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Alex Gibney, the director of the new documentary “Musk,” on how the richest man in the world consolidated his power—and now wields it with abandon.
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00:00Welcome to The Political Scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics.
00:06I'm Evan Osnos, and I'm joined as ever by my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser.
00:12Hi, Jane, and hi, Susan.
00:14Hey there, great to be with you.
00:16Hey, guys, so great to be with you.
00:20Jane, I want to start with a number.
00:22Since July, Elon Musk has given more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Republicans.
00:29That makes him the biggest known donor in this year's midterms, and it's not even close.
00:37So, you know, I feel like by now that the dollar figures around politics have gotten so wild that they
00:44kind of leave us numb,
00:46unless you really slow down and just think about it for a second.
00:50And so I wonder, you've been looking at these kinds of numbers in politics for a long time.
00:54How extraordinary is it now that we have Musk at this level?
00:58It's unbelievable.
01:00I mean, and it is a shame that it's so numbing because I think it's making people not realize the
01:05extent of this situation
01:07and just how dire it is that you can have this kind of money in politics.
01:10Basically, if you can buy an election, this will be the test of it because you can, I mean, the
01:18amount of money is so massive, so phenomenal, so overpowering that, you know,
01:25if that's what makes the difference, it will make the difference.
01:29And we've seen this already once, you know, with Musk.
01:32I mean, in the 2024 election, he broke all the records in the amount of spending.
01:37He spent $290 million, they think.
01:40And he's breaking that record just in the midterm elections now.
01:44People think that he's probably spent $366 million so far in this election, and that's what's visible.
01:52Everybody believes there's quite a bit more money being spent under the table in various curious ways.
01:58So it's just unfathomable.
02:00I think part of what is startling about this, Susan, is that it was only a year and a half
02:06ago, after all.
02:07Remember, Musk was, at that point, he was running Doge.
02:10He's got his chainsaw on stage.
02:14He's talking about feeding USAID into the wood chipper.
02:18You've got agencies thrown totally into chaos in this town.
02:23And then it was over, and Musk said that he was, you'll recall, stepping back from politics.
02:28It seemed as if he had gotten singed.
02:30You had, you know, Tesla sales were down, his approval ratings, which, ironic that we now need those for billionaires,
02:38were in the toilet.
02:41But something changed.
02:42That didn't last long, right?
02:44Why is he back in politics?
02:48You know, here's the thing.
02:50When the history of this moment is written, think about how you would approach the world's wealthiest man spending more
03:01money than any human being, any single human being in the history of American elections to essentially win first a
03:13presidential election.
03:14Now, to come in and basically be the single sponsor of a Senate race in one of the most populous
03:22states in the country, Texas.
03:24And that you would do so while at the same time being one of the contractors for the United States
03:30government and controlling one of the main platforms for political speech in the country and, you know, having a government
03:39agency created for you in order to destroy other government agencies without Congress, without oversight, without any accountability whatsoever.
03:48I mean, the addictive quality of that for someone who seems to have, you know, a very addictive personality, I
03:56can imagine that it would be very, very hard for Elon Musk to walk away from that kind of power
04:03and influence.
04:03So, like, I'm not surprised that he's back dominating this.
04:07I do think it's the commingling of his interests, the lack of transparency.
04:13Just the other day, Pete Hegseth announced that Elon Musk was going to be one of three people he was
04:20appointing to a commission essentially to determine the military's future.
04:24Can you imagine appointing a government contractor to decide how the government should spend its military money in the future?
04:32And Susan, I mean, just to be clear, we just even in the last few days saw an indication of
04:37this bizarre fusion of commercial and strategic power.
04:42I mean, what happened with Starshield in Ukraine, according to Reuters?
04:48This is an astonishing story.
04:50Yeah, you know, I mean, Elon Musk's technology called Starlink, the satellite service, is absolutely crucial to the defense of
04:58Ukraine, to the communication system.
05:01It's something the Pentagon didn't have.
05:03And Musk stepped in at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and provided this service.
05:13Now the U.S. government, the Pentagon pays for it, and that's called Starshield.
05:17How amazing that Donald Trump, by the way, alongside Elon Musk, decided to have a public feud with Vladimir Zelensky
05:26this week in the middle of which, right in the middle of an enormous Russian bombardment of civilian targets once
05:33again across Ukraine, this system suddenly stopped working.
05:38It meant that Ukraine was left enormously vulnerable in the middle of Trump's political feud with its leaders.
05:45I mean, you know, this is a kind of life-in-death power that's remarkable.
05:49Now, how fascinating that Musk immediately blamed this.
05:53He said, well, it's not me.
05:54It's the Pentagon.
05:54It's the U.S. government that controls this lever.
05:57And actually, Reuters then reported the call came from directly inside the White House to shut this down.
06:03This is a technology that is so powerful, Evan, that, you know, Ukrainian civilians live and die whether Elon Musk's
06:11satellite is working over their country in the middle of war.
06:16Well, amazing.
06:18Control and power.
06:20That is our topic today.
06:22In the person of Elon Musk, how did one man come to hold this much power over our politics, over
06:29our technology, even our wars?
06:31And what does it mean for a democracy when so much of its power and control rests in private hands?
06:38To help us think these through, guys, we are joined this week by the ideal guest, by Alex Gibney, the
06:45Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind countless documentaries, including Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room, and, of course,
06:53Going Clear, which is his film about Scientology.
06:55The New Yorker, in a piece about his new documentary called Musk, writes, everyone should watch this film as if
07:04their lives depended on it.
07:06Alex Gibney, welcome to the show.
07:08Thank you so much.
07:10Alex, you have steeped yourself now in Elon Musk's motives, his calculations.
07:18And I want to start with how he relates to something like the midterm elections.
07:24As we talked about a minute ago, Musk has poured at least a quarter of a billion dollars into this
07:30election.
07:31And I want to understand what's at stake for him here.
07:35What does he stand to lose, really, if the Democrats gain?
07:39Or what does he stand to gain if they fall short?
07:43And really, I'm trying to understand is, does he see his political work, as far as you can tell, as
07:49an extension of his business ambitions?
07:51Or is it part of something larger?
07:56Like everything with Musk, there's a kind of a shiny object in one hand, and then the real story in
08:01another hand.
08:03Everything's both a joke and deadly serious.
08:05You know, I think he would like to evince this idea that he's part of some anti-woke political project.
08:13But I think this really has far more to do with pragmatics for him.
08:17I mean, if the Democrats take the House and the Senate, I mean, there's going to be multiple investigations into
08:23Musk.
08:24This was the reason why he rolled so much money into the Trump campaign, is because, you know, his companies
08:30were facing federal civil investigations.
08:32There were state investigations, and there was a criminal investigation that might have landed him in prison.
08:37In fact, in the film, he sort of jokes about it with Tucker Carlson.
08:41I wonder how long my prison sentence is going to be.
08:43If he loses, man, what?
08:48You're fucked, dude.
08:50I'm fucked.
08:51If he loses, I'm fucked.
08:53It does seem that way.
08:55You can't just be like, you can't just be like, yo, I...
08:58Yeah, I'm like, how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?
09:01Do you think, will I see my children?
09:03I don't know.
09:05It was a joke, but it wasn't a joke at the same time.
09:08So I really do think this is his way of forestalling those investigations, which might ultimately lead to criminal investigations
09:17in 2028 or 2029.
09:20not with the current Department of Justice, but also I think it's a gravy train for him.
09:27I mean, he has really mastered the art of, I wouldn't even say regulatory capture.
09:33He's just opened the bank in terms of the money that flows to his businesses.
09:41It's crony capitalism at the highest order.
09:43So it's kind of an old wine in a new bottle, I think.
09:46But now, thanks to the stock market, he has this fabulous fortune to throw at this stuff.
09:51I think I read someplace recently that he put in something like $150 million for Paxton.
09:58Yeah, $150 million.
09:59Just Paxton alone, yeah.
10:01Yeah.
10:01I mean, and so if he's trying to basically buy off investigations, what are the liabilities you think he had?
10:09Is this about killing people in the autonomous cars or what?
10:14Well, that's what I think that's what the criminal investigation is about.
10:18There was a robust criminal investigation into fraud relating to full self-driving because, of course, 67 people are dead
10:25as a result of that.
10:27And the question is, did he know how bad the product was while he was touting it as full self
10:32-driving?
10:32Because in 2016, he ran an ad, said it's all good, full self-driving.
10:38And that was at a time when his cars couldn't tell the difference between a red light and a green
10:43light.
10:43So that's really the criminal case.
10:46Though I think there are other criminal cases that could be brought relating to what he did at Doge, to
10:51be honest with you, in terms of the extraction of our data.
10:56And nobody's properly investigated that, again, because we don't really have a federal investigative arm right now, except as an
11:03instrument of revenge.
11:05So that's what I think he's worried about.
11:08But there's a whole lot of other, you know, he wanted to get rid of the CFPB because of, you
11:15know, investigations into what will soon become a kind of money platform for him.
11:20And even USAID had a regulatory function, which people don't talk about that much, but that I suspect is one
11:28of the reasons he went after it so hard.
11:30You mentioned Doge.
11:31I have to say, watching your extraordinary film, I really was having a flashback to this sort of iconic moment,
11:39which you do show of him on stage at Madison Square Garden in that remarkable pre-election rally for Donald
11:46Trump in the fall of 2024.
11:48Madison Square Garden, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States
11:59of America.
12:00Musk obviously has evolved, is a charitable word, changed a lot politically.
12:06You know, back in 2015, he was even giving something to Democrats.
12:09He was presenting himself as, you know, a champion of the environment who cared about saving the environment.
12:15Then in the space of a few years, by 2024, he emerges as the single biggest financial supporter of Donald
12:23Trump.
12:23You cover this a bit.
12:25It was a conversion, but we still don't know exactly, you know, sort of what triggered it, right?
12:31There's this scene in Palm Beach where he meets Donald Trump, right?
12:36And the other billionaires are facilitating, essentially, this connection that becomes the connection between the richest man in the world
12:45and the most powerful man in the world, but one that didn't exist before, right?
12:49He goes from this initial meeting in Palm Beach to on this stage at Madison Square Garden, right?
12:56And he and Howard Lutnick are there.
12:57And they promised a couple of things that are amazing in hindsight, right?
13:00Number one, they say they're going to cut $2 trillion, right, from the U.S. budget.
13:06Now, here we are, right?
13:08That's A, that's everything.
13:10But here we are a couple of years later, and they've added money to the federal budget.
13:16And then, number two, oh, we're just going to hand over this power into this sort of, quote, unquote, government
13:23agency that's not really a government agency and let him come in and do whatever he wants.
13:28The journey on that alone, right, will fill a million books, a million historians.
13:33But I'd love your initial take on, like, was it ideological?
13:37Like, you know, was it just a man given too much power who shows up in Washington and doesn't know
13:43what the heck he's doing?
13:44I mean, what did we just experience here?
13:48I know.
13:50He presents an interesting conundrum because on the one hand, he's got enormous power and influence.
13:58And yet he's fundamentally not as serious a character as you would hope for for somebody who wields that much
14:06power and influence.
14:06In fact, there's an aspect of him that's just downright childish.
14:10And in this, I suppose he reminds us of Donald Trump.
14:12But, you know, I think he comes in and he gets handed the reins to Doge, this weird agency.
14:23It's not really an agency.
14:25It's just power, right?
14:26And it's kind of Donald Trump's genius move in a way because he allows Elon Musk then to roll forward
14:34and essentially destroy the regulatory state.
14:38And then if he goes too far, Trump can just go, oh, it's Elon.
14:42You know, what can I do?
14:44Well, you didn't have to give him that much power.
14:47But I honestly think that for Musk, he didn't and this was never really about fraud, waste, fraud and abuse,
14:53though there's a moment where he he becomes visibly upset that that Trump is expanding the deficit.
14:59So I think, you know, there's all sorts of weird cognitive dissonance going on where he he imbues himself with
15:05a sense of righteousness.
15:06But I think the project was really about two things, destroying the regulatory state and start first with all the
15:13agencies that regulate you, i.e. Elon Musk.
15:16And then two, it was a data move here, which I think has been underappreciated because these Doge boys didn't
15:23know anything about the agencies they went into.
15:26But they got super admin status and were able to have full and total access to to the data of
15:35the federal government kind of jaw dropping.
15:37And to that that question of sort of what is the intent, what is the goal?
15:43I find that to be this recurring point.
15:47And that's sort of at the center of this movie.
15:49You get this fascinating journey where you're kind of being led through this process of in some ways it's the
15:56core question, which is why?
15:58Why does he do the things he's doing?
16:00And the central metaphor in the film is that, as he often talks about, you know, maybe we're living in
16:05a simulation.
16:05He lives his life as if he's in a video game in which he is ready player one and everyone
16:11else is sort of immaterial.
16:14I mean, if you step beyond the immediate questions of regulatory dis of dismantling the regulatory state or of forestalling
16:22investigations into his businesses,
16:25when you really get to the kind of molten core of Elon Musk, Alex, what do you see as the
16:31as the driving force?
16:35What was that famous quote about, you know, when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back to you?
16:44I think that may be the scariest thing of all.
16:47There's a quote at the end.
16:48There's an interview at the end of the film where somebody asks him, you know, you've accreted all this power
16:54that has this extraordinary amount of reach.
16:59Why?
17:01And he literally can't answer the question.
17:03He's stymied.
17:05It's like when they asked Ted Kennedy, why are you running for president?
17:07And so it's just a jaw dropping moment.
17:12You think you're you're gathering all of this power and control over all our lives.
17:17And yet you don't really know or understand why.
17:21I thought that was an incredible moment in the film.
17:23There's so many unbelievable moments in this film, though.
17:27One of the things I hadn't realized, though, and I'm curious when you talk about his his political rattle radicalization,
17:33was that it seemed like covid really played a part in in changing his views of government.
17:41Or is that or is that just another fake thing?
17:44And he wanted to keep making money.
17:46I couldn't really tell.
17:48What do you think?
17:49Was covid really a radicalization moment for him?
17:52I do think it was.
17:54But in a way, it also goes back to these pragmatic issues.
17:58You know, he was on a mission and his mission was to make Tesla succeed.
18:02And these people, these bureaucrats in California were caring too much about the safety and lives of his workers.
18:10And they were getting in the way of production.
18:12But he then wraps it up into a much bigger deal.
18:16You know, instead of being a pragmatic reaction to a massive public health problem,
18:24he sees it as kind of this broad government overreach.
18:28And so it becomes part of this newfound libertarian idea, which is also a personal idea.
18:33Like he's never liked the idea of any constraints on his own power, whether it's in his marriages or whether
18:40it's in his companies.
18:42And that and the more power he got, the worse that impulse came.
18:46So I do think that broke his brain somewhat.
18:49And it's when he moves from California to Texas, which is both at once a kind of gut check thing.
18:55Now he's going to wear the cowboy hat and embrace all of that, those memes.
18:59But it's also very pragmatic.
19:02I mean, Texas is the ultimate pay to play state.
19:05But it really did have an impact on him, I think, because because in 2022, that's when you see the
19:12the giving to the Republican Party really go through the roof.
19:15It's like 50 million dollars in 2022, though he does it secretly because he knows that, you know, liberals buy
19:22Tesla's.
19:24So he's being careful.
19:26It's only 2024 where he goes all in for for Trump.
19:30But I do think covid was a was a moment for him.
19:32You know, it's really interesting, this kind of journey, you know, radicalization of a billionaire kind of story, because on
19:41constraints, he goes also from being.
19:46One of the original A.I. doomers, right, one of the original people who's both fascinated by this power, but
19:52also talking in terms of, you know, guardrails.
19:55He's one of the founders of open A.I. before he braced with it, you know, into now leading the
20:02way.
20:02And I feel like at this moment in time for your investigation of Elon to come out, it seems really
20:10remarkable, given that we're literally watching day by day as these these frontier companies are admitting every single day things
20:20that, you know, should sort of fry our heads.
20:22But, you know, meanwhile, we're caught up in our own political dysfunction.
20:28I think it's it's blinding us to this even bigger story.
20:33And and Musk, again, is at the center of the A.I. thing.
20:36I'm just amazed he's at the center of every story.
20:38But everything I'd love you to talk a little bit about the A.I. piece, because I think the question
20:44of whether there's just a self-interest here that is taking someone and who warned us about this technology.
20:51And now pretending that he didn't warn us about it.
20:54Like, what does that tell us?
20:56How should we think about Musk and A.I.?
20:58Will he flip back possibly or is it already too late?
21:01It's a really interesting question.
21:03And I went into this film not really knowing the answer.
21:08And I still can't say I definitively know the answer, but I was intrigued by the irony of it.
21:12In other words, he's the guy who says we're summoning the demon, you know, in relationship to A.I.
21:17and then starts open A.I., which was allegedly, you know, this altruistic thing to look into the ethics of
21:24it, out of which grew, of course, a different kind of company.
21:28But it's interesting.
21:30One of the things I discovered it was even as he was sounding the alarm and he was a doomer,
21:34he was also investing recklessly in A.I.
21:38for his full self-driving technology.
21:41Right. And so you begin to wonder, like, was the warning about the, you know, summoning the demon, was that
21:50a way of getting other people to slow down so that he could catch up?
21:54Right. And that becomes the big question that we're all asking now, because they're all they're all doing playing this
22:02strange game where they're talking about the existential risk and the power of this medium.
22:06But they're saying we're helpless to stop it. And by the way, please invest in our IPO next week.
22:12One of the things that you set out to do in this is to capture not just what's going on
22:18inside this guy's head, but but but also how it was that the system, quote unquote, all of us, really,
22:25the culture, our political arrangements allowed this to happen.
22:29Because that is, in some ways, the subplot that runs through this whole thing is that this is a guy
22:35who having a series of a kind of mixed business record in some respects, he succeeds in some things, fails
22:42in others, but is steadily accumulating this unprecedented level of political power.
22:48And I'm trying to understand if you came to the conclusion that it was something about his cultural role, the
22:56way that he tapped into some need that people had out there and they thrust him into power or he
23:04hacked the political system.
23:06I think it's both, to be honest with you. And, you know, the David Byrne song that ends the film,
23:12let me sell you a dream.
23:13I mean, that's it for him. He's always invested in the memes and the dreams that we want to believe
23:19in.
23:19And he's and and and he's saying, let me sell that to you.
23:22You know, whether it was the idea of being the climate savior.
23:26And then, of course, he endorses the president who's destroying the climate.
23:32So I think, you know, because I asked the question at the beginning of the film, how did he get
23:37so much power and why do we give it to him?
23:39There's a chapter called reward hacking, where he said he's always been a genius at figuring out how to hack
23:44rewards from the federal government, but also think he's been a genius at sort of how to hack certain fundamental
23:50myths that we all hold dear.
23:53You know, the rugged individualist, you know, and in that he's kind of a confidence man.
24:01Right. He's he's he's able to to to use certain urges that we all have in and and and monetize
24:11them.
24:12The other interesting thing about him is, you know, he talks in a different context about finding anomalies in the
24:18matrix.
24:19Well, I think he found the anomaly in the matrix of the American system, which is money.
24:24Right. He understands how to use money in our system, which, you know, Jane is making.
24:31I've spent so much time talking about.
24:34Just applying it to the political process and understanding the more you give, the more you get.
24:40I think he's he he represents in a weird way an evolution in the relationship of money in politics, because,
24:48you know, the book that I wrote was dark money and it was the billionaires were fighting.
24:53And he's the coming out party for the billionaires, the oligarchs.
24:58Oligarchs. He's basically like taking he's on the stage saying, I bought it all.
25:02Here I am. Now, give me the government.
25:05I'm going to go carve it up and get rid of all the regulations on me.
25:09And then I'll I'll take I'll take a billion dollars worth of defense contracts.
25:13Thank you. And so it's part of this, like there's no shame anymore.
25:18But it's a lot. It's interesting to me.
25:21I'm curious about your thinking about his relationship with Trump, because when you say he's a confidence man, of course,
25:27we recognize that quality in our president.
25:29And and who also had a mixed if if you want to be kind business record, but made himself out
25:36to be, you know, an incredible whiz at it.
25:40Both of them have been excellent at myth making about themselves.
25:44And is that what we're learning is that we're incredibly vulnerable to to to to fake myths about people in
25:52power or, you know, what is the relationship like?
25:55You know, I think that is it.
25:57You know, it's it goes back to the Wizard of Oz.
25:59I mean, you know, we we believe in the Grand Vizier.
26:03It would it would pay for us to hire a lot more totos.
26:07So because because he did create a myth.
26:14I mean, he was actually a much better businessman than Trump.
26:17Trump failed at everything he did, but he managed to keep branding stuff.
26:21But Elon in his own way, because his massive fortune is only due to his stock pumping and to this
26:27creation of of an image of this sort of grand Leonardo da Vinci like character, which is fake.
26:33But, you know, Tesla's make real cars and the rockets at SpaceX are incredible and and and Starlink is a
26:40good technology.
26:41He attracted a lot of people to that to the missions of those companies, which, you know, focused a lot
26:48of talent.
26:48But the the the the spread between what those companies really deliver on an economic basis in terms of profit
26:56and loss and what their stock is, is just extraordinary.
26:59And that's where you kind of get upset because he's using that money that's just fanciful.
27:05It's like tulips in Holland to turn our our country into an authoritarian joke.
27:13You know, what's amazing is that, you know, this goes back to, I think, the theme of this conversation, which
27:20is to say,
27:20is that a byproduct of Elon's will to power or the end in and of itself, which leads me to
27:27my question, which is space is the other thing that, you know, we associate with Musk that, you know, in
27:35the early parts of your film.
27:36Right. He seems to be genuinely that's the one thing he seems to care about.
27:40Right. You know, he's he's like on the edge of his seat.
27:43Are those missiles going to blow up or they're going to actually go up in the air?
27:46And I'm reminded, too, that it's another way in which he he's this sort of zealot character, brings it all
27:52together.
27:53He's going to Russia, you know, for decades. Right.
27:56And we were talking before you came on about this week's incredible events.
28:00Once again, Donald Trump pivoting to Vladimir Putin, attacking Zelensky, Musk cheering Trump on.
28:05Musk has had ties with the Kremlin for years.
28:09You know, he was reported to have spoken with Vladimir Putin at the beginning of the Ukraine war.
28:17There's been a lot of, you know, sort of noise around that.
28:19I just I wonder if you can tell us a little bit both about, you know, the space piece.
28:25Is that the actual, you know, little kid who really just did have an actual dream part of Elon Musk?
28:33And where's the Russia part come in? Is that just because they're good at space or is he fascinated by
28:39Russia and Putin in some way that we don't fully understand?
28:43Yeah, I do think that the space thing was the little kid looking up at the stars thing.
28:48I think that was for real. But ultimately, it becomes another con.
28:53In other words, next year, we're going to be on Mars.
28:55It's like next year, we're not going to be on Mars and we're not going to be on Mars in
28:5810 years.
28:59We're not going to be on Mars in 50 years. You know, it's just bullshit. Right.
29:05But he did attract all these great engineers because they were frustrated with NASA and stuff like that.
29:10And they ended up doing incredible things with the reusable rockets and Starlink and so forth.
29:16You know, his companies are good at sort of pivoting that way.
29:19In terms of Russia, it's really interesting.
29:21I mean, there was a counterintelligence investigation into attempts by the Russians to curry favor with wealthy South Africans in
29:30Silicon Valley, i.e. Peter Thiel, David Sachs and Elon Musk.
29:35And as you guys probably know better than I, I mean, Peter Thiel was actually an FBI informant for that.
29:41But there was and I think that there were direct conversations with Vladimir Putin, you know, which I sort of
29:51elite allude to in the film.
29:53But I think there is something there with Russia that has yet has yet to be uncovered.
30:00Well, that's the kind of thing we may learn more about if, in fact, some of the investigations that he's
30:06been concerned about come to pass.
30:08You know, as we as we as we wind down here, Alex, there is this central question about power and
30:15the concentration of power, which runs through this film.
30:19There's there's a scene early on, just a flash of a whiteboard in the background at one of his companies
30:26or somewhere like it that has a quote from Lord Acton that says liberty consists in the division of power,
30:34absolutism in concentration of power.
30:37And I found that so interesting because, as you say, he's lived his life with this kind of libertine fanaticism,
30:45this idea that nobody will constrain him.
30:48And and and and so there's that at the same time that he is himself concentrating power more completely than
30:55any human has ever been able to do in the modern era.
30:58And I wonder how these two pieces fit together. Does he not see himself?
31:05Does he believe he is a sort of escaped the bounds of Lord Acton's, you know, axiom?
31:11Or is it actually just proof of concept that absolute power really does corrupt?
31:15The remarkable thing about him is I think it's both, to be honest with you, that quote you cite is
31:22is part of the footage from the early days of open A.I.
31:25when he was the idealistic, you know, ethical A.I. person.
31:30Of course, we know that at the time it wasn't true.
31:32And also, you know, one of the things he was most fond of, one of the slogans he was most
31:39fond of tweeting on Twitter, then X, was Vox Populi Vox Dei, right?
31:46The voice of the people is the voice of God.
31:48Well, he doesn't believe that.
31:50It's just the opposite.
31:51You know, the voice of Elon is the voice of God.
31:53But he understands the myths that the memes that move us.
32:01And I think he invests in them and kind of sort of believes them emotionally, but then does something completely
32:08the opposite.
32:09It's a it's a both it's a mental trick that allows him to feel like as if he's the good
32:16guy.
32:17Well, in fact, he's like a stock villain.
32:20It sort of reminds me like all these guys, Teal and Musk, and they all go back to Lord of
32:25the Rings and they're constantly, you know, citing stories from Lord of the Rings and stuff like that.
32:29And I think in his fervid imagination, Elon Musk believes he's Frodo when he, in fact, is Saruman.
32:37You know what I'm saying?
32:38It's just like.
32:41Well, I have one practical question for you.
32:44You certainly have some interesting material in the movie that's about his potential manipulation of the 2024 election.
32:56His former girlfriend, I guess she was, Ashley Sinclair, suggests that there was there were things going on behind the
33:05scenes that he did to try to affect the 2024 outcome in favor of Trump in a way that people
33:11don't fully understand.
33:12Are you thinking he's going to be manipulating in the midterms in some some underhanded way?
33:20I think it's possible and likely.
33:23I mean, we we posit, you know, this goes back to the data that he may have gotten from Doge.
33:30And both Hinton and Katie Drummond from Wired, you know, sort of suggests that if he had that much data,
33:39you know, that's a that's a you could feed AI on that much data and really have some powerful tools
33:46to be able to impact and affect.
33:51The election diversion of resources, kind of messaging, you know, all sorts of stuff, you know, all sorts of stuff
33:57because it's feeding the data on all of us in detail.
34:00I mean, in the film, Ashley Sinclair gets a number of texts from Elon.
34:03He's kind of bragging that he knew before anybody else that Trump won the election in 2024.
34:12I think that actually had more to do with, you know, early reporting, because that's where it's much easier to
34:17get data.
34:18Not and not not not easy, but, you know, possible to get data as opposed to switching votes, which leads
34:25me to the concern for this coming election, which is that if it's a blue wave, as it's looking like
34:31it might be.
34:33But we'll see.
34:37It's how to discredit the result.
34:40That is really, really something that's concerning.
34:44Well, that's a chilling note to finish us on here, Alex.
34:50I want to ask you just one final question, which is, you know, OK, there's the four hour version.
34:55There's the six hour version.
34:56There's your, you know, months and years of inquiry version.
35:01Was there anything that that surprised you the most about Musk that you didn't expect to find?
35:06I guess it was the magnitude of his fiction making really did shock me.
35:16And and and that's why I mean, I go back to the genius of that David Byrne song at the
35:23end of the film.
35:24Let me sell you a dream.
35:25He sold us all a dream and we fell for it.
35:27Well, in some ways, exactly.
35:31It's that it's it's the realization of the in the enormous effect and power he has.
35:39And at the center of it, the smallness of the person.
35:41Yes.
35:42Strained.
35:43Yes.
35:43His experiences, his motives, his emotional life is.
35:49Alex Gibney, thank you so much for coming and joining us today.
35:53You've helped us understand this election and this person at the center of it in ways I don't think we
35:58could otherwise.
35:59Thank you so much.
36:00Great to be here.
36:01Thanks, Alex.
36:02OK, thanks, Jane.
36:03Thanks, Evan.
36:04Thanks, Susan.
36:05Take care.
36:06What do you guys think?
36:07What's what jumps out at you first?
36:11Well, Jane, I have to say props to Jane, because I think this image of Elon Musk as, you know,
36:17the coming out party for dark money that's dark no longer.
36:21Yeah, it's neon money now.
36:23I mean, the age of dark money is just antique.
36:26I mean, yeah, no, that's exactly right.
36:28I did think, Jane, that he ended on a really chilling note here about the election and the data.
36:35He's he several times in that conversation.
36:38He led us back to doge not only as an exercise in mindless slashing, but in particular in an exercise
36:45in unaccountable, untransparent data collection on Americans in ways that we have no idea how they're going to use it.
36:54And of course, we're going to wake up one day and they're going to have already used it and we're
36:58going to be really shocked.
37:01Unbelievable. I mean, to me, the whole movie and I mean, I think it's it's interesting that you guys brought
37:07up that the Lord Acton quote, because it is the illustration of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts.
37:14Absolutely. And, you know, the founding fathers of the United States tried to design a system that would withstand that.
37:23And what we're looking at is it's it's not quite up to the job in this particular era with these
37:31kinds of tools, with these kinds of the power of of sort of mass communication that we've now got.
37:38And, you know, and the amount of accumulation of money and a Supreme Court that let us down with Citizens
37:44United, it must be said.
37:45And and the combination of these things is just, you know, overwhelming.
37:50So but we'll see. I mean, the the election is is is the test in a lot of ways.
37:55It tees up even more why the the midterm election is so important in a way to see whether it
38:02can, you know, whether voters can withstand it, stand up to this kind of thing.
38:07One of the things that I'm really struck by is that, you know, this is a there's this is a
38:12four hour documentary that covers this really just this pretty confined period in this man's life.
38:17And what's absolutely breathtaking to remember, guys, I have to look back at this stat this morning to remind myself
38:23of just how amazing this is.
38:25You know, 10 years ago, Elon Musk had about 10 billion dollars.
38:29Today, he has on any given day a trillion.
38:33He is the richest person that's ever lived.
38:36And so and so in that period of time to go from being, you know, let's face it in this
38:41day and age, an ordinary billionaire to having the capacity to move a couple of little tiny muscle movements and
38:50affect a war on the opposite side of the world.
38:52The president of the United States, the control of Congress, I often think that the most revealing psychological admission Musk
39:01has ever made was that little tweet when he was fighting with Trump.
39:05And he said, were it not for me, Trump would not be president.
39:08Democrats would control the House.
39:10And then he added such ingratitude.
39:13And that's where we are.
39:15It's almost like nobody has the psychological capacity to go from 10 billion dollars to a trillion dollars.
39:21And we're living in the consequences.
39:23Well, and you said, Evan, and I think it's right, you know, that never has there been a wider gap
39:31between the power and the smallness of the man.
39:34And I honestly think the pithiest thing that he said, which is funny thing to say about a four hour
39:40movie, but the Elon Musk thinks he's Frodo and he's Saruman.
39:46I mean, that that image, I think, says it all.
39:50Here we are 18 days before this midterm election.
39:53I'm so glad we had Alex Gibney on.
39:56This film is one I will not forget anytime soon.
40:00And it's great to be with you both.
40:04Great to be with you guys, too.
40:06Thank you guys so much.
40:08This was this was really a powerful one.