Musk the messiah (or a very naughty boy?)

What’s worse: working for him, living with him or simply being him? You’ll find the (at times disturbing) answers in this mesmerising new biography of the Monty Python-obsessed Elon Musk, writes Sean O’Grady

Brought to book: copies of Walter Isaacson’s unauthorised biography ‘Elon Musk' at a Barnes & Noble in Glendale, California (EPA)

Elon Musk, as is widely acknowledged, is not a very nice man. But I’m not quite sure which of the experiences mesmerisingly portrayed in Walter Isaacson’s superb biography is worse: working for Elon Musk; being related to, or in a relationship with Musk; or actually being Musk, who makes being the richest person in the world (worth about $300bn) much less fun than it might be.

Getting employed by Musk is certainly incompatible with the pursuit of human happiness, at least if you end up at close quarters with this emotionless slave-driving workaholic. Isaacson was very wise to break his meaty 616-page work into 95 chapters, plus a prologue (“Muse of Fire”, which hints at Isaacson’s very occasional slides into idolatry). Such is the complexity of Musk’s personality, business dealings and personal life that they can only be digested in the form of anecdotal, often first-hand vignettes; in effect, 96 glimpses of Musk. The author was allowed to bum around with “the most controversial innovator of our era” for two years, read his texts and emails, interview his friends and enemies, his family and associates. He forms his own conclusions, which are mostly admirably balanced and mature. It’s not an “authorised” biography – at least, not in the worst sense of the term – and given Musk’s tendency to control, it is remarkable Musk didn’t even read the manuscript pre-publication. At any rate, it’s the best we’re going to get for a while.

Even so, sometimes the narrative does get repetitive. Once you have vicariously witnessed Musk bullying some hapless executive with impossible demands, you don’t really want many encores, but it is such a central feature of the Musk way of doing things that it does take up quite a bit of the book. It’s how he got the biggest rocket in history into orbit, I suppose, though I’m not convinced that is essential. It is always the same routine. Fixing them in his sci-fi laser-style stare, Musk will tell someone to put a chip into a pig’s brain that will transmit thoughts to a laptop, and complete it by the weekend. If they are stupid enough to “push back”, Elon tells them to do it anyway or their “resignation will be accepted”. I exaggerate only slightly. There’s a lot of that in the book, and the demanding deadlines are dished out to friends, relatives and strangers with equal indifference to personal circumstances. Isaacson, in his quest for a comprehensive audit of the Musk phenomenon, errs slightly on the side of the voyeur in these encounters, but I can’t blame him. It’s quite the spectacle.

There is no sense that Elon Musk seeks sympathy for any of his psychological flaws or emotional traumas, nor that he needs it (Getty for The Met Museum)

The way Musk sees the world, there’s no room for hurt feelings in the world of physics or business, and empathy gets in the way of success. He doesn’t spare himself, and doesn’t see why he should park you from pulling an all-nighter. So, no, you don’t want to be working for Musk, nor be a contractor or a business partner.

As for a life partner… well, he’s had 11 children (10 surviving) with four women, mostly through IVF and, as far as one can tell, with two principal motivations. The first is that he thinks the main purpose of being alive is to reproduce (he does not have much of a spiritual side); the second is that he has a lot of fun dreaming up embarrassing names for them. Musk is a man who was bullied so badly at school in South Africa that he still undergoes corrective surgery on his nose tissue. Yet he seems to think it OK to send his own offspring into their respective playgrounds having to live down names such as Y (his daughter, who was previously named Exa Dark Sideræl and narrowly escaped being called Andromeda Synthesis Story Musk… perhaps someone noticed her initials would then spell ASS Musk, which would be unfortunate). So keen is Musk on procreation, that at one point, and unknown to each other, two women – Grimes (real name Claire Boucher), and Shivon Gillis – were simultaneously having more of his children.

So what’s it like, being Elon Musk? Well, there’s been a whole load of hurt in his life, mostly inflicted by his “adventurer” father Errol, who routinely insulted and humiliated him during his upbringing in Pretoria, just as Musk does to others now. This is not to excuse Musk’s personal excesses, but it is essential context. Errol Musk did have a lot of money, at one time running a racket involving diamonds moving illicitly out of Zambia, the proceeds of which helped fund a Rolls-Royce Corniche, good education for the kids and a comfortable lifestyle. But Errol also went bust from time to time, and you can’t really argue that Elon was fabulously privileged; emotionally, he was dragged up in abject poverty, despite the adulation of doting mum, Maye.

Elon found he could cope with all this by escaping into the world of science fiction, especially the works of Isaac Asimov. Humanoid robots and settlements on remote planets were the themes that intrigued him most. His relationship with his father, despite sporadic outbreaks of goodwill, has been poor and now they are not on speaking terms. From his vast fortune, Elon sends his father $2,000 a month. Maye, by contrast, is spoilt – if that’s the right word.

To say Musk is anti-woke is an understatement and, for such a logical mind, his revulsion is fairly irrational

One of the most disturbing passages in this sometimes startling biography concerns Errol’s relationship with his stepdaughter, Jana. On a rare family visit, when Errol was 56 and Jana 15, the book claims that Elon was so disturbed by Errol’s behaviour towards the girl that he ended the visit. Musk and his brother Kimbal were even more “creeped out” at a meeting a decade later when they discovered that Jana, whom they had partly grown up with and treated as a sister, had been made pregnant by Errol. Elsewhere, Elon observes: “My father will have a carefully thought out plan of evil. He will plan evil. Almost every crime you can think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”

Still more distressing for Musk has been his estrangement from his trans daughter, Jenna Wilson. She rejected her father in changing her name from Xavier Musk and by embracing socialism. Musk tried to appease her by accepting her transition, selling his mansions, adopting a simpler lifestyle and living in a two-bedroom house near his dusty Texas space centre. That actually suited his outlook, which is not especially materialistic; he once remarked that his Amazon rival Jeff Bezos spends too much time in the hot tub for the good of his business. But it was to no avail with Jenna, and Musk famously blames the “woke-mind virus” for the rift –  “I lost a son”. It’s one reason why he decided to acquire Twitter, as well as to use it to prevent rivals such as Google boss Larry Page from controlling the cultural framework and vocabulary of Artificial Intelligence. To say Musk is anti-woke is an understatement and, for such a logical mind, his revulsion is fairly irrational: “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally antiscience, antimerit, and antihuman in general, is stopped, civilisation will never become multiplanetary.”

There is no sense that Elon Musk seeks sympathy for any of his psychological flaws or emotional traumas, nor that he needs it. That’s because being Elon Musk is comparatively easy. He enjoys taking risks, is restless, lacks empathy, is self-diagnosed with Asperger’s, and is at his happiest playing strategic empire-building video games such as Polytopia and Civilisation until his eyes burn. He’s what you might call self-contained. He has a few simple, if unconventional, goals in life, to which he is dedicated. Everything and everyone is suborned to the ascendancy of the electric car, to save the planet, and to the establishment of a human colony on Mars in case Earth gets destroyed by climate change or nuclear war. Those are the transcendent drivers of Musk: he wears an Occupy Mars T-shirt, after all. He means it.

It’s all inspired by science fiction and, as Isaacson notes, Musk lives his life as a human amalgam of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, The Matrix, Marvel Comics, and Asimov. Rockets, social media, politics, family life, money, all are means to the end of saving humanity by making us a “space-faring civilisation” able to conquer disability through hi-tech neural interventions and beating climate change with affordable electric cars. It’s all admirable in its way, if a touch crazed, but it is hard to avoid concluding he is possessed of a messiah complex. As he is so tediously fond of quoting Monty Python scripts, we might conclude that “he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy”. Trouble is, whether we like it or not, we’re increasingly subject to this naughty boy’s gravitational pull.

‘Elon Musk’ by Walter Isaacson is published by Simon & Schuster, £28