Introducing...Elon's Spies

Elon's Spies | Tortoise Investigates

Tortoise Media

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Elon Musk is one of the most powerful men in the world. He's a billionaire, the founder of SpaceX, Tesla and more. To his followers, he's a hero; to his critics, a far-right rabble rouser.

But for someone so public, there’s one part of his life that’s less well known.

Elon’s Spies investigates how this free-speech champion uses private investigators and surveillance to target everyone from whistleblowers at his companies, to online critics and people in his own life.

Episode 1 is available on Tuesday 8th October, with episodes releasing weekly. To get ad-free access and binge listen to all 3 episodes on Tuesday 8th October, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or by becoming a Tortoise member.

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Reporter: Alexi Mostrous

Producer: Gary Marshall

Original Music & Sound design: Tom Kinsella

Podcast artwork: Jon Hill

Executive producer: Ceri Thomas

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sometimes as a journalist, a story you thought was over, it's just the start of something else.
0:09.0	Last year my colleague Basher was working on an investigation about a serial fantasist. Her reporting threw up an intriguing
0:17.6	detail about someone unexpected. And I think that you came across something about Musk and private investigators.
0:24.0	Yes. So he told people that Elon Musk had put private investigators on him.
0:31.0	Elon Musk, an ambitious billionaire, a free speech absolutist, one of the most powerful men in the world.
0:41.1	To many he's a hero, but to his critics, he's a far right rabble rouser.
0:46.8	He is somebody who is exceptionally dangerous, like most sociopaths, like most privileged men in his position. They don't like being
0:55.4	challenged. Basha had discovered that Musk had used private investigators to
1:01.0	gather information on someone without their knowledge.
1:05.0	And it got me thinking,
1:07.0	what if this was just the start of something bigger?
1:10.0	I find it difficult to talk about because I think it's the most disgusting thing that you can call
1:16.7	anybody really and even to the extent where he got a private investigator on me.
1:22.4	What if this free speech champion behaves very differently in private?
1:28.0	Just speaking about it makes me anxious and my hands are like rubbing my hands.
1:33.2	What if he uses his resources to suppress critics
1:37.1	and to shape the reality around him?
1:40.0	We have an active shooter threat.
1:41.5	Martin Tripp is on his way to the gigafactory,
1:43.6	threatening to shoot people up and shoot the place up.
1:46.2	I hadn't yet dealt with Elon Musk,
1:49.2	so I didn't necessarily know that he would then hire people to investigate?
	...

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