Book Review #29
A new book on the mercurial Elon Musk and that too by Walter Issacson (Spielberg movie release moment of the book world 🙂) means I had to read it in the first month itself.
These 620 pages of intimate, unbiased peeks into the life, motivations and toxic flaws of Elon is an output of Issacson's two years of shadowed meetings, factory walks and hours of interviewing Elon, his family, coworkers, and adversaries. Here, I pull out a few big themes as usual.
1> Fearlessness from a Scarred Childhood: Growing up in South Africa he was bullied physically by thugs and emotionally by his father. He grew into a person who doesn't understand fear so much so that he put his 180 million from PayPal in SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City and slept on factory floors. After his 3rd rocket launch failed and when Tesla roadster couldn’t be launched in 2008, he was bankrupt
2> Driven by Vision: Elon believes in preserving human consciousness sees real threats due to climate change and AI. Hence he wants to build sustainable electric cars, build colonies in Mars, preserve free speech & make AI safe so cars and robots can work symbiotically for us on Earth and Mars. Hence, he leads Tesla, Optimus, SpaceX, Starlink, Twitter, Boring Company, Neuralink and X.AI
3> Demon mode and Factory Hell: Elon places Humanity over Humans. And that means he doesn't care about burning out people who work with him. He creates crises, extreme deadlines, and wild surges of work. Such created factory hells are usually preceded by a 'Demon mode' where he goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his head. And then he prescribes the factory hell that causes a lot of chaos but gets shit done. But these bold bets have led to legendary outcomes
4> Drama Seeking: Thriving on crisis mode means he is a man-child with craving for storm and drama at work and in romantic relationships
5> Contrarian thinking: Musk still doesn't have a secretary, takes no vacations and has 11 children through 3 women as he says that a collapsing birth rate is civilization's biggest danger. He believes in engineering focus & asks his teams to question every requirement, simplify, eliminate (delete till you need to addback) and automate.
6> Shifting Political beliefs: Triggered by his daughter Jenna's (nee Xavier) transition he started battling the excesses of political correctness and the woke culture of the progressives. The hypocrisy of the left made him swing from Obama campaign donor to develop right leanings. He claims to be a centrist and says "I support the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party!"
Episodes on failed rocket launches, repeat marriages with Talulah Riley, the Twitter saga are really entertaining.
But in Issacson's own words “Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness? The times he’s an a——hole? The answer is no, of course not.”
#bookreview #ElonMusk #biography
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