On with Kara Swisher - Why We Can’t Quit Elon with Ronan Farrow & William Cohan

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

We’re talking about Elon – again – but this time we're looking at the big picture: the tech titan’s “unprecedented power” over our the federal government and national security, as encapsulated in Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ronan Farrow's latest New Yorker profile. William Cohan, a financial journalist and founding partner of Puck News, also joins to break down the varying fortunes of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, and the sustainability of those companies under a leader that is ambitious, but capricious. Stay til the end to hear Kara tell Nayeema why, despite his shenanigans, she still has empathy for Elon Musk.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. I'm pretty much only his. Not kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Neymar Aza. And Elon is, yeah, he said that there is no more great social network. Though he's trying his very best, he said. And he's starting by what? Taking away the block feature. He's trying his very best to ruin one that was okay.

It was pretty good. Your favorite one. What do you mean okay? Yeah, it's my favorite. It was my favorite. It had a lot of problems. It had pre-Elon problems, and it will have post-Elon problems. Unfortunately, we don't have a block feature for Elon on this podcast,

because we're talking about him again. Yeah, we are. Because we have to. Because actually, there's been a, one of the things I'm very heartened about is we're not talking about stupid things like his idiotic tweets or cage matches or whatever. But we're talking about a real thing, which is the national security threats and the national security issues around his ownership of key parts of our world, our infrastructure, including charging, including space, including drones, and including Starlink, which is the way people in Ukraine are using to wage the war there, the communication system. And so I think it's more important to talk about that, and it's on the occasion of an article by Ronan Farrow about focused in on this, which I think is the most important thing people should be talking about. Yes. And in a moment, we're going to bring on Ronan Farrow, who's one of our guests today. He's the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who, on Monday, released a new New Yorker piece on Elon.

Everyone needs to write an Elon story these days. And then there's William Cohen, a founding partner of Puck News and the New York Times bestselling financial journalist, someone you've talked to a lot. Yeah, I like consulting, Bill, because there's financial implications to this too. And I really would like to focus on the serious issues, and this is one of them, is what does it mean when one unstable billionaire who's the richest person in the world controls really important parts of our, which should be public infrastructure. And is that a good thing? And while you can reward him for the innovation of doing it, where's our government here? Yeah, what I liked about Ronan's piece here is that while it kind of ends with an exploration

of Twitter and Elon's likely kind of ketamine-fueled hardcore grind. Allegedly. Allegedly. It starts with a much bigger stakes question, which is Elon's power in Starlink. It starts with this scene of the kind of back and forth on Ukraine, something we talked about at the time. And it looks at the kind of access and sway he has when it came to the Pentagon, the White House, Zelensky, even Putin. And then Ronan's piece looks at tentacles everywhere. So not just in the theaters of wartime communication, but also in launching rockets to space with SpaceX, helping the

president meet climate standards or targets with Tesla. And finally, the narrative power he's amassed on Twitter. And Ronan frames it as, in the past, this is a quote from the article, in the past 20 years against a backdrop of crumbling infrastructure and declining trust in institutions, Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where after decades of privatization, the state has receded. Do you think that was Elon's investment or entrepreneurship thesis? Or do you think that's just accidental? No, I don't think it's accidental. I think he saw an opportunity. Our government, this is something I've been talking about for two years

now. Like, why is there, I mean, I wrote a column in the Times a couple years ago about the privatization of space, the privatization of lots of things. And it's more than, you know, look, big companies have always been involved in these things, whether it's the big aerospace companies or weapons companies. They've always been involved. But no single one person based on peak has been allowed to make decisions like this. And that's what's very different here. And I think that's what Ronan's story pointed out. Yeah, and I think it did a good job of it.

It also makes you think in the global context, because I've lived in a lot of countries where one person does make the decision, autocracies, but often they have some kind of responsive legitimacy, let's say, even if they're not elected at the polls. In this case, the American context, here is somebody who has amassed enough power through the private sector to really influence and affect government from regulating him. And in other countries, Elon is a taker, actually, in a little way. I mean, he has some sway, but he's also a taker. The Chinese aren't going to let him run rampant. Here he has amassed power, not just in industries, but over people and people's minds and hearts and minds. Well, some people's minds. Which is dangerous, right?

Yeah. Well, I don't really care if it that that part of it, I don't care about because that's the way we've had people like him throughout our history. Joe McCarthy, you know, Huey Long, William Randolph Hearst. This is not a new and fresh thing, Donald Trump. And so what is more is this where we are, we've reached the natural progression of capitalism, which some people think is a good thing, but it seems like all it does is concentrate into smaller and smaller hands, and now it's in a pair of very small hands of someone who's somewhat unstable. Oh, gosh, Kara, are you making tiny hands jokes?

I'm making tiny, I don't know, he probably has big hands. He does have big hands. Let me be clear, I have seen his hands, they're big hands. Fact check, Elon has sizable hands. He does. He does. Okay, now that we've covered that, do you think that the power that he's amassed has deterred regulators from taking a closer look at him? Because certainly he has a lot of sway. He kind of defies FAA orders, court requests, pushes government around on the universal electric chargers requirement. I mean, has he gotten too big and has government gotten too meek? He does it in San Francisco. He takes down a sign

or puts up a very dangerous sign and doesn't care. He's someone who violates laws all the time. And he's very right. Nobody just does that because they think they're going to get stopped, but you really aren't. You really could do a lot of damage if you just have no, if you're shameless about just violating rules. Yeah. And the irony is that this would never have become, America would never have become the capitalist kind of haven it has become if there were no rule of law. And people who have gotten rich off of that are now undermining that rule of law, right?

If you flaunt government- The history of the United States is people undermining the rule of law, but okay. No, but the idea that you could come build a business here comes from knowing that your contracts can be enforced. You know, and Elon tried very hard to wriggle out of his own contracts and he's trying not to show up in court and others.

I guess. I think he comes from a long line of mavericks. That's a complimentary way of saying it. Mavericks. Yeah, I think this is an American. Wherever you come from, he's from South Africa, obviously, but it just is. It's an American trope.

He's the American dream. It's a trope. It's one of the many tropes of America, and he's one of them. The big value of Ronan's piece is that it kind of ties, it's a very good tie-up piece. It's not as much about the fresh reporting, but it's about the contextualization of the power of someone like Elon Musk. And my big curiosity reading it was, what was his reporting journey like? Because a lot of these people seem afraid to be on the record. Someone at the Pentagon says, I'll talk to you if Elon wants us to. People seem to live in fear of Elon Musk.

Well, he's the richest man in the world, and he controls many levers of power, so they should be scared of him. And he's shown an interest in using those levers, so that's why. Yeah. The most vociferous critics here might have been Reid Hoffman. Yeah. In this whole piece. Were you surprised by that? I was surprised. I was surprised. I thought, Reed is a very circumspect person. He always tries to see the good side of people, but those were pretty tough. He's very worried.

He's clearly worried about Elon. He wouldn't have said those things on the record if he wasn't. And I think things have escalated in terms of his state, his behavior, and his willingness to use his power in ways that are inappropriate. and his willingness to use his power in ways that are inappropriate. Yeah. And Reid Hoffman, of course, is maybe going to be a competitor to Elon in the AI space, but seemed to be coming at this with broader... He's not trying to get Elon. He would do anything but want to do this. Some of the best sources he seemed to have were these mid-level government bureaucrats, safety folks like Stephen Cliff from the Deputy Safety Administrator of the DOT,

or Garrett Brown at Occupational Health and Safety in California. And it reminded me of people like Brad Raffensperger, like government bureaucrats who were standing in the way of Donald Trump during the elections, like trying to call out bad behavior, whether it's poorly reported information when it comes to self-driving cars or people who have a view on him.

And in that way, the piece kind of makes the argument that government is a good thing without actually saying that. It can be. It certainly can be. And there shouldn't be a single, unaccountable, unelected person making decisions like this. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Ronan Farrow to understand his reporting journey in this piece and also Bill Cohen to understand if Elon can keep it all together financially and otherwise. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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Hey, Cara. Great to be here. So, Ronan, I'm going to start with you. You've done huge investigative pieces on Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Eric Schneiderman. Tell me why this profile on Elon. I was surprised when you called me about it. Were you assigned? Did you seek it out?

Or does every reporter have to file at least one Elon story? That's like the state of the media right now, which I think is indicative of something that I didn't fully reckon with, which is just the degree to which understanding Elon Musk's behavioral patterns, his personality has been mined, as you say, by kind of everyone. I mean, this is a man who's the subject of more biographies than any public figure I can think of in the shortest number of recent years. public figure I can think of in the shortest number of recent years. The thing that I felt was underexplored as I started to look at Musk's influence and his rise in different fields was the systems around him and how he interacts with them. The fact that the U.S. government has become so dependent on him in so many ways. The fact that there's this situation with little precedent where government officials have to treat him as kind of an elected figure.

And where there's a lot of good in the way he identifies areas in which the government has let progress go fallow and underinvested for years and years, and then kickstarts those areas. But then also, I think a lot to be cautious about and concerned about in the way in which we just don't have ways to restrain that power, right? If the state recedes in this way, and you have a single man, essentially, who is the only way we can get NASA crew into space from U.S. soil, who is the linchpin of the government's green energy plan to get more electric charging across the country. This is concerning when you then have patterns of erratic behavior, you know, whims that come up, political views that, you know,

sometimes are not totally straightforward, right? Yeah, I think everyone expected Elon Musk to be sort of a staunch ally of the Ukrainian cause going into that conflict. He provides all of the Internet satellite access in that country. That's really important to the outcome of that conflict. That's a situation where I document the twists and turns of it seems like he was telling people for a while he was talking to the Kremlin. Suddenly he's presenting peace plans that are very pro-Russia. And you have this strange situation where the government doesn't, at the outset of that story, have a deal with this guy. Like we've created a situation at this stage of capitalism where we are reliant on these hyper-billionaire figures and on private industry in all sorts of ways.

And then I think this is a case where sometimes we pay a price for that. And we cede a whole lot of power in ways we're not fully reflecting on. That's, I think, what I wanted to get at chiefly. So, Bill, talk about this, because this is something you and I have talked about a lot. You've written about all kinds of big companies controlling various things from GE, which was a big player, but you'd never see Jack Welch, you know, weigh in on anything, for example. And they were a critical player for the US government for many years and still are. Yeah, I think the beauty of what Ronan has brought to bear here is to show us, you know, the power that the really unprecedented situation with, you know, Elon Musk, you know, controlling the communications in Ukraine, being the one to

ferry astronauts up to the International Space Station to put up on this unbelievable number of satellites. By the way, you know, to see it in the sky is incredible. I mean, you really scratch your head saying, what the heck is that? Yeah. Someone just said that to me the other day. Google it and figure it out. And then you could say, okay, it's just Elon being Elon. But there's really, it's totally unprecedented. And, you know, it's sort of like a natural, unfortunately, extension of our capitalist system, you know, late-stage capitalism, where somebody amasses this huge amount of wealth by controlling these companies that sort of are exploiting opportunities, as you said, where the government, you know, has sort of failed us. Right. So Ronit, you start with the story of Starlink, as you said, describing the global power Musk has vis-a-vis the war in Russia and Ukraine, and everywhere. And you go on to say,

let me quote you, the meddling of oligarchs and other moneyed interests in the fate of nations is not new. You say, though, Musk's influence is more brazen and expansive. So talk about why it's more brazen and why it's more expansive. Well, I think in none of those cases did we see the facet of this we've been talking about that's about government reliance on Elon. where an essential service or something we have previously considered to be an essential service from the government to the American people becomes something solely gatekept by a private citizen. You know, the NASA example is a great one. And yes, NASA officials are quick and rather sheepish about saying, well, in a year or more, potentially, we're working really hard to get Boeing back in that space. So there have been contractors involved before. Musk is distinct,

in addition to that level of dependency, in a way that is related just to him personally. And that doesn't come in play with a traditional contractor like Boeing. You know, not that those companies are in any way beyond reproach, not that their products haven't failed spectacularly on occasion. But Musk is something new to navigate personality-wise. The fact that he does have such unpredictable politics. But this isn't really about where he swings on the kind of right-left spectrum. It's about the fact that he seems to sometimes behave in this incredibly impulsive way that has made him a sort of zeitgeist celebrity, right? And people love watching him post videos of rockets blowing up. And, you know, part of the way in which the public is transfixed is the unpredictability.

But also that means that for government officials and regulators who are working on areas where he has become a singular, you know, linchpin of national security or other important objectives, that can create a very difficult situation where, as you say, you essentially, you have people like, you know, serious diplomats saying, what do we do here? Right. How did Elon's power show up in your reporting and sourcing? You mentioned that you spoke with more than 30 of his current and former colleagues, a dozen people in his personal life, and many government officials who admit to living, quote, off his good graces. Treating him like, quote, an unelected government official and a lot of people in his personal life who are all paid by him. I always talk about this.

Like, try not to trust people who are paid by him. And one Pentagon spokesman even saying to you, quote, we'll talk to you if Elon wants us to, which was, that to me was the most chilling quote in the whole thing. You know, you'll probably be unsurprised to hear that that person was very, very displeased with that quote making it in. And I'm not, like, a gotcha guy. You know, I do actually really hear people out if they have a sensitivity. There's a lot of back and forth. I'm not a person who's like, well, you know, the ground rules allow and I'm going to run with it. I try to do it all thoughtfully. In this case, I too felt that that was really, really important. In all my years of reporting on national security stories, I have not had senior officials in important national security sensitive offices

answering questions about important national security sensitive matters, in this case, what was happening in a military conflict on the ground, by saying, we're going to seek permission from a private mogul. So I think that does reflect the entire theme. And when you talk about the sourcing, it's interesting, you've navigated this too. And of course, you're dead right to be savvy about who's on payroll. There's also the wider kind of penumbra of his power just in Silicon Valley. You know, people are very quick to talk shit until it comes time to actually get quoted in any way. Sure. And I think that the people who are quoted in this piece,

you know, Sam Altman's, the Reid Hoffman's, these kinds of people who have worked closely with him and who frankly stand to lose quite a bit in terms of social capital by going out on a limb and speaking in any way, frankly, I think the thing that motivates in at least some of those cases, you know, I don't want to speak with a broad brush about a whole category of people, but is a feeling that this sort of enforced silence that happens with the combination of the vast number of people on payroll and the vast number of people with shared equities in various industries could be contributing to a lack of accountability. Yes, completely. And for all of the good that we see in what he does, there is a need to talk about some of the difficulties and the dangers

in this much of a concentration. I had that back and forth with Mark Benioff, where he was like, I get the anti-gay stuff, but he can land a rocket on a surfboard. And I was like, uh-huh, like, interesting. He said it out loud, right? And I think that's what I get a lot of. What was interesting to me is the quotes from Reid Hoffman are really sounding an alarm. I thought Reid's quotes were astonishing, actually.

I've never seen him. He's not a speaker out of—he's just a very lovely person and very— and he said, Les tats c'est moi, messiah complex. Sam Altman, as is his manner, was more sort of trying to find the best of it, I guess, but it seemed rather negative. Now, they are now in fights with him over AI, but they were longtime supporters of him. And these are people who know

him very well are the ones making an alarm, like, this is problematic. I found that really particularly unusual. So, Bill, what is the view from Wall Street right now of what's going on? Let's move into these businesses, and we'll go from Starlink to the others, because there's some that are very good businesses, right? So let's start with Starlink. The Wall Street Journal just published a story on SpaceX's financial position. The company's valued $150 billion, which is on par with Disney or Intel, though it's privately held. It doesn't make that much money. I think it's $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2023. Doing well. It's had losses most of the time.

Obviously, it's a very difficult arena. Talk a little bit starting with SpaceX. How does Wall Street look at that? Because it's very hard to separate his companies at this point, given how he gloms them together. Sure. And first, I just want to make the point that we're all sort of waiting to see, you know, Walter Isaacson's book on Elon, which is coming in a few weeks. So we'll see how much...

His dad was mean to him. That's what I'm gleaning for. Yeah, right. Well, we'll see how much he spills to Walter and that. You know, my stepfather was mean to me, and I'm not doing this. But go ahead. So maybe he had verbal diarrhea with that book. We'll see how much he spills to Walter and that. You know, my stepfather is moving to May, and I'm not doing this, but go ahead. So maybe he had verbal diarrhea with that book. We'll see.

Look, what Starlink is valued at, what, 300 times earnings? You know, that is quite, you know, that's even more than Tesla, I think, at this point. I mean, it's a private company. So, you know, who knows really either. I mean, good for the Wall Street Journal to get access to that and, you know, shed a little light on it. But this is a valuable business, even though it's a high CapEx, right? How do you evaluate a business like this? right? How do you look at, how do you evaluate a business like this?

I mean, well, I mean, first of all, could you imagine if Elon owned the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal? I mean, that's essentially what he's doing with Starlink and the ferrying of the astronauts to the ISS. Look, I mean, I think investors get all hyped up about Elon companies. You know, I don't know how you justify 300 times PE. I don't know how you justify the Tesla valuation. I don't know how he justified paying what he paid for Twitter, obviously. He's just somebody who attracts a cult-like following of investors, that he can get away with valuations and behavior that other executives and other companies just can't even imagine getting away with. And that is inured to his incredible benefit. In the last year, his net worth has gone up $100-plus billion, and that's after face-planting $44 billion on Twitter, which, again, if anybody before him had lost $44 billion as soon as a deal closed or close to that amount of money, they'd be bankrupt. I mean, it wouldn't even be close. And for him, it's like, you know, petty cash.

And, you know, the Tesla stock took off again, and his value, you know, his net worth went up about another $100 billion. Let's move on to Tesla then, because that was another area he was very early to. I recall that's the reason I was attracted to talking to him. Because not a founder. Not a founder. Of course not, but he was there early. Well, they ensured that through a legal settlement eventually he gets to be a co-founder.

He does. Which is one of the things, by the way, the Silicon Valley kind of Kafkaesque obsession with the term, even when the term is completely meaningless in the common parlance, is so funny to me as a relative outsider to that culture. The reason why is this happened at Facebook. It's happened in a lot of places, right? Who's the co-founder? Who's the founder? In any case, he was critical to it. But, Bill, talk about this.

Its shares have been all over the map, 100 to 300 in the last year as a market opening. It's at 215. It sort of settles in and out. It has a lot of fanboys. Talk about the financial health of Tesla. And look, the board doesn't have any power over Elon. I'll say the power of the board, but there isn't any. It's now a crowded space, much more so than space.

There's tons of car makers now in this with very good cars, very good cars. I've tried them all pretty much, almost all of them. So this first mover advantage, most people tell me is two or three years and mostly around batteries and chargers. But talk to me about this from a financial, because this is holding him up, right? This is holding him up. Totally. This is propping him up. It enabled him to buy Twitter and not suffer the consequences of losing $44 billion.

There is a ton of competition now. There's no question about it. I've been waiting for my rivian now for two years it's supposed to come soon uh but you know uh but he does control it seems that the charging network at the moment uh that is something that you know again he loves to control bottlenecks uh and you know he's very good at figuring out what those are and then exploiting that and now we're sort of codependent on on him and his charging stations i i don't understand uh cara the valuation of tesla i've never understood it and but you know people who've shorted it and tried to express that view have gotten singed. So, I mean, this is just, as we were talking about

before, he's just way, way outside the norms of Wall Street investor behavior and logic. The valuations are insane for many, many years until, you know, the last year or two, much of the value of Tesla was contained in the carbon credits that he got for selling carbon credits, and he sold off his Bitcoin at a loss. I mean, maybe others should do that too. So he's just in a world by himself. It's a rarefied world. I can't think of another real example. You can't justify the valuations, you can't justify the cult-like following that he has, you know, even the cars, you know. I wanted to buy an electric car, but I would not buy a Tesla, just on principle. Bill, why wouldn't you buy a Tesla on principle?

Because I've pretty much had it with Elon Musk, and I don't need to, you know, I'd rather, you know, RJ Scaringe, who's the founder of Rivian, I wrote a piece in the FT about him. He's a really interesting guy. He's sort of the, I think the headline on the piece was the anti-Elon Musk. I mean... My reason is because I think it's ugly. That's all. I just think it looks like, I think Johnny Ive told me, and I think it was correct, it looks like an egg. Once upon a time, it looked pretty sexy. But now there's a lot more choices.

I do think it has been pioneering. I think it's been out front. He was way out front before everybody else. But now I think everybody else has shown up. And that's another reason why the valuation of Tesla makes no sense, Kara, is because the competition is rising rapidly. is because the competition is rising rapidly. And there's no reason that Tesla should be, you know, have a valuation equal to every other car,

the top 10 or so other car companies combined. The truck is coming out, allegedly, after two or three years of delay, which is fine. Delays are normal. I don't give them a hard time for that. But the CFO, just so ugly. That's, to me, very telling. Yeah, the CFO is left. So talk about those me very telling. Yeah. The CFO. The CFO is left.

So talk about those. And then I want to get into what this is all paying for, which is Twitter, to finish up. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, again, you know, having written a book about the fall of GE, I mean, once GE seemed absolutely invincible. Now Tesla seems invincible. My gut tells me Tesla, again, you know, is heading for a correction, is heading for, I mean, the competition is rising, you know, so it's kind of inevitable that the first mover advantage that it has benefited from tremendously is likely to wane. It just is inevitable, it seems

to me. And, you know, this meme stock like valuation that he's enjoyed is at some point going to return to earth because it, you know, it always does, Cara. It just always does, even when you don't think that it possibly could happen. to Twitter and X, I'm going to keep calling it Twitter if you don't mind. This week, Elon tweeted the sad truth is there's no great, quote, social networks right now. Thankfully, he is here to build the greatest or so he says, though, again, something else he didn't invent. What do you think of that? Bill first, then Ronan? I mean, Cara, we've discussed this. I mean, this is the largest financial embarrassment in the history of Wall Street street i mean to buy a company for 44 billion as soon as you drove the company off the lot after it closed it was immediately worth a fraction of that uh and you know by his own reckoning at one point you know it could go bankrupt it may in fact go bankrupt although there's no reason for it to go bankrupt because

he could solve that quickly if he wanted to but But, I mean, his behavior, not paying creditors, not paying former employees, not paying landlords. I mean, what is this guy up to? It makes absolutely no sense. He's got infinite resources, and he's playing games with the financial livelihoods of his employees, his former employees, his landlords, his vendors, his creditors. It makes absolutely no sense. We can debate whether he's ruined it or not. Obviously, it's not what it was.

It wasn't a very good business to start with. It wasn't a very good business to start with, and he's destroyed what little business they had. So I don't get it, but at all. Ronan, what is your, I think it's an influence peddling scheme, but go ahead. Yeah, I get the sense that this is a situation where, you know, Elon's friends gassed him up. You know, we actually, we know that from the text messages that were released around the acquisition, you know, when he was fighting to get out of the acquisition initially, and there were legal proceedings. There were

people texting him saying, like, yeah, you gotta, you gotta buy, I'm paraphrasing here, but very closely, you know, you gotta buy it to fight the woke mind virus. So there was both a sort of political inflection to it, and also just, I I think, frankly, slightly dilettante-ish contour of, hey, I'm a power user on here, I'm a star on here, and I can make it better, I can run it better. And then there's, at a macro level,

these two parts of him that we've seen across his career. He's always wanted to make an everything app of some kind with a heavy banking component. You know, this goes back to x.com, which became PayPal eventually. He has wanted to dominate online banking. And he now sees everything apps that include a transactional component succeeding in Asia. There hasn't been one that's really caught on in the West. So there's a sort of pragmatic goal, which may be misguided or not. And then there's this sort of political weirdness where he's become so isolated by fame and wealth. You know, there are these questions about his psychopharmacology that have emerged.

We're going to get into that in a second. Right. And I'm interested in your thoughts on that because you've had a lot of dealings with him. And, you know, all of that, according to people I talked to, even inner circle people who were supportive of him, as you say, you know, people on payroll have this quite rosy perspective. And I got plenty of that. even they sort of concede that it is confusing that he has been pushed into such an extreme place politically, you know, in a way that doesn't really resemble how he characterized himself earlier. No, or what it was like. Right. And I think, you know, you're, you may be right that that part of that is performative. I strongly sense that part of it is personal and wounded. I don't mean that in a way that is overly sympathetic. I mean, he cares that he wasn't invited to one of these White House electric vehicle events. Yeah, he called me after that.

Why? I'm not surprised. I don't know. I think I said, I'm sorry your father didn't hug you. You're going to have to get over it. I don't know. Wow. You're tough. I said something know. I think I said, I'm sorry, your father didn't hug you. You're gonna have to get over it. I don't know. I said something like, I am. He was upset. I did actually contact someone in the Biden ministry. I said, Oh, he's mad at you. You better. And they're like, what? They like, they were surprised. You know whatday MSNBC. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So, Bill, what happens here from a Twitter point of view from a fight? Because it doesn't matter.

Like someone's like, oh, is he really going to get taken to the cleaners? I'm like, it doesn't matter. It's like owning a yacht that's sort of too big or, you know, who cares? Like it's just $44 billion for someone who has a lot. It's a good chunk, but it's not. dollars for someone who has a lot it's it's a good it's a good chunk but it's not uh i mean if i were larry ellison who put in a billion dollars i'd be a little peeved but i guess not he's got another 90 mil billion and prince al-walid who could have taken the cash and rolled over and now he face planted on his investment uh you know i'd be a little peeved but again he's got billions

more so you know he these are his investors in Twitter. These are his investors who invested $7 billion in cash of the $31 billion in equity that was put in with another $13 billion borrowed. The banks have got a big loss on their hands, you know, just a mark-to-market loss. I mean, probably 50 cents on the dollar if they could even sell it now. I mean, they're going to be forced by the Fed at some point to either sell those... When will that happen? We keep talking. That's a mystery, Kara. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I'm surprised they haven't been

forced to mark-to-market. And you know what? They may have marked it to market and then slipped it in a bigger category. And so you don't know. Explain what that is, what mark to market is. In other words, if the value of the debt has fallen from $100 cents on the dollar. Which it has, which Fidelity has written it down. No question. No question that it has. The question is this, whether it's 50 cents or 30 cents, banks that are regulated by the Federal Reserve, which is all the big banks that made these loans, or most of them, you know, have to respond to that

and have to mark these debts down and take their losses. It goes right through their equity account. They have to take the losses on their equity account and then announce that or, you know, if it's material enough. And, you know, it's probably not material enough because they're so big, they're such big banks, and they can hide it and other things but you know word gets around on the street about what they've marked it at and uh uh so you know at some point it's going to come out with these or they're going to trade or or these banks are going to sell give us a wrapper so crashing debt declining revenue employee lawsuits vendor lawsuits uh involuntary bankruptcy potential from three creditors getting together.

Fucking with people's data this week, getting rid of pictures. I mean, it could all just go right down the tubes, but it probably won't because he's Elon and he can bail it out at any second and just stop the shenanigans. It's just sort of what? Just whimper? Well, I mean, you know, he could stem the losses. He could pay people what he owes them and, you know, take the bankruptcy risk off the table. And then maybe actually try to fix it or change it or I don't know. I mean, make it relevant again or over, you know, defeat his competitors over at Facebook.

I don't know. Right, right. He's worth around above $200 billion, somewhere over $200 billion at this point. Yeah, it's a rounding error for him. We'll be back in a minute. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign?

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who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Grammarly, enterprise- learn more. Grammarly. Enterprise Ready AI. There was only one paragraph specifically naming Donald Trump in the article, although there's a federal judge asking questions whether Twitter X was intentionally withholding Donald Trump's Twitter DMs from the special counsel in the January 6 investigation. Where is his relationship with Trump right now, for example, who's going to be the, probably going to be the Republican nominee?

He's inviting him back, obviously. It's certainly hard to see him going back to the political choices he described to you, right, of donating to Hillary Clinton, voting for Clinton, voting for Biden. You know, this is someone who now is telling people to vote Republican pretty consistently. So we'll see. But I would be surprised if we see anything but him backing a Republican candidate. I think it's really that simple. And, you know, there are plenty of comparisons to Trump that are easy to leap to when we look at his recent and more erratic behavior and the kind of emerging profile of his seemingly new or newish political views.

One thing I want to point out is there's a reason I leaned on Bridenstine, the former NASA administrator, who is a, you know, a Trump-affiliated Republican. He was a Trump appointee. You know, he's a super conservative in this new vein, congressperson at one point. He articulates, I think, an interesting philosophy from that political set of the thing that's scarier than a government monopoly is a private monopoly the government can't get out of. And he says, you know, look, in some of these areas like space,

eventually, if we concentrate this much power in private industry and we deregulate this much, we are going to see on a much larger scale a kind of Titanic-style disaster, either the original or he's referring to, you know, the recent submersible disaster. That's what happens when you deregulate completely. So I think, you know, Elon in his kind of seemingly like tween experimental political phase is eventually going to run into the fact that even in the Trump set, you're going to have concerns about too much

concentration of power. Yeah, because Trump wants it all for himself. This is like the plot of Total Recall for those who don't follow it. Go watch that movie. Let me end this. And I like that you mentioned that because the through line in this whole piece and in his life is, well, Mars and just science fiction. Like, you know, I'm saying you're writing close readings of the philosophy of the video game Deus Ex, you know, and just just realizing I'm going to have to sell New Yorker editors on that. But it's important to him. He built Neuralink, if not because seemingly inspired by that game. He's talked about that.

I've had long discussions about sci-fi with him. The XAI was launched in a whole Hitchhiker's Guide to the to the Galaxy themed framework. Which is ironic. This is what I point out. Yeah, like Douglas Adams was a real, you know, anti-hyper wealth, anti-capitalist firebrand. And there's that irony in a lot of his kind of sci-fi inspirations. One of the things in the article, which many people have brought up, and there was just one in the journal, there was one in the journal about his drug use, especially ketamine, alleged drug use, I guess, although it doesn't seem to deny it very much. And also, the journal had a story, is he crazy, essentially, is what the article said. And is that a problem? I'm pretty certain he's been high on many interviews I've done. I don't know. He says it sometimes, he jokes

about it. He's joked about it to me. Joe Rogan, right? Joe Rogan. You know, smoke the spleef. Yeah. So, Ronan, talk about this. You talked about this, and obviously lots of people are writing and talking about this. You know, I hasten to point out Ambien, ketamine, weed are all substances that can be taken, you know, legally and safely. And you might have varying views on how healthy each of these things are. But there's certainly a, you know, valid defense of a healthy use of all of them. Nevertheless, this picture that emerges when you talk about him with people who are close to him and even care about him is of a person who's under

tremendous stress. Um, you know, maybe grapples with, you know, I'm not going to diagnose the guy and say depression, but certainly he's talked about sadness, loneliness, right. Um, and, you know, those kinds of substances in excess, um, can be ones where, where you would be concerned if someone is in a, in bad shape emotionally and using them to, to excess again in sensitive contexts like launching rockets, you know, and navigating the permissions for those things, which as we,

as we point out you know, is a, an actual situation that played out right where he has launched things without FAA approval. And we don't know in that particular moment whether, you know, there is this element of his substance use intruding onto his professional life. All we know is that it's been a question that's been raised, including by members of his boards, including by people close to him. by members of his boards, including by people close to him. And if that is a factor, part of a constellation of factors contributing to erratic behavior, there's not a lot to be done about it. And I think that goes back to Bridenstine's point, which is, you know, wherever you are on the

political spectrum, too much concentration of power in one place with too few restraints on it can present a lot of dangers. It's a little bit structural, right, to the business world right now and capitalism right now. Like, this is an unfortunate case where it's not like there's a little Abed-style narrow policy suggestion. This is the world that we have built and the economy that we've built. Yep, absolutely.

And the rewards that we have given. Yes. Elon's getting the ultimate reward for everything he's built. Yeah, and misbehaving. We're just man of the world. And misbehaving or being racist or homophobic. It pays off for him.

But what makes it such a hard topic is, you know, I also in this piece talk to NASA administrators who are like pissed at him, but say we move faster because of him. That is correct. You know, we would not be, we would still be relying only on the Russians to get crew in space without Elon. So it's like you can't live with him, can't live without him, I think is the predominant disposition. So last, very last question. We've spoken a lot about his power.

Who do each of you think has power over Elon? And are you hopeful or hopeless about his ability to redeem himself in the future? Bill first, then Ronan. Shareholders, Cara, his shareholders, whether private or public. Okay. They're the only ones at this point who have any power over him. I don't think the boards do. And are you hopeful or do you think he'll shift? I mean, I've never understood the valuation of Tesla or SpaceX to begin with. I mean, 300 times P.E., you know, I don't get it. Drives you crazy, Bill. Drives you crazy.

What are you going to do about it? That's right. That's why my hair is gray. I mean, if you short it, you're going to get your head handed to you, clearly. And so I don't know what you'll do. It'll come around eventually is the way I think about it. All right, Ronan, last word. Are you hopeful?

First of all, silver bill. Silver. It's a great look. Silver. That's right. Who has power, first, Roman, over him? And after reporting this, are you hopeful or hopeless about his ability to redeem himself in the future? I think that Bill gives the right answer about shareholders.

I would just expand on that to two more attenuated but still important areas of power. One is consumers, you know, who can have a knock-on effect on the posture of investors and shareholders. The other is influential people in his fields. You know, you highlighted how Frank Reid Hoffman is in this piece. That's unusual, as you point out. And it's unusual because it is costly for fancy people who deal with Elon Musk to talk about these issues that everyone is talking about. But the only way you get accountability and you maybe haul someone who's in a difficult place back to a better place is through frank conversation. And there are very few people with whom Elon Musk interacts who have power over him per se. But I think the critical mass of figures in his various fields,

at the top of his various fields, who he does consult with, have power, you know, and can call out this stuff. Give me a name. Reed is obviously, I was surprised to see those quotes. Yeah, I mean, you know. Peter Thiel. I think, you know, a Peter Thiel, even a Bobby Kotick, who he's close to. Larry Ellison, maybe. Larry Ellison, right. You know, people who are more sort of peripheral, but he will talk to,

like an Eric Schmidt or something. You know, I think that these are the kinds of people who could have, like, if not a heart-to-heart, at least a gentle gesture towards, hey, what's going on? So hopeful or hopeless? When you finish this up. It's interesting that you ask that, because I so deliberately try not to think in those terms when I'm doing this kind of clinical investigative reporting. I don't think that I am hopeful. I think the gears of power, once they start turning in this direction, and the tremendous weight of the economic systems we're talking about, just all militate towards preserving power indefinitely and preserving this hyper concentration of wealth indefinitely. And even the swing to the right, and I think what he sees as an anti-establishment, more libertarian bent,

it does land him squarely in a new set of political views that are about preserving individual wealth, right? And it's not an accident that Peter Thiel has gone that way, that he's gone that way. So the confluence of a vast set of economic systems that exist to protect the status of someone who rises in the way that Musk has financially, and the political moment we're in, where that kind of preservation of wealth is reified in politics everywhere you look. And that movement around that is gaining force, makes it hard for me to see a scenario in which suddenly Elon Musk is reigning. Yep, that's right. So hopeless, absolute power corrupts,

but it also stays in power. It also stays in power. Anyway. Mazel tov. Well, I would just add one thing. Go ahead. I feel like there's a fall story left to be written here. You know, pre-pandemic, his net worth was only,

but you know, 30 billion, and it's gone up like eight times in the last couple of years. So he, Elon Musk is a bubble, he's a financial bubble, and so financial bubbles eventually burst. And so we've written the rise story, I'm sure Walter's book will be rise and rise further. I think there's a book to be written at some point about the fall of Elon Musk. All right. Well, on that note, we will leave. It'll be a spectacular popping of the bubble, indeed, and very colorful.

Anyway, thank you both, and I really appreciate all your thoughts, and I'm glad you focused in on things that aren't just tweets and the cage matches. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Cara. Thanks for having us on. All right, thanks.

Yeah, thank you. It's on! Let me start with a question you asked them. Who has sway over him? And are you hopeful or hopeless about Elon's ability to redeem himself? I think Cat Turd has sway over him. The last person he talked to, whoever, he's in that Trump zone. And so I'm hopeless.

I am. I think he's too far gone. I mean, one always hopes that people, he's a very intelligent, smart, it's such a disappointment to see such an intelligent, smart person become such a jerk, like, and become really unhelpful. He's living by his worst qualities, and his best ones are receding into the background, which are many, they're myriad. He has many really great qualities. You just said he was in the Trump zone. They're living in, they're deluded. They're deluded to the, you know, at one point you figured Trump was in on the joke of himself. He kind of was going along with the joke and now he believes it. I think he believes those election, the election was stolen. I don't think he's faking it.

And I think Elon believes he's persecuted. He's always had a persecution complex for many years. But now he sort of feels like he's this superhero. He's just got a weird, creepy vibe now and when he didn't before. Do you have empathy for him? Because you brought up many times he didn't get hugged enough as a kid. I know you brought it up in a kind of sarcastic way. Yes, I do. I do. I have empathy because he really is, as Ronan said, when you talk to him, at his best, he's really fascinating and really interesting. And I know people get angry at me for saying that. But this is not the person I know. Like, parts of it are there. Like, he was always obnoxious. But I really enjoyed Elon. I was really, it's very heartening and inspirational to

see someone not doing stupid things. The cars, the space, it was, it's all big ideas. And I really, I really appreciate someone with big ideas. But now he has small ideas. He's small. It's all big ideas. And I really appreciate someone with big ideas, but now he has small ideas. He's a small man now. He was a big man, and he's a small man. And one of the things, and you've gotten into this with your critique of the Paul Pelosi tweet, but it's his kind of movement toward this very right, white, straight, grievance narrative version of the world. I'm saying that in diplomatic ways. But he tweeted that graphic about black and white crime. He called the racist shooter in Texas a psyops.

He supported Dilbert creator Scott Adams. What is going on there on the right? Because that isn't something that has been tackled, really, in the media, I would say. I just think once you head down one of these rabbit holes, you end up down one of these. There's been story after story of this. You know, many people have written about what happens when people go down these internet rabbit holes. They become what they never said they'd be, right? This is someone who said he was voted for Obama and Biden and now is like thinking it's all a psyop. It's crazy. I think that's what happens with conspiracy theories. They're mental illnesses, these conspiracy theories. Do you think the media is afraid to talk about race with Elon? Just like with Trump, it was like racially charged versus racist.

Do you think the media is afraid to tackle that? I think I've called him a racist. I've said he's a racist. I think he's racist. I think he is. I think he's just, on Twitter he is. He sure has posted racist stuff. So I don't know what other conclusion to make.

I think he's a sexist. I think he's misogynist. I think he's homophobic. I think he's transphobic. And it's a shame because he has a kid who is trans. So no, I don't think people are afraid. No. Well, I mean, if there was any hope, we feel very hopeless now. So maybe this is a good hopeless moment. I don't know. Sorry. But there's other heroes for you. There's other heroes coming. At least he has big hands, right? He has big hands. I'm so sorry, Elon. Come back. Come home. I think you have big hands. Okay, I'm gonna go try to delete that from my memory. Today's show was produced by Naima Ra christian castro rossell megan cunane and megan bernie special thanks to mary mathis rick kwan engineered this episode our theme music is by trackademics if you're already following the show you get a gentle therapeutic dose of ketamine allegedly

if not watch out for that k-hole because you'll end up retweeting cat turd. Go wherever you list a podcast, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more. Support for this podcast comes from Stripe. Stripe is a payments and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like Uber, BMW, and DoorDash. Stripe has helped countless startups and established companies alike reach their growth targets, make progress on their missions, and reach more customers globally. The platform offers a suite of specialized features and tools to fast-track growth,

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