Antisemitism storm renews interest in Isaacson’s Musk biography
Walter Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years, attending meetings and factory visits and interviewing him, his family, friends, colleagues, and opponents for hours.
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A top biographer trailed the world's richest man for two years then spent 688 pages deciphering him, yet Elon Musk has always been hard to define, as his latest scrap with Jewish leaders shows.
Antisemitism storm renews interest in Isaacson’s Musk biography
Since Simon & Schuster published his biography in September, there have been some difficult days for billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Days after publication, a former partner filed a parental petition against him.
Then, in October, he was sued by a college graduate unhappy at being labelled a neo-Nazi and by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, unhappy over his purchase of Twitter.
Yet it was a firestorm in November that led to Musk facing accusations of antisemitism. Since then, sales of the Musk biography by author Walter Isaacson have shot up.
Less than two weeks after causing the firestorm in question, Musk was in Israel, touring a kibbutz near Gaza with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in apparent atonement for a tweet that caused such uproar among Jewish leaders.
It stemmed from a post on Twitter/X claiming that Jews were “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them”.
In November, Musk faced accusations of antisemitism. Ever since, sales of his biography by the author Walter Isaacson have shot up.
What made it so dangerous, Jewish leaders said, is that it harks back to a conspiracy theory prevalent among white supremacist groups.
According to this theory, Jews are behind the immigration of non-whites into the United States and Europe, replacing the white majority.
The opprobrium soon led to a mass advertising boycott of the platform, led by Disney.
Not the smartest thing
Musk knew it was "one of the most foolish things I've done" and said so days later.
"I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and to those who are antisemitic, and for that, I am quite sorry," he told journalist Andrew Sorkin.
Yet after his trip to Israel, the tech titan claimed in a TV interview that the visit "wasn't an apology". Indeed, he didn't seem the least bit sorry in his public demeanour.
He blasted advertisers' attempts to "blackmail" him, singling out Disney's Jewish chief executive Bob Iger and telling him, in no uncertain terms, where to go.
Yet it was not just Iger that Musk seemed to be at war with. He publicly criticised George Soros, the liberal American billionaire of Hungarian Jewish descent, and promised to sue the Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Musk also slammed Jewish groups that waged aggressive campaigns against him, blaming them for a 60% drop in advertisements on X, which he owns.
American Jewish leaders say their issue is that his stewardship of X has coincided with a proliferation of hate speech and antisemitic content on the platform. Musk says he is working hard to ban it.
Musk slammed Jewish groups for waged aggressive campaigns against him, blaming them for a 60% drop in advertisements on X.
The furore has embroiled tech and media firms like Amazon, NBC, and IBM, whose ads on the platform were found to be running alongside antisemitic posts.
Apple has stopped advertising on X, and politicians in both Brussels and Washington drew a line.
"It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history," said a White House spokesman.
This was in reference to the Pittsburgh synagogue attack in October 2018. The shooter, Robert Gregory Bowers, was motivated by the same theory that Musk endorsed.
A chill normal dude
The billionaire's troubles did not stop there. On 18 November, SpaceX's second spacecraft, Starship, exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
Musk famously owns the hugely successful space exploration company SpaceX, along with electric car company Tesla, a tunnelling company, an AI company, and a firm that is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Tesla CEO Elon Musk visit Kibbutz Kfar Azza in the border area with the Gaza Strip.
After its safety system detected a malfunction, the SpaceX Starship automatically exploded over water, to prevent debris landing over populated areas.
It was not Musk's first space-bound loss, far from it. An earlier attempt in April saw the spacecraft explode four minutes after lift-off over south Texas.
Yet Musk has ambitious plans for Starship. He wants it to travel as far as Mars, where he plans to establish a permanent human settlement.
As he said when introducing himself to the audience of Saturday Night Live: "To anyone I've offended, I just want to say: I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
Twinkle Twinkle Little Starlink
When writing his colossal 688-page book on Musk, Isaacson strayed from his usual storytelling approach.
His past biographical subjects have included Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci, which were hero-based narratives.
Here, he switches to a portrayal of the protagonist as troublemaker or villain.
The author, a seasoned journalist, is skilled at condensing the chaotic mass of human existence into a coherent dramatic structure, and an expert researcher, a skill he honed during his long tenure at CNN.
Be that as it may, a big claim within the book had to be corrected.
Isaacson said that, immediately prior to a Ukrainian naval raid on Russian-occupied Crimea, Musk 'turned off' his Starlink satellites, because he did not want to facilitate an act of war.
Starlink — his SpaceX constellation of low-orbiting satellites — has given Ukraine internet access ever since Russia invaded in February 2022.
But it was not 'turned off' over Crimea, because it was never 'turned on', owing to the peninsula being occupied.
When writing his colossal 688-page book on Musk, Isaacson strayed from his usual storytelling approach.
There is no doubt that Starlink has become a highly political tool or that Musk wields immense power by controlling it. Turning it off or on can open or close a population's door to the world when all other doors have been locked.
On 27 November, Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karkhi said in a tweet on X that Netanyahu and Musk had agreed that any use of Starlink in the Palestinian-Israeli territories, including the Gaza Strip, would require prior permission from Tel Aviv.
Depths of character
Isaacson has an innate gift for compelling storytelling, a rarity among biographical novelists, many of whom can leave their readers yawning.
Yet Isaacson's most exceptional talent is his unmatched ability to delve into the depths of his subjects. His characterisation of his biographies' protagonists is unparalleled.
He never simply glorifies the past but seeks to explain why these people were/are significant and how their legacies impact the present and the future.
He dispenses with superlatives and sifts the essence of his subjects to distill the lessons.
Musk's satellite-based Starlink system has kept Ukraine connected to the internet since its invasion by Russia
For instance, Einstein is a master of critical thinking, who can teach the art of scepticism to a polarised world of black-and-white in which everyone already knows the answer.
Henry Kissinger is a champion of realpolitik, a lesson to today's dogmatic political leaders, while Steve Jobs is a visionary who first imagines a future where science and art meet algorithms to improve our human existence.
Last, but not least, Leonardo da Vinci is an indecisive genius who, like many today, find the meaning of their existence in their hesitation.
Readers of Isaacson biographies will notice a change in style when his book on Musk, but his thorough analysis, first-rate sources, masterful contextualisation, and in-depth research remain consistent.
In the book, Isaacson shifts his focus from celebrating genius to recounting the life of a daring, mercurial "man-child" to highlight the dangers of ambitious endeavours.
Formative concrete steps
Elon Musk grew up in South Africa, where he was regularly bullied and beaten. One particularly brutal playground attack left him in hospital for a week with a severely swollen face, after he was pushed down concrete steps.
The scars remain, but the more lasting impact was inflicted by his unreliable and charismatic engineer father, Errol.
He would launch into hour-long rants at Musk, who would just have to stand there and listen to the abuse.
Musk grew up tough but vulnerable, a mercurial risk-taker with a grandiose, fervent enthusiasm bordering on the destructive.
It paid off. In 2021, he became the world's richest man, SpaceX launched 31 rockets into orbit, and Tesla sold nearly a million cars.
Yet by early 2022, he knew he needed to change. "I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about 14 years now, or arguably most of my life," he said.
Musk grew up tough but vulnerable, a mercurial risk-taker with enthusiasm bordering on the destructive. It paid off. In 2021, he became the world's richest man.
In Isaacson's book, we see Musk making his Twitter takeover decision overnight, taking on the whole global automobile industry to go all-in on electric cars, and aiming to establish the first settlement on Mars.
Each of these endeavours, together with their potential dangers, is presented as the brainchild of a self-assured, egotistical Musk.
Of course, Musk is not without his flaws, like other Isaacson subjects. One need only recall how Kissinger backed an anti-democratic coup in Chile that resulted in the death and disappearance of thousands.
As bad as many people believe Musk to be, he is yet to facilitate the killing of a democratically-elected president to enable the establishment of a fascist regime.
Musk and Jobs
Isaacson's departure from his usual style with Musk is most evident when comparing it to his biography of Steve Jobs, two undoubted tech geniuses.
The change in style may even reflect American societal change over the past two decades.
Whereas Isaacson criticised Jobs for various shortcomings, the context was generally more positive and flattering. With Musk, the opposite was true.
For the biography, Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years, attending his meetings, accompanying him on factory visits, then spending hours interviewing him, his family, friends, colleagues, and opponents.
Although he presented some of Musk's virtues, the overall portrait is of a character so troubled that he comes across as malevolent and harmful to society.
Yet in Isaacson's 2011 biography of Jobs, we learn that the Apple icon exploited the work of Steve Wozniak, appropriating inventions like the mouse and desktop icons from small IT companies.
He even stole Stewart Brand's quote "stay hungry, stay foolish".
Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years, attending meetings and factory visits and interviewing him, his family, friends, colleagues, and opponents for hours.
Alongside all that, he led the company to the brink of collapse before he was fired. As Balzac once said of America, "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime".
To read Musk's biography is to read of a man with ambition bordering on madness who constantly puts himself on the line.
It is a treasure hunt for the mysteries and details of Musk's obsessions, deviations, and disregard for rules.
By the end, readers see him as a man of privilege who sees the world as his playground.
The media image is of an insensitive control freak and uncompassionate drama king. But the same can be said about several billionaires.
Who amongst the world's wealthiest ever lived by the motto 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'?
Talk of the town
In the late 1990s, America had exported the 'Silicon Valley' idea to the world.
Journalist Don Hoefler coined the term in 1972 to refer to the area of San Francisco, now home to big tech firms like Facebook, Google, and Apple.
Elon Musk
During those years, a few start-ups based there were on the brink of changing the lives of billions of people forever, heralding profits thus far unheard of for investors.
A well-written story is the most effective way to spread an idea, and Isaacson's biography of Jobs did just that.
It portrayed him as 'that friend you'd meet in the coffee shop with big plans, semi-fictional projects, and an obsessive attention to detail'.
Yet if Jobs was the talk of the town yesterday, Musk is the talk of the town today.
And if yesterday the coffee shop talk was of start-ups, today it is about brands and the ability to streamline the effective targeting of products.
This Musk book is not just another business success story. When challenged, Musk has many dark places in which to go, savage playground beatings being one.
The result is an intimate narrative filled with remarkable stories of triumph and turmoil, that ultimately begs the question: are the demons that drive Musk what we truly need to fuel innovation and progress?
