Ryan Mac

person in the White House next to Donald Trump. Now, so yeah, we can get into all that, but there's a lot to unpack.

is gonna do. They've talked about it, you know, cutting two trillion dollars, you know, Elon and Vivek Ramaswami his co head of this department, making decisions over hiring and firing. But what they've talked about, we've compared to what we reported on it in Twitter. You know, for example, at Twitter, he cut more than at this point eighty percent of the staff then, you know, compared to when he what

he when he took over, that's thousands of jobs. You know, if he applies that to the federal government, that's tens of thousands of jobs that could be that could be removed. You know. He slash costs kind of ruthlessly at Twitter as well, cutting things from rent payments to janitorial services, to food services, to systems that help make the website run. And we could see that kind of kind of slash and burn technique play out in the government to an

extent we've ever seen before. So, you know, we have to talk very generally about what he's saying he's doing. And of course Elon is someone that makes a lot of promises, but the precedent has been kind of set with what he did at Twitter.

this job but in previous gigs. I've worked at BuzzFeed News before this, at Forbes magazine as well, and my rem at The Times is to, you know, find these stories, dig deeper into these guys, and you know, report out

these monumental business decisions or happenings in the industry. So, you know, two and a half years ago, when Elon decided to buy Twitter, I was one of a couple of reporters that was thrown head on into covering this kind of unprecedented transaction, this transaction of one man, you know, the world's richest man worth two hundred billion dollars at the time, buying a whole company for forty four billion dollars,

and one thing led to another. I was teamed up with Kate Conger, my co author now in the book, and we were reporting two or three stories a day to the point where we couldn't fit everything into the pages of The New York Times. And you know, that's where we got this book and kind of continued it from there. But at the Times these days, I effectively

cover Elon full time. You know, there he is someone that is incredibly powerful, incredibly interesting, and I'm one of a couple of reporters where are dedicated to, you know, following him and understanding what he's up to, whether that's a Tesla or SpaceX or now in the White House.

I worked at the Orange County Register, my hometown paper where I grew up in Orange County. I ended up working for The Times as an intern and in Bloomberg, and eventually, you know, you know, what the heck, I'll give this a shot. And after school I went to Forbes worked there for five and a half years as

a staff writer on the magazine covering Silicon Valley. I was based in San Francisco, so it made it a lot easier and actually at Forbes, I started on this thing called the Wealth Team, which is the team that puts together these kind of Forbes ritualists, you know, the Forbes billionaires, the Forbes four hundred riches, Americans, And actually

it's a great place to start. As a cub reporter, you are essentially doing these calculations that ever one sees of you know, so and so is worth billions of dollars. But behind the scenes, as reporters, you are doing the nitty gritty of those calculations. You are tallying up SEC documents and looking at the financial filings. You are valuing

things like megayachts and wine collection and art. You're talking to you know, some of these people talk to us and like, you know, say, you know, I'm actually up this year. You're missing my picasto that I just bought, or you know that that wine collection is too low for me. Actually it should be higher because the price of burgundy went up. So as a twenty two year old reporter who was making peanuts thirty five thousand dollars a year talking to the richest people in the world,

it was kind of surreal for me. And actually that's where I developed kind of my early network, my rolodex. As a reporter, you know, you're as good as your sources and the people you talk to, and it was kind of a start for me, kind of a because you know, you're that young, you don't usually get introduced into those circles. And from there I kind of built a platform, you know, I moved off that team. I was able to generate my own story ideas, did a

lot of profiles of CEOs and those types. I actually covered music briefly with zach O Maalley Greenberg at Forbes, who was a business music business guy, and kind of learned from him as well. And uh yeah, moved to BuzzFeed a couple of years later, kind of pivoted a little bit to do more investigative type reporting, where I reported quite a bit on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and won some awards there and ended up at the Times three and a half years ago.

were at the whims of these tech platforms. These giants, right and Facebook, you know, love that content initially and then didn't like it so much and turn off the spigot, and that's what caused the collapse. But in that kind of heyday, which I kind of joined towards the end of, you know, the venture capital fueled digital media revolution, it was great. You had these amazing resources to pursue these

long term stories. You know, you didn't have to deal with the nitty gritty day to day coverage your news cycle. I could kind of pull out and do a three month investigation into Facebook or Google or I covered a lot of Peter Tiel, for example. It was a billionaire who was on the Facebook board. And I kind of built my name on those stories. And BuzzFeed had the resources to do that and gave the opportunity to kind of mid career or early to mid career reporters like myself.

So it was a great place to work, super collegial. Everyone is like friends and sharing each other's work, you know, and just an amazing place to be a great energy. Unfortunately, what we learned is that that model wasn't a great business, you know, And when this bigot was turned off by the digital platforms, there were layoffs and quite a few until the point where the news division is effectively dead. I left before the very very end of BuzzFeed News Buzzy.

The New York Times saw my work and liked it and recruited me. But yeah, that's that's kind of how that played out.

the paper values more than most. And honestly, you know, that could sound like me blowing smoke up people's asses, but in reality, you know, there is no political bent to the paper that I've experience, and you know, on my desk, you know, I'm I cover technology. There's no remit to go after whatever, report on certain targets, whatever. But you know, we for me, it's always been about interrogating power. That that for me has kind of been

my north star, regardless of political affiliation. And you know, I think my career has kind of proven that that I have focused on the powers, the titans of industry, you know, the powers that be, you know, the richest people in the world, the people that control these platforms, that control these companies that shape our daily lives. And that's how I hope I continue to report, you know, and and you know, I think that's that's kind of okay.

you could X is the news source. You are the news source because it's it's people feeding X. Well, a lot of that news comes from mainstream media. You know that that we're the ones reporting it that is then aggregated into those tweets or or or shared in those videos.

And I think that's the kind of uh, shortsightedness. I think in all this that like when when I when I cover social media, for example, when people talk about social media replacing newspapers or CNN or whatever, a lot of what they draw from is is what we work on every day. You know that information couldn't come out without a reporter at the New York Times calling someone up and writing up a story which then gets aggregated or pulled out into a tweet or put on TikTok,

for example. And it's that ecosystem that I think people don't understand. And yeah, it's it's it's kind of sad because Elon Musk and Lynda Akarino, the CEO of X now it's called X because that's what they've changed the name to have made this kind of antagonistic point that like X is actually the replacement for the New York Times or for whatever fill in news source. You know.

But the last two decades of Twitter I have shown that, you know, the platform has been super reliant on news generators and reporters, and to alienate them seems pretty shortsighted. And not to understand that that ecosystem seems kind of absurd to be.

beat at the company. You know, we have we have reporters that cover Tesla. We have reporters that cover X. Kate, my co author, covers X on a full time basis. We have reporters that cover Google and you know, name

whatever company. I help those reporters, I'll supplement them. But if there's a deep dive that we need to go into or you know understand you know, musk relationship with the White House, for example, which is something we've been trying to do over the last couple weeks to months, you know, the deploy me on that and I'll kind of shift my resources and my efforts to that kind of story.

their wealth at all. You know, they would they would hang up the phone as soon as I called, never return my emails, that kind of thing. Some people want to get down to the every last detail. You know,

you miss this. I think my holding over here in these stocks and you know, I'm actually up by one hundred million over here and down, and it's it's like it was like such an exercise in egos in a way, and you start to realize that, like it's gonna sound like weird, but like, you know, they're normal people like us, you know it. They have the same hang ups or

you know, same motivations in some ways, same fears. And that's actually really like it took me a while to understand that, Like there wasn't like one gene, for example, that causes you to become super wealthy. I think there's a lot of luck at play, a lot of where you start in life. Sure there's things like hard work and that kind of thing and effort, but Yeah, there's there's no one characteristic that I could ascribe to, or else I would have followed that and made myself a billionaire myself.

the electric car revolution. He foresaw this industry to privatize space and get things into into orbit, which now he has a virtual monopoly with the US government and getting things into space, you know, to see that and be successful in that not once but twice, because there's a lot of credit at the same time, it doesn't necessarily make him, you know, smart in another area. He is not a epidemiologist, you know, when he was making comments

about COVID, for example. He is not by any means an expert in social media and how to run a social media platform, which I think is in some ways the original sin when he bought Twitter, right, it's this idea that he had been so successful in these other areas that, you know, how hard could it be. This is a social media company. It's you know, in his view, servers and a website. You know, you're just plugging it

in and letting it go and keeping it online. How hard could that be compared to you know, developing autopilot or making a rocket land on a ship in the middle of the ocean. And I think that is the original sin because what he didn't realize is social media isn't a tech problem. It's actually a human problem. You are,

it's a societal problem. It's a social problem. You're connecting people online and figuring out ways for them to communicate without killing each other or you know, causing huge disturbances and making everyone feel at least most people feeling like they're welcome to exhibit and express themselves, and yeah, so I mean that that kind of central understanding which powered our book is one that I come back to a lot that oftentimes there are people that are very successful

that think because they've reached such success in one area, they can be successful in another, and oftentimes that's not the case.

it wasn't by any means like my main focus. And by the time he made the offer for Twitter in April of twenty ti twenty two, I don't think I had written a single story on him for The Times I had joined gosh, I think the year prior, year and a half prior, I hadn't written about him for The Times, but they had known my pastwork and covering him. There's actually a trial we can talk about that I was kind of in some ways involved with with him,

but at the times. You know, they saw my past work and they're like, Okay, this is a pretty monumental event. That's actually take some time and understand how serious this is, because what you have to remember is when he actually made the bid, people didn't know if he was serious. You know, it was he made a reference to a weed joke, you know, for fifty four twenty fifty four to twenty per share was his offer amounted to forty

four billion dollars. His offer letter was pretty thin when he when he made the offer, it wasn't clear if he was going to go through. And then obviously he tried to pull out of it a couple weeks later later. But they had me spend a lot of time trying to interrogate whether or not this thing was going to happen, and you know, what was the mindset and what was the thinking. So I started to dig in and work

closely with Kate. And when he finally did take over the company after all the kind of legal wrangling in October twenty twenty two, it was kind of all hands on deck. You know, it was two or three stories a day. You know, it was, oh my gosh, he's laying off people over in this part of the company, or he stopped paying rent over here. At one point we heard the janitorial services were cut, so like I'm in a toilet paper in the offices. But everything was

like a fire. Every day. We'd wake up when we have two or three things to report on about his takeover. And since then, it's kind of hasn't stopped. You know, it's led from one thing and the other into the book, into our coverage of him now as a political figure, and that kind of that roller coaster hasn't stopped.

get at his message. He was very big on getting on magazine covers and in stories, to the point where we were talking to folks used to work with him, and he'd be up at three am reading like some obscure Belgian blog, you know, trying to understand like every piece of coverage was near and dear to him. He had a Google, earned his own name. He cared so much, you know. And on the other hand, he battled with

the media anytime they got something wrong. And so that story you reference actually is very telling, and it was it kind of in some ways proved his belief that there was this kind of media force against him and against his success, and he was out to kind of prove them wrong, which in some ways you can see the line that's drawn to the Twitter acquisition. In terms of my interactions with him throughout my career, I don't

think he's ever denied a story I've reported. My famous run in with him was that when I was at BuzzFeed in twenty eighteen, and do you remember when those kids got caught in the cave and time of course, man, the whole bit exactly. So for the listeners, like, you know, cave rescuer gets involved, a British guy living in Thailand. Elon then gets involved. It's like this crazy thing. He builds a submarine to get these kids out of this

winding underwater cave. They don't end up using the submarine, but Elon gets a lot of press out of it, and one of the rescuers goes on CNN and says, like, you know, that didn't work, like he can stick that sub up his butt, you know, and you know kind of was like it was a complete distraction and he

didn't help at all. And in return, Elon calls this guy a pedo guy you know, on Twitter, and it was like this kind of I mean, those reactions now were kind of part and parcel of who he is on Twitter, but at that point in time, it was kind of a insane accusation to call someone a pedophile on Twitter with no basis. So in that process I ended up emailing Elon asking him why he thought this guy was a pedophile. Elon emails me back with this kind of screed. Bear in mind I'd never really talked

to him. The screed of why this guy was a quote child rapist who had a twelve year old bride. Since she's trying to get me as a reporter at BuzzFeed to write a story about this guy being a pedophile,

we actually didn't did not end up doing that. We reported it out a little more, and it turns out that Elon was kind of making all this up and trying to get a reporter to dump this out into the world, and so we ended up publishing Elon's email in full, to kind of show his state of mind, you know, to show that he was willing to destroy someone's reputation and to show that this, you know, was kind of a typical behavior for anyone, much less us someone who runs, you know, a major company in Tesla.

Fast forward that that that cave Rescuer ends up suing Elon. Elon tries to depose me in court to for the case. But you know, that was a that was a crazy interaction in my career and one of the times that I've ever gotten to interact with them.

You know, I broke that story, and you know, I was a cub reporter at Forbes, a younger reporter at Forbes, and before we publish, you know, there was a doubt in my mind that flash. You know, I was so solid on the reporting, it's spent months doing it, but was like, you know what if that point zero zero one percent chance is right? You know what if I've been duped the whole time into reporting this out what happens, you know, and like that that feeling never goes away.

And I think being paranoid in some ways as a reporter helps you because that will lead you to make the next call, right, You'll be like, actually, you know I have sources. Maybe I'll go for six or seven, or maybe I'll make that extra send that extra email. You know, It's helped in my career that I've been supported by major publications that have great resources, in Forbes, in the New York Times. But you know that that

fear stays with you. And I don't know, I could be eighty years old and you know, have worked the New York Times for fifty years. I'd be worried if that fear wasn't part of me still, you know, because you always want to have a little bit of paranoia, I guess. And yeah, when when when it's someone like Elon, you gotta you gotta do everything by the book, You gotta, you gotta, you gotta be so solid on your reporting.

And I've always led with that, you know, my I yeah, I've always relied on the reporting and the like you know, my source saying and everything like that, and yeah, but you know, if someone tries to intimidate us at the same time, like, I'm not going to back down. You know, if we know something is right, we're gon we're gonna go with it. And it's kind of that weird balance.

the Delaware Court? And to what degree are you penetrating the company in terms of sources such that when the case goes down, you're prepared.

You know, they had some meetings about what it would. Bear in mind as he was backing out, there were still some meetings that were going on between him and the company over there was a calculat there was that bot argument, for example, and there were they were trying to assuage him concerns about bots because the company was bound by it's pretty sure your duty to make this deal happen, right, which is why they sue the company. But you know, gosh, that was it was a crazy period.

Kate was ready to go to Delaware and and spend like weeks there. I was having to read up on chancery court, which I knew very little about until that,

until that kind of moment. But that's kind of the beauty of reporting, right, Like you're thrown into the deep end of these weird situations you might have never been in before, you might have never thought about the court of chancery, and suddenly you're making calls to trial lawyers who have you know, practiced there or represented other companies who're trying to find comparisons to maybe legal precedents that I played out similar to this, where you know the

court has compelled someone to buy a company like that. What did you think did you think it? Did you think it was going to happen at that time?

in a smaller setting. And so it's kind of funny seeing that play out in a way. That being said, when you're at the New York Times, you know, it carries the gravitas that has the name, the rename recognition. When you call someone, they're not asking you to spell out you know what do you who does that mean? BuzzFeed? Can you spell that for me? You know, you're at the New York Times, You're like, oh, okay, I get it.

You know, you know where you're coming from. But in those moments, it's it's it's kind of you kind of have to be lucky, and sometimes people don't want to talk to you at all. You bear in mind, you know, the people around the Twitter deal are especially on the Twitter side, are scared. Are scared shit lists. You know, they don't want to ruin the deal. They don't want to say anything to report that could scupper this, this

monumental deal, this payout for shareholders and whatever. But in writing a book, what I found is that oftentimes after the fact, if you say, you know, actually my book is going to come out in a year or two years time. You know, people might be open to talking to you for that because it's going to be past the period where it's sensitive for them. You know, this is something that is for history in a way. It's not just a daily story, and so we use that

to our advantage for the book. You know, some people that that didn't talk to us for these stories in the New York Times came back to us or towards the very end of the process they were like, actually, I want to make this one thing very clear and just the specific thing. But it ended up being very helpful.

So you get all types. I'll say it. In the moment, it's quite hard to get people to speak immediately, but if you give them a little time, if you work on them a little bit, you keep reminding them there's always a chance. And I've learned that kind of perseverance is kind of the you know, one of my most important traits as a reporter.

But if you get a reporter from an publication, a lot of times they're aggressive. And most people who deal with the press deal with the press and frequently what is your style?

their own style. But I've never found the kind of you know, give me the information before everyone else, or some people use kind of like a bullying you know, why why did you talk to the Washington Posts over there, Wall Journal and not to me? Next time? I want you to come to me first. I've never found that works for me. Some people it works great, and it makes them really dogged reporters. My style is to talk

to people NonStop. You know, if I think the worst thing for someone to feel like is for someone to feel used in a way. And I don't know, maybe the social engineering is like the wrong word here, but something lighter than that. But I want to make people feel like they can talk to me about anything, and so you know, it's not just me checking in for information when I need it. You know, I'm talking to them about their holidays or you know, what do you

have for Thanksgiving? And you know, how is your Christmas break? You know, how is your soccer team doing. I'm building those relationships. I'm meeting people for drinks to the point where when it comes to talking about something that is relevant to my reporting, it feels natural for them to talk to me about it. And that isn't like a unique finding like that could a banker could do that or a lawyer. You know, it's just a relationship building and people building. And it took me a long time

to realize that. You know, I wasn't the biggest chatterbox in college and I still am not. But like, you don't ever want to make people feel like you're just pumping them for information, and then you'll never sty'll never see you again, and you know I and that just feels weird and not human to me anyway, So I guess yeah, playing the human card is actually is actually pretty important to me.

the after his offer letter. Remember he was on the board, he had bought this this chunk of the company. He was on the board because Twitter brought him in to be closer to them. He ended up kind of getting into a fight with the CEO and offering to buy the company kind of in this huff, right, and right after that, he wants the deal to close immediately, so much so that he tells his his bankers and his lawyers, you know, we don't need to I don't need to look at the books here, I don't need any non

public information. I don't need to sign an NDA to get that non public information. I just want the company, and you're gonna You're going to force that deal through for me, so I have that company by the end of the month. And that's what he did. There was no diligence. You remember when he steps on stage at the TED conference in I think it was a Vancouver in the day after his offer letter comes out, he

makes all these grand pock proclamations. You know, he says he's going to get rid of the bots, He's going to say free speech, and that was said without any understanding of the business. So yeah, there was no there was no looking under the hood effectively, and that was one of the major quirks of this deal that caused him a lot of problems down the line. Basically immediately as soon as soon as the merger agreement assigned.

his whole career. It's very gut instinct, it's very primal in some ways, and it served him well. You know, he's going to look back on his successes. Is net worth, you know, he's worth more than three hundred billion dollars. He has two major companies. He's gonna be like, what this has served me so well throughout my life. You know, why why shouldn't I do things this way? And in this case, in the Twitter case obviously came back to

bite him because he doesn't do the due diligence. He signs the merger agreement and then he starts to get really cold feet and tries to find ways to back out. You know, he starts to name issues around bots, for example, and you know that's kind of the source of his pain.

For example, Wemo actually has cars on the streets that are taxing people around with no drivers, and Tesla is still kind of making these half promises about full self driving. Oh actually it's not full self driving. You have to be engaged with the driver. And he's kind of jerked people around on the meeting of Autopilot. You know, he had that Robotaxi event a couple months ago. I'm sure you saw it right where he had. You know, it's

a staged event. You're on a literally on a movie set in Burbank, driving people around these pretend cities on these supposedly autonomous vehicles. And he's selling that to people as if it's like the next revolution, when if you walk over to Hollywood you can find a Waimo, you know,

going up and down the street with no driver. So yeah, I mean, I think the one thing understand a boy Elon is that one of his superpowers, if not his most super important superpower, is his ability as a salesman, his ability to sell you on a mission and a vision. And people love that, you know, because you know, we can we can debate whether or not he hits his his his goals or his his projections. You know, he said, for example, we get to Mars by twenty twenty five.

I don't think that's going to happen. But you know, you look at this robotax event and me as a report, I'm like, I'm very skeptical, like this is. But you have people that are screaming and cheering and posting online. You know, they're loving the robots that are serving the beers and everything, and you're like, wow, he really has sold this to people. People really believe him on this stuff, and I don't. Uh, yeah, I don't know. It's it's it's an interesting quality that he has.

a people problem. And so he's taking advice from people of his same background of the same ilk you know, like David Sachs, Jason kalakhanis of these investors that have put money into this deal. He at one point takes advice from his own biographer, Walter Isaacson, and he and also in that process decides to fire people that have worked at the company for years studying this stuff and working on it, largely because he believes they're inept or

they're too woke or whatever. And that's I think that Hubris. Again we talk about these kind of gut decisions that he makes, but that is what has hampered him throughout the deal and throughout the takeover to the point where the company is, you know, valuation wise is crashed. It's advertising as crashed, the user numbers have crashed.

He may be wildly successful, but does he have the expertise to understand what it means when an FTC consent decree comes in from the FTC? Does he understand what happens when the EU demands information? And does he have international law expertise to under like to grasp that. I don't think so, you know. And Elon fired a lot of the people or got or encouraged them to leave, folks that have kind of specialized in these areas and

working in it for their whole careers. And again, that's just kind of one of the wilder things of this, of this whole thing. There was really no transition in place to understand how Twitter operated when he took over the company. There were a handful of meetings, but there wasn't like a transition plan. There wasn't like, Okay, these these people work over here. I understand that this is

how the advertising business works. Let me understand that that came after he took over the company and after he laid off hundreds and thousands of people, and that has fundamentally damaged to the company.

Does this basically say, if you're one of these guys, you have these balls, the real rules really don't apply.

four hundred and twenty dollars a share. He's going to take Tesla private, take it off the public market where it's not doing well because he's not hitting his numbers with the Model three rollout, and he says, screw it. You know, I don't need the public market. I have my private investors. You know, he didn't have that money, so I was going to come from Saudi Arabia wasn't coming. And the SEC sues him because he puts out a statement that manipulates the markets and offers a false promise

to investors. YadA YadA. They sue him. He fights it, briefly settles what is what is he? What does he have to pay for that? You know, he personally pays a twenty million dollar fine. Testa pays a twenty million dollar fine. He's no longer able to be chairman, whatever that means. But what is a for What does forty million dollars mean to someone who's worth one hundred billion dollars? You know it it's a parking ticket for you and me.

And his fundamental understanding of that that he could either fight something or simply pay the fine is crucial to how he operates now because when you get to something like operating Twitter and complying to an FDC consent decree, He'll be like, you know, I don't care about that, Like what are they going to do to me? Like are they going to They're not going to take the company away from me. They'll levy a fine. What is the fine going to be? Tens of millions dollars? Hundreds

of millions of dollars? You know, I'm now worth two hundred billion dollars. And not only that, I'm going to fight on every level using the legal system to really clog this process up. Right now, he is being asked to sit for a deposition by the SEC in a in a related securities cases. He's simply not showing up to his depositions, you know, and he's flaunting the SEC. He had a tweet the other day which is a

play on something. He's kind of childish thing he said, but he says, the SEC stands for you know, the E stands for Elons, So you know S, you know, suck Elon's blank. You know that's what the s. You know that that was his tweet the other day, And you start to realize that in some ways he's he's blown past the gravitational pool of accountability. You know, he

is so rich, he has so many resources. The government is so reliant on him with that, you know, he doesn't care, and that I think is a crucial understanding understanding how he operates.

Some of it came from Kingdom holding the Saudi Prince, who is effectively overseen by MBS Mohammed bin Salman, who rolled over his steak from he already owned past Twitter share, so he just rolled over his investment about two billion dollars into into Elon's deal. But a lot of these were blue like leading venture Capital from the Silicon Valley.

We're talking about Siquoy Capital, Andreas and Horowitz, you know, and these and these firms believe in him as an entrepreneur, you know, they they see him as a generational talent. He has done so much with SpaceX and with Tesla that they're just going to take a punt on this Twitter deal. And even if it's a money loser, they're still close to him. They've they've it's it's especially buying loyalty in a way where on his next deal they

might come to him. And so I think about this message that we reported in the book from Mark Andreesen, the head of Andresen Horowitz, who was offered to invest I think to initially two hundred million dollars. The number changed after but the emails, the messages came out. He's like, you know, two hundred million. Sure, we don't even need to do dilig just whatever he wants, he gets the check. And that's the level of influence he has over these people.

And if you actually think about this deal, yes, it individually it's a money loser for the Sequoia Capitals of the world, for the and recent Horowitz of the world, but these same firms invested in this ai company that Elon spun up off of the data from Twitter Xai. And yes, it's funny money, but that company was recently valued at fifty billion dollars in a private venture round.

So you know, if you're looking at the plus minuses here Twitter goes down, it's now about eight to nine billion dollars if you believe Fidelity's valuation of the company. But he's been able to create xai out of zero zero to fifty and so you're like, you know, maybe they have a point. You know, maybe they've they've gained the system enough where they understand that just being close to Elon begets more wealth.

These are the Morgan Stanley's, the Moral Think Bank of America had some of the debt Mizuno as well, and for them, I think the calculus is is somewhat even similar. You know, maybe we take this hit, really ugly hit on our books from this this Twitter deal. But let's say SpaceX goes public in the next couple of years, we want to be on that i PO. You know, that's a that's a billion dollar i PO for us and so and you know what happens with Neuralink and

Boring Company. You know, they're probably doing the plus minus calculation and thinking, actually, they will still come out on top, even if even if Twitter is a historically bad deal.

of the content moderation folks. You remember this guy Yoel Roth. We ended up like severely harassing on the platform, to the point where Roth had to sell his home because he was being chased in real life by this online harassment. They were trying to get along. Elon was taking advice from this guy Yoel Roth ahead of Trust and Safety. Yoel eventually resigns, I think in the two or three weeks after the deal closes, and then kind of all hell breaks loose. He goes after you Wel he continues

to fire Trust and Safety people. But yeah, content moderation for Elon was one of his big bugaboobs begaboos, and like it still is to this day. You know, he's he still thinks that Twitter was or the previous administration was influenced by progressive woke wokeism or whatever, and that everything flowed from that, and uh yeah, now you kind of that's that's kind of how you can understand or the content that's on Twitter now these days.

content moderation. A couple there's there's a couple things you have to understand, which is that advertisers have been driven away by the lack of content moderation, right like it's a It's caused major brands to leave or spend less money, because why would they want their content to be next to a white nationalist who's been let back on the platform. Why would they want it next to tweets about Nazism or you know, videos of violence, which are somewhat commonplace

on the platform. Now, the Brazil situation is very interesting to me, and it goes back to Elon's political alliances around the world. Elon was friends with Jayra Bolsonaro, the previous president in Brazil who was voted out essentially and

replaced by the leftist president. But in doing you know, and then there were they had their own kind of January sixth moment where supporters of Bolsonaro storm government buildings in Brazil, which led to these decisions by the courts down in Brazil to essentially demand that Twitter ex remove these voices that caused for people to question the election

and cause this kind of unrest. You know, we can debate whether or not it's good for any government body to get involved in online speech, but that was the law of the land in Brazil, and Elon decided to fight that in part because he was aligned with, you know, the old president, and he made a huge think about this to the point where X was pulled out of the country for a couple of weeks and then ultimately folded. You know, he complied with the orders and now the

platform is back in the country. He'd loved to make if you analyze this case, he loved to make himself. He loves to make himself kind of the free speech advocate or seen as the free speech advocate. But let's compare this to what's happening in India, for example, where he's very close with the Prime Minister there in Arender Modi. The Modi government has demanded that Twitter sensor content regularly. I think of something like a documentary that was put

up by the BBC about Modi himself. It was put on YouTube and shared across platforms. You know, Twitter complied with those takedown orders. There was no standing up for free speech in that case by Elon and opposing that that government takedown requests. He complied very easily. He's complied with government takedown requests in Turkey, for example, where he's aligned with Erdawan. So this kind of free speech mantra that he purports is very selectively applied and really depends

on the market who he's aligned with. As well as his own kind of personal interests.

this throughout his career. But if you're if you're GM, if you're Chevy, if you're even Rivian, you know you're you're probably raising your eyebrows and being like, damn, we really, you know, do we want to reevaluate this relationship? We got in bed with our main competitor and he is completely erratic and we don't know why he did it. Still like was it because he one day he woke up and was like, actually, you know what, I don't think I want my competitors to use my Like why

would I give away my secret sauce? You know, let them build their own they you know, this is that's capitalism. I should be able to control my own chargers. But this kind of erratic nature and you know, unexplained decisions are part and parcel of him. Uh and it is it is fascinating to watch it play out over and

over again as a reporter. But yeah, if i'm if I'm Mary Bara a GM, I'm I'm watching this with with Rai's eyebrows and wondering what's going on and just always seems like a master of five alarm fire with him.

how do things operate? And if you're able to explain things to him in those first principles, he'll appreciate that. But what he doesn't tolerate is being criticized in a group setting or being made to look like he is dumb in a group setting. Essentially, we opened the book with this with this instance. Actually was well, this is a one on one thing, so it's kind of contradictory to what I said, But of this instance of a data scientist challenging him on why he tweeted out that

conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. Do you remember that, yes? Yeah, So Paul Pelosi was attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband on far right media. It became this kind of rumor that he was attacked by a jilted lover, and Elon actually shared that came within days after the his acquisition. He shared that conspiracy theory essentially and this data scientist who's already going to quit, manages to get a one on one

meeting with Elon and tell him. He goes in the meeting with the hope that he could maybe change him or change his perspective. And this is a data scientist who had studied misinformation and how it spreads on social platforms.

And he says, like, look, I can't believe you would believe you know, you're in like the top tenth percentile of folks who would fall for something this ridiculous, Like how could you believe that you really need to like understand online sources better and like how information flows and really be more skeptical of what you read online. And

like they get into a shouting match. Elon says, fuck you, you know, and the guy was going to quit anyway with like you know, fires him, and you start to realize that, yes, he doesn't he doesn't like to be challenged very often. And there are other scenes of the book where he fires people on the spot as well. And we go back to, you know, operating on gout instinct. It's worked for him in the past, It's worked for

him at Tesla. You know, he has worked people to the bone, and if they don't get the things he wants done for him, he'll just find the next person who will. And he's built these major companies off those techniques, and he has simply applied those to Twitter. And you see that over and over again in the book.

this for breakfast. And sustenance. And what are you saving here? You're saving how much are Lucky charms? You know, mass produce Lucky charms, you know, a thousand couple thousand bucks. But it's for him, it's proving a point, right, it's if I can endure this pain, you can endure this pain, and I am willing to cut whatever we need to cut to make this company successful, whether that's lucky charms, whether that's servers, whether that's toilet paper, which I keep

referencing but actually happened. They didn't have toilet paper the offices for a bit. But it's like a it's a psychological thing, almost right. And what he believes is he's going to be the one enduring this pain as well. He'll be the one sleeping at the factory if he can not eat and be on the factory line or

be on the factory floor. And if he can sleep in the office, which he did set up be set up a bed in one of the conference rooms, then you like individual employees should be able to tolerate that pain too. Now on the flip side of that, you know, I talk to a lot of people about this, and it does motivate a certain amount of people. But then these people start to realize, like the upside for them, like what is it in Like what do they get?

They get a couple shares, they get a good salary, but his upside is, you know, millions of shares that could increase in value. So he's the one seeing the upside from the enduring of pain by these folks. And whereas you know, the individual contributor to the individual employee

isn't seeing the same kind of payoff. I guess he would argue, you know, he's made many people at Tesla millionaires, but you know, the cutting has always been a part of him and his identity, and it's something he's now taking into to the White House.

to simply settle and pay these things. He's going to fight, which ultimately may cost him more, or you know, maybe his calculation is that some people would simply give up and forget about it. He's taking the same tact with the four executives that he fired in like literally the minutes after taking over, he fired the CEO, chief legal officer, General counsel, and chief financial officer. That was literally his first action upon taking over the company in October twenty

twenty two. And all these these four executives were do golden parachutes on a change of on a transfer power, which, uh, you know, any kind of merger or anything, they would do these golden parachutes, which amounted to about I think it's around one hundred and twenty million dollars total for

all four of them combined. So he's he's fired them for cause, which allowed him to say, actually, you know, I fired you for cause, Therefore you don't deserve your golden parachutes or you're you're not, I don't have to pay you those And of course those executives sued.

to table and negotiate with him. We often think about like too big to fail, and we use that with banks. Obviously the financial crisis. There's a quality of Elon. There's a quality of that to Elon as well. You know, this idea that he is too big that people have to play on his terms. He's not going to simply do things because he signed a contract or because he's

legally obligated to. But he can bend the rules and get people to play on his playing field if he wants to, and he's done that constantly with Twitter.

In San Francisco, the company, the city sent inspectors to inspect the so called Twitter hotel in the building where he built these hotel rooms for employees to stand because he didn't want to pay for out of time employees to stay in hotels, so they would sleep in conference rooms on mixshift beds and shower in the office and that kind of thing. So the city set investigators and like you know, they continued to operate and have people stay there. He just doesn't care, you know. And that

is a again going back to accountability. That's just a key understanding that he has. He is bigger than any law or any regulator or any agency.

he took out that were overseeing that. When we talk about cuts, it's not just the platform itself, it's the people that also oversee advertising and what happened with advertising at the company. It's completely cratered. So yes, I think at the time, all these speculator all the speculation about Twitter collapsing after he did all the layoffs, I think was a bit premature, and Twitter over the years had built up a pretty robust infrastructure to keep itself online.

You know, obviously we all remember the days of the fail well and you know those error messages that we we get or during big events like the Super Bowl, the site crashing or not the super Bowl, but the World Cup and stuff like that. But by and large, it's it's a bit a pretty robust system that Eleono has been able to take over, and so it stayed online. That being said, you know, it doesn't guarantee that it's

going to stay online forever. And who knows. I reserve judgment, I guess, is what I'll say to that.

And he sold investors on this idea that he could build the weed Chat of the US, you know, a place where you could watch videos, you would hail your cab, you would order your food, you would have your bank. And by and large, that vision has not been achieved. You know, they've been still working on those money transmitter licenses in all those states. You know, there's really you can't pay for anything with X at this point in time. But yeah, it's it's again these promises that he continues

to make, and that's how he's operated as companies. It's always on this idea of a vision, this mission that we need it to and for for X, that mission has been the everything app mean, by the way, he hasn't mentioned that very recently. If you notice how we talked about it, he doesn't really talk about payments anymore. He doesn't talk about the everything app so maybe that was a convenient message for him to raise capital at

the time. But yeah, I guess that's kind of a wait and see moment still as well.

was pretty obviously right leading. There were a lot of engagements with right wing accounts and that kind of thing, and she saw an opportunity, so they began a conversation. Remember Elon had that very bizarre period in December twenty twenty two where he had a lot of self doubts of whether he wanted to run the company, and he tweeted out that thing about, you know, should I still

be CEO of Twitter. It's this dark moment in the book, and it's I think one thing you realize about Elon is this very human He goes through these very up and down and in that point in time, our reporting put him in like a very dark place. You know, he had a lot of self doubts, and so there was kind of some public chatter about, you know, maybe he's looking for someone to like take the burden off. And so Linda Yakarino comes in and they start to

have those conversations. She interviews him at a conference and ads conference where they have decent rapport on stage, and a couple months later she's named as the CEO. You know, I think anyone looking at that company knows who calls

the shots. But also Linda oversees a lot of the aspects of the business that Elon just has no care for, and that particular part is advertising because Twitter, despite what Elan has said about subscriptions and despite what he has said about wanting to develop new revenue streams, is supremely dependent on advertising, and so Linda is there to do

that but also carry his message. So you often get this very weird dynamic where she has to speak out of both sides of her mouth, or she has to pairt what Elon says, and uh, yeah, it's it's it's fascinating watching her and what she says online.

don't have to report those anymore. But I guess some numbers internally in the US, for example, that it's it's still declining after year over year, after a pretty bad year in the in the previous twelve months, it's still declining. And so Elon has wanted to put out this message that actually advertisers are returning, but you should, we should all be kind of skeptical about what returning means. Does that mean they're returning and spending five dollars? You know,

what's the actual spend is actually the main question. And like you can often I pay attention a lot to what's on the Explore page that that on the training topics. You see that not right? So that big like banner ad is about a five hundred, it's anywhere from tw hundred fifty to fi hundred thousand dollars a day to take over that page and run that banner ad, and

it's often very empty. You know, that used to be a place where artists promoted their new albums, or there were movie promotions, or if there was a new Apple you know, whatever, iPhone launch or whatever, they would take over that space. And that goes empty a lot of the time. And that just speaks to where the platform is at with advertisers being very queasy about the content and the people that remain on.

it creates a huge headache for you. And on some level, you know, like if he tweets value, you're just gonna have millions of people coming after you and denigrating you, and you know, a just criticizing you. And I think all of them believe that it's just easier to play nice with him. And so when Tim Cook says we're still advertising on X. It's interesting, right, like they still could be advertising an X, but what is the amount?

You know, how does that compare in the past. And bear in mind that these companies are also very they have to do it's best for their business as well, and so if they are trying to break out of the duopoly of Google and Facebook and online advertising, you know, X offers a pretty reliable place, I guess, or at least an alternative. And that's not new to Elon. That's how it's always been. That's why Twitter was able to survive as a kind of alternative to the kind of

two giants. But when when Tim Cook says something like that, it definitely feels like a very placating move, right, it's a it's a it's an olive branch to Elon.

he's the most engaged with account. This wasn't his intent when he bought the company, but he's been able to use it to leverage UH and get the presidential candidate he's wanted into the White House. So for him, it's been a you know, absent all the discussion about finances and everything. It's been a great success, and he's shaped

it in a way. He's driven away the reporters that used to thrive on there, the news outlets that used to thrive on there, the people used to criticize them, and recreated it to become this place where his favorit. People have the blue check marks, they've bought them. They're elevated in his replies. They're the ones being shared on the for you page, the algorithmically curated page, and yeah, I think you could be happier in some ways. You know,

his net worth has never been higher. You know, he's now worth three hundred and twenty three twenty five billion dollars give and take on any given day. So we talk about the financial problems that Twitter has had, but again in the plus minus column, like he's he's on, he's up, you know, and uh so, Yeah, I think I think X continues to exist forever, for however long he wants it to.

great replacement theory. He starts caring about voter fraud and you know, the thing that it has been talked about ad nauseum on Fox News, And he starts engaging with folks like Tucker Carlson and that kind of stuff. So I view that process as radicalizing him towards Trump, because you have to remember he was never a Trumper. He supported Ron de Santis in as late as May twenty

twenty three. You remember that Twitter space he had where he DeSantis launched his you know, his disastrous but he launched his his presidential campaign on x with Elon, but owning Twitter, engaging in that sphere really pushed him further and further to the right, to the point where he arrived on Trump's doorstep and they began a fast and aggressive relationship that kind of continues to this day.

the government moves at a glacial piece. To continue would absolutely require compromise on Elon's part. Is that going to happen, or is Elon going to jump the rails at some point say you know this is just fucked up. You don't know what you're doing. I gotta I gotta lead.

in the same space for however long? We've already started to see reports about folks around Trump tiring of the amount that that that Elon has spent at the president's side in mar A Lago. That's the big question, you know. I wish I was in the game of predictions, but historically they have tended not to get along well with other people that have similar egos, similar desires to take

control and be the leader. In my opinion, though, and this is complete speculation, I think both of them are aware of that, and they understand that like they're being watched in this way, and so to do things as they've always done them might not be the way to go.

But who knows. I mean, these guys make split decisions, especially Elon, and one day you could wake up and find himself on the other side of Trump's good list or bad list, and it may lead to fireworks, but hopefully were there to report it out.

SpaceX rocket manufacturing or design. So all these people are very very familiar with how he works and what we've heard from people at these companies, is he's kind of the troubleshooter. If there's a major problem that's happening at Tesla or SpaceX, let's say in twenty eighteen, for example, on the on the factory line manufacturing Model threes, you know he'll get in and try and problem solve very aggressively and spend all his time on that problem until

it's fixed. And so actually, if you think about it, like people call elon the sun in these companies, and you don't want to get too close to sunny get burned. So like if he is, if he's working with you on your part of the company or whatever project you're you're probably fucked. Like you're probably in there, you're probably in deep shit, right. You don't want to be in that position. You don't want to be in the same room with him. And so, by and large, these companies,

when there is no crisis, he's run themselves. SpaceX has a very strong number too, and when shot well he had he has other vps around him as well that run that company and know about way more about rocket science or manufacturing than he does, and he defers to them. Same thing at Tesla with X, he didn't have that right. This wasn't a company he built up from the ground up, and so when he came in and fired everyone, there

was really no one he could trust. He couldn't he couldn't leave and like let this thing operate week to week. So that's kind of what explains why he spent so much time there when after he took over, and explains why he eventually hired Linda Ekerino. But that's that's just an understanding of how it operates. So x is I guess getting there to the point where it can maybe be a little more self sustainable and he's not spending all his time there. But yeah, that's just that's how he works.

And it's funny because Jobs and Musk are often talked talked about as having this quote reality distortion field, right, this ability to you know, if it's not real in real life, they able to make it happen. You know, no one saw the iPhone before Steve Jobs, no one saw self landing rockets before Elon, And they're able to push people and the boundaries to get them working towards these once impossible goals. And you know, I think I

think that's it's borrowed from Star Trek. I'm not a Treky, but I think the reality distortion field is a Star Trek thing. But we've talked to so many people that say that about someone like Elon right, like that he has that ability to make people believe. And you see that quality not just that his companies, but outside his companies. You talk about the Robotaxi event. Again, he got people

believing in this thing that's not even real. You know, that is on a movie set you know, farrying people around from fake city to fake city on a movie set. And when we talk about like his greatest quality as an entrepreneur, I think that that's it.

everything on his iPhone. Presentations have to be delivered to him so it's readable on a you know, whatever the size screen of an iPhone is, and from there he's able to dictate his vision and you know, tell people and direct them. But I don't think he's doing much engineering these days, particularly at Twitter or X.

a reporter, I'm sure you've read the book. What do you say about Isaacs in book?

And I think as a reporter, like leading with that is uncomfortable for me, particularly because I view my job as having to interrogate power. Like Yes, on one hand, I can understand that he's built great companies, but on the other hand, if he is harming, if people are getting hurt in his factories if he is breaking the law, like, it's my job to report that and expose that and show that and understand that there are costs to being

this supposed great man. And I think, you know, with the Isaacson case, we'll just let a reporting do the talking. You know, our reporting showed that he was providing advice to Elon on Twitter Blue, the subscription service. He was telling him that a lot of people will use a service, how we should you know, he should price it low because it's going to be such a game changer. He

was giving Elon advice on labeling. You know, there was that kind of tiff with NPR and whether or not it should be labeled as state sponsored media, and apparently Isaacson got involved with that as well. And as a reporter, that's just not a place I want to be in, I don't, you know. I want my I want my subject. Yes, I want to be in the room with my subject if they allow me to. But I'm not going to compromise my integrity as reporter. I don't want to be

an advisor to him by any means. And I think that's the trap that he fell into, you know, Elon is extremely influential. He he he has a gravitational pull. We see this with all the people that come to kind of kiss his ring, and you know a lot of people described it as a king's court, and you kind of if you guess, if you're around it long enough, you fall into that. And we see that time and time again in our book with Walter, and I think

that caloused your judgment when it comes to reporting. I think one of my main issues with his book is that he took Elon for face value on a lot of reporting. You know, as a reporter, you want to get multiple perspectives. And so for example, Elon's daughter has come out as trans daughter and said, you know, you've written about me a lot in your book, but you never reached out to me to get my perspective, and you just took my dad's and they don't have a

very good relationship effect. Elon has said that his daughter is dead to him. So he simply took Elon's perspective about the trans daughter and ran with it. And I don't think that's good reporting. You know, that would that would never fly in a basic reporting one in one class, and yeah, that's that's kind of my view on it.

ah gosh, I mean, it makes him so influential. You think about the Ukraine War and him essentially controlling the communications and pipes for the Ukraine defense effort as he simultaneously is calling for a cease fire and end of the war and an appeasing of putin right, it's kind of just nuts, Like we haven't really never seen this, and I think starlink only will get more powerful, like because Elon has a virtual monopoly on getting things into space,

at least in the private industry, Like he controls how those satellites get up and he knows that and it

gives him a lot of power. I think of the hurricanes that just hit, you know, the Southeast, and how FEMA was reliant on starlink and getting communications to that region, and Elon is is literally criticizing FEMA on on X he is shitting on the federal government, He's shitting on Biden, and yet FEMA has to play ball with him because he controls Starlink like it's an incredible position to be in, and I think Starlink will become more and more a

source of his power. I think I saw today in the news that they had signed a contract with T Mobile to provide I guess calling service, So you know, we start to see more of those deals overseas. It's quite influential as well. And yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely an underrated part of his empire.

say those are not his main focuses. You know, obviously he'll dip into uralink stuff when they have an announcement or things like that. But when we talk about those kinds of teams that he's built up from the ground up, those companies are good examples of that where they kind of self operate without him. He'll dip in when he needs to, and when there's a big announcement he can draw attention to it. But it certainly adds to his lore, right Like he he's the man that runs six companies ostensibly,

and it gives him a great legend. And oftentimes I get asked, you know, does how is he able to do this? Like I can't even do my own job, how can you do six and like run all these companies? Well, the truth is, like there's more to it, and he certainly loves to profit off this this image. But it's not like he is. He is going into New orlank every day and working on that from a nine to five.

the Trump. But when we ended the book, I do not think we could have predict did the extent which with which with with which he would support Donald Trump. You know, there is a different world in which I thought it would have been a much more quieter support.

He would have maybe announced his endorsement a couple of days before the election, and he would not have done by any means what we saw happen, you know, which is to pour two hundred million dollars into his campaign and to literally go to rallies in Pennsylvania and stuff for him and have this charity whatever lottery giveaway to people who register to vote for him. That was unfathomable to me, and I'd like, that wasn't even on the

cards for me. And what I've learned from that is just his convictions, and what when you have that much money, what you're able to do about those convictions. You know, he spent two hundred million dollars on Donald Trump's campaign, and that seems like a really smart bet considering what he'll get out of that. You know, he'll be able

to appoint people that he wants the government. He might he has the influence an ear of the president, and so that two hundred million dollars looks incredibly cheap, where whereas that's unfathomable. You know, who else could do that in the world. And so yeah, I've learned, I've learned how that works, I guess, or how that looks, and yeah, yeah.

a lot of people have written books recently. I had to listen to Kara Swisher write about her and talk about her fucking book for over a year, came out, was gone within like a week, and really no one bought it. And there are a lot of other people like that. Okay, your book certainly has a higher pedigree, more interest. Do you find you're getting continued feedback? Do you find that you're hearing from people that you didn't used to hear from. Do you find that you're being criticized?

Are you stunned that the world has moved on what has been your emotional experience in addition to what has been incoming.

we did some events in London. So on that level, I honestly thought I talked to a lot of authors who are like, you know, enjoy it while you can, because a week later, like, people aren't gonna talking about your book. That's just the natural progression of things. And for us to be continuing to talk to people two and a half months out of publication, to people like yourself,

has been an incredible privilege. And so I'm just trying to kind of ride that wave and enjoy it and kind of impart the knowledge that we've learned about him too. You know, people that are interested.