Review

Ambition

Culture

3 November 2023

6 min read

The awe and outrage of Musk's toxic ingenuity

Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk, is a biographic rollercoaster reckons Krish Kandiah. One marked by magnificent moments and moral crossroads.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Elon Musk, wearing a dark suit, stands on a stage to a white robotic looking surgical robot.

Elon Musk at a demonstration of the Neuralink technology in 2020.

There is something both inspiring and unnerving about Elon Musk. He is a game-changing pioneer and innovator in so many industries pivotal to our future: rockets, electric cars, solar panels, batteries, satellite Wi-Fi, and Artificial Intelligence. But he is also no stranger to scandal, controversy and allegation. In his latest biography, author Walter Isaacson explores the toxicity as well as the ingenuity that has come to be associated with the richest man on the planet. As he reveals Musk’s series of successes, and what has been sacrificed to acquire them, I found myself going on an emotional journey: from compassion to awe to outrage.

Compassion: a man familiar with misery

In the opening chapter of his book Isaacson draws attention to the trauma in Elon’s childhood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon was socially awkward at school. When he once pushed back at a boy who bumped into him, he was being beaten up so badly his face was unrecognisable. When he returned from hospital Musk reports how his father reacted: “I had to stand for hours. He yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless.” There are a number of similar stories from Musk’s seemingly brutal childhood. Errol Musk, Elon’s father, features heavily in a series of shocking revelations including that he slept with his own stepdaughter, fathering two children with her. The background of Musk’s chaotic childhood, his experience of domestic abuse, and his series of fractured relationships provides a context for some of the strange, indeed outrageous things catalogued in the book.

Having worked for many years with children in the care system and with refugee experience, I understand a little about the impact of trauma and how it can change the brain in profound ways. There is a great deal of evidence showing how adverse childhood experiences can cause long-lasting impact on decision-making, impulse control, relationship building, mental health management and emotional regulation. While many turn to alcohol, drugs or self-harm as coping mechanisms, others, perhaps like Musk, channel the pain into ambitions and achievements.

I found myself feeling profoundly sorry for Musk. No child should have to experience such prolonged cruelty both at school and at home. All of us need to know that we are loved and valued, independent of anything we have done or anything that has been done to us.

Awe: a man of magnificent moments

Musk’s ideas have revolutionised so many industries. The automotive industries move to electric power owes a lot to the innovation of Tesla. His Space X programme is currently changing the way we think about space travel. His company was the first to create self-landing reusable rockets and was the first private owned company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that reached orbit; the first to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft; the first to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station; and the first to send astronauts to the International Space Station. He is also trying to revolutionise Artificial Intelligence (AI) through his company xAI - a direct competitor to Open AI even though he was one of their early backers.

Musk has a complex relationship with AI as he is not only one of the lead innovators in the field but also the most prominent of the 33,000 signatories of a letter calling for a pause to ‘Giant AI Experiments’ until there is, in Musk’s words, “a regulatory body established for overseeing AI to make sure that it does not present a danger to the public."

AI, alongside each of the other major interest areas in Musk’s work, is way beyond any dreams I ever had of a futuristic world. Musk has managed not only to imagine the unimaginable, but to find a way to get there with impressive speed, scale and sustainability values. The more I read about the innovations involved in each step of each project, the more impressed I am with the genius behind them.

Outrage: a man without a moral compass?

Despite Walter Isaacson’s clear respect for all Musk is achieving, he paints a warts-and-all picture of his book’s subject. We see a man who is ruthless in his hirings and firings, who has often treated staff and colleagues badly. In 2018, he famously called a rescue diver, helping to save teenage boys from a flooded cave in Thailand, a ‘paedo’, in what seemed to be a reaction to a snub to his offer of using his minisub.

In light of these sorts of outbursts, and his apparent desire to save the world from looming environmental disaster, it is no wonder that some people have accused Musk of having a messiah complex. Yet if he does, it is a very different mindset from the true messiah. He appears to me to be morally, emotionally and financially the polar opposite to the Jesus whose willingness to sacrifice himself on behalf of those in need was central to his claim to be sent from God. From the way Isaacson describes Musk, I see him more as a man on a mission to save himself than to save those around him.

The future? Musk, a man at a crossroads.

Isaacson closes his book with the following analysis:

“But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They are reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

I find this a disconcerting epilogue to the book. It suggests that we can pardon toxicity in the name of innovation, that the ends always justify the means, that morality and decency can take second place to advancement and wealth. If this stance were to be applied to, say, the development of AI, Musk’s fears of it becoming a danger to the public may sadly well be realised.

While factors such as grand ambition, the contribution to society, early years trauma, and mental health struggles may provide a robust explanation of why a person may be toxic, toxicity itself can never be excused. No amount of wealth can undo the harm toxic masculinity does to those around us. No amount of charitable giving can buy a person a generous spirit or moral compass. No amount of environmental awards can create the sort of world we really want to live in in the future – a world where people treat one another with the respect they need and deserve.

Elon Musk’s biography is unusual because he is still mid-journey. Who knows what else he may go on to achieve or fail at, to create or destroy? Will his AI revolution be a force for good, helping to create a better future for those who need it most, or will it become the behemoth of the doomsayers? What will future editions add to his biography? Is being ‘untethered’ really integral to who Musk is, or can he change? The visionary in me would love to imagine a redemption and transformation story for Musk that can unleash a compassionate generosity that could even overshadow his creative genius. The sceptic in me fears he may end up doing more harm than good.

Article

Art

Culture

Trauma

War & peace

23 June 2025

5 min read

Forgotten soldiers and new narratives are shaping how we mark our wars

Writing our history of conflict is as much a war of images as of words.

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

An actor reads a speech at a commemoration

Timothy Spall recites Churchill.

Sky News.

Heading into an intense summer of World War Two remembrance, with May’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day followed by marking the end of war in the Far East in August, it is remarkable how well the essentially Edwardian model of honouring the war dead has stood the test of time.

In The Edwardians Age of Elegance exhibition, at the King Gallery’s, a room is devoted to the passing of the extravagant turn-of-the-century era into the sombre age of war memorialisation, following World War One. George V commissioned traditional English artist Frank O Sullivan to paint the inaugural service for the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. The long canvas, with a domed frame at the centre to accommodate Edwin Lutyens’ freshly unveiled, lofty Cenotaph, captures the solitary King walking behind a flag draped coffin, mounted on a gun garage, as the parade passes the war memorial. Initially a temporary wood and plaster structure, Lutyens’ Portland stone monument commemorated over a million soldiers lost in the Great War, some buried near the battlefields near where they fell, and nameless others whose remains had been obliterated by mechanised warfare.

Attended by widows, ex-servicemen and armed forces personnel, the 1920 Armistice Day ceremony marked a shift away from solely glorifying commanders and officers, placing the sacrifice of ordinary combatants centre stage. The monarch symbolised his gratitude to his people, rather the other way around.

Ceremonial Great War gun carriages featured in the London VE Day parade on 5th May. And the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery provides gun carriages and teams of six black horses for state funerals. Following World War Two, and complete mechanisation of artillery, George VI instituted a troop of horse artillery for ceremonial occasions, enshrining the continuation of practices from a previous era’s warfare.

Layering memorialisation upon memorialisation was also evident in the 5th May ceremonies when actor Timothy Spall read an extract of Churchill’s Whitehall speech, given to the crowds when European hostilities ended.

“In the long years to come, not only will the people of this isle, but of the world wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, will look back on what we have done and they will say do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straight forward and if needs be, die unconquered.”

Narratives around the present and recent past are codified with a focus on forecasting how future generations will view events when looking back.

While Europe celebrated in early May 1945, the one million troops of the Fourteenth Army continued fighting the Japanese Army through Burma and the Pacific. Dubbed the Forgotten Army and the Forgotten War, their campaigns were underplayed in the Allies’ wartime narrative. Singapore’s fall to Japanese forces in February 1942 was seen as a shameful defeat. Remoteness from London of the Far East campaign, and the vastness of the theatre of war, made it near impossible to report on by radio and print journalists. Letters to and from the Fourteenth Army took months to reach their destinations. Soldiers and civilians held as prisoners of war by Japanese forces were forbidden to make images or create records of their captivity, making contemporaneous images of their incarceration rare. But drawings of camps and hospitals by Jack Chalker hidden in hollowed out bamboo sticks, acted as preparatory works the artist to later make paintings such as his painting Medical Inspection, Chungkai Hospital Camp 1943, created in 1946, and now held by the Royal Army Museum.

As traditions of commemorating the war dead evolve, new grey areas come to light, demanding space in the official narrative

Contrasting the paucity of images of the war in the Far East, with the array of works depicting the Blitz in London - created with American audiences in mind, in the hope of winning support for the Allied cause - together with photographic images of North African and Middle East operations, it is little wonder the Forgotten War struggles to be remembered. Veterans of the Far East campaign and POWs were far more likely to join ex services organisations such as the British Legion and Burma Star, than those who served in Europe. Marginalised from victory and peacetimes narratives, the Forgotten Army chose to remember together.

Before Victory over Japan’s 80th anniversary is commemorated on 15 August, with the famous cover photo of an American sailor dramatically embracing a woman in a white dress showing on repeat, the 80 years since the dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have to be faced. Mainly civilians died as a result of impact and sickness from the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August, with estimates of between150,000 -246,000 deaths. Whether the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare was justified, as it prevented loss of life from not having to wage a military campaign to occupy mainland Japan, or the horrific sacrifice of so many civilians was a war crime, remains a morally grey area.

As traditions of commemorating the war dead evolve, new grey areas come to light, demanding space in the official narrative. Actress Sheila Hancock wrote recently about the trauma and fear of being an evacuee, sent away from her London family as a small child, to an emotionally neglectful home in the ‘safer’ countryside. Forced adoption of children born to lone mothers, and the stigmatising treatment expectant women received at the hands of Christian denomination- ran mother and baby homes, is a wartime and postwar story now demanding to be heard.

Lesser documented stories of marginalised civilians, and combatants in faraway places take time to emerge, fighting to be heard above familiar images of plucky cockneys in bombed out buildings and amorously celebratory sailors. Shaping a multifaceted history of conflict is as much a war of images as of words. And as families become more transnational, the search for a shared narrative can replace clinging to the right or official story.

The idea of army chaplain, the Reverend David Railton, to commemorate an Unknown Warrior with honour, still resonates over a century later. Railton’s battlefield altar cloth, known as the Padre’s or Ypres Flag, covered the coffin on its journey from Boulogne to Westminster Abbey.

Stretching and fraying to include the stories of groups previously overlooked, the Edwardian fabric of military remembrance is proving remarkably strong.

The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, the King’s Gallery, until 23 November.

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