeply about human factor especially the staff.

After putting up with Elon, it came time for these people to choose comfort and quality time in their lives. This also means they have to leave their jobs. Elon uses a tool until they get worn out and then replaces them without a thought. That's also how he deals with people.

The lesson of Andy
(p 284) Andy didn't quit and learned how to handle Elon. Andy learned a trick, and that was to parrot Elon after making an order. This reassures Elon that he was heard and understood. Even Elon noticed that Andy had a good feedback loop - understanding what was told to him and responding positively. Once, he climbed up the wall to do hard scrubbing as others left because of high winds. Andy admitted that he fears and loves Elon at the same time. But after 2 more years, Andy decided to have a better work/life balance and left Elon.

SolarCity
(p 286) After Elon's Starbase surge in the summer of 2021, his next line of fire was the solar roof company. He purchased the SolarCity company from his cousins through Tesla for $2.6B which caused a law suit vs him for bailing out his relatives. He has been sprucing the company's bottomline to convince the public that SolarCity was a noteworthy purchase. Elon has already fired many top level executives that people were scared of him. His goal was to have a solar roof that was easy to install, and have more installations. His Algorithm was applied where processes were deleted or simplified. But installing solar roofs was labor intensive and it didn't scale. The cost of installing a roof remained the same per roof whether you do 100 or 1000.

SolarCity with solar roofing

Brian Dow
(p 287) In order to find out the real problems, he ordered his man, Brian Dow, to come with his 8 men and do an actual installation in Boca Chica. Elon saw all the details - reducing the nails, noticing too many fasteners, eliminating the cardboard packaging, etc. He was so outraged that he demanded the designers and engineers to come and do the installations themselves. This produced a big improvement. Elon kept grilling Dow - on costs, on expenses, on being there, etc. Dow was unwavering in his enthusiam and even worked tirelessly during his birthday, but in the end, Elon fired him. Dow was a good worker with great attitude. But to Elon, Dow was simply expendable collateral damage.

Court Ruling
(p 289) The court ruled in his favor and this somehow quenched his urgency for more installations. Ultimately, the company only produced 30 roofs/week, a far cry from the 1000/week Elon wanted.

Saturday Night Live
(p 291) At SNL, he used humor to come clean with his shortcomings - no emotional EQ, having Aspergers, etc. He was awkward, but that became part of this charm. His mother Maye and Grimes were both there. After the event, they partied with some comic celebrities.

Fiftieth birthday
(p 291) His birthdays used to be celebrated with fantasy parties choreographed by then-wife Talulah Riley. This time, having just been operated in the neck to alleviate pain, he decided to spend a quiet evening at Boca Chica with close friends. Kimbal and Elon's older sons fired off some fireworks. They just hung out all night in the tiny house.

Burning Man 2021
(p 292) Burning Man has been an annual tradition for Elon, Kimbal and key executives. When it was canceled for Covid, Elon chipped in $5m to revive it, if Kimbal is also on the board. That year, it was again canceled. Kimbal re-organized a renegade burn where he used drones instead of burning the Man. Elon came Saturday only and left to trouble shoot a Tesla issue. Grimes and Elon weren't going well. They decided to break up. Grimes composed a fitting song, Player of Games.

Met Gala, September 2021
(p 293) The break up with Grimes wasn't permanent. Their relationship took the form of boundary testing, loneliness refuge, co-parenting, etc. At the Met Gala, Grimes came with a Dune-inspired costume. Elon wasn't too excited and spent more time with the magician. He left soon to trouble-shoot something that really didn't need his attention. Elon found celebrity life exciting but awkward. The following day, they flew to the Cape to launch the first civilians into space.

Grimes with her Dune-inspired costume + sword

Jared Isaacman
(p 296) Despite Branson and Bezos going into space, it was never Elon's motivation. He wanted space for humanity and not for him. Besides, billionaires enjoying monopoly on civilian space travel didn't sound good to him. Instead, he took Jared Isaacman, an intrepid adventurer and successful interpreneur, to take the first civilian space flight into orbit (not just going into space). The added risk of this flight was that it was going higher in orbit than even the Space Station. At that level, there were more space debris that can collide with the rocket. Isaacsman knew the risks and took them. He was so stoked that he offered half a billion to do a space walk and be first for the Starship space flight.

Jared Isaacman

Koenigsmann
This launch was also Koenigsmann's last mission before leaving the company over his factual reporting to the FAA. There was no emotion exchanged. Elon wanted his employees to take the fall for him.

Dana White?
There was even an offer by a UFC promoter (unnamed, but probably Dana White) for $500M for a space match...but the top brass and Elon thought it would cost the company its goodwill and reputation to do so at this early point.

Human Agency Required
Civilian space flight by a private company opened doors for many possibilities. Elon was philosophical, stating that technological progress is not inevitable, as was exampled by NASA who gave up on its space missions. For technology to progress, it needs man's conscious agency.

Engineering mode
(p 300) Because of the complexity of the Raptor engines and the huge task to develop a lighter and cheaper version, Elon mandated a daily 8pm meeting including weekends. He pushed for the cheaper stainless steel as the material base of choice.

Jake McKenzie
(p 300) Elon was looking for someone who could oversee the development of the Raptor rocket. After a few more meetings with his executives, he narrowed down his choices to Jake McKenzie, a cool-looking dreadlocked engineer with a composed demeanor. His job was to keep the cost down and delete anything even potentially unnecessary. Jake applied an automotive approach to the problems which reduced costs up to 90%. Jake asked Tesla engineers to oversee how automotive technology can be translated into rocket building to simplify production. Designers were subordinated to Production people - if the designers were making complex designs or making them expensive to manufacture, change the design - this was the new mandate (analogy would be to have the civil engineer tell the architect what to design...not the other way around). Jake moved all the engineer desks next to the assembly line.

Jake McKenzie

The 1337 engine
(p 302) Instead of infinitely tweaking the complex Raptor engine, Elon redesigned the entire product and even detracted from the eagle naming convention. Instead of Raptor, he named the new engine, "1337". The goal was to lower the cost to less than $1000 per ton of thrust. This was the benchmark to make man a multiplanetary species. He urged his team to go ultra hardcore on deletion and simplification. Midway, Elon reverted to improving the Raptor to Raptor 2, instead of furthering the futuristic 1337. The 1337 was nowhere in sight but Raptor engines need to come out of the production line, 1/day ideally. By 2022, Jake was making more than 1 Raptor/day, enabling a huge stockpiling of Raptor rockets.

The friendly robot
(p 305) Ever since Elon got a scare about AI being an existential threat to mankind, especialy after his conversation with Larry Page, he made efforts towards making robots symbiotic to humans - the chip implant to make human cyborgs (NeuraLink chips), starting OpenAI (with Sam Altman), and self-driving cars (Tesla). He has always been fascinated by a humanoid robot. In 2021, he began talking to Tesla engineers about that vision, naming the robot, Optimus - 5'8", elfish and androgenous-looking. The Tesla team working on the FSD car (Full Self Driving) will also work on Optimus. It should learn by looking and mimicking human behavior (machine learning). Elon would formally announce this initiative with a presentation on Tesla's Palo Alto HQ in Aug 19, 2021, and called it "AI Day".

AI Day
(p 305) AI Day was unpolished and the guy making the slide presentation was chewed up by Elon for a boring presentation. But Elon was able to take his message across that humanoid robots (Optimus), supercomputers (Dojo) and self-driving cars (Tesla), will transform the way we live life.

Human-computer interfaces
(p 309) One of the technological ground-breaking leaps of the digital age was the human-computer interface where human brains and computers communicated. A great example was Apple's Siri where humans and computers interacted by voice. Elon found typing to be slow, inefficient and tedious. He wanted the human input to be 'thought' and not typing. This meant implanting chips inside a human brain. This coupling would defend man vs malevolent AI.

He founded Neuralink with 6 top neuro-scientists. Amongst the top team were Shivon Zillis (became head of NeuraLink), Max Hodak (brain-machine interface expert) and DJ Seo (survivor of Elon's surges).

The chip
(p 310) The chip would be implanted under the skull so it cannot be seen. The brain transmission to the computer would be wireless. In its infancy, it only connected to 100 of the brain's 86B neurons. In a public demo, a cyborg pig was shown to be walking on a threadmill. When his engineers showed him an updated version with 4000 connections, wired to a router in the ear, he rejected it. He wanted a single piece containing everything - so no failure point. The engineers initially thought it was impossible, but they actually produced the product. The 2nd challenge was to disregard requirement about the chip size to accomodate a bigger battery (First Principle thinking).

Pager
(p 311) This device was installed on a monkey, Pager where his neural feedback was recorded as he was playing Pong on a joystick. Having determined what neurons are activated in the game, they attached the chip needles to them. From thereon, Pager was playing Pong from his mind without a joystick.

Delete radar
(p 314) In making self-driving cars, radar (to detect non-visible hazards) and cameras (for vision) were both utilized. Elon eventually scrapped the radar to make Tesla pure vision. This was contentious and caused a top manager to leave.

Controversy
(p 314) This decision went public with NY Times. It talked about the misgivings of the engineers who felt safety was compromised by using only vision with no radar sensor. Other competing auto-pilot cars were on radar, LiDAR and thermal imaging. The picture painted was that Tesla was going backwards instead of forward. This prompted an investigation by a government agency regarding Tesla's safety, citing its accident record.

Elon argues that bad drivers cause accidents and not software. He pushed to waive privacy issues on accident related issues.

Phoenix rises
(p 315) Elon wasn't against radar per se, but against radar that doesn't measure up to his standards. Lars Moravy was the new guy hired to further develop Phoenix, the radar software. A new approach was taken - to radar only what the driver could not see - it was a high precision military grade radar. Elon was open to installing it on his high-end Tesla models.

The world’s richest person
(p 316) In Jan 2021, Tesla's share price peaked at $260 making Elon the richest person on the planet, worth $190B, ousting Jeff Bezos. In Oct, Tesla's value peaked at $1T, exceeding the combined value of the 5 top car companies in the US. By the start of 2022, Elon was already worth $304B.

Public push back was intense - for no crime, just for being rich. He was further criticized for not paying tax. But this is because Elon wasn't taking any salary, and not cashing in his stocks (for capital gains tax). In 2012, pursuant to a public polling if he should exercise his stock options, he did so with a whopping payment of $11B - the biggest tax ever paid by an individual.

What money can’t buy
(p 317) Elon wasn't happy despite (or inspite) of being the world's richest man. He would go into wild mood swings. When he's sadder than sad, he would get stomach pains, heartburn and would throw up. He would often be in a lot of pain.

He had to keep pulling rabbits out of a hat or Tesla dies - this was his constant stress. After a long stint doing this, something gives up. But surviving this ordeal makes normal life a bore. Thus, he never enjoys the good times to celebrate whatever he accomplished. Restless during his birthday, he left his guests/family to fly to LA to work on the Raptor engines. He didn't really have to do that as the Raptor engines would not be needed til next year.

Shivon’s twins
(p 320) Nov 2021, Elon became the father of twins by Shivon Zilis, a former AI investor who worked at OpenAI and then managed NeuroLink. She was a close friend, intellectual partner and buddy gamer of Elon.

Grimes and Zilis overlapped and complemented Elon in opposite ways. Grimes was fiery and Zilis was a calming presence.

Elon was always a big fan of having kids, not necessarilly being married. He feels that it's a civic duty to have kids or civilization perishes. He encouraged Zilis to have kids with him...but no marriage and not even sex. Elon offered to be the sperm donor. Elon was named the biological father but the last name was Zilis'. Elon was fond of the twins but did not, cannot, show cuddly affection - it wasn't in him.

Baby Y
(p 321) Grimes wanted to have a baby girl for Elon, so they decided to have one, in vitro, to a surrogate (because Grimes body is fragile). While the surrogate was having pregnancy complications, Zilis was also in the same hospital with her pregnancy complication. Both babies are from Elon, both are in vitro. The baby girl was named "Why?" or Y.

TIME's Person of the Year
(p 322) 2021 was a boon year for Elon. He was annointed the world's richest man, Tesla topped $1T in market value, SpaceX launched the first commercial flight carrying a civilian crew to orbit, he was named "Person of the Year" by both TIME Magazine and the Financial Times.

Person of the Year 2021, Elon Musk

“Take the red pill”
(p 323) Covid devastated Tesla's stock. Elon was defiant against shutting down his factory. He came to work and challenged the sheriff's office. This episode radicalized Elon to be anti-Democrat and anti-Obama. He tweeted, "Take the Red Pill", as a protest to unveil the truth.

The woke-mind virus
(p 324) Elon's politics shifted towards the end of 2021. He waged war against the woke culture - a Zeitgeist of extreme political correctness manned by aggressive social-justice activists. He lost his son to this woke movement so it was a personal crusade. He saw them as anti-science, anti-human and anti-merit. Woke people shield themselves with a false virtue to unleash their hate and condemnation without forgiveness. Woke kills comedy!

Pre-empting an exposé about paying a staff for being propositioned by Elon, he tweeted that he was now Republican and that the Democrats will now unleash their propaganda machine to ruin Elon. Thus, when the exposé was released, the public push back was minimal.

Biden
(p 325) The democrats were on a siege. Elizabeth Warren called Elon a free loading grifter for not paying taxes when Elon was the biggest individual tax payer in US history. He labeled California as now a land of litigation, regulation, and taxation.

Elon was in a tight space - he hated Biden but regarded Trump as a conman. Biden snobbed Tesla/Elon by falsely giving other EV manufacturers credit for the electrification of vehicles, even though Tesla outsold everyone in the market. To mitigate the rift, Biden's people talked to Elon and Biden's next speech mentioned, "Tesla is the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles."

When Biden announced that the government would build $3B in charging stations across the country, Elon tweeted that the government should not go into that business and leave it to the private sector to spur up the economy. Governments don't own gasoline stations, so why should they own charging stations? Elon also announced that other EVs can charge on Tesla's charging stations.

A libertarian circle
(p 327) Elon held an impromptu party at Tesla's Giga factory. Invited was Luke Nosek, who invited Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson. Post party, they went to Nosek's house and talked til 3am. (I cannot feign a veiled envy to the gathering of Elon, Peterson and Rogan. No, I don't wish to be the 4th, I just wish I was there to listen up to whatever they talked about. I feel that those 3 are part of one of the most exclusive clubs on the global stage - Elon because he is a once in a lifetime phenomenon, Jordan for being an eloquent and articulate intellectual powerhouse, and Rogan for being the most popular podcaster on the planet and in my opinion, is a perfect role model for a successful man - very smart [not necessarily packaging himself as an intellectual], successful, holds his own with anyone and can kick ass).

Elon with Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson at the Tesla party

Elon's anti-Woke sentiments were highly influenced by libertarian colleagues largely from PayPal - Nosek, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, etc. This anti-wokeness concerned some people close to him - Justine, his ex-wife and Grimes, his current girlfriend at the time.

Polytopia
(p 328) Elon revels in playing video war games. This is how he honed his business skills about resource management/acquisition, strategic/tactical thinking, one-upping the enemy, economic campaigns, etc. After a heated debate with his engineers, he would seclude himself to play video games, often with Zilis, who was across the country. Elon takes these games very seriously. When Grimes surprise-attacked him when they were supposed to be allies in the game, Elon was infuriated and didn't talk to her the rest of the day. To him, it was betrayal. He delayed a meeting with his engineers in Berlin because he was still playing the game. He encouraged Kimbal to play the game to learn how to become a better CEO.

Lessons from Polytopia

1. Empathy is not an asset - the game does not factor-in empathy, which Elon regards as a baggage. He has no empathy gene which makes it easy for him to discard loyal and hard working employees. When you remove empathy in the equation, your thinking shifts (but you also become a user and an asshole)
2. Play life like a game - Zilis once remarked that perhaps as a kid, while playing a video game, his Mom pulled the plug and Elon didn't know. So he kept playing the game into his adulthood
3. Do not fear losing - losing hurts. But after losing 50 times, it doesn't hurt as much. At some point, it doesn't get emotional anymore and then you can take greater risks
4. Be proactive - most people are reactive based on what happened around them. But when you are proactive, you make strategic decisions and play them out - now you are proactive and people become reactive to your strategic moves...they now play by your rules
5. Optimize every turn - you only get 30 turns in Polytopia, so every turn counts. See life that way - that every turn counts. Don't let it slide. There may not be another turn
6. Double down - keep putting everything back in the game...all or nothing. You lose big, but you also win big. Essentially, it means increasing the stakes when difficulty arises
7. Choose your battles - you don't go into battle knowing you'll lose or not knowing if it's winnable. Simply choose the ones you can fight and win. Don't go against 'City Hall'
8. Knowing when to unplug - the game can ruin your life and ruin your marriage. Know when to unplug. Life offers many fixes that are too good to be true, but could be catastrophic. Know when something is an aid and know when it becomes a fix. Know when to unplug

Starlink to the rescue
(p 331) An hour before Russia attacked Ukraine (Feb 2022), Russia disabled Ukraine's internet capacity with a malware offensive. Ukraine's defenses were crippled. Upon Ukraine's request, Elon sent 500 Starlink terminals to resume internet functionality. By July, there were 15,000 terminals + solar/battery packs where electricity was cut off. Altogether, Elon must have donated $80M worth of equipment to Ukraine's war effort. He received lavish praises from the press.

Starlink terminal deployed in Ukraine's war effort

No good deed...
(p 332) Elon learned that Ukraine was launching an offensive attack vs a Russian naval fleet in Crimea using Starlink to navigate the 6 submarine drones. It would cross the red line and escalate the war to possibly a nuclear level. He didn't want Starlink to be used for offense - just defense. And he expressed that to the Russian ambassador. Thus he instructed his engineers to deactivate Starlink connectivity before the subs reach Crimea.

Elon wanted the war to stop and proposed that Crimea becomes an uncontested part of Russia and Ukraine would not become part of NATO. He got push back even from Zelensky himself. Elon reminded Zelensky that SpaceX's contribution to Ukraine was $80M.

Starlink was playing a big role in the war scene and spending a lot while big private military contractors were charging an arm and leg for the role they played. Even when the US was ready to pay $145M to SpaceX, Elon expressed publicly that he will waive it simply because he got a lot of Twitter criticism for accepting a 'refund'.

Vice PM Federov and Elon held private exchanges about the war, with Elon holding back to save humanity from a WWIII escalation. At the end, Elon was wondering how he got Starlink into a arming drones to attack enemy posts when he developed Starlink so people can watch Netflix.

The visit
(p 337) Gates and Elon had a light friendship over the years. Gates invited Elon to talk about philanthropy and charity. Gates and Elon, being at one point the richest man in the world, share a few common traits - laser focus, feeling of intellectual certainty to the point of arrogance, sharply analytic minds, and not suffering from fools.

Gates was critical of Elon's Mars project, of having electric semis, but was impressed by Tesla's Giga factory and Elon's deep knowledge of every piece of machinery. He was also impressed with Starlink - it was the realization of his vision 20 years ago.

Short Selling Tesla
Elon got mean with Gates when he realized Gates shorted Tesla. Gates apologized but this didn't placate Elon. To Elon, short-sellers were his circle of hell. Elon thought Gates was a hypocrite by claiming to be green but betting to have a company for a green energy fail. Grimes thought is was about 2 big dick guys showing who's got it bigger.

When Gates followed up on philanthropy a few weeks later, Elon asked if Gates was still shorting Tesla. Yes. Elon rebutted that he cannot take Gates' philanthropy on climate change seriously when he shorts Tesla, who is doing the most to mitigate climate change. He then twitted his now-famous, "How to lose a boner fast" meme. Gates was puzzled why Elon is so upset about the short, as Elon was puzzled why Gates can't get it. Gates was gracious - he defended Elon at some dinner event telling the diners that no one in their time has pushed the boundaries of science and innovation more than Elon.

"How to lose a boner fast"

Philanthropy
(p 339) Elon wasn't big on philanthropy. He found it better to reinvest his money back to the company that was pragmatically doing positive changes for humanity.

Before the storm
Boon for all companies
(p 341) April 2022 was a boon for Elon. Tesla's value of $1T was more than the next 9 auto manufacturers combined. Because he browbeated the semi-conductor suppliers prior to the pandemic, Tesla was able to manufacture and deliver when competion was paralyzed from supply dislocation. SpaceX at $100B, was riding the crest of the wave as well with its 4th manned launch for the ISS (International Space Station). It's Falcon 9 was still the only reusable rocket in the entire aero-space industry. Starlink had 2100 satellites in orbit connecting 40 countries.

Restless
Elon had the best reasons to take it easy and relax. But he cannot. His system defaults to adversity and crisis. He doesn't know what to do when things are calm - he gets restless. He is one to push all his chips on the table, betting all or nothing. Usually, he goes into a hellish surge on his companies, yanking on the alarm chain and conducts a fire drill. But he didn't do that this time. He simply bought Twitter, without fully thinking it through.

Flamethrower for the thumbs
(p 342) Early 2022 was also the time Elon had $10B in cash from the sale of his shares. He bought Twitter with this. In January, he ordered his personal manager, Jared Birchall to begin accumulating Twitter stocks. Twitter was a perfect playground for Elon. Its members are unfiltered, impulsive and irreverent. It rewards aggression, bullying and taunting. But compared to real life, at Twitter, the clever ones get rewarded and gains followers. But the most clever gets to 'own' the turf.

Twitter Engagement
Elon was an early adapter of Twitter. It was his way to get an unfiltered feel of public thinking and sentiment. He could be goofy like his Art Garfunkel photo with a fright wig. Or he could shoot himself on the foot when he pre-emptively announced that 'funding was secured' to privatize Tesla, or branding one of the cave rescuers a 'pedo guy'. He posted 19,000 tweets in a decade. When questioned about his impulsiveness, he quoted Gladiator, "Are you not entertained? Isn't that why you are here?" - this statement becomes a recurring theme to justify his outrageous behavior, impulsive moves and insane risk-taking.

Art Garfunkel wannabe with a fright wig

Woke Virus
Fueling Elon's purchase of Twitter was the increasing aggression and popularity of the Woke virus. Anyone posting anything contradicting the mainstream agenda was censored - even Trump was banned for life. Elon's libertarian friends, including Joe Rogan, supported him in 'liberating Twitter'.

Censorship
When Elon took a poll if Twitter was adhering to free speech, the answer was 70%, NO. When he asked if a new platform is needed, founder and board member Jack Dorsey, privately replied, YES. Elon wanted a democratized Twitter where users are not censored especially if they post something against the mainstream agenda.

Board Seat
(p 343) Elon initially thought about developing an alternative platform to Twitter. But he received an invite from Twitter to join its board instead. He privately met with its CEO Parag Agrawal and its board chair, Bret Taylor. Agrawal enticed Elon to join the board (like Dorsey). Elon found Agrawal to be nice....too nice to be CEO. He maintained that Twitter needs a fire breathing dragon for its CEO. When Elon received the formal offer, he found it hostile and rejected it. Twitter returned with much friendlier terms which Elon accepted. When the public announcement was made, Elon already owned 9% of Twitter shares.

Brainstorming
(p 344) Elon confided to his trusted friends, Howery and Nosek, that Twitter's board were not personally invested in the company and that the inmates were running the asylum. A few raised issues were, "should all tweets be posted verbatim?". If verbatim, what algorithm should be used to priortize or de-emphasize the tweet? Should the algorithm be open sourced? Elon thought about charging a small amount for membership using credit cards. This way, there is more transparency and people will be more restrained in spreading hate, lies and misinformation. This also gives users a ready access to make any online payment on Twitter if they already have their credit cards in the system. This was his vision for PayPal - an social platform that supports financial transactions.

Giga Rodeo
(p 346) At the grand opening of the Tesla Giga factory, 15,000 guests were invited. It was a spectacular extravaganza with celebrities and Burningman-like art installations. Elon announced that Tesla would soon be 'full self driving' - although he said that many times before, it was still a bombshell. But the buzz amongst his closest friends was, "Why the heck is he buying that snake infested swamp (Twitter)?"

Elon Musk hamming it at the Giga Rodeo party

Pause
(p 347) In a conversation with Kimbal, Elon expressed 2nd thoughts about being on the board of Twitter. None of the board use Twitter and they will just nod to Elon but be ignored. He wanted to buy Twitter instead, take it private and fix it. Kimbal added that Elon can also develop an alternative social media platform on the blockchain and accept financial transactions - a combination of PayPal and Twitter, his long time vision. Elon instructed Jared Birchall to hold everything while he ponders more about the Twitter dilemma.

Hawaii
(p 347) He flew to Hawaii with Natasha Bassett and spent 4 days at the house of the Oracle founder, Larry Ellison. What would have been a honeymoon turned out to be a deep dive into Twitter. He tweeted a question if Twitter was dying, which prompted a heated exchange with CEO Agrawal. Elon then unleashed his bombshell to Agrawal and Taylor that he would no longer sit on the board, and instead, will buy Twitter and take it private. A hostile takeover? Agrawal and Taylor were shocked. Twitter announced that Elon would no longer be on the board. Concurrently, Elon was talking to Kimbal online about a blockchain-based social media platform. Elon was hedging his bets....buy Twitter and take it private or build a blockchain competition vs Twitter. He instructed Birchall to make arrangements for a buyout. Morgan Stanley took care of the takeover details. The blockchain alternative became "Plan B".

Natasha Bassett was an occassional date-buddy of Elon (while Grimes and Zillis were both pregnant by Elon - both delivered practically a week apart)

Vancouver
(p 349) From Hawaii, Elon flew to Vancouver to hook up with Grimes and have Grimes' grandparents meet Baby X. Elon stayed at the hotel and continued his Twitter acquisition by formally making an offer of $54.20/share. He also gave a talk on TED Talks about the 'meaning of life'. After all that rush, he played a video game, Elden Ring until sunrise. Then he tweeted that he made an offer to buy Twitter - now it's public! (Seriously? Brainstorming with Kimbal, then jetting for a 4-day honeymoon with an Australian actress, Natasha, then jetting to Vancouver to attend to his girlfriend, Grimes, then doing a TED Talk, and then plays a video game until sunrise while all the time diving deep into his $44B Twitter acquisiton? I am blown away by this non-stop high-octane bigger-than-life white-knuckle riding of the bull!)

Navaid visits
(p 351) Elon hooked up with his Queens University close friend, Navaid Farooq, after nearly 30 years. Farooq is one of Elon's close friends who could talk to him intimately about life, loneliness and family. Faroog's question was (together with all his friends' question), "Why are you doing this? (taking on the big headache of buying Twitter)". Elon simply said, "I don't really mind."

A vision
(p 351) Beyond 'free speech', Elon envisioned that Twitter can generate increased revenues from user subscription and data licensing. Users can also make financial transactions like WeChat (to also authenticate users and eliminate bots or spammers). Elon was emulating the features of WeChat for the future Twitter. Elon will remove the biases and de-platforming policy of Twitter so people with opposite views can discuss things online. No one gets canceled unless they really mean trouble.

When asked if this was worth all the trouble, Elon rebutted that it was nothing compared to colonizing Mars or shifting the energy souce of the planet from fossil to green (I am blown away by this lofty vision).

Yes, but why?
(p 352) Twitter didn't seem to fit into the big picture. Tesla and SunCity replaces fossil fuel with sustainable energy. SpaceX makes man a multi-planetary species. And Twitter? Elon said it buys time for humanity until it becomes multi-planetary. Huh? How? He claims that Twitter was hastening the collapse of civilization with its way of keeping everyone toe the line along the mainstream narrative (personally, it was a stretch). Isaacson thinks Elon was buying Twitter because it was a fun playground for him - political smackdowns, intellectual gladiator bouts, bad puns, unfiltered opinions, dopey memes, etc. Are you entertained? All that in addition to important announcements, buy-sell opportunities and revenue generation. Secondly, Isaacson thinks that it's not just a fun playground but it's Elon's playground. In this arena, he's the big swinging dick!

The deal
(p 353) Details with the Twitter purchase was being ironed out as Elon stayed out all night, not with the details, but was partying with friends!

He sourced a $1B investment from Larry Ellison (Oracle founder, Tesla investor, owner of Hawaiian compound where Elon and Natasha Bassett spent 4 days, mentor, and Elon friend). He also had Sam Bankman-Fried, soon-to-be-disgraced founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, willing to invest $5B and architecture the Twitter migration to blockchain. But Elon found him a little too full of himself and Elon was skeptical of latency issues with Twitter's fast-paced movement on a sluggish blockchain - so it was a NO. Both thought the other was nuts.

The Twitter deal was the global sizzling topic but Elon couldn't be bothered as he was working on issues with the Raptor rocket and then listening to live music until the wee hours with Kimbal. (When hostile bidders make a $44 billion dollar deal, they pull hairs and bite their nails, but Elon was repairing rockets and listening to live music...is this guy for real? Sure enough, he's playing life like a game).

Warning flags
(p 355) During dinner with Elon's 4 sons, it became clear that they were not happy about the Twitter purchase. During a meeting with Twitter management at the SF hq, Elon noticed that the size of the bots and fake accounts were under represented....and management could not give Elon specific answers to his pointed questions Note: This was the sticking issue for Elon's 2nd thought on Twitter. This was never settled even after his purchase. He thought Twitter's management team was a big joke. At Tesla, he would have fired them all.

Twitter HQ in San Francisco

Second thoughts
(p 356) Elon knew he offered too much - Twitter was trading 30% below his offer and social media companies were on a dive. He was oscillating between going through or backing out, or repricing. A $44B offer means a ton of debt to service and the prospects were dim.

Town hall
(p 356) Without consulting his think tank, Elon participated in a town hall with Twitter employees. Will he unleash what he really thought about Twitter? That their content-moderation policy crossed into unjustifiable censorship, that they were wrong in banning Trump, that the company was overstaffed, that staff should show up for work, that the corporate culture has been corrupted by the woke-mind virus, etc. But Elon was on an even-keel. He talked about free speech but limiting reach depending on content and also making users comfortable. If Twitter becomes toxic, people will not use the system. When asked how he will deal with diversity, gender, and inclusion in the workplace, Elon championed meritocracy. He didn't make the employees happy, but he didn't explode bombs either.

All my kids
(p 359) It was Father's Day and Elon was hurting over Jenna's estrangment from him. She changed her name, dropping the Musk family name and didn't wish to have anything to do with her Dad. Elon points the blame on the woke-mind virus that corrupted her. (What was Elon's crime? For being rich? Find me a person as rich as Elon who cares as much for humanity? I find no logic in Jenna's stance.) Jenna dropping the Musk name hurt Elon that he asked Shivon Zillis (close friend, intellectual companion, gaming buddy, Neuralink Operations Manager, mother of Elon's twins) if she would retain the Musk family name for their twins. The court appeal leaked and Grimes was furious learning that Zillis (whom she considered a friend), had Elon for her twin's father. So, the question was, would Grimes 2 kids, X and Y, play with Zillis' twins? Father's Day was outrageous in the Musk den.

Techno Mechanicus Musk
(p 359) On the same week, Grimes, through a surrogate, had her 3rd child with Elon. He was named Techno Mechanicus Musk or Tau. with so many kids, he tweeted that he had more kids than Lucid Motors made cars. He expressed how he loves his own humor...even if others don't, "I kill me!"

Sins of the father
(p 360) Elon cut off his support to his estranged father, Errol - for taking credit for Elon's success, for impregnating his step daughter, Jana, whom Elon considered his half-sister and for becoming deranged. The bombshell was Errol fathering a second child with Jana!

Bonding attempts
(p 361) A steadying influence along Elon's tumultuous life was Talulah Riley, a former wife. They both continue to feel warmly towards each other despite Talulah having a boyfriend. They once had dinner and she bonded with Elon's 4 kids. She was emotional after and the boyfriend had to console her.

Talulah Riley with Elon

Fatherly Surge
(p 362) Elon took his 4 boys together with Grimes and X to Spain to vacation with the Murdoch siblings and their children. The Murdochs were family friends who provided political counter balance and calming influence to Elon. Then they flew to Rome and met with Pope Francis.

Pope Francis and the Musks

A house, not a home
(p 362) Elon felt he should have a family home, so he bought a horse farm across the river from Tesla's Giga factory. He commissioned the famous Lord Norman Foster, who architectured the space age circular Apple HQ. Elon was suggesting outlandish designs - a galactic crash site, a shard glass sticking out of the lake, etc. He realized it was becoming an art installation more than a home. He put off the construction.

Apple's circular HQ designed by Lord Norman Foster

---

Showing off Starship
(p 365) Six months after his surge at SpaceX where he wanted the boosters stacked up, he went into another surge, this time making a public presentation of Mechazilla in stacking 2 stages with its chopstick arms. He gave his team a little over a month to finish all the preparation - too soon, as expected, according to his executives.To commit to the deadline, he tweeted it in Twitter.

At the time of the show, Elon was with 3 top executives of NASA, joined by Jared Isaacson. X was also there, impressing everyone how smart and fearless he was. Talk drifted on China as the only contender for sending rockets into orbit - NASA wasn't even in the running. Elon remarked that if China lands a man to the moon, it would be Sputnik all over again.

Jolting the team
(p 366) Starlink satellites were piling up because Starship at Boca Chica wasn't ready and it was still Falcon 9 delivering the satellites at 50/launch. Elon instructed Mark Juncosa (diplomatic hell raiser at SpaceX who is one of Musk's most loyal lieutenants) to go down Boca and shake things up with their 2 point men Sam Patel (hardworking Director of Starship operations who can't give Elon bad news) and Bill Riley (jolly Senior director, SpaceX who can't fire anyone). Elon met with the Boca guys and told them to begin working 24/7 and meet nightly and apply First Principles algorithm. After that meeting, he jetted to Austin (north Texas) for a Tesla share holder meeting and came back later that night to Boca (south Texas) to continue the meeting (Elon is so indefatigable).

The Tiki bar break-in
(p 367) The meeting at Boca resumed with Elon pushing the deadline on Mechazilla public presentation. It was already 1 am, Elon staring blankly into space with no date set yet. The engineers gradually disengaged and Juncosa led them to break into the Tiki Bar for some partying, unbeknowst to Elon (but Elon learned about it anyway). The guys were wound up and the party was actually a good idea. It was 3:24 a.m. when Elon decided that instead of 10 days, they would do it in one day using a clever trick - stacking the booster without the 33 engines.

Human touch
(p 371) A humanoid robot was first announced in Aug 21 and work began in earnest. Elon wanted a human-looking robot - not R2D2. The designers made it look human but not exactly like a human - 2 joints on a finger instead of three, longer pinky, tapered fingers (like a woman) and longer bottom palm (to hold a power tool with better grip). The robot was supposed to look human but can do more than a human.

Young Frankenstein
(p 371) The designers added calibrating pressure on the fingers instead of it just being able to grip - cost was a factor in choosing which approach from an array. Elon would always attend his weekly meeting with the team, regardless how busy he was - even offsite. Once Elon was in Florida partying with Kanye West when he attended the meeting with the Optimus crew by phone.

Meetings were long and detailed. Monitor screen with a face instead of a robot head? Optimus behind a self-driving Tesla (for legal compliance)? A charger for a butt-plug-in (too much giggle factor)? A "stop command path" to unplug a robot in case it turns malevolent?

Elon envisioned Optimus to be the revenue driver for Tesla, more than the car. Charts for function-to-cost were calculated - a wrist moving left and right at $700, while a wrist moving left-right-up-down would be $1300. All bad news, especially ones that missed a delivery date was to be studied.

the evolution of Optimus

Walking
(p 373) By March, Optimus could walk. By April, it could carry a box. Elon pushed it once, and it stayed upright. He was impressed. He announced holding a public presentation of his AI arsenal on Sept 2022 - Optimus, Dojo and a Tesla full self-driving car. The event would be AI Day 2.

The terminator
(p 376) Elon didn't know yet what course of action to take in the Twitter acquisition. He could take the $44B deal or negotiate a discount. He hired Bob Swan, former CEO of eBay and Intel. Bob suggested paying the 44B. Elon treated him like an employee on a surge. Bob quit. Bob was too successful already to accept such treatment. Elon then asked a long time friend and original Tesla investor, Antonio Gracias for help. Gracias assembled a team to dive deep into the Twitter numbers. He employed the assistance of investment banker Robert Steele. Steele asked Elon if he wanted to walk away from the deal or negotiate a discount. Legally, Elon could not say he wanted to walk away, so he said a discount. Elon asked the ramification of either choice but never asked for the lawyer's recommendation - an odd thing, but Elon wants to make decisions himself. Twitter later sued Elon for trying to walk back on his commitment to buy Twitter. Elon continued tweeting which deepened his legal case.

Ari Emanuel wades in
(p 377) Ari was a successful Hollywood super agent and eventually became a mogul in the entertainment industry. He wants to dip his fingers in any deal he can smell. He wanted to buy a Tesla and asked to meet Elon. They became friends and Ari bought a Roadster. Elon went to Saint-Tropez, France with Natasha Bassett to attend Ari's wedding. He got seated next to Larry David who didn't like Elon's Republican vote. Ari tried to work on a back channel between Elon and Twitter (through Durban, a major shareholder). Elon wanted to avoid the law suit.

Ari Emanuel and Elon at Ari's island in Mycokos, Greece. Elon looked bleached-white and blubbery.

Going for it
(p 378) Lowering the purchase wasn't that simple. It means the banks who committed the loan when interest rates were lower, can now regotiate at a higher rate - which offsets whatever savings there are. The Twitter board also demanded that Elon would not launch a lawsuit against them - unacceptable to Elon.

Elon was oscillating between going with the Delaware lawsuit becuase Twitter lied about its bots. Other times, he feels he should just buy Twitter and sue the board later for fraud. But the board owns very little stocks. Ultimately, Elon agreed to pay $44B to buy Twitter at $54.20/share (claiming it was trading at $70/share when it was still run by fools...and should shoot higher with Elon at the helms).

With Elon officially buying Twitter, Ari proposed to run Twitter for $100M. Ari will cut costs, change the culture and reestablish relations with the advertisers. Elon politely declined. It wasn't his thing to relinquish control.

Hair on fire
(p 381) With all the preparation going on for AI Day 2, Elon was juggling too many things - deposition to the Delaware court, an SEC investigation, lawsuit againts his Tesla compensation, controversies about Starlink's role in the Ukraine war, dependency on China's supply chain, Falcon 9 launch with 4 astronauts, Falcon 9 launch with 52 Starlink satellites, sundry issues with family and girlfriends.

Elon deals with stress by being goofy. So he sold 30,000 bottles of perfume smelling singed human hair at $100 in just one week. The caption, "Buy my perfume so I can buy Twitter".

Rehearsal for AI Day 2 was in full swing with Optimus walking to the edge of the stage, pausing, looking at the audience and waving. It was awe inspiring. Kovic, who was chewed-up by Elon for showing a boring slide presentation in Day 1 (who brooded for weeks but didn't quit) reminded Elon of the incident. Elon stared at him blankly, not remembering him. (Classic Elon, who traumatized a man for life and not even remembering the incident)

The AI Day rehearsal
(p 382) After the now-viral shot of bleached Elon at Mykonos, he took on Intermittent Fasting, eating only one meal/day...but he gorges himself with food for that one meal. Neuralink was also complimenting Optimus with walking. Later that night, he walked to his old office building in Palo Alto where he developed Zip2 with Kimbal. He was pleased to order the teriyaki bowl across the street which he ate everyday.

AI Day 2
(p 382) The engineers huddled to exchange 'Elon war stories'. One engineer burned out working 24/7 but returned because after Tesla, everything else was boring.

During the actual presentation, Optimus performed flawlessly. Everyone was relived. Elon announced that someday, millions of Optimus will be available for every household.

We are all in on autonomy
(p 384) Elon believed that fully self-driving cars will not only free people from the drudgery of driving but would no longer motivate people to drive cars. They'll just summon up a Robotaxi which Elon envisions to come out of the assembly line at 20M/year (hmmm...let me sink that in. Then why are people not just flagging taxis? Well, in NY, due to the expense of finding a parking spot, a car is a liability. Even celebrities just use taxis. But for the masses? How will this work? If the Robotaxi will be cheap, then yes, why buy a car that you have to drive and maintain?).

In a meeting with his top 5 Tesla lieutenants, Elon gave instructions to manufacture a FSD (Fully Self Driving) with no mirrors, no steering wheel and no pedal, regardless of legal restrictions. No regrets about the decision, he announced to the RoboTaxi team that this pivotal point will be remembered for the next 100 years and will transform Tesla from $1T to $10T.

The $25,000 car
(p 386) As headstrong and stubborn as Elon is, he can also change his mind when he realizes he's wrong - if his engineers take his attention to it in a non-challenging way.

He doubled back to put the steering wheels back when he was told that even if the US allows it, it will take several more years before the international community agrees with it. So to sell cars at the moment, they have to have steering wheels and pedals.

The project to produce a cheap $25k car for the masses was put on hold. Elon was thinking the Robotaxi would render such a car non-essential. But his engineers broached that for Tesla to grow at 50%/year, they need to produce a $25k car - it simply had a global demand. Furthermore, they can build a factory where the Robotaxi and the budget car can come off the same assembly line sharing the same vehicle platform - the next generation platform. When Holzhausen produced a model for both, Elon was impresseed.

In May 2023, he began construction of the new high-speed ultra-automated factory in Austin near the Tesla factory so that the designers and engineers are not away from production.

Robotaxi and $25k Tesla sharing the same looks, platform and assemblyline

Clash of cultures
(p 389) In Oct 2022, shortly before the acquisition of Twitter, Elon's mood was swinging wildly from going through with optimism to going through faced with insurmountable challenges. When he visited the hip-redesigned 10-story Art Deco Twitter HQ in late Oct (first visit), it was screaming WOKE and laid back (with 5 types of water) - to his chagrin. He brought with him a sink with him saying, "Let that sink in (the new Twitter is not a flower-smelling culture anymore)", to the amusement of CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. The smell of culture-clash was ominous - like a rough-hewn journeyman being served nouvelle cuisine in a cummerband bistro. High-empathy vs being chewed up for not knowing the Idiot Index of a component. Work-from-home vs show up at your work station. Psychological safety vs orbital velocity and urgency.

Very hot coffee
(p 390) Wednesday, 2 days before the announced closing of the purchase, Elon talked to the product managers of Twitter and liked the idea of charging users a small token to read content. This also gets the content provider paid for his work. Another suggested a user 'wallet' within Twitter to speed up any money transfer. Elon suggested that the 'wallet' be tied to a Money Market account to make it more compelling for users. Elon knew that Substack would be his major competitor when it comes to subscription-based content because journalists get paid by the readers for the content they publish. A mid-level manager, Ben San Souci suggested crowd-sourcing the moderation of hate speech. When asked if he will fire 75% of the staff, he said cost needs to be kept low and revenues high. After 3 weeks (when Twitter was already his), he did fire 75% of the staff.

Elon was able to convince former CEO Jack Dorsey to roll over his shares to the new company and Elon guaranteed him the $54.20 price.

The closing bell
(p 393) Twitter, the public and Wall Street thought the closure of witter's purchase happens Friday Oct 28 at the opening of the market. The chronological turn of events would have been:

1. money is transfered - when the Federal Reserve's reference number is received
2. documents are signed
3. Twitter is delisted on the exchange
4. Twitter becomes a private company and Elon takes control

At this point, Agrawal (now former CEO of Twitter) and his top deputies would have resigned, collect their severance pay and vest their stock options (to exercise the purchase of Twitter stocks at a predetermined price, cheaper than the $52.40 they could sell it for).

But in a quick, ruthless and stealthy maneuver, on Thursday afternoon when the market closed, Elon initiated a fast closing. When the money was transfered at 4:12 pm and the documents signed, Elon took control, fired Parag before his could resign, cut Parag's email off, and had his security escort Parag out of the premises. Parag could not make a quick resignation before being fired because his email was cut off. Since he was fired first before he could resign, Parag could no longer vest his stock option, saving Elon $200M. This is also how much Parag lost by being out-foxed by Elon.

Elon was able to save money and extract vengence since he felt he paid too much for Twitter and could not back away from it, and also because he felt the board wasn't on the level about the bots-infestation of Twitter.

Alex Spiro, Elon's long time gunsligner lawyer architectured the brilliant plan. It was also Spiro who guided Elon during the legal altercations about the "pedo guy" and "take private" tweets. Spiro was exceedingly confident and competent which made him indispensable to Elon, who sometimes watched him with caution.

Elon's first instruction as new owner was to call Tejas Dharamsi, a young engineer who was on his holiday already on board a plane to India, to change Twitter's landing page to the Ëxplore page instead of the Login page. Instead of waiting until Monday, Elon told the guy to do it right then and there while being on the plane. The guy did it, and then marveled how there were so many plans in the company to improve Twitter but no one acted on it. And now, this new guy Elon comes along and wastes no time to get things done.

It was 9 pm when Elon came home from the Twitter takeover and met with a Democrat congressman, Ro Khanna. They talked for 2 hours and Elon didn't even mention Twitter, which was the one of the most signifant and high profile tech-deals that happened in the century.

James, Andrew, and Ross
(p 396) James Musk, a 29 year old cousin of Elon who looked eerily like him, and brother Andrew (engineer at Neuralink), together with Ross Nordeen (James' backpacker coder friend whom he shares memorable escapades together) and Dhaval Shroff (Autopilot team) were the 4 who made the core of a 36-man contingent of Tesla and SpaceX engineers who descended upon Twitter to fix things up.

James Musk in cap lower right, with Andrew right behind and the Extra Care Movers team at the Sacramento server center.

Code graders
(p 397) The core's mission was to assess the 2000 Twitter engineers according to code-writing skill, productivity and attitude. They decide who to keep and who to fire. Elon's instructions were to identify who wrote more than a hundred lines of code that month. Then identify the good coders from there.

Ben San Souci
(p 397) In a serendipitous turn of events, Ben San Souci was swept into the insider realm of the core group. Ben's brilliant suggestion was instead of cherry-picking the good coders, they should also cherry-pick the team that works well together for their synergy. Ben wasn't afraid to disagree to give his 2 cents. Ben suggested a hybrid of showing up for work and working remotely.

In charge
(p 398) There was a buzz that Elon might hire someone to take charge of Twitter - true. He talked to Kayvon Beykpour, owner of Periscope, a video app that was purchased and dumped by Twitter. Beykpour was also fired by Agrawal. Beykpour had creative ideas Elon liked, like having a 'thumbs down' button for those who paid and subscribed and registration opt-in of their interests for targeted marketing. Elon invited Beykpour to join Twitter again. He gave it a thought and declined, knowing that Elon doesn't like sharing power.

Round one
(p 399) 24 hours after the purchase, Elon rounded up his core and 36 engineers to cut deep into Twitter lay offs, up to 90%. The crew flinched. It was too close to the bone. If anyone got sick or left the company, operations may be crippled. Elon persisted - he wanted a cadre of hardcore engineers. So the core instructed the Twitter managers to start trimming up the company. They were not happy. Elon wanted the first firings before Nov 1 so that they can't get their bonuses and options (another ruthless Elon manuevering). But California law protected the workers so Elon had to do it on Nov 3 - 90% were sacked. This was the first of 3 bloodbaths.

Council of one
(p 402) Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), was a party-buddy of Elon. It wasn't an intimate friendship - they just basked in the limelight and shared similar traits. Both were unfiltered, unafraid of ridicule or rejection, and a force of nature. Ye tweeted a hate speech vs Jewish people - he got banned and remained banned despite an Elon interjection. This episode taught Elon that free speech is a very complicated matter. He quickly realized that his banner-waving of free speech was too simplistic. He also learned how impulsive policy decisions can be detrimental. For the first week after acquisition, content moderation became the focus of Elon. Twitter was a toxic cesspool of frauds, scams, hate speech, lies, and misinformation. Lies propagate across the internet in a blink while the truth takes a snail's pace. Elon decided to create a content-moderation team to look after this issue. They would comprise of people from across the planet representing diverse cultures and tradition. Elon quickly lost interest in that. Ultimately, he alone was the council - a council of one who decides who gets reinstated.

Yoel Roth
(p 403) Content moderation fell into the hands of a left-leaning Democrat with a distaste for Republicans - Yoel Roth. Yoel was summoned by Elon and Yoni Ramon, Elon's Tesla information security engineer. Yoni's job is to ensure none of the disgruntled Twitter staff can sabotage the company. Both were shown Twitter's content moderation tools by Yoel. This tool needs high security and sensitive - it configures settings for any user of Twitter. Yoel vowed he could be trusted to be the gatekeeper of this tool. Elon asked him for the top 10 people Yoel trusts with his life who can have access to high-security tool. If any of these people fuck up, Yoel is fired together with the entire team. Yoel understood.

Babylon Bee
(p 404) First trouble for Yoel was when Elon wanted Babylon Bee to be reinstated after misgendering a Biden official. Yoel did not want Elon to make arbitrary reinstatement decisions vs policy, so he called Elon's lawyer, Alex Spiro who gave 3 options, each with its own problem:

1. continue banning BBee - Elon doesn't like this
2. remove the banning policy - this starts a major cultural war and advertisers will flee
3. reinstate BBee because Elon wants it - can, since Elon owns the company. But what if another user makes the same mistake? If this user is banned, then there is a consistency problem in implementing policy. Elon suggested a 'presidential pardon'. Yoel said people will test Twitter to see if policy has changed.

Yoel offered warnings on Tweets instead of outright banning or deleting. Elon instructed to make problem tweets not searchable and not fed into other users' timelines, but will still be visible in the poster's profile page. Or at least, restrain through limited reach, de-amplification, dis-engagement, filtration. When this policy was disclosed in Elon's Twitter Files, it created push back because it confirmed that management was shadow banning conservatives by the liberals. Elon agreed to hold off the reinstatement of BBee and Jordan Peterson until Yoel can develop a clearer policy on de-amplification vs banning.

Sacks and Calacanis
(p 405) Elon had 2 friends who summoned Yoel for a meeting.

Within 24 hours after Elon touted non-censorship, Twitter was inundated by a swarm of organized trolls and provocateurs (mostly bot attacks) who were testing the limits in a coordinated assault. Hate speech, anti-Semitism and racism overflowed to the brim. 50,000 tweets from 300 fake accounts. Suddenly, unfettered free speech was not so simple to implement. Elon stepped in and ordered the hate speech to be removed (despite his public no censorship stance). Elon was concerned that advertisers would be alarmed. Yoel tweeted explaining the troll campaign and Twitter's course of action. Elon considered Yoel an Elon-insider and began fielding questions and suggestions on a regular basis. Elon even publicly supported Yoel from the backlash of the conservatives.

New York visit
(p 409) When the husband of Nancy Pelosi, 82 years old, was attacked with a hammer, a right-wing faction suggested it was by a male prostitute. Elon tweeted that there might be something else to the story, suggesting some kind of conspiracy theory. Elon quickly realized it was a blunder, deleted the tweet, apologized, but it was too late - the damage was done. Advertising revenues would slide down in the next 6 months. Elon is thrilled by raucous free speech, but it's a slippery slope between that and weaponization of disinformation that is recklessly spread (now by Elon himself).

He went to NY with mother Maye and son X to meet with his ad sales team and address the crisis. Bringing Maye and X were perhaps to dissipate the heat from a promisingly heated meeting. Activists had been pressuring advertisers from signing up with Twitter. Elon was livid about this. The meeting did little to reassure advertisers. Explaining the Pelosi tweet, Elon simply said he was being him - not in repentant mode but rather cold indifference. Top ad executives trusted by the advertisers left or were fired. Elon blamed the activists for threatening the advertisers who either paused their advertising or left altogether. Ads fell by 80%.

Space commanders
(p 410) One of the reasons for going to NY was to attend a costumed halloween party where Elon came wrapped in a leather body armour. They left after 10 minutes as it was too loud and Elon was annoyed with too many taking selfies with him.

Elon on his red/black body armour suit at Heidi Klum's halloween party

The following day, Elon monitored the launch of Falcon Heavy with 27 rockets, the first after 3 years. Later, he went to the US Air Space in Washington to attend a commencement for the changing of the generals. Despite his anti-Biden sentiments, the Pentagon was still warm to him, being the only space company that takes military satellites and crew to space.

Thermonuclear
(p 413) Round 1 of the firings were survived by Yoel Roth and most of the content-moderation team. Yoel gave Elon the promised guidlines for offending tweets - warning, not retweetable and low visibility. Elon approved. In addition, Elon revived an obscure feature, Community Notes, where readers can add context or correct a false posting. This way, the community becomes self-policing instead of having this huge task done by the Twitter police. Online activists were pressuring advertisers like Oreo to boycott Twitter. This put Elon on his dark mode. He ordered Yoel to BAN these users. This was unacceptable to Yoel because this was in full reversal to Twitter's content moderation policy - this was outright censorship, the very thing Elon vowed to eradicate from Twitter. Elon's argument was essentially that Twitter was a moral company and any attack on Twitter is immoral and must be stopped. Advocating boycotts on Twitter was done all the time and there was no specific policy to stop this. Yoel was also fearful of the Barbra Streisand effect where the repression gives it more voice and amplification. Yoel was deeply conflicted. Elon was blackmailing the activists. The boycott tweets were not violating any of Twitter's rules. Elon then decreed that blackmail was now banned as a policy. Yoel was advised by the Elon insiders to develop the instinct on what to follow and not to follow when Elon goes dark. This is something the Nixon insiders learned - when Nixon rants and gives non-sensible orders, don't do it. Nixon would likely forget it too.

Twitter Blue check marks
(p 414) Twitter has the paid Blue Checkmarks for the notables - celebrities and VIPS. Elon wanted something similar to those paying a monthly subscription - some kind of authentication badge. But it would create hierarchy in Twitter to have 2 different badges. Elon opted to have one - Twitter Blue. The advantages are:

1. Revenue - paid subscription adds to revenue
2. Credit Card access - payment is done through credit card so the cc is now on the system making it easy when Twitter adds payment functionality into the system
3. Reduces bot armies and troll farms - only one credit card/phone # can be used per account

The Human Problem
(p 414) The engineering was done on Twitter Blue but they realized there was a vulnerability. Users can game the verification card, get a blue checkmark and change their profiles to impersonate someone else. Elon met with his engineers to address this issue - people getting checkmarks, impersonating Elon and go to the press and unleash misinformation. With the blue checkmark, people will believe it was Elon. They had to prepare for a swarm of bad actors who will test the defense of the system. When Twitter Blue was launched, there was a tsunami of fake accounts with blue checkmarks spreading misinformation causing stock price to fall, spreading fake news, scamming users, etc. It got overwhelming, Twitter Blue was suspended.

Return to work
(p 415) Elon went on crisis-mode with revenues falling, interest due on a $12B debt and other foreseeable cash shortfall. He had to sell $4B of his Tesla stock to mitigate the cash hemorrhage. Elon announced to the company that Twitter is now on a belt-tightening mode and everyone has to report to work at least 40 hours/week (reversing the previous "work at home forever" option). This reflects Elon's work ethic and also his belief that people who communicate in person are more innovative and productive. When someone questioned the "show up for work" policy even when they can effectively work at home, Elon put his foot down and said resignation is accepted.

The Apple issue
(p 416) Nobody checked, but there was a problem with Apple. Elon assumed people will use their Apple smartphone to launch the Twitter app for people to register and pay the $8 fee. Apple will then share the user's info and credit card number to Twitter. NO! Apple would get 30% of the $8 and won't share the data. Elon asked Yoel to call Apple and release the information. HUH? A midlevel employee from an outside company can call Apple to give out confidential user data? Elon must have been nuts. This was the last straw on Yoel's back - he resigned shortly. Elon said he'll talk to Tim Cook of Apple if need be. This spells the doom of Twitter Blue on iPhones.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Yoel Roth resigns
(p 417) Elon was increasingly unbearable to Yoel - Yoel calling Apple?, more lay offs coming from Yoel? Blue Check imperiled by impersonators that couldn't be checked because Elon fired most of the human moderators, Elon's authoritarian outbursts, etc. Yoel resigned after informing his team. Elon was shocked and genuinely disappointed, thinking Yoel was for the long-term haul. Yoel's resignation leaked and he received several calls from the Elon camp - Yoni Ramon, Jared Birchall, Alex Spiro, persuading him to come back. Yoel said he'll give Elon a courtesy exit-call. During that call, Yoel enumerated all the things Twitter needed to fix. Elon persuaded Yoel to come back, but NO. Yoel sees two Elons - the Bad Elon (authoritarian, dark, mean) and the Good Elon (goofy, very smart, reasonable, funny, engaging). He didn't hate Elon. He admired Elon for many positive qualities. He left also because he feared for his safety as he was getting threats already.

Despair
(p 418) In a conference call with Franz von Holzhausen (Tesla design), he ranted about his desperation with Twitter - the laziness, the entitlement, the culture, the mess he was into, etc. He was in despair and wished for the Twitter hell to blow away soon. During this Twitter maelstorm, he was still juggling his CEO duties with Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. When asked how to be Elon in an Indonesian summit, Elon remarked that he subjects himself to next-level torture - it's not fun being Elon.

Moving in
(p 420) Twitter was still in dire straits - Twitter Blue is on hold, advertisers are fleeing and a new round of sacking was imminent. It was time to mobilize the troops. To be the wartime general that he has always been, he moved in to sleep on a couch at Twitter, occupying a library on the 7th floor.

The second round
(p 420) Elon met with his musketeers James, Andrew, Ross and Dhaval at the 'hot box' for another round of firing. Ross threw up thinking of the looming nightmare. Elon wanted 80% fired and the remaining 20% should be;

1. Excellent - this was already done in the first round of firing
2. Trustworthy - this was the current mandate. Those who were not loyal to Elon is out. Previous messages and postings were checked to see if they were disgruntled or a threat. One guy posted a command that would wipe out the entire data center. He was immediately fired. Ross felt queezy that they were violating private stuff. To what extent do you allow dissent? About 36 malcontents were fired.
3. Driven - Elon wanted a hardcore cadre of engineers who can work 24/7, all in and not complain. He scorned successful people who took vacations (Huh? Successful people deserve their vacations. Maybe lazy and failed people who take vacations should be penalized instead...but isn't that why they are losers to begin with?). One posted that he will leave, just give him his severance pay. The team then realized it was better for people to opt out of the hardcore Twitter voluntarily instead of being fired. They offered 3 months pay and departure on good terms. Elon hatched a brilliant version - instead of opting out, they can opt in instead, thereby declaring that they are hardcore and willing to work hard at high intensity. Those who haven't opt in by a certain time will receive 3 months compensation. Things got exciting. Of the 3,600 remaining employees, how many would opt in? 2,492 or 2/3 opted in, higher than what they expected.

Code reviews
(p 423) Elon announced a code review at 2pm for all remaining staff who were doing code. Others for fear of being fired, canceled their flights and showed up with their suitcases. There was no food so someone bought pizza. Elon didn't show up until 8 pm. He asked pointed questions and suggested code rework. It was 1 am when he left the office.

Reinstatements
(p 425) With Yoel and the other content moderators gone, Elon unilaterally reinstated Jordan Peterson, Babylon Bee and comedian Kathy Griffin. He tweeted that hate or negativity on Twitter will not be monetized, no reach and no visibility. He did not reinstate conspiracy provocateur Alex Jones for "using deaths of kids to gain popularity", refencing his Sandy Hook proclamation. Despite being an Elon friend, Ye (Kanye West) remained suspended as Ye tried his best to push the limits of free speech - insinuating that Elon is controlled by Jews, that Ye loves Hitler and putting a swastika inside the Star of David. Donald Trump? Elon put out a poll and let the public decide. This caused a very serious strain on the system because there was hardly anyone left to man the system and the servers could suffer a melt down. But Elon was gleefully celebrating as his engineers were shitting bricks. Out of 15M who polled, Trump won by slightly over half. He was reinstated. Elon was not a Trump fanboy. He thinks Trump is full of it and an aggitator.

Round three
(p 426) Robin Wheeler, Twitter's ad sales chief resigned as well. She had to make another set of firings, some to people she encouraged to go for YES on the opt in selection. Now, some of those people will be fired. It was too much. Elon also ordered the coders to submit their recent code. The musketeers had to burn the midnight oil to get those 500 submissions tested for presentation the following day. Elon met with the Twitter staff to announce there would be no more layoffs - there was great applause. But his sinister gameplan was to fire people for cause thereby no severance pay. Technically, a firing is not a lay off. 50 more were fired.

Elon explained to a few capable engineers that at some point, Twitter will be a software company driven by engineers and not by product managers or design engineers who prioritize in human relationships.

Why so demanding?
(p 427) After the 3 rounds of firing, out of 8,000 Twitter employees before the takeover, only over 2000 remained. Elon pulled off one of the most radical and swift culture-change in modern corporate history. Twitter was no longer the cushioned, 3-artisan meal, work from home company, but a hardcore group of Spartan engineers with a mind tough enough to rough the trenches.

With all the turmoil, Twitter was on a deathwatch. Pundits and media experts created a #Twitterdeathwatch hashtag. But with Twitter's kernel of hardcore engineers left, innovation was also happening at breakneck speed.

Mainstream media were incisive but fair, "The company culture that allowed Twitter to be the most influencial social network, was dismantled by Elon." And, "The dire demise of Twitter as predicted by the pundits did not happen and Twitter is still alive, functional without the bloat." Generally, it was a vindication of Elon.

Apple visit
(p 428) Elon tweeted that perhaps Apple does not subscribe to free speech that's why it stopped advertising with Twitter. With that salvo, his mentor and mentor of Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, advised Elon not to fight Apple. Without Twitter's app on Apple, Twitter can die. Also, Apple was a major advertiser. Elon was being Elon - abrasive, feisty, confrontational and unfiltered.

Tim Cook has been Apple's CEO since 2011. Unlike Elon, he was calm, non-confrontational, cool under fire with a steady moral compass about him. But he can go into warrior-mode when warranted.

Elon met with Tim Cook. Additionally, he wanted to see the incredible circular spaceship-looking HQ of Apple as designed by Norman Foster, the same guy who did sketches for his Austin home. The meeting lasted an hour. They initially talked about supply-chain horror stories, and Elon gave Tim praise for handling that crisis so competently. During the meeting Apple assured Twitter that there is no policy to stop the ads, but not if Twitter remains to be a cesspool of misinformation, hate and racism. Also, the 30% clawback has already been reduced to 15%, and the Twitter app remains on iPhone. However, the most compelling issue, sharing user information, was too sensitive to discuss at the moment.

Apple HQ

Cures
(p 431) Neuralink opened its branch in Austin when Elon moved there. The main HQ remains in Fremont, CA. Elon was getting impatient with Neuralink. Aside from a monkey playing Pong using its mind, nothing exciting ever came out of Neuralink - nothing exciting enough to get the public excited. Elon came up with an AHA Moment and conferenced everyone in Neuralink for their next mission - make a paralyzed person walk again. Brain implants can by-pass spinal blockages or neural malfunction and send nerve impulses from the brain to the concerned muscle. One idea on the table is to propagate brain impulses using diffused energy from the molecules instead of electromagnetism, as convention believed. Using this principle, the blind can see and the deaf can hear. Elon muttered why limit the blind to see visible light only. Maybe infra red? ultraviolet rays?

The presentation
(p 432) Impatient, Elon set Nov 30 as a date when Neuralink makes a public presentation of what it has done. Elon arrived at Neuralink, Fremont, late since he met with Tim Cook earlier. Lex Friedman was there and so were the Twitter musketeers. Elon stated that he wanted a seamless mind meld between machine and the human brain. For near-term goal, he wanted the lame to walk and the blind to see.

Perception of Twitter's filtration
(p 434) Twitter has become notorious for banning posts they consider harmful speech. This has been seen either of 3 ways: (all of which were proven true with the disclosure of the Twitter Files)

1. Deep state collusion with big tech - feeding the fervor of the conspiracy theorists
2. Filtration of false information, scam, hate speech, toxic speech
3. Well-intentioned filtration but went too far in repressing opinion counter to medical/government narrative, or warranted disapproval of Twitter's toxic woke culture

Matt Taibbi
(p 434) Elon initially felt strongly about the woke toxicity, but gradually veered towards Deep state collusion with big tech. David Sachs suggested to Elon to talk to Matt Taibbi, writer for Rolling Stone and other popular publications, to determine Twitter's motivation for info supression. It was difficult to determine Matt's political leaning so it was assumed he's a safe one to go with. Elon gave Matt liberties to sift through Twitter's old emails, old files, Slack exchanges, old tweets by the content moderation team. This was supposed to bring transparency and assuage the public on what the real deal was. Instead, it backfired and sent everyone scurrying to the safety of their political tribe on social media. This messy episode has been known as the Twitter Files. Matt's public release of his first report was delayed pending legal issues and had to wait for Elon's termination of a meeting with French president, Emmanuel Macron. Matt's report included special privilege extended by Twitter to government, FBI and intelligence agencies on what to suppress, essentially making Twitter an FBI contractor. Taibbi also disclosed that content moderators readily ban content supportive of Trump. Twitter management had internal squabbles, inconsistenties and bias in moderating content or banning users.

Isaacson noticed that Twitter's algorithm can cleverly navigate a user to the political left or right through its suggested, "You might like:" feature.

Bari Weiss
(p 435) Like Taibbi, Weiss is an independent journalist whose ideology is hard to pin down. Like Elon, she waves the banner of free speech in opposition to the progressive wokeness that gave rise to the censorious cancel culture especially in mainstream media and elite educational institutions. Together with other independent journalists, she established the Free Press newsletter, platformed on Substack on a paid subscription basis.

She received a message from Elon asking her to make a trip to SF that night and help out Matt since the work is too overwhelming for one man alone. They arrived 11 pm and Elon showed them around and briefed them. It was past 2 am when they checked in their hotel. The following day, Elon told them he bought Twitter because he couldn't back away from his offer. As he warmed up, he also talked about developing a public forum dedicated to free speech (Note: this was proven too difficult given the reality. Troll farms and bot armies tested the limits and even Elon caved in). The objective for Weiss was to clean the slate and move forward. The conversation snagged when Weiss asked how Tesla's China operations will impact on Twitter. Will Elon walk on eggshells for the Chinese?

For the Twitter Files, Weiss and wife (same sex marriage) were frustrated because legal dept would not give them access, so they had to use Ross Nordeen's laptop to access the old Slack messages. Later, it turned out that an FBI counsel. Jim Baker, was the one acting as Twitter's legal counsel as well. It was like Al Capone investigating himself on tax evasion. Jim Baker was immediately fired by Elon.

Visibility filtering
(p 437) Taibbi and Weiss worked at the Hot Box together with the smelly musketeers James and Ross, who were working 20 hours/day. Elon would sometimes drop in for a scoop of food and engage them in long discourses. Ross and Weiss felt uneasy going over private messages of other people, but it was the job.

One story uncovered by Weiss was shadow banning - the practice of allowing people to post their content but they don't know it's not visible to anyone else. Another story was about visibility filtering - capping a post so as not to trend or making its reach very short or not available in searches. Elon embraced and went public with Twitter's visibility filtering and shadow banning. The problem with visibility filtering was if it was exercised with political bias like suppressing right-wing content. Twitter had a blacklist of undesirables whose tweets are filtered for its political content. Another practice was narrowing the scope of acceptable discourse and expanding the definition of the words hate, safety and violence. Weiss also found that Twitter was too quick to suppress content not compliant to the mainstream narrative like "do masks work?", "was COVID manufactured in Wuhan, China?", Debates about the merits of mRNA were also suppressed.

The Twitter Files portrayed journalism's evolution the last 50 years. Duing the Vietnam war, journalists were suspicious of the military and the government. In the 90s especially after 9/11, journalists would share information and cooperate with government and intelligence agencies. This trend was showcased in social media.

The Twitter Files also exposed how Twitter handled content moderation and how difficult it also was - e.g. if CIA flags Twitter that certain posts negative to Ukraine was Russian sponsored, would Twitter uphold free speech and let the Russians get away with their mis-information campaign? Or will they suppress it and be labeled as being subjugated by the intelligence agencies?

@elonjet
(p 440) Elon was extremely fond of his 2-year-old son, X, who was constantly with him in meetings, launches and important events. When X was attacked, that's when Elon lost it and unleashed the dragons, shaking the very foundation of his banner-waving free speech dictum.

A stalker of Grimes followed a car with Baby X (thinking it was Elon). When security detail cornered him, he jumped on the roof of the car. No arrests were made. The stalker tracks Elon through a Twitter account, @elonjet, where a student named Jack Sweeney posts real-time landings and take-offs of Elon's jet from a public flight information source. This has long annoyed Elon due to its doxing potential.

He could have banned the account but refrained to uphold his "free speech" stance - this impressed Bari Weiss. But Weiss later found out that @elonjet was severly "visibility filtered". The account could not be searched and visibility was on a very short leash. After the Baby X incident, Elon banned the account, contrary to Elon's "free speech". Additionally, he also banned journalists (NY Times, Washington Post, etc.) who carried the story of @elonjet's banning adding links to the account.

Weiss found this all too hypocritical of Elon, acting in ways he disdained from the old Twitter overlords - this notwithstanding that these banned journalists were Weiss' biggest bullies. So how is Twitter a public forum for free speech? She lectured her fellow colleagues why they do nothing when journalists are kicked out of Twitter. It was a matter of principle to Weiss, even though she knew she'd lose access to the Twitter Files (and lose Elon as a sperm donor...jokingly). She tweeted her opposition. Elon tweeted that Weiss was virtue-signaling that she is "good" and gain the favor of elite media, allowing her to tread both worlds. Then Elon restricted her Twitter Files access.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]Twitter Spaces
(p 441) Jason Calacanis and David Sachs both texted Elon to reinstate the journalists as he was doing Twitter a lot of harm. When Calacanis told Elon that 2 banned journalists were joining an audio conversation on Twitter Spaces (they were banned from main Twitter but not Twitter Spaces...an unforseen loophole), Elon joined in as well. This spread like wildfire and soon, 30,000 were listening in. He got cornered, got angry, left the conversation and shut down Spaces for a day. He realized he had gone too far in banning the journalists and was trying to find a fig leaf in reversing himself. He tweeted a poll if the journalists should be reinstated. 58% said yes, the journalists were reinstated, and Elon got himself out of a tight bind.

Prosecute/Fauci
(p 442) While people were joking about the new pronouns while in the Hot Box with Weiss, James and Elon, someone mentioned that Elon's pronouns should be "Prosecute/Fauci". He laughed so hard and tweeted it. It was loaded and unleashed an avalanche of hate - even Elon insiders called him out:

1. it mocked the transgenders because of the pronoun issue
2. it added fuel to conspiracy theories (which Elon subscribes to)
3. it alienated people from buying Tesla
4. it scared off the advertisers

The conspiracy overtone was reminiscent of his father who is deeply into that. Errol messages Elon from time to time about his conspiracy thoughts. But Elon never received these messages since he changed his email without telling his Dad. Elon wanted to purge his Dad out of his existence.

Fallout
(p 443) When the Twitter Files were released exposing Yoel Roth's Slack and emails about the issue of having sex with underaged kids through the Grindr App, Elon put Yoel on his crosshairs by insinuating Yoel was a pedophile, even though he wasn't. This unleashed a flurry of anti-Semitic and homophobic tweets. His address was published which forced him to flee for safety. Yoel became the example of how irresponsible tweets can wreak havoc in people's lives - but this time, Elon was the perpetuator.

When Elon attended a Dave Chappelle act, he was booed by the crowd as a result of his Fauci tweet. Elon was advised by David Zaslav, CEO Warner Bros. Discovery, that his tweets were contrary to aspirational brands, so ad revenues will be elusive. Tesla's stock fell by almost half. The Telsa board took notice about his tweets but Elon pushed back saying it was a global macroeconomic cause, not his tweets. Kimbal said it was high time someone called out the big elephant in the living room - Elon acting like an asshole.

Head-explosion emoji
(p 446) The data-server company, NTT, where Twitter has some server farms were charging $100,000,000/year and Elon wanted the servers moved out from its current Sacramento location to one in Portland, Oregon. The server company wanted Twitter to move out quickly, afraid that it would go bankrupt and unable to serve its payments. But Sacramento still needs to be around for the next 6-9 months to serve traffic. Elon gave them 90 days to do the transfer and reconnection. This was a typical case when Elon feels what is necessary vs others who say what is possible.

The Sacramento raid
(p 447) On the flight to Austin from Sacramento the following day, Elon was still ranting about the servers. James butt in and said, "Why not now?" With that, Elon had the jet turn back to Sacramento. Everyone squeezed themselves on a small rental car and went to the server farm. They arrived at night but a Twitter staff was there so they were let in. The facility also housed servers from other companies. It was very secure with retina scanners for entry.

The Twitter vault had 5200 refrigerator-sized racks weighing 2500 lbs and up to 8 feet high, mounted on floor panels. Each rack had 30 computers stacked on it. To move the racks, one contractor lifts the floor panel with suction cups and another contractor detaches the electrical cables and seismic rods. Elon using a pocket knife went under the floor panel and unplugged the cables - no explosion. That's it! Moving it wasn't that hard...or so he thought.

typical NTT server farm

The following day (Christmas Eve when everyone should be on holidays with their families), the server farm was full of reinforcements from Spacex, Boring Company and other personnel. Ross stopped by a few hardware stores to buy bolt cutters, wrenches, head lamps, and other tools for the task. The Elon team, with no loading experts, were loading servers on regular trucks and strapping them down without bubble wraps or other protective insulation. Spectators from the facility were dumbfounded. Those were sensitive and expensive equipment!

NTT wanted to halt the move. Elon agreed but only for 2 days. On the 26th, the moving resumes. This meant a 2-day Christmas holiday for everyone, including the NTT management.

Family Christmas
(p 448) Elon invited James and Andrew for Christmas in Boulder with Kimbal and family. Kimbal grabbed the opportunity to remind Elon has was spinning out of control and going open loop, making lots of enemies in high places very fast - the Pelosi tweet? the Fauci tweet? Elon confessed that he stabs himself on the thigh with a fork.

Elon also bonded with his sons. Damian was into particle physics and quantum computing after finishing his high school online. Kai was encouraged by Elon to drop out of high school and finish it online while he writes software for his company. Kai was too smart for high school. Griffin was the top in 450 of his class in computer science. Saxon, autistic, knew his Dad was taking a lot of fire for Twitter.

The heist continued
(p 450) Dec 26 and the moving resumed. NTT gave them all the hassle - retina scan every entry, a security guard watching their every move, etc. NTT offered a moving company charging $200/hour. James found a moving company for $20/hour. He tipped them $1 for every server they haul up.

User data was supposed to be wiped clean during the move, but it was too late. Elon instructed the trucks to be padlocked with the combo lock codes messaged to Portland on a spreadsheet. It actually worked!

The record for the facility was moving 30 racks in 1 month (1 rack/day). James and his crew have already moved 700 in 3 days (230 racks/day)! Elon offered James a bonus of $1M if all servers are up and running in Portland by year's end, or $1000 for every server that reaches Portland (even if unplugged) or stock options to join Twitter. James planned on using the money to buy his folks a house in California.

All would seem rosy but Elon's quick action and rash caused problems. Sacramento servers still needed to run, so for the next 2 months, Twitter was destabilized and the lack of servers caused meltdowns including the presidential hosting on Twitter Space. Elon thought they had redundancy on all the servers. Not. There were 70,000 hard-coded references to the Sacramento servers that they were still fixing months after. Elon admitted that moving all the servers that fast was a mistake. But Twitter was still alive and the legacy staff realized what Elon meant by maniacal sense of urgency.

New Year’s Eve
(p 451) Elon needed a break from all this maelstorm. So in late December, Elon, Grimes and X spent a few days in Lanai Island, home of his mentor, Larry Ellison. He gazed into Larry's new astronomical telescope, pointed to Mars, and told X he'll live there some day.

For New Years, they flew to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to celebrate with Kimbal and family. It was a rare moment for the Musks to be all gathered there and feel happy - all kids and wives. After the countdown, Elon had this blank stare again looking at the night sky. He felt the urgency to get Starship into orbit.

Cars that learn from humans
(p 454) Dhaval Shroff (4th musketeer in the Twitter takeover) had a brilliant idea for Tesla. Instead of programming it to follow road rules, it will do what a skilled human driver will do. This fascinated Elon since he has been working with many applications of AI - Optimus, Dojo, Neuralink and FSD Tesla. Now, he envisions Tesla to be more than a car company, more than a clean energy company but an AI company - a company working on the real world with its cars and working in the virtual world. Elon wanted Dhaval to leave Tesla Autopilot and work with Twitter (which Dhaval didn't like), but this changes things in favor of Dhaval.

Originally, Tesla was programmed based on Rules-Based approach. Tesla sees with its 8 cameras the road situation and then applies the rules - stop on red, don't overtake on double yellow, etc. Manual codes in C++ were written for this. In Dhaval's Neural Network approach, the Rules Based will be the foundation, but layered on top of it would be 'judicial driving' based on thousands of videos on how humans deal with any road problem. Tesla was in a unique position because it has one of the world's largest and fastest supercomputers to train neural network with chips from Nvidia. However, Elon envisions Dojo, its supercomputer to take over at some point. Only car videos in difficult driving situations expertly manuevered by "5-star Uber drivers" will be fed into the computer. Elon popped the question. As wonderful and promising this neural network is, is it truly needed? Or is this an overkill...swatting a fly with a sledgehammer? Dhaval demoed where the car broke the rules if needed but all humans would do it anyway in the same situation. But the Rules-Based foundation will prevent any collision. For metrics, Elon decreed miles/human intervention on a FSD Tesla. The higher the miles traveled without human intervention, the better. Goal is not to have any human intervention - it should become unneccesary. When a programmer gets to fix a situation where human intervention happened, he gets to bang the gong - bragging rights!

An AI test drive
(p 456) A test was conducted with Elon on the wheel and the rest of the engineers. It performed flawlessly. Tesla had millions of video feeds from its customers to train the neural network with. The neural network was far more simpler than the manual codes done on the Rules-Based approach. In fact, 300,000 lines of code were redundant and had to be deleted. The softward stack of the Neural Network was like an AI bot playing a boring video game. Elon ordered more resources moved into the Neural Network project - he was truly impressed.

Noteworthy is that the Neural Network didn't start performing well until after a million video clips were fed into it. But it became very good at 1.5 million clips. Tesla receives realtime billions of frames/day from all its cars which gives it a very unique and powerful position. The same thing for Twitter which Elon did not see - with billions of tweets/day, that's a massive amount of useful data to feed into AI. In the meeting was a superstar AI engineer whom Elon recently hired for his latest and secret project.

The great race
(p 459) The advent of ChatGPT's release in Mar 2023 heralded the arrival of the AI era. This prompted an AI-race between the 2 giants - Microsoft's OpenAI's ChatGPT vs Goole's DeepMind. Elon wasn't even in the running after he left OpenAI but he had very promising projects - FSD Tesla, Optimus, Dojo, and Neuralink. Elon was alarmed that Google and Microsoft might indoctrinate their AI with woke-mentality. Or, AI might turn malevolent vs humans. Or, weaponized chat bots inundating Twitter with misinformation, spam, hate speech, etc.

Sam Altman
(p 460) Elon met with Sam Altman of OpenAI in April 2023, drilling him on how a non-profit company has now teamed up with a corporate monopoly (Microsoft) to be a $30B for-profit company. Elon himself invested $100M and named it OpenAI because it was supposed to be open source. Elon questioned the legality of this conversion. Sam was pained by that confrontation - he wasn't a confrontational guy and hasn't cashed-in or profited from OpenAI.

Musk’s data streams
(p 460) AI feeds on data. Microsoft and Google have lots of that from their search engines, cloud services and email access. That's plenty to train their AI chatbots.

Elon, on the other hand, has Twitter with a trillion tweets since its inception and 500M tweets/day of real-time data set on human interaction. This represented the human hive mind. This is an asset Elon didn't realize when he bought Twitter. In January, Elon monetized access to such data streams to prevent Google and Microsoft from getting free access to them to improve their AI chatbots.

For an AI for FSD, Elon gets 160B video frames/day from all Tesla customers which can be fed into a self driving program.

The challenge for AGI is to build robots that can function in the physical world as well, not just on a computer screen. With Tesla and Twitter, Elon has a very strong competitive advantage vs Google and Microsoft.

The Ides of March
(p 461) Elon was still preoccupied with AI being safe and not a threat for humans. What can he do to mitigate that? He met with Isaacson in Austin to talk about AI. He explained that human brain power has plateaued while AI has been increasing exponentially. At some point, the humans will pale in comparison as the AI will move on with unparalleled pace. He urgently felt the need to reach Mars before earth comes to an AI apocalypse. Isaacson was thinking if he should act like this is normal conversation. Elon continued ranting if he should continue Twitter or devote his remaining time on the pursuit of Mars. Immediate call to action? Mars and making AI safe.

X.AI
(p 462) Elon personally recruited Igor Babuschkin from Google's DeepMind to be the chief engineer of Elon's new AI company, X.AI. He wanted it to be an independent company like Neuralink but getting AI engineers were demanding $1M signing bonus at the onset - better to give them stock options of the new company instead.

With X.ai, Elon would be running 6 companies concurrently - 3x more than Steve Jobs at his peak with Apple and Pixar:

1. Tesla - including FSD, SolarCity, Optimus (humanoid robot), Dojo (supercomputer)
2. SpaceX - including Starlink (internet satellite system), Starbase (spaceship to Mars)
3. Boring Company
4. Neuralink
5. Twitter
6. X.ai

Even though Elon admits to being behind in Large Language chat bots, he knows that the bigger picture of AGI, he comes out ahead because he already has AI on the physical world - FSD Tesla and Optimus.

3 Goals for Babuschkin
(p 463) In April, Elon assigned 3 tasks for Babuschkin

1. AI that can write computer code - it should be able to auto complete what a programmer is doing
2. AI that can directly compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT series - but is politically neutral
3. AGI that safeguards human consciousness - it should be able to 'reason', 'think' and pursue 'truth'. It should be able to build better rockets

Ultimately, Elon was envisioning a "maximum truth-seeking AI" - one that is truly interested in knowing the deepest secrets of the universe. This was straight out of Elon's childhood bible, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Risky business
(p 465) April 2023 and Starship is about to launch...the first ever - a booster with 33 Raptor engines. Elon heard horror stories from his engineers how difficult it was to get approval from the regulatory agencies. A bureaucratic impediment to Mars? He gave them a pep talk then went on a philosophical diatribe that civilization is declining because America has been successful too long and they got lazy. No one's taking risks anymore.

“An awesome day”
(p 465) The launch was moved by 3 days due to a faulty valve. On launch day, Grimes and 3 kids were also there. Lift-off was good and the rocket was soon out of sight. But problems arose prompting the rocket to be blown up over water to prevent crashing into populated areas. Video playback revealed that the blast of the more powerful Raptor rockets also blasted concrete out of the launch pad and the debris may have hit some of the rockets. Musk intentionally did not dig a flame trench for the rockets in 2020. During the launch, the water mechanism that was supposed to cool the launch pad foundation was not yet available. The heat without the water was too much even for the high-density concrete launch pad. Even though the rocket failed and had to be exploded, the mission met its goal which was to lift it off the ground and disappear into the sky. There was celebration at the Tiki Bar that night. Hans Koenigsmann was there for the launch but didn't bother to say Hi to Elon.

“Molded out of faults”
(p 468) The explosion of Starship was a metaphor for Elon's life - aiming high, taking risks, acting impulsively, achieving great things, having epic fails and without celebration, shifting into other projects before he gets too comfortable. He is hero-worshipped by the fanboys and gloated on by his critics. Often within that thin line of vision and hallucination, he pursued his dreams with single-focused determination. He made unnecessary strong political assertions that made him many high-level enemies at an alarming rate. He has taken risks not done by mature companies manned by mature CEOs but neither have they achieved so much as Elon did.

Left Hanging....

1. He said Tesla will have a Full Self Driving car at the end of the year....like he always says every year
2. NBC Universal’s advertising chief Linda Yaccarino became CEO of Twitter while Elon remained Board Chair and Chief Technology Officer
3. He removed the Blue checkmark status symbol to the notables in Twitter and only kept them to those who paid subscription
4. For Neuralink, they received approval to implant chips into human brains
5. After a 2nd test drive of Tesla with the Neural Network programming, Elon was a convert. He suggested that it be synced with the FSD Tesla
6. SpaceX remains the only rocket that can take astronauts to the Space Station and come back

Can Elon be excused for being an asshole simply because he achieves great things? NO. But maybe the asshole part and the achiever part are but in one spectrum. You cannot have one without the other. Elon comes as a bundled package. Elon is a risk-seeking man-child who resists potty training.

This is not just a good book about Elon. It's packed with knowledge gleaned from the trenches. Any one can learn a lot just by reading this book.

Elon's Algorithm (in priority sequence)

1. Question every requirement - it doesn't matter if it came from the legal department or safety department, it doesn't matter if the person who made it is smart. The rule is to attach a name to that requirement and question that person - including Elon himself. Then make the requirement less stupid
2. Delete any part or process you can - you can always add them back if it was a mistake. If you didn't add back at least 10%, then you didn't delete enough
3. Simplify and optimize - this comes after Step 2 because it makes no sense simplifying something that should have been deleted to begin with
4. Accelerate cycle time - any process can be speeded up, but follow the priority sequence because you could be accelerating a process that should have been deleted already
5. Automate - this has to be the last when unneccesary process are already deleted and what's left has been simplified and then accelerated. The mistake Elon did was to automate everything before the 'tests' were implemented.

Elon Commandments

1. All technical managers must have hands-on experience - if you're in charge of roofing, then you should be able to install a roof yourself. In short, you add your real-world experience to the job and not just be an order-giver
2. Comradery is dangerous - because it's hard to fire someone who already became your friend. Or it's hard to correct the mistake of someone who has become a friend. Keep an arms-length distance with colleagues.
3. It’s OK to be wrong - no one's perfect. If you're not willing to be wrong, then you'll always stay on the safe side, afraid of making mistakes, not coming up with anything brilliant or noteworthy. Note: Donald Trump said that the worst employee is the 'good' employee because he will not contribute to the leveling-up of the organization. You can't fire him either because he hasn't done anything wrong. Trump, Elon and Steve Jobs all want to filter their crew into the A-List that can go 24/7 of work or contribute great ideas or both.
4. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do - Elon sleeps on the factory floor, gets underneath the assembly line. Note: Mike doesn't order me to clean the dirty pond - he goes into the dirty pond which prompts me to get myself dirty to clean the pond.
5. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers - talk to the guy on the production floor so you know the full story. Managers can be good in hiding things or making mistakes and blaming it on the lower ranks. Note: Antonio Gracias is very good in talking to the production people on the floor to know what's really happening on the ground.
6. When hiring, look for attitude first, then skill - skill can be taught. Attitude is a whole new mine field with deep roots. Note: when applying for Chapters Online, my future boss, Ilan, hired me because he liked my 'moving forward' and 'can do' attitude
7. Laws of physics - they are the only rules - everything else is a recommendation (requirements, guidelines, etc.)
8. Optimize production patches - densities, flow and processes are in sync for a smoother production flow with no bottleneck. This is so obvious in everyday life. E.g. in a supermarket, there's the cashier with a long line of people, and a bagger who's just waiting idly for the next processing. Solution? Have one bagger per 2 cashiers or add more cashiers.
9. Go as close to the source as possible for information - so if you want to know about welding stainless steel, don't talk to the company executives, talk to the welders
10. Question every cost - can it be done in-house for less? Can a cheaper material be substituted? What discount if we buy volume? Even if cost targets were not met, it would have been reduced substantially
11. Maniacal sense of urgency - impose tight deadlines because processes can always be speeded up. Most of Elon's deadlines are unrealistic and sometimes not even warranted. But sometimes, it actually gets done - even the workers surprise themselves. But if the deadline is impossible, and smart engineers know this, they just get demoralized
12. Learn by failing - instead of avoiding problems (as specified by government agencies' protocols), Elon seeks the problems and fixes it. He goes by creating a quick prototype, testing, blowing things up (knowing at what point something blows up), analysing, repeat. He did this in the first launch of Starship with Raptor engines - it did blow up
13. Improvise - when a pressurized tank needed to be replaced due to a bulge, Elon instructed the crew to just hammer it in and test. It worked, saving the company lots of money and precious time. This approach sometimes backfired, but it was inspiring for the crew when it works
14. Finding inspiration from toy models - Elon made Tesla using the one-piece diecast of a toy Model S. This was never done before and there was no manufacturing in existence at that time. It meant having the biggest diecast machine ever to be manufactured. It was done. What used to be made with hundreds of parts that are welded, bonded and rivetted together and still created gaps, leaks and rattling, is now an 80-second job that was quick, easy and cheap to make - it took Elon to have that thing conceptualized and manufactured.
15. Idiot Index - a high ratio between cost of raw material to the finished component meant the manufacturing process was inefficient or the design was too complicated. When an engineer couldn't say the Idiot Index of a component of the top of his mind, Elon chewed him up - it was very traumatic to the engineer
16. Reach out to interesting people - Elon and Kimbal would read about an interesting person in the newspaper. They would reach out. Often, it leads to a lunch conversation, which leads to a job or opportunity
17. Vertical integration - Tesla was successful because it manufactured its own components in-house instead of outsourcing. This proved extrememly useful during the supply-chain crisis when car companies halted production while Tesla continued churning out cars from its assembly line. Additionally, Tesla had quality control and had kept the costs down
18. Designers, Engineers and Production should work together - they should physically be working together close to the production line as possible. They are independent, but should function as one intelligence...or different instruments in an orchestra but delivering harmonious symphony. They should openly communicate to one another. But there should be a distinction if the operation is engineer-centric or design-centric

From a Worker's Perspective

1. Don't say NO to an authocrat - Elon does not take NO for an answer, no matter how unrealistic the goal is. If you have a boss like Elon, don't say NO. Air your concern and finish off saying you'll do your 101%. But document the process and the steps you've taken, so that when it fails, you can show the boss why it failed and remind him of your earlier concerns
2. Being fired vs resigning - these 2 ways of leaving the company kept being bounced around. Either people couldn't stand Elon anymore and resigned or Elon fired them. What are the ramifications? I was curious and took this as an opportunity to learn. I asked ChatGPT:
   
   Fired: if the employee is fired for cause (incompetence or misconduct), it can leave a stigma and affect future career opportunities - more reference checks will have to be made by prospective employers. Unemployment benefits can be taken away. It also produces anxiety and deep emotional disturbance. Severance pay can be withheld if for cause, otherwise, severance can be negotiated (When I was fired from AIM Funds Management for calling my boss incompetent, management looked for dirt to fire me for cause - they couldn't find any. Thus, they had to give me the standard severance pay. However, I told them that I will seek legal counsel to ensure that my rights were not violated - this alarmed them, and I knew I was rattling a saber. Without any further negotiation, the company offered me a generous severance pay and 30 days of Unemployment Benefits. Had I asked for a penny more, my case would have been elevated from HR to Legal. Of course I accepted.)
   
   Resigned: resignation is seen more favorably by a prospective employer. It means you made a pro-active choice and took control of the situation. Unemployment Benefits are sketchy, but if not for cause (unsafe work conditions, harassment, etc), you can negotiate. Severance Pay can be negotiated, especially if you left under amicable terms. Legal consideration might be to sign a non-compete or non-disclosure clause - be careful what you sign. You can usually negotiate the terms - last paycheck, final package, benefits, etc. Unlike being fired where anxiety overwhelms, resigning gives you a sense of control and empowerment.
   
   Musts: either way, you must update your resume, network extensively and seek career counseling. Seek emotional support from friends and family during this difficult period.

For starters, let me say that I'm perhaps the biggest fan of Johnny Harris and his advocy on 'new' journalism. He is redefining the legacy and now-irrelevant format of journalism into something engaging, relevant and thought provoking. I've watched ALL his videos and I'm eagerly anticipating the next one.

I've read the book by Walter Isaacson and I agree with all the facts Johnny presented. What I don't agree on is the balance in which his video was presented and I don't agree with his conclusion.

1. Balance - Johnny talked about Elon's over achievements and how much of a hyprocrite Elon is about his "Free Speech" turn-around. But Johnny probably put a 30% weight on Elon's achievement and 70% on the Free Speech issue. I found it lop-sided. I would rebalance Elon's contribution as 5% hypocricy and 95% service to humanity (yes, the chasm is that wide).
2. Conclusion - Johnny essentially ended his video with this message:

   "Elon is an asshole and a hypocrite".

   His viewers in all likelihood came away with that take-out impression. Elon is indeed an asshole, but his being an asshole pales in comparison to his achievements. I think being an asshole and hypocrite are miniscule compared to the crimes of others who contributed nothing to humanity yet received accolades - Kissinger, a war criminal who is responsible for the senseless killing of 180,000 innocent Cambodians and Laotians (citizens of neutral countries in the Vietnam War) receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973? Did Elon get anyone killed? Did he initiate regime change? Did he bomb any nation?
   
   I believe that a fair conclusion would be more along the lines of:
   

   "Elon Musk is an asshole and a hyprocrite for reversing himself in his Free Speech stand. But he single-handedly developed the Tesla EV and propagated solar roofing (SolarCity) for green energy, took space exploration into private hands (SpaceX) and out of NASA's incompetence to build a re-usable rocket, send astronauts to the Space Station, launch Starlink satellites for increased global connectivity and eventually colonize Mars. He also pushed the boundaries of AI by creating Optimus the humanoid robot, a FSD car (full-self-driving Tesla) and Dojo deep learning to aid humankind and protect it against malevolent AI. No other human in history has single-handedly achieved (and still achieving) so much on a concurrent basis."

I believe the above is more objective with a more accurate conclusion.