Walter Isaacson: If you don't want Elon Musk to control so many industries, you should learn to get stuff done too.

“Why is Elon successful at some of these things, like getting 5,000 satellites up? He said we used to be a nation of really great risk-takers. Even the people who ran Boeing probably were risk-takers at one point. Not safety risks, but they were going to try rockets.

He said everybody who came here, whether it was on the Mayflower or across the Rio Grande, they were adventurous, they took risks.

He says nowadays we have more referees than we have risk-takers. We have more regulators than we have innovators. We have more people saying you can't do it, the lawyers, the whatever.

He said it's made it so that our big military contractors can't get anything done. We can't get high-speed rail.

I would think that the best way to make sure he doesn't have so much clout on things is for somebody to be able to build more electric vehicles.

He built a charging network and then the US Government, Ford, GM, decided to build their own, and they've surrendered because the Tesla charging network works.

I'm not trying to just sing his praises, but it would be useful if you don't want him to control the charging network in America, if you don't want him to control the Internet in outer space, if you don't want him to control rocket launches, to have Boeing and Northrop Grumman and others be able to get stuff done.”

The 92nd Street Y, October 13, 2023