By Shivaji Dasgupta
Faiz Siddiqui’s literary carnage of Elon Musk is a delight for conspiracy theorists and binge followers of socio-economic intrigue. It divides the American population into two unambiguous segments—those who love the man and those who hate him. The former stretching every sinew to further his seemingly unscrupulous agenda, while the latter necessarily gaping at his chutzpah, without being able to intervene sufficiently.
Two major arenas occupy much of the narrative—electric carmaker Tesla and thought disruptor X. The cast and crew are marinaded in uncompromising audacity—whether reckless technology development, Stalinist purges in corporate structures or the relentless ability to manipulate policy makers and industry icons. Therefore, suggesting a twisted Orwellian version of the American Dream, now seemingly one reckless man’s prerogative and no longer a licence for every sincere fellow.
The narrative begins with the accidental death of Huang, a passionate lover of Musk’s autopilot Tesla vehicles, on a highway due to tech failures, whether caused by man, machine or the alliance of both, up for much debate. Musk initially appears to be cooperative in the investigation process, when Robert Sumwalt takes charge of investigations. But he soon takes a deliberate U-turn and when Missy Cummings from the NHTSA, the safety board, takes charge, the atmosphere turns ferociously hostile. Cummings, a former fighter pilot, is invested in LIDAR, a technology competing with the Tesla worldview, and she soon is the recipient of direct and clandestine personal threats. Seemingly orchestrated by folks like Omar Qazi, a Musk fan boy, on a mission to smoothen every circuit for the guru’s electric dreams.
The autopilot and its evolution into ‘full self driving’, further closer to singularity, continues to make significant appearances throughout the sequence of pages. Musk’s intent to fast forward the automation protocols takes precedence over the electrification spiel, as it is projected as a modern-day Titanic, doomed for disaster. Cybertruck plays a key cameo, a paint-free apparition with bullet proof glass that guillotines every engineering convention for this cadre. Trump’s unveiling of the mega star is projected in tragi-comic light, with cheeky comparisons made to the iconic product reveals of Steve Jobs. Clearly Siddique is no foe of the Apple impresario, and dispels all attempts by Musk to place himself as an elite peer.
The automotive saga continues with the Uber flirtation, as Musk considers the robotaxi project by Travis Kalanick’s team to be competition that merits collaboration, or rather control. ‘Full self driving’ keeps resurfacing as a persistent villain, as its three way skillset of highways, city streets and parking prowess is brutally audited. The journey from ‘smart summons’ to ‘actually smart summons’ is gleefully projected as a necessary blow to Tesla’s utopian script, even as Uber seems to be abandoning its autonomous aspirations, chastened by an unsavoury crash or two. It still remains competition for Musk in a fundamental sense, but the tech intersection has been abdicated.
A few sideshows add subversive fuel to the torrential tidings. Phantom Braking, a much vaunted killer feature, is tested with aggressive vanity, with real children as test cases. Dan O’Dowd and Ralph Nader appear as brakes of dissent—the former a tech millionaire who is deeply opposed to the automation overclaims, and the latter, a legendary advocate of car safety, from the 1960s. Joe Biden strangely excludes Musk from a Washington summit on EVs, in tune with his administration’s efforts to turn up the regulatory volume, and in sharp contrast to the Trump patronage. The latter is evident on multiple occasions, including the premature reopening of the California production facility during Covid, in contravention of the county laws. ‘Free America Now’ seems to be a shared agenda for Trump and Musk, the Covid standoff just a merry trailer and the 450-odd employees affected by the virus simply minor collateral skirmishes. Poetic injustice, in all this, ensuring that Tesla became the most valuable automotive player in the market.
Musk’s game playing with Twitter is projected with gleeful abandon, as if blockbuster evidence of satanic strains. He was clearly ‘buying influence’ and the power to control opinion, a standard dictatorial stock in trade, through deeply under-ethical means. The workforce was brutally diminished, including Dorsey’s CEO Parag Agrawal, and this led to a breakdown in services, like inadequate risk mitigation processes failing to censure a fake Eli Lilly account proclaiming that insulin was free, amongst multiple such gaffes.
His own tweet responses were boosted artificially to delight both ego and impact, while unsavoury elements were allowed to continue. Twitter Blue, the paid verification service, seemed to undermine the credibility of the platform, while the wish to make it ‘The Everything App’, like China’s WeChat with transaction built in, clearly inappropriate for the free universe. The author takes great pains to project a Heinrich Hynkel-like pattern of calibrated insanity, like Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Quite seamlessly, like strategic timeouts in the IPL, routine court proceedings are built in to address diverse charges, the stoic Musk emerging consistently as a defiant powerhouse, the bad out of reach for the good. The liquidity of his net worth is often questioned, as if for consolation points and not real analysis.
In the dubious lineage of Trump, Musk does come across as the poster boy of American corporate villainy, a character out of a James Bond classic, determined to conquer the world with the gore of evil. Yet it is faulty to ignore that he is indeed a visionary who ‘sprints’, not just ‘walks’, the talk, and that is no mean feat. Thus, leaving the world to be both a richer and a poorer place, an equilibrium that is constantly work in progress. Elon Musk is far from being shattered in Trump 2.0, and that is the only constant.
The author is an autonomous brand consultant and writer.
Book details:
Title: Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk
Author: Faiz Siddiqui
Publisher: HarperCollins
Number of pages: 336
Price: Rs 599