As the world reacts to US Vice President Kamala Harris’s own vice-presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, our attention stays focused on Monday’s stock market selloff (though much was recovered on Tuesday). One of the big topics of conversation was, does the sudden dip represent a popping artificial intelligence bubble? And what would such a correction do to Elon Musk? On this week’s episode of Elon, Inc., Bloomberg Businessweek’s Max Chafkin, Bloomberg technology editor Sarah Frier and reporter Kurt Wagner discuss. Plus later on: a conversation between Chafkin and the New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe and journalist Chris Hooks on what Musk’s relocation to Texas has meant for the state.
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Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one man.
Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
I mean legitimate.
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different.
He'll vote Republican.
There is a reason the US government is so reliant on him. Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Anything he does, he's fascinating people. Welcome to Elon, Inc, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, August sixth.
I'm your host, Max Chafkin, filling in for David Papadopolis. Is dominating the news today with the vice presidential pick being announced. But in the world of markets and money, which is to say, our world, all the conversation has been around the big sell off that happened in Asian markets on Monday, and that has continued to reverberate. Here in the US, stocks took a big hit yesterday, but.
They're rebounding today.
But really, like all of this kind of chaos and the lingering fears of a recession are leading to some really hard questions about what it means for markets in general and in particular the technology industry.
There have been questions sort of.
Building up over the last year that the hype around AI artificial intelligence might be overblown, that we might be in the middle of a bubble, and this week people are starting to really seriously ask is that bubble starting to burst? This would have huge implications for Elon Musk and for the world, but in particularly for Elon because he's staked his, you know, the future of Tesla on AI, the future of several of his company, including x.
And his AI company Xai.
We're going to be talking today to Bloomberg's Big Tech editor Sarah Fryer and social platform reporter Kurt Wagner about all this market action.
Kurt, Sarah, thank you for being on Elon.
K, thanks for having me.
Yeah, thank you, Max.
And then later we're going to share another one of our conversations as part of our great summer series of deep chats. Today's is one that I had with the two Texas based journalists, Rachel Monroe and Chris Hooks. Okay, so let's get to it. Sarah, what did the tech world wake up to on Monday morning? What did Elon Musk wake up to on Monday morning?
I mean every market indicator was down, Nickay down, you got Crypto go down, the Vix up, volatility, and investors piles into bonds like it was just like a whole out panic. Those are some economic indicators driving this, some US economic strength indicators. But there's also this fear brewing for big tech companies that they have maybe promised and invested more than they've delivered or even are showing signs of being able to deliver in AI. The whole growth plan in AI is going to cost billions upon billions of dollars, and it's not clear that that is translating into better revenue, certainly not better profits, and that is causing a lot of concern. I'm here in Silicon Valley. I feel like I've had a little bit more of the kool a than Wall Street, so I've seen a lot more in terms of what AI is changing about how people work than maybe the market has. That said, i mean, you know, the way that stocks have clined on the promise of AI has been just astounding, and the amount of money pouring into it is maybe unsustainable.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel like the conversation that we've had had on this podcast for the last year about kind of Elon Musk's promises around AI and Tesla, or promises around AI and Rock. I mean that's been happening at like kind of every tech company, right, Kurt.
Yeah.
And I was going to say, I think something that Mark Zuckerberg at metas said a few weeks ago to our very own Emily Chang.
I was.
I was in the room down at Meta's headquarters when she interviewed him, and he basically said, there's a very real possibility we're all spending billions of dollars too much money right now to chase this thing, because the fear of missing out is so high, right, So, in other words, we're willing to overspend. We know even that we're overspending on AI right now. We're over indexing that way because you can't afford to not do it. And so I think, you know, we may see some short term repercussions of that overspend, which is going to be you know, a dip or a little bubble or whatever it may be. But I think that gives you a glimpse into the mindset of the leaders of these companies, because I imagine if Mark Zuckerberg feel way, that's sort of probably how a lot of these guys feel, is that they have to have to have to spend.
It was just so wild too. When Kurt showed me that quote, I was just like imagine just being like, yeah, we may be overspending by billions of dollars, but that's just how we roll when we need to do something like this.
Yeah, it's for AI. So it's all good. I mean not a good sign.
And I mean, you know, just to sort of put something more specific on what you were saying, Sarah, I mean, there's been a lot of talk about and obviously a lot of successful products and and sort of demonstrations around AI. Just like not a lot of revenue coming in to these companies, at least not yet. And let's just bring it around to Elon. I mean, what does this mean for him? I mean, if the AI bubble is bursting, I mean he's been going around saying you're gonna be You're wrong to think about Tesla as a car company. You should think about as an AI company. Are we gonna get on the earnings call? Like you know, a few months from now, and he's gonna say, actually, if you think about Tesla as an AI company, you got it all wrong.
You got to think about it as a car company. Cars are the thing.
There's no way that he could achieve, you know, the valuation that he's achieved by just calling it a car company. It needs to be something more. It needs to be a promise for the future. And at one point, Tesla is going to revolutionize the environment, right like it just there always has to be some bigger dream that people are chasing. And I think that's what's happening across big tech. All these companies are maturing, their legacy businesses aren't producing the level of growth that they used to, and so the leaders of these companies need to come up with another promise for what the future is going to hold and cast themselves in their companies almost like startups all over again. And in AI there is some way of believing that the big tech companies will continue to lead, if only because it is so expensive to develop an AI that it is one of those markets where you might not get the rug taken under you by an upcoming company that is just building something in the garage, right you really need do need capital to do this? And the big top companies have capital.
Yeah, speaking of capital, I mean shortly after the Tesla learnings called, Elon Musk floated the idea in a poll I believe, right right, Kurt of a Tesla making an investment in x dot Xai, which had me kind of wondering, like, what do we even know about is I mean beyond Grock, what is x Ai? Like? Where does XAI sit right now? And should we think about this as an investment or is it more of a you know, a bailout, a way for Elon must to absorb some of those very high costs that Sarah's talking about.
Well, Xai, I'll start with the first part of that question, is still a bit of a mystery, quite frankly. I mean, we don't know a ton about it. We included it on a list of our you know, ten Ai companies to watch here at Bloomberg. I was struggling, honestly to figure out exactly where the headquarters of Xai are, Like very basic stuff, right, I mean, well, we know they have an office in Palo Alto. I think they list Austin, Texas as their official headquarters on some documents, but then they were you know, created in Nevada. So it's like even just the basics around where this company exists are not always clear, which sort of gives you a flavor of sort of how they operate. But I think in terms of like what does this look like? You know, to go back to what Sarah was talking about, just about the broader stock market and how it impacts Elon in particular, this is someone whose vast majority of his wealth is tied up in Tesla, which is therefore dependent on, you know, the success of that stock and the broader stock market. When things go down, he doesn't have the liquidity that he needs or wants to do all these other projects that he has right boring company Xai even x And we saw this play out when he tried to buy Twitter a few years ago, right the stock market went down at the worst possible time for him, and what happened. He spent all summer trying to fight to get out of that deal. So I think he is more susceptible to a stock market decline than most simply because of all these other endeavors he has going on and the fact that he needs his Tesla wealth to sort of either fund those directly or use those Tesla shares as collateral to get money for these their businesses that he's running.
The thing that I find like most striking about this is just that, you know, open Ai, which is widely regarded as like the most successful of these companies, there are reports coming out that it is running short on cash, that it is going to have money, that it may even have trouble raising money. So you do wonder what does it mean. You know, what does it mean for Elon Musk? And on that note, the big news are one of the big pieces of news in Elon Land is that is a feud watch story. The open Ai x feud is back on right Sarah.
There is another lawsuit that Elon Musk flung their way. It's just the continuation of this class we've talked about for months between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. He was one of the original founders of open Ai, funded a lot of the initial capital that was back when open Ai was supposed to be more of a nonprofit. Obviously they've gone the for profit direction. Musk is upset about that, but look, on the other hand, that's what he's doing with his own business. He's trying to build a for profit AI operation. So is this real legal problem or is this more trying to stall to buy time to win.
Some fantastic writing in this complaint, The perfidity and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.
That was an improvement I think from the previous complay.
Right, Kurt.
I was reading about it this morning as well, trying to understand exactly what's different this time around, Right, because as Sarah and you pointed out, maxis is now the second lawsuit that's come about, and it's not entirely clear. I mean, it sounds like maybe they've honed in on, like the very specific stuff that they're claiming open Ai did, and so we'll see what ultimately happens. But I feel like now that he has a competing AI business of his own in X dot Ai, it's very you know, coincidental timing that he is suddenly taking this very aggressive stance and approach to open Ai, which, as Sarah pointed out, he's had a relationship with for a very long time.
Let's leave the world of AI and markets and pivot to X A lot happening, oh for the weekend on Sunday, Elon Musk sort of started inserting himself into a conversation that's been kind of happening on the right, not just on x but on other social networks. Following me violent knifing attack in Southport, England, there was a lot of misinformation in the wake of that attack and implying that the attacker was either an immigrant or a Muslim or both.
None of those things were true.
There was violent rioting across the country and Elon Musk kind of threw himself into the middle of that, responding to a video that showed some of some of the rioting, saying civil war is inevitable, Sarah, what is going on?
The riots in the UK are almost completely based on this flood of misinformation, much of it originated on telegram. But then this is the kind of content that is rewarded on X and by Elon himself. It's this anti immigrant mint. Even though authorities in the UK I have identified the person who stabbed those children as a UK citizen, all of the sentiment is you know, anti immigrant, anti foreigner, and resulting in these terrible riots all across the country. And really we haven't seen the platforms say or do much, not just X we haven't seen you know, Meta come out with a statement. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kurt. But the difference for Elon is he is actually personally fueling these ideas. He is responding to some of the conspiracy theorists, he's fueling some of the some of the racist language on the site.
You have UK authorities saying, hey, listen, this is like people responding to misinformation and people really need to like settle down because it's leading to real violence. And instead of responding by trying to tone it down somehow, he tweets he legitimizes the violence, says this is this is the beginning.
Of a civil war.
I mean, extremely kind of edgy, you know, bordering on at least as authorities in the UK see it irresponsible.
No, absolutely, And I think that this is like interesting in the context of another video that we saw today from Lynda Yakarino, where she is saying that X's is a victim here because none of the advertisers, they're all they're all conspiring against the platform and deciding not to put their money there and infringing on free speech. This is the kind of thing that advertisers don't want their promotions by and they know that this is toxic content. They know that this is leading to real world violence, and they don't want to be associated with it.
I want us to do a new segment called Feud Walls, which is our feud watch for the Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walls. Kurt, what are the chances of a feud with Walls breaking out in the next seven days.
In the next seven days, I'm gonna give it a ninety percent chance. I'm gonna go one hundred percent chance before the election. It's just a matter of time before Elon bans the word weird on X and says that anyone who calls someone else weird is now committee in some type of uh, you know, social accusation. That's just beyond the pale for this company. So I'm going to give it a ninety percent chance in the next seven days.
I think we're gonna see it happen in the next seven hours.
Like, you gotta give Wall's credit here.
I mean, he's of the Elon Musk school of memory, right, he made weird happen. He's got these funny videos doing car repair like he really seems despite you know coming off as this nice Minnesota guy, he may have a little bit of poster in him. I think Kurt Sarah will. We'll be talking about this more, I'm sure over the next few months. Thanks for thanks for being.
Here, Thanks for having us.
Yep, thanks Max.
Now we're going to go to Texas.
Last week we talked about Elon's breakup with his old state California. Now we're going to dig into his romance with his new state, Texas. We talked about this earlier at the south By Southwest conference for our special episode, but we still had questions for some of our favorite Texas reporters. So I got on a zoom last month with Rachel Monroe, who covers the Southwest for The New Yorker, and Chris Hooks, who is a contributing editor for Texas Monthly and sometimes.
A contributor to Bloomberg Business Week.
The south By Southwest conversation was all about Elon's kind of identity as a Texan.
Is he where the cowboy hat? What's his deal with the border.
For this conversation, I wanted to ask Chris and Rachel how Elon Musk is changing Texas and how those changes, say you know what those changes say about the effect he's having on the wider world. His operation, just to refresh your memory, is enormous. You've got two factories in Austin or in the Austin area, one that makes cyber trucks, another one that'll make Starlink satellites. And then there's this crazy launch site in South Texas near the US Mexico border where the homes literally shake every time one of Musk's starship rockets takes off. For context, again, we record this last month, but with Elon pushing ever deeper into politics, and of course with SpaceX, you know, vuying for more government contracts couldn't be more relevant.
Hope you enjoy the conversation. Rachel, welcome, Hi Max, great to be here. Chris welcome to Elon inc.
Hey, guys's good to be here.
Okay, So just to start, I want to talk about the geography in South Texas. Last year on the Joe Rogan podcast, Joe Rogan asked Elon Musk, Hey, how did you decide to locate your rocket site in Bocachica, which is just outside of Brownsville, And he basically said, oh, well, I spun the globe and it looked like a good place to do it. I mean, he completely dislocated from any sense of the place. But this is a place, and Rachel, can you just give us a sense of what it's like there at the SpaceX site, what Boka Chika is like.
Sure.
So, Bocachica, like you said, is outside the city of Brownsville. It's the very tip of Texas. It's where the Rio Grande flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and it's it's mostly surrounded by protected land, various wildlife refuges owned by the state, or the lot of shore birds and scrubland, and kind of used to be basically a neighborhood of intrepid people like this is the kind of place like the county doesn't build roads out there. You can't get city infrastructure. You have to get your water trucked in. So it was a place where you could buy like a cheap house, like a house for like fifty thousand dollars or something. It's basically, or it was for a long time, the last undeveloped part of the Texas Coast, or probably even the entire Gulf Coast, which is just dotted with refineries and industrial sites.
Your story.
I think called it the poor people's beach course, the poor people's beach for people in Brownsville, Chris.
There's a conglomeration of cities in this southernmost part of Texas. Brownsville is one of them. Bokachka is about a half an hour maybe forty five minutes from Brownsville. Brownswelle is a poorer place. It's one of the poorer places in Texas. The major a lot of the major employers there are shipbreakers. There is an industrial field ship breakers. Ship breakers, so welders and other metal workers will take apart old ships. And before SpaceX came to Brownsville for a long time and the idea of an economic development project, there might be an old aircraft carrier gets towed around South America from Washington State and in Brownsville they break it up. It had been a place that had felt neglected for a long time. One thing they did have was access to natural beauty around Bokachica. It's not necessarily a place that you know, it doesn't look like a big sur but as far as Texas goes, this is a place that is remarkable because it's been undeveloped for so long. A lot of folks in Brownsville grew up going to Bokachica Beach have fond memories of it, and it's a place that I love. I went to the Gulf Coast a lot growing up, but the geographical features of the area kind of make it remarkable. There's a big protected bay called Laguna Madre nearby where dolphins and other animals gather. The beach at Bocachica is used by the Ridley sea turtle, an endangered sea turtle. It's also a very important place for migratory birds short birds, including a lot of birds that migrate for thousands of miles and have kind of generation after generation for one hundreds thousands or more years, relied on this place to lay eggs.
So you're both talking about this unusual place, a lot of natural beauty, these animals, and Rachel your story which kind of in Esquire believe was a couple of years ago that kind of told the story of how Elon got there. It opened with this quote, which is from Elon Musk, and it was we got a lot of land with nobody around it, so if it blows up, it's cool, and so like, how did Elon get there give us the kind of short version of how this kind of awesomely empty as he saw at space essentially came to be his Yeah.
So, And I should say first that in describing Bookachka as the poor people's beach, that's a statement made with a lot of pride. That's not a derogatory statement. When people say that, people are like, no, this is our beach. You don't have to pay to come here. We come here, we fish, we grill, we love it, And that's a statement of ownership. And so again, of course it's not an empty place. That's definitely not true that there's no one there. But Elon comes to Texas after having started out some SpaceX launch sites in other places where he just you know, you're mostly launching out of government run sites which have their own levels of regulation, and here you have a place of undeveloped land, and the land was quite cheap, partially because there were no services out there. And it's also I should say it has in the past been like a hurricane ravaged place.
When I first visited, it had this vary.
Boogie feeling of you could see some of the ruins of the things that had been built there, nobody had built a huge resort that then just got totally washed away, And so I think people looked at this space with you know, one road that washed out a lot, hurricane potential, no city or county services for the most part, surrounded by this protected land, and thought this is not worth messing with.
So what But he goes to local leaders and says, I want to build a spaceport and they say, sure, come on in or.
I mean yeah, for the most part, this is an area, like Chris was saying, like there's a lot of desire for economic development in this area because it has been so underdeveloped for so long. I thought a PowerPoint presentation that the Cameron County officials gave to kind of say like we should approve you know, these tax bicks that were giving to Elin, and it had him dressed up as Iron Man. They're like, fully buying a superhero is coming here to save us story.
Most these people, most people work for him, are living in Brownsville, I assume, and driving out what is how forty five minutes or something to get to get to the beach, and what do they see when they get there?
What's the operation look like?
Yeah, I mean it's quite different than from a place like Cape Canaveral, which is in this enormous facility and a huge institution and a source of national pride. So the launch pad is directly adjacent to a road, and if you go down there on a given day, there will be a line of Tesla's right next to where the rocket is being assembled, and there will be people walking around and admiring it. The local residents at Bocachica, distinct from the people in Brownsville, feel that there was a bait and switch that happened where they were initially told that there would be a small launch pad, they thought, oh, that's very interesting. Initially they were launching much smaller rockets than they're launching right now, and there was the idea that this small community could maybe coexist with this facility. What's happened over the years is that this BaseX facility has expanded, launching much bigger rockets than they used to, but how big. The small town that used to be there is gone, or it's used for it's been renovated, it's used for housing for workers. The prior residents have been kicked out. Some of them feel that the county kind of used un ethical or improper means to kick them out. The entire area has become a large SpaceX compound and it's slowly growing. They're attempting to get new land from the wildlife reserve. There is a small road that connects Brownsville to Bocachica. It's filled with workers most days, and the influence of this area has expanded into Brownsville. People in Brownsville feel that the town is giving itself over to this company.
Yeah, I mean, I you're.
Sort of mentions this in which I found surprising, although maybe I shouldn't have that. SpaceX is the biggest employer in Brownsville.
And of course Elon lives there.
Elon has moved or taken over one of these small homes in what was Bokachica, right, Rachel.
Yeah, I mean it's so funny. It was very funny to go down there. I sort of had the fortune to spend some time there at this moment of flux. Like Chris is saying, it's basically all been taken over by SpaceX now, but when I visited, it was still in this kind of in between zone where you had these people with these houses that were just decorated with shells that they had found, like retirees, and then every other house would be painted that kind of like slate Airbnb gray, you know, with like a zeroescaped front yard and a Tesla parked in front of it. You could just see that energy taking over. And Yeah, one of those houses was Elons, And so you had this very strange situation where there were people who at the time were fighting SpaceX trying to take their houses through eminent domain, which of course is supposed to be used for projects that benefit the public good, not necessarily a private company. So they're battling this company while they're like living next to Elon and seeing him out walking his dog. It's a very surreal situation.
The image of Elon walking his dog, There's something about that is hard to picture, but I guess he does have a dog and dogs need to be walked. So the Chris Your piece and the Times like it opens with this really visceral image, right of a person essentially being shaken awake by a rocket going off.
This is in Brownswelle.
This is like a long distance from the actual rocket itself.
Like, how big are these explosions?
Yeah, I think I talked to a man named Noel Rangele who was woken woken up by the launch of one of the starship Super Heavy. I mean, part of the transition that Brownsville has been making is that they started out launching these Falcon rockets, which were much smaller, and they are now presented with these enormous explosions happening regularly near the town. Sometimes the rockets blow up, they blow up at different stages. Sometimes they distribute debris over the local beach or a wider area. Sometimes they distribute what the last one of the last failures the starships Super Heavy distributed what seemed to be either sand or some kind of concrete dust over a very wide area, and a lot of people that went to see the launch in South Padre, which is a pretty big distance away, went back to their cars to find this fine mist covering everything. Even though SpaceX is Brownsville's largest employer, a lot of people in town are just living their lives and not super tuned into what the company is doing, and so they may not know when a launch is coming, and it's a kind of regular surprise that happens in Brownsville. Hopefully the launch is a success, sometimes it's a failure in the community has to grapple with the consequences of it.
The thing that runs through both of your writing about this is just the way that local people feel at once attracted and repelled by the spectacle that's around them, and proud of it and resentful at the same time. Chris, your story. I send this around to our producers before, but this moment your story.
You talk about a.
Woman who is grappling with Elon Musk and says her core complaint was that her native city didn't feel like it belonged to her anymore, and it felt as though public officials were changing the city to become a center from Space for space tourism. It was a kind of psychological burden. It's exhausting, she said. We're constantly being bombarded by Elon Musk and SpaceX news down here. There was the ever present threat that Elon might show up to Charro Days or sombrerofest, she said, referring to some of the local festivals. Most of all, she wished to stop having to think about him so much. Let me say, first of all, I can relate to this as a regular panelists on ELONNI.
But also It's such a funny image. The fear of.
Elon Musk coming to Sombrero Days or Charrofest or whatever.
Is that real? That's how people feel in Brownsville.
Yeah, I mean there's the sense that this powerful figure who is completely unaccountable. Nobody in Brownsville can really affect what he does. But what Elon does affects Brownsville quite a lot, and I'm sure you feel that quite strongly. I feel that as somebody who has to spend a lot of time on Twitter. I think Americans in a lot of places and of a lot of stripes feel that about Elon sometimes just he's everywhere in a way that can feel oppressive if you're not totally bought into the idea of Elon Musk. But Brownsville is a small and poor but very proud community and that had a strong sense of community before Elon got there. And I pieces about Brownsville and the reaction to Elon Musk often dwell on kind of the dissidents, And I do think you have to say that the majority of Brownsville are I'm generally supportive of the space ex's presence, or they kind of don't have a feeling about it.
I Mean, the most memorable thing to me about Rachel your piece from several years ago, was that, like one of the big opponents is also going to every rocket launch. I mean, she is simultaneously extremely angry about getting thrown out of her home and also a huge like rocket fan girl.
Basically, I found her so fascinating and tragic and relatable in that way where her life was about to get steamrolled by this this force, like Chris is talking about the force of just like what a billionaire wants. He was going to take her house. She didn't want to lose her house. She wanted to stay in her house. But at the same time, like being in proximity to that power was so compelling to her, and she would just she would post up on this hill and just watch the rocket. And now it's like a little bit different. Now there's they've built some enclosures so you can't just sit there and like stare at the guys hammering on.
The hull of the rocket all day. But she would just sit there. She invested in all these cameras.
She like got a bunch of Twitter followers and was just stalking this rocket.
She loved the rocket.
She was mad that she was getting kicked out of her house, and I was just like, this is We're all in this position of being enthralled to these people.
Who are you going to step on us? Like we're ants, but we're like, wow, they're so big.
Yeah. I talked to a woman named Jessica Tetrou who was a former city council member ran for mayor in Brownsville a few years ago, and she's totally bought into what Elon represents, the promise that he's offered this community, and I thought it was moving in a way. I mean, she talked about growing up in Brownsville at a time when it was in serious decline. Brownsville is a place that's generally forgotten by state government in Texas and by a lot of people in Texas. And suddenly Elon offered her and her kids the opportunity to be part of a project that they believed was saving the human race, saving civilization, bringing it to the stars. He made this small community the launchpad to this great civilizational project.
It's almost religious.
It is almost religious. I write about politics mostly, and so much of the people I meet have this searching for meaning, for something that makes them feel like their lives are part of a bigger narrative. And I think what Elon is brilliant at is roping people into his own narrative, offering them a chance to be part of it.
So, in a.
Weird way, these people in Brownsville, Boca Chica, they have access to Elon, an access to Elon that most of us do not. And I'm sort of wondering from both of you, like, what do they understand about him that we don't, and maybe maybe what do they have to teach us about billionaires and powerful people in general.
I think that from the people that I spoke to, they were surprised at his willingness to sort of come right out and talk to them and spend time with them and win them over. And then at the same time that kind of ultimately came to nothing or that didn't actually end up helping them in the long run.
He got what he wanted.
There were some people who kind of aligned themselves with him, there were people who fought tooth and nail, and either way it didn't really matter. Everybody kind of ended up in the same place.
I think to the extent that Elon Musk's incentives lined up with the city of Brownsville. He's been helpful to Brownsville, but he's also he's doing his own thing. He's not accountable to anyone, and he's not He doesn't show a lot of willingness to bend his own plans when they conflict with other peoples. I think there has been gratitude among people in Brownsville that he's given some money to local schools and local charities. In truth, he hasn't given all that much, and especially given his prodigious net worth. And I think I wonder to what extent the people who live in the area feel real to Elon, And I wonder, I guess, by extension, how whether any of the people around Elon feel real to Elon.
That is a dark thought, but I think it is definitely one that I take away from some of this reporting. So my final question here for both of you. Elon has built facilities in Los Angeles. I think it's Hawthorne, California, Fremont, which is in the East Bay, Reno, Nevada, Austin. We talked about Buffalo, Berlin, Ish, Boca Chica, Shanghai. If you had to be Elon's neighbor next to one of his factories one of these places that I've just mentioned, which would you pick? Chris, You have just made a move, so I know you're you're thinking along these lines already. But I'm curious which Elon city would you most want to live in if it had to be.
I mean, Hawthorne seems nice. I have to say, I don't think I would choose any of them. The changes that have taken place in Austin in the last few years, not exclusively because Elon moved there, but in part I think have were not entirely welcomed by me. But I'll opt for California. I mean, yeah, out one in one out.
Which point out that it is very close to the beach, but it is also very close to lax So okay, it's not the most picturesque part of la although very convenient to the beach.
Well that's great, Rachel.
If you could promise me a house on Boca Chica, I could have the one remaining like seashell decorated house that SpaceX couldn't get via eminent domain. I would love to be the one wacky old lady remaining there, like surrounded by SpaceX engineers.
You've got your rocket t shirt, walking your dog with Elon exactly.
I'll be the holdout and waving at all all my engineer neighbors.
Thank you both for being here. Thank you, Chris, great to be here. Thanks Rachel, thank you.
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong, Naomi Shaven and Rayhan Harmancier senior editors.
The idea for this very show also came from.
Rayhon Blake Maple's Handles Engineering, and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott, Antonio Muffarech and Aarafatchelas Sho. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elon Ink theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sagiera. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head.
Of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to our supporter Joel Weber. I'm Max Chafkin.
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