When he heard the word "psychological safety," Musk smiled wryly. He sees this as the enemy of urgency, progress, orbital speed. His favorite buzzword is "hardcore." He believes that discomfort is a good thing, a weapon against the scourge of complacency.
Walter Isaacson's new biography, Elon Musk, is scheduled for publication on September 12.
In his new biography, Elon Musk, the famous American biographer Walter Isaacson tells the behind-the-scenes story of Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), who acquired Twitter, in one of the most surprising and controversial decisions of his career. On August 31, local time, the Wall Street Journal disclosed part of the book.
Isaacson, a former journalist and editor-in-chief of Time magazine, wrote biographies of Apple founder Steve Jobs, scientists Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, and diplomat Henry Kissinger. Elon Musk is scheduled to be published on September 12.
"Battle status is my default setting"
According to the book, in April 2022, everything on Musk went surprisingly smoothly. Tesla's stock price has risen 15-fold in five years, and its market capitalization exceeds the next nine car companies combined. SpaceX launched twice as many launches in the first quarter of 2022 as all other companies and countries combined. If Musk can get through it safely, it will be a brilliant year. But that's not his nature.
According to Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink and mother of two, Musk was like a video game addict in early April, and although he won, he couldn't pull the plug and felt itchy. "You don't have to be in combat all the time." She told him, "Or do you find greater comfort when you're in a time of fighting?" He replied, "That's part of my default settings." ”
Coincidentally, Musk happened to cash out some expiring stock options during this period, receiving about $10 billion in cash. "I don't want to leave it in the bank." "So I asked myself what product I liked, and it was a simple question, Twitter," he said. In January of that year, he secretly told his private business manager, Jared Birchall, to start buying stocks.
Musk sees Twitter as a way to realize his initial idea. "Twitter could be what X.com should be." He told Isaacson, "We can help save free speech in the process." X.com is the company he started more than 20 years ago, and he wants to make it a "one-size-fits-all app" for all personal financial transactions and social connections.
In October 2000, Elon Musk (right) and Peter Thiel's companies merged to form PayPal. Musk fought to keep X.com as the name of the combined company, but his new colleagues resisted.
Meanwhile, another thing deeply stimulated Musk. He is increasingly concerned about the dangers of what he calls the "awakening virus," which he believes is infecting the United States. Awakening is what Americans have called left-wing political movements since the 2010s for people of color, LGBTI people, and women's identity politics. "Civilization will never become multi-planet unless the fundamentally anti-scientific, anti-moral, and anti-human awakening virus stops." He told Isaacson.
Musk's anti-arousal sentiment was sparked in part by his oldest child, Xavier, who decided to transition. When he found out that the child was transgender, he was generally optimistic, but then Jenna (who changed her name after Xavier) broke off all relationships with him. Musk said she believes anyone who is rich is evil. Since the death of his eldest son, this rift has been the most painful thing in his life. He blamed it in part on the ideology Jenna absorbed while attending a Los Angeles school. He believes Twitter has been similarly influenced by the suppression of right-wing and anti-establishment voices.
A new social media platform based on blockchain with payment functions
After dinner with then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Musk agreed to accept Agrawal's invitation to join Twitter's board. But he felt Agrawal was too flattering: "What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon." He said after that meeting, "And Parag wasn't like that." ”
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
After some time, Musk threw out some ideas while chatting with close friends. "What if we charged people a small fee, say two dollars a month, for verification?" He said access to users' credit card information would help eliminate fake bot accounts online, provide new revenue streams and facilitate his goal of turning Twitter into a payment platform. "It fulfills my original vision for X.com and PayPal." Musk said to his friend with a smile.
The next day, Musk's brother, Kimbal, told him over lunch that it would be best to launch a new blockchain-based social media platform. Musk was intrigued, half-jokingly saying that maybe there could be a payment system that uses Dogecoin. Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency whose development he has been quietly funding. After lunch, he sent Kimball a few text messages detailing the idea of "a blockchain social media system that can both make payments and send text messages like Twitter."
Musk then flew to Lanai, the Hawaiian island of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. He planned the trip to meet Australian actress Natasha Bassett, whom he occasionally dates. During these 4 days, he thought about how to deal with Twitter.
On the first night, when Musk looked at the list of users with the most followers, he found that they were no longer active. So, at 3:32 a.m. Hawaii time, he tweeted: "Most 'top-tier' accounts tweet very little and post very little content. Is Twitter dying? He then confronted Agrawal online.
Musk said that when he arrived in Hawaii, it was clear to him that there was no way to fix Twitter or turn it into a X.com by joining the board.
Musk is also texting with Kimbal to discuss the idea of starting a new social media company. "I think there needs to be a new social media company that is based on blockchain and includes payment capabilities." He wrote. But by late that afternoon, he embraced the idea of acquiring Twitter. "It already has a certain user base." He told Isaacson, "You need this booster to start X.com." ”
Musk then flew to Vancouver to meet his intermittent girlfriend, Claire Boucher, an artist whose stage name is "Grimes." She kept urging him to go there so she could introduce their son X to her parents and elderly grandparents. But when she was going to drive to see her parents, she decided to leave Musk at the hotel. "I could tell he was in stress mode." She said.
Later that afternoon, Musk texted to present his formal decision. "After a few days of deliberation — which is obviously a serious issue — I decided to go ahead and take Twitter private." He said.
That night, Grimes returned to the hotel to find Musk immersed in a new video game to relax. "He didn't sleep." Grimes said, "He played until 5:30 a.m. Soon after, he tweeted: "I made an offer. ”
The FTX founders wanted to be involved in the acquisition of Twitter
Musk's story of finding outside investors has also had twists and turns.
Ellison agreed to join, contributing $1 billion. But he hasn't tweeted in a decade and can't even remember his Twitter password, so Musk had to reset it for him himself. But Ellison thinks Twitter is important. "It's a real-time news service and there's nothing better than that."
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and not yet discredited at the time, was eager to participate in the deal. FTX declared bankruptcy late last year, and Bankman-Fried, who is facing criminal charges including fraud, has been put into custody.
At the time, Musk's Morgan Stanley banker urged him to call Bankman-Fried, saying he was "going to do engineering work for blockchain integration of social media" and investing $5 billion in the deal.
Despite discussing with Kimball the idea of building a social network on the blockchain, Musk felt that the approach was too slow to support fast-paced Twitter posts, so he didn't want to meet Banksman-Fried. "Blockchain Twitter is not possible because peer-to-peer networks cannot support bandwidth and latency requirements." He said he could meet with Bankman-Fried at some point, "as long as I don't have to have a tough blockchain debate." ”
Later, Musk spoke with Bankman-Fried. "My detector goes off like a red alarm on a Geiger counter." Musk said that Bankman-Friede was fast and talked about his own business. "He speaks in a tone like he's accelerating or Adderall [a stimulant], a mile a minute." Musk said, "I thought he should have asked me questions about the deal, but he kept telling me what he was doing. I was like, 'Man, calm down. The call lasted half an hour, and Bankman-Fried ended up with no investment.
Isaacson revealed that Musk's mood swings were intense in the months between the deal agreement and the official deal.
Whistleblowers and others convinced Musk that Twitter was lying about the actual number of users, that his initial offer of $44 billion was too high, and that he wanted a better deal. The lawyer eventually convinced him that if he went to court, he would lose the case and that it was better to close the deal on its original terms. By then, he had regained some enthusiasm for taking over the company. "I should pay full price, so to speak, because the people who run Twitter are fools and idiots." He told Isaacson at the end of last September, "The potential is so huge. There are a lot of things I can fix. He agreed to formally close the deal in October.
"All these damn birds must leave"
The book describes details of Musk's visit to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco before the acquisition. The headquarters is located in a 10-story Art Deco building built in 1937, renovated in a technologically stylish style, with a coffee bar, yoga room, gym and games hall. The spacious café on the 9th floor offers free meals, from artisanal burgers to vegan salads. Signs in the bathroom read "Gender diversity is welcome here," and as Musk rummaged through cabinets full of Twitter-branded merchandise, he found T-shirts with the words "Stay awake."
On October 26, 2022, just before Musk's acquisition of Twitter was about to be completed, he jokingly walked into Twitter headquarters with a sink and tweeted, "Come to Twitter headquarters, you taste, you taste!" （let that sink in!）”
Twitter's style is very different from Musk's. The company prides itself on being a friendly place, and doting is considered a virtue. "We absolutely have a high level of empathy and care a lot about inclusion and diversity; Everyone needs to feel safe here. Leslie Berland, Twitter's chief marketing and personnel officer, said she was later fired by Musk. The company has a permanent work-from-home policy and allows for a mental "day off" each month. One of the buzzwords commonly used by the company is "psychological safety."
Isaacson described Musk smiling wryly when he heard the word "psychological safety." He sees this as the enemy of urgency, progress, orbital speed. His favorite buzzword is "hardcore." He believes that discomfort is a good thing, a weapon against the scourge of complacency.
Musk then became disgusted by the ubiquitous Twitter bluebird logo. "All these damn birds have to leave." He told a friend.
After completing the acquisition, Musk's aides handed over dismissal letters to Agrawal and three of his executives, the book said. Minutes later, Musk's senior security officials came to the second-floor conference room and said everyone's access to email had been cut off. Agrawal had prepared a letter of resignation citing a change of control, but when his email was cut off, it took him a few minutes to send the document to Gmail mail. By then, he had already been fired by Musk.