Elon Musk and the one trillion-dollar algorithm that explains everything he does

Five bullet points show the motivation behind everything from rocket launches to buying Twitter, writes Anthony Cuthbertson

(Composite/ The Independent)

Elon Musk has never written a book, but if he did he might call it The Art of the Algorithm. Unlike the brash boardroom bravado that Donald Trump claimed was the key to success in his 1987 business manual, Musk takes a far more scientific approach. 

It is detailed in Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the tech billionaire, which saw the writer spend two years shadowing his subject and speaking to more than 100 of his friends, family members, colleagues, employees and rivals. 

As a result, the book offers an unparalleled insight into Musk’s life, work and motivations, ranging from the trivial – you learn that Musk’s parents were originally going to call him Nice after the city he was conceived in – to the deeply personal. 

Along with unwarranted firings and bullying attacks on staff, one anecdote reveals an uncomprehendingly callous side to Musk that saw him refuse to lend his brother $10 million in 2018 in order to rescue his faltering restaurant business. This was despite his brother Kimball previously sacrificing his own capital and time to help save Tesla when it was on the brink of failure. (That’s without mentioning that $10 million represented less than 0.05 per cent of Musk’s net worth at the time – the equivalent of someone with $10,000 in their bank account not lending you $5.) “I was absolutely furious with Elon and didn’t speak with him,” Kimball Musk recalled to Isaacson. “I felt like I lost my brother… At that point I was like, ‘I’m done with you.’”

You also find out that Musk takes an almost unnerving amount of design inspiration from toy cars, robots and Lego – and that some Tesla engineers were so upset with the design of the company’s Cybertruck that they secretly crafted alternative options. 

But perhaps the most revelatory moment of the 615-page book is when Musk outlines what he calls his “algorithm”.It comprises five key steps that Musk repeats “to an annoying degree” to those around him. They are detailed in full in the book (p.284-6 in the hardback edition if you’re interested), and are seen as inseparable from Musk’s success. The quick version, in order, is as follows:

1.) Question every requirement

2.) Delete any part that is unnecessary

3.) Simplify and optimise

4.) Accelerate cycle time

5.) Automate

The algorithm also comes with a few corollaries, which warn that “comradery is dangerous”, and call for “a maniacal sense of urgency”. It also advises that “the only rules are the ones dictated by physics, everything else is a recommendation”.

These five points and addendums are the reason his companies have a combined market cap north of $1 trillion, making him the richest person on the planet. They also explain his tumultuous relationships with colleagues and family – as well as his tendency to consistently undermine the authority of regulators like the FAA and FTC. They also make his decision to purchase Twitter clear, together with the reason he undertook such a radical overhaul of the platform. 

He transforms the Silicon Valley adage of ‘move fast and break things’ to ‘move maniacally and delete things’ – all for seemingly impossible targets like making humans multiplanetary through SpaceX, preventing climate change through the transition towards electric vehicles with Tesla, solving traffic through his tunnel-digging venture The Boring Company, staving off the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence through his brain chip startup Neuralink, and creating an “everything app” that connects the world through X.  

Whatever your thoughts on Musk, his algorithm has helped him become the most successful businessman and technologist of this century. But the biography of Isaacson, whose previous subjects include Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs, also reveals that he is a mercurial megalomaniac with a messiah-like complex to save humanity, no matter what he has to delete along the way.

A version of this piece appeared in the IndyTech newsletter. To subscribe to receive all the latest in news and analysis, click here.