Walter Isaacson, who has authored bestselling biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albert Einstein, speaks with On The Money about his new book on Elon Musk. Isaacson, 71, gives his take on fake news, the state of the journalism business and whether Musk's leadership offers a blueprint for other CEOs to follow.
Lydia: There's been an uproar over the correction to the excerpt on Starlink and Ukraine that was published by the Washington Post. Do you regret how that was handled? Is it fair to say Elon Musk isn't always a reliable source?
Walter: The night of the sneak attack attempt, Musk told me he was not allowing Starlink to be used to guide the Ukrainian subs to attack the Russian fleet in Crimea. I mistakenly thought he meant he turned it off that night, but he later said – and I realized – the decision to have it not be enabled was made earlier. But the Ukrainians didn't know that. I corrected it to say he denied their request to enable it as opposed to saying that night he disabled it. That doesn't change the main issue which is should this person have the power to enable or not enable an attack.
Lydia: How does Musk think about journalism at X? He's grappling with a lot in terms of news distribution while also balancing fake news.
Walter: There's always a balance between opening the aperture to more speech and guarding against misinformation. Sometimes we get the balance wrong. In the past, a lot of social media outlets were pushed to not allow people to question mask mandates or whether COVID came from a lab leak in China. So sometimes we clearly went too far.
[But] .. Musk may be going too far in allowing the amplification of voices that make the platform feel very noxious. He and [X CEO] Linda Yaccarino are going to have to calibrate that. I expect that they will adhere to his idea that there will be freedom of speech not freedom of reach. In other words if you're saying something that seems problematic, it's not going to be amplified. But that's a difficult thing to do as we've seen with Facebook, with internet bulletin boards. And I'm not sure he has a perfect feel for that at the moment so I think it's going to be a problem.
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