Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (Biography Summary)

Prologue
Grew up in South Africa and went to a survival/wilderness school called veldskool. He got punched a lot and bullied getting corrective surgery for years. But it was nothing compared to his father. No compassion and went ballistic a lot. Ending with telling Elon how worthless he is.

Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for their father’s mistakes….
Barack Obama

His dad was always calling him a moron or idiot so he turned off certain parts of himself and conditioned himself into innovation. He repeats that adversity shaped him. He enjoys risk and calculates it well. Wasn’t happy to just be on the board of twitter. He made a hostile bid.

Chapter 1
Motto live dangerous, carefully. Grandfathers risk taking and going on adventures with the haldemen family. Both haldemen and musk family history.

Chapter 2
Elons mood changes and crying. He would experiment with rocket and explosives. Teachers though he was retarded and zoned out a lot. All senses turn off when thinking. Walked 2 hours across Pretoria to a birthday party that just ended as he got there. Usual family dramas with father being the bad guy. Mom would date another abusive man and they put firecrackers in a cigarette.

Chapter 3
Stays with his father and as happy as he was it was a mistake to him. His dad used emotional blackmail. His dad took him and sister Tosca to US and then Hong Kong. They loved playing video games. Elon and brother Kimble would fight violently which was normal to them until one got hit in the balls as that would end the fight. He would use hypnosis to convince Tosca that she was a dog and to eat raw bacon. He would discover books with great inventions which made him interested in going out of the planet.

Chapter 4
He was not convinced by religion but science was not helping either with what he calls his ‘adolecent existential crisis’. Maybe life may have no meaning? He started reading Nietzsche and the like and doesn’t recommend reading Nietzsche as a teenager as it led his confusion more towards despair. Science fiction helped him more. One big one that helped was the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. He created his own game called Blastar and started selling it to magazines. He loves playing for hours.

Chapter 5
Staying with his father became dark with a split personality. Verbal abuse and obsession to conspiracy theories. Then happy and playing. Then making the kids clean toilets with toothbrushes. Father Errol would make Elon look older so that he could write numbers down to beat the casino. Elons first partner Jennifer could see his dad in him. Elon escaped his dad and South Africa to go to Canada.

Chapter 6
He was very broke and moved around with his stack of books. He stayed at his cousin’s farm for a bit. May and Tosca also moved to Canada and the lived together. He used hang out with his sister but at a distance so he’d read his books.

Chapter 7
Elon goes to Uni and makes friends with Farooq. He learns to use the Socratic method to make friends. He was very much interested in the meaning of life and late-night discussions about this. Farooq and him loved strategy games. He would relax by all these kinds of games. He would talk about electric cars and all sorts since back then. He tried to trade with millions of Brady bonds while interning at Scotiabank.

Chapter 8
He studied engineering and business. Became friends with Robin Ren and he noticed Elon would focus on making rockets to go to Mars, electric cars and solar power. Robin also noticed that Elon had 3 ways to escape or zone out – strategic games, encyclopedia reading and partying. He used to like parting with Adeo Ressi in University of Pensilvania. He liked being around the party but from a distance. (Paras note: I do that!)

Chapter 9
Musk liked hardware just as much as he liked software. He’d rummage around junk yards and do things to cars. His father gave the impression that his dad had an emerald mine. His life vision had 3 components – the internet, space travel and sustainable energy.

Chapter 10
Farooq quit working with Musk at Zip2. He could either be his friend or work for him but not both. His Zip2 team won some Quake game thing. He was not into the whole work/life balance philosophy. Elon got 22 million when Compaq aquired Zip2.

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Chapter 11
He was never into money and more about solving problems. He married Justine even though Kimble warned him. They loved fighting in public or just dramas.

Chapter 12
X would be his go to letter for naming things from emails to kids and companies. Musk becomes the most important person in Silicon Valley. He already coined x.com but it was for other purposes at that time. He took over PayPal and tried to rebrand XPayPal. He would merge engineering with product management. Work stories with Peter Thiel and Max Levchin like arm wrestling to win an argument.

Chapter 13
PayPal the coup. People could see he was into risk which was not what their people do. His strategy was to keep risking his chips until he won the game he didn’t know anything about and then walked away. He would forgive and forget as he’d say ‘life is too short, lets move on’. Musk went on vacation and got malaria which put him in ICU for a while.

Chapter 14
He wanted to get into space and liked flying like a daredevil to know things about flying firsthand. He decides he wants to colonise Mars. He doesn’t think about money, he thinks of the idea and then Tarantino’s it. He says life should be about pursuing great dreams. Experiments like sending an Oasis/Greenhouse to Mars.

Chapter 15
Buying rockets from Russians who would spit on them. They would double the price of the rockets when negotiations kept going on. In a way it was good because he went back to First Principles thinking. Whenever he was told he couldn’t his resolve deepened. Musk ended up being NASA’s Chief Engineer with Space X. He is known to set unrealistic deadlines on projects.

I watch this a lot when I feel the doubters are getting me down

Chapter 16
First child Nevada was born and given the name because of the Burning Man festival. The child died of sudden infant death syndrome. Elon wanted his dad around but also not around so bought him a house at a distance. Things just got worse so Erol moved back to South Africa.

Chapter 17
Tom Mueller was a founding employee at Space X. He named the first rocket Falcon 1 from Star Wars.

Chapter 18
Rules for rocket building:
– Question every cost. Try to make it inhouse.
– Have a maniacal sense of urgency.
– Learn by failing. Move fast, blow things up, repeat.
– Improvise.

The 5 Step Algorithm:
1. Question every requirement.
2. Delete any part of the process you can.
3. Simplify and optimize.
4. Accelerate cycle time.
5. Automate.

The engineers set up cameras to watch the cows as they launched rockets, and called it a cow cam.

Chapter 19
Gwynne Shotwell would complement Elon’s style of working at Space X. She has been straight forward but still respectful. She understands people with Asperger’s syndrome and she understands that Elon can come out sounding as an a-hole but it’s not his intent. Space X pioneered a fixed price contracting where it would pay for its own expenses until it showed results.

Chapter 20
JB Straubel comes into the picture with his ideas of using lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. After a few chance meetings he connects with the guys from Tesla Motors and AC Propulsion. Musk was always in a hurry or pushing others towards his vision.

Chapter 21
Elon’s idea was for Tesla to make it’s own key components instead of other how companies’ source from everywhere. Signs of their first success come to fruition. Tesla’s leadership team was in conflict as Elon was happy to focus on his other companies. 2 of the team would try get the other fired and Elon had to make a call. Not many were successful with convincing Musk agasint his ideas to be able to release a car. Musk is more into tweeting, podcasts, memes and the like instead of schmoozing like the others. PCGC embarrassed Musk in an article that didn’t give him any credit or shone the light on others.

Chapter 22
Over at Space X they had to decide to launch closer to the equator to give the rocket more momentum. Moving to Kwajalein Island to get the “equatorial launch advantage”.

Chapter 23
When Elon is stressed or worried his mind goes into the future and throws surprise questions to the team about things way in the future. First mission fails and they go back to the drawing board. After Elon lost it with a teammate he put on Team America. He was known to mix silliness like this.

Chapter 24
Over at Tesla same old story. Looking for materials, finding good teams, etc.

Chapter 25
Eberhard heard of Elon’s secret trip and decided to step down. Musk is known to accuse people of lying a lot. Eberhard and the team that came with him were ousted instead so he created a blog to vent his qualms.

Chapter 26
After the death of their son they decided to have kids immediately with IVF which resulted in triplets. He likes having someone around even former girlfriends. Justine was having emotional issues and Musk blamed the adderal and ADD. She said he was just not emotionally available. The marriage broke up.

Chapter 27
Musk meets Riley and they get married.

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Chapter 28
Another Space X launch failure.

Chapter 29
Musk sold his Apple stock to keep up with expenses. Lot of people helped him with money. He was having night terrors and vomiting. 2008 was the worst but he said he’ll do it again and wont give up. He had to choose between Tesla or Space X. The more people insisted the more his resolve solidified. How can he sacrifice one child to feed the other??!!

Chapter 30
Faced with bankruptcy he was not able to do a 4th launch until the ‘PayPal Mafia’ came to the rescue. Peter Thiel wanted to be part of it and a way to patch things up from the PayPal saga. He gave his team 6 weeks. They had to charter a C17 from the Air Force. After a mishap they had to get it to base and make it work. People realised that Musk is capable of pivoting if needed and that his dedication was very real and serious. Finally, success! Elon was so stressed he couldn’t feel joy.

Chapter 31
Salzman and Musk conflict on Tesla batteries.

Chapter 32
Conflict with designer Fisker and hires Holzhausen next who brought in Dave Morris. He wanted battery cell numbers reduced and the people responsible would freak out but they would get it done. The idea of a friendly handle popping out like a handshake came from the iMac handle. Musk ordered the government mandated safety signs to be removed. Lots of fun and functionality added to the car.

Chapter 33
They would buy home air conditioning units and modify them. Obama cancelled NASA’s constellation program which opened things up for Space X. And the US would send more people than any other country because of this.

Chapter 34
Using a hairdryer to dry the antenna. Vindication of Space X with a successful launch. Next they cut of the skirt where the cracks were showing instead of taking days or weeks to repair it. They used a burp method/Heimlich maneuver kind of code to make things work.

Chapter 35
Talulah talks about how he’s very childlike but on both sides including the dark side. They get married. Talulah Riley would be the longest stretch of a stable relationship he would have.

Chapter 36
Comparing Jobs to Musk. How Jobs would not visit his factories in China etc. Tesla goes public. When he got his own car after launch he was not happy. Musk’s favourite for work culture is ‘hardcore’, only letter also read Ultra Hardcore. They pursue a partnership with Panasonic for a battery factory. When Panasonic showed reluctance Straubel invited them to see the factory already forging ahead and they didn’t want to miss it.

Chapter 37
Jeff Bezos joins the space race. Musk would ask Bezos to do a book review and Bezos said that is not how Amazon works but he did it for Musk even after his bad behaviour. Both felt that reusable rockets would be most feasible. Patents and suing, etc.

Chapter 38
More back and forth with Bezos and Musk as they land and reuse rockets. Musk would keep pushing his team to chill down fuel more and more to fit more in without increasing mass or size. Musk and team celebrate successful landing.

Chapter 39
Talulah relationship back and forth. She would entertain him but didn’t want to have kids with him as he already had so many. He blew out a disk as they did some play fighting and had to get 3 operations. They get back together and then divorce again. He will always be her Mr. Rochester.

Chapter 40
Musk tries to stop Google from buying DeepMind. He started publicly warning of AI. He preferred small systems checking in on each other instead of a few systems under big companies would be best. He wanted AI to be connected to humans and would be his thinking behind Neuralink. His new endeavours would be tied to AI and and his other projects like Tesla.

Chapter 41
Tesla goes autopilot. A death occurred with a driver watching Harry Potter on his dashboard. He got angry with asked about the 2 deaths in interviews. He started pushing the team to have no steering and all sorts. A prediction towards the robotaxi.

Chapter 42
His next thing was to get into solar and would later become SolarCity with Musk as chairman of the board. Enter the Powerwall. He was adamant to move from mine and burn to better ways to get energy. He would introduce the solar roof project with the solar tiles.

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Chapter 43
The Boring Company. His idea of making roads in 3D by making tunnels. They completed a 1.7 mile tunnel as a start but didn’t get far.

Chapter 44
He contributed to Obama and Clinton campaigns but wasn’t too fond of Trump in the start. His relationship took him into a dark vortex and he calls it brutal. He said she was like a comic book villain and loved chaos. She said the he loves fire and chaos too. His father has a child with someone else and that was it for Musk. Dad was no more in the picture. During his interview with Neil Strauss he just got up and walked away thinking about his dramas. He said everything evil to be done was done by his dad.

Chapter 45
The subject of Elon being bipolar and him avoiding dealing with and just plough through. He was in severe emotional pain in the last few weeks. He put on a show in the start but it took a dark turn. He talked about how he looked forward to working with all through production hell. He calculated 5000 Tesla models a week will keep Tesla going but the battery pack factory could only do 1800 units so he fired one and got another leader. Elon goes on a firing spree. He changed his mind about automation and started looking at sticking points to replace it with de-automation.

Chapter 46
Fremont factory hell. Only 2000 Model 3’s were being produced per week. Tesla stock plumets. Even while trying to work on the Space X side of things he would keep looking at his Tesla monitor. He would make 100 command decisions and going ape sh1t on the floor. A lot of staff were concerned because he would want to make shortcuts to speed up production and it became a safety concern. Musk likes history especially war. Story of unconventional thinking and a tent in the parking lot. He realises his promise to release 5000 cars as per deadline. He likes talking about ‘the algorithm’.

The Algorithm
1. Question every requirement: Identify the person behind each requirement and question its necessity, even if it came from a smart or powerful person.
2. Delete any part or process you can: Remove unnecessary parts or processes. If you don’t end up adding back at least 10% of them, you didn’t delete enough.
3. Simplify and optimize: Only after questioning and deleting should you simplify and optimize the remaining parts or processes.
4. Accelerate cycle time: Speed up processes, but only after completing the first three steps.
5. Automate: Automate processes, but only after ensuring they are necessary, simplified, and optimized.

Other rules were:
– All teams must have hands on experience.
– Camaraderie is dangerous.
– It’s ok to be wrong.
– Don’t ask someone to do what you are not willing to do.
– Meet with all different levels not just your managers to solve problems.
– Skills can be taught so look for the right attitude.

The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation
Elon Musk

Chapter 47
Elon starts having meltdowns and lashing out about small insiginificant things. His attraction to drama. Elon works on mini-sub to rescue divers in Thailand. One guy dissed Elon as it was a PR stunt, Elon calls him a ‘pedo’, Tesla stocks collapse. He retracted his tweet. Elon doesn’t really let go and gets in a defamatory case with Unsworth. He would appear to take advice on chilling out but then spiral again on dramas. Things get better and stocks shoot up, Elon is concerned that they can’t make the stock private if it gets too high so he pushes for this move. SEC start investigation after some of Musk’s bad moves including weed references. Psychiatrists diagnose this as classing bipolar risk-taking. Musk was forced to take the SEC deal.

Chapter 48
More dramas from Epstein Island, smoking weed on the Rogan Podcast. Tesla stock drops again and breaking federal regulation. Selling flame throwers after some fun times. His childish humour included fart sounds and putting a command saying ‘open butthole’ to open the charging port in the Tesla. His brother reaches out for a 10 million loan and Musk initially agreed, then after getting some info declined and his brother reminded him who was there for Tesla. It ruptured the relationship. Elon takes a long vacation after 15 years. Musk likes new blood so he doesn’t really care about people leaving.

Chapter 49
Grimes. Their weird and interesting dates and quirky ways complemented each other. Her lifestyle and difficult attitude brought the same drama Elon is attracted to. Azealia Banks was supposed to do some music with Grimes but she didn’t show up and Banks lots it with some scathing tweets. Grimes was still good for Elon as she was chaotic good while Elon was used to chaotic evil. Elon shows up with a 200 year old gun at Grimes voice over for a game and insisted on having a cameo. They were scared but it was close to him and his work. Grimes calls his darkness ‘demon mode’. There are guys in his head that don’t like her, she says. She knew how to navigate his different ‘modes’.

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Chapter 50
Musk teams up with Robin Ren but didn’t want to get ‘married’ with other companies. Soon China would be making more than half of Telsa cars.

Chapter 51
Next was the Cybertruck. It will be stainless steel and make the design team to explore new ideas. He didn’t care if anyone buys it, he just wanted something difference as there was nothing new done for decades. Staff didn’t want anything to do with it and engineers would secretly design different things. The famous unveiling.

Chapter 52
Starlink. They aim was to create a constellation of 40,000 satellites. The team were not bothered with urgency, so he made a special flight to fire them.

Chapter 53
Next was Starship or Super Heavy Rocket. The move to trail travel to Mars. He suggested moving from carbon to stainless steel. People were reluctant as usual but he told them to do the numbers and they saw the light. Something about building a dome by dawn deadline.

Chapter 54
Musk tries to get rid of the electric car steering wheel. He predicted that a fully autonomous car was just a year away. It was always a year away. His artificial and unrealistic deadlines drove the team crazy for Autonomy Day.

Chapter 55
Setting up a Gigafactory in Texas. He pushes his team to get ideas from toys as they need to make the toys fast and still be good.

Chapter 56
The birth of X Æ A-XII (X ASH A-12) with Grimes through IVF. He upsets Grimes by sending her C-Section birth pics to friends. Out of the kids Xavier hated his dad, transgender and changed name to Jenna. Elon and Kimble reunite when they fought out their Covid cases together. Kimble was into Ayahuasca by now. They bonded over Cobra Kai.

Chapter 57
Rocket success. Musk was cold towards Trump at that time.

Chapter 58
Musk and Bezos had been on the space race. Bezos was methodical, Musk was to push the team. Bezos did the same thing Branson did with using his face for Virgin Galactic.

Chapter 59
The plan to try and catch the booster with movable chopstick arms. People could predict the surge coming where Elon would burst and make people work extra long hours to meet deadlines. The Starship surge was successful and kept his team ‘hardcore’. Musk had something called an idiot index – the cost of a finished product compared to the cost of its raw materials. He told his staff that if they don’t have this information off the top of their head, he’ll accept their resignation immediately.

Chapter 60
Musk’s surges are sequential. So the next surge was for solar. Musk throws tantrums, pushes people, etc. At some point the court allowed his purchase of Solar City so he could get on track to his deadlines.

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Chapter 61
Elon appears on SNL. Elon and Grimes loved going to Burning Man but it was close the year of Covid so they sorted their own festival with a burning man figure. They’d tell each other ‘I love you but I don’t love you’. Their breakups wouldn’t last and would go through this strange cycle from co-parenting to other things.

Chapter 62
Elon was different in that his aim for space rockets is for humanity.

Chapter 63
Elon loved stainless steel for parts so pushed for more parts to be made of that. He changes naming convention for rocket engines to 1337 which looks like LEET so that is what it was called.

Chapter 64
Optimus the friendly robot. He wanted to release it during something he called AI day.

Chapter 65
Musk was tired of how slow it took to type on his phone so his next step was Neuralink. Symbiosis between machine and human. (Paras note: There was a very interesting podcast with Joe Rogan about Noland Arbaugh, the first human recipient of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface implant.) Musk was focused on improving the Utah Array chip. Musk didn’t like the first draft and wanted only one piece with no router. The team went through post Musk depression and then figured it out.

Chapter 66
He sets out to delete radar and go towards camera only driving for Tesla. His team convinced him otherwise with good radar. He was not happy about the ‘privacy teams’ regulation.

Chapter 67
Elon becomes the world richest person, beating Bezos. Elon sold all his houses and didn’t take a salary but still was angered by people judging him. He ended up paying the largest tax bill. During another social he locked himself and played Polytopia. He still had mental and physical scars, especially stomach issues. When things were the most dire he got energised.

Chapter 68
Elon and Shivon Zilis hit it off and he encouraged her to have children as he wants clever people to have children. She would have an IVF with Elon’s sperm. He had twins prematurely. In the meantime Grimes wanted to give Elon a daughter.

Chapter 69
Covid restrictions enforced his anti-authority streak. He was happy to be arrested on behalf of co-workers. The staff didn’t have any outbreak issues. He goes against the woke mind virus and blame it for his child to go trans and disown him. Controversy of getting a hand-j from someone in a plane for money and/or pony. He had a deep disdain for Trump and bored of Biden. He calls Biden a sock-puppet until he would get a promise the Tesla will be publicised. He would get so deep into Polytopia that it became a serious thing. Once Zilis and Grimes learned about it they figured how to help him and at some point unplugged from it.

Chapter 70
Ukraine pleaded Musk with help Starlink as Russia target comms. He sent batteries and solar too. Defence forces in the West got interested in this. He believed this could lead to trouble as Ukraine would use the technology to sneak attack and he requested to disable coverage near Crimea. He again saw dramas between China and Taiwan. He insisted that Ukraine not join NATO. He would further disable communications where he thought would lead to nuclear war. To him, private companies should not play a part in war. Fedorov sends Musk encrypted thank you message for what he’s done. Starshield would be created to help the military.

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Chapter 71
Elon didn’t have a schedule and him and Bill Gates wanted to meet so Gates called him personally. Neither would suffer fools. Gates gave him a hard time but he was impressed with Elon’s knowledge of every machine and what it all does. Elon thought philanthropy was BS and only 20 cents per dollar would be effective. Gates shorted Tesla stock because he wanted to make money and didn’t believe in Tesla as much after the visit. Elon had promised to send Gates a paper and reports on the inefficiency of philantrophy. Elon did his childish posting of Gates picture with the belly.

in case u need to lose a boner fast pic.twitter.com/fcHiaXKCJi

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022

Chapter 72
2100 sattelites using space connectivity for internet. All his companies were valued in their billions. Extended periods of calm are unnerving to Elon so his reflex is to manufacture a drama. This time he bought Twitter. He had been secretly buying shares and he wanted to use the money sitting around. He actually likes how it’s like a school yard. He was concerned by the ‘woke mind virus’. Even though he didn’t like Trump he was not happy about the cencorship on Twitter. He was considering starting a new platform but the Twitter board wanted him to get more onboard. It was not a friendly agreement though. After some back and forth they changed the agreement to a much shorter one and the main restriction was that he can’t own more than a certain amount of Twitter stock.

Chapter 73
Elon felt like he could do more than be a board member. He was about to announce joining the board, but it turned into a hostile takeover where he made an offer the buy Twitter right out. Texts back and forth. He was supposed to go easy and not keep bitching about Twitter but went even harder. He wanted to take Twitter private. He found a new game called Elden Ring and he liked spending time in the most dangerous areas, then take breaks for the game to reply to texts. He was already planning to fire a lot of the staff who didn’t do anything or even show up. Elon designed his large missions to increase the chances of preserving and advancing civilisation. So Twitter didn’t make sense at first but because he was beaten a lot in the playground, now he had somewhere where he could be the bully or not the underdog.

Chapter 74
There was a back and forth about crypto with Sam Bankman-Fried. His BS detector went off when they met. He wasn’t a fan of how Sam kept going on about himself. Folks didn’t know if he was joking when he said ‘how else are we going to get Trump re-elected’ when his team were against the Twitter takeover. He was not getting straight answers on the diligence meeting when they couldn’t answer why so many staff were needed compared to other platforms.

Chapter 75
His trans kid rejection was breaking his heart. The secret of the twin children was made public. Grimes was outraged. Family reunions, meeting the pope, etc. He wanted a family home. He wanted it to look like something out of space landed on a lake but then put off building it.

Chapter 76
Time for another surge. He wanted the chopstick arms. He felt that the declining birthrates are a concern. Sends his guy to Boca Chica for a management shakeup and then during the online meeting he got angrier with each slide. Back to first principles thinking and getting rid of anything that doesn’t fit. He was always looking for ways to delete things. Some Tiki bar escapade. His son X was showing a lack of fear that concerned Elon.

Chapter 77
Optimus robot! Usual rigamrole. Someone said that whenever Elon takes his phone out to take a video he’s impressed.

Chapter 78
Deep dive into Twitter’s finances.

Chapter 79
Optimus. AI Day stuff. He went onto Ozempic and did some intermittent fasting. Some of the staff said that they’d quit because they were burnt out but then later called back begging for the job as they’d rather be burnt out.

Chapter 80
Elon believes that the future belongs to the Robotaxi. He want wants full self-driving (FSD) so did not want to compromise on mirrors, pedals, steering wheels. Even though he can be stubborn, he is still also able to change his mind in a rational way. Franz von Holzhausen had a secret project as he felt that if Tesla wanted to be profitable, they’d need a small affordable option.

Chapter 81 and 82
They would force a close for Twitter before the staff expected and Elon schemed to push an early close. Letters of dismissal were sent and emails were cut off. Basically he fired guys like Parag before they resigned. He started pushing changes from day one.

Chapter 83 and 84
Mostly small stories until Kanye wore the White Lives Matter shirt which got him banned on Twitter. He was into free speech but after Kanye’s stunt he put his decisions on pause. He wanted to make the ultimate calls even if the council gives their opinions. He called Trump a ‘racist tangerine’. LMAO! Political correct back and forth, misgendering, bla bla bla. Racism shot up with Musk taking over but it was a troll campaign.

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Chapter 85, 86, 87 and 88
Advertising tumbles with Twitter and Elon’s reckless tweets didn’t help. Elon loves Halloween because of the role playing and games. The blue check mark gets implemented that would help fight against bot farms while also getting money details as he wanted the platform to be one with financial capabilities. But still a lot of fake accounts with blue checks showed up. So the blue check idea was suspended for the time being. Apple would take a cut and keep credit card information without sharing info, Elon was infuriated. They were going to fire 80% and people were getting sick vomiting thinking of it. They created the Musk-ateers. Lots of moves to stop disgruntled employees from sabotaging Twitter, looking for keywords to remove bad players, etc. Clearing the air with Apple on adverts and reducing the cut they were taking.

Chapter 89
Neuralink!
See interview with the first Neuralink patient with Joe Rogan

Chapter 90, 91 and 92
More Twitter back and forth from Russian bots and troll farms to links leading to Russia’s top people in security being responsible for a lot of the dramas. A stalker shows up as a Twitter account was giving out Elon’s personal information. After what happened with his son he doxxed accounts sharing locations. When Yoel Roth left he was scared of Musk tweeting his secrets and Elon came through when Roth didn’t think he would. Musk pushing people on moving 2000lb servers during Christmas. Kimble warned Elon that he’s making too many enemies too fast. His next obsession is to get Starship into orbit.

Chapter 93 and 94
The AI cars will not only work on C++ but learn from neural networks of how we’ve driven before. They would use the supercomputer Tesla Dojo. His benchmark was miles per intervention. Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman. Musk uses Twitter’s data feed for his AI chatbots. He also had Tesla video data. He keeps wrestling with keeping AI safe and has voiced his concerns regularly.

Chapter 95
Successful SpaceX Starship launch. Linda arranges a meeting with Elon to be CEO of X.com.

Summary of Elon’s awesomeness, his flaws and everything in-between. People would talk to him about his impetuous and impulsive behaviour.

Table of Contents

• Prologue: Muse of fire
• Adventures
• A mind of his own: Pretoria, the 1970s
• Life with father: Pretoria, the 1980s
• The seeker: Pretoria, the 1980s
• Escape velocity: Leaving South Africa, 1989
• Canada: 1989
• Queen’s: Kingston, Ontario, 1990-1991
• Penn: Philadelphia, 1992-1994
• Go west: Silicon Valley, 1994-1995
• Zip2: Palo Alto, 1995-1999
• Justine: Palo Alto, the 1990s
• X.com: Palo Alto 1999-2000
• The coup: PayPal, September 2000
• Mars: SpaceX, 2001
• Rocket man: SpaceX, 2002
• Fathers and sons: Los Angeles, 2002
• Revving up: SpaceX, 2002
• Musk’s rules for rocket-building: SpaceX, 2002-2003
• Mr. Musk goes to Washington: SpaceX, 2002-2003
• Founders: Tesla, 2003-2004
• The roadster: Tesla, 2004-2006
• Kwaj: SpaceX, 2005-2006
• Two strikes: Kwaj, 2006-2007
• The SWAT team: Tesla, 2006-2008
• Taking the wheel: Tesla, 2007-2008
• Divorce: 2008
• Talulah: 2008
• Strike three: Kwaj, August 3, 2008
• On the brink: Tesla and SpaceX, 2008
• The fourth launch: Kwaj, August-September 2008
• Saving Tesla: December 2008
• The Model S: Tesla, 2009
• Private space: SpaceX, 2009-2010
• Falcon 9 liftoff: Cape Canaveral, 2010
• Marrying Talulah: September 2010
• Manufacturing: Tesla, 2010-2013
• Musk and Bezos: SpaceX, 2013-2014
• The falcon hears the falconer: SpaceX, 2014-2015
• The Talulah roller coaster: 2012-2015
• Artificial intelligence: OpenAI, 2012-2015
• The launch of autopilot: Tesla, 2014-2016
• Solar: Tesla energy, 2004-2016
• The boring company: 2016
• Rocky relationships: 2016-2017
• Descent into the dark: 2017
• Fremont factory hell: Tesla, 2018
• Open-loop warning: 2018
• Fallout: 2018
• Grimes: 2018
• Shanghai: Tesla, 2015-2019
• Cybertruck: Tesla, 2018-2019
• Starlink: SpaceX, 2015-2018
• Starship: SpaceX, 2018-2019
• Autonomy day: Tesla, April 2019
• Giga Texas: Tesla, 2020-2021
• Family life: 2020
• Full throttle: SpaceX, 2020
• Bezos vs. Musk, round 2: SpaceX, 2021
• Starship surge: SpaceX, July 2021
• Solar surge: summer 2021
• Nights out: summer, 2021
• Inspiration4: SpaceX, September 2021
• Raptor shake-up: SpaceX, 2021
• Optimus is born: Tesla, August 2021
• Neuralink: 2017-2020
• Vision only: Tesla, January 2021
• Money: 2021-2022
• Father of the year: 2021
• Politics: 2020-2022
• Ukraine: 2022
• Bill Gates: 2022
• Active investor: Twitter, January-April 2022
• “I made an offer”: Twitter, April 2022
• Hot and cold: Twitter, April-June 2022
• Fathers day: June 2022
• Starbase shake-up: SpaceX, 2022
• Optiumus Prime: Tesla, 2021-2022
• Uncertainty: Twitter, July-September 2022
• Optimus unveiled: Tesla, September, 2022
• Robotaxi: Tesla, 2022
• “Let that sink in”: Twitter, October 26-27, 2022
• The takeover: Twitter, Thursday, October 27, 2022
• The three musketeers: Twitter, October 26-30, 2022
• Content moderation: Twitter, October 27-30, 2022
• Halloween: Twitter, October 2022
• Blue checks: Twitter, November 2-10, 2022
• All in: Twitter, November 10-18, 2022
• Hardcore: Twitter, November 18-30, 2022
• Miracles: Neuralink, November 2022
• The Twitter files: Twitter, December 2022
• Rabbit holes: Twitter, December 2022
• Christmas capers: December 2022
• AI for cars: Tesla, 2022-2023
• AI for humans: X.AI, 2023
• The starship launch: SpaceX, April 2023