Elon Musk, the great disruptor

Walter Isaacson’s biography

How can a victim of family violence, who grew up amidst the violence of apartheid in South Africa, become one of the most consequential people of the modern advanced world? How can someone who cares so much about the future of humanity demonstrate such little empathy for those in his work and family life? What motivates the world’s richest man (the world’s first trillionaire) to keep taking great business risks rather than investing his immense wealth in philanthropic endeavours like Bill Gates?

Walter Isaacson offers insights into these questions in his biography of Elon Musk, which was published in September 2023, before President Donald Trump appointed Musk to the controversial role of head of the short-lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It is an engaging book of 95 short chapters over almost 700 pages, which capture the fast-paced life of Musk. Moreover, it is a narrative based on the two years that Isaacson spent shadowing Musk, but does not seek to make judgments of Musk’s behaviour.

Demons in Musk’s head

A recurrent theme is the seeming incongruity of someone who is capable of immense brilliance, especially in the engineering side of his projects, but is often lacking in human empathy. He has “demons in his head”, the consequence of extreme brutality of his father, and which are responsible for some of the darker sides of his personality. He may have a pugnacious and impulsive personality, but he is also a driven person who has been able to do things that others could not.

Is Musk’s hard-nosed approach to human relations an unavoidable counterpart to his engineering brilliance? Isaacson’s answer is perhaps, although not all brilliant innovators embody this complex cocktail of yin and yang. Another part of the answer is that there are multiple Musks, he can be a Jekyll and Hyde character. The man can on occasions be immensely charming, only to switch as his dark side comes back to the surface. His mood can change on a dime.

One of Musk’s paradoxes is that he inspires some staff, but he also runs through a lot of people rather quickly. He is characterised by the Reality Distortion Field, the charismatic ability to convince his team and himself that seemingly impossible tasks and strict deadlines were achievable.

Musk’s epic quests

Musk is motivated by epic quests. He's in the business of saving the world. He believes that survival of the human race requires sustainable energy, becoming a multiplanetary civilisation, lifting human fertility, and protection against artificial intelligence and robots which could go rogue. He has an almost Messianic quality as he believes that if Tesla fails the planet is doomed, if SpaceX fails we'll never become a multiplanetary civilisation, if we can’t stop the decline in human fertility the future of humanity is at risk (Elon Musk has publicly confirmed he has 14 children with four different women), or if we don't deal with the AI issue we're going to be overwhelmed by the robots and computers. Isaacson argues that Musk’s epic visions of himself come from being a lonely socially awkward kid who retreated into a world of science fiction after suffering immense brutality.

At the heart of Musk’s behaviour is an engineering algorithm by which he questions every rule, regulation or reason why something cannot be done. He is dismayed that the US has lost its risk-taking spirit. America used to be a nation of risk takers – whether you came on the Mayflower, across the Rio Grand or from Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 30s, you took risks. Today, America has more referees than risk takers, and more lawyers and regulators than innovators. He argues that collegiality and empathy are not your friend. If you're trying to please all the people around you, you'll lose sight of the mission.

Musk’s management style

His management style is to focus with an urgent intensity on the details in the belief that this will ripple through the enterprise. Indeed, he's addicted to drama and risk, such that when everything seems to be going smoothly he almost has a compulsion to invent a reason for adopting almost impossible deadlines. He calls for a “surge”.

At a time when many American companies, like Apple, were offshoring much of their production, and focusing on innovation at home, Musk decided that his companies would make all their components themselves. Designers should have their desks next to the factory assembly line, so that they can walk the factory every day, and iterate hour by hour and see what works. He believes that managers should be like Napoleon, riding on the battlefield.

Musk’s successes

Musk is uniquely successful. Tesla, his electric vehicle company of which he is the largest shareholder, flirted with bankruptcy in 2019. But today it is by far the world’s most valuable motor vehicle company. SpaceX, of which Musk is the primary owner, is the world’s most important aerospace and satellite company, with a near-monopoly on global rocket launches. It builds and operates the vast majority of active satellites in orbit via Starlink, and serves as an irreplaceable national asset. The US government, including the military and intelligence services, is now highly dependent on Musk, as neither Boeing nor NASA is capable of such rocket launching.

Musk’s unique status was highlighted in the early stages of the Ukraine war. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine had no way to communicate with its troops as Russia knocked out all the satellites it was using. But Musk’s SpaceX provided thousands of Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine, which served as a vital lifeline for Ukrainian military communications and civilians. Mykhailo Fedorov, then First Vice Prime Minister, credits Musk with saving Ukraine.

But things became complicated when the Ukrainians wanted to use Starlink to launch a secret attack on the Russian fleet in Crimea. Musk then decided to “geofence” Starlink so that it could not be used to launch such an attack. Following his discussions with the Russian ambassador in Washington, he feared a nuclear response by the Russians which could cause World War 3. Uncomfortable with his new geopolitical role, Musk subsequently granted access to Starlink by the US government in the form of the variant dubbed “Starshield”.

From Twitter to X

Perhaps Musk’s most curious decision was to buy Twitter, which he renamed “X”. Isaacson speculates on the possible reasons. Musk had lots of money lying around which provided temptation. He also thought that Twitter had become too “wokish”, restricting freedom of speech – the “woke mind virus”. This started with Covid and lockdowns.

Another factor could be his ejection from Paypal, which he wanted to become a financial system connected to a social network and be named X. So he may seek to transform Twitter into this vision. Isaacson writes that while Musk may be a great material scientist, he has no feel for human emotions, and is thus ill-placed to manage X. Musk has used it as a personal megaphone, promoting right-wing views on hot-button culture-war issues such as immigration and transgender rights.

From business to politics

Musk has a number of other business interests. Tesla has been active in solar energy and battery storage since its acquisition of SolarCity in 2016. Musk is also chief executive of Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company he co-founded in 2016. Founded in 2016, The Boring Company is Musk's tunnel construction and underground transport venture. SpaceX also sits at the centre of Musk's growing artificial intelligence ambitions through its ties to xAI and social media platform X.

In sum, Musk’s companies have kept America at the forefront of the defining industries of our era

Musk, too, has deeply involved himself in politics. Over the past few years, Musk has shifted from being an Obama democrat to the populist right that includes even Bobby Kennedy Jr. He aligned himself with Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign before going on to lead the Trump administration’s controversial campaign, under Department of Government Efficiency, to cut waste and fraud in the federal government.

What is the future for Elon Musk?

Musk does not see the value of philanthropy like Bill Gates. He believes that his companies are making a greater contribution to human welfare. Moreover, he is always looking for drama. He's always putting his chips back on the table, always risking things. He loves being in the arena. He is a drama magnet. Peter Theil, the controversial far-right Silicon Valley entrepreneur, said that most great entrepreneurs know how to calculate risk. But he said Musk is different, he's addicted to risk.

Since the publication of Isaacson’s book, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX executed the largest initial public offering in world history, debuting on the Nasdaq on June 12 with a $75 billion offering. One consequence is that Musk, the world’s richest person, is now the world’s first trillionaire.

Isaacson notes that people either love him or hate Musk. He concludes however that we should avoid such polarising views. As Shakespeare argues, even the best people are molded out of faults, we are a rich tapestry.