Hubris Maximus: Pride, prejudices, and the nine lives of Elon Musk

How Elon Musk continues to emerge unscathed despite his most outrageous tweets and pronouncements

Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk

by Faiz Siddiqui

Published by HarperCollins

268 pages ₹599

  Elon Musk’s life and business shenanigans make for highly readable books. Apart from becoming staggeringly rich — and at one point the world’s richest man — he is eccentric, utterly arrogant, super confident in his own abilities, extremely inconsistent and, finally, given to impulsive decisions. He has built a legion of followers who swear by him and are willing to go to war against his perceived enemies after a single post by him on X (earlier Twitter). His personal life and beliefs are even more colourful. And the number of mistakes he has made and wrong gambles he has taken should have made him bankrupt many times over.

 

Often overlooked is his ability to take the rashest of decisions — and still come out ahead. This has happened far too many times in his career. If this is luck, then he would be one of the luckiest people on earth (and maybe eventually on Mars if he manages to turn it into a habitable colony for billionaires as is his stated ambition). More likely, despite his eccentricities and hubris, he hides a shrewd business brain and the ability to manipulate public officials, investors, and even customers. He can sell outrageous dreams and make a large number of people believe only he can fulfil them.

 

He has been the subject of many books. The book under review is Hubris Maximus, but in the past year, this reviewer had the pleasure of reading The Founders: The Inside Story of PayPal by Jimmy Soni and Character Limit: How Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. This is, of course, apart from the constant bombardment of news and feature articles about him in almost every publication tracking Silicon Valley and its tech moguls.

 

Faiz Siddiqui is a technology journalist with The Washington Post and has covered and broken many stories about Mr Musk, Tesla and even the Twitter takeover. He is an excellent investigative reporter and an accomplished storyteller.  This book would have been very difficult to put together for Mr Siddiqui. Apart from the fact that Mr Musk doesn’t like any article or story that portrays his business or actions negatively, he suspects that Mr Siddiqui has been put to work on making him look bad by his rival tech tycoon Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post.

 

The volume is deeply researched and focuses on parts of Mr Musk’s business in the past couple of decades. Mr Siddiqui spends a good portion of the book on the ups and downs of Tesla’s self-driving software, the errors and accidents that took several lives— while Mr Musk managed to cock a snook at the safety agencies. It looks at the cult-like following that Mr Musk has developed that often manifests itself in legions of followers trolling and threatening even senior public officials of safety agencies at the slightest perceived signal from Mr Musk. It also looks at his ability to come out unscathed despite his outrageous tweets and statements. He got past the infamous “Funding Secured” tweet, which should ideally have been considered market manipulation. He managed to get away with no punishment despite calling a British engineer who rescued children from a tunnel in Thailand a pedophile. And he tried to wriggle his way out of his Twitter deal. The book also looks at how he has managed to get away with thumbing his nose at elected representatives and senior US government officials. It traces his cynical politics — first as a Democrat funder and follower before shifting allegiances to the Republican Party.

 

Though a good part of Hubris Maximus has been covered in great detail in other articles and books, notably Character Limit, the book is a racy read. I have some minor quibbles. The narration sometimes jumps back and forth, making some parts feel repetitive. Also, the secret sauce that makes Mr Musk so successful time and again when people have written him off is not explored. (To be fair, it has not been explored in other books this reviewer has read either).

 

The book ends with Mr Trump’s victory and Mr Musk’s role as czar of the Department of Government Efficiency. Now, Mr Musk and Mr Trump are warring openly and the US President’s recent moves could prove fatal to Mr Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX businesses. Of course, Mr Musk may prove that he has not exhausted his nine lives yet. For people with an interest in colourful business tycoons, most books on Mr Musk are a must-read — though the final chapter on the definitive story of Elon Musk will not be written for a few decades at least.

 

 

The reviewer is former editor of Business Today and Businessworld, and founder of Prosaic View, an editorial consultancy