Philip Low Unmasking Musk

“I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company.

Elon is not a Nazi, per se.

He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it.

Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else.

Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later.

All his talk about getting to Mars to "maintain the light of consciousness" or about "free speech absolutism" is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work). His lust for power is also why he did xAl and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAl and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. He announced Neuralink just after I invited his ex-wife, which she and I notified him about, to a fundraising dinner for Hebrew University in London (The fact that she tried to kiss me - I immediately pushed her away - while taking a photo at that event, even if playfully, clearly may have added to the alienation and possible emasculation he may have felt when she spoke to me in a pool at a party when they were together and she was naked. To not be disrespectful to her or to him, I stayed but looked at the sky whilst talking to her). I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV. It is ironic that years later, he clearly tried to undermine Twitter before buying it, and in my view, blowing it up and using it to manipulate the masses to lean to the far right in country after country, including The USA.

[Here is more detail as some people asked. After he received a press release draft confirming NV never took a penny from the US Government, he asked to be removed from the Business Advisory Board, but then tried to give the stock he bought back, including for no money, which could have completely crashed NV's stock price. I told him he was fired from the BAB, with cause, as he admitted he had not been participating. That also meant he had no ability to exercise his stock options (years prior, despite not being allowed to discuss his investment because of a solid NDA, he/his people leaked to the press that he had invested twice as much in NV as he actually did, as if the stock options had been counted as stock). This is the email I sent him around that time:

"Elon,

Only one of us apparently knows the difference between Science and PR, and between friendship and phonies, and unfortunately you ain't it.

Let's cut ties here.

Your NV stock is not being transferred, and if you try to transfer it without my consent, in contravention of your stock purchase agreement, I will have to shove my boots so deep up your derrière, legally, that your pissing contest with Bezos will seem like it was from another life, one you want to get back to.

Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars.

Seriously, don't fuck with me."

“Elon has less than 0.05% of NV and was never a principal or principal investor in NV as was falsely reported by some. I own between 80 and 90%. NV is the most valuable neurotech company in the world and does not regard Neuralink as a competitor because we have an arsenal of patents and introduced our technology to customers in 2009 and furthermore do not view their implantable technology as scalable. Moreover, the company is apparently under investigation regarding statements Elon made to investors and most of Neuralink's co-founders ditched Elon and the company.]

[Continued in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903685]

layer82• 1 year ago

Continued:

Elon did two Nazi salutes.

He did them for five main reasons:

1. He was concerned that the "Nazi wing" of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate also did not pick his first choice;

2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his "power" just like when he told advertisers to "go fuck yourself". This has nothing to do with Asperger's;

3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them;

4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing;

5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen. Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable.

N.B. For the few whining about my post "sans connaissance the cause" and either trembling about my having shattered their illusions about their cult leader or thinking I am defending Elon:

I. My point is that he is transactional rather than ideological;

II. That being said, I am not defending him or his actions, just explaining them and confirming that he did, in fact, do two Nazi Salutes if anyone had doubts or believed the doctored footage of Taylor Swift doing the same thing to normalize what Elon did;

III. At some point, it matters to few people if one is a Nazi or if one acts like one. My father was a Holocaust Survivor. 32 out of 35 of his family members were murdered by Nazis. My mother's grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz;

IV. After Elon tried to manipulate NV's stock in 2021, 1 fired him with cause, and he was unable to exercise his stock options. In the aftermath of the Nazi Salutes, I told both him and his wealth manager to fuck off. Any remaining friendship between us ended with the Nazi Salutes. He is blocked on my end and I am pretty sure l am blocked on his;

V. I did not share what he told me in confidence. I just happen to know him extremely well, the person, the aspirations and the Musk Mask;

VI. I know who I am, have no desire to be famous and give exceedingly few media interviews. I prefer to work in obscurity and let the work speak for itself. I am certainly not envious and would definitely not want Elon's life, including living in a bubble and having to make one outlandish claim after another and manipulate the public, elections and governments to shore up my stock and prevent the bubble from bursting. Unlike Elon, I am an actual scientist and inventor and I am not pretending to be someone I am not, like a fellow who got his BA in Econ at 26 all of a sudden pretending to be an expert in mechanical engineering, chemistry, rocket science, neuroscience and Al and keeping the people actually doing the work hidden and paying people to play online games in his name to appear smart and feed his so-called "Supergenius" Personality Cult — the "Imperator" has no clothes, and he knows it. I am just very disappointed in what happened to someone I had a lot of deep admiration for and the first person to find out about my concerns about his behavior was always him;

VII. He is the one who betrayed a number of his friends, including Sergey, and, given his actions, many other people who believed him and believed in him. I have no sympathy for this behavior, and at some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically, whatever the risks may be, so as to not be part of the timid flock remaining silent while evil is being done, including propping up far right governments around the world in part to deregulate his companies and become the first trillionaire and otherwise to "rule the planet" — he knows Mars won't be terraformed in his lifetime and he really wants his planet. No joke... Ethics matter. People matter. The truth matters.

I took down Descartes (through the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) and I am definitely not afraid of a so-called inventor whose greatest invention is his image.

I will not be silent. You should not be either. I am a sovereign individual, and so are you. I stood up to bullies, and am stepping out of the dark to do it again.

Stop working for him and being exploited by him. Sell your Tesla and dump your Tesla stock. Nikola Testa was a great, creative and courageous man who led with ethics and by example and he would not have wanted for his good name to have been used by him and would agree with my principled stance. Sign off of "X" which is boosting far right propaganda, and of your Starlink as well. He is a complete cunt (British slang not meant to be offensive to women) who doesn't give a shit about you — only about power. Just ask Reid Hoffman. He only wants to control, dominate and use you — don't let him and cut him and his businesses out of your and your loved ones' lives entirely. Remember he is a total miserable self-loathing poser, and unless you happen to be one too, he will be much more afraid of you than you should ever be of him.

He will probably come after me, and I am completely fine with that. I am a self-made multibillionaire with an armada of lawyers — literally — and most importantly, I know who I am and who I stand for, the people and their freedoms, whatever happens. He can send his dumb Proud Boys and Oath Keepers after me and they will be butchered on sight. Either way, I would rather die with honor than live as a coward.

"Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." — Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

vdupras• 1 year ago

Western civilization: from nationalism to feudalism. What a great time to be alive! I'll get my popcorn.

codr74• 1 year ago

This post just leapt 10 positions down on the front page.

Never saw that before.

sho_hn2• 1 year ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902355 also disappeared from the front page very suddenly earlier. This also gave me the impression there's either more active moderation of a certain class of stories atm, or the audience is flagging them a fair bit.

krapp• 1 year ago

probably both.

dang2• 1 year ago

That one also was heavily flagged by users and set off the flamewar detector. We turned those off on that one.

archagon5• 1 year ago

Bizarre. I also saw this. The thread went from nothing to [flagged][dead] over the course of about a minute without going through an intermediary [flagged] phase. Fortunately, it's vouched back to life for the time being.

Yesterday, I posted an "Ask HN" on the same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42892245

I wonder if there's some sort of coordinated flagging of Musk-related topics going on, especially given Musk's ongoing (and possibly illegal) government interference. The fact that the flags seem to come so rapidly (enough to mark [dead] within ~30s) is suspicious to me. Can dang comment on this?

DemocracyFTW22• 1 year ago

I wonder if there's some sort of coordinated flagging of Musk-related topics going on

my impression as well

defrost• 1 year ago

Flags and vouching come more from the user base than from dang who more often trails in late.

There are very strong pro and anti Musk camps on HN, evidenced in any Musk related thread. These are not necc. large populations but they are quite active.

thwackamole• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens all the time, you just happened to notice this one. It's not only Musk-related posts, either. Negative submissions about Altman also get flagged and disappeared. The mods don't seem very interested in countering this behavior. Often it's weakly supported by claiming the discussion is low quality. (Which is often true, but not imho a good enough reason to suppress the topic rather than enforcing comment guidelines.)

77pt77• 1 year ago

Can dang comment on this?

LOL! The naivete...

akerl_3• 1 year ago

I flagged this because watching rich tech bros slap each other around is not something I consider to be a thought provoking topic for discussion.

nothrowaways6• 1 year ago

I think the community can learn from it.

DemocracyFTW22• 1 year ago

it is also about learning who this guy who is already impacting the lives of uncounted people

codr74• 1 year ago

Flagging makes things disappear, it's bad when it happens to truth.

sebazzz• 1 year ago

I really recommend a RSS reader for this reason, it does not have bias.

GeoAtreides• 1 year ago

i would recommend: https://hn.algolia.com/

with "last 24 hours" selected

it shows all submissions and cuts through the censorship

moffkalast2• 1 year ago

Nah this happens a lot on HN, every so often I see something interesting on mobile, and go to reply on desktop maybe 10, 20 minutes later and I just can't find the link anymore at all without directly typing the id from mobile into the address bar, shit just disappears entirely on a regular basis. Not even flagged, deleted, or anything obviously wrong with the post at all, they just get silently delisted.

dang2• 1 year ago

It has been heavily flagged by users and also set off the flamewar detector.

nothrowaways6• 1 year ago

as sons of highly accomplished men.

I can agree, Errol had an amazing journey

nothrowaways6• 1 year ago

I frequently read "bullied in highschool" thing affecting his adult life.

If it's affecting him this much, Why can't he get a professional psycho therapist and move on?

deepfriedchokes• 1 year ago

[flagged]

zozbot234• 1 year ago

The problem with the easy "Musk is just a narcissist" take is that most narcissists don't do things like create a world-changing mass market for electric vehicles, reusable rocket launches, "Starship" spacecraft (which gives us capabilities that we lost with the Space Shuttle disasters, and can do a lot more besides), or indeed, all of those at once.

sidibe• 1 year ago

He's tweeted multiple times that his tombstone will say he never went to therapy. It is a major point of pride, he is too superior to need that

Edit: example https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1763054266762121517

olalonde6• 1 year ago

Interesting insight into Elon Musk but whether or not he actually meant to do "Nazi salutes" seems like speculation.

nothrowaways6• 1 year ago

I don't think he is stupid to intentionally do it at that stage.

MrMcCall2• 1 year ago

A) Ketamine and (probably) Adderall.

B) And Hitler wasn't stupid enough to open up a second front on the Soviet Union? Jacked up on meth and morphine likely makes a person rather confident, perhaps perilously so.

archagon5• 1 year ago

An intelligent person makes deductions based on evidence. Low knows Musk's character from working closely with him; knows he's smart enough to understand how his salute would be perceived; sees his close connections with far-right groups (e.g. AfD) around the world; observes his public reaction (Nazi jokes, ha ha) after the controversy. It's not difficult to put two and two together here.

olalonde6• 1 year ago

knows he's smart enough to understand how his salute would be perceived

That assumes his salute was a deliberate, calculated act rather than an impulsive gesture in the heat of the moment. Given his visit to Auschwitz, his public statements, his pro-immigration stance, and his numerous Jewish friends and colleagues, there’s far more evidence suggesting he is not a Nazi than the opposite.

kevingadd2• 1 year ago

Anything is speculation if you try hard enough to make it speculation.

_DeadFred_6• 1 year ago

Watch the salute videos from all angles, including the contorting he does of his face into a look very much not of love.

Then watch the videos from the past where he reaches out from his heart and lack of facial contortions. There is zero similarity between his past 'from my heart' and his salutes.

Then put his salute videos next to nazi salutes and try to find the difference. Look at the un-natural elbow position, unnatural finger placement, straight rigid wrist, the angels, un-natural timing of the movement.

olalonde6• 1 year ago

The prime minister of Israel and the Anti-Defamation League disagree that it was a Nazi salute.

nothrowaways6• 1 year ago

All his talk about getting to Mars to "maintain the light of consciousness" or about "free speech absolutism" is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone. to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work). His lust for power is also why he did xAl and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAl and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. He announced Neuralink just after I invited his ex-wife, which she and I notified him about, to a fundraising dinner for Hebrew University in London (The fact that she tried to kiss me - I immediately pushed her away - while taking a photo at that event, even if playfully, clearly may have added to the alienation and possible emasculation he may have felt when she spoke to me in a pool at a party when they were together and she was naked. To not be disrespectful to her or to him, I stayed but looked at the sky whilst talking to her). I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV. It is ironic that years later, he clearly tried to undermine Twitter before buying it, and in my view, blowing it up and using it to manipulate the masses to lean to the far right in country after country, including the USA...

Wow

oskarkk• 1 year ago

All his talk about getting to Mars to "maintain the light of consciousness" (...) is actually BS

While I hate Elon's politics, I love space exploration, and I believe his motivation with SpaceX is sincere. From the start he made SpaceX with the goal of getting to Mars, and after all these years SpaceX is actually getting near the capability of sending tens of tonnes of cargo to Mars. He's been talking about getting to Mars for more than 20 years, he became a member of the Mars Society in 2001 and wanted to fund a small (unmanned) Mars mission[0], when he wasn't yet a billionaire, but very rich from PayPal, and before SpaceX was founded. Then he invested a big part of his fortune in SpaceX, which was a very risky bet. Even in the early days of SpaceX he planned to make a big rocket capable of getting a big payload to Mars[1] (the "BFR" that the 2005 article is talking about is today's Starship). I wish he had stayed focused on Mars, instead of making Earth's dirty politics even dirtier.

[0] https://spaceref.com/status-report/marsnow-19-profile-elon-m...

[1] https://www.thespacereview.com/article/497/1

kanavs• 1 year ago

This is a bad article. Probable coming from Phillip Low's own inadequacies and childhood trauma. So much stuff in there that is just factually incorrect. "All his talk about getting to Mars to "maintain the light of consciousness" or about "free speech absolutism" is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them." How do we know this for a fact, when soo many people have said the opposite 'Elon genuinely believes what he says..', plus you get to witness his good deeds in public as well. Every time there is a natural disaster or a war, he puts so many of his own resources to work (Starlink, tesla cars, SpaceX for bringing the astronauts home, etc.). The other reasons are probably the dumbest I have ever seen, it made sense for this post to get traction on X/bluesky, but on hackernews, it just seems absurd.

_DeadFred_6• 1 year ago

If you are talking about the current astronaut situation SpaceX was already contracted to bring the astronauts home by Nasa all the way back in August, way prior to the recent theater between Trump and Musk.

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/24/nx-s1-5087892/nasa-starliner-...

nothrowaways6• 1 year ago

This is the email I sent him around that time: "Elon, Only one of us apparently knows the difference between Science and PR, and between friendship and phonies, and unfortunately you ain't it. Let's cut ties here. Your NV stock is not being transferred, and if you try to transfer it without my consent, in contravention of your stock purchase agreement, I will have to shove my boots. so deep up your derrière, legally, that your pissing contest with Bezos will seem like it was from another life, one you want to get back to. Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don't fuck with me."...

Wow

scotty792• 1 year ago

I think soon any post about Musk will get auto-flagged. He made himself too terrible to not get people fuming whenever his name popps up.

gnschenker• 1 year ago

Big words of a man with an even bigger ego. But let’s leave the persons aside and compare businesses. It only takes a quick query to ChatGPT or other AI to compare NeuroVigil and NeuroLink. The first one monitors, the second one actually enables severely handicapped people to get their life back. Which one would you think has the potential to do more good to humanity?

SurfinSally• 1 year ago

SpaceX had its best fiscal year yet in 2024,

bolstered by over $3 billion in US government contracts, yet -

Elon Musk paid $0 in federal taxes in 2024.

Do you really think he's looking out for your best interests????

Philip Low Unmasking Musk

Related Stories