Elon, Inc.Feuds. Can’t beat ‘em, can’t stop ‘em. At Elon, Inc., we’ve long covered Elon Musk’s penchant for a public feud at the end of episodes, but today feuds take center stage. David and Max talk to Bloomberg emerging markets reporter Julia Leite, who is based in Brazil, about Musk’s evolving legal situation there. Then Dana joins to talk about the Cybertruck situation in Chechnya.
We can't help ourselves. There's two extra feuds, both related to land-use disputes. First, the party game Cards Against Humanity is suing SpaceX for allegedly trespassing on a swath of land that the company bought in 2017. Secondly, in the ongoing feud between prominent venture capitalist and Democrat donor Vinod Khosla, there has been a new chapter. In the course of trading insults on X, Musk mocked Khosla for a previous fight Khosla had had about beach access, and Khosla has asked him to apologize.
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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. Elon 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, September twenty fourth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. Now regular list ers might know that this show, like Elon Musk himself, loves a feud, and this week has been all about the feuds. Elon lost one battly in Brazil, he seems to have started another one with the warlord of Chechnya, and he even made a couple of enemies in a battle over land rights. Yes, says Elon has been rubbing elbows and yucking it up with his new pals, Javier Milay and Georgia Maloney. In New York for the UN General Assembly. The conflicts have been coming in fast from all directions. Dana Hall will join us to talk about that Chechenan warlord Ramsen Kataroff and his beloved cyber truck, and we'll get into those land rights bats. But before that, we're going to start in Brazil, where Elon just caved to Judge Aleishandri jumurais bringing an end to a high profile battle that led to X being banned. There to discuss this, Max Chapkin has joined me here in the studio. Hey, Max, Hey, David and from salpowl Will were beaming. And Julia Leche, who run are Emerging Markets coverage in Latin America.
Julia, welcome, Hey David, thanks for having me.
Okay, Julia. So, when we last visited the topic of Musk versus the Sovereign Republic of Brazil, Musk was still refusing to do the things at the Supreme Court wanted there remove accounts spreading disinformation on X, a point a representative in the country, and X was still banned. All that change late last week. Walk us through what exactly happened.
So a little less than a month after Twitter went down, Musk decided to back down. Indeed, so he named a legal representative. He blocked the accounts that the judge had ordered them too, and paid fines that had been incurring for a while and that he had been refusing to pay. Now at the beginning you said it was over right, it's not quite yet. You cannot access Twitter here yet. We tried a bit earlier.
So when you try to call up the app, it'll get what do you get? What does it show?
It just keeps loading, keeps a.
Load and just looks, you know, no tweets, no nothing, just you know, the little what is it called it the.
Beach Ball of doom.
It's the beach Ball of Doom. Okay, Max. So you still can't access it as we speak. And that's been the case, as you said, what for going over a month now, right.
Yeah, I think it was August thirty or thirty first that it first went down.
Okay, So the better part essentially all of September, Musk has said he's done these things, he's shut down these accounts that the Supreme Court wanted to shut down, and he's now got a legal representative in the country. But for Gimo and ies I guess that's just not quite enough yet, is that right?
Yeah, that's right. So he gave the company until Friday to file additional paperwork, which is essentially proof that he hired legal representation, wants things to be notarized and you know, just full proof that yes, this is the legal representative. They can be held accountable. And he also asked the regulatory bodies on NATHEL to ensure that they've paid all the fines that they owe from previous rulings before he allows it to before he'll decide.
It's like a million bucks, right, it's like three and a half million dollars, okay, But basically this guy's not messing around. I mean he's like, you may say these things, all right, show me the money and show me bring me your counsel. I want to speak with this person.
All the paperwork, all the bureaucracy, I want it, and then all decide.
And X is a pretty big deal there in Brazil. Right, as far as social media giants go, it's.
Pretty widely used. It's not like when it went down. It was not the chaos of when what'sapp went down in twenty sixteen, also because of a court order that was chaos, but this was weird. I think the latest numbers that we have are about twenty million active users, which is pretty hefty. It's not it doesn't compare to What's app or YouTube, but it's still pretty widely used. I think the survey one survey that we had was about a third of smartphone users had it installed.
That is indeed a pretty big number. Nine Max. I mean, here's the thing. We had the sense on this show a few weeks ago, you and Kurt Wagner as well, that as big a market as Brazil is for X in some ways twenty million users and so on and so forth, that ultimately, in terms of the nickels and dimes that generated for the company, it wasn't enough for Musk really to worry about it. And because the whole thing had been come in in this pitched battle over free speech with the Brazilian Supreme Court judge it and he had kind of become a cause celeb, and so it was a good fight to fight. But the way he suddenly just absolutely caved, bang bang bang and acquiesced everything Jim what Ies was asking for. I guess he didn't need the money in the end, you know, there are.
Some memes are not worth the cost.
And you know, when you Elon Musk walked into the Twitter headquarters with the sink, like I assume he had to send an intern to home depot.
That costs the interns.
Labor and the you know, one hundred and fifty bucks for that sink, And maybe that was worth it.
But here we're talking.
About a bunch of costs and I think what probably happened over the course of this month is that they started to add up in his mind. So so yes, it's true that revenue in terms of advertising revenue from Brazil is not significant, but as Kurt pointed out when we talked about this, as far as a number of users, it's actually one of the bigger markets. And you know, if we've learned anything over the last couple of years of Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter, now x he doesn't care that much about advertising revenue, but he really cares about engagement. And if you just like pull out a bunch of users like that is going to show up, and then.
Why do you care about engagement without the revenue? I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day.
He's building a new model.
David he is. He is charging people a subscription fee. He's also interested in influence. So like advertising revenue, right, it's it's been devalued in his mind. So but what hasn't been devalued, I don't think is number of users. He constantly is bragging about how many users are in X and also.
From the style right, Well, I don't think it's just about look at the size of my crowd.
It's not just about his ego though, I mean, part of what makes this thing worth it in his mind, I think is number one, like influence, which is about number of users. And number two he is trying to build a subscription model and having a lot of users, you know, is the way to do that.
So those are things that I think hurt him. The other thing is like.
There are a lot of like very active accounts in Brazil, some of which Elon Musk you know follows and others that are just like they're you know. One of the funny things about this band was that you had like random fan accounts, random meme accounts, just just these big X accounts that happen to be run by Brazilians that were went offline.
So I think that's one.
Thing and the last thing is like Brazil has ways to hurt at Elon Musk outside of x You know, we talked about the potential for freezing assets, you know, for attacking his other businesses, Like you don't really want to pick a fight with a large country if you can help it.
And I think in that sense this was inevitable.
Yeah. And I also believe it was inevitable because on Brazil being a large country. This is a very important point here. I mean, it seems to me that when he got initially locked in this battle with them, he some way, somehow convinced himself that Jimurai's in the Supreme Court of Brazil were going to capitulate. That was never going to happen. I mean, you should just call up Brazil in a map. Okay is geographically a very very large place, larger than the continental United States, and like the US, it's it suffers a bit from big country itis. It carries itself that way in international forms. And there was no way in hell alischandri Jimurais was going to say, you know what, Elon Musk, You're right, let me rever all these orders I made, and I'm gonna let you operate here in the country without striking down those accounts and without having a legal representative here, that was a losing hand, and perhaps he came to realize that.
It is also the problem of the precedent right. So part of the part of the problem here with making taking a stand in Brazil is that there are other countries, countries with politics that Elon Musk might find even more objectionable, that have also asked X to throw out accounts and or have bandexed altogether. And Elon Musk had attempted to kind of walk this line, saying that he believed, as you're saying, David, that the actions of the Supreme Court, that the application of the law was somehow unlawful, like basically attempting to say, like, well, this is just a dispute over the reading of the law. As if, as you say that that that the Justice would bret back down, which of course didn't happen. If he had, if he had sort of tried to play this out, it would create all sorts of problems in other countries, In Turkey, in China, you know, anywhere where you have countries attempting to restrict speech, which is a lot of countries.
Julia leto let me ask you this on the topic of losing engagement and losing numbers there there has been some migration from X users to other platforms there in Brazil. Has there not been?
Yeah, there has been. They were losing active users even before this, as I think globally is the case as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, But we did see. I think the main ones were Threads, which is owned by Meta, and Blue Sky, which was founded by Jack Dorsey. Both look very similar to Twitter and both saw a big inflow in the lead up and right before Twitter went down, politicians and celebrities and influencers started tweeting their handles in these platforms so they wouldn't lose the following.
Now, did you yourself go over to believe hire threats?
I did not go into Blue Sky? I did.
I did.
I did go into Threads.
I did.
And now okay, now, but now that X is coming back, Julia, are you going to shut Threads down? You're right back on X or no, you're sold on Threads. I will.
I will keep it open, I see, but I will if, if, if, and when it's restored, I will go back.
To people sending you like you were trying to watch the debate, the US debate, the Kamala Harris Donald Trump debate. You know, that was the kind of thing you to typically would have followed on X. Unable to use simply what we're like send screenshots by people outside of the country pretty much.
Yeah, both, And it was we are having local elections here as well, which is also playing into this dynamic of Musk and the Supreme Court. But watching a political debate without Twitter or without.
X is very different.
I'm curious, like it's an interesting, sort of like natural experiment to have a country, just a large country with a big Twitter following, where you know there's a lot of very healthy political discourse, suddenly have no Twitter, Julia did has Does Brazil seem just like a less vibrant place over the last month without this town Square, this amazing app that we're all addicted to a little bit.
I think it's harder to find stuff right, and it's harder to find common ground through these conversations because they're all Some are on Blue Sky and some are on threads, and some are on WhatsApp group. So you just have to get screenshots sent to you.
The whole time. Okay, well, Julia, you know you're gonna have to let us know as soon as your account is working again, to great fanfare, we shall announce it here on this show. Thank you for joining us, and we'll have you on again too.
Thank you.
Now we say hello to Dana Hall. Hello, Dana, hey, hey, and we're going to talk all about the Chechen world ROMs and Cadaroff and his cybertrock and how Elon Kadaroff alleges has disabled it. What exactly is going on here and how did Kadaroff get his hands on one of these things again in the first place. Remind us.
So this story is a little bit problematic for me because we have no way to actually verify if anything that this Chechnian warlord is saying is true. Right now, the cyber truck is only sold in North America. That said, some people in Europe and elsewhere have gotten their hands on them. They're importing them via third parties. So apparently he got his hands on a cyber truck, outfitted it with a machine gun, drove it to the front lines or used it, you know, in the war in Ukraine, and then alleged that Elon Musk had disabled it remotely. I mean, I can't verify if that that's true. Tesla does not have a comms team, so it's like we're sort of taking his you know, the whole news cycle around this was basically taking this Chechnian warlord at face value. And the people are like, you know, and I get it, like, oh, Tesla cybertruck warlord. That's like easy clicks for the news media. But I just have a problem with it because I really have no idea what is true and what is just sort of like a fake thing.
We also Musk denied that he gave the original claim is that Musk gave him this truck. Musk denied it, you know, right immediately, and like I, like Dan, I think we should wait.
But are we doubting that this guy actually has his hands on a truck and has fitted it with a machine gun, or were we saying we think that those are deep fakes.
Or were I think it's very possible, as Dana says, that he managed to.
Acquire one through a third party.
That happens all the time in countries that are subject to sanctions, so totally possible that it happened here. I don't know what the You know, I'm not an expert on cyber truck authenticity or whatever, but I do think, like Dana is saying, we should regard these posts as having motivations that might not be might not be as explicit as just saying as just complaining elon Musk or thanking him or whatever. This very much, to me has felt like efforts by somebody who's very close to Vladimir Putin to get messaging out into the Western media, which has effectively here we are, we're talking about it, and.
We are indeed talking about it. Now, let me at least ask you this part of it, though Dana he cut her off, alleges that indeed that Musk disabled it, and I need to ask you this is this a thing so you can all of a sudden, like I could be driving a cyber truck down the highway at seventy two miles an hour or abiding the law, so at fifty five and all of a sudden, you know, big brother turns it off on me and I lose momentum, Like is that is that possible?
That's the other thing, like it could have just broken down right, Like I mean, the cyber truck is still in fairly early production, so it could have just been broken down and he's claiming that Musk himself disabled it. Yeah, that said, like Tesla is very much a software based company. You know a lot of people always talk about how the vehicles are iPhones on wheels. I'm sure that like if Elon and his like it and security team really wanted to, they could like go deep into the bowels of their security infrastructure and like low hate the vehicle via the vinn and somehow like send some software to you know to stop it. But I'm not under the impression that this is something that like Tesla actively does. I think a more plausible explanation is that it just broke down.
Well, especially was on the bet so third party actor.
Like you know, first of all, there have been accounts of other vehicles, non Tesla vehicles that have been remotely accessed by hackers. Like Tesla isn't alone in having a car that is connected to the internet that like they're like this stuff has come up with other vehicle makes where hackers have have reported exploits that they say have been able to disable vehicles. There are also third parties probably involved. There's like a chain of software providers and so on, and if he really did acquire this cyber truck, he acquired it through a broker, so so some other third party who could have put something in the in the like, It's just it just seems like there are so many unknowns here that it's almost impossible to say anything definitive or useful about this, except that, like the cyber truck is a meme, and that meme has reached Russia.
And the cyber truck is a vehicle that I think Musk would clearly love for the military to think of as a procurement option. It's this apocalyptic car designed for you know, zombies and life on Mars and apparently war, and so I think that there's like some upside to this being out there. But I'm just sort of frustrated that, like we went through a whole news cycle of like credulidity based on like what a Russian warlord wrote on telegram, and I just think that, you know, in this era of disinformation and deep fakes, like I would prefer that people just exercise a little bit more caution before believing that there's any validity to this whatsoever.
So, you know, by the way he does counter off again forever much we want to believe him. Here he said that the cyber truck Max was performed its combat tasks beautifully. Now I'm just trying to guess what we think these tasks were. You know, was it actually in the front line or was it like making dunkin donut runs for the generals or something.
I have a hard like Dan, I have a hard time believing any part of the story, including that part of the story. The cyber truck has gotten kind of middling reviews from car reviewers. I don't expect that military reviewers are going to offer anything other than that. Although again, it does have the look, and if you care about the look, maybe, but I just don't. There's there's just like, very little evidence that this is even a good way to like haul wood, let alone move around your move along a battlefield.
Yeah, what's the charging infrastructure there? That's my other question.
Yeah, I don't know. That's you know, that's it. That is a very good question. But Max, to someone who's hold a lot of wood in my life, yes, no, I don't think that that's a wood hauling vehicle.
Dan.
I'm sorry to obsess on this point though, but on the disabling of this thing. I'm just worried if all of a sudden, my you know, my truck, you know, as I'm driving down the road, is going to turn off on me. What you're telling me is it's not necessarily if this technology exists, in this ability to exist, that big brother can do this to you. It's not about whether your vehicle is an EV or a combustion engine vehicle. It's about just how connected you ultimately are to the Internet and how much you know, how much of a smart vehicle it is. That's what would make it to separate.
I mean, Chessa just has a lot of data about its vehicles. Like there was a there was an incident like years ago where certain vehicle owners, instead of charging their Teslas at home, would go to like the local supercharger and charge and they were kind of like using the superchargers more than they were supposed to, and they were like supercharger scoff laws, and like Tesla knew who they were because they have the data analytics about like charging use and they sent letters to some owners that was like, hey, you should really charge at home, and so they just know a lot about your vehicle there's you know, so this is just the way that vehicles are going to be going forward, Like especially if you have a vehicle, this very software to find and Tesla doesn't use third parties they do, you know, they buy and large do all their software in house, so they have a lot of information about you. Whether they're actively disabling vehicles, I have no.
Idea, yeah, and I just think, like clearly, both of these messages have seemed to feel like deliberate attempts. Both of what mess both the original claim that he had that here look at me driving around me a Chechen warlord in a sanctioned country. That el must gifted me this thing, which would be a sanctions violation, and the claim that Tesla remotely disabled it, which would be damaging if everyone believed that if that were if that were true thing, if Tesla just goes around, you know, bricking.
These is what I'm trying to figure that out, that'd be very damaging.
So to me, these feel like both in their own way, attempts to somehow destabilize effect put out some information about Musk that is damaged.
So you think this guy is short Tesla stock.
If I had to guess which direction he would is in.
I would guess short Okay, you know what that I'm sure.
That Chechen warloads have very you know, robust ethics codes around short selling, so I wouldn't I wouldn't want to accuse him of doing anything.
But okay, So given how both Max and Dana feel like the entire thing, the entire episode and incident are preposterous, We're moving on. Okay. You know, Max, it's been a while since we've had a real feud watch here at the end. So it's been weeks and weeks so long that I've heard from some of our listeners they're wondering if you're taking your job seriously enough here.
Oh my god, there have been so many good feuds as you so where.
You've been, all right, So if you're back to you, You've got not one but two for us this way.
And they are both related to land use disputes. So the first is a lawsuit brought by the card company Cards Against is a game company, I should say, Cards against Humanity. They make sort of tabletop games.
Like Apples to Apples X rated version or something.
I always find it like to not be the most fun.
I'm more of a catan guy or whatever, but like, you know, whatever to each his own, and they as part of a cards against humanity, has a sort of anti establishment.
There's a puckishness to everything they do.
During Donald Trump's presidency, they did some like a crowdfunding effort to buy a swath of land on the Texas border to stop form President Trump from building a border wall. And they have like taken this swath of land and used it as ammunition in a new dispute with Elon Musk, claiming that it's close to this launch site where SpaceX shoots rockets off, claiming that SpaceX has essentially trashed their land and asking for damages. And it's a very I was trying to pull up the page that lays out these allegations, but it's like a very entertaining complaint, essentially saying we bought this land to mess with the efforts of a racist billionaire. But now there's an even more racist billionaire who is who you know who We've turned our attention to, that being Elon Musk.
Yeah, I mean, I gotta say I love this feud, right, I mean, this is a fantastic feud. And I feel like a little bit like we were saying earlier about you shouldn't mess with Brazil. Don't take on Cards against Humanity. They're they're they're ferocious, Max, And so I also believe right, correct me if I'm wrong that, according to the lawsuit, Musk and SpaceX tried to pony up the money and hand hand Cards against Humanity some money and buy the land. Cards against Humanity said, hey, this is like a tiny little amount. This is a joe. Come on, we're not taking this seriously. But you know, if you think about it, Max, who better to own Cards against Humanity than Elon Musk? Just but I would actually thought that maybe he found it and created the game. It's a perfect game.
It does it. You're so right, David.
I mean, I will say they so they've included some pictures of this land, and it really shows you that these, I mean, the pictures look bad. Like it looks like there's a before and after, and like one of them looks like a nice like looking marsh and the other looks like an industrial site. And I do think like Elon Musk has made a lot of efforts to kind of dismiss the concerns of environmentalists as just kind of like red tape or seeing this kind of extended dispute with the the FAA, the aviation authorities over these sort of reauthorizing SpaceX disputes with the EPA.
Like this stuff, it like doesn't look good.
And I think, obviously he's gonna this is gonna roll right off his back. But it isn't necessarily helpful for a guy who has a lot of fans or used to anyway have a lot of fans in the environmental movement.
But Dana, this is in line with somebody who likes to push the envelope and whould much much more prefer to ask for forgiveness than permission, right, Yeah, And I.
Think that this Cards against Humanity tidbit was like deep in a really well reported Reuter story that was just all about how vastly SpaceX has kind of changed Bokachika, you know, which is where Starbase is and buying up all the land around it. And yeah, I mean, Musk does not have a lot of tolerance for the slow wheels of government bureaucracy.
The other thing I'll say is, and we're probably gonna have to talk about this more in a subsequent episode or episodes, But like Donald Trump is talking a lot about Elon Musk these days, and has made comments about Mars and the need, you know, suggesting that he's just going to like hire Elon Musk to fly some rockets there. This story and that together, it strikes me that that if SpaceX were to become Trump coded, where like, if you just start to think of this as like a Trump thing, that it's not. This isn't about humanity getting to Mars or expanding, you know, its ambitions or sort of all of those like really you know values that I think many people share about how how wonderful the space exploration is. Like if it just turns into this partisan thing, that would be very bad for you, Musk. So like, I don't think this is not going to damage him, but I do think there is this kind of drumbeat of ways in which his sort of political support for Donald Trump and his shift to the right is creating exposure and like legal exposure, but also cultural exposure.
Okay, very good. Now listen to a certain extent, I feel our rustiness here in the feud Watch segment, because I think one of the rules of feud Watch is you can't take any of it that seriously Okay, we're trying. You're trying to break down a fight between Elon Musk and the men and women of Cards Against Humanity. Come on, now, you have a second feuture.
Okay, now this is This one is between Venodekosla, who is a very famous, very accomplished venture capitalist also a donor to democratic candidates. Like, it's so much back and forth. They're just they've been mean tweeting each other for like two days. He started by attempting to sort of criticize some of Elon Musk's migration posts about migrants and essentially calling Elon out for repeating the lie that that Haitians are eating cats and dogs, and that devolved into a lengthy back and forth in which Elon brought up an earlier dispute, an earlier land dispute where Venode Cosla had been trying to stop the public from accessing a beach. Elon used a fake sign that said no pleabs allowed.
They posted that. Venode responded that that that's a notion.
You need to do a pull it, and lots of back and forth and I really it really just shows like Twitter is not the best place to resolve your differences and as a result, we have these two very wealthy guys, very powerful guys, kind of doing a back and forth like crazy, like like schoolyard style.
Schoolyard style. I don't know. I still of the two feuds you brought here this week, I still feel like the Cards against Humanity is the better feud at the two first of because I just like saying cards against humanity. I mean that that's part of it.
But I also like, can we talk about the the opposite of a feud. I just want to say that I had predicted that there that there might be a closing together.
Predicted like what you told your kids or something.
No.
On this podcast, on this pot between Georgia Maloney, the head of State of Italy, and Elon Maloney is here in New York.
Elon gave her an award.
He said she was beautiful on the inside and the outside.
She's also someone who is authentic, honest, truthful, and that kind of always be said about politicians.
It really feels like they had a connection already, but it feels like that connection, that alliance, whatever you want to call it, it has deepened, and like she's got to be one of his favorite heads of state.
If not his favorite, right, then are we gonna grant Max this point? Are we gonna Are we gonna reward him and say, indeed he nailed this prediction.
He did.
I don't remember it was several months ago.
But yes, he did.
I predict that Elon Musk and Georgia Maloney, the leader of Italy, will intensify their alliance.
However that means, and I mean they are united around immigration about concerns about the falling birth rate. I think it's interesting that like she My understanding is that she chose him to get the award.
They both really do seem to be whatever to appreciate the other, and you kind of get it. I mean, Maloney is conservative but has has been effective as a prime minister. She kind of maybe the embodiment of the kind of world leader that Elon Musk admires that maybe even in a way that Donald Trump is not.
Okay, very good Max. So that was a little bonus. I thought we only had few well done, We're going to leave it there, Max. Dana, as always, thank you great to be here, Thanks for having us. This episode was produced by Stacy Wong, Naomi Shaven, and Rayhan Harmantier are senior editors. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples Handels Engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson. The Elonin theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to our supporter Joel Weber. I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.
