"Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson
Above: "Elon Musk," by Walter Isaacson. 688 pages. I completed reading this book in August 2024.
Elon Musk is one of the leading positive influencers for continued human progress in a world where human advancement seems to have slowed. Elon Musk is one of today's few eminent humans having the capacity to lead a rebirth of optimism about humanity's future. Musk's vision focuses on a commitment to assure human liberty, on celebrating the expansion of human consciousness, and on increasing the odds of humanity's long-term survival. Isaacson's book may not be the only way to build an understanding of Elon Musk. But understand him you must if you want to better comprehend how an Elon led burst of human progress impacts you and your family and how you might get on the bandwagon yourself. Isaacson's book is a good start to building such understanding.
Introduction
Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, Neuralink, the Boring Company, Optimus, Starlink and X (Twitter). Musk is co-founder, with Sam Altman, of OpenAI. At this writing, Musk is the world's wealthiest man with a net worth of $270 billion. In "Elon Musk," after chronicling Musk's early life, Isaacson, who followed Musk around for two years to acquire material for the book, outlines the story of Musk's business accomplishments, including manufacturing breakthroughs, and his impact on our world, interlaced with interludes of family and private life.
We learn from Isaacson's account that Musk is not just a successful businessman. He's a larger than life, once in an era, figure, whose creative direction and pattern of accomplishment has a discernible potential impact on continuing human progress and humanity's survival.
Should Elon Musk succeed in establishing a human colony on Mars, he will be remembered, 4000 years hence, as Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, is remembered today... that is, as the only recognizable name from 4000 years prior. Musk, via his X (Twitter) acquisition and roll out of Starlink, deserves secular canonization for his commitment to free speech in an era when totalitarian forces around the world, including in the US, are on the move to quell freedom of expression. Musk's commitment to defend human consciousness in the wake of AI's potential to replace it, forces reflection on the value, or not, of humanity itself. Elon Musk's warning about the risks to human civilization of population decline causes us to reflect on the impact of our own selfish and narcissistic lifestyles. Aside: Musk's concern about declining birthrates may help explain his own unorthodox pattern of breeding - he has eleven children by three women.
Selected Takeaways from "Elon Musk."
To build his empire, Musk lived on the edge more often than not using his own money. He put his first $13 million from Zip2 into what became PayPal, the $250 million from PayPal was directed to SpaceX ($100 million) and Tesla ($70 million) among others, only for those two alone to nearly bankrupt him. Capital gains provide him with the means to continually pursue the impossible.
Time is precious for Musk. Sleeping on factory floors and all-night meetings are de rigueur for Musk seemingly always under pressure with looming self-imposed deadlines.
As an entrepreneur Musk seeks to create needs, not meet them. Cybertrucks: “I don’t care if no one buys it. I don’t do focus groups.”
Peter Thiel famously laments the slowing of human progress. "Yes," Thiel says, we are making some progress in bytes (internet, AI), but not in bits (things). Elon Musk is an avatar of the revival of human (bits) progress. Musk's companies have made significant breakthroughs in auto manufacturing (Tesla, SpaceX), robotics (Tesla, Optimus), rocketry (SpaceX), and communications (Starlink). Isaacson ably chronicles the stories behind these "bit" breakthroughs.
No crony capitalist, Musk has skirted financial ruin several times.
Musk is obsessive on costs. Musk is obsessive about getting rockets into space with fewer and fewer expensive inputs. The Isaacson narrative of Musk's shedding 80% of X (Twitter) staff on taking it over is a priceless tutorial on cost management. Musk, an unabashed Trump ally, is now talking about leading an efficiency taskforce, should Trump be elected president in 2024, to pare down the size the deep state US Government using the successful X cost cutting effort as a model. Shudder. No wonder the deep state bigs and their state-controlled media partners don't like DJT.
Musk on coronavirus. "The harm from the coronavirus panic far exceeds that of the virus itself.”
Musk on AI: "Our biggest existential threat." And what about Musk's philosophical battle on AI's future with Google's Larry Page? Page says, "let AI go where it goes even if human consciousness is threatened. It's the nature of progress." Musk says, "No, in considering a strategy for AI, all effort must be applied to preserve human consciousness." Wow! Is the general public prepared for entering an era where the nature of human consciousness is up for debate... where technology that could overpower human consciousness is in sight? The game is on. Musk is developing his own large language model AI platform as an antidote to Google"s AI "run amok" ChatGPT.
Musk's ancestors were risk taking swashbucklers... speculators, dare devils, opportunistic, entrepreneurial, romantics. A reader can't help but speculate about how Musk's ancestry shaped his own risk taking and creative attributes. The first fifth of the book, which deals with Musk's ancestry and upbringing, is important in understanding Musk. I recently read Michael Lewis's biography of Sam Bankman-Fried, "Going Infinite." "Going Infinite" by Michael Lewis | Stephen DeWitt I was struck by the similarities between Musk and Bankman-Fried. Both are on the spectrum. Both are obsessed with work... ie. overnighters at the workplace were the rule for both and not the exception. Neither was comfortable at social gatherings. Both pushed their employees to make exceeding job performance expectations the norm. Yet, Bankman-Fried was a con man and Musk was a value creator. What was the reason that two otherwise seeming similar figures operated on opposing moral planes? Provenance surely had much to do with it. Musk's authentic, buccaneer, adventurer ancestry was a world away from the inauthentic, amoral, unempathetic, and self-adulating, elitist college professor parentage of Bankman-Fried. Oxymoronically, Bankman-Fried's severe, ill-gotten mother was a Stanford ethics professor as she fit right in with the conscienceless atmosphere of America's elite colleges today (!). Though Musk became estranged from his confabulating father, Errol possessed a consistent authenticity not found in the sterile Bankman-Frieds. Elon inherited many of dad's quirks. Both were brusque when dealing with others; neither suffered fools gladly. Elon has stayed close to his dietician/model mother, Maye. Maye, also authentic, has always been there to support her son, even in the darkest moments.
Musk's South African upbringing was rough and tumble. There were bullies at his school. Elon, in Isaacson's account, had to deal with the bullies on his own. The contrast between anti bullying protocols in today's US public schools and Musk's laissez faire school setting gives rise to conjecture about whether or not pampering our own children today on the schoolyard prevents them from learning essential lessons required for them to thrive as adults. In the fourth grade, Jack Lott used to chase me around the playground at Maeser Elementary School in Provo, UT. If he caught me, he beat me up. Like Musk, I had to figure out on my own how to deal with Jack Lott. I built a group of school buddy allies who would rally to my defense when Jack Lott threatened. Jack Lott eventually gave up. Elon's solving his own bullying problem surely made him, as it did me, better prepared to confront interpersonal related challenges in later life.
Musk, even today, has a genuine love for video games. Musk: "Killing the demons in a video game kills the demons in my mind." Huh? I thought video games were an impediment to child development?!
From his teens, Musk has been an acolyte of Douglas Adams and his sci fi classic, "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Adams' character Arthur Dent asks, "the universe is the answer, what are the questions?" "To ask the most prescient questions requires constantly expanding humanity's collective intelligence," says Musk. Should Musk succeed in making humanity a multi planetary species, Douglas Adams will be the philosophical inspiration for that quest.
Musk knew that holding a grudge could be an impediment to progress. Musk had a vision of a multi-product, full service, online bank which would be called X. He merged his nascent company, X, with PayPal, which was doing much of the same customer research as X. It made sense for PayPal and X to combine efforts. The PayPal guys (Max Levchin, David Sacks, Peter Thiel and others), the PayPal Mafia, wanted to stick with creating a payments only company and not a diversified online bank. The PayPal Mafia conspired to kick Musk off the board when he was traveling in Oz. Relationships were tense when Musk returned, but Musk, later reached out to his business partners to successfully reconcile. This reconciliation effort showed Musk, often seen as a hot head, capable of putting potential longer term business interests ahead of personal passions.
The X (Twitter) acquisition shows Musk to be a passionate crusader for free speech even as the arithmetic of his Twitter deal looks shaky. Musk's X stand on free speech has brought unwanted pushback in the form of regulatory hurdles, delayed permissions, lawsuits etc. from entities (US Government, California State Government, EU, Brazil to name a few) seeking to quell open dialogue. Musk's defiant stance in preserving free speech on X in the wake of this pushback is awe inspiring. But Musk's vision for Twitter goes well beyond the establishment of a free speech social media platform. Circle back to the X online bank Musk wanted to build during the PayPal merger and consider Twitter (the new X) as the new platform for that original dream earlier stymied by the PayPal Mafia.
Though one of his eleven children is estranged, Musk is a doting father. He famously brought his two-year-old son X to his meetings where he negotiated his purchase of X (Twitter). There are numerous examples throughout the book where Musk interacts positively with his children.
Four Insights into Elon Musk
On Management Style. Isaacson highlighted examples of Musk's "maniacal" pursuit of excellence throughout the Musk biography. Musk would set task expectations that his employees felt were impossible to fulfill. "We can do 100%," his people told him, "But not the 150% you are asking for." The employee pushback was met by Musk with some form of "well, if you can't do it, I'll find someone who can" reply. When the employees came back with 125%, they learned that they could achieve much more than they first believed they could, and Musk, pleased, accepted the result.
During my financial services career I was lucky to have a couple of bosses who managed me much in the same way. Out of fear, I put in the effort and accomplished beyond my own expectations of my abilities. Both of the bosses laid the money on me, in amounts beyond my expectations, when I delivered the results. I experienced a heady level of self-esteem and self confidence in addition to the financial reward as a result of my achievements. I applied this management principle with success in my own varied managerial roles. Not all employees will respond successfully to this type of pressure. Some employees will not make the cut and have to be let go or be reassigned. I learned that true accomplishment and the self-esteem that derives from it doesn't occur without experiencing some form of pain.
One of the keys of being a good leader is knowing how to inflict "pain" wisely. Musk may be difficult. But he brings out the best in the best people. That is an important key to his success.
On Space Travel. I have come to believe, even before hearing about Elon Musk's obsession with making humanity a multi planetary species, that it is likely that earth is the only place where life as we know it exists in the universe. That earth is alone as having life in the galaxy/universe is, of course, very much a contrarian view. On a motorcycle ride (Triumph Rocket III) circa 2010 I visited the Kitt Peak National Observatory fifty-five miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona. There I learned about the Drake Equation, a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. While the Drake Equation variables were highly conjectural, the implication of the equation was that there were numerous planets in the galaxy that could, theoretically, support life.
In contradistinction to the Drake hypothesis, Musk cites the Fermi Paradox which is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. Musk says, "if life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now." Musk's passion to colonize Mars and beyond derives from his belief that "we're it," and therefore there is an imperative, or destiny, for mankind to hedge its survival bets by populating other planets. Interestingly, Stephen Hawking also held this view.
On the Spectrum. Musk, who acknowledges that he may be on the spectrum and who (as I noted earlier in this review) exhibits personal, unempathetic, behavior that could confirm that, saw himself as somewhat of a social misfit. He'd go to parties with his brother and friends, but he'd end up as more of an observer than a full party participant. No one has ever said I'm on the spectrum, but I've considered myself socially tainted ever since I didn't get invited to Irene Greene's dance party when I was in the fifth grade. Since then, I've shied away from cozying up to social insiders or social trendsetters. I was "star" center on the high school basketball team, and I, along with best friend, "star" guard Hippo, while staying, mostly, but not always, outside of the cool kids orbit (Hippo and I even turned down an invitation to join their club), had considerable status in the school, having positive relations with the broad majority of the students, whom many of the cool kids ignored.
I didn't build rockets as an antidote to self-perceived social awkwardness. But I had some success in managing financial services business turnarounds. In life I have cast a wide net to develop social relationships. As a boss, I believe my ability to discern the difference between underlying talent and con artists derived, at least in part, from my early skepticism about the socially prominent. Fortunately, I have learned over the course of my life that social prominence is not mutually exclusive from being talented, high in character, and empathetic. But I believe that my own social clumsiness may have imbued me with greater discernment than might have otherwise been the case with respect to evaluating people's competence, sincerity, authenticity and intent. Was Musk's own social awkwardness, in fact, a benefit for him when it came to understanding the people dynamic?
On the blurring of work and fun. I loved the account from Isaacson's book on how Musk would sit down in all night sessions with his rocket experts to name the SpaceX rockets. Musk didn't want any jargony, numerical/alphabet names for his rockets. In naming the rockets, Musk and his rocket team took inspiration from Star War's Millennium Falcon space craft and came up with names like, Falcon, Draco, Merlin, Kestrel and Raptor. Issacson describes the passionate, joyful engagement of Musk and his rocketeers as they selected names for the SpaceX rockets. Moral? You can, and should have, fun as you create.
Ten years ago, at San Francisco's Battery Club, I attended a limited partners private equity fund annual meeting where Elon Musk was the speaker. The fund where I was invested had considerable SpaceX holdings. The audience Q and A with Musk was boring with a lot of tedious financial discussion. Even Musk seemed bored. I got ahold of the roving mike and asked Musk if he had seen the movie, "The Martian," and if he had seen it, what he thought of it. The heretofore characterless tone of the after-dinner Q and A session totally flipped. Elon responded to my question with zeal and enthusiasm saying he had seen the movie and that movies like "The Martian," helped condition the population to accepting the imperative and possibility of space travel. In answering my question, Musk showed the same boyish enthusiasm as was described in Issacson's account of Musk and his rocket experts naming their rockets. Creativity and fun are not mutually exclusive.
SDT Book Endorsement
Elon Musk is one of the leading positive influencers for continued human progress in a world where human advancement seems to have slowed. Elon Musk is one of today's few eminent humans having the capacity to lead a rebirth of optimism about humanity's future. Musk's vision focuses on a commitment to assure human liberty, on celebrating the expansion of human consciousness, and on increasing the odds of humanity's long-term survival. Isaacson's book may not be the only way to build an understanding of Elon Musk. But understand him you must if you want to better comprehend how an Elon led burst of human progress impacts you and your family and how you might get on the bandwagon yourself. Isaacson's book is a good start to building such understanding.
PS. How did I get through this book review without talking about Tesla? A reader of Isaacson's book could easily do a review where Musk's Tesla success would inform the greater part of the review discussion. Musk's starting as a minority shareholder/board member in a nascent electric car company, later becoming CEO and then, designing, testing and manufacturing at scale to create an auto company that within ten years acquired a net worth of which exceeded all other auto manufacturers is a world class story on its own. Isaacson recounts the Tesla story well. Notwithstanding, I'm personally ambivalent on electric vehicles. I append here a link to a write-up that provides some insight on my lack of enthusiasm about EV's.EVs. Not Yet My Cup of Tea | Stephen DeWitt Taylor