Elon Musk has admitted he gets lonely sometimes as he offered a rare glimpse into his personal life in a new wide-ranging interview.
Mr Musk spoke about how humans should not try to live forever, how he tries to practice meaningful philanthropy, and helping thwart Russian attempts to shut off the internet in Ukraine in an interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of German media giant Axel Springer, published on Insider.
And the Tesla CEO, widely thought to be the world’s wealthiest man with a net worth of approximately $260bn, said he thought Russian president Vladimir Putin was “significantly richer” than he was.
The 50-year-old entrepreneur said he decided to help provide Ukraine with access to his Starlink satellites after receiving a request from the country’s digital minister soon after the invasion began on 24 February.
As Russian forces continued to attack Ukrainian cell towers and other digital infrastructure, Starlink could soon be the only way for many to connect to the internet.
“We cannot let Putin take over Ukraine. This is crazy,” he told Insider.
Mr Musk, a keen student of the history of warfare, said he felt it was important to do “something serious” to aid the Ukrainians, and felt his enormous wealth and high-tech resources could be helpful during conflicts.
And in a rare compliment to the Biden administration, he said the US had done more than many realised to help Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government.
When asked if he was happy, the notoriously private billionaire replied: “I think there are degrees of love. But certainly, for one to be fully happy, I think you have to be happy at work and happy in love. So, I suppose I’m medium happy.”
Mr Musk recently split with the musician Grimes, with whom he shares two children, and said he often only had his dog for company.
“I’m sure there are times when everyone is lonely,” he said.
“Say if I’m working on the Starship rocket and I’m just staying in my little house by myself, especially if my dog is not with me, then I feel quite lonely because I’m just in a little house by myself with no dog.”
The serial entrepreneur is developing a developing human-like robots Optimus as a “worker-droid” to complete repetitive or dangerous tasks at Tesla factories.
He said he believed the human brain could one day be downloaded into an Optimus, preserving a person’s memories and personality.
But he said he was against trying to make humans live forever, as it would cause an “asphyxiation of society”.
“I think we already have quite a serious issue with gerontocracy, where the leaders of so many countries are extremely old. In the US, it’s a very, very ancient leadership,” he said.
President Joe Biden is 79, former president Donald Trump is 75, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 82 and the two party leaders in the Senate, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, are 71 and 80 respectively.
He said the country’s founders should have imposed maximum ages for elected officials.
“Because for a democracy to function, the leaders must be reasonably in touch with the bulk of the population. And if you’re too young or too old, you can’t say that you will be attached.”
Mr Musk has drawn comparisons with creative and scientific geniuses of previous eras, and was asked who out of Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo DaVinci he would most like to meet for a glass of wine.
He replied that he would be “honoured” to meet any of them, adding that Benjamin Franklin would be the “most fun at dinner”.
He said he tried to approach all of his businesses from the perspective of trying to help improve life in the future.
He said he tried to target causes like environment, education, and pediatric care through his philanthropic foundation, as issues like hunger were more of a “political and logistics problem”.
