new biography about elon musk

South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.

Who Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers.

Musk made headlines in May 2012, when SpaceX launched a rocket that would send the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station. He bolstered his portfolio with the purchase of SolarCity in 2016 and cemented his standing as a leader of industry by taking on an advisory role in the early days of President Donald Trump 's administration.

In January 2021, Musk reportedly surpassed Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world.

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. As a child, Musk was so lost in his daydreams about inventions that his parents and doctors ordered a test to check his hearing.

At about the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 10, Musk developed an interest in computers. He taught himself how to program, and when he was 12 he sold his first software: a game he created called Blastar.

In grade school, Musk was short, introverted and bookish. He was bullied until he was 15 and went through a growth spurt and learned how to defend himself with karate and wrestling.

Musk’s mother, Maye Musk , is a Canadian model and the oldest woman to star in a Covergirl campaign. When Musk was growing up, she worked five jobs at one point to support her family.

Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a wealthy South African engineer.

Musk spent his early childhood with his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca in South Africa. His parents divorced when he was 10.

At age 17, in 1989, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk obtained his Canadian citizenship that year, in part because he felt it would be easier to obtain American citizenship via that path.

In 1992, Musk left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

After leaving Penn, Musk headed to Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with the Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation in 1995. Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

Zip2 Corporation

Musk launched his first company, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995 with his brother, Kimbal Musk. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune . In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.

In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk used the money from their sale of Zip2 to found X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today.

In October 2002, Musk earned his first billion when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock.

Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

Falcon 9 Rockets

On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Of the launch, Musk was quoted as saying, "I feel very lucky. ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

In December 2013, a Falcon 9 successfully carried a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, aiming to observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and communications systems on Earth.

In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel.

A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company's new Block 5 Merlin engine. SpaceX reported that no one was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of Falcon 9 rockets.

The company enjoyed another milestone moment in February 2018 with the successful test launch of the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. Armed with additional Falcon 9 boosters, the Falcon Heavy was designed to carry immense payloads into orbit and potentially serve as a vessel for deep space missions. For the test launch, the Falcon Heavy was given a payload of Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster, equipped with cameras to "provide some epic views" for the vehicle's planned orbit around the sun.

In July 2018, Space X enjoyed the successful landing of a new Block 5 Falcon rocket, which touched down on a drone ship less than 9 minutes after liftoff.

BFR Mission to Mars

In September 2017, Musk presented an updated design plan for his BFR (an acronym for either "Big F---ing Rocket" or "Big Falcon Rocket"), a 31-engine behemoth topped by a spaceship capable of carrying at least 100 people. He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

In March 2018, the entrepreneur told an audience at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights early the following year, while delivering a knowing nod at his previous problems with meeting deadlines.

The following month, it was announced that SpaceX would construct a facility at the Port of Los Angeles to build and house the BFR. The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX, as its mammoth rocket will only be movable by barge or ship when completed.

Starlink Internet Satellites

In late March 2018, SpaceX received permission from the U.S. government to launch a fleet of satellites into low orbit for the purpose of providing Internet service. The satellite network, named Starlink, would ideally make broadband service more accessible in rural areas, while also boosting competition in heavily populated markets that are typically dominated by one or two providers.

SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 satellites in May 2019, and followed with another payload of 60 satellites that November. While this represented significant progress for the Starlink venture, the appearance of these bright orbiters in the night sky, with the potential of thousands more to come, worried astronomers who felt that a proliferation of satellites would increase the difficulty of studying distant objects in space.

Tesla Motors

Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company formed in 2003 that is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering and design of the company's products.

Five years after its formation, in March 2008, Tesla unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well as traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery.

With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with Toyota, Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million.

In August 2008, Tesla announced plans for its Model S, the company's first electric sedan that was reportedly meant to take on the BMW 5 series. In 2012, the Model S finally entered production at a starting price of $58,570. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, it was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine .

In April 2017, Tesla announced that it surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year.

In September 2019, using what Musk described as a "Plaid powertrain," a Model S set a speed record for four-door sedan at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey County, California.

The Model 3 was officially launched in early 2019 following extensive production delays. The car was initially priced at $35,000, a much more accessible price point than the $69,500 and up for its Model S and X electric sedans.

After initially aiming to produce 5,000 new Model 3 cars per week by December 2017, Musk pushed that goal back to March 2018, and then to June with the start of the new year. The announced delay didn't surprise industry experts, who were well aware of the company's production problems, though some questioned how long investors would remain patient with the process. It also didn't prevent Musk from garnering a radical new compensation package as CEO, in which he would be paid after reaching milestones of growing valuation based on $50 billion increments.

By April 2018, with Tesla expected to fall short of first-quarter production forecasts, news surfaced that Musk had pushed aside the head of engineering to personally oversee efforts in that division. In a Twitter exchange with a reporter, Musk said it was important to "divide and conquer" to meet production goals and was "back to sleeping at factory."

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact. In an email to employees, Musk explained his decision to eliminate some "duplication of roles" to cut costs, admitting it was time to take serious steps toward turning a profit.

The restructuring appeared to pay dividends, as it was announced that Tesla had met its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June 2018, while churning out another 2,000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. "We did it!" Musk wrote in a celebratory email to the company. "What an incredible job by an amazing team."

The following February, Musk announced that the company was finally rolling out its standard Model 3. Musk also said that Tesla was shifting to all-online sales, and offering customers the chance to return their cars within seven days or 1,000 miles for a full refund.

In November 2017, Musk made another splash with the unveiling of the new Tesla Semi and Roadster at the company's design studio. The semi-truck, which was expected to enter into production in 2019 before being delayed, boasts 500 miles of range as well as a battery and motors built to last 1 million miles.

Model Y and Roadster

In March 2019, Musk unveiled Tesla’s long-awaited Model Y. The compact crossover, which began arriving for customers in March 2020, has a driving range of 300 miles and a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.5 seconds.

The Roadster, also set to be released in 2020, will become the fastest production car ever made, with a 0 to 60 time of 1.9 seconds.

In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable energy and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6 billion dollar deal was solidified to combine his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had helped his cousins start in 2006. He is a majority shareholder in each entity.

“Solar and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.

The Boring Company

In January 2017, Musk launched The Boring Company, a company devoted to boring and building tunnels in order to reduce street traffic. He began with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles.

In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

In May 2019 the company, now known as TBC, landed a $48.7 million contract from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to build an underground Loop system to shuttle people around the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In October 2022, Musk officially bought Twitter and became the social media company's CEO after months of back and forth.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S ELON MUSK FACT CARD

Musk’s Tweet and SEC Investigation

On August 7, 2018, Musk dropped a bombshell via a tweet: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." The announcement opened the door for legal action against the company and its founder, as the SEC began inquiring about whether Musk had indeed secured the funding as claimed. Several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

Musk’s tweet initially sent Tesla stock spiking, before it closed the day up 11 percent. The CEO followed up with a letter on the company blog, calling the move to go private "the best path forward." He promised to retain his stake in the company, and added that he would create a special fund to help all current investors remain on board.

Six days later, Musk sought to clarify his position with a statement in which he pointed to discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the source of his "funding secured" declaration. He later tweeted that he was working on a proposal to take Tesla private with Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake as financial advisers.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet. Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

On August 24, one day after meeting with the board, Musk announced that he had reversed course and would not be taking the company private. Among his reasons, he cited the preference of most directors to keep Tesla public, as well as the difficulty of retaining some of the large shareholders who were prohibited from investing in a private company. Others suggested that Musk was also influenced by the poor optics of an electric car company being funded by Saudi Arabia, a country heavily involved in the oil industry.

On September 29, 2018, it was announced that Musk would pay a $20 million fine and step down as chairman of Tesla's board for three years as part of an agreement with the SEC.

Inventions and Innovations

In August 2013, Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the "Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use.

Although he introduced the Hyperloop with claims that it would be safer than a plane or train, with an estimated cost of $6 billion — approximately one-tenth of the cost for the rail system planned by the state of California — Musk's concept has drawn skepticism. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur has sought to encourage the development of this idea.

After he announced a competition for teams to submit their designs for a Hyperloop pod prototype, the first Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at the SpaceX facility in January 2017. A speed record of 284 mph was set by a German student engineering team at competition No. 3 in 2018, with the same team pushing the record to 287 mph the next year.

AI and Neuralink

Musk has pursued an interest in artificial intelligence, becoming co-chair of the nonprofit OpenAI. The research company launched in late 2015 with the stated mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity.

In 2017, it was also reported that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software. He expanded on the company's progress during a July 2019 discussion, revealing that its devices will consist of a microscopic chip that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone.

High-Speed Train

In late November 2017, after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for proposals to build and operate a high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from O'Hare Airport to downtown Chicago in 20 minutes or less, Musk tweeted that he was all-in on the competition with The Boring Company. He said that the concept of the Chicago loop would be different from his Hyperloop, its relatively short route not requiring the need for drawing a vacuum to eliminate air friction.

In summer 2018 Musk announced he would cover the estimated $1 billion needed to dig the 17-mile tunnel from the airport to downtown Chicago. However, in late 2019 he tweeted that TBC would focus on completing the commercial tunnel in Las Vegas before turning to other projects, suggesting that plans for Chicago would remain in limbo for the immediate future.

Flamethrower

Musk also reportedly found a market for The Boring Company's flamethrowers. After announcing they were going on sale for $500 apiece in late January 2018, he claimed to have sold 10,000 of them within a day.

Relationship with Donald Trump

In December 2016, Musk was named to President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum; the following January, he joined Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration. "My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all."

On June 1, following Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, Musk stepped down from his advisory roles.

Personal Life

Wives and children.

Musk has been married twice. He wed Justine Wilson in 2000, and the couple had six children together. In 2002, their first son died at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Musk and Wilson had five additional sons together: twins Griffin and Xavier (born in 2004) and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian (born in 2006).

After a contentious divorce from Wilson, Musk met actress Talulah Riley. The couple married in 2010. They split in 2012 but married each other again in 2013. Their relationship ultimately ended in divorce in 2016.

Girlfriends

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp . Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

In May 2018, Musk began dating musician Grimes (born Claire Boucher). That month, Grimes announced that she had changed her name to “ c ,” the symbol for the speed of light, reportedly on the encouragement of Musk. Fans criticized the feminist performer for dating a billionaire whose company has been described as a “predator zone” among accusations of sexual harassment.

The couple discussed their love for one another in a March 2019 feature in the Wall Street Journal Magazine , with Grimes saying “Look, I love him, he’s great...I mean, he’s a super-interesting goddamn person.” Musk, for his part, told the Journal, “I love c’s wild fae artistic creativity and hyper-intense work ethic.”

Grimes gave birth to their son on May 4, 2020, with Musk announcing that they had named the boy "X Æ A-12." Later in the month, after it was reported that the State of California wouldn't accept a name with a number, the couple said they were changing their son's name to "X Æ A-Xii."

Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, in December 2021. The child was delivered via a surrogate.

Nonprofit Work

The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the human race have become the cornerstones of Musk's abiding interests, and toward these, he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources.

In October 2019 Musk pledged to donate $1 million to the #TeamTrees campaign, which aims to plant 20 million trees around the world by 2020. He even changed his Twitter name to Treelon for the occasion.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Elon Musk
• Birth Year: 1971
• Birth date: June 28, 1971
• Birth City: Pretoria
• Birth Country: South Africa
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.
• Space Exploration
• Internet/Computing
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• University of Pennsylania
• Queen's University, Ontario
• Stanford University
• Nacionalities
• South African
• Interesting Facts
• Elon Musk left Stanford after two days to take advantage of the Internet boom.
• In April 2017, Musk's Tesla Motors surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker.

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Elon Musk Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/elon-musk
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 31, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I'm very pro-environment, but let's figure out how to do it better and not jump through a dozen hoops to achieve what is obvious in the first place.
• Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

Entrepreneurs

Donald Trump

Kylie Jenner’s Go-To Lip Product Is Only $11

Sean “Diddy” Combs

Selena Gomez

8 Musicians Who Have Built Business Empires

Who Is Music Mogul Scooter Braun?

The True Story of Pop-Tarts and ‘Unfrosted’

The Life and Hip-Hop Legacy of DJ Mister Cee

The Truth About Walt Disney’s Frozen Head

Frederick Jones

Lonnie Johnson

In 2021, Elon Musk became the world’s richest man (no woman came close), and Time named him Person of the Year: “This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P. T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen ’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars.” Right about when Time was preparing that giddy announcement, three women whose ovaries and uteruses were involved in passing down the madcap man-god’s genes were in the maternity ward of a hospital in Austin. Musk believes a declining birth rate is a threat to civilization and, with his trademark tirelessness, is doing his visionary edgelord best to ward off that threat. Shivon Zilis, a thirty-five-year-old venture capitalist and executive at Musk’s company Neuralink, was pregnant with twins, conceived with Musk by in-vitro fertilization, and was experiencing complications. “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” Zilis said. In a nearby room, a woman serving as a surrogate for Musk and his thirty-three-year-old ex-wife, Claire Boucher, a musician better known as Grimes, was suffering from pregnancy complications, too, and Grimes was staying with her.

“I really wanted him to have a daughter so bad,” Grimes said. At the time, Musk had had seven sons, including, with Grimes, a child named X. Grimes did not know that Zilis, a friend of hers, was down the hall, or that Zilis was pregnant by Musk. Zilis’s twins were born seven weeks premature; the surrogate delivered safely a few weeks later. In mid-December, Grimes’s new baby came home and met her brother X. An hour later, Musk took X to New York and dandled him on his knee while being photographed for Time .

“He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable,” the magazine’s Person of the Year announcement read. Musk and Grimes called the baby, Musk’s tenth, Y, or sometimes “Why?,” or just “?”—a reference to Musk’s favorite book, Douglas Adams’s “ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ,” because, Grimes explained, it’s a book about how knowing the question is more important than knowing the answer.

Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction.

Elon Musk is currently at or near the helm of six companies: Tesla, SpaceX (which includes Starlink), the Boring Company, Neuralink, X (formerly known as Twitter), and X.AI, an artificial-intelligence company that he founded, earlier this year, because he believes that human intelligence isn’t reproducing fast enough, while artificial intelligence is getting more artificially intelligent exponentially. Call it Musk’s Law: the answer to killer robots is more Musk babies. Plus, more Musk companies. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing,” Musk says, fretting about A.I., in Walter Isaacson’s new biography, “ Elon Musk ” (Simon & Schuster), a book that can scarcely contain its subject, in that it raises infinitely more questions than it answers.

“Are you sincerely trying to save the world?” Stephen Colbert once asked Musk on “The Late Show.” “Well, I’m trying to do good things, yeah, saving the world is not, I mean . . . ,” Musk said, mumbling. “But you’re trying to do good things, and you’re a billionaire,” Colbert interrupted. “Yeah,” Musk said, nodding. Colbert said, “That seems a little like superhero or supervillain. You have to choose one.” Musk paused, his face blank. That was eight years, several companies, and as many children ago. Things have got a lot weirder since. More Lex Luthor, less Tony Stark.

Musk controls the very tiniest things, and the very biggest. He oversees companies, valued at more than a trillion dollars, whose engineers have built or are building, among other things, reusable rocket ships, a humanoid robot, hyperloops for rapid transit, and a man-machine interface to be implanted in human brains. He is an entrepreneur, a media mogul, a political provocateur, and, not least, a defense contractor: SpaceX has received not only billions of dollars in government contracts for space missions but also more than a hundred million dollars in military contracts for missile-tracking satellites, and Starlink’s network of four thousand satellites— which provides Pentagon-funded services to Ukraine —now offers a military service called Starshield. Day by day, Musk’s companies control more of the Internet, the power grid, the transportation system, objects in orbit, the nation’s security infrastructure, and its energy supply.

And yet. At a jury trial earlier this year, Musk’s lawyer repeatedly referred to his client, a middle-aged man, as a “kid.” The Wall Street Journal has described him as suffering from “tantrums.” The Independent has alleged that selling Twitter to Musk was “like handing a toddler a loaded gun.”

“I’m not evil,” Musk said on “Saturday Night Live” a couple of years ago, playing the dastardly Nintendo villain Wario, on trial for murdering Mario. “I’m just misunderstood.” How does a biographer begin to write about such a man? Some years back, after Isaacson had published a biography of Benjamin Franklin and was known to be writing one of Albert Einstein, the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called him up and asked him to write his biography; Isaacson says he wondered, half jokingly, whether Jobs “saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” I don’t think Musk sees himself as a natural successor to anyone. As I read it, Isaacson found much to like and admire in Jobs but is decidedly uncomfortable with Musk. (He calls him, at one point, “an asshole.”) Still, Isaacson’s descriptions of Jobs and Musk are often interchangeable. “His passions, perfectionism, demons, desires, artistry, devilry, and obsession for control were integrally connected to his approach to business and the products that resulted.” (That’s Jobs.) “It was in his nature to want total control.” (Musk.) “He didn’t have the emotional receptors that produce everyday kindness and warmth and a desire to be liked.” (Musk.) “He was not a model boss or human being.” (Jobs.) “This is a book about the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries.” I ask you: Which?

“Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training,” Isaacson concludes in the last lines of his life of Musk. “They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.” It’s a disconcerting thing to read on page 615 of a biography of a fifty-two-year-old man about whom a case could be made that he wields more power than any other person on the planet who isn’t in charge of a nuclear arsenal. Not potty-trained? Boys will be . . . toddlers?

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. His grandfather J. N. Haldeman was a staunch anti-Communist from Canada who in the nineteen-thirties and forties had been a leader of the anti-democratic and quasi-fascist Technocracy movement. (Technocrats believed that scientists and engineers should rule.) “In 1950, he decided to move to South Africa,” Isaacson writes, “which was still ruled by a white apartheid regime.” In fact, apartheid had been declared only in 1948, and the regime was soon recruiting white settlers from North America, promising restless men such as Haldeman that they could live like princes. Isaacson calls Haldeman’s politics “quirky.” In 1960, Haldeman self-published a tract, “The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship & the Menace to South Africa,” that blamed the two World Wars on the machinations of Jewish financiers.

Musk’s mother, Maye Haldeman, was a finalist for Miss South Africa during her tumultuous courtship with his father, Errol Musk, an engineer and an aviator. In 2019, she published a memoir titled “A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success.” For all that she writes about growing up in South Africa in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, she never once mentions apartheid.

Isaacson, in his account of Elon Musk’s childhood, barely mentions apartheid himself. He writes at length and with compassion about the indignities heaped upon young Elon by schoolmates. Elon, an awkward, lonely boy, was bored in school and had a tendency to call other kids “stupid”; he was also very often beaten up, and his father frequently berated him, but when he was ten, a few years after his parents divorced, he chose to live with him. (Musk is now estranged from his father, a conspiracist who has called Joe Biden a “pedophile President,” and who has two children by his own stepdaughter; he has said that “the only thing we are here for is to reproduce.” Recently, he warned Elon, in an e-mail, that “with no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees.”)

Link copied

Musk’s childhood sounds bad, but Isaacson’s telling leaves out rather a lot about the world in which Musk grew up. In the South Africa of “Elon Musk,” there are Musks and Haldemans—Elon and his younger brother and sister and his many cousins—and there are animals, including the elephants and monkeys who prove to be a nuisance at a construction project of Errol’s. There are no other people, and there are certainly no Black people, the nannies, cooks, gardeners, cleaners, and construction workers who built, for white South Africans, a fantasy world. And so, for instance, we don’t learn that in 1976, when Elon was four, some twenty thousand Black schoolchildren in Soweto staged a protest and heavily armed police killed as many as seven hundred. Instead, we’re told, “As a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk knew pain and learned how to survive it.”

Musk, the boy, loved video games and computers and Dungeons & Dragons and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and he still does. “I took from the book that we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe,” Musk tells Isaacson. Isaacson doesn’t raise an eyebrow, and you can wonder whether he has read “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” or listened to the BBC 4 radio play on which it is based, first broadcast in 1978. It sounds like this:

Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former galactic empire, life was wild, rich, and, on the whole, tax free. . . . Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural because no one was really poor, at least, no one worth speaking of.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide” is not a book about how “we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe.” It is, among other things, a razor-sharp satiric indictment of imperialism:

And for these extremely rich merchants life eventually became rather dull, and it seemed that none of the worlds they settled on was entirely satisfactory. Either the climate wasn’t quite right in the later part of the afternoon or the day was half an hour too long or the sea was just the wrong shade of pink. And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of industry: custom-made, luxury planet-building.

Douglas Adams wrote “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” on a typewriter that had on its side a sticker that read “End Apartheid.” He wasn’t crafting an instruction manual for mega-rich luxury planet builders.

Biographers don’t generally have a will to power. Robert Caro is not Robert Moses and would seem to have very little in common with Lyndon the “B” is for “bastard” Johnson. Walter Isaacson is a gracious, generous, public-spirited man and a principled biographer. This year, he was presented with the National Humanities Medal. But, as a former editor of Time and a former C.E.O. of CNN and of the Aspen Institute, Isaacson also has an executive’s affinity for the C-suite, which would seem to make it a challenge to keep a certain distance from the world view of his subject. Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years and interviewed dozens of people, but they tend to have titles like C.E.O., C.F.O., president, V.P., and founder. The book upholds a core conviction of many executives: sometimes to get shit done you have to be a dick. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable . For the rest of us, Musk’s pettiness, arrogance, and swaggering viciousness are harder to take, and their necessity less clear.

Isaacson is interested in how innovation happens. In addition to biographies of Franklin, Einstein, Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci , he has also written about figures in the digital revolution and in gene editing. Isaacson puts innovation first: This man might be a monster, but look at what he built! Whereas Mary Shelley, for instance, put innovation second: The man who built this is a monster! The political theorist Judith Shklar once wrote an essay called “ Putting Cruelty First .” Montaigne put cruelty first, identifying it as the worst thing people do; Machiavelli did not. As for “the usual excuse for our most unspeakable public acts,” the excuse “that they are necessary,” Shklar knew this to be nonsense. “Much of what passed under these names was merely princely wilfulness,” as Shklar put it. This is always the problem with princes.

Elon Musk started college at the University of Pretoria but left South Africa in 1989, at seventeen. He went first to Canada and, after two years at Queen’s University in Ontario, transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied physics and economics, and wrote a senior paper titled “The Importance of Being Solar.” He had done internships in Silicon Valley and, after graduating, enrolled in a Ph.D. program in materials science at Stanford, but he deferred admission and never went. It was 1995, the year the Internet opened to commercial traffic. All around him, frogs were turning into princes. He wanted to start a startup. Musk and his brother Kimball, with money from their parents, launched Zip2, an early online Yellow Pages that sold its services to newspaper publishers. In 1999, during the dot-com boom, they sold it to Compaq for more than three hundred million dollars. Musk, with his share of the money, launched one of the earliest online banking companies. He called it X.com. “I think X.com could absolutely be a multibillion-dollar bonanza,” he told CNN, but, meanwhile, “I’d like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone .” That would have to wait for a few years, but in 1999 Salon announced, “Elon Musk Is Poised to Become Silicon Valley’s Next Big Thing,” in a profile that advanced what was already a hackneyed set of journalistic conventions about the man-boy man-gods of Northern California: “The showiness, the chutzpah, the streak of self-promotion and the urge to create a dramatic public persona are major elements of what makes up the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. . . . Musk’s ego has gotten him in trouble before, and it may get him in trouble again, yet it is also part and parcel of what it means to be a hotshot entrepreneur.” Five months later, Musk married his college girlfriend, Justine Wilson. During their first dance at their wedding, he whispered in her ear, “I am the alpha in this relationship.”

“ Big Ego of Hotshot Entrepreneur Gets Him Into Trouble ” is more or less the running headline of Musk’s life. In 2000, Peter Thiel’s company Confinity merged with X.com, and Musk regretted that the new company was called PayPal, instead of X . (He later bought the domain x.com, and for years he kept it as a kind of shrine, a blank white page with nothing but a tiny letter “x” on the screen.) In 2002, eBay paid $1.5 billion for the company, and Musk drew on his share of the sale to start SpaceX. Two years later, he invested around $6.5 million in Tesla; he became both its largest shareholder and its chairman. Around then, in his Marvel Iron Man phase, Musk left Northern California for Los Angeles, to swan with starlets. Courted by Ted Cruz during COVID , he moved to Texas, because he dislikes regulation, and because he objected to California’s lockdowns and mask mandates.

Musk’s accomplishments as the head of a series of pioneering engineering firms are unrivalled. Isaacson takes on each of Musk’s ventures, venture by venture, chapter by chapter, emphasizing the ferocity and the velocity and the effectiveness of Musk’s management style—“A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principles” is a workplace rule. “How the fuck can it take so long?” Musk asked an engineer working on SpaceX’s Merlin engines. “This is stupid. Cut it in half.” He pushed SpaceX through years of failures, crash after crash, with the confidence that success would come. “Until today, all electric cars sucked,” Musk said, launching Tesla’s Roadster, leaving every other electric car and most gas cars in the dust. No automotive company had broken into that industry in something like a century. Like SpaceX, Tesla went through very hard times. Musk steered it to triumph, a miracle amid fossil fuel’s stranglehold. “Fuck oil,” he said.

“Comradery is dangerous” is another of Musk’s workplace maxims. He was ousted as PayPal’s C.E.O. and ousted as Tesla’s chairman. He’s opposed to unions, pushed workers back to the Tesla plants at the height of the Covid pandemic—some four hundred and fifty reportedly got infected—and has thwarted workers’ rights at every turn.

Musk has run through companies and he has run through wives. In some families, domestic relations are just another kind of labor relations. He pushed his first wife, Justine, to dye her hair blonder. After they lost their firstborn son, Nevada, in infancy, Justine gave birth to twins (one of whom they named Xavier, in part for Professor Xavier, from “X-Men”) and then to triplets. When the couple fought, he told her, “If you were my employee, I would fire you.” He divorced her and soon proposed to Talulah Riley, a twenty-two-year-old British actress who had only just moved out of her parents’ house. She said her job was to stop Musk from going “king-crazy”: “People become king, and then they go crazy.” They married, divorced, married, and divorced. But “you’re my Mr. Rochester,” she told him. “And if Thornfield Hall burns down and you are blind, I’ll come and take care of you.” He dated Amber Heard, after her separation from Johnny Depp. Then he met Grimes. “I’m just a fool for love,” Musk tells Isaacson. “I am often a fool, but especially for love.”

He is also a fool for Twitter. His Twitter account first got him into real trouble in 2018, when he baselessly called a British diver, who helped rescue Thai children trapped in a flooded cave, a “pedo” and was sued for defamation. That same year, he tweeted, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420,” making a pot joke. “Funding secured.” (“I kill me,” he says about his sense of humor.) The S.E.C. charged him with fraud, and Tesla stock fell more than thirteen per cent. Tesla shareholders sued him, alleging that his tweets had caused their stock to lose value. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, he went king-crazy, lighting up a joint. He looked at his phone. “You getting text messages from chicks?” Rogan asked. “I’m getting text messages from friends saying, ‘What the hell are you doing smoking weed?’ ”

“Musk’s goofy mode is the flip side of his demon mode,” Isaacson writes. Musk likes this kind of cover. “I reinvented electric cars, and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship,” he said in his “S.N.L.” monologue, in 2021. “Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?” In that monologue, he also said that he has Asperger’s. A writer in Newsweek applauded this announcement as a “milestone in the history of neurodiversity.” But, in Slate, Sara Luterman, who is autistic, was less impressed; she denounced Musk’s “coming out” as “self-serving and hollow, a poor attempt at laundering his image as a heartless billionaire more concerned with cryptocurrency and rocket ships than the lives of others.” She put cruelty first.

Musk’s interest in acquiring Twitter dates to 2022. That year, he and Grimes had another child. His name is Techno Mechanicus Musk, but his parents call him Tau, for the irrational number. But Musk also lost a child. His twins with Justine turned eighteen in 2022 and one of them, who had apparently become a Marxist, told Musk, “I hate you and everything you stand for.” It was, to some degree, in an anguished attempt to heal this developing rift that, in 2020, Musk tweeted, “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.” That didn’t work. In 2022, his disaffected child petitioned a California court for a name change, to Vivian Jenna Wilson, citing, as the reason for the petition, “Gender Identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” She refuses to see him. Musk told Isaacson he puts some of the blame for this on her progressive Los Angeles high school. Lamenting the “woke-mind virus,” he decided to buy Twitter. I just can’t sit around and do nothing .

Musk’s estrangement from his daughter is sad, but of far greater consequence is his seeming estrangement from humanity itself. When Musk decided to buy Twitter, he wrote a letter to its board. “I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” he explained, but “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.” This is flimflam. Twitter never has and never will be a vehicle for democratic expression. It is a privately held corporation that monetizes human expression and algorithmically maximizes its distribution for profit, and what turns out to be most profitable is sowing social, cultural, and political division. Its participants are a very tiny, skewed slice of humanity that has American journalism in a choke hold. Twitter does not operate on the principle of representation, which is the cornerstone of democratic governance. It has no concept of the “civil” in “civil society.” Nor has Elon Musk, at any point in his career, displayed any commitment to either democratic governance or the freedom of expression.

Musk gave Isaacson a different explanation for buying the company: “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally antiscience, antimerit, and antihuman in general, is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary.” It’s as if Musk had come to believe the sorts of mission statements that the man-boy gods of Silicon Valley had long been peddling. “At first, I thought it didn’t fit into my primary large missions,” he told Isaacson, about Twitter. “But I’ve come to believe it can be part of the mission of preserving civilization, buying our society more time to become multiplanetary.”

Elon Musk plans to make the world safe for democracy, save civilization from itself, and bring the light of human consciousness to the stars in a ship he will call the Heart of Gold, for a spaceship fuelled by an Improbability Drive in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” In case you’ve never read it, what actually happens in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” is that the Heart of Gold is stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is the President of the Galaxy, has two heads and three arms, is the inventor of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, has been named, by “the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6,” the “Biggest Bang Since the Big One,” and, according to his private brain-care specialist, Gag Halfrunt, “has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.” Person of the Year material, for sure. All the same, as a Vogon Fleet prepares to shoot down the Heart of Gold with Beeblebrox on board, Halfrunt muses that “it will be a pity to lose him,” but, “well, Zaphod’s just this guy, you know?” ♦

New Yorker Favorites

Can reading make you happier ?

Why walking helps us think .

The Vogue model who became a war photographer .

The perils of Pearl and Olga .

Sentenced to life for an accident miles away .

The resurgent appeal of Stevie Nicks .

Fiction by Lore Segal: “ Ladies’ Lunch ”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

8 major takeaways from the explosive new book about Elon Musk that lifts the lid on the world's richest person

• Walter Isaacson's biography on Elon Musk hit shelves last Tuesday.
• The author trailed the Musk for about three years and provides a peek into the billionaire's mind.
• The book details everything from Musk's relationship with his father to his "hardcore" work ethic and "demon mode."

Elon Musk has dominated headlines for years, but a new book proves there is still plenty to learn about the world's richest man.

After shadowing Musk for three years, Walter Isaacson provided a peek behind the curtain into the life of one of the most powerful men in the world in his biography on the Tesla CEO.

The book hit shelves on September 12 and it had some eye-popping details about the billionaire — from big reveals on his relationship with Ukraine and the birth of his eleventh child to details on Musk's hardcore work ethic and emotional swings.

Here are eight things we learned from the biography.

Musk's moods vary a lot, and those close to him fear his 'demon mode.'

The book explains how Musk's moods can swing wildly .

"He has numerous minds and many fairly distinct personalities," Grimes told Isaacson. "He moves between them at a very rapid pace. You just feel the air in the room change, and suddenly the whole situation is just transferred over to his other state."

Isaacson said that throughout his time with Musk, he'd also witnessed the billionaire's emotional volatility, saying he'd switch between "light and dark, intense and goofy, detached and emotional."

"When we hang out, I make sure I'm with the right Elon," Grimes said. "There are guys in that head who don't like me, and I don't like them." These vary from the version of him "who's down for Burning Man and will sleep on a couch, eat canned soup, and be chill" and his so-called "demon mode" — "when he goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his brain."

During these periods, Musk is likely to unleash his rage on employees or order up a work surge, according to Isaacson. Grimes said despite the darkness associated with "demon mode," it's also the mode where he "gets shit done."

Elon Musk's relationship with his father massively affected his personality and outlook on the world.

One character who appears frequently throughout the book is Elon Musk's father, Errol Musk.

The biography is peppered with descriptions of incidents where Elon Musk claims his father bullied and demeaned him ( something Errol Musk has denied ), as well as comments from Elon Musk's former girlfriends and wives about how Errol Musk ultimately influenced his son's personality and outlook on the world.

After his parents divorced, Elon Musk originally lived with his mother before spending about seven years living with his father in Pretoria from the age of 10.

"It turned out to be a really bad idea," Elon Musk told Isaacson. "I didn't yet how how horrible he was."

His younger brother Kimbal Musk told Isaacson that their father had "zero compassion" and often "went ballistic."

"It was mental torture," Elon Musk told Isaacson. "He sure knew how to make anything terrible."

Elon Musk's mother, Maye Musk , said there was a fear her son "might become his father."

Both Elon and Kimbal Musk no longer speak to their father, Isaacson wrote.

But the years that he spent with his father have somewhat shaped Elon Musk's personality, according to the book. 

"I think he got conditioned in childhood that life is pain," Grimes, Elon Musk's former girlfriend, told Isaacson. She also noted that because of how his father brought him up, Musk sometimes lets himself be treated badly and "associates love with being mean or abusive."  

Justine Musk , Elon Musk's first wife, told Isaacson said that during their arguments, Elon would belittle and insult her, calling her a "moron," an "idiot," or "stupid and crazy."

"When I spent some time with Errol, I realized that's where he'd gotten the vocabulary," Justine Musk told Isaacson. 

Ex-wife Talulah Riley also told Isaacson that Errol Musk's treatment of his son "had a profound effect on how he operates."

"Inside the man, he's still there as a child, a child standing in front of his dad ," she said.

Musk's 'hardcore' work ethic has always been a part of him.

Musk is well known for his "hardcore" work mindset , which in some cases involved sleeping and eating in the office. His late-night habits seem to stem from his childhood, when he would stay up until 6 a.m. reading, Isaacson wrote.

While he worked at Zip2, his first business, Musk and his brother slept in the office, showered at the YMCA, and mainly ate at Jack in the Box, the book said. One early Zip2 employee told Isaacson that he even had to tell Musk to go home and shower before customer meetings.

"At Zip2 and every subsequent company, he drove himself relentlessly all day and through much of the night, without vacations, and he expected others to do the same," Isaacson wrote. "His only indulgence was allowing breaks for intense video-game binges."

Musk has applied the same intensity to other aspects of his life, too, including learning to fly planes. "I tend to do things very intensely," he told Isaacson.

Musk expects his employees to display the same workaholic nature. At banking company X.com, which later became PayPal following a merger, he told staff that the site would launch to the public on Thanksgiving weekend and "prowled the office each day, including Thanksgiving, in a nervous and nervous-making frenzy and slept under his desk most nights," Isaacson wrote.

After buying Twitter more than two decades later, he told its staff to commit to an "extremely hardcore" work schedule with "long hours at a high intensity" if they wanted to keep their jobs.

He's been difficult to work with from the start.

Horror stories about working with Elon Musk are hardly a new phenomenon — from quickly laying off over half of Twitter's workforce to forcing some Tesla workers to work through Thanksgiving — working at one of his companies has become the stuff of urban legends. And it turns out tensions were often near a boiling point, even at Musk's first startup.

Musk's brother once "tore off a hunk of flesh" from Musk's hand while the brothers wrestled on the floor in Zip2 's office back in the 90s, according to Isaacson. The biographer said the two men would wrestle during periods of "intense stress."

Similarly, Musk's college dorm-mate quit working at Zip2 just six weeks after starting at the company because he couldn't handle working with Musk, according to the book.

"I knew I could either be working with him or be his friend, but not both," Musk's longtime friend and former dorm-mate, Navaid Farooq, told Isaacson.

Musk later explained the reasoning behind his intensity after he chewed out a SpaceX worker who had lost his child the week prior.

"I give people hardcore feedback, mostly accurate, and I try not to to do it in a way that's ad hominem," Musk told Isaacson. "I try to criticize the action, not the person. We all make mistakes. What matters is whether a person has a good feedback loop, can seek criticism from others, and can improve. Physics does not care about feelings. It cares about whether you got the rocket right."

Musk reacts physically to stress but it also motivates him. He can't handle peace.

During stressful periods at work and in his personal life, Musk would stay awake at night and vomit, Isaacson wrote.

The biographer said that at one point Musk's stomach pain had a doctor checking for appendicitis. 

In 2008 when Tesla was facing the potential of bankruptcy, Musk's wife at the time, Talulah Riley, told Isaacson she worried the stress would cause Musk to have a heart attack.

"He was having night terrors and just screaming in his sleep and clawing at me," she said. "It would go to his gut, and he would be screaming and retching. I would stand by the toilet and hold his head."

Musk's ex-girlfriend Grimes says she recalls similarly sleepless nights during her relationship with the billionaire.

Musk appears to seek out these periods of high stress, according to some. 

"You don't have to be in a state of war at all times," Shivon Zilis, the mother of two of Musk's children and a director at Neuralink, told Musk when he was gearing up to buy Twitter. "Or is it that you find greater comfort when you're in periods of war?" 

Musk told Zilis it's one of his "default settings."

"I guess I've always wanted to push my chips back on the table or play the next level of the game."

Though, Musk has admitted to Isaacson his intensity has taken a toll on him physically.

"From 2007 onwards, until maybe last year, it's been nonstop pain. There's a gun to your head, make Tesla work, pull a rabbit out of your hat, then pull another rabbit out of the hat," Musk told Isaacson in 2021.

"You can't be in a constant fight for survival, always in adrenaline mode, and not have it hurt you. But there's something else I've found this year. It's that fighting to survive keeps you going for quite a while. When you are no longer in a survive-or-die mode, it's not that easy to get motivated every day," he added.

Musk can be a difficult person to date.

Isaacson interviewed many of the women Musk used to date or be married to. It becomes clear that Musk can be a difficult person to date because of a range of factors, including his laser focus on his businesses and his lack of empathy and social awareness.

"Elon and I were used to having big arguments in public," Justine Musk told Isaacson. "I don't think you can be in a relationship with Elon and not argue."

Musk postponed his honeymoon with Justine by months so that he could sort out X.com's merger with PayPal , and they had to cut it short amid turmoil at the company.

Justine told Isaacson that Elon Musk told her to dye her hair blonder and that she felt like she was being turned into a "trophy wife."

"I met him when he didn't have much at all," she told Isaacson. "The accumulation of wealth and fame changed the dynamic."

"The strong will and emotional distance that makes him difficult as a husband may be reasons for his success in running a business," she added.

Meanwhile, his emotional volatility and inability to understand other people's emotions at times can be hard to deal with, Grimes told Isaacson.

Isaacson wrote that Musk sent a picture of his then-girlfriend Grimes having a C-section when she had X to their friends and family, including her father and brothers. Grimes said he was "clueless" about why she'd be upset about it.

But he has a tender side too.

Though the book describes Musk's volatile relationships with many people, including relatives, friends, partners, and business associates, it also details how he can be tender at times. In particular, Isaacson paints a picture of Musk as a doting father to X AE A-XII, also known as "baby X," his first child with Grimes .

Isaacson wrote that X "had an otherworldly sweetness that calmed and beguiled Musk, who craved his presence. He took X everywhere."

Musk also moved in with his father aged 10 because he didn't want him to be lonely, Isaacson wrote. Musk's cousin Peter Rive told Isaacson that playing "Dungeons and Dragons" together as a child brought out the "incredibly patient" and "beautiful" parts of Musk's personality.

When a close friend of Musk's ex-wife Talulah Riley died in 2021, he flew over to England to be with her, "and he just made me laugh instead of cry," she told Isaacson.

Musk's politics are beginning to echo his father's.

While Musk has cut off communication with his father, Errol Musk, Isaacson said the billionaire's political stance is beginning to mimic his father's.

Isaacson said Errol's sons were sometimes off-put by their father's political rants. For example in 2022, Errol sent Musk an email in which he called the COVID-19 pandemic "a lie" and dubbed President Joe Biden a '"freak, criminal, pedophile president' who was out to destroy everything that the US stood for, 'including you,'" Isaacson wrote.

The biographer said Musk had begun to show a similar propensity which was in part triggered by his daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson 's decision to cut ties with him. Isaacson said that Musk blamed the disconnect on the "woke mind virus."

Over the past few years Musk has gone from from supporting the Democratic party to publicly dissing President Joe Biden, reposting anti-transgender content on X, and promoting conspiracy theories.

"Musk's tweet showed his growing tendency (like his father) to read wacky fake-news sites purveying conspiracy theories, a problem that Twitter had writ at large," Isaacson wrote of Musk's decision to post about a conspiracy theory related to the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband.

And, like his father, Musk's politics have been met with distaste from much of his family.

"It's not okay," Kimbal Musk told his brother after he tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." "It's not funny. You can't do that shit."

The biography is in stores now.

• Main content

• Biographies & Memoirs
• Professionals & Academics

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } -42% $20.36 $ 20 . 36 Join Prime (function(f) {var _np=(window.P._namespace(""));if(_np.guardFatal){_np.guardFatal(f)(_np);}else{f(_np);}}(function(P) { P.when('ready').execute("npa-prime-signup-ingress", () => { P.load.js("https://d1nruqhae353qc.cloudfront.net/primesignup/widget.js"); }); })); to get FREE delivery Tomorrow, November 14 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

We offer easy, convenient returns with at least one free return option: no shipping charges. All returns must comply with our returns policy.

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select your preferred free shipping option
• Drop off and leave!

Save with Used - Like New .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $18.48 $ 18 . 48 Join Prime (function(f) {var _np=(window.P._namespace(""));if(_np.guardFatal){_np.guardFatal(f)(_np);}else{f(_np);}}(function(P) { P.when('ready').execute("npa-prime-signup-ingress", () => { P.load.js("https://d1nruqhae353qc.cloudfront.net/primesignup/widget.js"); }); })); to get FREE delivery Tomorrow, November 14 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Amazon Resale

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Elon Musk Hardcover – September 12, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons

• Print length 688 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Simon & Schuster
• Publication date September 12, 2023
• Dimensions 6.13 x 1.9 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1982181281
• ISBN-13 978-1982181284
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster (September 12, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 688 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982181281
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982181284
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.25 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.9 x 9.25 inches
• #1 in Computer & Technology Biographies
• #2 in Scientist Biographies
• #2 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals

Videos for this product

Click to play video

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson - Watch BEFORE Buying!

George Vlasyev

HONEST REVIEW! Must watch before buying!

Brian & Camila's Must Haves

My thoughts after finishing this book

✅ Kyle's Reviews

Why I think THESE book is MUST READ? (Quick Review)!

The Total Coverage Review

My Point of View on the Book: Elon Musk

Andre Ballin

Look inside the new Elon Musk book before buying

Chris Hughes

A great addition to our library, here is why.

Heidi Leatherby

Loving this book so far, recap of some of the chapters

ELON MUSK By Walter Isaacson An Amazing Comprehensive BOOK

Deanna Falchook - Hot for History

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

Cary Decker

About the author

Walter isaacson.

Walter Isaacson is writing a biography of Elon Musk. He is the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He is a Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine.

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 77% 17% 4% 1% 1% 77%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 77% 17% 4% 1% 1% 17%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 77% 17% 4% 1% 1% 4%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 77% 17% 4% 1% 1% 1%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 77% 17% 4% 1% 1% 1%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book very interesting and readable. They also say the approach is educational and inspiring. Readers describe the writing quality as well-written, seamless, and thrilling. They describe the biography as compelling, enchanting, and wonderful. They mention the story is meticulously crafted and gripping. Customers also appreciate the well-balanced portrayal of an eccentric man.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book interesting, excellent, and comprehensive. They say it shows the good, the bad, and the ugly of Elon Musk. Readers also mention the first three-quarters of the book is great and leaves them with a profound understanding.

"...curious about the world-changing ideas of our time, this book is a captivating and enlightening journey that is not to be missed...." Read more

"...This biography is a masterclass in storytelling, offering a captivating and nuanced exploration of Musk's life, from his childhood to his..." Read more

"... it's a good read imo . a page turner. overall i'd say it's a study of character rather than a cut and dry accounting of what elon has done...." Read more

"Fascinating biography. Well written and very readable. Most enjoyable ." Read more

Customers find the book insightful, educational, and inspiring. They say it's well-researched and helps them understand the man who will be influencing their lives. Readers also mention the achievements are obvious.

"...For aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators, the book provides a treasure trove of lessons on perseverance, problem-solving, and thinking beyond..." Read more

"...The book provides invaluable insights into Musk's innovative spirit, his relentless drive, and his passion for shaping the future...." Read more

"I thoroughly enjoyed reading “Elon Musk”. His contributions to humanity are awesome ...." Read more

"...In another way – a significant way! – this biography is also an encouraging book , especially for people who are struggling with life’s challenges...." Read more

Customers find the book well-written, easy to read, and rendered with a level of finesse and understanding. They appreciate the short, concise chapters that flow very easily. Readers also mention the book is educational and inspiring, simplifying the details of Musk's large-scale projects.

"...The prose flows seamlessly , keeping the reader engaged and eager to turn the page.Timely and Relevant:..." Read more

"...Isaacson's writing is engaging , and his research is meticulous...." Read more

"Fascinating biography. Well written and very readable. Most enjoyable." Read more

"...Plus, Elon is always highly readable , and short...." Read more

Customers find the biography compelling, enchanting, and wonderful. They say the author is extraordinary at making the reader follow the ideas and science. Readers also appreciate the great interviews that flesh out the reality of Musk.

"...In conclusion, "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson is an exceptional biography that offers a profound and intimate look at the life and mind of a modern..." Read more

"...This biography is a masterclass in storytelling , offering a captivating and nuanced exploration of Musk's life, from his childhood to his..." Read more

" Fascinating biography . Well written and very readable. Most enjoyable." Read more

"...This biography is by many miles the most interesting biography I have ever read...." Read more

Customers find the story length of the book meticulously crafted. They say it's a complex story and gripping tale full of amazing events and details. Readers also mention the book is a lengthy tome that delivers a comprehensive look at Elon's life.

"... Compelling Narrative Style :Walter Isaacson's storytelling skills are evident throughout the book...." Read more

"...It is full of amazing events and details about what happens in parts of the world, including the world of AI, of which ordinary people know close to..." Read more

"...is accurate, though as a genuine believer in that mission, seemed awfully short ...." Read more

"...His life story is fascinating .....his mind is unlike anyone else...." Read more

Customers find the character portrayal fascinating, well-balanced, and fantastic. They appreciate the quirky personality, incredible drive, and objective portrayal. Readers also mention the book is nuanced and comprehensive.

"...automotive industry, Musk's visionary ideas are portrayed with enthusiasm and intellectual depth ...." Read more

"...Isaacson tackles it all, painting a portrait that's both nuanced and comprehensive...." Read more

"...This is a fascinating character study and read about one of the main characters shaping our time in history.What he has accomplished to date" Read more

"...And about Elon Musk - an amazing guy - temperamental , moody, genius, flawed, spontaneous. He has accomplished so much in such a short time...." Read more

Customers find the book well-designed, breathtaking, and engaging. They appreciate the details and pictures that help convey his persona.

"..." by Walter Isaacson is an exceptional biography that offers a profound and intimate look at the life and mind of a modern visionary...." Read more

"...By existing he makes this world a better place. The pictures were very helpful in conveying his persona. Thank you!" Read more

"...It displays both the brilliance and the outrageous craziness in equal measures. Absolutely fascinating!" Read more

" Interesting look into the interworkings of Tesla, SpaceX and X. Elon is a high energy guy. Driven. That though? Success? Madness?..." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's fast, timely, and dynamic. Others say it feels rushed, disjointed, and chaotic.

"...are at the forefront of global discussions, "Elon Musk" is incredibly timely and relevant...." Read more

"...book, hard to put down like all of Issacson's books, but this one felt rushed ...." Read more

"Elon Musk is the most influential genius of our lifetime. He is dynamic , witty and has a great sense of humor...." Read more

"...was really plugged into what Elon was all about...it's kind of a disjointed , time jumping at times narrative...." Read more

Reviews with images

Elon musk is such an Important person we need Critical thinkers in this day and age

• Sort by reviews type Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Registry & Gift List
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• Sign up and get a free ebook!
• Don't miss our ebook deals!

Free shipping when you spend $40. Terms apply.

• Avoid Publishing Scams. Learn More.

• Unabridged Audio Download
• Unabridged Compact Disk

LIST PRICE $35.00

Buy from Other Retailers

• Amazon logo
• Bookshop logo

Table of Contents

• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

About the author.

Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time . He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 12, 2023)
• Length: 688 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982181284

Browse Related Books

• Biography & Autobiography > Science & Technology
• Biography & Autobiography > Business
• Biography & Autobiography > Composers & Musicians
• Computers > History

Related Articles

• 10 Vital Books Walter Isaacson Recommends - Off the Shelf

Raves and Reviews

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year "Whatever you think of Mr. Musk, he is a man worth understanding— which makes this a book worth reading." — The Economist "With Elon Musk , Walter Isaacson offers both an engaging chronicle of his subject’s busy life so far and some compelling answers..." — Wall Street Journal "Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk , published Monday, delivers as promised — a comprehensive, deeply reported chronicle of the world-shaping tech mogul’s life, a twin to the author’s similarly thick 2011 biography of Steve Jobs . Details ranging from the personally salacious to the geopolitically volatile have already made the rounds — the rare example of a major book publication causing a news cycle in its own right...What Isaacson’s biography reveals through its personalized lens on Musk’s work with Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, and more is not only what Musk wants, but how and why he plans to do it. The portrait that emerges is one that resembles a hard-charging, frequently alienating Gilded Age-style captain of industry, with a particular fixation on AI that ties everything together....Isaacson’s book is like a decoder ring, tying the mercurial Musk’s various obsessions into a coherent worldview with a startlingly concrete goal at its center." — Politico "[The book] has everything you'd expect from a book on Musk—stories of tragedy, triumph, and turmoil.... While the stories are fascinating and guaranteed to spark a mountain of coverage, founders and entrepreneurs will also unearth valuable lessons." — Inc. "Isaacson has gathered information from the man’s admirers and critics. He lays all of it out.... The book is bursting with stories....A deeply engrossing tale of a spectacular American innovator. " — New York Journal of Books "One of the greatest biographers in America has written a massive book about the richest man in the world. This fast-paced biography, based on more than a hundred interviews...[is] a head-spinning tale about a vain, brilliant, sometimes cruel figure whose ambitions are actively shaping the future of human life." —Ron Charles on CBS Sunday Morning "A painstakingly excavation of the tortured unquiet mind of the world’s richest man… Isaacson’s book is not a soaring portrait of a captain of industry, but rather an exhausting ride through the life of a man who seems incapable of happiness." — The Sunday Times "An experienced biographer’s comprehensive study." —The Observer "Walter Isaacson’s all-access biography… Its portrait of the tech maverick is fascinating." —The Telegraph "Isaacson boils Musk down to two men… the result is a beat-by-beat book that follows him insider important rooms and explores obscure regions of his mind." —The Times

Resources and Downloads

High resolution images.

• Book Cover Image (jpg): Elon Musk Hardcover 9781982181284

Get a FREE ebook by joining our mailing list today!

Plus, receive recommendations and exclusive offers on all of your favorite books and authors from Simon & Schuster.

More books from this author: Walter Isaacson

You may also like: Thriller and Mystery Staff Picks

More to Explore

Limited Time eBook Deals

Check out this month's discounted reads.

Our Summer Reading Recommendations

Red-hot romances, poolside fiction, and blockbuster picks, oh my! Start reading the hottest books of the summer.

This Month's New Releases

From heart-pounding thrillers to poignant memoirs and everything in between, check out what's new this month.

Tell us what you like and we'll recommend books you'll love.

• Login / Sign Up

Fearless journalism needs your support now more than ever

Our mission could not be more clear and more necessary: We have a duty to explain what just happened, and why, and what it means for you. We need clear-eyed journalism that helps you understand what really matters. Reporting that brings clarity in increasingly chaotic times. Reporting that is driven by truth, not by what people in power want you to believe.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

The big Elon Musk biography asks all the wrong questions

In Walter Isaacson’s buzzy new biography, Elon Musk emerges as a callous, chaos-loving man without empathy.

by Constance Grady

There’s a recurring phrase in Walter Isaacson’s new biography Elon Musk . Certain things, Isaacson writes again and again in his dense and thoroughly reported book, are simply “in Musk’s nature,” while others are “not in his nature.” This is a book in which Elon Musk — the richest man in history and surely one of the most infuriating, too — is driven by an immovable internal essence that no one can alter, least of all Musk himself.

Things that are in Musk’s nature according to Isaacson: the desire for total control; obsession; resistance to rules and regulations; insensitivity; a love of drama and chaos and urgency.

Things that are not in Musk’s nature according to Isaacson: deference; empathy; restraint; the ability to collaborate; the instinct to think about how the things he says impact the people around him; doting on his children; vacations.

“He didn’t have the emotional receptors that produce everyday kindness and warmth and a desire to be liked. He was not hardwired to have empathy,” Isaacson writes. “Or, to put it in less technical terms, he could be an asshole.”

The great question of Isaacson’s book is more or less the same question he posed in his 2011 biography of Steve Jobs : Is the innovation worth the assholery? Can we excuse Jobs’s cruelty to his partner Steve Wozniak because we have the iPhone? Can we excuse Musks’s many sins — his capricious firings, his callousness, his willingness to move fast and break things even when the things that get broken are human lives — because after all, he opened up the electric car market and reinvigorated the possibility for American space travel? Is it okay that Musk is an asshole if he’s also accomplishing big things?

“Would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound?” Isaacson muses in the final sentences of the book. “Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training.”

A hundred pages earlier, Isaacson depicted the man he describes as “resisting potty training” personally making the call that Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia and on those grounds declining to extend satellite services to the Ukrainian military in the disputed territory.

“Risk of WW3 becomes very high,” Musk explained in a private exchange with Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

“We look through the eyes of Ukrainians,” Fedorov responded, “and you from the position of a person who wants to save humanity. And not just wants, but does more than anybody else for this.”

The risk-seeking man-child has amassed the power to have world leaders fawn over his unilateral judgment.

Isaacson portrays Musk as someone who loves chaos and has no empathy

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. His mother was a model who spent most of her time at work; his father was an engineer and a wheeler-dealer with a violent temper. They sent Elon to nursery school when he was 3 because he seemed intelligent.

Musk was not, however, socially gifted. Isolated and friendless, he was prone to calling his peers stupid, at which point they would beat him up. He took refuge reading his father’s encyclopedia, plus comic books and science fiction novels about single-minded heroes who saved mankind.

For Isaacson, all this is the kind of foreshadowing biographers dream of. Most foreboding is the existence of Musk’s father, Errol, who Isaacson describes as having a “Jekyll and Hyde personality” that mirrors Musk’s own.

“One minute he would be super friendly,” says Elon’s brother Kimbal of Errol, “and the next he would be screaming at you, lecturing you for hours — literally two or three hours while he forced you to just stand there — calling you worthless, pathetic, making scarring and evil comments, not allowing you to leave.”

From Errol, Isaacson intimates, Musk inherited his explosive temper and fondness for dismissing anything that displeases him as stupid. He also learned to crave crisis, to the point that decades later, as CEO of six companies, he would develop a practice of arbitrarily picking one of those companies to send into panic mode. A rule he makes his executives intone like a religious litany is to “work with a maniacal sense of urgency.”

Another one of Musk’s rules is that empathy is not an asset, largely because he himself claims not to experience it. For Isaacson, this is one of the other foundations of Musk’s character, part of that unchangeable nature that was created by the mingled forces of Musk’s traumatic childhood and his neurodivergence. The lack of empathy, he argues, is hardwired in, probably due to the condition Musk describes as Asperger’s. (Asperger’s syndrome is a form of autism spectrum disorder that is no longer an official diagnosis . Musk is self-diagnosed.)

Studies suggest that people with autism actually experience just as much affective empathy as neurotypical people , but that is not a possibility either Musk or Isaacson ever discuss. For the narrative of this book, Musk’s callousness must be something beyond his control, one of the fundamental differences that sets him apart from the kinder, smaller people who make up the rest of the human race.

Musk goes through companies as rapidly as he goes through women

After high school, Musk fled: first to Canada, where his mother was born, and next to America. Over two years at Queen’s University and two at Penn, he earned a dual degree: in physics, so he could work as an engineer with an understanding of the fundamentals, and in business, so he would never have to work for anyone but himself. Upon graduating, he turned down a spot at Stanford’s PhD program to start his first business, an early online business directory called Zip2.

At Zip2, we see the beginnings of Musk’s maniacal work ethic take hold — that, and his inability to work well with others. He and his brother Kimbal sleep on futons in their office and shower at the Y down the street. When new engineers come in, Musk devotes extra time to “fixing their stupid fucking code.” He and Kimbal get into physical knockdown fights in the office; once, Musk has to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot after Kimbal bites him. They sell the company after two years for $300 million.

Zip2 establishes the pattern that will follow Musk throughout his professional career. He works exceptionally long hours, frequently camping out in his office, and he rages at anyone who does not. He tends to dismiss all his collaborators as stupid and will get into furious fights with them (albeit mostly not physical). He will end up having alienated a lot of people, created a pretty interesting product, and made a hell of a lot of money.

From Zip2, Musk moved on to X.com, an early online banking company. Musk had grand plans of using X.com to reinvent banking writ large, but he was pushed out when X merged with PayPal to develop a product he saw, disgustedly, as niche.

Licking his wounds, Musk decided that he would focus his energies only on companies that were truly changing the world. To make humankind an interplanetary species, in 2001 he founded SpaceX, with a mission of bringing humans to Mars. To help stave off the worst of climate change, in 2003 he brought together a group of engineers working on the electric car to amp up the fledgling company that was Tesla.

As Isaacson is always noting, it was not in Musk’s nature to give up control. After briefly experimenting with having other CEOs, he took personal control of both SpaceX and Tesla. Today, he’s CEO of six companies. In addition to Tesla and SpaceX, he’s got the Boring Company (for tunnels), Neuralink (for technology that can interface between human brains and machines), X (formerly known as Twitter), and X.AI, an artificial intelligence company he founded earlier this year. Musk goes through companies fast.

He also goes through women. Isaacson chronicles the four major romantic relationships of Musk’s adult life with a shamelessly misogynistic binary. All Musk’s girlfriends in this book are either devils or angels, and accordingly they bring out either the devil or angel in Musk’s uncontrollable nature.

His college girlfriend and first wife, fantasy novelist Justine Wilson, is one of the devils: “She has no redeeming features,” insists Musk’s mother. Per Isaacson, she thrives on drama and brings out Musk’s control freak side. He pushes her to dye her hair platinum blonde and act the part of the new millionaire’s trophy wife. “I am the alpha in this relationship,” he whispers into her ear as they dance on their wedding night.

Musk’s second wife, the English actress Talulah Riley, is meanwhile an angel. She dotes on Musk’s children with Justine, tells the press she sees it as her job to keep Musk from going “king-crazy,” and throws him elaborate theatrical parties. “If he had liked stability more than storm and drama,” Isaacson writes, “she would have been perfect for him.”

It goes on like that. Actress Amber Heard, who Musk dates for a tumultuous year after divorcing Riley, is a devil who “drew him into a dark vortex.” Musician Grimes, with whom he has three children, is an angel, “chaotic good” to Heard’s “chaotic evil.” (Musk repays her chaotic goodness by secretly fathering more children with one of Neuralink’s executives, a friend of Grimes’s, at the same time that he and Grimes are working with a surrogate to have their second child.) The idea that it might be Musk’s responsibility to control his nature, rather than the responsibility of his romantic partners, appears nowhere in this book.

The book’s big problem is that it ignores systemic problems for individual

In 2018, Musk became the richest man in the world and Time’s Person of the Year. From there he spiraled. His political views veered sharply to the right wing and paranoid. His tweets got weirder. Then he outright bought Twitter and commenced polarizing an already polarized user base. He’s still making the rockets that supply the International Space Station and he’s still building the most successful electric car in the world, but his reputation has taken a palpable hit.

In Isaacson’s narrative, Musk’s social downfall is part of his Shakespearean hubris, the tragic flaw that drives him to continually inflict pain on himself: the lack of empathy coupled with the craving for excitement; the genuine intelligence matched by over-the-top arrogance. It drives him to achieve great things and to mess up badly.

For Isaacson, this binary illustrates why Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was destined for trouble. “He thought of it as a technology company” within his realm of expertise, Isaacson writes, and didn’t understand that it was “an advertising medium based on human emotions and relationships,” and thus well outside his lane. What does the man who doesn’t believe in empathy know about connecting human beings to one another? But how could the man who needs chaos to function resist the internet’s most visibly chaotic platform?

That’s a genuine insight, but by and large, Isaacson’s focus in this book is not on analysis. Elon Musk is strictly a book of reportage, based on the two years Isaacson spent shadowing Musk and the scores of interviews he did with Musk’s associates. His reporting is rigorous and dogged; you can see the sweat on the pages. If his prose occasionally clunks (Isaacson cites the “feverish fervor” of Musk’s fans and critics), that’s not really the point of this kind of book. Instead, Isaacson’s great weakness shows itself in his blind spots, in the places where he declines to train his dutiful reporter’s eye.

Isaacson spends a significant amount of page time covering one of Musk’s signature moves: ignoring the rules. Part of the “algorithm” he makes his engineers run on every project involves finding the specific person who wrote each regulation they slam up against as they build and then interrogating the person as to what the regulation is supposed to do. All regulations are believed by default to be “dumb,” and Musk does not accept “safety” as a reason for a regulation to exist.

At one point, Isaacson describes Musk becoming enraged when, working on the Tesla Model S, he finds a government-mandated warning about child airbag safety on the passenger-side visor. “Get rid of them,” he demands. “People aren’t stupid. These stickers are stupid.” Tesla faces recall notices because of the change, Isaacson reports, but Musk “didn’t back down.”

What Isaacson doesn’t mention is that Musk consistently ignores safety regulations whenever they clash with his own aesthetic sense, to consistently dangerous results.

According to a 2018 investigation from the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal , Musk demanded Tesla factories minimize the auto industry standard practice of painting hazard zones yellow and indicating caution with signs and beeps and flashing lights, on the grounds he doesn’t particularly care for any of those things. As a result, Tesla factories mostly distinguish caution zones from other zones with different shades of gray.

Isaacson does report that Musk removed safety sensors from the Tesla production lines because he thought they were slowing down the work, and that his managers worried that his process was unsafe. “There was some truth to the complaints,” Isaacson allows. “Tesla’s injury rate was 30 percent higher than the rest of the industry.” He does not report that Tesla’s injury rate is in fact on par with the injury rate at slaughterhouses, or that it apparently cooked its books to cover up its high injury rate .

Isaacson is vague about exactly what kind of injuries occur in the factories Musk runs. Nowhere does he mention anything along the lines of what Reveal reports as Tesla workers “sliced by machinery, crushed by forklifts, burned in electrical explosions, and sprayed with molten metal.” He notes that Musk violated public safety orders to keep Tesla factories open after the Covid-19 lockdown had begun, but claims that “the factory experienced no serious Covid outbreak.” In fact, the factory Musk illegally opened would report 450 positive Covid cases .

No one can accuse the biographer who frankly admits that his subject is an asshole of ignoring his flaws. Yet Isaacson does regularly ignore the moments at which Musk’s flaws scale . He has no interest in the many, many times when Musk did something mavericky and counterintuitive and, because of his power and wealth and platform and reach, it ended up hurting a whole lot of people.

Instead, Isaacson seems most interested in Musk’s cruelty when it’s confined to the level of the individual. He likes the drama of Musk telling his cousin that his solar roof prototype is “total fucking shit” and then pushing him out of the company, or of Musk scrambling to fire Twitter’s executive team before they can resign so he doesn’t have to pay out their severance packages. Those are the moments of this book with real juice to them.

Ultimately, it’s this blind spot that prevents Isaacson from fully exploring the question at the core of Elon Musk : Is Elon Musk’s cruelty worth it since he’s creating technology that might change the world? Because Isaacson is only interested in Musk’s cruelty when it’s personal, in this book, that question looks like: If SpaceX ends up taking us all to Mars and saving humanity, will it matter that Musk was really mean to his cousin?

Widen the scope, and the whole thing becomes much more interesting and urgent. If Elon Musk consistently endangers the people who work for him and the people who buy his products and the people who stand in his way, does it matter if he thinks he’s saving the human race?

Isaacson compares Musk to a “man-child who resists potty-training.” If we look closely at the amount of damage he is positioned to do, how comfortable are we with the power Elon Musk currently has?

Correction, September 15, 11:30 am: A previous version of this story misstated a university Musk attended. It is Queen’s University.

Most Popular

• How Big Toilet Paper dupes us all
• 43 lab monkeys escaped in South Carolina. They have a legal claim to freedom.
• Trump is demanding an important change to the Senate confirmation process
• Take a mental break with the newest Vox crossword
• It’s not normal for the East Coast to be on fire

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Culture

Public librarians have to be coders, social workers, and book rec machines. They’re irreplaceable.

The investigation into the murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams sums up the messy state of true crime.

“Middlebrow” doesn’t mean bad.

4B, the protest movement that boycotts men, explained.

You can’t understand Trump’s win without understanding what young men are doing online.

Was Jeffrey Epstein really Donald Trump’s “closest friend”?

7 Takeaways From Walter Isaacson’s New Biography of Elon Musk

The book peers into the tycoon’s private life and his leadership style at Tesla, SpaceX and X, formerly known as Twitter

Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk went on sale Tuesday, offering a behind-the-curtain look into the businesses and lifestyle of the world’s richest man. Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years.

Ariel Zambelich/The Wall Street Journal

Running more than 600 pages, “Elon Musk” is the latest in a series of biographies by Isaacson, a Tulane University history professor and former editor of Time magazine. Here are seven takeaways.

Private Life

The book explores Musk’s difficult childhood and dives into his troubled relationship with his father. It describes how the billionaire and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Grimes secretly had a third child—bringing the total number of his known, living children to 10.

Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Huffington Post

Leadership Style

The book describes examples of Musk’s “hardcore” management style. At SpaceX, for example: “Musk has a rule about responsibility: every part, every process and every specification needs to have a name attached. He can be quick to personalize blame when something goes wrong.”

SpaceX’s Starship launch in April ended with an explosion a few minutes into the flight. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty

This browser does not support the video element.

Isaacson puts forth the idea of “demon mode” to explain the temperamental impulses behind some of Musk’s successes—and setbacks. Grimes coined the term in an interview with Isaacson. “Demon mode is when he goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his brain,” Boucher said in the book. “Demon mode,” she added, “causes a lot of chaos but it also gets s— done.”

Tap speaker icon for sound

Isaacson said that Musk’s demons stem from his childhood and a psychologically abusive father. Musk’s father, Errol Musk, pictured, disputed the suggestion that he exposed his son to psychological abuse and took issue with the “demon mode” characterization of his son’s behavior.

Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty

“The Algorithm”

Musk has five commandments for how he wants problems solved by his workers, a framework he calls “the algorithm.” In short, Musk urges his employees to: question every requirement; delete any part or process you can; simplify and optimize; accelerate cycle time; and automate.

Michael Reynolds/EPA/Shutterstock

In the book, Musk acknowledges he talks about the approach often. “I became a broken record on the algorithm,” Musk is quoted as saying. “But I think it’s helpful to say it to an annoying degree.”

Taking Over Twitter

Musk told his team to root out employees of Twitter who were untrustworthy. Musk’s lieutenants scoured Slack messages and social-media posts looking for disgruntled employees, searching for keywords including “Elon.” Dozens were fired.

Workers in July install a sign atop the San Francisco headquarters of X. Photo: Noah Berger/AP

Musk’s behavior after taking over Twitter was damaging enough to Tesla’s brand that board members intervened. “The giant elephant in the room was that he was acting like a f—ing idiot,” said his brother, Kimbal Musk, according to Isaacson.

Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg News

Driving Tesla

The book goes deep on a handful of initiatives, including new products. Isaacson writes that Tesla plans to make a robotaxi with a “Cybertruck futuristic feel.” Musk has been all-in on the idea, and adamant that the vehicle not have mirrors, pedals or a steering wheel.

Musk with a Cybertruck. Photo: Angela Piazza/Caller-Times/USA Today Network/Reuters

Guiding SpaceX

The book shows an intense cost focus embedded in SpaceX from its earliest days. It also spotlights moments where Musk pushes out employees or icily demands information and is furious when they don’t deliver. And it reinforces Musk’s dedication to launching a mission to Mars, a flight that he plans to attempt using SpaceX’s Starship rocket.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty

Artificial Intelligence

Musk has given three major objectives to his newest company, the artificial-intelligence venture called xAI: Make an AI bot that can code; produce a chatbot to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT; and, in a grander goal, develop a form of AI that would want to preserve humanity and “care about understanding the universe.”

Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty

Cover photo: Julia Nikhinson/Reuters Produced by Brian Patrick Byrne

• Platformer /
• Elon Musk /
• Twitter - X

Nine wild details from the new Elon Musk biography

Walter isaacson brings new tales of jack dorsey, that sergey brin selfie, and more..

By Casey Newton , a contributing editor who has been writing about tech for over 10 years. He founded Platformer, a newsletter about Big Tech and democracy.

Share this story

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

This is  Platformer , a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer.  Sign up here .

Over the weekend, a highly anticipated book arrived in the mail. Elon Musk , Walter Isaacson’s first biography of a tech titan since his comprehensive take on Steve Jobs, followed from two years of Isaacson shadowing Musk in his travels around the world. Given Musk’s general antipathy toward the press, the book promised to offer the sort of fly-on-the-wall accounts of Musk’s recent life like no other.

Over more than 600 pages, Isaacson details the improbable arc of Musk’s life, from his early childhood under a cruel father and relentless schoolyard bullying through his purchase of Twitter and recent decision to launch yet another company .

Given Platformer ’s close coverage of the Twitter saga over the past year, it was this aspect of the book that interested me the most. In some ways, Isaacson’s perspective on the story skews much closer to Musk’s than mine does — particularly in its depiction of Twitter 1.0 as more of an adult day-care center than a tech company. “Twitter prided itself on being a friendly place where coddling was considered a virtue,” Isaacson writes.

At the same time, anyone who comes to this book looking for evidence that Musk screwed things up there will not leave disappointed. On the whole, Isaacson depicts Musk as an era-defining genius shaped by childhood trauma and a manic, visionary zeal to invent.

At the same time, the biography does not suggest that Musk is pleasant, tolerable, or even safe to work for. After hundreds of pages of anecdotes, Isaacson notes accurately that Musk “preferred a scrappy, hard-driven environment where rabid warriors felt psychological danger rather than comfort.”

In any event, given the general interest in its subject, I imagine it will be one of the year’s bestselling books. Below are top details that stood out to me. If you read it, let me know what I missed. (I’m leaving out the story that Musk sabotaged a Ukraine attack on Russia by disabling Starlink service, which Musk denied and Isaacson has since said he got wrong .)

Twitter considered selling itself to Musk at a discount after he signed the original deal. Musk spent much of last year trying to get out of his deal for Twitter. Behind the scenes, he worked to get a discount. He wanted to save at least 10 percent on the purchase price; Twitter considered proposals that would have given him something closer to a 4 percent savings, Isaacson reports.

Unfortunately for Musk, restructuring the deal would have given banks the chance to renegotiate the terms of their loans. Interest rates rose significantly during between the deal being signed and its closing date, which would have wiped out any discounts.

The other big obstacle: in exchange for a lower price, Twitter’s C-suite wanted Musk to promise not to sue them in the future.

Musk’s response?

“We are never going to give them a legal release,” he said. “We will hunt every single one of them til the day they die.”

Jack Dorsey almost bailed on investing in Twitter 2.0 . The Twitter co-founder, who famously called Musk “ the singular solution I trust ” to “extend the light of consciousness” as the company’s owner, very nearly reneged on his promise to roll his 2.4 percent stake in Twitter 1.0 into the new company. Isaacson reports that he had been “unnerved by the controversy and drama” surrounding the acquisition after Musk walked that sink into Twitter headquarters, and Musk had to call him several times and reassure him “that he truly loved Twitter and wouldn’t harm it.”

In the end, they struck a deal: if Dorsey ever wanted to cash out, Musk would pay him the original purchase price of $54.20 for the shares. As Dan Primack noted at Axios , Dorsey’s decision saved Musk about $1 billion .

Musk sought to ban activists for organizing an advertiser boycott after he bought the company. From the start, Musk has faced pressure from activists who urged him not to reduce the company’s investments in content moderation. This pressure ratcheted up significantly after Musk posted a lurid, baseless conspiracy theory about the attack last year on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

That tweet, which he posted three days after buying the company, led some activist groups to call for an advertising boycott . Advertisers began leaving in droves. Musk was outraged, accusing them in one tweet of “trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Musk believed the activist groups were trying to “blackmail” him into taking action, Isaacson reports. He shared that view with Yoel Roth, then his head of trust and safety, and ordered Roth to ban the activists.

Roth protested that the activists hadn’t violated any of the site’s published rules.

“I’m changing Twitter policy right now,” Musk said, according to Isaacson. “Blackmail is prohibited as of right now. Ban. Ban them.”

Roth ignored the directive, and Musk forgot about it.

The issue would of course be renewed this month, when Musk focused his rage on one of those activist groups in particular .

Musk knew the Twitter Blue rollout was going to be a disaster. Last year, Platformer was the first to report that Twitter’s trust and safety team had presented Musk with a seven-page list of recommendations designed to blunt the impact of the massive wave of impersonations that it correctly predicted would follow the introduction of paid verification badges. At the time, I assumed that Musk simply didn’t believe it would be as bad as the trust and safety team suggested, and blundered ahead anyway.

As Isaacson tells it, the story was even stranger. After reading the recommendations, he writes, Musk agreed to delay the launch — but only by two days. He then insisted that the company move forward, even while warning his lieutenants that disaster was likely to follow.

“There will be a massive attack,” he told a group of product leaders on November 7th. “There’s going to be a swarm of bad actors who will test the defenses. They will try to impersonate me and others and then go to the press, which will want to destroy us. It will be World War Three over the blue check marks. So we have to do everything possible to not have this be a total exploding egg-on-face situation.”

In the end, the company did almost nothing to address the trust and safety team’s concerns, and it was indeed a total exploding egg-on-face situation .

Musk privately acknowledged Twitter would need to be “careful” about China. After Musk took over Twitter, some observers wrote that his international business ties deserved more scrutiny. (See Matt Yglesias on this point .) Among the top concerns was that Musk would have difficulty resisting calls to remove posts critical of the Chinese Communist Party due to the fact that China is a major market and manufacturing site for Tesla.

When Musk brought in independent journalist Bari Weiss to write an installment of the Twitter Files last year, she pressed him on the issue. Musk had brought her in to tell the story that Twitter 1.0 executives had improperly restricted speech on the platform — but wouldn’t he soon find himself in a similar position in China?

Isaacson writes:

“Musk got annoyed. That was not what the conversation was supposed to be about. Weiss persisted. Musk said that Twitter would indeed have to be careful about the words it used regarding China, because Tesla’s business could be threatened. China’s repression of the Uyghurs, he said, had two sides. Weiss was disturbed. … They moved on to other topics.”

Sergey Brin tried to avoid their famous selfie together . Last summer, the Wall Street Journal published a memorable story alleging that Musk’s friendship with Google co-founder Sergey Brin had been ruptured after the former had a brief affair with Brin’s wife.

“Right after the story broke, they were at a party together, and Musk maneuvered himself into a position where he could take a selfie with Brin, which Brin tried to avoid,” Isaacson reports.

I would have read 500 more words about this party, and Brin’s feelings on the matter, but sadly the tale ends here. When I went to go look at the selfie today, I noticed that it had been deleted. (It is memorialized in the Daily Mail .)

Musk refused to work with Bill Gates on philanthropic issues because Gates took a short position on Tesla . On one hand, this hardly seems like a surprise — Musk’s antipathy toward short sellers is legendary . On the other, it’s painful to consider the good that might have been done had they been able to reach an accord. Projects that Gates pitched Musk on would have supported “refugees, American schools, and AIDS cure, eradicating some mosquito types through gene drives, and genetically modified seeds that will resist the effects of climate change.”

Gates seems to have laughed off the whole conflict — “he was super mean to me, but he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it personally.” Grimes said “I imagine it’s a little bit of a dick-measuring contest.”

At the time of their meeting, incidentally, Gates had lost $1.5 billion shorting Tesla.

Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel told Musk he would run Twitter for $100 million . Emanuel, who is CEO of the entertainment firm Endeavor, saw an opportunity last year when Musk signaled that he would go through with his $44 billion acquisition of the company.

“In a three-paragraph message sent on the encrypted text service Signal,” Isaacson writes, Emanuel made a proposal: he and Endeavor would run Twitter. “For a fee of $100 million, he said, he would take charge of cutting costs, creating a better culture, and managing relations with advertisers and marketers.”

The idea was quickly dismissed. Jared Birchall, a top Musk lieutenant, said it was “the most insulting, demeaning, insane message.” Musk had always intended to run Twitter himself.

Musk’s favorite mobile game is called The Battle of Polytopia . A turn-based strategy game not dissimilar from Civilization , Musk has at one point or another forced most of those closest to him to play against him. He once stopped speaking to Grimes for a day because she surprised him with a fireball attack. “It’s a huge fucking deal” he reportedly told her.

At one point Musk tells his brother, Kimbal, that playing Polytopia will teach him how to be a better CEO. Eventually they write down a shared list of life lessons they have learned from the game, including “Empathy is not an asset,” “optimize every turn,” and “double down.”

Elon Musk is in stores now .

MKBHD got himself in trouble again

Amazon is shutting down freevee, apple ai notification summaries exist; rarely useful, often hilarious, trump says elon musk will lead ‘doge’ office to cut ‘wasteful’ government spending, bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week.

More from Tech

The Nintendo Switch 2 will now reportedly arrive in 2025 instead of 2024

The best Presidents Day deals you can already get

Interview: Figma’s CEO on life after the company’s failed sale to Adobe

Vudu’s name is changing to ‘Fandango at Home’

We Don’t Need Another Antihero

In Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk, the focus on psychology diverts us from the questions we should be asking about the world’s richest man.

This past December, Elon Musk’s extended family gathered for Christmas. As was their tradition, they pondered a question of the year, which seemed strategically designed for Elon to answer: “What regrets do you have?”

By that point in 2022, Musk had personally intervened in Russia’s war by controlling Ukraine’s internet access; had failed to tell his on-and-off girlfriend and co-parent Grimes that he had also fathered twins with one of his employees, and had been forced by a judge to follow through on a $44 billion purchase of Twitter; then fired most of its staff and alienated most of its advertisers. His main regret, he told his family, according to an account in Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk , “is how often I stab myself in the thigh with a fork, how often I shoot my own feet and stab myself in the eye.”

In Isaacson’s study of the world’s richest man, the reader is consistently reminded that Musk is powerless over his own impulses. Musk cannot control his desperate need to stir up drama and urgency when things are going well, Isaacson explains. He fails to show any kind of remorse for the multiple instances of brutally insulting his subordinates or lovers. He gets stuck in what Grimes has dubbed “demon mode”—an anger-induced unleashing of insults and demands, during which he resembles his father Errol, whom Isaacson describes as emotionally abusive.

To report the book, Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years, answering his late-night text messages, accompanying him to Twitter’s office post-acquisition, attending his meetings and intimate family moments, watching him berate people. Reading the book is like hearing what Musk’s many accomplishments and scandals would sound like from the perspective of his therapist, if he ever sought one out (rather than do that, he prefers to “take the pain,” he says—though he has diagnosed himself at various moments as having Asperger’s syndrome or bipolar disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder).

Choosing to use this access mostly for pop psychology may appeal to an American audience that loves a good antihero, but it’s a missed opportunity. Unlike the subjects of most of Isaacson’s other big biographies, including Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci, Musk is still alive, his influence still growing. We don’t need to understand how he thinks and feels as much as we need to understand how he managed to amass so much power, and the broad societal impact of his choices—in short, how thoroughly this mercurial leader of six companies has become an architect of our future.

What does it mean that Musk can adjust a country’s internet access during a war? (The book only concludes that it makes him uncomfortable.) How should we feel about the fact that the man putting self-driving cars on our roads tells staff that most safety and legal requirements are “wrong and dumb”? How will Musk’s many business interests eventually, inevitably conflict? (At one point, Musk—a self-described champion of free speech—concedes that Twitter will have to be careful about how it moderates China-related content, because pissing off the government could threaten Tesla’s sales there. Isaacson doesn’t press further.)

The cover of Elon Musk shows Musk’s face in high contrast staring straight, with hands folded as if in prayer, evoking a Great Man of History and a visual echo of the Jobs volume. Isaacson’s central question seems to be whether Musk could have achieved such greatness if he were less cruel and more humane. But this is no time for a retrospective.

Read: Demon mode activated

As readers of the book are asked to reflect on the drama of Musk’s past romantic dalliances, he is meeting with heads of state and negotiating behind closed doors. Last Monday, Musk convened with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; on Tuesday, Israel’s prime minister publicly called him the “unofficial president” of the United States. Also, Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant start-up—mostly discussed in the book as the employer of one of the mothers of Musk's 11 known children—was given approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting participants for human trials. The book does have a few admiring pages on Neuralink’s technology, but doesn’t address a 2022 Reuters report that the company had killed an estimated 1,500 experimented-on animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys, since 2018. (Musk has said that the monkeys chosen for the experiments were already close to death ; a gruesome Wired story published Wednesday reported otherwise .)

Isaacson seems to expect major further innovation from Musk—who is already sending civilians into space, running an influential social network, shaping the future of artificial-intelligence development, and reviving the electric-car market. How these developments might come about and what they will mean for humanity seems far more important to probe than Isaacson’s preferred focus on explaining Musk’s abusive, erratic, impetuous behavior.

In 2018, Musk called the man who rescued children in Thailand’s caves a “pedo guy,” which led to a defamation suit—a well-known story. A few weeks later, he claimed that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, attracting the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Isaacson covers these events by diagnosing Musk as unstable during that period and, according to his brother, still getting over his tumultuous breakup with the actor Amber Heard. (Ah, the toxic-woman excuse.) He was also, according to his lawyer Alex Spiro, “an impulsive kid with a terrible Twitter habit.” Isaacson calls that assessment “true”—one of the many times he compares Musk, now 52, to a child in the book.

The people whose perspectives Isaacson seems to draw on most in the book are those whom Musk arranged for him to talk with. So the book’s biggest reveal may be the extent to which his loved ones and confidants distrust his ability to be calm and rational, and feel the need to work around him. A close friend, Antonio Gracias, once locked Musk’s phone in a hotel safe to keep him from tweeting; in the middle of the night, Musk got hotel security to open it.

All of this seems reminiscent of the ways Donald Trump’s inner circle executed his whims, justifying his behavior and managing their relationship with him, lest they be cut out from the action. Every one of Trump’s precedent-defying decisions during his presidency was picked apart by the media: What were his motivations? Is there a strategy here? Is he mentally fit to serve? Does he really mean what he’s tweeting? The simplest answer was often the correct one: The last person he talked to (or saw on Fox News) made him angry.

Read: What Russia got by scaring Elon Musk

Musk is no Trump fan, according to Isaacson. But he’s the media’s new main character, just as capable of getting triggered and sparking shock waves through a tweet. That’s partially why Isaacson’s presentation of the World’s Most Powerful Victim is not all that revelatory for those who are paying attention: Musk exposes what he’s thinking at all hours of the day and night to his 157.6 million followers.

In Isaacson’s introduction to Elon Musk , he explains that the man is “not hardwired to have empathy.” Musk’s role as a visionary with a messianic passion seems to excuse this lack. The thinking goes like this: All of his demands for people to come solve a problem right now or you’re fired are bringing us one step closer to Mars travel, or the end of our dependence on oil, or the preservation of human consciousness itself. His comfort with skirting the law and cutting corners in product development also serves a higher purpose: Musk believes, and preaches in a mantra to employees at all of his companies, that “the only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.”

By presenting Musk’s mindset as fully formed and his behavior as unalterable, Isaacson’s book doesn’t give us many tools for the future—besides, perhaps, being able to rank the next Musk blowup against a now well-documented history of such incidents. Instead of narrowing our critical lens to Musk’s brain, we need to widen it, in order to understand the consequences of his influence. Only then can we challenge him to do right by his power.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

About the Author

Trump taps Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to lead new 'Department of Government Efficiency'

W ASHINGTON —  President-elect Donald Trump  said Tuesday he's tapped tech billionaire Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person, and former Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency" that will work to slash federal government spending, waste and regulations.

Trump said the commission will "provide advice and guidance from outside of government," partnering with the White House and Office of Management and Budget "to drive large-scale structural reform" throughout the federal government. He said the team's work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026.

"Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies − Essential to the “Save America” movement," Trump said in a statement.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

During the 2024 campaign, Musk said he would take a job in the administration as leader of a “ Department of Government Efficiency ” or DOGE, referring to the cryptocurrency he champions. The 53-year-old founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla has also said publicly that he could quickly eliminate $2 trillion from the federal budget but has not provided any specifics on how.

Trump said the department led by Musk and Ramaswamy could potentially become "the Manhattan Project of our time." Trump provided no details on the size or budget of the department beyond the leadership of Musk and Ramaswamy.

Trump's description seemed to suggest the department would operate as an advisory commission − not a formal federal agency − with no statutory authority. It was not immediately clear whether Musk and Ramaswamy would be working under contract for their services.

"A smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!" Trump said.

Musk has never worked for the federal government before. But his various companies have billions of dollars in government contracts, including with space, military and intelligence agencies. That has prompted concern among watchdog groups that his cost-cutting efforts – and influence on Trump – could create conflicts of interest and lessen oversight of his companies.

“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!" Musk said in a statement distributed by Trump's transition team.

Musk posted a message on X , the social media platform he owns, following Trump's announcement: "Threat to democracy? Nope, threat to BUREAUCRACY!!!"

Musk said the department will publicize all its actions online for "maximum transparency" and solicit feedback on cost-cutting measures from the public. “We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining," Musk said.

Ramaswamy, 39, a biotech entrepreneur and the son of Indian immigrants, ran unsuccessfully in the 2024 Republican primary but quickly became a strong ally of Trump. As a candidate, Ramaswamy advocated for the shutdown of federal government agencies including the FBI, Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of 'DOGE' for a very long time," Trump said, adding that the department will "create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before."

Trump first proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission in a Sept. 5 speech to the Economic Club of New York. At the time, he said the commission would conduct "a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government" and make recommendations for changes.

Trump's critics said he and Musk are aiming to end government protections in a host of areas, from education to the environment, and to get rid of thousands of public servants.

“Musk and Ramaswamy leading a non-existent efficiency department would be funny if the consequences weren’t so serious,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Elon Musk may think money bypasses the rule of law and our democratic system of government, but we’ll make sure every unhinged attack on critical environmental protections and every illegal attempt to harm government employees will fail.”

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights advocacy group, said the term “cutting red tape” is code for “getting rid of the safeguards that protect us in order to benefit corporate interests.”

“The purpose of government regulations is to protect the American people,” Gilbert said. “We all depend on these regulations to protect our air, water, workers, children's safety, and so much more.”

Democrats mocked the undertaking. "The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person," U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. said in a post on X. "Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient.

One of Trump’s staunchest supporters in the last few months of the 2024 campaign, Musk injected more than $100 million, including controversial $1 million daily payments to registered voters in seven battleground states. He has since become an informal advisor to Trump on a wide range of foreign and domestic policy issues, including Russia’s war with Ukraine.

More: Trump transition live updates: Latest news as election winner makes moves

Musk made headlines for reportedly joining in the first phone call between Trump and  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy , raising questions about his potentially outsized role in the upcoming administration. “A star is born," Trump said in his victory speech upon winning the White House, referring to Musk.

Trump and Musk have been spending a lot of time together at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a CNN report that said Musk was advising on transition, policy and personnel issues.

Further complicating matters: The  Wall Street Journal reported  on Oct. 25 that Musk “has been in regular contact” since late 2022 with a major U.S. adversary – Russian President Vladimir Putin. Musk has not responded to requests for comment from USA TODAY.

"I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans," Trump said. "Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending.

"They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to “WE THE PEOPLE," Trump said.

Josh Meyer is USA Today's Domestic Security Correspondent . Email him at [email protected] and follow him at @JoshMeyerDC on X.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump taps Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to lead new 'Department of Government Efficiency'

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Entertainment
• Biographies

Amber Heard Talks Elon Musk Relationship in Biography: He 'Loves Fire, and Sometimes It Burns Him'

Elon Musk's brother Kimbal called Amber Heard "toxic" in the biography, out Tuesday

Elon Musk and Amber Heard recall details about their relationship in Walter Isaacson's new biography Elon Musk .

In the book, out Tuesday, the SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO, 52, and the Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom actress, 37, open up about their romance, with which they went official in April 2017. The pair dated on and off in the months that followed, before breaking up for good in 2018.

Isaacson writes of their relationship in the biography's "Rocky Relationships" chapter that Musk first took an interest in the actress after seeing her in 2013's Machete Kills , and that they met when she visited SpaceX a year later.

"I guess I could be called a geek for someone who can also be called a hot chick," Heard said in the book, while Isaacson claimed Musk took her for a ride in a Tesla during that SpaceX visit.

Among other tidbits about their dynamic, Isaacson said Musk flew to Australia in April 2017 to visit Heard while she was filming Aquaman , and that she once commissioned a costume to "roleplay" a character Musk said she reminded him of: Mercy, from the video game Overwatch .

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.

Isaacson also gets into some of the more tumultuous moments of Heard and Musk's time together, including a fight they had near the end of their relationship while on vacation in South America in December 2017 with family, including his brother Kimbal Musk .

While Heard allegedly admitted to Isaacson that the argument occurred, she also shared photos and videos of their evening afterward with him, which Isaacson said depicted the actress and tech mogul sharing a New Year's Eve kiss.

Of their relationship, Musk said in the biography, "It was brutal." For her part, Heard told Isaacson that she still loves her ex "very much," and added: "Elon loves fire, and sometimes it burns him."

Kimbal, 50, told Isaacson in the book that he thinks it's "really sad" his brother "falls in love with these people who are really mean to him."

"They're beautiful, no question, but they have a very dark side and Elon knows that they're toxic," he continued.

Asked by Isaacson why he falls for these types of people, Musk laughed and replied, "Because I'm just a fool for love. I am often a fool, but especially for love."

A rep for Heard did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment on Monday.

Over a year after the breakup, Heard told  The Hollywood Reporter  in December 2018, "Elon and I  had a beautiful relationship , and we have a beautiful friendship now, one that was based on our core values. Intellectual curiosity, ideas and conversation, a shared love for science. We just bonded on a lot of things that speak to who I am on the inside. I have so much respect for him."

Elon Musk , out Tuesday, is available for preorder now .

Related Articles

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments, personal eccentricities, the bottom line.

• Business Leaders
• Entrepreneurs

Who Is Elon Musk?

Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Musk has achieved global fame as the chief executive officer (CEO) of electric automobile maker Tesla ( TSLA ) and the private space company SpaceX. Musk was an early investor in several tech companies, and in October 2022, he completed a deal to take X (formerly Twitter) private.

His success and personal style have given rise to comparisons to other colorful tycoons from U.S. history, including Steve Jobs , Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford . He was named the richest person in the world in 2021, surpassing Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos. However, as of June 22, 2024, Bezos has regained the title of richest man on Earth, making Musk the second richest man.

Let’s look briefly at the life of the man who has scaled the pinnacle of the business world.

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is the charismatic CEO of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.
• Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind X in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.
• Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.
• Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics and business, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.
• Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time.

Bailey Mariner / Investopedia

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being...almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."

“I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don’t face enough adversity,” Musk would later say.

Bullied as a Child

Musk attended the private, English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School—he started a year early—and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. A self-described bookworm, he made few friends in those places.

“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan.

Musk’s College Years

At 17, Musk moved to Canada. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have six sons together, a first son which died shortly after birth, twins, and then triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

Entering the U.S.

After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and a second bachelor's degree in economics from the  Wharton School . The two majors foreshadowed Musk’s career, but it was physics that left the deepest impression.

“(Physics is) a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.

In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corporation for $307 million in cash and $34 million worth of stock options. Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.

X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal CEO before eBay ( EBAY ) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.

“My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview. “$100 (million) of that went into SpaceX, $70 (million) into Tesla, and $10 (million) into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”

In 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain name back from PayPal, citing its sentimental value.

Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million, to begin with, and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker.

In addition to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity. The company currently produces rechargeable solar batteries and other solar power equipment. The Powerwall is a battery developed for home backup power. Tesla also produces commercial energy infrastructure including grid management programs.

Musk used most of the proceeds from his PayPal stake to found Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket's developer commonly known as SpaceX. By his own account, Musk spent $100 million to found SpaceX in 2002 .

Under Musk’s leadership, SpaceX landed several high-profile contracts with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force to design space launch rockets. Musk has publicized plans to send an astronaut to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.

The company was founded in March 2006 as Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Originally a private company, it went public in November 2013. It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO) .

Musk joined the site in June 2009. A frequent poster on the messaging network, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in Twitter in March 2022. The company responded by offering Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted before declining days later. Musk then sent a bear hug letter to the board proposing to buy the company at $54.20 per share.

The company’s board adopted a poison pill provision to discourage Musk from accumulating an even larger stake, but they ultimately accepted Musk’s offer after he disclosed $46.5 billion in committed financing for the deal in a securities filing.

In July 2022, Musk attempted to cancel the deal , arguing that X had failed to provide certain information regarding fake accounts. The company sued Musk to require him to complete the deal.

After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on October 28, 2022. The company was renamed X the following year.

During his May 8, 2021, appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live , Musk revealed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL . Or at least the first to admit it,” he said. How does the neurodevelopment condition manifest itself? “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy,” Musk explained.

On September 7, 2018, Musk smoked cannabis during a filmed interview for The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. Musk subsequently settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleging he knowingly misled investors with the tweet by paying a $20 million fine along with the same penalty for Tesla and agreeing to let Tesla’s lawyers approve tweets with material corporate information before posting.

In March 2022, Musk filed a court motion to overturn the consent decree stemming from that case. In April 2022 during a live TED Talk, Musk called the SEC regulators on the case “bastards.”

Is Elon Musk Married?

Elon Musk has been divorced three times—twice from his second wife, Talulah Riley. From 2018 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, professionally known as Grimes, with whom he had a son in 2020, a daughter in 2022, and a third child revealed in 2023. They remain best friends. He also has six boys (five living, one died after birth) from his first marriage to Justine Musk. He also shares twins with Shivon Zilis. Musk has a total of 11 children.

How Rich Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $207 billion as of June 24, 2024, making him the second wealthiest person on the planet.

Was Elon Musk Born Rich?

No, Elon Musk was born into a middle-class family. In 1995, when he founded Zip2, he reportedly had more than $100,000 in student debt and struggled to pay rent.

What Does Elon Musk Do at Tesla?

Elon Musk is officially listed as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla on the company’s website. In a 2021 securities filing, the company disclosed an additional Musk title as “Technoking of Tesla.”

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Elon Musk is a large stakeholder in several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and X Corp .

Musk’s early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels are reflected in his idealism and concern with human progress—and in his business career. He works in fields he has identified as crucial to humanity’s future, notably the transition to renewable energy sources, space exploration, and the Internet.

Musk has defied critics, disrupted industries, and made the most money anyone ever has from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX—game changers all, despite the inevitable missteps.

Britannica Money. " Elon Musk ."

The New York Times. “ Elon Musk Has Become the World’s Richest Person, as Tesla’s Stock Rallies .”

Bloomberg. “ Bloomberg Billionaires Index .”

Distractify. " Elon Musk’s Parents Lead as Affluent and Controversial Lives as Their Son ."

Rolling Stone. “ Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow .”

Education Next. " From Bullied Bookworm to Billionaire Innovator: Elon Musk Inspiring Journey ."

Historydraft. " Elon Musk ."

The Washington Post. “ The 22 Most Memorable Quotes from the New Elon Musk Book, Ranked .”

Yahoo! Finance. " Elon Musk Made a Video Game at Age 12 and Sold It for $500. Where Is It Now? "

Gizmodo. “ Elon Musk: The Tech Maverick Making Tony Stark Look Dull .”

CNBC. " Elon Musk Lived on $1 a Day When He Moved to Canada as a Teen and More Surprising Facts About His Youth ."

Biography. " Elon Musk ."

Marie Claire. “ ‘I Was a Starter Wife’: Inside America’s Messiest Divorce .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Ran a Nightclub Out of His College Frat House to Make Money for Rent .”

Inc. “ Elon Musk Just Said MBAs Are Overrated, and He’s Dead Right .”

TED. “ The Mind Behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity... .” Click "Read Transcript."

X. “ Elon Musk, Dec. 28, 2019, 6:22 PM .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Tried to Pitch the Head of the Yellow Pages Before the Internet Boom: ‘He Threw the Book at Me’ .”

TheStreet. " Elon Musk Disagrees With Billionaire Peter Thiel on the Key to Success ."

Simple. " How Elon Musk Uniquely Manages His Wealth Through His Family Office, Excession ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ eBay to Acquire PayPal .”

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Interview [I Made 180 Million Dollars but Still Had To Borrow Money for Rent] .” 1:58–2:14 (Video).

X. “ Elon Musk, July 10, 2017, 9:10 PM .”

Wired. “ How Elon Musk Turned Tesla Into the Car Company of the Future .”

SpaceX. “ Updates .”

YouTube. “ People Should Arrive on Mars in 2025 .” (Video)

Britannica Money. " X ."

X. " Elon Musk ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Twitter, Inc., Schedule 13G, March 14, 2022 .” Page 3.

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 5, 2022, 8:32 AM .”

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 10, 2022, 11:13 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 2 to Schedule 13D/A, April 13, 2022 .”

CNBC. " Twitter Board Adopts ‘Poison Pill’ After Musk’s $43 Billion Bid to Buy Company ."

Reuters. " Explainer: How Elon Musk Funded the $44 Billion Twitter Deal ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, April 15, 2022 .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 3 to Schedule 13D, April 20, 2022 .”

ABC News. " A Timeline of Elon Musk’s Tumultuous Twitter Acquisition ."

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Now in Charge of Twitter, CEO and CFO Have Left, Sources Say .”

The New York Times. " From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand ."

American Autism Association. " Elon Musk Shared Aspergers Diagnosis on SNL ."

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Monologue—SNL .”

CNBC. " Elon Musk Smokes Weed, Sips Whiskey on Joe Rogan’s Podcast ."

X. “ Elon Musk, Aug. 7, 2018, 12:48 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged With and Resolves Securities Law Charge .”

U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. “ Defendant Elon Musk’s Notice of Motion to Quash & to Terminate Consent Decree .”

Reuters. " Musk Says U.S. SEC ‘Bastards’ Forced Settlement Over Tesla Tweets ."

Vanity Fair. “ Elon Musk Splits With Actress Talulah Riley for the Second (or Third?) Time .”

TODAY. " Who Are Elon Musk's Children? "

X. “ Grimes, March 10, 2022, 11:32 AM .”

Vanity Fair. “‘ Infamy Is Kind of Fun’: Grimes on Music, Mars, and Her Secret New Baby with Elon Musk .”

The Economic Times. “ Elon Musk Had Over $100K of Student Debt When He Started 1st Company, Turned His Room into Nightclub To Pay Rent .”

Tesla. “ Elon Musk .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, March 15, 2021 .”

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

Trump’s Cabinet: Here Are His Picks For Key Roles—Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Pete Hegseth And More

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday billionaire backer Elon Musk and supporter Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” while Fox News host Pete Hegseth will serve as secretary of defense, the latest in a flurry of appointments in the days since Trump won the election, tapping some of his staunchest defenders and loyalists for roles in the administration.

President-elect Donald Trump gestures at supporters after speaking as he holds hands with former US ... [+] First Lady Melania Trump during an election night event at the West Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump has reportedly chosen people for a handful of Senate-confirmed Cabinet-level jobs, and he’s picked a White House chief of staff and a national security advisor, two key roles that don’t require confirmation.

Attorney general and secretaries of defense, state and homeland security are top priorities for Trump, according to The New York Times , citing people familiar with his thinking who said he is keen on candidates who will remove career bureaucrats Trump considers to be part of what he refers to as the “deep state.”

Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here .

Department Of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy

Trump announced Elon Musk , the world’s wealthiest person, will run a new Department of Government Efficiency (or “DOGE”) alongside investor and former Republican primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy . Trump said in a statement the department—which has not yet been created—will offer “advice and guidance from outside of Government” and focus on “making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency,” including through spending and regulatory cuts. Musk, a vocal Trump backer who donated over $100 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, has pitched the department in the past, seemingly naming it after the meme cryptocurrency dogecoin.

Secretary Of Defense: Pete Hegseth

Trump selected Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense Tuesday, praising his status as a combat veteran and role as a co-host on Fox & Friends Weekend. Hegseth was deployed in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq while serving with the Army National Guard. The veteran is the former CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative organization that has communicated with Trump on the matter of veterans affairs and received backing from billionaire Charles G. Koch —one of the wealthiest people in the world. Hegseth has also made appearances on various Fox Nation series.

Cia Director: John Ratcliffe

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe will serve as the CIA’s director. A former Texas congressman, Ratcliffe served as the director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021 and acted as Trump’s primary intelligence adviser during his last presidency. During his time as director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe declassified unverified Russian intelligence information that claimed Hillary Clinton approved a plan to link Trump to Russia and the Democratic National Committee cyberattacks in 2016. Democrats criticized Ratcliffe’s decision to publicly release the information, alleging he was politicizing unverified information to aid Trump.

White House Counsel: William Joseph Mcginley

Trump picked former White House cabinet secretary and top GOP lawyer William McGinley as his White House Counsel. McGinley was brought into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and tasked with helping it secure delegates for the Republican National Convention. He worked as Trump’s White House cabinet secretary from 2017 to 2019 and was in charge of advising other cabinet members on policy coordination, optics and ethics, according to Politico .

Special Envoy To The Middle East: Steven C. Witkoff

Steven Witkoff , a GOP donor and real estate investor, will be Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff is chairman of the University of Miami Business School Real Estate Advisory Board and the CEO of Witkoff, a real estate firm he founded in 1997. He is also a longtime friend of Trump’s and one of the president-elect’s golf partners . Witkoff was with Trump during the apparent second assassination attempt on his life, telling NBC that Secret Service agents dived on Trump and got him off his Florida golf course in under 20 seconds.

United States Ambassador To Israel: Mike Huckabee

Trump announced Tuesday he appointed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as his envoy to Israel on Tuesday, touting his military service as he served in the Army Special Forces for 27 years. Huckabee is a staunch supporter of Israel and has criticized the Biden administration’s calls for a cease-fire with Hamas. Huckabee has advocated for Israel to annex parts of the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967, and has backed Israeli settlers in the territory. A former Southern Baptist pastor, Huckabee regularly leads evangelicals on visits to Israel.

National Security Adviser: Mike Waltz

Trump confirmed Tuesday he appointed Rep. Mike Waltz , R-Fla., to serve as his national security adviser. In recent months, Waltz—a former Army Green Beret—has frequently criticized China, urged NATO members to pay more for defense and said he expects Trump to push Ukraine and Russia toward a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.

Homeland Security Secretary: Kristi Noem

Trump has picked South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for the role of secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CNN reported early on Tuesday, citing two unnamed sources. Although no official announcement has been made, Noem is a long-time Trump loyalist who was believed be a contender for Vice President. The appointee will be essential in carrying out Trump’s aggressive immigration plans, in addition to the agency’s duties surrounding cybersecurity, antiterrorism and emergency response.

Secretary Of State: Likely Marco Rubio

Trump is likely to pick Sen. Marco Rubio , R-Fla., as his secretary of state, according to multiple reports . The New York Times says Trump might change his mind, and CNN reports Trump set his sights on Rubio after initially favoring former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell for the job. Rubio, a high-profile Republican who was reportedly among the finalists for Trump’s running mate choice, has a reputation as a foreign policy hawk, favoring tough approaches on China and Iran. Rubio said prior to the election he believed a Trump administration would broker “a negotiated settlement” to end the war in Ukraine. Rubio and Trump were bitter rivals in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, often clashing vehemently, but their relationship has improved since then.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator: Lee Zeldin

Trump announced Monday he’s tapped former Rep. Lee Zeldin , R-N.Y., to lead the EPA, citing his “very strong legal background” and calling him “a true fighter for America First policies” in a statement. Zeldin—a Trump ally who ran for New York governor two years ago—“will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American business while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards,” the statement said.

Deputy Chief Of Staff For Policy: Stephen Miller

Trump is expected to announce Stephen Miller for the White House position in the coming days, multiple outlets reported Monday. Miller was a senior adviser to Trump during his first administration and one of the architects of some of his most controversial immigration policies, including his family separation program.

Border Czar: Tom Homan

Trump appointed his former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan to the role, he announced Monday, as Trump plans a mass deportation of undocumented migrants during his second term.

Un Ambassador: Elise Stefanik

Trump announced Sunday he’d nominate GOP Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik , R-N.Y., for the United Nations ambassador role, and she told the New York Post she had accepted the offer.

Chief Of Staff: Susie Wiles

Trump named his campaign co-manager Susie Wiles chief of staff two days after his election win, marking his first major administrative pick. Wiles will be the first woman to hold the position.

Attorney General

Trump is expected to overhaul the Department of Justice and staff it with political loyalists who could blur the lines of independence between the agency and the executive branch, potentially by carrying out Trump’s wishes to prosecute his political enemies. Sen. Mike Lee , R-Utah, R-Mo. and former administration lawyer Mark Paoletta are some of the names commonly floated for AG in media reports . Federal Judge Aileen Cannon , who dismissed the DOJ’s classified documents case against Trump, is on a proposed personnel roster Trump’s team has circulated, ABC News reported last month, citing unnamed sources. Speculation has also swirled that Trump adviser, Kash Patel , could be appointed AG. Trump said previously that Patel would help craft a “blueprint” for his next administration and lauded his book “Government Gangsters” as a “roadmap to end the Deep State’s reign.”

Treasury Secretary

Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., former ambassador to Japan under Trump, is on the speculative short list for this role. Other contenders include Trump’s transition team co-chair, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick , former Trump U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer , and hedge fund executive Scott Bessent —who spoke recently with Forbes . Bessent met with Trump Friday at Mar-A-Lago, according to Reuters and Bloomberg , though Bloomberg cited people familiar with the process who said the meeting was not a job interview. Trump is expected to narrow his list of candidates by the end of the week, and he is leaning toward someone with Wall Street experience, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing anonymous sources.

Energy Secretary

North Dakota Gov. and former presidential candidate Doug Burgum is considered a top choice. Burgum served as a liaison between Trump and oil executives during his campaign and has reportedly helped shape Trump’s energy policy. Burgum could also be asked to serve as Trump’s “energy czar,” a new position he plans to create to coordinate policies that span multiple agencies, The New York Times reported .

Education Secretary

The agency’s former leader, Betsy DeVos , said she would be willing to return to the role in a recent interview with Education Week . Trump has proposed dismantling the department and giving states control over their public schools.

Will Rfk Jr. Serve In Trump Administration?

Trump has indicated vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would play a prominent role in shaping health policy in his administration, telling an audience in Arizona earlier this month Kennedy could do “anything he wants” and that he would “work on health and women’s health.” Trump also recently expressed openness to Kennedy’s controversial proposal to remove fluoride from public water.

Trump ruled out former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as possible picks for his second administration in a Truth Social post over the weekend. Pompeo was considered a potential pick for defense secretary.

Key Background

Trump has decamped to Mar-a-Lago since his win Tuesday, holding meetings with his inner circle, administration hopefuls and transition team to craft his second term agenda and build out his staff. Trump is shaping his second-term agenda with the help of several right-wing groups, his closest allies and billionaire backers. Musk, who has been spotted on numerous occasions at Mar-A-Lago since his election, is among those who appear to be influencing Trump’s policy and personnel decisions. Lutnick is also overseeing a team making recommendations for personnel picks and vetting potential candidates, the Times reported, and Miller is expected to play a key role in making the final decisions. The right-wing think tank America First Policy Institute is reportedly the primary driver of Trump’s transition plans and has been crafting possible executive actions for Trump once he takes office. The organization is chaired by former Trump Small Business Administration leader Linda McMahon and led by former Trump Domestic Policy Counsel Director Brook Rollins.

Further Reading

What We Know About Trump’s Potential Cabinet—With RFK Jr. And Elon Musk Among The Candidates (Forbes)

Who Will Help Shape Trump’s Policy Agenda? Here Are The Key Groups And Players (Forbes)

Stephen Miller Will Reportedly Lead Trump’s Policy Agenda—Here’s Who Else Could Help Him (Forbes)

• Editorial Standards
• Forbes Accolades

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

Watch CBS News

Trump announces Musk, Ramaswamy will lead newly-created Department of Government Efficiency

Updated on: November 12, 2024 / 9:18 PM EST / CBS/AP

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that billionaire Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy will head up a new temporary agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump in a statement said the two "will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies - Essential to the 'Save America' Movement."

Trump seemed to suggest that Musk and Ramaswamy might not formally join the government, explaining that the two would "provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before."

In his own statement, Musk said the new agency "will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!"

Trump, in his statement, set a deadline for their work, saying it would "conclude no later than July 4, 2026." 

"A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence," Trump wrote. "I am confident they will succeed!"

The Trump campaign described the agency as "potentially, the 'Manhattan Project' of our time," referencing the secret World War II program that was involved in developing the atomic bomb.  

Musk was a major part of Trump's reelection campaign effort, while Ramaswamy ran against Trump in the Republican primary before endorsing him. 

The department's acronym, DOGE, is also a dog meme that inspired Dogecoin , a cryptocurrency promoted by Musk that was created as a joke and is credited with being the first meme coin .

It's not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.

Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.

Musk has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago since Trump won the presidential election.

The president-elect has often said he would give Musk a formal role overseeing a group akin to a blue-ribbon commission that would recommend ways to slash spending and make the federal government more efficient. Musk at one point suggested he could find more than $2 trillion in savings — nearly a third of total annual government spending.

Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.

"I don't think I can get him full-time because he's a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does," Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. "He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we're going to get Elon Musk to be our cost cutter."

• Vivek Ramaswamy
• Donald Trump
• Trump Administration

More from CBS News

Denver police officer arrested for domestic violence assault

Alleged staging of hate crime hoax results in indictment

CSU begins construction on new Clark Building

New mural at Auraria Campus honors neighbors who were displaced

Advertisement

Supported by

Musk Believes in Global Warming. Trump Doesn’t. Will That Change?

The Tesla billionaire is a key figure in the president-elect’s orbit. One question is whether his views on climate and clean energy will have any sway.

• Share full article

By Brad Plumer

Elon Musk has described himself as “pro-environment” and “super pro climate.” But he also threw himself wholeheartedly into electing as president someone who has dismissed global warming as a hoax.

Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to enter the White House, one big question is how much sway — if any — Mr. Musk’s views on climate change and clean energy might have in the new administration.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump noticeably softened his rhetoric on electric vehicles as he grew more friendly with Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla. After months of bashing plug-in cars and promising to halt their sales, Mr. Trump backtracked slightly this summer.

“I’m constantly talking about electric vehicles, but I don’t mean I’m against them. I’m totally for them,” he told a crowd in Michigan. “I’ve driven them and they are incredible, but they’re not for everybody.”

At the time, Mr. Musk claimed credit for Mr. Trump’s apparent shift, telling Tesla shareholders at a June meeting, “I can be persuasive.” Referring to Mr. Trump, he said, “A lot of his friends now have Teslas, and they all love it. And he’s a huge fan of the Cybertruck. So I think those may be contributing factors.”

Now Mr. Musk, who spent election night at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and posed for a group photograph with the president-elect’s family, is expected to have a direct line to the White House in the coming months. Mr. Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, already make billions from government contracts and federal policies , and he is expected to seek additional advantages for his businesses.

But whether his persuasion might extend to other realms, such as climate issues, remains to be seen.

“It’s a real question,” said Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University Center for Environmental Policy. “Does Musk only advocate for the interests of Tesla and SpaceX? Is he just a self-interested lobbyist? Or does he try to influence Trump to recognize that as an economic matter, clean energy is a huge opportunity for the United States to outcompete China?”

Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Trump’s views on global warming and energy policy are no mystery. He has doubted whether the Earth is getting hotter. (Scientists are unequivocal that it is.) He has falsely described climate change as “where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years.” (Sea levels have already risen an average of roughly eight inches over the past century and are expected to rise several feet or more by 2100 as glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.)

The president-elect has promised to withdraw , yet again, from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, under which nearly 200 nations pledged to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet. He has attacked solar panels and wind turbines. And he told a crowd of supporters on Wednesday that the United States would amp up oil production even beyond current record levels. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Musk, by contrast, has consistently said he thinks climate change is a problem — although he has sometimes wavered on how urgent that problem is. He has long been a major proponent of shifting to low-emissions technology like solar power, batteries and electric vehicles.

In a biography published last year by Walter Isaacson, Mr. Musk was described as becoming interested in solar power and electric vehicles as a college student because he was worried about the dangers of global warming and the prospect of the world running out of fossil fuels.

Tesla’s success in producing electric cars with mass appeal helped supercharge a global industry. Mr. Musk’s company also sells rooftop solar panels as well as batteries that can provide backup power to homes or help balance wind and solar power on the grid. This year, battery storage accounts for roughly 10 percent of Tesla’s revenue.

“I think we should just generally lean in the direction of sustainability,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Trump during a two-hour, live-streamed chat the two men held on X in August. “And I actually think solar is going to be a majority of Earth’s energy generation in the future.”

Mr. Musk has also supported nuclear power, which does not produce any greenhouse gases and which Mr. Trump has sometimes endorsed. “Nuclear electricity generation is underrated,” Mr. Musk added during their chat. “People have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it’s actually one of the safest forms of generation.”

Yet Mr. Musk also suggested that there was no hurry to stop global warming. “We still have quite a bit of time, we don’t need to rush,” he said in August. He later added, “If, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re mostly sustainable, I think that’ll probably be OK.”

That puts him at odds with many world leaders and environmentalists, who have urged nations to slash their emissions much faster, down to around zero by midcentury, to keep global warming at relatively low levels. Scientists agree that the longer it takes humanity to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the air, the greater the risks of deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.

In recent years, Mr. Musk has urged caution about drastic societal changes to address climate change. “I’m super pro climate, but we definitely don’t need to put farmers out of work to solve climate change,” he wrote on X last year , commenting on farmers in Belgium who were protesting limits on nitrogen pollution.

He also said in his August chat with Mr. Trump, “If we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. So it’s, you know, I don’t think it’s right to vilify the oil and gas industry.”

In the past, however, Mr. Musk has openly disagreed with Mr. Trump on climate issues.

In 2017, when Mr. Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Mr. Musk stepped down from two presidential advisory councils in protest. “Climate change is real,” he wrote. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”

At the time, several officials in the Trump administration — including Rex Tillerson, then secretary of state — were also urging the president to stay in the Paris accord. But in the end, Mr. Trump sided with those in his cabinet who dismissed climate change altogether and wanted to exit the pact.

Some observers point out that Mr. Musk isn’t the only influential donor on the issue of energy in the president-elect’s orbit. During the campaign, Mr. Trump raised more than $75 million from oil and gas interests, including the billionaire Harold Hamm of Continental Resources.

Mr. Hamm has had Mr. Trump’s ear since 2016 and pushed him then to appoint Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency, where Mr. Pruitt denied the science of global warming and unraveled various climate regulations. (Mr. Hamm did not respond to a request for comment.)

“One can only hope that Donald Trump will put conspiracy theories to the side and take the decisive action to address the climate crisis that the American people deserve,” said Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, an environmental group. “But I won’t hold my breath.”

Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming. More about Brad Plumer

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Aftermath of the Election

Higher Education’s Vulnerable Moment: Colleges have been a favorite target of Republicans who believe they have tilted leftward. Now, schools are bracing for the Trump administration to take action .

Who Will Lead the Democrats?: The party will soon have a leadership vacuum, and there will be no shortage of ambitious governors, senators and Biden cabinet members  looking to fill it.

Kennedy’s F.D.A. Wish List: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers on health, is taking aim at the agency’s oversight on many fronts .

Presidential Transition

The Trump Insiders: As Trump’s team ramps up the transition process, here are some of the key people  who will have an outsized influence on his cabinet picks.

Lee Zeldin: The choice of the former Republican congressman of New York to be the next E.P.A. administrator caught even some of his closest allies by surprise .

A Focus on Deportations : With his staffing decisions, Trump is signaling his intention to carry out a campaign promise of widespread deportations of undocumented immigrants .

More News and Analysis

Congress: Ebullient Republicans returned to Capitol Hill to face questions about how they will wield their power — and how tight a grip Trump will have on their new majority .

Black Voters: In interviews, these voters, especially men, questioned what dividends have come from their loyalty to Democrats .

Europe’s Economic Fears: The United States is the biggest trading partner for the E.U. and Britain, whose economies could be at risk  from Trump’s policies.