Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait hosted Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk virtually at the Qatar Economic Forum where he discussed his deal with Twitter, job cuts at Tesla, and the possibilities of recession in the US. The interview lasted almost 20 minutes and Elon was asked multiple questions regarding Twitter, Tesla, and his Political impact on the audience.
While the main focus of the interview was initially on the deal of Twitter, it also includes various topics and Musk’s view on different political leaders.
Regarding the twitter deal, Musk said he cannot reveal the information to avoid incremental lawsuits. But he did reveal the three major concerns that have held the deal till now are the number of spam or fake users, the debt portion of the round, and shareholders’ vote in favor. He said he does not care if he is called the CEO of Twitter or not as long as he is driving the product. The same he feels with Tesla and SpaceX.
He again added that he envisions 80% of North America and at least half of the world on Twitter. He believes instead of restricting people to speak (within the law), the platform should provide the option to users to restrict the types of posts they don’t want to see/read.
“I think there’s a big difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach”, said Elon.
Musk has recently said that the US is probably going to face a recession and adding up to that statement, he said the recession in America is inevitable for the short-term near future.
He also talked about the SpaceX plan of cutting salaried employee by 10% and shifting focus towards hourly employees. Currently, the company has one-third of salaried employees and two of the employees are on an hourly basis. The 10% cutoff will result in a total of 3% to 3.5% of the cutoff of employees overall.
He believes China has an impressive car manufacturing market.
“I’d say I am very impressed with the car companies and just in general with companies in china. I think they are extremely competitive, hardworking, and smart, and I think there’s gonna be a massive wave of Chinese products going out into the world.” He added.
He also said that Tesla focuses on scaling the production and not on the competition as they already have a high demand in the market.
He was also asked about his statement about his Florida governor Ron Desantis and he confirmed he is still undecided at the moment.
He was also asked about his relations with the Chinese market and its impact on buying Twitter, and supporting Desantis or trump, the humanoid robot that is going to be unveiled on September 30th, and his thought on AI being closer to human thoughts.
