Tech Won't Save Us - Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein w/ Ed Niedermeyer

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Paris Marx is joined by Ed Niedermeyer to discuss the years-long relationship between Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein, and how their relationship sheds light on the murky inner workings of the one percent. Ed Niedermeyer is the author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors and a co-host of the Autonocast. Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: Ed has written two recent pieces about Elon Musk’s relationship with Epstein. Here’s more information on Juleanna Glover’s relationship with Epstein.

This world is run by an elite that has this solidarity with each other. Again, their interests may align or conflict moment to moment, and it doesn't matter. What matters is their power and that they have it and that that doesn't change. And so that to me is really the lesson of the Epstein files. I've seen firsthand, you know, all this reporting and then nothing ever happens. Why is that? Well, now we're finally starting to get a look at sort of the mechanics that explain what's gotten so badly broken in our society and in our world more broadly.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Ed Niedermeyer. Now, if you're a regular listener to the show, you will hopefully be familiar with Ed by now because he has been on the show many times to talk about Tesla and Elon Musk, autonomous vehicles, all these other things. And he is back once again. Of course, if you're not familiar with him, he is the author of Ludacris, the Unvictor. varnished story of Tesla Motors and is working on another book at the moment. And he's also a co-host of

the Atonicaast. But I wanted to have him on this week because obviously Jeffrey Epstein is, you know, very much in the conversation the past couple months because of these Epstein files. And of course, we know that Elon Musk has had some association with Jeffrey Epstein for a while. You know, we have known about the emails where Elon Musk is kind of asking about going to Epstein's Island and trying to figure out the best time to go do that. But these documents that are out there now reveal a lot of other information about the relationship between these two men, how it developed, and whether much ultimately came of it. And the good thing about talking to Ed about this is that because he knows so much about the history of Tesla and Elon Musk, there are a lot

of things that he could kind of glean from the files that were maybe not expressed outright. Things certain business dealings and relationships between other people that might have had an association with Elon Musk at different times. And so I think that this is a fascinating conversation because we get into not just what motivated Epstein to try to find a relationship with Musk. And yes, it was Epstein that tried to cultivate that relationship, not Musk trying to do so. And certainly how he, you know, one of his routes into that was through Kimball, Elon Musk's brother. But then we also get into talking about the business dealings that may be. came of or had some relationship to Jeffrey Epstein and the relationship that these men had to one another.

So, you know, we talk about attempts to try to get Musk to go into Israel that Epstein tried to facilitate things around Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, you know, and then just this bigger question as we get closer toward the end of Epstein's life. And he is having, you know, these conversations with Elon Musk and trying to connect people to him. And certainly that gets us to the point where there's this big scandal where Elon Musk tries to take Tesla private and there's talk of Saudi money involved. And based on Ed's reading of the files, it looks like Epstein was kind of behind the scenes and had some involvement in that too. And so basically what I'm trying to say is I think that this is a really insightful conversation for us to figure out more about the relationship between Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein and what motivated these men to basically come together, basically have these conversations and what each. of them was getting out of it. I think for now, this is probably going to be the final episode that

we do on Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship to these billionaires in the tech industry. Obviously, there's a lot more that we could talk about, especially when you see names like Peter Thiel in the Epstein files as well. But for me, I don't think that there's value in getting into every different character who comes up in the Epstein files. I think that Bill Gates and Elon Musk were some of the two major characters that were important for us to dig into in these conversations. And I think, you know, we're worth having more drawn out discussions about. But, you know, I'm less convinced about that with some of these other people. But if it gets to a point where I deem that that's necessary, maybe I'll revisit it.

And maybe we'll have a conversation about some other of those folks as well. So for now, if you do enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues so you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week, so we can keep having these critical in-depth conversations about so many different aspects of the tech industry and the people who lead it and run it, and occasionally have some, you know, more hopeful conversations, I guess, as we did last week with Gita Jackson,

then you can join supporters like Jack in Vancouver, British Columbia and Anna in Chicago by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Ed, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Always good to be here. Absolutely. It's always great to chat, get your insights on Elon Musk and everything involving him.

And, you know, unfortunately, this week we're talking about one of his more sordid aspects of his career, his life, I guess. People will be familiar with his name being in the Epstein files. And so we obviously want to dig into that today because, you know, there's the kind of general reporting that people have been hearing about the obvious mentions of his name. But you're very familiar with Musk and his history. so getting in there, you can see things that maybe other people aren't connecting the dots on, and that was why I was really eager to talk to you to learn more about this. But before we dig into those specifics, I want to ask you what you make of what we've been learning about the tech industry and, you know, kind of broader elite society from the Epstein

files and what has been coming out in them. You know, obviously the focus of the Epstein files and just the whole situation surrounding it is, of course, on the victims, right? And the sexual crimes that took place, the exploitation, rightly so, right? that should be the focus. But I think, you know, for those of us who've been investigating various aspects of how power and money work in our world, there's this whole other layer to this, right? Where it's like, it's sort of like the, compare it to the ground opening up beneath our feet

and we get this, you know, limited, right? And this is, I think, really important preface for the whole conversation that we'll be having here. It gives a very limited look inside the sort of nuts and bolts and make. of how our world works at the elite level. Unfortunately, it is limited. And so there's going to be a lot of stuff where we're sort of having to string together sort of pieces here.

And for me, I think what's fascinating about it is, as you alluded to, is that I have all this context of covering Elon Musk. And the number one sort of thing about all this, you know, it's been, I've looked at so many different parts of so many different of his businesses and the different, whether it's financial or technological or all these sorts of different things. and exposing all this stuff. And throughout this now 11 years, almost that I've been doing it, the frustrating and baffling part is that, like,

you keep bringing these facts up, you know, to light. And then things just don't work the way we were sort of raised in school to believe that they were supposed to work, right? You're supposed to the facts come out and the markets respond to them, the regulators respond to them, law enforcement response to them, the system wars into action with the receipt of new information. That hasn't been happening. And throughout it, the mystery at so many different points in so many different way.

Why does the stock keep going up? Why does, you know, what is going on here? And I think these files, and again, it's very limited. It doesn't tell us the whole story. Unfortunately, it's like almost tantalizing a lot of times how close we're getting to understanding what's actually going on. But at least it gives us a view. And it's like a first step in my view towards understanding, you know, again, for me, what's really been fascinating is the Elon Mustup. But I think it applies to a lot of different things.

And so we now have the basis to start to piece together, what are the mechanisms that actually make the world work? And when we see them, we understand that it's relationships, and it is sex and power and cool factor and very like high school kind of dynamics in a lot of ways, the history starts to make more sense because you understand, like, okay, this is, and above all, in all this, it's the class solidarity of the elite is the piece of this that I think, you know, really rings out. And when you start to understand, like, okay, this is how the world works.

It's not markets and a liberal order and all the, again, all the stuff that we were taught in school about how things are supposed to work, that it is like high school and it is just clicks and power and mutual interest and class solidarity among the elite, then all of a sudden things start to make a little bit more sense. Absolutely. And, you know, as you're saying, like, I believe if I'm correct, we only have like a segment of the Epstein files themselves because there's still a ton of documents that they're not releasing. And then, you know, on top of that is like, okay, how many of these emails got deleted that we don't even have? So as you're saying, like we have, you know, a very small picture.

But even then, that picture tells us a whole lot just on its face. But also, like you're saying, when you have the context that you have in digging into it further, in seeing that there's a lot of things that's not unwritten, but there are hints to when you pair it with other events going on at the time, you can understand more what is going on there, you know, which is obviously. what you've been doing with relation to Musk, but that other people have been doing with so many of the other people mentioned in these files, right? Absolutely.

And yeah, no, it's a really good point. So not only the limited window in terms of, it's one guy's emails, right? And the most interesting ones, we don't even know who they're to and from, because the other party is redacted. And then on top of it, there is all kinds of evidence that this is an incomplete survey of even that limited view, right? And so, you know, we'll probably talk about whether or not Musk went to the island. And, like, it's fascinating because there's all these, you know, illusions to, you know, certainly his desire to go.

And their relationship is really interesting. But the smoking guns all seem to be kind of mysteriously not there. And again, you know, in the instance of the island, I think there is maybe some ambiguity about whether or not he actually did. But again, that's not also the whole point. And I think that's, you know, the number one thing I want to get across about the Epstein file. So again, I don't want to take it. take anything away from the victims and the justice that they've been denied and deserve. But this is a really an amazing resource to understand so many other things.

And again, it's imperfect, but a really big first step. Because before these files, we just had to guess, you know, we didn't even have breadcrumbs to sort of follow and try and understand where they led. Absolutely. And even then, you know, the way that Epstein utilized these women who he was trafficking, you know, even come up in the story around Musk, but so many of these other people as well, right? Like, it's key, as you were talking about, you know,

all the things that you see in the files and the relationships between these powerful people, the procuring and the use of these women, of these girls, really, is a key part of what was connecting Epstein to so many of them. It's a currency in that, yeah, that's exactly right. It was, you know, part of it was,

I mean, there was a lot of elements to it in the different relationships. Clearly, there was an element of mutual, compromise that builds trust. There was also, you know, using women to attract people like like must, right? So, and I think to start to get into their relationship a little bit here, like, there's been all this controversy about like, did Elon go to the island and like, like, was he too uncool to go to the island? And there's like all these different sorts of theories. And so I think it is cool to be able to have some ability to talk about what that

relationship really was. And what's interesting is, you know, in the early years, Epstein was very clearly pursuing must. The way to make this all make sense is to think about it. in terms of high school and like soap operas and stuff, right? Like the first times that Elon Musk's name comes up, again, based on what we have in these files and in Epstein's emails, it's from people like Tom Pritzker, who's the chairman of Hyatt at the time. And he was like, you know, already a very wealthy guy, right?

Like I think he was second generation sort of wealth. But he was sort of not running, right, the business anymore. And he was investing in like green energy stuff. And if you think about the early, the 2010s, you know, that was a cool thing for wealthy people to do. And so Elon, and so he would, you know, he prescripted an email to Epstein where he talks about buying a Tesla. And again, this is, you know, this is how Tesla started. It was wealthy people who would go for a test drive in the car. They'd be blown away by the acceleration, the same way that a lot of people buy EVs, you know, ever since.

But in addition to putting down money to get a roadstorm in those early days, they would almost, if you could afford to put down, $50,000 or whatever it was and wait, you know, sort of an almost unlimited, you know, who knew how long, if ever, they were going to take to deliver it. If you had that kind of money, chances are you also wanted to invest in the company. And so it was this dual thing. And this has been, you know, a really important thread in understanding Tesla as a company. But the point that I'm getting at is that wealthy people. See, and Epstein himself, he, there's not a lot of evidence that he cared about EVs or green energy or anything like that. Like, he wasn't interested in Elon for that part of the business. I think.

There's evidence he was interested in the satellites and things like that and SpaceX. We can get into that. But what was, what first brought him to the radar was just, Elon was a rising star. And specifically, he was a rising star among the elite. And it's, you know, it's like, again, the new kid at high school, you know, or the kid who had the glow up over the summer. And all of a sudden he goes from being a nobody to like, like, oh, this guy's cool.

And like, everybody. And so Epstein, you know, the first references are people saying like, hey, do you know him? Or, you know, I've invested in this. I think it's really cool. And so you just see Musk getting onto his radar. And then sort of that first year, and I read a blog post that sort of, I call it year one. It's a little bit more than a year, but it's sort of like late 2012 to through the sort of end of 2013.

And that's when we start to see in the files that EPSCN really starts pursuing Elon. And that's fascinating as well, because that's when you start to see the women sort of come into it. Definitely. And even just to pick up on what you're saying about, like, Elon Musk is the rising star. He's the cool kid on the block kind of a thing. You know, he's the new kid in the playground, whatever you want to say. There's also the fact that Epstein's kind of power and influence came in part from the network that he had cultivated, right? And the fact that you have all these people kind of turning to him for connections and investment. You know, there was other reporting on how he was involved in, you know, funding for different tech companies and making connections there and things like that. And so it's like, if you start having all of these wealthy people being like, hey, do you know this guy, Elon Musk, then if you're someone like Jeffrey Epstein and, you know, your currency is in part relationships, it's also underage girls and things, then it's like, I need to make this connection. I'm probably interested in him too. But I have all these other people who, if I have a connection to Musk and I can use that connection to my advantage, then that further increases my importance to all these people, right? Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that, again, this has been freeing in a way, right, because I've been struggling with this thing for so long. And one of the ways I realized, like, that the Epstein-Pas has revealed why I've struggled so much to understand what was going on is that, you know, I approached this as a, from a sort of fundamentals analysis perspective. For me, it was, you know, is the auto industry going all electric, right? Is Tesla a company that that is positioned and has the culture and the resource? to capitalize on that. And what's fascinating about this is that, you know, Epstein, he doesn't even talk about it that much because he's invested in all these,

he's all these different investments. And he doesn't talk about it that much. He relies on other people. I think this is why he sort of, it helps explain his glomming on to academics and quote unquote intellectuals, is that he understood that he maybe wasn't smart enough to really understand this stuff. But when you do see him talking about stuff, If there's one email, I think it was with Sultan bin Salaim, who shows up all over the files.

It may have been with someone else, though. I don't have it in front of me at the moment. But he talks about, about, like, batteries and about how, and this is, you know, in the early 2010s, and he talks about how the cost of batteries is high, which, you know, is understood at the time. But he thought that, like, bio, he has his reference to bio battery. Like, his analysis, when you read it, is just like, it's fantasy. It's completely disconnected from reality. He doesn't understand any of the stuff he's investing in. And it doesn't matter because he exemplifies how the world actually works,

which is it's all social. If everyone else who has money believes in something, it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not. It doesn't matter if you do the investigation and you see maybe we're overestimating like the potential for EV adoption in the short term. Maybe we're wildly overestimating Tesla's ability to build vehicles at scale and to deliver on the mission that they say that the company is about, none of that matters.

It doesn't matter. And again, it hasn't matter. And that's what the freeing thing for me is seeing how Epstein operated, seeing how that class operates and the power that they have to impose reality on the rest of us, it's been freeing for me because it helps me understand how I've both been so right and so wrong about this, which has been, you know, has kept me up a few nights. Oh, definitely, 100%, right? And even when you're saying that, it's like,

of anybody, it feels like Elon Musk is one of the best people who like exemplifies what you're talking about, right? The fact that these relationships, the fact that these social dynamics keep these companies elevated, even if the business fundamentals aren't there. It's like who demonstrates that better than someone like Elon Musk and his companies. Of course, now we don't need to worry about the electric cars because the robots are, you know, Elon's just going to make all those instead and that's going to justify all the valuations. It's crazy. And that's exactly right. Because the narrative around the company has changed, the circumstances, the material reality of this company has changed so much, the trajectory, everything about Tesla and Elon Musk himself

as a person has changed. The only thing that hasn't is that the Epstein class sees him as this rainmaker. Simply as a result of them perceiving him that way, it's true. Like if enough of wealthy people see you a certain way and believe you, you know, then it comes into being. this is how our world works in a real way. And Epstein understood, right? Like his power comes from understanding how this world and this class works.

And he understood that just in the same way that underage women or the consequence and free environment of a private island or the consequence free environment and freedom that a private jet offers, all these things, these are all different kinds of currency. And so one of the things that's frustrating about these, earlier, throughout it, is there's just so much about the intent and what the plan is. What are people, what is their theory of mind around all this? That has always been the hard part with Elon. It's very difficult with Epstein because we only have this stuff. But what does seem to float up through all of this is that Epstein saw Musk as this rising star, which in itself

is a form of social currency. Other people in that network are asking about him. Other people are reflecting to Elon, sorry, to Epstein, that this guy is cool. and doing good things, amazing things, and building a better future and doing things that they want to be a part of. And in the absence of more granular data, which may still yet come to light, you know, hopefully, that casts more light into exactly what Epstein wanted because the timing of their, like, the 2012 or 2013 meeting at SpaceX is interesting. And we don't know what the meeting was about. And I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit because we're skipping through the use of women to get to what he wants. But what we see is, you know, he's pursuing it because of the social cachet that Elon's stardom creates.

I want to explore the first year a bit more and how they get to know one another. But briefly, before we do that, what did we know about Elon Musk's relationship with Epstein before these files were released? Like, you know, what was the degree of knowledge that we had about how they were connected? Not almost none. So as the files, one of the very earliest releases, there was like something that the house Dems released where it was like a schedule item of like Elon to the island. But it was very ambiguous.

And that was just in the last year or so. Prior to that, you know, what's interesting is the only thing. And we'll get to the Funding Secured episode of 2018. One of the huge mysteries of all this was that in 2019, when Epstein passed away, all of a sudden the New York Times ran this very baffling story about how this guy was. went to Epstein's, you know, townhouse. And they had like this on background or off the record conversation about Tesla. And it was, and about Elon Musk.

And that was sort of in the context of this whole funding secured craziness that happened at the end of the summer of 2018. This is when Elon Musk is saying that Tesla is going to go private, that he has the money to do it just to the Saudis and specific are going to take them private. And I remember that story coming out in 2019. of being like, like, why would Epstein be involved with the law must? Like, in 2019, it was, it was just incomprehensible. Like, Epstein was not the meme that he is today.

So it didn't have that immediate, like, oh, my God, like, you know, he definitely went to the island kind of thing or anything like that. It was, there was no, it was impossible to piece it together, but it was like, it was so weird. A, it was weird for the New York Times and we'll get into their, you know, how they fit into all this, too, if you want. But the New York Times running a piece after a guy died saying we had an off the record background conversation with him was like, that's a weird thing to do from a journalistic perspective.

But then it will also, so anyway, but this is just one of many mysteries, you know, throughout all this that we now can sort of look at and understand. But other than that, no one knew anything. You know, I've been as close, I think, as anyone to Elam's various dirt, you know. and it just never came up. And to be perfectly honest, there's so much stuff to investigate with Elon that I, a long time ago, got very good at saying,

like, okay, that's interesting, but like, I'm never going to be able to prove anything there, so I'm just not going to bother. You really have to decide what's worth investing your time into and whatnot. And so FC never was like, it flitted across the radar once, but the idea that there was more there would not have occurred to me until we just got this massive dump.

And it was literally in real time as I'm going through the emails. It's like, oh, wow, like these guys were in deep. Yeah. And I would add, the only other kind of piece there is the photo of Elon Musk with Gisly Maxwell at a party that has been circulating for a number of years, right? That is right. Yes. And there was, I'm trying to remember, there was some email about Kung Fu lessons.

There were a couple of these little grains. again, it's one of the things I just had to beat into my head covering Elon Musk is like, there's too much. There's always too much. And it's just like you really have to optimize for where you can actually make an impact on something because I've certainly wasted a lot of time digging really into really compelling stuff and just not being able to prove it. And that teaches you be ruthless about what you decide to invest in.

And so, yeah, so there were a couple little crumps, but nothing to suggest the kind of relationship that we now know. And again, there's a lot we still don't know, but we do know that. that they were more than just casual acquaintances. Absolutely. And so, let's dig into that, right?

Because as you're saying, the first piece, and you have a series of three pieces that you've written, kind of digging into Elon Musk's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and what you were able to kind of glean from these files that have been released,

again, a limited portion of what actually exists, but is not out there, right? How does Elon Musk ultimately get connected with Epstein? You were saying that Epstein was pursuing Musk for a while. And, you know, one of the things that really stood out to me was the important role that a connection with his brother, Kimball, seemed to play to actually finally make that connection to Musk himself. In this world, it's, again, it's high school, it's a social world. And I think it's very clear in the first year, especially, of email, is that Elon is, he doesn't need Epstein for anything.

Like, he's not, he doesn't understand, Epstein is pursuing him. And it's not clear exactly what Epstein wants other than the currency of being close to someone who his social group sees as a rising star. But what we know is how he gets to him, right? And the direct approach is, it's just not an option. Elon is already enough of a rising star that he's, you know, random people can't just be like, hey, I'm this rich guy, like, you know, let's be buddies. So how does he do it, right?

And again, it's a fascinating insight into who Epstein was and how he operated. that he went after Elon Musk's brother. Now, Kimball Musk is not super well-known outside of us, you know, freaks who pay way too much attention to the Musk clan and all of that. You mean not everyone's buying his cookbook? Right. So Kimball Musk is ostensibly, I mean, he's famous for being Elon Musk brother. That's it.

Like that's, you know, even in this like the kitchen, which I guess had a couple of restaurants, and he positions himself as like a food influencer or, you know, thought leader or whatever. but like he's kind of a joke, you know? And like, in a lot of ways, I say this, like, he's actually the most, like, relatable. Like, he's a goofball for the most part. He's sort of the most human of the musks in a certain sense. I feel like if anybody, like, remembers a clip of Kimball Musk, it's him, like, basically pushing Elon Musk on stage to admit that they were, like, illegal immigrants and working in ways that didn't actually were not included under their, under, under their visas.

And Elon is like, no, like, you don't say this. Nick's a illegal immigration, yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Like, that's, and Kimball, he's like, he's fun loving. He's on the border or he was. He got kicked out the board of a burning man. He's a, he's a bomb vivant.

And so Errolmus, their father, talks about them. And he basically, it's very funny how he describes him because he's like, he's like, yeah, Elon was like a nerd. Kimball was like the ladies man. Like, he's like, you know, handsome and like confident. And he had all the things that Elon didn't have. And it's funny, the way their father talks about him, Kimball is the one that seems to have the sort of, you know, Genesecois that that we now, somehow Elon has become like the avatar of this sort of like people want to be around him and whatever. Like, so Kimball was like, I think it's, it's helpful to think of him as a womanizer and as a kind of a party boy a little bit.

Elon comes across in these, in these emails as being very, you know, I mean, this is this is the period where Elon was building. his legend of the guy who was just sort of constantly at the computer, you know, always answering email. He wasn't in like the lab, you know, he wants people to believe that, but even when he's a workaholic, he wasn't like, you know, working on batteries or any of that shit. Like, no, he was, he was emailing a lot and he was, he was working a lot. And that's really clear in, in, in the correspondence, because he's very curt with, with absent a lot. But Kimball is both, you know, out there in the mix, partying, I think, a bit of a social climber, running. the kinds of businesses that don't get investment based on, you know,

people who invest in restaurants, like that is very much a social world. Womanizer, he'd already, I think, been through a divorce at this point, and it's this web of connections. Epstein leverages Boris Nicolich, who worked for Bill Gates, of course, to get, and he, and we don't know exactly how Nicolich and Kimball had linked up, but they were friends. And it's very clear in the email, like when this story, starts happening towards the end of September of 2012,

the Musk brothers are coming to New York. And so Epstein sees this as this opportunity to get his hooks into them, basically. He leverages Nicolage, it looks like he and Kimball are sort of like to be lads out on the town kind of a thing. Like that's very clearly their dynamic. And that provides Epstein the inn because that's,

Epstein knows how to deal with those guys, right? Like those guys are Epstein's bread and butter. And so through Nicolage, he can connects Kimball Musk with a woman. Nicolich asks in one of the, one of a number of very disgusting and, and the troubling passages, he says,

prepare this woman for, for Kimball. It says Kimball still has an X or like a soon to be X sort of in the picture, but it's okay. We'll sort of handle that. Prepare this woman for, for Kimball. And the phrasing of it is just,

I mean, is she may also. so like Elon. And that's Epstein saying that. It's also shocking, like, to see the way they communicated with each other such that, am I right, that Nicolick is the one who's reaching out and being like, prepare this woman, kind of a thing. You're right.

It is Nicolid. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so Nicolick clearly understands who Epstein is and how he operates. Like, that is from one email. And maybe it's worth saying this is in 2012. Is that right? So this is, 2012, yeah.

Yeah. So this is after Jeffrey Epstein has already been convicted of sex crimes years before, right? Absolutely. His conviction was 2008, I think. So Nicolig is clearly he's a middleman. He understands what he's doing. Again, I'm just interpreting based on the email. I don't know the man I've ever spoken to him.

I don't know what's in his heart. But, you know, the emails are interpretable. And it's very clear that he understands that both he, and this woman aren't intermediary between not just Kimball, but I think, well, the email doesn't make it clear. He understands that Kimball is a way to get to Elon, but I have to imagine that goes without saying, because I don't think, Jeffrey Eversy wanted to invest in the kitchen, right, in Denver. So yeah, so it's, and it's like this woman is a way to get to, and she has to be prepared for Kimball, but again, it's, she may like Elon. And so that, the implication that,

Right, like where this is going is sort of there right from the beginning. They meet up. It's hard to parse exactly. And there's always ambiguity. You know, it makes sense, right? People don't send emails, well, sometimes they'll send emails and say it was good to meet, right? I had a good meeting with you or whatever and like, you know, have a safe flight back or whatever. There's some of that.

But there's a number of points where there's some ambiguity about where exactly the meeting took place. But it's clear that a meeting took place. Epstein, I think, was trying to get them to his house, which is interesting as well because that brings up, right? There's all the cameras and there's all the sort of rumors and speculation about blackmail and things like that. It sounds like Kimball probably went to his home. Again, with Elon, it's always a little less clear. And I think it's probably because Elon was just less of a guy to send those kinds of emails. His emails are all very short and very curt. And you can tell, he's got a lot on his plate. And again, if you know the history of what he was

going through at the time, he had a hell of a lot on his plate. And so it makes perfect sense. Not that he wasn't interested, because as we'll get to, he was. And when the moment presents itself, he becomes very interested. But I think what's important about that first meeting, and then I think they come back to New York, like shortly thereafter, this leads up to the first sort of maybe, maybe we'll go to the island around the new year. So, you know, again, I think for me, the most important thing of that is, is that dynamic of Elon comes up on the radar. you know, in this world, he's becoming a star. Epstein pursues him through a web of social connections using women as a currency.

And that ultimately, you know, Elon is, and for a while after this, continues to be curt with him, continues to sort of be a little even dismissive of him. But that ultimately the appeal of what Epstein has to offer is something that very clearly connects with Mos. Just to be clear, we don't know exactly when Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein meet for the first time, but we do know that Jeffrey Epstein makes a trip to SpaceX specifically in 2013. That is a confirmed one, but we don't know when they meet before that. Is that right?

Yeah. So there's talk about him coming to the island December 2012, January 2013. The email suggests that they struggled to link up. the timing was off and that it looks like maybe they met for lunch in like St. Barts or something like that in that area. But it doesn't, it's not clear that you don't actually went to the island. And in fact, the next year as well, Elon by this time was looking forward to going to the island. And we'll get into maybe why that interest was, had grown over the course that year.

But even then, Epstein was like, I can't make it. And so they didn't, it seems like they didn't link up then either. So it's not, you know, I think, I think there's been a lot of speculation on social media and stuff about, you know, was Elon too uncool to go to Epstein Island? I don't think that was the thing. We also don't have, you know, really, as you say, the definitive proof, like, yes, he was definitely here on this date, you know, and Epstein was there, whatever. So there is ambiguity about the island piece of this. But what's unambiguous is that there's something going on between them, right? So there's some sort of meeting, I think, in the, in the Virgin Islands, somewhere over that sort of. of New Year period. And then in sort of February, so just months later, Epstein's assistants are reaching out to Musk's, Elon Musk's assistants, organizing a meeting at SpaceX between the two of them. The two of them and three girls that he brings with them, am I right? And three girls.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, you know, there had to have been something there. I think the missing piece in all of this is what was Epstein's. interest. The emails are really shaky on that front. The sort of theory of mind of like what exactly was Epstein trying to get. Because again, clearly there was the social cachet and this was going to be a useful person to him in a generic sense. But like that wasn't enough to precipitate a meeting at SpaceX headquarters. It's one thing for them to meet up on vacation, have lunch and who knows what they talked about. But meeting up at SpaceX, it's a big deal if only because, you know,

you referred to these three girls, they had to send their passports, right? So there's like a record of their passports at SpaceX visiting in order to comply with, you know, ITAR, I don't know, I don't know all the details of defense legal compliance, right, that exists to prevent, you know, foreign entities from infiltrating, you know,

folks who are part of the military industrial complex. But clearly they, you know, it was this interesting thing where, where you don't have a meeting at SpaceX just for, you know, to hang out with women. Like there was clearly some business angle to it and we don't know. And I think this is the part, and I didn't even write this in my year one piece. It's too speculative because we don't know. We have no hint of evidence about what the business angle is for that first, that SpaceX meeting.

What can't be ignored, though, is the fact that that first quarter of 2013 was what I call the immaculate quarter for Tesla. It's one of the most earliest and most mysterious periods in the company's history because the Model S had been in productions in summer, but like it was not doing well. The quality sucked. They only had a couple of colors it was available in. The word of mouth was not good. People were sort of saying a sort of, you know, kick car. It's sort of what, you know, one of the things you expect with a small startup car company.

And the sales weren't doing well. They turned that around not just in that first quarter of 2013, but the last month. and I think I don't have the dates in front of me, but the meeting was in like April. And like mysteriously the next month, Tesla sold enough Model S is like turned around the sales, sold enough to make their first profit, which then they leveraged into borrowing money,

paying off the government loan, and this is where Tesla's stock started to go crazy. So again, it's too speculative to say, like I really, you know, I want to avoid legal problems. I want to, you know, and I want to make it clear. that like this is this could very easily just be a coincidence and i have no evidence that there was all i know is i don't know what the business relationship was i don't think that fcc the evidence

doesn't suggest that epstein was interested in tesla as a business was interested in green energy was into electric vehicles but he was a guy whose currency was favors and so you know if elin was desperate at that moment and needed someone to raise money to buy some cars to get them off tesla's books and maybe they would buy them, someone would buy it back later. You know what I mean? Like if there was some sort of stealth bailout that happened there, Epstein certainly would have been the kind of guy to do it. So, again, I'm not alleging anything.

I just don't know. But if you know the context, that mysterious involvement right at that particular moment is certainly interesting. Yeah, certainly raises some questions, right? Questions that could potentially be answered if more files were released, maybe, you know, or at least, you know, hint towards something. It's hard to say. If you listen to this show, you already know that Silicon Valley wants to shape the future

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That's surfshark.com slash save us because if we're going to critique the system, we might as well not fund it with our browsing history. I feel like in this kind of first period, there's one other piece that stood out to me that I feel like even links us into the next part of the story that you talk about. And this is, of course, Ehud Barak, who is a former Israeli politician. I can't remember the exact month that he's reaching out. But like 2013, he's still in government. He's minister of the fence early in that year. He's reaching out essentially to try to see if Epstein can arrange, you know, a connection with Musk to try to get Tesla into Israel.

And, you know, he's like significantly rebuffed in that moment by Musk. But that's those kinds of requests are not rebuffed in the same way a few years later. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So it's also, yeah, the context of what was going on with Musk and Tesla at the various points in the story matter. And again, not in the way that conclusively prove anything, but as we are piecing this together, it suggests some things, right? So again, so why was it that Elon Musk was willing to meet with at SpaceX with a convicted sex offender six months after meeting him? Well, we can point to the fact that Tesla was in financial crisis. And, and, and, and, and, Epstein had, you know, access to sort of shady and socially intertwined money, right? Maybe that, maybe that explains it. Why was later that year? See, because once Tesla got through that first quarter of 2013, they paid off their

government loan, which they contrasted against, you know, GM and Ford, not doing it. They started talking about the, it was the, this was when the solar, you know, solar superchargers. This is exactly when he first started talking about autopilot. Basically, as soon as they paid off that government loan, Elon. very clearly set out to, and I call it going, you know, he went ludicrous mode, right? I mean, starting in that second quarter of 2013. And you can't even see it on the stock price now because it's that dynamic that started literally in that second quarter of 2013 has become so huge that you can't see it starting

on the stock chart anymore. But if you go back and you look at from IPO until 20, whatever, 16, 17, 18, wherever, you can see that is the inflection point. That is where Tesla becomes, you know, seven years. before the term meme stock existed. Tesla was becoming a meme stock. It was creating the profile for that. So when Ehud Barak reaches out to Epstein,

then Epstein reaches out to Must, that is later that in 2013, it's after the stock has started to go crazy. It's solved, so Elon has solved his problems in the short term. And it suggests the fact that he rebuffs Epstein, it doesn't rule out the possibility that he owes Epstein a favor,

but it may, kind of maybe hints that maybe, you know, Epstein didn't just completely bail him out, which is, again, I don't want to forward that theory too strongly. What's clear is that is that Tesla's short-term problems are over. The stock is going crazy. That's the engine of, it's always been the engine of that whole thing. And also, you know, Tesla was struggling to expand, right? The Model S only been on sale for a year.

They were still producing it at very small numbers. I think the original tooling for the Model S was 20,000 units a year, which is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny volume. It's funny. It was huge by roadster standards, right? It was a big leap, but it was still minuscule. And so they were struggling at that time with, like, as you, right, you need to open to a global market.

You're selling a car to rich people. You have to open global markets, but you have to be really smart because you don't have a lot of money to invest in the sales and the service locations. And so it's literally, right? It's like you think of like the luxury brands have this thing. So that's why you see Paris and New York and Tokyo. and London, you know, or Dubai, like a couple of little, Dubai being a much later thing.

At that time, Tesla had very little money to invest in new markets, and they were supply constrained. So they had more demand already by the mid to late 2013 than they were able to, you know, because they were very struggling. It was their first time building a car themselves properly. And so they were really struggling with that. And of course, as you reported, Elon Musk made a bunch of design decisions that made it even harder to build.

But, you know, that's a whole other, hubbing. Absolutely. Yeah. No, so, so, so the point being is that Israel, it was very easy for him to just blow Israel off. Like, they did not actually go into Israel. I don't have the number of front of me. I think it was in the 2020s.

Okay. The Israeli car market is tiny. It's notoriously corrupt. Like, Mazda's the best selling car. I'm not, again, I feel like I have a lawyer sitting on my shoulder this whole episode. I'm not accusing Mazda or the Israeli automotive authorities of I'm just reflecting what Israelis have told me about how their car market worked and the fact that their car market looks super different than every other car market in the world, which

tends to suggest or imply that that something other than the same market dynamics that are driving those markets are at play in Israel. So the point being is that Tesla didn't go there until much later. I think after the Model 3 came out, which makes sense because it's just not a market. It makes sense for them to invest in. So must rebuffs that. And then later that year, you know, it looks like their relationship is sort of getting a little rocky again. And again, you know, who knows what exactly is going on behind the scenes.

But Epstein reaches out again. And he does this a lot where he just emails people. And he just sort of says, you know, when do you come to New York? When do you come to New York? Hey, buddy, kind of stuff. The files are full of this. And it's, again, it's an insight into how the world works. People love that, right?

People love to feel like someone who's wealthy and powerful cares about them. It's a great way to manipulate people. I say this as, you know, it's happened. People have tried this on me, you know, like when you're a blogger and some CEO emails you, you're like, you know, and it's like, it's a powerful tool. Epstein reaches out later in 2013 and says, hey, the UN General Assembly is meeting in New York. There's to be a lot of interesting people at the place. You're going to come hang out.

And I think for, you know, most people in that clique, you know, in that world, that's very appealing, compelling thing. Elon responds very clearly, and this exchange, I think, encapsulates their relationship really well. Elon responds and is like just super bitchy with him. He's just like, I'm running. And you can tell it's the,

he is now starting to believe by late 2013, he's getting high on his own supply. He's believing his own press. And this machine that has now gone way off the rails is really starting to build up ahead of steam. and he's like, I'm running two very important companies. I'm very critical to their success. I can't just, it's like going off to New York and hanging out with a bunch of diplomats

just doesn't seem like a good use of my time. And Epstein, you know, clearly he's been putting a lot of effort. It's been a year of cultivating this relationship and quite successfully. And he sees it, I think, slipping away. And he goes back to, I think, the baseline of, of like, okay, what, how do I make this work? What does this? What do I have that this guy wants?

Because it's not diplomats in the UN General Assembly, right? It's women. He said, and he says, he's like, what do you think I'm an arsler? No one there is going to be under 25 or over 25 and everyone will be super cute. And again, Elon doesn't respond to this, but it's very telling to me that, you know, Epstein is trying to understand him. He's trying to figure out what makes sense. this guy tick. And those are the sort of the two things, the two major currencies that Epstein

trades in. It's status and prestige, which is, which is symbolized by the UN General Assembly to be able to rub elbows with the people who run the world, at least in a formalized, you know, sort of performance of running the world. Or it sucks. Elon is not, Elon is sort of a new class of elite that is coming in. And Epstein is figuring out, which of these currencies works with him. And it's not the status thing. It's the sex thing. By the end of that year, Elon is like,

okay, I'm ready for a vacation. And again, if you look at Tesla was just doing better at the end of 2013 than it was at the end of 2012. And that's where the infamous Elon, like, you know, when's the big party on the island? Or actually, that may have been the year earlier. But he's, but by the end of 2013, Elon is just unambiguously,

I really want to go hang on on your island. And unfortunately, we don't have emails to confirm whether that actually happened or not. But you mentioned Musk kind of blowing off this potential relationship to Israel. But of course, you write that several years later, Sultan bin Suleim, the CEO of Dubai Worldport, is kind of reaching out to Epstein making a similar request, right? To get Tesla into Dubai, to get that all set up. And by 2017, this is kind of bearing fruit. So what do we make of that relationship of why Musk seems much more open to, you know, pursuing this kind of relationship in this moment versus when the Israelis reached out?

There's sort of the cyclical nature of Tesla's business. You know, again, by, you know, 2012 was an almost going bankrupt year. 2013 was, you know, solved that, you know, and then you're doing good sort of into 2014. By 2015, things are getting challenging again, right? You've had to make these big investments in growth. Again, the quality problems are persisting. You know, the Model S is doing okay, but the Model X is really struggling to get to market. When Bin Saliam's interest in Tesla, too, it starts with the Model X.

He just wants to get a Model X. And Bin Saliam and absolutely were very close and had been for quite some time. You know, the background there is really Dubai had a series of distressed debt moments as well. And again, like this is this hints at maybe why Elon what the business is, this relationship was, is that when you are a profligate overspender, as both Elon and the guy who ran to put Dubai Port's world at different scales, totally different scales at this time, of course, but they both sort of were beyond their means in a corporate sense, right? They were not keeping that eagle eye on the bottom line. They were very, you know, boom-bust sort of things. And when these

sorts of guys run into trouble, Epstein is just one of the people they call. And again, this is, you know, talking about, like, how is it that companies that don't have good business models, you know, can you just stay in business and their valuations continue to grow, understanding that there are guys like Epstein out there that connect people

with various sources of capital and that they have all these relationships that are not necessarily just built on the bottom line, right, and building successful businesses. It's not. That's almost secondary

or tertiary even inside a lot of these cases. Bin Tully I had, they had this long relationship with Epstein. You know, he would like email Epstein. asking him to find apartments in New York, he treated him like a concierge a lot,

and EFSI was very gracious. You know, again, this is how these relationships work. You take those kind of undignified moments in stride. You help out the powerful guy, and then when it's your turn, you get something out of them. There's a mysterious moment where, you know, Epstein is asked by Vincent L.A.M. to get about a model X. It's very confusing about where Epstein's getting his information

about the availability of the Model X. there's a couple of different, like the way he basically says, we'll find out November 15th. And it's possible that like there was a typo. And because obviously his emails are full of typos. And it's possibly by November 5th when Tesla, like that's the most sort of innocuous explanation

is that Tesla was releasing information on the 5th. But even then, it came out earlier. The other thing was like November, it could be November 15, which is actually very close to when the Model X ended up coming to market. And what's fascinating is that, again, you have to contrast what's going on behind the scenes with what's going on out in public. At this exact moment, Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley, who is basically Elon's, this is my personal

characterization, because Elon must like, you know, chief stock pumper for many years, as this request for information is happening, he is starting to drip feed out ahead of that earnings release, the fact that the Model X is delayed, and then it won't come out until Q3 of 2015. So anyway, it's, again, there's hints that maybe Epstein is actually getting even like non-public, material non-public information from inside Tesla. There are interpretations where that's not the case. It's sort of hard to tell. But it's the start of this interest.

And again, this is why Epstein was positioned himself to have a relationship with Tesla is because he knew, you know, eventually people who are less plugged in than Tom Pritzker, but equally, if not more wealthy, we're going to find out about this Tesla thing and want in on it. And Bin Salam sort of exemplifies that. Yeah, because I think he's reaching out, like, specifically looking for three cars, right? For him, his wife and his son or something like that. Yes. And so that sort of resolves ambiguously because the model X isn't ready.

And then going into 2014, yeah, 2015, you get a version of the same request that A. Barak had forwarded through Epstein, which is come to, this time come to Dubai. Now, I think the big difference, other than, so there's, the market is different. It's a much more established luxury car market than Israel. You know, Dubai has, has become one of those Paris, New York, London, sort of fashion tour kind of luxury destination type of places by this point as well. But the other, there's this

other subtext going on here too, which is notably absent from the Ahead Barak, once you see the contrast, which is he basically straight up says you don't have to bribe anyone. I will make sure that you can get in to Dubai. I will put you on, I'm forgetting the day, it's the main commercial strip in Dubai. It's a former Porsche dealership. Actually, this is one of the interesting things. Porsche had built a brand new location in Dubai,

and their old place needed a tenant. That's the other subtext to this. You know, the pitch was, basically, we'll roll out the red carpet. It's a luxury market. I will get you in there. I'm the only guy who can get you in without, and this is the other crucial thing, without a partner. A lot of car markets, whether, so on the big scale of this is China.

And again, Tessa was the first foreign automaker to enter into China without a local partner. This is a number one priority for Elon. He does not want enforced partners. He will just not go to your country. And so that was also the other thing was it was like, you know, you don't have to, And again, he said it all as explicitly as you can put it in an email. You don't have to bribe me or anyone else. I will make sure to it.

I'll put you on the commercial strip and we will help you out. And sure enough, the UAE becomes not just a source of sales, right? They get that former Porsche dealership. They get the big building. Elon comes there. He talks about how the Birch Khalifa is this amazing tribute to humanity, kind of in the same way that the pyramids were, I guess, and other sort of slave labor-built monuments.

And then the big thing is that the government buys a lot of cars. And what's amazing is that Tesla was just in the very earliest days of even hyping the self-driving and autopilot thing at this point. And there's what's at the Dubai Future Foundation makes this incredible video. It was like AI slot before AI slop. It was just really bad. They took, it was literally, they took a Tesla Model S. and they made this video that shows, you know, an Emeraldi man, of course, getting in the backseat.

And it's got this whole user interface that's like projected onto the window as fully driver. But it's a Tesla. And it's like taking Tesla's, what Tesla at that time was still just sort of hinting at. Like it was the self-driving pitch was just in his infancy. And they're taking it and turbocharging it, you know. And so they're essentially they're doing, you know, government-funded advertising. the local taxi organization is buying, you know, model S's, which is a hard sell for a taxi company. Again, with the prospect, and they're hyping it as, you know, in Dubai you're going to show.

And by the way, they're still struggling to put this together. Now they got the Chinese companies in there to try, because they had this future vision that like 30% of their rides would be autonomous by 3030 or whatever. I'm sorry, by 2030. And they thought Tesla was going to or they were willing to buy into the vision of Tesla was going to provide that. So I think it was a lot of things that made that work. One was the sort of timing of where Tesla was. It was Dubai is a more appealing thing. It was that you don't have to bribe anyone.

It was the government is going to support you. But there was one other element as well, which is that apparently Epstein pitched him in person. This was not just sort of an email saying, hey, Ehud asked me to ask you, you know, what do you think? Kind of a thing. He was in person, as far as we can tell, it looks very, again. We don't have, you know, the timestamp photos and, you know, but it looks pretty clear. Epstein says, I'm going to meet with Elon today. Remind, give me more detail on that pitch you mentioned.

And Bouselayam sends it. And then immediately, like, asks, well, how did it go? How did it go? How did it go? The other thing, by the way, too, that Dubai got out of all this was it really was right when they were turbocharging their world government symposium or whatever they call it. And Elon Musk came for that. Now, they already had, like, big names.

You know, it's not like he made it. But it's this mutualistic exchange that we see with Elon again and again, which is you treat him like he's a big deal. He treats you like you're on the cutting edge of the future. And it's a circle jerk that has, right, like, sort of taken over our world. Yeah, everyone kind of wins in the sense that they get what they want out of it, right? You know, the Emirates want the cars. Except for the self-driving taxis, yeah.

Of course, of course, yeah. Well, you know, but at least they get the best. boosts, you know, they have the Teslas, you know, they get to participate in the PR. They get to, like, you know, bask in the aura of Elon Musk, you know, and he, again, gets pumped up in this way. You know, we're talking about the Amarades here. But obviously, you know, as you were talking about earlier, the Saudis and Musk, there's also a very important relationship there that really, you know, is, is most emblematic in 2018, as you were saying, when Elon Musk announces that he's going to take Tesla private, that he has secured the Saudi money to.

to do it. And I know that there is stuff in the Epstein files that you're after finding that relates to that as well. So what is that telling us about what are these Epstein files further revealing about what is going on in 2018 around, you know, Elon Musk's supposed intentions to take Tesla private in that moment? Yeah. So Epstein claimed in his emails to have links to the Saudi, the king of Saudi Arabia, going back to 2011 was the earliest I found. So quite early as far as the files are concerned. So clearly, and I, you know, I don't really know where that relationship started, where it comes, like, you know, there's emails from a French diplomat talking about, you know, the harem that the Saudi King has. So there's, there's, you know, implications of, you know,

that maybe the sexual thing is a factor in that. I don't know. There's so little about, about the origins of that relationship that I can't even begin to speculate, really. The relationship with the Saudis between Epstein and the Saudis seems to intensify based on my reading of the files, sort of around that 14, 15, 16, sort of culminating in a trip that he takes to Saudi Arabia where apparently Mohamed bin Salman meets him on the airplane, meets him at the, on the tarmac, rather, when his airplane lands. That's, you know, pretty significant. This is around the time that Mohammed bin Salman also sort of solidifies his position as the, you know, as the power in Saudi Arabia where he locks family members up.

Epstein was certainly interested in that as that was going on. He was very interested in the Saudi Aramco IPO. He had a theory that by going public, that it could create an exposure, a sort of an attack surface that would create vulnerabilities for the Saudi state. So he's clearly advising them. And more importantly, by, you know, certainly by 2017-18, people are emailing him and saying and asking him about his Saudi friends. and these are well-connected, you know,

Lana Thomas Jr. at the New York Times and Giuliana Glover, who a lot of people don't know, but she sort of figures in and all this. Giuliana Glover is someone that I got the pleasure of figuring out who she was through my coverage of Tesla. She is an immensely powerful woman in the East Coast establishment. She was involved in the Bush administration.

She, I think, was sort of a cheney person, but she's positioned herself very much as a second. interest in D.C. She's very sort of equally at home, sort of with either party. And Michael Wolfe connects her with Elon. I'm sorry, connects her with. She was already connected with Eli. It connects her with Epstein because they were both sort of,

kind of anti-Trump a little bit in the first Trump administration. So, you know, there's, and they're sort of like, oh, he's going off the rails. And she was writing about how there needs to be a third party candidate, which is, again, classic beltway sort of, you know, oh, well, we just need, you know, someone who's sensible in charge and, you know, and Epstein, of course, is like, oh, you're so smart. You're so smart. When Michael Wolf introduces him, so Epstein is basically talking to Michael Wolf. And Michael Wolf is the author of Fire and Fury or whatever it is, the book about the Trump

administration, very, and fascinating character in his own right, is the author. But basically, Epstein is saying, I need help with PR. And Michael Wolf says, well, this woman, Juliana Glover, he says multiple times, She's wholly owned by Elon. Elon has bought her out. And so she can't take other work, but like, you guys will get along. And sure enough, they do. And they're sort of talking about this sort of third party kind of anti-Trump stuff a little bit.

But then all of a sudden, the funding secured thing blows up. And all of a sudden, she's in his email saying, in case you're advising certain parties that may or not be involved in what's going on, like, I can help you sort of. message, you know, like the potential of Tesla. So, you know, really clearly reading through the lines. And again, you know, what we know about, you know, Saudi Arabia. So, so Mohammed bin Salman had been, you know, clearly was interested in. And what we've seen with the rise of Mohammed bin Salman is this interest in Saudi Arabia, from Saudi Arabia in the tech sector. And we've had, you know, these big state visits and meeting all the, the Titans. And we had huge investments. And clearly, you know, and so I think. Well, there was that big controversial visit where he came.

came over and like spent so much time visiting all these CEOs in Silicon Valley and all that kind of stuff, right? This was before the kind of murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which turned them off for a bit, but now they're all back in the Saudi sphere again. Yeah, well, and you think about this sort of heel turn that Silicon Valley has really sort of leaned into so heavily. And it makes sense that a lot of that comes from, you know, this huge influx of wealth from the Gulf states, you know, and that then they're targeting that as a source of investment. It was all Also, of course, in the ZERP era, it was hard to get yield elsewhere outside of Silicon Valley, so they weren't the only ones.

But Epstein seems to have been at the forefront of that trend, of the Gulf states getting into and meeting up with the tax sector. So I don't know if Epstein personally brokered the Saudi meeting about, because the Saudis did meet with Musk that summer of 2018, and there was talk of an investment. But the funding was not secure. We know the funding was not secured. and Elon just sort of popped off about it. As there's this like multi-day scandal, Epstein makes it clear.

Like he blows off other people who's dealing with crypto stuff at the same time. And he's like, I can't deal with this right now. I'm like fully engaged in this Elon thing. It sounds, it seems like both. So he and Giuliana are ostensibly, Julian Glover are ostensibly on opposite sides of this deal. He's advising the Saudi. She's advising Elon or representing Elon. And yet they're collaborating.

and they're collaborating on, among other things, manipulating the New York Times. And that's the sort of the number one thing that comes out for me in this period is they are talking, they are both getting information in and out of the New York Times. They are, from their sources who work at the Times, they're learning about stories before they come out.

And then they are collaborating to manipulate those stories and manipulate the coverage. when you know that, right? And then it's like, okay, so now it makes sense that, that, you know, this guy, and I can't remember exactly which reporter it was who, I think it was James Stewart, who goes to actually his townhouse

and records an interview with him, or not records a has an interview with him, and then doesn't write about it until the guy dies a year later, like all of a sudden, this makes a little more sense. What does it, there's a lot that still doesn't make sense, though. So we can see how, how they manipulated the situation, but like we still don't really understand why Elon sort of announced this in the first place, like whether, whether there was, there was clearly something else

going on, like the deal didn't exist and he was trying to will it into being. Fascinatingly, Epstein has a horror of drug use. And at this time, he's like, he's like, your boy is like smoking weed on Joe Rogan, right? That was also happening at this time. And he's like, this is, And his employees were emailing him about it and being like, this is bonkers. Like, everyone in Epstein's little world was like, oh, my God, drug people are bad. Keep them away from us. Like, they do. They're those people.

We're, you know, one of us means, you know, you're not a druggie. You're into the stuff that we're into. You know, the relationship between him and Glover is really fascinating because, again, like, the number one thing that comes through is they're on opposite sides of the deal, but they're also both part of the same class. They both have access to the New York Times. They both are able to manipulate it. They both, and they're working together, I think, to sort of diffuse.

And by the way, she, of course, is like, oh, Elon does barely even drinks. She's trying to manipulate him, too. So they're both collaborating and many people. Anyway, it's one of those things where it's like you realize these people are both in this class. They both wield immense power. And even though they're on opposite sides of this deal, this is just one deal. And like they all have other angles and other interests. And this moment will come and it will go and they will still be there.

And they will continue to. And again, in the moment, whether they're trying to spin each other or collaborating to spend the times or whatever else it is that they're doing, there's this interplay of conflict, but that is smothered by, again, the class solidarity that happens in this world. Hearing everything that you're talking about, that, like, obviously there's the whole piece with Elon Musk and, you know, with the deal with the Saudis. And again, how Epstein is involved in this very key moment in, you know, kind of like the history of Elon Musk's business empire, certainly one that we have talked about many times. But, you know, this kind of wrinkle of it was

not something that we were aware of, you know, again, until these files were released. But the other piece that really stands out to me again is this relationship to the media and to the New York Times and kind of the influence and the passing of information that is there, that also, I would say, present some big red flags, right? Yeah, so, and the part where I have some personal experience with this, you know, is fascinating. It's, you know, I was around this time frame, actually a little before this, I was contributing regularly to Bloomberg. It was called Bloomberg View at the time, now Bloomberg Opinion.

And, you know, I was starting to write more and more about Tesla. There was one incident specifically, and it was in 2016, so it was before this, but after Juliana Glover, this is how I found out who she, was, was I wrote about the painted black, basically Tesla doing this fake self-driving video, and this is when they started doing full self-driving. I write this draft about it, and I'm very skeptical, critical, and we're in edits, and all of a sudden, my editor gets this lit laundry list of corrections from Juliana Glover. And to be perfectly honest, like, they're almost all, in fact, they were all, no,

there was one where I'd said a few, there'd been a few, there'd been a few, deaths because we knew about two, we had two proven deaths, and then there was the Gow Yenning, in, we knew Josh Brown, and I think it was a Jeremy Banner somewhere else. Anyway, the point is I, I could prove two, and I suspected a third, and it was all but obvious that there was a third, but, okay, so we'll say two instead of a few. That was the one correction that was like, fine, yes, legitimate, one word. And then there was this laundry list of others, most of which were just sort of, we dismissed out of hand, and some of which actually went in, and I could show you this piece today. For example, like, she says that the drive,

that they did started at Tesla's factory, which is in Fremont, and ends up at their headquarters in Palo Alto. Well, how does it cross the Bay? It doesn't cross the Bay. Like, I grew up in the Bay Area. Like, I'm sorry, this is like the easy, most easily disproven and stupid correction, but it's still in that piece, 11 years later, you know,

or 10, almost 10 years later, it's still in that piece. And this is the Power Juliana Glover. And then I went on Bloomberg TV in San Francisco. It was my first time doing it in person, you know, at the Bloomberg studio in San Francisco. Cisco. I was so excited for it. And Emily Chang is there, who's great, by the way. And we're literally five minutes to going on air. And Emily Chang gets his phone call. She's like, okay, mm-hmm, gets off the phone. And she looks at me and she's like, I am so sorry about this. Like, this doesn't

happen. That was my boss's boss or my boss's boss's boss, something like that. It wasn't just her boss. It was someone way up. And she's like, you know, we've had the word has come down. And I have to ask you about corrections that were made to your piece. And I'm like, I'm sitting here, I'm like, wait a second. This is Bloomberg TV asking about one word correction after a bunch was dismissed out of hand in your own outlet. It was a Bloomberg, you published the thing, and now I'm on TV to promote it on your TV channel.

And anyway, this was like, this was my first hint at the kind of power that is for sale in this country and that Elon had bought. And we now know from Michael Wolf. He just, he bought her out. Like, I shut her to think what her annual rate is to not work for anyone else. It's got to be a lot of money. And boy, does she get results. Like, again, I saw it firsthand.

And so to see her and Epstein collaborating and then just to see all the things that he has his fingers in, this world is run by an elite that has this solidarity with each other. Again, their interests may align or conflict moment to moment. And it doesn't matter. What matters is their power. and that they have it and that that doesn't change. And so that to me is really the lesson of the Epstein files. I've seen firsthand, you know, all this reporting and then nothing ever happens.

Why is that? Well, now we're finally starting to get a look at sort of the mechanics that explain what's gotten so badly broken in our society and in our world more broadly. Totally. And Elon Musk is just one of those, right? You know, you're talking about your experience with regard to Elon Musk and reporting on Elon Musk, but when you touch so many of these other billionaires, you find that they have their own PR people and fixers and lawyers who are doing the same sort of thing to try to make sure that negative

coverage of them and their businesses are staying out of the headlines, you know, are not being reported on, are being, as you say, corrected so that, you know, it is not as critical. It better reflects their narrative, that sort of a thing to try to take, you know, the potential pain of this out of it. But I just want to pick up on, you know, to to kind of close off our interview, the moment we're talking about here is about a year before Jeffrey Epstein is arrested and then ultimately goes on to supposedly kill himself. I know there are still questions about that, you know, what ultimately happens there. But like this is already getting close to the end of his life and he still has this, you know,

very close involvement with Elon Musk and his empire. And so, you know, as we wrap this up, I wonder in your mind, you know, again, based on the limited information that we have, what do these revelations tell you? you big picture about the relationship between Epstein and Musk and how that all operated. Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things. One is just that, you know, Epstein represented this point of entry, this nexus of money and power.

If you could get close to him when things got sketchy. And again, I'm not just talking about Elon, you know, or when you wanted something, he was a fixer. He was a fixer. and the realities of the business didn't matter. You look at how he did business, and he would ask for these very sketchy characterizations of financial deals that he was being asked to participate in. They had very loose grasp of the fundamentals of businesses that he was involved in,

and everything was sort of social. And I think, right, that that's understanding that we don't live in, again, the world that we were taught as schoolchildren to believe, you know, that there's a system and that it works in systematic ways. Well, there is a system, but it doesn't work in systematic ways. It's a social system. That's the number one. The number two of it, and I think this is something that is going to bear a lot more reporting,

and I think it helps explain not just Elon Musk, but a lot of the things that are happening, I think, in our world, our politics right now, especially as we go to war in the Middle East, is the role of Gulf Oil, to be perfectly blunt. in a lot of things. And I think you can sort of step back and look at some high-level things. And again, maybe, you know,

we need more information to flesh a lot of this out. But, you know, you see the rise of the idea of the network state. And you see, you know, that is what Dubai is, is a little bit of networks, right? And it's sort of the template for what a lot of people are trying to create from Silicon Valley. And you just see a general attitude where, you know, tech companies,

act more like Gulf states than they do sort of American companies. For better force, I don't want to romanticize American business culture because obviously there's a lot wrong there going way back. But, you know, and we see this in our politics too. And even in, you know, I made a joke on Blue Sky about how you can't get a PR job anymore

because like when someone reports negative news about the company, like the response is just like the CEO like puts out a tweet that's like, yeah, we did it. And it's part of some bizarre, you know, like ideological thing, right? Like there's no denying anymore. It's like people, the masks are off. And how that's happened in both business and technology and then in our politics,

I also don't want to say like, oh, there's all these foreigners and their money. But like, we know that that oil and oil money are one of the foundations of our world. And that, and it creates a lot of power. And that power is wielded by people who have what I consider to be very objectionable values. And I see them seducing the power in our country towards those values because those values privilege power and the naked use of power against the less powerful and justifies it in any in all circumstances. And so I see where our country across, again, business and politics and everything else

is drifting. We're drifting towards a Dubai-type world of intense wealth and the spectacle of wealth in technology that is built on slavery and exploitation. And that seals like the world where we're headed to. And I think that as we get more information, I hope we do. And I think of nothing else, I hope that Epstein files inspires hackers to not, you know, that this information is power. We need to see more about what's happening in this.

But I think Epstein was really the midwife in a lot of ways, or certainly a facilitator of this transition from, you know, letting loose the last vestiges of, I think, what are reasonably good American values, which, again, I don't want to romance a size American history, but this noticeable turn towards things that look even worse, right?

For those of us who've been critical of America's past, that the future looks even worse. And I see Epstein sort of at the center of brokering the relationship between certainly technology and that sort of Petro dollar power. So I think, you know, on that basis, he is a linchpin in understanding this very mysterious, in a lot of ways, the mechanics of it don't make.

I think a lot of people find that's been baffled by this turn that's taking place. And I think the Epstein files hold a lot of answers as to why this is all happening. And they suggest that we need to do a lot more digging and we need to expose a lot more emails from a lot more people because what's happening is really important. And, you know, we haven't been asked to vote on it or even have a proper discourse about it because we don't have the facts. And so hopefully this is step one in, at least trying to do some of those things. Yeah, very well said. We need to be having that discussion. We need to get more of these files,

whether that's through hacking or through leaking. Someone can put them out there because they do exist. But then the other piece, of course, picking up on what you say is, okay, we know this much about Jeffrey Epstein, you know, still a very limited amount. But how many more Jeffrey Epstein's are out there trying to do a similar sort of thing as well, right? You know, there's a lot of, I think, accountability that is really needed for what is happening here. And unfortunately, we're not seeing nearly enough of that, certainly in the United States, but in many other places as well. Ed, it is always great to speak to you, to get your insights, even when it's terrible topics like this one, but we need to know what is going on and how this world actually works and how

these powerful figures are connected through these networks that are just terrible. So I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much. Absolutely. It's a pleasure as always. Ed Niedermeyer is the author of Ludacris and a co-host of the Atonacast. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Husson. Tech won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to Patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us and making a pledge of your own.

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