Rethinking the Genius of Elon Musk

In his attempt to finagle his way out of buying Twitter, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has shown little business savvy.

Image Courtesy: DonkeyHotey — Creative Commons

It’s long overdue, but perhaps it’s time people stopped fawning over Elon Musk and introduced a little skepticism into their appraisals of his business acumen.

Musk has been noticeable in his silence over the last two months or so, only breaking that most welcome of peace with an idiotic Twitter poll asking for Ukraine to capitulate to Russia.

The timing seemed odd, almost random, considering Ukraine’s recent successes in reclaiming its territory, and Putin is under pressure both at home and abroad.

But, three things happened this week, which raised Musk’s need for deflection: One, Tesla missed its numbers, big-time. So bad, he resorted to bribery, offering employees of the Shanghai Giga plant triple overtime to abandon their Golden Week vacation plans to complete Teslas.

Two, as part of the discovery phase of the Twitter acquisition trial, scores of texts between Musk and many big tech honchos and media types — Jack Dorsey, Larry Ellison, and Joe Rogan, to name a few—were released, shining a light on remarkably pedestrian, and almost high school-like behavior amongst these august captains of industry.

And, finally, Musk blinked.

After months of verbal abuse, false promises, unsupported allegations, and empty threats, he squirreled a letter to the Twitter camp, capitulating to what was an inevitable conclusion, his purchase of the company at the original price.

I was once a huge fan of Musk, not that that matters in the large scheme of things—until in 2018 when he belittled a British caver for rightly rejecting the use of his toy submarine during the attempt to rescue Thai students trapped underwater. It was then that Musk’s true character became apparent, an arrogance that undermines his credibility.

Musk didn’t “give” Ukraine STARLINK, as it happened, the U.S. government footed most of the bill. But, the myth of Musk as this great corporate statesman persists. But, his self-serving Tweets about that “gift” and the recent, contradictory surrender poll of this week, paint a picture of a man looking to deflect attention from his failures.

The Twitter deal isn’t done yet; the company’s board has to approve the proposal, and the suit and countersuit need to be dropped, but Musk’s change of heart, whether forced by his attorneys or his billionaire friends (allegedly embarrassed by the public airing of their laundry via text) doesn’t get him out of the woods.

Within days of Musk’s rapprochement, word came that two of his investors in the initial deal, Apollo Global Management Inc, and Sixth Street Partners, have pulled out and are no longer working with Musk.

A common retort to Musk naysayers and skeptics by his acolytes is that he is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, but, if that’s the case, at least in a game of strategy, you can arguably see a plan or map toward success.

Something that’s been decidedly missing from Musk’s attempt to purchase Twitter.