Tesla CEO Elon Musk was interviewed Wednesday by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin at the 2023 New York Times DealBook Summit in New York where he discussed various topical issues from advertisers boycotting one of his other companies, X, to AI to unionization push by far-left activists at his Tesla factories.
Sorkin asked Musk about advertisers' concerns over controversial posts on X, and the recent boycott the platform is facing by some big companies including Disney.
"If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself.” He added, “Don’t advertise.”
He specifically took aim at Disney. “The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail,” Musk threatened.
He also told Sorkin, “I have no problem being hated. Hate away.”
Musk faced backlash recently over his post on X, which some unhinged left-wing activists and media talking heads claimed is antisemitic.
He called the post, “one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I’ve ever done on the platform.”
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” he said. He added, “I tried my best to clarify, six ways to Sunday, but you know at least I think over time it will be obvious that in fact, far from being antisemitic, I am in fact philosemitic.”
The SpaceX chief traveled to Israel this week, where he met and spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When the Israeli leader said he wanted to “deradicalize” and “rebuild” Gaza, Musk offered to help. He told Sorkin on stage that his visit to Israel was planned before his tweets, and were not part of an “apology tour.”
Musk also discussed the unionization campaign launched earlier on Wednesday, by UAW against Tesla and 12 other automakers in the U.S.
Sorkin asked Musk what that means for his EV business.
Musk said unions create a “lords and peasants” atmosphere at companies, and “naturally try to create negativity,” pitting workers against management. He said, “Many people at Tesla have come up, gone from working on the line to being in senior management and there is no lords and peasants -- everyone eats at the same table.”
The EV automaker's chief also added, “If Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.”
At one point during the interview, Sorkin asked, if he feels "like anybody has leverage over you?”
“If we make bad products that people don’t want to use, the users will vote with their resources and use something else," Musk replied. "My companies are overseen by regulators. SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla -- are overseen by cumulatively by…a few hundred regulators because we’re in 55 countries.”
Musk noted that he complies with nearly all the regulations levied upon his companies, but “once in awhile” he disagrees with a regulation and would object to it and disobey. “I’m incredibly rule-following,” he said.
On possible Chinese government leverage over him because of his Tesla factory in the country; Musk said: “The best that the platform can do is adhere to the laws of any given country. Do you think there’s something more we can do than that?”
He also later added that he believes the Chinese electric car companies are extremely competitive, and that many people believe the top ten EV companies in the world will be Tesla and nine Chinese makers.
On the recent boardroom power struggle at OpenAI which he co-founded, Musk said he had talked to a lot of people but had not found out what precisely led to the recent firing and re-hiring of CEO Sam Altman. He also said he has “mixed feelings” about Altman personally, hinting that he feels like the OpenAI CEO has too much power. “The ring of power can corrupt.”
Musk left OpenAI in 2018, with a star engineer who he later hired to run Autopilot software engineering at Tesla. The SpaceX chief also said that he’s worried about the danger of AI harming humanity, and that he was “having trouble sleeping at night” because of it.
WATCH Elon Musk remarks at NYT DealBook Summit.