Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

I just finished the bio of Elon Musk, written by Walter Isaacson, the author who has also written the bio of Steve Jobs. A bio that has way more content and excitement than a general fiction.

Musk is a living legend pushing the boundaries of technology.

People either love or hate Musk. Yet, there is no doubt that Musk has lived, and is living an extraordinary life. Back in the 1990s, Musk made his first pot of gold by developing a yellow page with a map function. This is what it looked like.

Then, he went on to found PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. (Neuralink's aim is to connect human brain to a computer. Two years ago, they have successfully allowed a money to play a computer, just by its brain wave and without a joystick. See the link here. This is sic-fi in living.) Any one of the above companies could fundamentally change the world, and he owns 4. (He is now the CEO of 6 companies, including X, previously known as Twitter.)

He has literally changed the world, from sustainable energy to making personal space travel possible, by being ruthless, setting maniac deadlines and having an incredible sense of technology and business.

And he gets more powerful than anyone could imagine. For example, with Starlink, Musk has Internet access from the space that is controlled by him, which allowed him to indirectly affect the Ukraine war.

Musk is not happy

You could not succeed without risk and hard-work. To achieve Musk's unbelievable accomplishment, you have to take unbelievable risk and work unbelievably hard.

Isaacson had an interview with Musk on the day he became the richest person in the world, and instead of being the most joyful person worldwide that day, Musk was on a horrible mood.

“From 2007 onwards, it’s nonstop pain. There’s a gun to your head, make Tesla work, pull a rabbit out of your hat, then pull another rabbit out of the hat. A stream of rabbits flying through the air. If the next habit does not come out, you’re dead. You can’t be in a constant fight for survival, always in adrenaline mode, and not have it hurt you," Musk said in one of his interview after one of his many health incidents in the 2020s. There was a picture in the book showing Must looking at two screens at the same time. He was checking Tesla's progress of producing 5,000 model 3 cars per week, and watching a SpaceX rocket launch at the same time. That is some real multi-tasking. My stomach hurt reading this paragraph.

His relationship with Grimes, one of his partners, is described as, "companionship, co-parenting, loneliness avoidance, boundary setting, estrangement, blocking, ghosting, and re-embracing." How could one be satisfied in such a complicated relationship. And without meaningful relationship, how could one be happy?

This is the exact opposite of the sharing in “I may be wrong”, the sharing of the forest Monk. He does not live in the present - he lives in the constant pursuit of the future.

Musk is compromised

From what is stated in the book, Musk is extremely unkind to his employees. He would unhesitantly fire workers who have not gone home for weeks to work for him, for failing to answer one of his random questions, or not being in the office at 11 p.m on a Friday night, or not meeting a deadline, or simply for his bad mood.

He is at times a hypocrite. While he claimed to champion the freedom of speech, he said that Twitter had to be careful about the words it used regarding China, because Tesla’s business could be threatened.

He says sustaining humanity is his sole goal. But he mentioned China’s repression of Uyghurs had two sides. With these statements, I personally lose a lot of respect to him (not that it means anything..).

After all, I get it - he is a businessman, the richest and probably the most powerful businessman. But, he could not really care about freedom of speech and humanity as he says, if he make such statements that are directly against humanity.

This is a good read and allow me to glimpse into the life of one of the most important people of the century. The most interesting part for me is the price he pays for his success, however that is defined. I am partly glad that I am a perfectly normal, chill guy living my ordinary life.