The Free Press
Elon Musk is many things: genius tech innovator, owner of the world’s most important public square, freelance diplomat, volatile CEO. No wonder his every move is covered so closely.
But don’t let the media carnival around Musk distract you from just how much he matters. Musk is building our future, at both SpaceX and Tesla, and influencing our present, with X and Starlink. With the platform formerly known as Twitter, he can control the flow of information. And he isn’t afraid to use his internet infrastructure company to influence geopolitics. Starlink has offered Ukraine intermittent support, and more recently, Musk floated the idea of offering Wi-Fi to “internationally recognized aid organizations” in Gaza when Israel cut off access ahead of its ground invasion.
On this week’s episode of Honestly, Bari talks to Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson. He spent two years shadowing Musk, and has a better idea than anyone of what Musk is doing with all his power, what makes him tick—and why we can’t look away.
Read an edited transcript of Bari’s conversation with Walter here. Or listen to their conversation in full below:
How should Jews handle the alarming rise of antisemitism around the world? Not by embracing a victimhood narrative, writes Batya Ungar-Sargon. “Do not cast your lot as a competitor in the oppression Olympics,” she writes in The Free Press. “Instead, reject that entire way of looking at the world.”
Read her full cri de coeur here:
If the past month has been a stress test for Israeli society, then the reaction to appalling tragedy—and a massive defense failure—has demonstrated the country’s resilience. The solidarity and selflessness displayed by ordinary Israelis in recent weeks is no surprise to Dan Senor and Saul Singer, authors of the just-released The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. Today in The Free Press, they explain why Israel’s societal strength offers a blueprint for the revival of the West.
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Fundamentally what bothers me most about the contemporary controversy surrounding Elon is what it says about how simple minded, tribal, binary thinking has now dominated our culture. Most people just won’t bother to think, to read, to contemplate any complex ideas, individuals or issues. Elon is an extremely complex man. Yet we live now in a culture where things are distilled down to hating or idolizing - depending on which tribe you belong to
I listened to the podcast of Bari and Walter I. Surprisingly to me it was actually good. What makes my temperature rise, however, is Bari's tendency to inject her biases into her writing and interviewing and do so without seeming to recognize that she is biased. Wanna know what she did in this one? She poses the question to herself and to Isaacson whether Musk has "too much power". Bari and Walter agree, Musk has too much power! Surprise, surprise, surprise. But did either try to explain why? Justify it? Explain it? Unless you think "well, he has all these major companies which he controls, Q.E.D., that is too much power". That is really a pathetic analysis by each of them. We expect better from Bari, if not Walter.
But the interview was good, mainly because Bari let Walter talk. I'd downloaded the book and intend to read it - have started. It'll be my 4th from Isaacson.
But, Bari, be a journalist, not a politician.