Latest / Best of Business / Dennis Kneale: Former Managing Editor of Forbes and host of “What’s Bugging Me” talks Elon Musk

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Dennis Kneale: Former Managing Editor of Forbes and host of “What’s Bugging Me” talks Elon Musk · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. It be
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  Speaker 1: follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
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  Speaker 2: Well, who hasn't spent some time over the holidays following
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  Speaker 2: the headline that is the new first Buddy Elon Musky
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  Speaker 2: as an office in the West Wing seemingly has the
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  Speaker 2: presidency here. Dennis Neil knows him very well. He's a
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  Speaker 2: former host at CNBC and Fox Business. His new book
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  Speaker 2: is called The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk, and Dennis
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  Speaker 2: Needles with us from New York.
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  Speaker 3: Good morning, It's great to see you.
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  Speaker 2: So you are, you know, an expert on Elon. We
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  Speaker 2: can't talk about Elon without talking about Donald just generally.
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  Speaker 2: What have you made of the last week or so?
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  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it is unbelievable, you know, a founding belief.
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  Speaker 3: My new book, The Leadership Genius Elon Musk, offers eleven
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  Speaker 3: lessons of Elon, like how does he succeed? How does
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  Speaker 3: he live? And what can we borrow from that? Well,
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  Speaker 3: the one founding belief of Elon's is that we've very
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  Speaker 3: well be made, maybe living inside a huge computer simulation
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  Speaker 3: operated by somebody somewhere far off in the future. Now
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  Speaker 3: this freeze him up to take huge risk to do
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  Speaker 3: things no one else will do.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: But it also means that who's ever running that simulation,
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  Speaker 3: they wouldn't run it for boring outcomes. They run it
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  Speaker 3: for the most entertaining unexpected outcomes. And can you believe
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  Speaker 3: the past week is definitely the most unexpected outcome of
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  Speaker 3: all Trump all those people trying to stop him from
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  Speaker 3: getting into office. Elon coming alongside Trump and helping him
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  Speaker 3: get into office the very opposite outcome of what was
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  Speaker 3: expected or what people tried to make happen. And that's
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  Speaker 3: another lesson of Elon that the most likely outcome often
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  Speaker 3: is the most ironic one, the most opposite of what
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  Speaker 3: was expected. And that's in part because if this is
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  Speaker 3: a simulation, they'd want it to be really entertaining.
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  Speaker 2: Now do you reckon it's a simulation, you know.
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  Speaker 3: The weird thing Mike is. At first, I guess thought
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  Speaker 3: he's kidding, He's kidding. No, But then I had did
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  Speaker 3: ten years worth of research into how long he's been
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  Speaker 3: talking about it, and I looked at the science of it,
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  Speaker 3: and I interviewed a physicist named Melvin Bobson at a
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  Speaker 3: UK University whose name is Escape just now and Melvin
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  Speaker 3: came up with the second law of info dynamics. Melvin
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  Speaker 3: the physicists found that across all of the universe, all
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  Speaker 3: of nature, this weird thing happens. Information is reducing itself
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  Speaker 3: all the time. The first COVID nineteen virus had you know,
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  Speaker 3: a plethora of base pairs of DNA, but as it
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  Speaker 3: mutated mutat it got less and less and less and less,
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  Speaker 3: even though it did the same job. Everywhere in nature
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  Speaker 3: is reducing. And this physicist says, you know, if this
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  Speaker 3: were a computer simulation, you'd want to save on storage
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  Speaker 3: and processing power as much as possible. So maybe this
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  Speaker 3: is proof there's a simulation. So it starts to get
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  Speaker 3: very fun. But here's the one thing. Even if we
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  Speaker 3: don't believe literally it's a simulation, technologically it could be.
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  Speaker 3: You know, if you look at where we came. Elon
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  Speaker 3: says from Pong in nineteen seventy, just kind of two
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  Speaker 3: little bits of light hitting a ball back and forth
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  Speaker 3: against a black background into these three D video realistic
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  Speaker 3: you're inside you know, doom, you know, shooting monsters. But
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  Speaker 3: if it can advance that much in seventy years, imagine
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  Speaker 3: what I could do in ten thousand years. So it
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  Speaker 3: would definitely be true ten thousand years from now to
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  Speaker 3: have a simulation that's so undetectable from reality that you
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  Speaker 3: don't even know it. And if it's true in ten
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  Speaker 3: thousand years, and you look at the Earth's about four
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  Speaker 3: four billion years old, that's something like four hundred thousand
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  Speaker 3: or four million different ten thousand year patches in which
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  Speaker 3: it could have happened. The thought that's never happened until
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  Speaker 3: ten thousand years from now seems unlikely. So Elon therefore, says,
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  Speaker 3: and if there's one simulation, there's probably billions a lot
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  Speaker 3: of people playing simulation. Jesus, So aren't the chances billions
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  Speaker 3: to one in favor of simulation? But let's say we
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  Speaker 3: reject all that. It's just fun to think what if
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  Speaker 3: it were it. Lets us look at the world in
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  Speaker 3: a different way. I've got a new job offer, but
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  Speaker 3: it's crazy, it's such a high risk. Well maybe I
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  Speaker 3: should take it because this could all be a video game.
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  Speaker 3: I've just had a terrible loss. My wife has left me,
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  Speaker 3: divorced me. You know, as hard as it is, if
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  Speaker 3: I could put on glasses that say, hey man, this
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  Speaker 3: is all fake, This is all just a simulation. Maybe
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  Speaker 3: I could heal a little bit and feel a little
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  Speaker 3: more philosophical about it and kind of remove myself from it.
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  Speaker 3: There's one more thing about the simulation thing, okay, that
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  Speaker 3: I throw in there. Ketamine, a drug that used to
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  Speaker 3: be purely a hospital painkiller for surgical patients and now
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  Speaker 3: is a therapy for depression. My own doctor fifteen years
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  Speaker 3: quit his practice to join a ketamine company. Ketamine is
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  Speaker 3: very popular with Elon, and I'm told that when you
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  Speaker 3: take ketamine and you're sitting there, there comes a point
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  Speaker 3: where you are dissociated from the picture in front of you.
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  Speaker 3: You are suddenly sitting on high. Everything's super sharply defined,
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  Speaker 3: and it's as if everything is a prop It's as
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  Speaker 3: if all of it is an illusion, and you suddenly
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  Speaker 3: realize that it's like what the materialists said one hundred
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  Speaker 3: and fifty years ago. This desk is here only because
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  Speaker 3: I think this desk is here. It has substance only
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  Speaker 3: because my mind gives it that. So it starts to
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  Speaker 3: get really quite fascinating. And the publisher warned me, and
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  Speaker 3: talking about the book not to start there. It's just
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  Speaker 3: too weird. I've just started with you know less than
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  Speaker 3: number five. Most people are loafers, work harder than you
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  Speaker 3: ever had before, and yet I remain fascinated by its possibilities.
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  Speaker 3: What are you?
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  Speaker 2: How much in the genius of Musk? How much is
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  Speaker 2: genius and how much is pure insanity?
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  Speaker 3: Oh? I think it's ninety percent genius. The guy's unbelievable.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, we've never seen and I've been understod of
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  Speaker 3: a business reporter Wall Street journal, managing eder of Forbes,
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  Speaker 3: anchor at CNBC, anchor at Fox Business for thirty plus years,
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  Speaker 3: and I've never seen anything like it. It's one thing
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  Speaker 3: to see Jeff Bezos, who once crashed a dinner party
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  Speaker 3: of mine and sat with me for an hour and
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  Speaker 3: a half. Great guy, fantastic laugh, amazing ambition. But he's
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  Speaker 3: been great at one thing and on Blue Origin his
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  Speaker 3: space rocket stuff, you get the feeling he's not that
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  Speaker 3: deeply involved. He leaves it to the engineers. Elon is
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  Speaker 3: super successful on half of different fronts and companies, and
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  Speaker 3: he gets deeply involved in each thing and is actually
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  Speaker 3: technically involved. And he continued he amazes the engineers around
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  Speaker 3: him when he comes up with solutions that they just
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  Speaker 3: don't see because he then you get to that ten
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  Speaker 3: percent insanity that gives him that extra ability to see
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  Speaker 3: things that most people don't.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Dennis, So tell me Dennis about Teesla. See,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not a massive fan of Tesla. The genius I
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  Speaker 2: think of what he did with Tiesla was he beat
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  Speaker 2: everybody to it. So you know, he had an EV
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  Speaker 2: before the world hit an EV. But now he's going
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  Speaker 2: to get beaten by the Chinese and badly. So what's
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  Speaker 2: you know, what's genius about that?
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  Speaker 3: Okay? So first he bought into Tesla right with his
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  Speaker 3: own money. He staked I think seventy million, which was
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  Speaker 3: at the time a substantial portion of his own wealth,
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  Speaker 3: which no one ever does. You raise other people's money.
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  Speaker 3: He did that and made it into something better than
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  Speaker 3: it ever would have been. But to me, the biggest
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  Speaker 3: gift of Tesla is I always said along I was
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  Speaker 3: an opponent of green policy. I thought it's there is
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  Speaker 3: no crisis. The profit motive and technological advance will take
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  Speaker 3: care of any threat. The thought that a four billion
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  Speaker 3: years old Earth suddenly is in danger only because of
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  Speaker 3: one hundred years of industrial use by humans seems a
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  Speaker 3: little arrogant, okay, And yet Tesla was a great car.
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  Speaker 3: People who drive it by it and drive it say
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  Speaker 3: his self driving goes something like one and a half
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  Speaker 3: million or two million miles without an accident. If you
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  Speaker 3: look at the whole fleet, that is three times the
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  Speaker 3: links without an accident of regular cars made by Detroit.
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  Speaker 3: He made a car that was better than other cars.
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  Speaker 3: Never mind whether it's electric or what it was. Was
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  Speaker 3: just a great car, and people love it. They feel
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  Speaker 3: out affection. But one other thing, there's this synergy that
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  Speaker 3: goes on but among all these different Elon businesses. So
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  Speaker 3: his EXAI engine AI chatbot learns from reading stuff. Right, Well,
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  Speaker 3: it's able to read six thousand messages per second posted
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  Speaker 3: to the x platform that Elon owns. Meanwhile, the Tesla car,
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  Speaker 3: its self driving system changed a year or two ago
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  Speaker 3: over from lines of computer code. If then do this,
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  Speaker 3: If then then do that to instead reacting to video,
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  Speaker 3: eliminating the computer code in favor of ingested video. Very
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  Speaker 3: few other AI efforts have been able to do this. Now,
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  Speaker 3: all that information that ingests also can be fed to
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  Speaker 3: x AI, the platform that learns only by seeing and
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  Speaker 3: reading more things, so there's a way it hooks into everything.
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  Speaker 3: But then when he takes Tesla and he says, you know,
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  Speaker 3: if you're going on vacation for a month, there's no
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  Speaker 3: reason your car should sit idle. We can just order
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  Speaker 3: it up and have it go pick up people and
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  Speaker 3: get paid for you and you don't have to do
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  Speaker 3: anything because but we have self driving. So it ends
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  Speaker 3: up becoming its own taxi fleet. And then you look,
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  Speaker 3: Tesla has this robodies making. Have you seen this thing? Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it's human sized. And by the way, one of the
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  Speaker 3: most fascinating things is that the human hand is one
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  Speaker 3: of the hardest things to replicate five fingers. It's why
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  Speaker 3: cartoon characters only have three, and yet this thing has
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  Speaker 3: five four fingers and a thumb perfectly operating. All right, Now,
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  Speaker 3: this thing supposed to make Tesla cars is going to
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  Speaker 3: end up he thinks, being thousands of them in the home, right,
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  Speaker 3: But it also is ingesting everything, and it can feed
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  Speaker 3: that further to the AI engine. Its arm can end
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  Speaker 3: up being attached to an amputee thirty years fromw let's say,
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  Speaker 3: in the future, using the brain chip at his neur
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  Speaker 3: Link brainship company. So that an amputee could be using
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  Speaker 3: the brain chip to operate this mechanical arm, and that
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  Speaker 3: is from Olympus. I mean, so no one else sees
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  Speaker 3: how it all fits together. And I think Elon does
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  Speaker 3: what do you reckon he wants?
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  Speaker 2: With Trump?
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  Speaker 3: I truly believe he never would have gotten involved if
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  Speaker 3: he hadn't felt that America was about truly to tumble
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  Speaker 3: down into the woke mind virus and never come back
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  Speaker 3: from it. I think he did so reluctantly. He knows
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  Speaker 3: that he turns off half the audience, and he wants
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  Speaker 3: one hundred percent of the audience buying Tesla cars. All right,
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  Speaker 3: But and also because he has the zeal of a convert.
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  Speaker 3: He is an adopted American, he became a US citizen.
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  Speaker 3: He has more appreciation for the First Amendment right to
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  Speaker 3: freedom of speech and free expression than most Americans. Do
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  Speaker 3: you know something like this is shocking to me? When
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  Speaker 3: I did the research on it, A third of Americans
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  Speaker 3: believe that preventing hate speech, which is protected by our
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  Speaker 3: First Amendment. Preventing hate speech is more important than ensuring
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  Speaker 3: free speech. Well, you bunch of whimps and babies, how
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  Speaker 3: about you turn the channel how about you don't listen
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  Speaker 3: to the hate speech. It's so upsettering it makes you
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  Speaker 3: feel unsafe. You see, they actually talk about safe spaces
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  Speaker 3: at university campuses. What a bunch of babies. I can't
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  Speaker 3: even believe that. We got into a whole problem when
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  Speaker 3: we began to accept this term called harmful content, as
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  Speaker 3: if words they're mean can leap off the screen and
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  Speaker 3: smack you in the face. And so when someone smacks
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  Speaker 3: you in the face, you blame the words that made
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  Speaker 3: them do that, when you should blame the person that
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  Speaker 3: smacked you in the face. Stop with this because as
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  Speaker 3: soon as you decide content can be harmful, well then
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  Speaker 3: now we got to restrain it. We got a censor it,
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  Speaker 3: don't we. And that is what Elon Musk utterly blew
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  Speaker 3: apart by spending forty four billion dollars, most of it
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  Speaker 3: his money and not an insane expense, by spending that
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  Speaker 3: to buy Twitter Read am a X and tell government, no,
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  Speaker 3: we're not going to censor thousands of voices that you
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  Speaker 3: don't like to hear. No weird thing happened. All of
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  Speaker 3: social media continued censoring after the Twitter files came out.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks to Elon Musk and Matt Taibi, the independent journalist,
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  Speaker 3: and the guys he works with. All right, so so,
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  Speaker 3: but now finally, Mark Zuckerberg just came out the other
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  Speaker 3: day and said, look, we're sorry, man, we like bowed
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  Speaker 3: the government. We censored like crazy. We want to literally,
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  Speaker 3: he said, quote restore free expression to Facebook, threads, Instagram.
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  Speaker 3: Now he says we're going to get rid of the
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  Speaker 3: fact checking based on liberal media who are biased. Clearly,
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  Speaker 3: he says, we're going to do community notes the way
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  Speaker 3: X does. So that means that much of the social
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  Speaker 3: media world is going to go toward the X approach.
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  Speaker 3: And yet and politicians told us he had destroyed Twitter,
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  Speaker 3: it was going to die. He's ruined it, and yet
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  Speaker 3: today it's stronger than ever before. It is the most
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  Speaker 3: powerful media platform in the world. And he did that,
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  Speaker 3: and he did the Trump thing at considerable risk, just
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  Speaker 3: because he felt like there was no other choice. But
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  Speaker 3: how long Mike, before that relationship gets rendered asunder the
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  Speaker 3: new chief of staff, this woman that Trump put in.
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  Speaker 3: You know, Mark Cuban, the billionaire, said that he doesn't
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  Speaker 3: surround himself with strong women. And Trump is the first
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  Speaker 3: president to ever have a woman as chief of Staff.
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  Speaker 3: She you know, Elon has an office in the executive wing, Okay,
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  Speaker 3: so he's not in the White House, and she's now
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  Speaker 3: making sure he doesn't have direct contact with Trump unless
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  Speaker 3: he goes through her. And that's got to be frustrating
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  Speaker 3: for him because he's been hanging out and living at
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  Speaker 3: mar A Lago for weeks and like partying with Baron
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  Speaker 3: and hanging with Trump. But then once he becomes president,
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  Speaker 3: you get kind of secunded or secreted and no one
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  Speaker 3: can get to you, and it's got to be frustrating.
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  Speaker 3: I know that the Democrats and the media are working
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  Speaker 3: hard as they can and some Trump allies to break
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  Speaker 3: up that relationship. They fear it.
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  Speaker 2: Dennis, got a go, but I appreciate your time, Dennis Neil.
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  Speaker 2: The book is the leadership genius of Elon Musk.
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