'Remigration' Takes Flight on X, The Story of ElonJet

Published Oct 1, 2024, 9:22 PM

As we’ve previously discussed here on Elon, Inc., the billionaire’s posts on X have grown more and more political—and right wing—over time. This week, we have Bloomberg’s Jonathan Tirone with us to discuss how Elon Musk, and his platform, have brought the once-obscure, White nationalist term “remigration” back into US politics. Then, tech reporter Kurt Wagner talks to Jack Sweeney, the young man who made a flight tracking service Musk personally de-platformed. Plus: Tesla seems poised to uncork some good news about its sale numbers in front of next week’s big Robotaxi event. 

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Bill 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 to people.

Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, October First, I'm your host, David Popodopolis. As the US presidential campaign, we have politics on the brain once again. Over the weekend, Bloomberg publishes really terrific piece of data journalism showing how this obscure dark term from a far right figure in Austria has now entered American politics and in a big way, and Elon, it turns out, had a big hand in promoting this. We'll then take a hard pivot and touch a little bit on Tesla's third quarter sales, which are due out on Wednesday, and appear by all accounts to have rebounded. And then we're going to feature a fun conversation between friend of the pod Kurt Wagner and Jack Sweeney, who built the infamous Elon jet tracker. Now back in high school, Jack got himself into a little bit of trouble for publicly tracking the private planes of Elon and other celebrities on social media, and to this day Jack's accounts are closely monitored. We're going to start in Vienna, where we have reporter Jonathan Tarne, one of the authors on that data journalism story on the alarming trend, where we see the use of the term remigration grow and grow across social media. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for inviting me.

And I have our two regulars with me here in the studio, Mac Schafkin, Max Heloe, Hey, David and Dana Hall.

Dana, how are you always a pleasure to be here?

So, Jonathan, for the uninitiated out there, tell us what is this term remigration.

Remigration used to be an obscure social science term that burst onto the international scene, at least here first in Europe in January. It was formally used by mostly sociologists to describe the voluntary return of Jewish people after World War Two. It was reappropriated by right wing extremists over the last ten years to mean the forced expulsion of minority groups, mostly Africans, Arabs and Muslims, from Europe. It really took off in January after an investigative report discovered German politicians sitting down with this right wing radical from Austria. And when I say radical, we're talking really right wing. He received money from the christ Church killer who in twenty nineteen murdered fifty one people. He's mixed up as some really bad stuff has the attention of intelligence agencies, the equivalent of the FBI in Austria. He's really far right. He was meeting with mainline politicians in Germany and in Austria discussing this word remigration as a strategic imperative for European conservative parties. In January, we see it bursting through Alphabet trend analytics. Our contribution is then to use this sophisticated social media tracking platform where we can go back and examine eight months of online data to see how this word remigration is pinking about. What we find is that ninety seven percent of the traffic that we study is actually coming on Elon Musk Twitter, and what we were surprised to find is that he actually had a direct connection to some of this amplification.

And when you say a direct connection, Jonathan, what does a direct connection look like?

Well, for example, I mean the way these guys operate the people who are promoting remigration. They're very sophisticated in their online and offline interactions. So on March eighth, this young radical in Austria, he gets invited back onto Twitter after a four year ban. The first thing he does is he goes on and he thanks Elon for letting him back onto the platform, and then the next day he goes on and make some content. There's only three people, but they choose a strategical location. On March ninth, the day after getting back onto x, they scale the front of the Fundamental Rights Agency, which is based in Vienna. It's the equivalent of the Human Rights Watchdog. They occupy the balcony for three hours, far more police and far more firefighters than demonstrators. But that's not the point, because after they get hauled down, they start making videos and we can see then as we're tracking the data, how they're mentions and their likes, the amplification of their message is exploding online. It more than doubles overnight and remains at a high level for days after that. Then the young Austrian radical actually gets hauled off in handcuffs, and that's where Musk steps in. He messages him directly and asks whether you know it's even legal for him to be arrested for talking about remigration. And that's when you know, you see Elon Musk. If he gets in touch with you directly over the platform, then your engagements really take off, and that's when it starts, Yeah, climbing, rocketing.

Yeah, the piece, you know, that is very interesting and truly does you know, shed some light on how max you get to this figure? I mean, ninety seven percent of all references to this term appearing on X. I suppose if it were twenty seven or forty seven or whatever, you could say, oh whatever, random skew it or ninety seven percent is an incredible number.

Well, yeah, I mean it's such a high number that you'd be sort of tempted to ask, is this does this exist without Elon Musk? And but read reading the story, I do think it does and I think what it actually shows is more the centrality of Musk's role in the kind of like.

Far right information space.

Like we if we're talking about this ten years ago, there were other places where these ideas were bubbling up. There were sort of the more niche social media platforms, you know, four Chan and the like, and then you had kind of Fox News, some of some of the sort of further right parts of Fox News. And it really feels like Musk is kind of occupying both of those spaces, occupying both the edge lord kind of master of ceremonies for the edge lord right, and master of ceremonies for the actual right, or the kind of most ideological part of the actual right. And so, yeah, you have these kind of hard right ideas on immigration going from some random guy in.

Austria to you know, the mouth of the president. Yeah, and we're a president. Excuse me.

Yeah, it's become mainstreamed in a way, right, I mean there's always been right wing spaces or more conservative spaces. Talk you know, talk radio is huge in the eighties, you know, read it, four Chan, Telegram, all kinds of podcasts, But this seems to be sort of like the mainstreaming of views that people once thought were fringe, and then because they are on X, they're getting amplified. And then they start entering like the mainstream conversation because people start using the words. The president starts using the word and it's it's very tactical and it's very orchestrated. And I would imagine Jonathan correct me if I'm wrong. But are these people that are kind of interacting with Elon Musk are they also being paid by X, Like are they monetizing their accounts?

Well, I mean there's a parallel investigation by a Swedish agency that did find that one of the most popular X accounts promoting this concept of a remigration is actually do buy based outfit that is actually doing it for the AD revenue. So I mean there's that angle absolutely, But just generally speaking, I mean, you know, before the Internet came along, we used to call this like glorification of violence for example, right, you have movies that glorify violence or and this is like again what we're seeing over the course of this investigation. There are horrible things, There are horrible crimes, and there are riots like the race. So it took place in the UK over the summertime, and because everybody has a video production studio in their pocket these days, those images do go viral. But it's the difference then, of having mister Musk come on and saying civil war is inevitable, as he did at Ate in late July in response to some of these images of violence.

Yeah, in the in the UK right.

Versus somebody calling for a level headed response that is socially acceptable. And you know what we've found is simply you know that this extreme content is amplified a raging scream around this issue of remigration.

Jonathan, I want to ask you on that for a second, that the term I imagine remigration means different things to different people. I mean my understanding is some are calling for it for everyone who's in the country or any given country illegally. Others are saying, no, that doesn't go far enough. Not only do we need to drive out those who are in the country illegally, but also many of those who are here legally. Walk us through the different kinds of interpretations you have.

Yeah, so let's start with what we know. So September twenty ninth, the Freedom Party, the far right party in Austria, one of the most votes in the national elections. They've adopted remigration as a primary policy platform. They want to put pressure on anybody, any foreign born person who doesn't adopt the quote dominant culture. They want to institute a so called identity based migration policy, expel asylum seekers they name in their policy platform going into the vote. They want to remove millions of people across the European Union who do not meet their criteria and send them to a North African made up city. So basically we're talking about remigration in its official form as something equivalent to deportation.

Now, Max.

So it goes from something that's largely in Europe and it jumps over the Atlantic and comes to the United States of America in a big way, as Jonathan was indicating, and a big part of that moment was when Trump posted about it himself.

Yeah.

I mean it's important to say in the context of domestic politics, US politics, this.

Is like a euphemism.

It's not like the Trump is importing these crazy far right Austrian ideas. It's that he's importing a way of talking about the ideas that he's that are already here and that he's already basically put forward as a proposal. You know, he's saying he's going to deport millions of people, and so remigration just kind of like a euphemistic way of signaling it, or perhaps a way of signaling affinity with some of these right, you know, extremists on Twitter.

Unless I'm not hearing correctly, I've never heard him or the party say that people who are here legally and.

Haven't the US passport.

I don't, well, so the US passports.

There is a question of asylum seekers who are here legally who I think at various times he has implied that that would have to go home.

Jonathan.

Now that we're here in the US, we're going to talk a little bit about more about Elon and US politics, and so we are going to let you go. But thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks a lot, Thank you.

Buy Okay, So, Dana, Now, Elon's Pack is indeed contributing quite a bit to the Trump campaign into its messaging.

What's its spending up to now?

Yeah, so it's called America Pack, and to date they've spent sixty eight million dollars just to elect Donald Trump. That does not include the sort of millions that are being spent on down ballot races and a lot of competitive house districts, but that's a significant number. I mean, Elon's pack has emerged as one of the key packs that is supporting Trump this cycle. And it's hard to know exactly how the ground game is going on all of these swing states, but we've seen the mailers. We are definitely looking at all the digital ads, and then the sort of big in kind contribution that Musk is giving Trump, which is basically what he's spouting on you know, X almost NonStop these days.

You know, I'm almost going to retract my point because Dana points out that like the biggest contribution that Elon has made to Trump has to do with his posting and his use of X. That said, you know, remember when we first learned that Elon Musk was going to donate a lot of money to Trump. There were reports that he was saying he was going to donate forty five million dollars a month, which he sort of kind of half denied or back down from or whatever kind of threw into some doubt. We have some sense now, right because sixty eight million dollars. So that's a mathematic that suggests right that Elon Musk is has not ponied up the most extreme amount that he might have.

I don't think.

I think it's fair to say he is not donating forty five million dollars a month.

That said, he is donating a lot of money.

Now, remember when this pack was started, Elon Musk had not yet donated. I think, Dana, you'll correct me if I'm wrong. I think a little less than ten million bucks had been an error.

Tis actually, actually there's no fec filing at all that shows that Elon Musk has donated. Squat it's all his.

Friends, right right, No, No, But my assumption is those filings were very early before the reports came out that Elon Musk was going to make the contribution. I think it's fair to assume that the money that's come in now much of that has come from Elon Musk, if not all of it, But we do not know and will not know until we get filing. So, like, if you're trying to decide, like somewhere is it forty five million dollars a month? Is it more or less than forty five million? Like to me, we're looking probably in the fifty million dollar range. But again that's just a guess based on that's f Yeah, I think.

That's fair there. I mean, they are clearly spending millions of dollars that is coming from somewhere. We'll find out October fifteen just how much.

It's possible that the Jimmy Johns guy who was an early donor to this pack, or Joe Lonsdale will turn out to be like a Sheldon Adelson level Trump backer.

I think it's very.

Likely that much of this money, if not all of it that's come in, you know, since Musk began contributing, is Musk money.

Okay, So that's the Uh.

Those are the figures on the on the money exing on behalf of Trump as part of the the implicit agreement here. The Guardian ran the math the other day. Twenty four hours of elon Musk on x one hundred and forty five IXes roughly six an hour, roughly one every ten minutes. Now, Max, I'm guessing he's sleeping for a few.

Hours of these and some of these ex's, David, are very long, right, you think of like, oh, that's only you know, one hundred x is times one hundred and forty characters or.

Whatever like it's not that much. But no, no, no, Elon has.

Taking full advantage on of the long form capabilities of each There was a rant in their right right, I've got it pulled up. Over the weekend, he posted a somewhat long post that basically said that if Trump is not elected, this will be the last American election. Basically, if we do not support Trump, American democracy will end.

And then he's turning what the Democrats say on its head.

Mister Musk is here.

Turning what some, yes, some in the activist corners of the Democratic Party say on its head. And his justification for this was honestly like a version of the great replacement theory, basically that the Democrats have been importing immigrants that so that they can sort of swing the United States to a permanent, you know, one party state, you know, if only one, and he wrote if even one in twenty illegals, And now again that is not a that's that's not the preferred term for referring to undocumented people, but one in twenty illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible.

That would mean about two million new legal voters.

He goes on and on basically, you know, you got to get involved or the Democrats are going to you know, control America forever. He's sort of just on the regular expressing such racism and conspiratorial thoughts all the time. But like, this is a very extreme thing that he's saying, and it has you know, it creates a sense of urgency if you're perhaps a Trump.

Voter or somebody who's inclined this way already.

Yeah, you know, Dan, if we can talk about Elon's company, his biggest company for a second, it's going to come out and release third quarter deliveries tomorrow and lo and behold they are on the men.

Yeah.

I mean, I think one thing that I constantly want to push back on, which is like a very common narrative, is everyone in the United States has this idea like, oh my god, Elon Musk is such a right wing nutbag, like Tesla Sales or got a Creator. It's brand erosion. He's torching the brand. No one's ever going to buy an EV.

But that's only Max Auto Market.

Well, I've i mean, Max and I have written stories together that I've looked at this, but we live at a global auto market. Tesla has a huge advantage when it comes to electric vehicles because of its supercharging network and it's over the air software updates and its range and a lot of other things, and sales have really perked up in China. So we're going to get delivery figures tomorrow. Bloomberg consensus is like four hundred and sixty four thousand units. That's like a big comeback. That would be like a year over year increase from the third quarter a year ago. So you know, I mean, we won't know until we actually get the delivery figures, but there are signs that you know that sales have recovered, mostly thanks to China, which is like all in on evs. It has these great incentives.

But also not slily a commentary on like it doesn't.

If Tesla sales go down, it doesn't mean it was because Elon tweeted. But if it goes up, doesn't mean that, you know, the world's automotive virus. Now are like, you know, great, thank god Elon is warning us of these migrant.

No, but Max, I will tell you because you're you're a cyber truck skeptic. Well, essay, and that you're not sure it's ever going to amount to more than a rounding era in Tesla earnings. Indications are apparently that they sold a decent chunk of them, and the third indications are help me out, what is that?

Well, you mean the cyber truck. Yeah, no, I mean that I am seeing more cyber trucks on the road here in California. They also just started delivering cyber trucks in Mexico. And you know, there's even some hurricane photos about like, oh, my cyber truck has been great in the hurricane in North Carolina. I think some of the estimates are like maybe they did twenty thousand cyber truck sales this quarter.

These are not seven thousand a month.

This is impressive compared to a bunch of other electric trucks that are all are also not selling.

How many Rivians are they selling a court It's.

Fewer and but that doesn't But but like Rivian is a niche company that with very small footprint. Tesla, as they're saying, like, is selling four hundred thousand.

Can I ask you this, what quarterly number on cyber trucks do you need before it?

You know, it is something that you will.

Say that's looking at Tesla's comparison to the over to the auto market, So like, what are what is the F one fifty selling?

What is a RAM selling? What are what are other trucks?

Because because Chevy Silverado or or.

The Colorado, David's preferred way of the Colorado.

But you know, as we talked about it before the cyber truck launch, like trucks are the big automotive market in the United States. It's like more people own trucks than Sedan's and so like we shouldn't be like comparing it to a little bit. You know, Tesla is competing with the Corolla, the cyber truck is competing with the F one fifty, Like that's that should be the comparison, and really there's very little evidence that's happening. We should go back and look at like how quickly the Hummer sold in its early days, like one of these like kind of novelty trucks, whether it's even reached that status.

If you were to do that in this I'll give you seven days to do that, and the next Tuesday we'll talk about it. Maybe the demand is in d there because Dana, right, they are we know they still have supply issues with just cranking them out enough.

I don't know.

I thought twenty thousand was a significant number. Max is having none of it.

So I think one thing to look for tomorrow when we get the sales figures is Tesla doesn't even break out the cyber truck. They basically are like, we sell the three in the Y and then there's quote unquote other vehicles, which is the s the X of the cyber truck. So until a company even breaks out how many they sell, like, I'm not going to get excited.

And the reason we've had to bring it up is just to get Max worked up. That's really the only reason we talk about the cyber truck.

On this show.

Last point on Tesla stock is back up on the year, now erased all of its losses.

Dana, right, because what's coming? I mean, David, have you forgotten what ten ten is?

Right?

Right? I forgot?

We got to get excited our watch party for the big ROBOTAXI, you know.

And also these sales figures in China, the fact that interest rates appear to be coming down, there are like a bunch of reasons to feel more more were optimistic about about this company. Then before I did see you know, cyber truck in New York City in matt blue kind of it was a rap in this sort of deep blue, and I got admit it, it looked kind of cool.

We go back capitulation from Max Chapkins. So with that, I'm moving on.

Max and Dana, goodbye to you both.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Okay, so now we have for you a special little treat. Kurt Wagner did that interview with Jack Sweeney. Now, Kurt, when you were in high school playing big man on campus, doing keg stands and superstar quarterback of the football team, Sweeney was doing real stuff, right, I mean you know he was.

He was.

He was speaking truth to power. Tell us about your interview with him.

He was Jack Sweeney still just in college by the way down in Florida. Is perhaps better known as the career of Elon Jet, the Twitter account that tracks Elon's private planes.

So you know, this is where it takes.

Off, from where it's headed, what time it took off, what time it landed, how many you know the co two emissions that were that were emitted during the trips. So he's been publishing this information which is publicly available, you do got to hunt for it. But he knows how to do that, and he's been publishing this for the last several years, and uh, you know, we get into a lot of the drama that's unfolded for him in his life since then, because, as you can imagine, Elon is not a fan of people necessarily knowing when he takes off in his private plane and where he's headed.

Yeah, there certainly are some trials and tribulations along the way. Those come up in the interview. I listened to it last night. I thought it was a hoot, and I think you all will too. Let's give it a listen.

Hello, Jack Sweeney, the creator of elon Jet. Welcome to Elonik. It's great to have hey.

Thanks for having me. A lot to talk about, and it'll be interesting.

We have a lot to talk about. Absolutely no, we're so excited to have you on. You know, I want to start I think probably by this point a lot of our listeners may be familiar with elon Jet. We're obviously going to get into what that is, but I actually want to start with you and sort of give people just a quick background on who Jack is. Give us the Rundown because I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear you're still in college.

Yeah, so back in high school, I'm a senior now in college about to graduate. I've always been this kid who's been interested in tech and things like that, and I was interested in Testla on SpaceX. Like at some point I became aware that Elon Musk had a private jet. I kind of knew about flight tracking because my dad was familiar or he's in the aviation industry, so I was familiar that flight tracking existed, and I took what I knew from computers, flight tracking and all that during COVID and just kind of built up the idea that I had for a while.

So explain to people how this works exactly. I think there's a misconception that a lot of what you post is maybe private or not, you know, publicly available.

It is publicly available.

How do you get this information that you're you know, sharing with everybody about the private jet activity.

Yeah, so you know, the United States with FAA, and then everywhere else around the world, all the planes are required to are mandated to have transponders, and the transponders are transmitting their tail number and where they are, where there speed, their altitude, all that telemetry, and that can be picked up with like two hundred and fifty miles of like from the ground to any plane that's in that range. But so I have a hobbyists all around the world, like a thousand of them sending data all into a central server, and there's different networks like this that exists that are even bigger than mine. And then once you have that data, you can compare it to like registration databases and so like for instance, you can look up Elon's plane and it's registered to a subsidiary SpaceX that's registered at the same location as SpaceX or address, and like that way you know it's his plane, and then you start tracking it with that data. And the other thing is like Elon's tail number is N six two ats and his birthday is six twenty eight, and Ts's test on SpaceX.

So it's almost like some of these things.

That these celebrities and billionaires they don't want to be tracked, but then they do something like that that makes them obvious, and they're not really taking full advantage of what they could be doing to hide the tracking.

It's all automatic posting the programs.

Yeah, I mean Elon of course has pushed back on this. We'll get into that in a sac At what point were you aware that he was aware of the account?

Right?

Like?

Was there certain?

I'm sure when you first launched this, you know, maybe you thought maybe he'll see this, maybe he won't see this, but at a certain stage he clearly saw it. When did you become aware that he knew what you were doing?

So back in December twenty twenty, I believe is the year he flew to Hawaii and someone quote retweets it and then Elon sees it. He and he just replies visiting Larry Ellison blah blah blah because you know that's one of his friends and he gets like business advice from him. No problem with it then. And then like a year later, December twenty twenty one, you know, he DMS me it's like one am for me, and.

I'm like, wow, that's unbelievable, and like, you know.

Then we're messaging for like probably like a month, like every cup every week or so, like he says something or like I say something and he's asking me how it works and.

What's he's saying to you when he reached out to you, like, was it a complimentary No.

At that point he's like, I don't like this basically, you know, but he was asking how it worked.

Okay.

He has a strong distaste for the FAA already, and that's another reason why he's like air traffic control is so primitive, blah blah blah, you know, and I would say he's right about that, Like in general, if you're familiar with the aviation industry, it's behind with the times.

You're now having a dialogue with him at this point, are you feeling like, hey, this is pretty cool, Like this is a guy you look up to, and now he's s he's in your DMS? What is going through your mind when you start to have a conversation with him.

It's like you're really like trying to think about what he's thinking, and you know, you I don't want to like make him mad, but at the same time, I'm still going to hold like what I think he offers me five thousand dollars at some point to.

Stop and I think you countered right, Yeah.

I was like fifty thousand or a Tesla.

Fifty thousand, yeah, or a tesla that was did you ever get close, Like, did you ever think he'd actually take that offer for you to pull it down?

He said he was considering it, and then like and then he was at some point he's like, it doesn't feel right to pay to take this down.

Well, he ended up paying a lot more to take it down, a lot more to take it down, bought Twitter to take it down. Yeah, I don't know if you were aware of this that in January of twenty twenty two, Elon at this point is complaining to the CEO of Twitter, Peragagawall and saying, hey, you got to take down Elon jets.

So yeah, it's like it's about the same time.

So like during December, he's not happy with me, so then he switches to the CEO.

And I think what's interesting about that timing is that that's the same month he starts building a steak in Twitter.

You know what's interesting is there's an account right around when I was suspended on all my accounts.

Well, the timing is certainly interesting now that you know, Okay, he's reaching out to you, he's reaching out to the CEO, nobody's taking this account down, and suddenly he starts building a steak in the company. Do you think maybe he had an issue or he wanted to sort of like have a stake in Twitter so that he'd have more say in whether or not your account existed.

That's definitely part of it. I would think, like the time is too close. It just feels like he has a really strong distaste towards me and like the account. Like you ever watch like interviews of him and someone brings up elon jet. It's not like it's a product of mine. He makes it like about me and he like hates it.

Yeah.

Yeah, he buys the company, and I I believe at the point he said something in late twenty twenty two.

After November.

Yeah, November twenty twenty two, he says something along the lines of, like, I believe in free speech so much, I'm not even going to suspend you know, this account that's tracking my plan.

Yeah, my commitment to free speech.

Are you reading it? You turn your head, you have it written on the wall or something, Yeah, I do read it for us?

What does it say my commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.

That's right, So that's what he tweets in November. By December, you're you're suspended, right, So what happens with like your side of the story here from November when he says I'm going to let this account exist to December when he decides to ban you.

Yeah, so I was I was like thank you, you know, like I appreciate that. And then that's December. And then December twelfth and thirteenth, I get an email about someone inside Twitter leaking that my account has visibility filter. So I like, I post that and I make it public and then like that's on the news. You know, there's articles all about that during the weekend. And then December fifteenth, I wake up and like all of my accounts are suspended, and then for like a brief little bit of time they get unsuspended. I tweet something that's like can I have my eight dollars back or something, and then it all gets suspended again, like I don't know what the discrepancy is. And then like a few hours later, like Elon comes out with this tweet that like, you know, he said that his kid was being followed in a car.

Well, so we're gonna take a quick step back so two important things I think you just pointed out. The first is this idea of visibility filtering, right, which is essentially limiting the distribution of a particular account, but without telling anybody, right, Like you weren't alerted, at least not officially from Twitter. It's not like they said, hey, Jack, we're gonna, you know, cut distribution of Elon jet.

They just do it behind the scenes.

Yeah.

And I think we know that that did indeed happen because Walter Isaacson wrote that in his biography of Elon that then came out later that you know, he basically cut your distribution. I think the interesting thing a few days later, like the quick backstory for those who don't recall, is that Elon lands in La. You know, the account is tracking his plane lands in La twenty four hours later, supposedly as Stoker follows a tesla that you know, he thinks that Elon's in, but it's really Elon's son who's in the tesla. And there's a Stoker incident at like a gas station where they call the cops and all this stuff, and Elon, you know, I will say, as a father, rightfully sort of freaks out in the sense of like he thinks his young son is in danger, but his reaction is not really to be mad at the stalker. It's to go after you, Right, he says, my young son's in danger, and this is all because of Jack and the fact that he tracked my plane to LA even though the incident happened twenty four hours later, like you know, thirty miles away or whatever it may be.

Did you feel like, have you ever thought.

To yourself, well, maybe putting the fact that he landed in La, did you know put him in danger? Like does that ever does that seem reasonable at all to you? Or does that seem just crazy?

Not for that event at all, Like it's just like way too many disconnects between that and the facts we know. Yeah, and like that night, so like Heke does of tweets and then you know, he everybody that posts about Elon Jef being suspended, there's tons of journalists that also get suspended.

Okay, so your account gets suspended. This is December twenty twenty two, like a month after he takes over the platform. I think ultimately he comes to sort of this compromise where he says, you know, you can't track someone's location in real time, but if you wait twenty four hours, you know you can post his planes' location. But now it's on a twenty four hour delay, do you feel you're still doing it? So clearly you still see value in posting it even though it's delayed.

Yeah, the thing is he posted, you know, like a day after he posted, like should I unban the accounts that did this or whatever? And you know everyone votes, yes, all the journalists get unsuspended, but I don't. It's like, why wasn't I given that chance? He changed the rules suspended me back, like for stuff I did before changing the rules, So I was never given a chance like with those accounts. Yeah, and the elon Jet next day on Twitter and my personal account, those are new accounts.

That's right, So you had to start over in terms of followers and stuff. I'm curious if you've learned anything from having followed him as closely as you have, right, I mean, I I've learned a ton following elon Jet. I think I told you this when I wrote a book about Twitter, Battle for the Bird. I relied on elon Jet a lot, just to know where he was on particular days, where he was going and even employees were using it to track like when's the boss going.

To be in the office.

Yeah, even the early days, I remember I could see like there were like executives that like would be following it from Tesla Space.

Yes, what have you learned about him? Though?

Have you picked up behaviors or tendencies or anything you know unique as someone who's followed him this.

Closely, He definitely spends like way more time on X than SpaceX or Tesla now, at least in person. He used to visit Brownsville so much for Star Base, Texas for SpaceX, And there's a lot of San Jose now, which is like how he gets to San Francisco and Austin. The other thing is like about him personally, like you know, I think he's smart, but like he'll have like these impulsive things that he's not necessarily true about that he thinks he's like right about as someone maybe in power, Like his tweets have kind of like a little bit gone out of.

Control, Like even I not it's like there's typos.

And I'm like, come on, Like he's like starships are meant to fly, and it said starships are mean to fly, like.

You know, uh, needs that edit button. I guess well, Jack really appreciate you coming on Elon Inc.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

This episode was produced by Stacy Wong.

Naomi Shaven and Rayhan Harmansi are our senior editors. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan, Blake Maple's Handles Engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.

The Elon Inc. Theme is written and.

Performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiira. Brendon 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.

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Elon Musk’s sprawling business empire has granted the billionaire a degree of power and global influ 
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