The Chaser Report - The Fault In Our Starlinks

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Elon Musk has dug himself a very deep hole, and there is no ladder long enough to reach him out. Naturally, Charles and Dom delight in this.Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enGive us money:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence. This is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, it has been a difficult time to be a Tesla owner, to be Elon Musk. Elon Musk's been in the news quite a lot, Charles. And the first thing to say is that Tesla is on the nose. And a lot of people have been protesting in the...

their dealerships, people have been handing them back, and it's just, it's not a great time to be an electric car driver if your electric car is made by someone who's simultaneously trying to destroy the US government. Yes, it couldn't have happened to a nicer asshole than Elon Musk. Yeah, where are we going to start? There's so many things with Elon Musk. There are so many stories, aren't there, about all this? I guess that the place to start is, bearing in mind the cost of living pressures that so many of us are experiencing. We want to talk about Donald Trump buying a Tesla and saying that people who attack their dealerships are domestic terrorists. But let's start on the positive for Elon, shall we?

Yes. Which is that he's gone to court this week. And in fact, Tesla has gone to court this week in Delaware, which is where companies generally go so that they have no regulation whatsoever. But in this case, the court has twice said, the Chancery Court of Delaware has twice said that he can't be paid $100 billion for running. They're on a part-time basis. Now, admittedly, the figure you're quoting is in Australian dollars. So I think if you convert that into American dollars now, it's probably about 20 cents or something like that. I'm so sorry, you're right.

It's 63 billion US dollars. Let's talk about exactly why he's worth that much, apparently, after these ads, which will earn several billion dollars. On this Shardin-Froidter-themed episode of The Chaser Report. So this is quite fascinating. The board made up of people who Elon Musk picked, including I think his brother Kimber, have decided that he's such a great asset to Tesla, that he's worth by far the biggest pay package ever awarded

to anybody to do anything ever. In history. In history. So it's sort of like, and it's sort of late-stage capitalism, you know, really paying dividends, isn't it? Because, you know, you go through history and you go, Well, there's been some significant figures.

There's been Jesus. Yeah. You know, he was pretty good. He didn't get much of a payout, though. His wages... No, he didn't get a payout. His wages were more sort of in the form of death. Well, he was more focused on being able to pass through the eye of a needle.

Yes. So that he could get into heaven, the bloody goody two shoes. Then we had Isaac Newton. I reckon he's pretty notable. Yeah. I mean, he should really have been a founding shareholder or a rappel. Never got a payout. Never got a shareholder to pay a package.

Albert Einstein? Albert Einstein never got a payout even like Anne Berlin never got a payout Joan of Arc never got a pay out Neither of their shares would have vested what with the whole being murdered thing that happened to both of them

yeah yeah that's true Rosa Parks never got a 63 billion dollar payout but but Elon Musk does like it shows you what we've had like in some ways it's sort of saying that Elon Musk is better than all these other people in history

but it goes even further than that He goes even further than that. Because what they're saying is that not only is Elon Musk worth more than any human has ever been paid to do anything ever, but that that's for a part-time job, Charles. Like, how much time is he spending on Tesla in between SpaceX blowing things up, spending almost all of his time tweeting and running Doge as well? And apparently then gate crashing cabinet meetings at the same time. He can't be spending more than, if you'd be generous to say he's spending 10 hours a week on Tesla.

Yes. But it's a cost of living thing, Doc. It's not about the amount of time That ketamine doesn't pay for itself And look, maybe it's in the interest of Tesla for him To not spend time running Tesla And in fact, we'll get on to why that is Because Tesla's having a bit of a rough time at the moment

They're still in court in Delaware Trying to get this pay package up by the way Yeah, so because have you looked into the actual details of that court case Because that is a fascinating court case Which is that So what happened is years ago with this stacked board Elon said, hey, why don't you pay me this ridiculous bonus amount of money, right? Yeah.

And then the court, the first time the shareholders took it to court and said, this is just, you know, ridiculous. Bearing your mind again, this is in Delaware, which is famously the place where you, this is why they talk about Delaware corporations, because that's the place where you go when you don't want any corporate governance. And so what they went is, no, that was invalidly done. if you want to redo it in a valid way because they're saying the board shouldn't have done they should have put it to shareholders

such a significant transaction that it wasn't enough awareness if you want to redo it you can just redo it right but the reason why he keeps fighting to actually just get the previous one reinstated rather than just do it over

which he presumably could do if you wanted to is because the way it was structured he basically doesn't have to pay any capital gains tax on it was you wouldn't want to pay capital gain tax on a hundred billion dollars would you mean the US government was about to use that money they could actually fund all the things that Elon ironically is now slashing with all the money from the capital gains tax so that's why it's got to be um that's why he's so intent on it I mean he moved the whole company to Texas to try and get around it but you know these pesky

lawyers with their laws so Charles you told me just before we started recording that he's actually been crying, which I must say I'm a little surprised by it. I would have thought, I mean, don't want to stereotype the guy, but I don't, public displays are of emotion, not really Elon's thing.

Yeah, he's more sort of public despise of psychopathy, isn't he? You know, and bullying behaviour, you know, when he called those K-Divers, P-dos.

I mean, he's very socially awkward, as Mike Myers has been showing on SNL, Yeah, he's very sort of stuttery and awkward And in fact, him hosting SNL Was one of the strangest things ever seen Go and look at the videos If you want to be creeped out

But he went He went on Fox News A couple of days ago And they were interviewing him about You know The big backlash You know all sorts of things Because he's at a string of failures

It was SpaceX His rocket blew up Which makes Tesla's performance Look relatively competent To be fair Yeah And he he tiered up in that You can actually

see him tearing up but the better tea which is admittedly less verifiable than a public that when's that ever stopped you before charles yeah i know exactly is that um online everyone saying that uh he was actually audibly sobbing in the oval office you could hear him from the oval office sobbing and that was moments yeah in in in his own office in the oval office um and that then led about a day later to trump doing that that bizarre ad for Tesla. Yeah, and let's talk about that. So, Charles, I know this is unverifiable,

but are you sure, does the rumour have it that he was crying, sad tears, not just crying, sobbing. He was sobbing. Rather than just sacked another few million people and they were tears of joy. Are we sure? No, no.

And these are reputable influences. It's accounts like Salt Bayer. Sure. I don't know. And there was one, I'm just trying to find it called You're a non-central? Reading out the names of the anonymous tipses

who've repeated the rumours, that's making your research seem a lot more viable charge. Also, the respectable Lisa Gilliam 9534. That's right. To you, he's cool something. Okay, so. So he was, he was, because he's very highly leveraged, right? Yeah, yeah.

If his Tesla stock falls, Twitter, like, the way he's financed Twitter is based on, It's backed by Tesla shares, right? So his Tesla shares fall, then the banks get to own X. And by which we'll mean his children as well, like the child X. He won't be able to afford child support for the army of children that he has if this goes on. Yeah, and then it will all come crashing down because if he loses X, then he loses his influence. Trump no longer wants him.

Of course. And he doesn't get any Tesla ads on the White House lawn anymore. Yeah, we'll get to the Chessera, but we should acknowledge that there's been a massive backlash. Not only are people sticking stickers on their Teslas which say I bought this before Elon went crazy but people have actually been painting swast stickers on Tesla supercharges

they've been going into Tesla dealerships and vandalising cars and basically making a huge fuss. It's almost as though they associate Tesla with the actions of Elon Musk, strangely enough. Yes, yes, I don't know why. And so Donald Trump has been coming to

Elon's aid, which is really... It's so amazing to see Donald Trump actually going out and trying to help somebody else in this sort of generous, selfless way. And he actually, as he say, he bought a shiny new red Tesla. Yes, and he can't even drive. That's one of the funniest things about it, is that I know, he can drive, but the secret service won't let him drive it. So if the idea was to say everyone should go and buy a Tesla, like Maganaut should go and buy

a Tesla, go by a Tesla, hilariously, he's not allowed to buy it because it's too dangerous to drive such a fast car. Is that because it's at risk of exploding spontaneous? Quite possibly. Or is it just the full self-driving mode? There's a whole script here. They've actually taken a photo of the script in all of Tesla's. Sorry, they've taken a photo of the script that Elon gave him,

where it says, this is from in Trump's hand. Tesla's can be purchased as low as $2.99 a month. The Chaser Report, less news, more often. We should talk about Elon Musk's other enterprise that's not going very well, which is space x now you'd think that space x uh you know it's pretty bad that you know their latest rocket exploded especially as their latest rocket exploded in exactly the same way that their previous rocket exploded we like to see consistency though don't we isn't that called um yeah what do they call that in science like uh being able to to repeat an

experiment means that yeah verifiability no but the but yeah no but what it verifies is that they don't know what the fault is because they they think They thought that they'd fixed the thing that they thought it was that caused the crash, right? Or the explosion. And having fixed it, it's still exploded, which means they don't know. So it's actually, it's genuinely bad news. And these are the same rockets that Elon's sending up to rescue those astronauts. So you must just be tempted to go, you know what, we'll die in space.

If our choice is Boeing or Elon Musk, I think we'll just stay put. Yeah. Just stay for it. It's not so bad? There's a view. But the other bad news for SpaceX is that one of Elon Musk's other companies, Starlink, has just lost a huge contract with Carlos Sim. Oh, yes, the Mexican telco billionaire, yeah. Yeah, so Carlos Sim, it literally owns this terrible, horrible monopoly.

Like, he's just the worst billionaire in Mexico. He owns this virtual monopoly of all the internet and telephone services in Mexico. Are you including all the drug barons as well? In that, is he worse than the drug barons who do the beheadings? Well, this is exactly what Elon Musk accused Carlos Sim of being. He said, well, Carlos Sim, who he has a deal with Starlink, like Carlos Sim and Starlink are business partners. He said, Carlos Sim, oh, he made his money out of cartels.

He's actually just the head of a cartel, right? Was he trying to compliment? He immediately cancels, immediately cancels that. Carlos Sim. immediately cancels the contract. It's worth $7 billion. Wow. That contract to Starlink.

Now, bear in mind that Starlink's revenue, annual revenue, is $12 billion. So that is money that Starlink cannot afford to lose. Yeah, but also the most expensive tweet of all time. Like, I've just looked, he didn't even, he didn't even posts. All he did was he just retweeted someone else saying that with like an emoji of someone with a magnifying glass, like a monocle. That's it. One monocle emoji cost him, what,

$6 billion, did you say? That's pretty good work. $7 billion. No wonder he wants the Tesla money. But then just a couple of days ago, Carlos Sim announced that he's cutting all ties with Elon Musk across the entire deal. And that's 30 countries worth of Starlink.

Yeah. Now, gone from the Starlink thing. And now, the reason why this is bad news for Space X is because the only reason Starlink was, set up was to provide business for SpaceX, because SpaceX doesn't have a business model, right? Exploding apparently is not a service other people want. Yeah, what they wanted was they needed a reason to have to launch lots of rockets into space all the time.

And so Starlink, the way Starlink works is it has disposable satellites. They're actually, they don't last longer than about a year. There's so many of them. I think, yeah, there's thousands of them. and the thing is people go they're probably more flimsy than they need to be simply because that then gives SpaceX more business like it's a complete house of cards literally they're made out of cardboard probably yeah and so and so SpaceX now doesn't have like Starlink's lost they're saying it's something like 24 billion dollars worth of business

you know across the next no five years or whatever from the Carlos Sim thing. So Starling's basically going to collapse. SpaceX will therefore collapse. Tesla's collapsing, so Twitter's going to be sent to the bank. Don't forget the boring company. Don't forget the holes in the ground. Well, I must say he might need the boring company

to find a hole in the ground to go and hide, Saddam Hussein style. But the thing that I love about this whole thing and gets to my favourite theme in this podcast, which is that I am on. track to be right as always because I made a prediction a few months ago that Elon Musk would end up in jail in four years time. Do you remember, Dom? I do remember that. I do remember that, Charles. I will give you credit for that. I also should point out. I would just like to say, I reckon he's on track.

I think we're seeing the implosion, the catastrophic implosion. Of Elon himself. Of Elon. Well, I don't know, Charles, because here's the thing. We've seen already in the case of New York's Mayor Eric Adams that Donald Trump's Department of Justice is pretty flexible if you work closely with Trump. But also, the thing is, as you know, very well, Charles, if your career in business goes badly, if you can't make a buck on the free market, go and work for the government. Admittedly, in this case, go and work pulling apart the federal government, but it's still, he's still a government job that Elon has. And if he just, he can get an honest salary for what he's doing with Doge, he'll be fine. But what if Doge looks into his work and asks him,

to resign. What if Doge works out whether Elon Musk could basically shut down the federal government more efficiently? That I want to see, Charles. That's a very good idea. Series 2 of optics?

Yes, that's it. Oh, it writes itself, doesn't it? The Department of Optics efficiency. We are part of the iconoclast network. I think we've solved everything. We have. Absolutely. And if your internet in regional Australia

comes from Starlink, enjoy it while it lasts. See ya.