MUSK The God Player

I have watched this four-hour (!) documentary but it didn't feel like it was four hours. A 10-minute intermission in the middle helped, but the documentary itself was engaging and pulling in the ways I didn't expect.

I've followed Musk's life pretty closely up to 2020 when he clearly started to careen to the right in his views. When he had just started SpaceX, I watched his interview from the Zip 2 times, when he was a young Stanford dropout, where he said that for the humanity to survive and flourish, it needs to develop in three areas: 1) Make global communication and flow of money possible (PayPal, StarLink); 2) resolve transportation and energy challenges (Tesla, Solar City, HyperLoop, Boring); and 3) expand beyond the Earth and colonize other planets (SpaceX).

I have deliberately put the companies Musk founded and/or started in brackets as examples of his personal involvement in these areas. I admired his vision at the time, thinking that he was really concerned about betterment and advancement of humanity.

But then something happened and Musk went Dark MAGA.

Obviously, this was not a sudden transition or radicalization from liberal to far right conservative ideas. It was gradual and sliding, and most of it was hidden from the public eye. This is why those who didn't follow or watch him intently think that the shift happened suddenly, like a 180 turn.

I had my suspicions about the triggering events that facilitated his Dark MAGA transformation. I am glad that the documentary confirmed them and put them into sharper focus.

There were two major events in Musk's life that converged into his loud "anti-wokeism." The first one was COVID, when the government forced everyone to go into lockdown. Musk didn't want to close his Tesla and SpaceX production facilities and opposed these policies vehemently. He also pushed for some solutions and treatments (like the malaria treatment he'd received back in the days when he nearly died) that would cure COVID, which were not approved by WHO and CDCs. Anyone who pushed back on his statements about COVID was branded as stupid, ignorant, and blocked from his Twitter circle (Twitter was always and still remains a major part of his life, even more so now).

The second event is his son's Xavier gender transition. In his July 2024 interview with Jordan Peterson, Musk said he was “essentially tricked into signing documents” during the COVID period, in July 2020. Musk said he did not fully understand what he was authorizing and that he had been told Vivian “might commit suicide” if treatment were not permitted. Vivian objects that he was "tricked" and states that he read the document giving the permission for puberty blockers and subsequent hormone-replacement therapy at least twice - once in her presence and once without her.

This is also where Trump's "greatest hit" about "your child goes to school as a boy and comes back as a girl" comes from. It's a grossly oversimplified Musk's daughter's transition story that I'm sure Musk shared with Trump during one of their dinners at Mar-a-Lago after the 2024 election. The timeline of Trump's statements supports this.

Musk was devastated by this transition. "My son Xavier died," he shared on Twitter with the whole world. For someone who always wanted sons more than daughters and had hard time accepting the idea that Xavier "was gay," this "death" was almost literal. His daughter Vivien is now estranged from him, even though Musk told his ex-wife and Vivien's mother that "he would always love Xavier."

COVID for Musk was a clear signal that he needed to get more involved in politics, especially when the Biden administration shunned him out of the EV summit the White House hosted because it was pro-union and Musk is famously anti-union. During the Biden administration, the US regulatory agencies had several open investigations of Musk that could have led to breaking up of his monopolistic companies (Starlink), harsh labor policies, reduction of government subsidies and contracts, and even criminal liability under Harris administration. He even joked in one of the interviews that if Kamala was elected he might end up in jail.

A strong motivator to go to the other side, isn't it? Gibney's documentary put this into sharp focus for me.

I liked how the documentary was constructed. There were a lot of testimonials from people who know Musk as his former business or life partners, reporters and influencers who were in direct contact with him, and government regulators. They give a more direct and honest assessment of their interactions and experiences with Musk than the narrator - Alex Gibney himself - does. But I can totally see why Musk thinks this documentary is a "hit piece" against him because even in the most objective and detached assessment Musk comes across as a megalomaniac who thinks we are living in a simulation or video game where he is the god-like powerful player and we are all NPCs, or non-playing characters who exist just to populate the game.

There's a lot more to unpack in the documentary, including the background to his super-sperm spreader and pro-natalist ideas, his failures in many companies before Tesla and SpaceX, his childhood and relationship with his father that all have pushed and pulled him in a more conservative and fascist direction. Too much to cover here, but I was shocked by the suggestion that Musk has a lot more than 14 of his now known children. Up to one hundred, someone close to him suggested.

That reminded me of Pavel Durov, a Russian tech billionaire and the founder of The Telegram and VKontakte, who has 106 biological children that will all inherit his wealth when he dies. But Durov does it openly, no NDAs involved, as he believes that he needs to spread his healthy and smart genes, especially to women who have difficulties conceiving. Musk wants to grow a "legion" of his children whereas only he and their mothers know he is the father. And then at one point, he may summon them? For what?

I highly recommend this documentary, even if you watch it only when it comes out on HBO next year. It's in a very limited theatrical release right now because Musk doesn't want people to see it and used all his powers to blackmail distributors and movie theater companies to stop showing it.

P.S. This is an excellent podcast with Alex Gibney that will give you a good idea of what the documentary is about if you have no option of watching it in the theaters now. Pay attention to how the documentary resolved Musk's refusal to participate and give an interview. It really is brilliant.