Elon Musk, a truly extraordinary madman

The lives of powerful people have always interested me. From this perspective, I tried to analyse the life of Elon Musk, one of the most powerful people of today. Elon Musk's life is really interesting. He is a tremendous phenomenon with his realisation of what we call dreams when we first hear it, and his obsession with the conquest of space. Elon Musk did not come to this world as a member of an elite family! His childhood years were spent in an environment of violence and chaos. This traumatic situation never left him throughout his life. Look what he says when he expresses himself. "Yes, I know, I have unpredictable mood swings and I bought the "X" platform out of boredom!" Recently, Elon Musk's biography was published as a book. In this book, he reveals that Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX are obsessed with the conquest of space and harsh management methods.

Author Walter Isaacson, who has previously published other successful biographies of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (2011), Albert Einstein and others, says he had an unprecedented opportunity to meet Musk and conducted a series of meetings and interviews with him. The author says that this work is unlike any biography he has done before. He claims that Musk rejected Ukrainian requests to activate the Starlink system, thus preventing an attack on the base of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. Isaacson does not hesitate to reveal that Musk gave him all encrypted messages with the Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhailo Fedorov without asking the Ukrainians.

Even more remarkable, Isaacson says that Musk is finally about to sign a hitherto secret initiative to establish an artificial intelligence company. It seems that Musk hopes to use X and Tesla's massive data stores to compete with other AI companies like OpenAl. This could be of great commercial importance for the artificial intelligence industry. 10 years ago, Musk's two companies Tesla and SpaceX were almost in debt. But by 2021, Tesla had sold almost a million cars and SpaceX had conducted 31 successful launches. This commercial and technological boom has made Musk the richest man in the world. Time and Financial Times magazines named him "Person of the Year" for his vision to transform green transport and space travel. 

Musk is a somewhat disturbed personality. He can be disturbed even when things are going well. "Then everything was going so well that Musk started to feel uncomfortable," says Isaacson. "He doesn't like things going well. He's addicted to drama. Musk, perhaps out of boredom, made a plan to buy the social media giant Twitter, now known as X." "At first I thought it didn't fit into my larger core missions, but I came to believe that it could be part of my mission to preserve civilisation and buy more time for our society to become multi-planetary," Musk says about the Twitter platform. Musk offered $ 2022 billion to buy the Twitter platform in the spring of 44 and engaged in a devastating battle with the company's employees, the media, Twitter users and liberal politicians. 

Meanwhile, Isaacson describes how he wrote his biography book. Musk, while writing the biography, did not get bored and did not fire me, he says. "For weeks I was sitting on the sidelines taking notes. I was in the conference room for all company meetings and participated in his Zoom calls," Isaacson says, emphasising that Musk became part of his working life. 

Musk's family roots go back to South Africa. Musk states in this interview that he thinks he is bipolar, but he has never been diagnosed with such a diagnosis. As for Musk's fluctuations; Isaacson states that this is mainly due to the pain he experienced in his childhood, that he grew up in the middle of violence in South Africa and had a difficult relationship with his father, all of which were reflected in Musk's life. His relationship with his father made him feel like a stranger. Therefore, he constantly felt the need to prove himself to his father. As this situation affects his whole life, it also gives a meaning to his drifts. Musk is said to lack the ability to communicate on a human level with the people around him, especially with his wives, children and employees in his companies. He is portrayed as a complex and tortured character. The fact that he states that his father is at the forefront of all of these emotional ebbs and flows tells us about the trauma in his childhood years.

Musk, who describes his father as an emotionally and physically exploitative person, spends many years without contacting his father again. Eventually, upon insistence, he agrees to meet with his father in 2016. "It was the only time I saw Elon's hands shaking," says one of Musk's friends about this meeting in the book. Isaacson says, "There are some people who occupy an evil corner in Musk's brain and arouse cold anger in him. His father is one of them!" Isaacson concludes. He points out that Musk was often beaten and his father scolded him a lot. But at the age of 10, a few years after his parents' divorce, he chose to live with him.

Elon Musk tells his biographer that he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and that this is the reason for his poor ability to decode relational signals in his dealings with others. While the author states that Musk is affected by storm and drama, he emphasises that he is subject to 'unpredictable emotional fluctuations' that manifest themselves in the way he manages the companies he leads. The book gives a few examples of some of Elon Musk's tantrums in which he has expectations from his employees, gets angry when they are not met and does not hesitate to humiliate them if they resist him. Musk's former life partner, singer Grimes, tells the author that Musk has entered a situation that is demonic and creates a lot of chaos while expressing the billionaire's discomfort. Isaacson explains in the book that the Canadian artist has a third child with Elon Musk. The number of Elon Musk's children is mentioned as 11. Two of them are from a female official at the Neuralink company where he donated sperm. In 2022, Musk's daughter with his wife Justine Wilson will turn 18. 

According to the book, his child, who was born as a boy named Xavier, a Marxist, and later changed gender and became a girl, told Musk, "I hate you and everything you stand for." That same year, her daughter petitioned a California court to change her name to Vivian Gina Wilson. In the petition, she cited "the change in her gender identity and the fact that she no longer lives with her biological father or wants to have a relationship with him in any way." His daughter currently refuses to see her father. 

The author notes that the businessman has one obsession: his desire to make humans inhabitants of "multiple planets" through his space company SpaceX. The book states that Musk's decision to start an artificial intelligence company was partly due to his concerns about population shortages. Musk believes that human intelligence is declining because people are not having enough children, while at the same time computer intelligence is increasing dramatically. He also believes that at some point biological brainpower will be overshadowed by digital brainpower. Therefore, he believes that the only solution to counter the digital power represented by artificial intelligence is to have more children and combat the problem of depopulation. Contrary to popular perception, Isaacson insists that Musk dislikes former US President Donald Trump, whom he sees as a 'con man'. But at the same time, Musk is not a supporter of current President Joe Biden, despite telling the author that he "would have voted for Biden in 2020 if he had voted". According to the book, Musk describes a meeting he had with Biden years ago: It was so boring that when you pulled the string, it was like puppets saying the same stupid things over and over again. 

Musk is a living legend, a crazy genius personality, a good industrialist. He knows how to make money. He can sign technological developments and knows how to make big money from them over time. Although he shows with his various behaviours that he has been under the influence of the traumas he suffered in his family when he was young, his main focus is that he is always able to sign new projects. In this respect, he always does things that are beneficial to humanity. As a technology guru, he continues to be a role model for all children, young people and scientists. I believe that Musk will continue to sign many new crazy projects as long as he breathes. The world needs this crazy man and he realises this. We will see more things from him. We will continue to watch Musk. Maybe soon we will make space travel between planets thanks to him. We will say that we are glad Musk came to this world.

With respect and love