Hagiography 101

Walter Isaacson considers himself a man able to recognize genius, whether in historic or contemporary figures.  He's written biographies on Da Vinci, Franklin and Einstein, and now Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.  He tries to link them all together in this lengthy interview.  It's a pretty tall order but Walter makes his best effort.  The thing is with the historic figures, they actually invented things or pioneered new ideas.  Jobs and Musk invented nothing nor are any of their ideas new.  They were very creative in repackaging already existing products, the personal computer and the electric car, and turning them into something people wanted to buy.  In short, very successful entrepreneurs.

All the heavy lifting had been done by those who came before them.  In Jobs case, it was IBM that had already come up with the personal computer, designed by Gary Kildall in 1974.  The only problem was that it was prohibitively expensive and people opted for the cheaper computers on the market, even if you couldn't do much with them except play Pong.  Steve Jobs saw a golden opportunity and repackaged a nifty PC he called the Macintosh and put it on the market in 1984.  It sold like gangbusters and the rest as they say is history.

As for Musk, he didn't even invent the Tesla, much less the electric car.  Three other guys came up with the idea of a high performance electric sports car, as all the other electric cars on the market looked like something you would have bought from an Eastern European country in the 1980s.  It would be expensive but Michael Marks, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning hoped to attract investors.  That's where Musk came in.  He was flush with cash after a 100 million dollar buyout from Paypal and anxious to invest in the next great thing.  He joined the company and was put in charge of the board of directors as he was the prime stock holder.  The design of the car was entirely Eberhard and Tarpenning but Musk made himself the face of Tesla and has since been regarded as this great genius who foreshadowed the electric car revolution.  He even tried to squeeze the original founders out but they were eventually able to settle for co-founders in court.

I don't know how much Isaacson digs into all this because I have no intention of buying or reading the book, as I have avoided all his books.  He isn't so much a biographer as someone who capitalizes on writing biographies about famous persons knowing such books will sell.  Two years ago he seized on Musk and followed him around, compiling enough material to produce a whopping 688 pages.  By contrast, Ben Franklin only garnered 586 pages.  Granted Ben has been written about extensively but I'm sure Elon got a big kick out of his book being thicker than that of one of our Founding Fathers.

So how does Elon Musk warrant so many pages when his rise to stardom really didn't begin until 2012 when he was first reported as a billionaire by Forbes magazine?  Up to that point he was a relatively minor player as Tesla hadn't really taken off.  You do want to lay the groundwork, so you figure a hundred pages or so.  After that his story has been pretty much public knowledge so you can cut and paste from his TED Talks and numerous articles that have been written on him.  Walter tries to make it compelling by digging into his troubled childhood growing up in apartheid South Africa, his frustrations with a mean-spirited father, his apparent Asperger syndrome, which would make him mildly autistic, and how he was able to overcome all this with his big gambles on electric cars and space rockets to become the richest man in the world.

From what I've read from the reviews there is not a whole lot of heavy lifting here.  Isaacson mixes known facts with what he was able to glean from Musk, his numerous wives and paramours and his associates.  It's safe to say they all signed NDAs because it doesn't sound like they reveal very much.  Musk is the kind of guy who likes to project a certain image of himself and will sue anyone who strays too far from that projected image.  He has an army of lawyers to defend him at every turn.  He recently threatened to sue the ADL for calling out the rampant antisemitism on X, claiming it has cost him billions in revenue.  In the end what Isaacson has produced is another hagiography.

Isaacson provides all sorts of odd analyses of situations such as Musk's decision to pull the plug on Starlink last Fall when the Ukrainians had the Russians back on their heels.  In Walter's account, Musk was trying to stave off Armageddon given the threats of tactical nuclear warheads being issued by Moscow if Ukraine persisted in its effort to take back Crimea.  However, Timothy Snyder has a different interpretation.  By giving into Putin's nuclear threat, Musk essentially stopped the counter-offensive by cutting off vital communications, which allowed Russia to dig in all along its new border with Ukraine and extend a conventional war indefinitely.  Snyder visited the wounded Ukrainian soldiers, most of whom had limbs blown off from Russian land mines.  Isaacson provides the type of historic revisionism we have come to expect these days as everyone tries to project himself as the good guy.

The interesting thing to me is why Musk chose to provide Starlink to Ukraine in the first place if he was so worried about a nuclear holocaust?  The short answer is that Starlink was struggling at the time.  Still is in fact.  Musk thought this would be good PR.  So, he claimed to offer it gratis to Ukraine in its effort to defend itself from Russian imperial aggression, even challenging Putin to a combat match last March.  Turns out all those satellite receivers were bought and paid for by government and non-government organizations anxious to give Ukraine a communications system that Russia wouldn't be able to penetrate.  The only thing Musk provided for free was access to his Space X satellites. 

As it turns out, Musk was in contact with Putin all the time, as he has extensive interests in Russia and wanted to keep them flowing during the war.  When Ukraine began to push back, retaking large swathes of territory last Fall, Putin put pressure on Musk to cut off communications.  Elon did much to the chagrin of Ukrainian forces.  Overnight Musk went from patron saint to persona non grata in Kyiv.

Basically, you are talking about a guy who likes to play both ends against the middle with his own personal gain being paramount.  After all the "gambles" on Tesla and Space X, both have become rather middle of the road companies giving him healthy returns.  So much so he was able to withstand an enormous financial hit after the controversial buyout of Twitter last Fall and rebound entirely this year, once again making him the richest man in the world.  It does make you wonder how a guy can turn over 200 billion dollars so easily. 

Now, he wants to corner the AI market.  Isaacson gleefully recounts how Musk was able to lure one of the top scientists away from Google, and make it sound like Larry Page is the one being "cavalier with AI safety."  If Musk's tumultuous history is any point of reference, I think we should be far more worried what Musk plans to do with this AI.

Alarm bells are starting to sound.  The Defense Department was furious with Musk over the Starlink incident and he and his tech bros have been called into Senate hearings to discuss the future of AI.  I think the biggest concern, from a national strategic point of view, is that the Defense Department no longer has full control over the tech industry, having farmed out military projects for so many years that it now finds itself at the mercy of these behemoth tech companies.  We are one step closer toward the corporatism Steve Jobs projected in his infamous 1984 Macintosh ad. 

Of course, Walter does not go into this because he is more interested in the person than he is the repercussions of this corporate-based new tech world that very much could change life as we know it.  We have been warned by the "Godfather of AI" himself, Geoffrey Hinton, who also left Google earlier this year and has since voiced his deep concerns.  Maybe he should be the subject of  Walter's next book?