Elon Musk's Long Obsession With Sabotage

Elon Muskʼs Long Obsession With Sabotage - The Atlantic 29/3/19, 11(53 pm
TEC H N OLO GY
Elon Musk’s Long Obsession

With Sabotage
For the Tesla and SpaceX
founder, the acts of rogue
employees are not just fireable
offenses—they’re treason.
MARINA KOREN JUN 19, 2018
KIICHIRO SATO / AP
In October 2008, the news

outlet Valleywag published a
letter from an employee at
Tesla. The company, just five
years old then, had called
employees into a meeting and
revealed some troubling news,
the writer said. Tesla had only
$9 million in the bank.
Meanwhile, the letter writer
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/06/elon-musk-sabotage-tesla/563183/ Page 1 of 14
claimed, the company had

taken more than 1,200
preorders for its electric cars—
thousands of dollars in
deposits—but delivered fewer
than 50 to customers.
“I cannot conscientiously be a
bystander anymore and allow
my company to deceive the
public and defraud our dear
customers,” the employee
wrote. “Our customers and the
general public are the reason
Tesla is so loved. The fact that
they are being lied to is just
wrong.”
The employee’s name was not

revealed. But Elon Musk found
this person anyway.
The way he did it is the stuff of

Hardy Boys novels. According
to the Ashlee Vance’s 2015
biography of the tech
entrepreneur, Musk copied the
text of the letter and pasted
into a Word document, and
checked the size of the file. He
pored over the office’s printer
activity logs, looking for a

document that matched the
one he had created. It’s not
clear why this employee would
print out the letter that
appeared on Valleywag, but
Musk’s hunch proved correct.
He got a hit on the logs, and
used that information to track
down the person who carried
out the printing job. The
employee wrote a letter of
apology and resigned.
It’s no surprise that Musk

decided to play detective and
pursue the suspect in this
mystery. And the employee
was indeed a suspect, from the
moment the 2008 letter
became public. Like any
business leader, Musk prizes
loyalty among his employees.
But for Musk, the actions of
rogue employees aren’t
evidence of workplace
displeasure or disobedience
(some of which are not
unfounded—Musk later
confirmed the Tesla

employee’s claim that the
company was running on $9
million). They are, regardless
of their motive, not just
fireable offenses, but treason.
Sabotage.
This is clear in Musk’s recent

reaction to another mutinous
employee within Tesla’s ranks.
On Sunday night, Musk sent an
email, obtained and reported
by CNBC, to employees about
his recent discovery:
I was dismayed to learn this

weekend about a Tesla
employee who had
conducted quite extensive
and damaging sabotage to
our operations. This included
making direct code changes
to the Tesla Manufacturing
Operating System under
false usernames and
exporting large amounts of
highly sensitive Tesla data to
unknown third parties.
The full extent of his actions
are not yet clear, but what he

has admitted to so far is
pretty bad. His stated
motivation is that he wanted
a promotion that he did not
receive. In light of these
actions, not promoting him
was definitely the right
move.
Then Musk zoomed out a bit,

expanding his view of potential
sabotage:
However, there may be

considerably more to this
situation than meets the eye,
so the investigation will
continue in depth this week.
We need to figure out if he
was acting alone or with
others at Tesla and if he was
working with any outside
organizations.
As you know, there are a long

list of organizations that
want Tesla to die. These
include Wall Street short
sellers, who have already lost
billions of dollars and stand
to lose a lot more. Then there

are the oil and gas
companies, the wealthiest
industry in the world—they
don’t love the idea of Tesla
advancing the progress of
solar power and electric cars.
Don’t want to blow your
mind, but rumor has it that
those companies are
sometimes not super nice.
Then there are the multitude
of big gas/diesel car-
company competitors. If
they’re willing to cheat so
much about emissions,
maybe they’re willing to
cheat in other ways?
It seems that as Tesla has

expanded, so has Musk’s
perception of sabotage. His
email sounds like a warning
that threats to Tesla’s public
image can come in all kinds of
packages, from rogue
employees with access to
sensitive materials to outsiders
from the “long list of
organizations that want Tesla
to die.” Perhaps the threat of

the latter feels more acute now
because Musk’s businesses
have shaken off the label of the
ankle biters that critics
believed them to be. When
you’re not an ankle biter,
you’re the top dog. And,
according to Musk’s
philosophy, when you’re the
top dog, your competitors want
—and will try—to knock you
back down.
“The forces arrayed against us

are many and incredibly
powerful,” Musk wrote in a
different email, sent to Tesla
employees in February 2017
after a former production
worker wrote in detail on
Medium about the company’s
working conditions—long
hours, “excessive mandatory
overtime,” a shortage of
manpower, and frequent
injuries. “This is David vs.
Goliath if David were six
inches tall!” Musk said.
Musk considered “outside

forces” in 2016, when a SpaceX
rocket exploded on the
launchpad as it fueled up for an
engine test. The company
examined seriously the
possibility of sabotage in its
investigation of the incident.
“We literally thought someone
had shot the rocket,” Musk
said in an interview with
Christian Davenport, a
Washington Post reporter,
published in Davenport’s 2018
book, The Space Barons: Elon
Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest
to Colonize the Cosmos.“We
found things that looked like
bullet holes, and we calculated
that someone with a high-
powered rifle, if they had shot
the rocket in the right location,
the exact same thing would
have happened.”
SpaceX even got the U.S.

government involved. “[W]e
put pressure on the Air Force
and the [Federal Aviation
Administration] to go collect
whatever forensic data was

possible,” Gwynne Shotwell,
the president and CEO of
SpaceX, told Davenport. “The
first thing you do is think it’s
some outside force, right.
Because we couldn’t figure out
how in the world this could
have happened.”
Eventually, SpaceX engineers

determined the cause of the
explosion was a problem with a
pressure vessel in a liquid
oxygen tank on the rocket’s
upper stage. The feds ruled out
sabotage, too.
In moments of perceived
nefariousness, Musk usually
asks his employees for their
attentiveness for future threats.
He did the same this week.
“Please be extremely vigilant,
particularly over the next few
weeks as we ramp up the
production rate to 5k/week,”
he wrote in the email to his
employees. “This is when
outside forces have the
strongest motivation to stop

us.”
Worker safety at Tesla has been

the subject of several
investigations in last year,
including by BuzzFeed, The
Guardian, and the Center for
Investigative Reporting. Musk
has emphasized that
employees have several outlets
for their vigilance besides the
press, encouraging them to
bring concerns to their
managers, safety
representatives at the
company, or the human-
resources department. If
employees want to be
anonymous, they can register
their notes through something
called the Integrity Hotline.
Musk referred to it in his email
to staff in 2017, saying the
resource “applies broadly to
any problems you notice at our
company.”
The hotline’s name fits nicely

with Musk’s philosophy on
employee loyalty, or lack

thereof. Integrity: “adherence
to moral and ethical principles;
soundness of moral character;
honesty.” The name reads like
a warning. It automatically
bestows any incoming
concerns with the benefit of
belief. Complaints made
elsewhere—in the press, in
lawsuits, in the handling of
sensitive information, true or
false—won’t get the same
treatment.
We want to hear what you think

about this article. Submit a letter
to the editor or write to
letters@theatlantic.com.

Elon Musk's Long Obsession With Sabotage

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Elon Musk's Long Obsession With Sabotage

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Elon Muskʼs Long Obsession With Sabotage - The Atlantic 29/3/19, 11(53 pm

Elon Musk’s Long Obsession

MARINA KOREN JUN 19, 2018

In October 2008, the news

claimed, the company had

The employee’s name was not

The way he did it is the stuﬀ of

activity logs, looking for a

It’s no surprise that Musk

confirmed the Tesla

This is clear in Musk’s recent

I was dismayed to learn this

The full extent of his actions

are not yet clear, but what he

Then Musk zoomed out a bit,

However, there may be

As you know, there are a long

to lose a lot more. Then there

It seems that as Tesla has

to die.” Perhaps the threat of

“The forces arrayed against us

Musk considered “outside

SpaceX even got the U.S.

whatever forensic data was

Eventually, SpaceX engineers

strongest motivation to stop

Worker safety at Tesla has been

The hotline’s name fits nicely

employee loyalty, or lack

We want to hear what you think

You might also like