Code 2021, one of the technology events with one of the highest rates of familiar faces in the technology sector, sat Elon Musk in the interview chair yesterday. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX spoke of his role on Twitter, Dogecoin, Tesla and his latest news and, of course, the space race at hand. Also one of the biggest controversies of the moment: his rivalry with Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and Amazon, with whom he maintains an open war on space issues.
Elon Musk was very clear in his message to Bezos: “You cannot sue to get to the Moon, no matter how good your lawyers are.” It is one more line to a legal process that Bezos started a few months ago. First with the requirement to NASA to rethink the budgets awarded for the conquest of the Moon –which were in the hands of SpaceX-. Later with the question of Starlink when Amazon, pending to launch its own constellation of satellites with Kuiper System, charged against Musk's before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). For Amazon, Musk was not complying with the standards imposed by regulatory bodies in terms of codes.
“The conduct of SpaceX and other companies led by Musk makes his point of view clear: the rules are for other people,” argued Andrew Keisner, a lawyer for Kuiper. For Starlink, all this noise is simply a mechanism to buy time to launch the Kuiper satellites before the great development of Musk's.
In spite of everything, and returning to Code 21, Musk argued that anything that is to invest money in the advancement of space is good news. Perhaps a message more addressed to Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic and with whom he does have a close relationship, than to Jeff Bezos.
There was also a lot of Tesla
Of course, there was an opportunity to ask Elon Musk about some current issues in the world of Tesla and electric cars.
The first of them was directly due to one of the latest controversies of the company regarding the beta test of “Full Self-Driving”, the automatic pilot system of Tesla vehicles . From now on, a large group of users has been testing the beta of the system while uploading images and videos to social networks. Many of them, mainly the ones that report system crashes, end up going viral.
A few days ago Vice brought to light a confidentiality agreement that testers have to adhere to. According to this document, they are prohibited from speaking to the press or letting it come into contact with “Full Self-Driving”. Mainly to prevent the virals from becoming generalized. In this sense, Elon Musk was asked about these agreements, arguing that perhaps they are not necessary taking into account the situation in social networks and that, after all, the information always ends up arriving.
And a message from Elon Musk to Joe Biden Of course, the thing was not left alone in the controversy of Tesla's confidentiality agreements with its testers. The businessman also wanted to send a message to the recent Biden Administration.
According to the founder of Tesla, Joe Biden “is not especially friendly with his business” of electric cars, according to The Verge. Elon Musk remains resentful after not receiving an invitation to the summit of electric car manufacturers last August. While Ford, General Motors and Stellantis were in the meeting with Biden , Tesla it was left out despite being the largest electric car manufacturer at the time.
Why did Biden decide to leave Musk out? “The Biden government appears to be controlled by the unions,” Musk argued. Tesla is the only company in the industry that does not have a unionized workforce and Biden has spoken out firmly in favor of workers' rights . If we add the slights to the California Government during the most serious months of the pandemic in 2020, when Musk forced his employees to return to the Fremont factory despite the virus, we have the broth of perfect crop.
