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Our strengths are often our weaknesses. That’s the big picture takeaway from Walter Isaacson’s long-awaited, much-hyped biography of Elon Musk, which tracks why the man that many people feel is the world’s greatest entrepreneur is also a libertarian narcissist prone to meddling in democracy and geopolitics, not to mention verbal abuse and hypocrisy. (One of my favourite examples on that score is Musk’s ability to view himself as climate saviour even as he sends his private plane across the country to pick up a pet dog.)
As in his previous biography of Steve Jobs, Isaacson has a tendency to see bad behaviour by Silicon Valley titans as being part and parcel of What Great Men Must Do in order to change the world. He is fascinated by “genius,” at least genius of a certain kind, having written other major books about Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Jennifer Doudna (of Crispr fame), the sole woman on the bio roster. Isaacson clearly buys into Jobs’ view that “The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.”
In his latest work, he positions Musk, who grew up in South Africa with an emotionally abusive father and a masochistic mother, as being a traumatised, Asperger-y guy who turned his pain into drive. The results are certainly remarkable, from launching the payments platform PayPal, the electric-car maker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX as well as relaunching the social media platform Twitter as X.
It’s a familiar entrepreneurial narrative, particularly when it comes to big deal technologists. The fact that Musk all too often repeats the sins of the father with partners, colleagues and random strangers while he’s changing the world is due to the fact that he is changing it, at least in the author’s view. The book’s opening quote from Musk, taken from an episode of the comedy show Saturday Night Live, kind of sums this up: “To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”
To be fair, Isaacson, who ran Time magazine and CNN as well as the Aspen Institute before becoming a best-selling author, has done something amazing with the Musk biography, which is to write a 688-page quick read. This is long form for the TikTok generation. It’s the rare chapter that goes more than five pages, and even these — 95 in all — are filled with numerous subheadings — “The Coup”; “The Roadster”; “The Falconer Hears the Falconer” — that keep the reader moving (a classic newsmagazine hack).
Having shadowed Musk for two years, he also treats the reader to lots of social media worthy titbits from colleagues, adversaries, Musk’s 75-year-old model mom Maye (a major and constant presence in his life), his investors and his multiple wives and partners. These range from Elon’s dietary habits and Met Gala preparations to his struggles with a transgendered child who rejected both Musk and capitalism. His partners include the musician and performance artist Grimes, mother to three of his ten living children. Musk apparently fell in love with her after she compared his power to that of the Middle Earth wizard Gandalf, and subsequently passed his rapid-fire trivia test on The Lord of the Rings.
But while Elon Musk is probably as entertaining as any celebrity business bio could be, it is not in any way a book of ideas. Like Isaacson’s equally readable Jobs bio (the Musk book replicates Jobs’ iconic cover photo), this book is an enthusiastic tale about a personality, not a meditation on the meaning of that personality’s work.
Isaacson occasionally pauses to notice the big business ideas, like Musk’s prescient use of vertical integration at Tesla (a throw back to Henry Ford’s desire to control the entire supply chain). But there’s no reflection about how this upends years of outsourcing wisdom, something hugely relevant in a decoupling world.
Likewise, we get lots of cheerleading about SpaceX technology, and Starlink’s role in re-establishing the internet in Ukraine. Yet, Isaacson also writes how Musk intervened in September 2022 to cut Ukrainian military access to the satellite network close to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces.
Despite a raft of reporting details, I found myself wanting a deeper examination of the ramifications of Musk’s controversial position in the privatisation of space. In this way, Isaacson’s work lacks the economic gravitas of other technology enthusiasts, like author and Wired columnist Steven Levy, who wrote the definitive Google origin story, In The Plex.
Fortunately, Isaacson goes deeper when it comes to Musk’s strange detour into the alt right political world, and its impact on X, formerly Twitter, which he bought in 2022 and has since overhauled in ways that have led to a major backlash on the part of users, employees and investors. There, he’s willing to consider (albeit again in passing) that maybe this brilliant but dangerously unempathetic billionaire isn’t fundamentally trying to make the world safe for free speech so much as he is trying to own the playground of our digital town square in order to make sure he doesn’t get bullied in it, as he did on so many real playgrounds as a child.
In the penultimate page of the book, the author admits that the “audaciousness and hubris” that drive Musk to “attempt epic feats” don’t excuse him being a jerk. And yet, he writes, “as Shakespeare teaches us, all heroes have flaws,” and “sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children.” I closed the book feeling a bit depleted, and wishing the world had less patience and space for them than it does.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster £28/$35, 688 pages
Rana Foroohar is the FT’s global business columnist
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