Musk Biography: "Endured Father's Abuse and Violence, Imagined Hero... Became Business Idea"

Musk with Asperger Syndrome is a 'Grown-Up Child'
Musk Stops Ukraine Attack by Cutting Starlink

The latest biography "Elon Musk," written by Walter Isaacson, a specialist biographer, who closely observed Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, for the past two years, will be simultaneously released in the United States and South Korea on the 12th.

Elon Musk is a real-life "Iron Man" who oversees six companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), and is a master of eccentric behavior, endlessly spouting "reckless remarks" on social media like a reckless child.

Isaacson described Musk as having Asperger's syndrome, a seriously capricious "grown child" with a lack of empathy who "cannot pick up social cues."

For example, in May 2020, Musk shared a raw scene of Canadian singer Grimes giving birth to their son X with friends and family. Grimes, terrified, tried to delete the photo and later confided to Isaacson, "He didn’t even understand why I was angry."

This book also reveals for the first time the existence of Musk’s third child with Grimes, "Techno Mechanicus," previously unknown. With this, Musk has become a father of ten children with three women.

The source of the trauma that shaped Musk’s personality was the abuse from his father, Errol Musk, and school bullying. Growing up in South Africa, Musk was frequently beaten by peers during his childhood. On one occasion, he was seriously injured and had to be hospitalized for a week, but his father scolded him when he returned home after being beaten.

Whenever Musk was beaten, he endured it by imagining himself as a hero saving the world. That idea became the foundation of his business ventures, leading to the private space company SpaceX’s goal of colonizing Mars to preserve human civilization.

The New York Times evaluated, "The biggest scoop of this book is that Musk secretly ordered the Starlink satellite internet service to be shut down to stop drone attacks on Russia during the Ukraine war."

Musk positioned himself as "on Ukraine’s side" in this war, becoming a hero by installing Starlink free of charge, worth millions of dollars, in Ukraine where communications were cut off due to Russian attacks. However, when drones connected via Starlink began attacking Russia, fearing that Ukraine’s attacks might trigger a Russian nuclear retaliation, he urgently cut off the communications.

Isaacson also candidly portrayed Musk’s complex political tendencies. After acquiring X for $44 billion last year, Musk told his four teenage sons, "I bought social media to influence the next U.S. presidential election."

Musk jokingly asked Isaacson, "What should I do to get Trump elected in 2024?" but he is not a Trump supporter. He told Isaacson, "I’m not a fan of Trump. He’s a destructive person."

Regarding President Joe Biden, he recalled, "He was really boring, just mumbling for an hour."