This thing has been bugging me. It doesn't seem to square up, this insane manner in which he's setting fire to boatloads of his own money. One theory might be that he's set out to destroy the outfit altogether, given his ideology and everything; but even that doesn't make sense, because why do it in this manner? He could just as well have simply bought it and then delegated the management of it to someone else, including with instructions to have it unravel, but in such a way that he gets some portion of his investment back --- and all of that without lifting a finger himself, other than having signed the original check.
I suppose we'll get to know his actual motivations only when Musk himself volunteers that, in an interview or book or whatever, or someone he's confided in does that, but meantime, here's one theory (with zero basis in any concrete evidence, let me make that clear) that I think might make some sense:
I'm sure we've all, in our career, come across sink-or-swim situations. Depending on the nature of our work, these would either be very rare occasions, or else for some an uncomfortably frequent thing; but I for instance can recall one such instance, where it was a very crucial sink-or-swim thing. So when you jump in in the deep, because that's the only thing you can do at that point, you either succeed wildly, or else you manage to somehow say afloat, or else you sink under. (In my case I'd been fortunate, that time, in having ended up actually succeeding, and in fact setting a precedent about ...well, without going into personal details, certain key research protocols.)
So this guy, Musk, he shot off his big mouth about Twitter. Had too big of an ego to retreat. Like a fool he waded in on to a business he hasn't the first clue how to run. And took it on in a sink-or-swim spirit.
Now he's a complete *******, psychotically lacking in empathy, psychotically uncaring of other people's lives and situations, which is what dictated how he went about attempting to swim. But behind it all, I suggest, he was actually trying to make it work, in a field he lacked experience in, and that he was too proud to seek assistance in (whether from the earlier CEO et al, or from other consultants --- real capable professionals, not randos on Twitter). As it happens he's sinking, and sinking deep and fast.
This is the only narrative that makes sense of what's happening there.
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So this doesn't necessarily speak to the rest of what he's done. That is, it might, but it doesn't necessarily. It does speak to his cluelessness, but only to his cluelessness in this particular situation --- although again, it may extend to other areas as well, but not necessarily.
I think that makes sense, more sense than that he's completely crazy, or generally completely incompetent, or that he's set out to deliberately "sink" the place.
