The Journal. - Elon Musk's 'Demon Mode'

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Elon Musk’s wild mood swings are legendary. His “demon mode" gets a lot of attention from biographer Walter Isaacson in a new book about Musk. WSJ’s Tim Higgins talks with Isaacson about what fuels Musk’s "demon mode" and how it plays out in his business ventures.  Further Reading and Watching: -Elon Musk’s Lessons From Hell: Five Commandments for Business  -Elon Musk Is Running Twitter on His Impulses  -The Real Story of Musk’s Twitter Takeover  Further Listening: -Elon Musk Wants to Build an Everything App  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our colleague Tim Higgins sat down with a renowned biographer yesterday. Walter Isaacson, thank you for joining us. We're here to talk about your new book, Elon Musk. Congratulations, and thanks for making some time. And thank you, Tim, and thanks for being the pioneer on this subject. Walter Isaacson has written books about a lot of powerful men. Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin.

And for two years, Isaacson shadowed Elon Musk everywhere he went. You know, I slept in Airstream trailers in the south tip of Texas where SpaceX has its launch pad. I spent a lot of late nights in factories. He put nothing off limits, which surprised the heck out of me. He said, I just want to surprise you about the transparency. And my side of the deal was fine. I want to be

everywhere. But you get no control over the book. You don't even get to read it before it comes out. Has he read it now? I don't know. He says on Twitter, I don't know. He says he hasn't, so we'll see. On Sunday, Musk tweeted on the platform now called X that he has a copy of the book, but that, quote, Walter recommended that I not read it. A lot has been written about Elon Musk. He lives his life between the tweets. He has upended industries from the auto industry to aerospace, now trying to redo Twitter turned X. You spent two years shadowing him.

What did you learn that we didn't already know about Elon Musk? Well, there's certainly multiple Elon Musk, multiple personalities. Whether it's the hardcore engineering mode that you know so well, where you can figure out how to do a battery cell, or more importantly, figure out how to do steps on an assembly line that will make the battery cell. But also, there's almost a demon mode of Elon Musk, where he turns really dark. And that can be very problematic. But with a Musk or anybody, you figure out how did they channel those demons and turn them into drives. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Tuesday, September 12th. Coming up on the show, biographer Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk's childhood, his demon mode, and his disruptive management style. options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. You've written a lot of books. Steve Jobs' biography was maybe perhaps an instant classic. And in that book, you talk about the challenge of breaking through the Apple co-founders reality distortion field with Musk you had extraordinary access right by my count you talked to more than 120 people around him close deputies even family members his father even did you worry about that reality distortion field that he has, the fact that he can sometimes be an unreliable narrator in his own life?

Well, yes, he can be unreliable, and his memory is fallible, and he sort of cloaks himself as a hero in every tale. But I didn't feel a reality distortion field. was not, he almost was unaware of my presence, it seemed, a lot of the time, because he'd be being a real jerk to people at a meeting or blow up on a walk around one of the rocket sites. And I'd think, wait a minute, doesn't he know I'm taking notes here? So it did surprise me how open and in some ways not trying to sugarcoat things he was. You spend a really significant part of the book in the beginning talking about his childhood and his relationship with his father. What was the early days of Elon Musk like?

You know, he was a scrawny kid, socially awkward, beaten up on the playground a whole lot. Went to a wilderness camp in which he had sort of survival. And he lost 10 pounds in a week because they kept beating him up and taking his food. But when he went back to the wilderness camp a few years later, he had gotten bigger. He had learned a little judo. And he said, I just learned to punch people in the nose as hard as I could when they were being mean to me. And sometimes they'd beat me up, but if I punched them really hard in the nose, they wouldn't do it again. You almost see that nowadays, which is he's pugnacious.

He sometimes can be so confrontational, and when in doubt, he punches in the nose. I've never seen him go so in-depth about that childhood experience. Why do you think he was ready to talk about it now? It took a long time for Musk to want to talk about his childhood. I just sat there. I'd raise it every now and then. And sometimes we'd get to a place where suddenly he'd start talking about his father. And he would go and get teary-eyed at times, very, very emotional, and just say, you don't know how bad the abuse was.

And I talked, of course, to Kimball Musk, his brother, about it, and May Musk, his mother. But then I talked to Errol Musk, the father. I wanted to hear all sides of this. And after a while, Elon just kept opening up about the psychological scars he had when his father would make him stand in front of his father and yell at him for more than an hour and take the sides of the people who had beaten up Elon and call Elon stupid. Errol Musk, Elon's father, disputes the suggestion that he exposed his son to psychological abuse. He said that the success of his children would indicate that he must have been, quote, quite a good parent. Errol Musk also objected to the idea

that their relationship fueled his son's temper, or that mood which people around Elon Musk called demon mode. What is demon mode in your mind? Demon mode is something that happened to his father as well. It's almost like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where a cloud comes over and he gets into a trance and he can just be tough in a cold way. He never gets really angry, never gets that physical,

but coldly brutal to people. And he almost doesn't remember afterwards what he's done. Sometimes I'll say, why did you say that to that person? And he'll look at me blankly as if he didn't quite remember what happened while he was in demon mode. And sometimes I've talked to people who've worked with him for years and years who considered themselves close with him and they've seen it occur to them and it's almost, they describe it like a red mist comes over their eyes, his eyes, and he just goes into another world and doesn't seem to remember it after the fact. Exactly. It's almost, you see a storm cloud coming in, and he's in a trance.

And his father says, it happens to me, meaning the father, he says, and I can't help it. It just happens. And likewise, it happens to Elon. That's not to excuse it, but he hardly remembers that he's done it. Now, one of the things that Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, says is you don't want to be around him when he's in demon mode. It's really frightening, she said. Then she added, but demon mode is what gets shit done. Claire Boucher, or Grimes, had a relationship with Musk and is the mother of three of his children. You were around it.

Did you get a sense of when it was going to come? I remember once, late at night, and Grimes was there. She leaned over to me and said, demon mode. And I didn't see it yet, but she knew it was about to happen, like somebody can feel the change in pressure.

And boom, about a minute later, he got really dark. So it's like being somebody who has multiple personalities at times. Sometimes he'll be giddy and funny and pulling out his phone and making you watch a Monty Python clip about silly walks while he's doing Optimus the Robot. But then he can switch quickly to being engineering mode or sometimes being inspirational and sometimes being very dark. What does that mean for the people that work for him

as they try to reach the goals and sometimes achieve those goals? He's addicted to drama. He's addicted to risk. And whenever things seem to be going smoothly, he almost has a compulsion to stir things up. I've watched it happen a dozen times, whether it's standing on a roof late at night where they're installing the Tesla solar roof, and he just says, okay, we're going to have to have a surge. And he disrupts the whole thing. He disrupted full-service driving a few months ago, and I was there, which is, no, we're going to have to have a surge, and he disrupts the whole thing. He disrupted full-service driving a few months ago, and I was there, which is, no, we're going to make it based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, not on coding.

So it allows him to become a disruptive figure, but also a difficult leader. What do you think was one of the most surprising kind of instances of him losing his temper with one of his employees? Oh, one night in South Texas at the launch pad of SpaceX. It's a Friday night at 10 p.m. And everything's going smoothly. There's no launches being scheduled. And he looks, and there's only two people working at the launch pad. And all of a sudden, I see demon mode coming in, almost like storm clouds from the Gulf of Mexico. And I'm thinking, well, it's Friday night at 10

p.m., and yet he just reams out this guy named Andy, who was in charge of the launch pad site. And he orders a surge. He orders 100 people to come in from different parts of SpaceX, people to come in from different parts of SpaceX, from Florida, California, so they can all work for 24 hours a day getting this thing done, even though there was no need to. Afterwards, I went back to Andy and said, what was it like to be in the line of fire? Because I not only wanted Elon's side, I wanted to see what it does to people like, you know, a person who has been caught in that demon mode. And Andy didn't stay long with the company, did he? Andy stayed for another year. He said, I really believe in the mission.

We got to get Starship done. But then Andy had a kid. He got married. And he said, if you want work-life balance, you just can't do it around Elon a lot of the time. It's one of these interesting kind of paradoxes you see with Elon's companies. In one hand he inspires, on the other hand he kind of runs through a lot of people rather quickly. Given all of the stories about how he treats people, why do you think he still has the ability to attract talent to his companies?

Well as you know, Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX has been there more than 20 years as the president. At Tesla, people like Fritz von Holzhausen, Lars Moravey, others have been there for a long time. And those are the ones who so buy into the mission that they're willing to take some of the burnout. I talked to some of the people on the autopilot team at Tesla, and a couple of them had quit because it was just too brutal dealing with them, and they got burned out. But then one of them was back. I said, what happened?

He said, I decided I had a choice between being burned out or being bored, and I decided I wanted to be burned out because I believed in the mission. So some survive, but a whole lot don't. Are there lessons here, though, that you think the future can take from the way Elon Musk operates? Well, certainly don't. Are there lessons here, though, that you think the future can take from the way Elon Musk operates?

Well, certainly don't try this. You shouldn't try to be like Elon Musk. Biographies are not how-to books. With Steve Jobs, people would come up to me after they read the book and said, I'm just like Steve Jobs. When somebody does something bad, I tell them it sucks. I go, wait a minute, have you invented the iPhone?

Have you invented the Macintosh? We don't have either the right to be that way, nor should they be that way. So I hope people come from the books on anybody and say, all right, I'm going to try to learn the lessons of what makes somebody effective, but I'm also going to learn the cautionary tales. You don't have to be this mean. There'll be more on Elon Musk after the break. Need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Right now, get a small,

organic fair trade coffee and a tasty bacon and egg or breakfast sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. Crisp, clean finish. Perfect for sunny days and warm nights. Enjoy it well-chilled or over ice. That's refreshing. That's Summer's Beat. Must be legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly. Carlsberg Canada Inc., Waterloo, Ontario. In the interview, our colleague Tim Higgins asked Walter Isaacson who he'd rather have a beer with, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, and Isaacson refused to pick. And which of my children do I like the most or whatever? I think I'm not going to go there. Well, you know, one of the things that you would have some perspective

on this, Steve Jobs could be legendarily hard on people, but it seemed as if towards the end of his career, he at least put together an executive team that he trusted. He would be hard on them, but they could change his mind. They might not be easy to change his mind, but he could do that. With Elon Musk, it seems very hard to change his mind. You have some examples of people being successful at it, but do you think Elon is harder on his trusted team than Steve Jobs was? I think one of the failings Musk has

is he doesn't take negative feedback very well, and he doesn't necessarily allow people to tell him no. On the other hand, after a while, the people who have worked with him a long time know how to turn him around, and eventually he processes the information and does it. For example, he wanted to do a robo-ta but he wanted to have no steering wheel and they kept saying no no no We have to do one for now. That'll be good

About four or five months ago. There's a meeting and once again They present him with this you gotta have it have a steering wheel and he says okay. Let's do it I mean you're hitting on this thing that one of of the axioms of kind of the way he operates is that it's okay to be wrong just as long as you're not confident and wrong. But one of the challenges is the way he treats people. Sometimes people are afraid to tell him the bad news. I think that's one of his problems is people sometimes are afraid to tell him the bad news and then he keeps pushing at them and saying, get the bad news out there often, get it out there first.

And people like Marc Ginkosa, one of the sidekicks he has at SpaceX who's been with him a long time, whenever you're at a meeting with him, he's forcing the people at the meeting to give the bad news first. And so those who succeed around Musk are those who figure out you've got to give them the bad news, even if it's going to result in some unpleasant scenes. Another key, one of the ways of how he tries to manage is something he calls first principles, which is essentially a problem-solving way to not take what's been done in the past as the way it should be done in the future.

It's kind of getting to the root problem and figuring out from there. But that's very abstract. It's kind of hard to put that, understand what he means by that. But it seems as if by sitting around with him, you've kind of seen the way he's trying to impart that decision making framework to people with something called the algorithm. What is the algorithm? The algorithm is a five step process for

not only making good products and designing good projects, but manufacturing them. And you're right. It begins with first principles. He says question every requirement. And by first principles, he means look down at the physics. If somebody says, no, we can't build it at this price, he says, tell me how much the materials cost. Tell me exactly what's involved here, and then tell me you can or can't do it. When he first was trying to buy a rocket booster

in Russia early on, and they were charging him 15 million dollars or something, on the flight home he calculated how much is the cost of materials and fuel. And he said, okay, those are the first principles. So we should be able to make it at a much cheaper cost. With the algorithm, he's always saying question every requirement and then delete, delete, delete. So he simplifies things. And then, only then do you start to speed up the manufacturing process and eventually automate it. Isaacson was a fly on the wall during many of Musk's big business decisions, including with Starlink, which is a satellite venture. Not long after Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk started providing Internet access to Ukrainian war zones through Starlink. access to Ukrainian war zones through Starlink. But recently, Musk has been criticized for not enabling access to the service when Ukraine wanted to launch a drone attack on Russian forces.

This has sparked real questions about the power that he holds in geopolitical settings, the power of war. Do you think he has really processed that power that he has? I watched him process the power he has, say, over Ukraine. And the first thing you have to realize is he's the only person who's been able to put up communication satellites that were able to withstand Russian hacking. And so he supplies them to Ukraine in order to save their war effort. But after a while, he's geofenced off part of Crimea. It causes one of their attacks to fail. And he realizes, hey, why am I in this movie? I made this thing so that people could watch movies and play video games.

And he eventually calls Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And they work out a deal where Starlink sells a certain number of these satellites to the U.S. military. And the U.S. government gets to decide how they're used. So you watch him process the idea that maybe he's got to give up some of this power. I mean, it's one thing for him to kind of be, I don't know, wishy-washy or mercurial when he's running Tesla and changing things, or SpaceX and changing things. Those are his businesses.

But when it comes to influencing war, that's taking it to a new level. And it makes you kind of wonder, is he King Solomon in these decisions? Or is he kind of a new dictator that is more powerful than a government? I think he's very mercurial, and he makes intuitive, impulsive decisions. And I think, as in the case with Starlink, he'll create something called Starshield,

which is a military version of it, and say, I'm going to give up control of this. I'm going to sell it to certain governments, and they have control over it. So he's somewhat self-aware, but he does have an epic, you know, hero complex of which he's some comic book character wearing his underpants on the outside trying to save the world. And that can be worrisome at times. I mean, one of the things about him is that he has acquired a lot of power, right? He's the world's richest man. He is changing industries. And you see over time that some people rise into power and maybe they want to use it with velvet gloves or in the background. They don't necessarily want to, you know, have their footprints over things where he

has no objection to everyone knowing that he's doing what he's doing. Do you think there's something different about that? Does it get back to that original idea of punching somebody in the nose so they know that he's willing to punch them? I think it gets back to a scrawny kid getting beaten up on the playground and then hiding in the corner of a bookstore reading the comic books of the superheroes. And he really did develop a sense of mission, a mission that we should become spacefaring and go to Mars, a mission that we should move to the era of electric vehicles. That we have to tame robotics and artificial intelligence. And I think he sees himself as truly driven by these epic missions.

You know, you talk about mission, and some of his key supporters have been frustrated with him. Because they bought into the mission of Tesla, they bought into the mission of SpaceX, but then they see him with Twitter, now known as X, and they wonder why he's putting his time there. I'd have to imagine that when you started out to write this book, what did you think the ending was going to be? Because I can't imagine you imagined Twitter, X, was going to be the kind of the ending part of it. No, when I started the book, I thought, okay, man, this is somebody who's shooting up rockets and he can make them land and get things into orbit. Nobody else can do it. He's also brought us into batteries and electric vehicles that can sell a million a year.

And I thought, this is going to be a fun, rollicking book about some great technology. But, yeah, then Twitter comes along and, for that matter, artificial intelligence, where he summons me last March back to Austin and says I'm gonna start a company to do AI so this is a guy who can't leave well enough alone let's go back to his father and these demons that he was fighting and the concern that his mother even ventures out that he could become like his father in the end has he become his father? It's an epic struggle, almost like Star Wars, where, you know, Luke Skywalker's got to fight the dark side of the Force and becoming Darth Vader, becoming his father.

And that's what Mae must said. The danger for Elon is that he becomes his father. And you see signs of that, even in the demon mode, the dark mode he gets into. You see signs of it in some of the tweets, in the demon mode, the dark mode he gets into. You see signs of it in some of the tweets and the political move to the right. But you also see the struggle to harness the demons, and you see an understanding of what his childhood instilled in him and how he's got to fight those demons. Walter Isaacson, thank you. Hey, Tim, thanks.

That's all for today, Tuesday, September 12th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.