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[bucyou]

Heres the email he sent to employees

Subject: Some Concerning News

I was dismayed to learned this weekend about a Tesla employee who had conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to our operations. This includes making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties.

The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has admitted to so far is pretty bad. His motivation is that he wanted a promotion that he did not receive. In light of these actions, not promoting him was definitely the right move.

However, there may be considerably more to this situation than meets the eye, so the investigation will continue in depth this week. We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations.

As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industries in the world – they don’t love the idea of Tesla advancing the progress of solar power & electric cars. Don’t want to blow your mind, but rumor has it that those companies are sometimes not super nice. Then there are the multitude of big gas/diesel car company competitors. If they’re willing to cheat so much about emissions, maybe they’re willing to cheat in other ways?

Most of the time, when there’s theft of goods, of leaking confidential information, dereliction of duty or outright sabotage, the reason really is something simple like wanting to get back at someone within the company or at the company as a whole. Occasionally, it is much more serious.

Please be extremely vigilant, particularly over the next few weeks as we ramp up the production rate to 5k/week. This is the strongest motivation to stop us.

If you know of, see or suspect anything suspicious, please send a note to REDACTED with as much information as possible. This can be done in your name, which will be kept confidential, or completely anonymous.

Looking forward to having a great week with you as we charge up the super exciting ramp to 5000 Model 3 cars per week!

Thanks for working so hard to make Tesla successful,

Elon”

and another from a few days ago

“Late last night we had another strange incident that was hard to explain. Small fire on the body-in-white production line. No one was in the area and there were no injuries or significant equipment damage, but it was enough to stop the body production line for several hours.

It could be just a random event, but as Andy Grove said, “Only the paranoid survive.” Please be on alert for anything that’s not in the best interests of our company. If you aren’t getting a response from the REDACTED email please send me a note directly.

Thanks, Elon”

website's take with link to more info

Electrek’s Take

Musk’s concerns were proven right to a certain degree since he has been the subject of well-financed smear campaigns before, but sabotage would be a whole new level.

There were other examples of vandalism over the years like when a Tesla Supercharger was sabotaged and Tesla vehicles were set on fire in an apparent act of anti-EV vandalism, but we never knew who was behind the incidents.

In this case, it’s not even confirmed that any other party other than the employee was involved so I wouldn’t jump the gun and say that it is a ploy from the fossil fuel industry.

But it’s still a worrying situation either way. We will keep you updated if we learn more.

https://electrek.co/2018/06/18/tesla-sabotaged-elon-musk-employees-alert/

This is pretty fucked up if true, especially if on the off chance this guy was paid by a company. Hope they get to the bottom of it

 

[Vicetrailia]

Hopefully they get to the bottom of it.

 

[ickythingz]

This dude better serve life in prison or be executed. To sabotage a company that is fighting to make the environment better, this dude literally committed a crime against humanity.

 

[infinitys_7th]

Sounds like history is repeating itself:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48

 

[bucyou]

Sounds like history is repeating itself:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48

interesting!

Also the way GM repo'd and crushed all the ev1's in the 90s comes to mind

 

[Chairman Tickles]

Musk is the Trump of the technology industry. He has many powerful enemies.

 

[WaterAstro]

Elon Musk is already sharing a lot about his vehicle technology. Shame someone is creating more damage against Tesla.

 

[Cybrwzrd]

Tesla needs to get out of the bay area, they can't pay enough to keep their people happy and run a profitable automotive company.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Considering he has already shared all of the patents and secrets of Tesla it must be some highly sensitive stuff that´s been stolen. Like pictures of Musk getting shitfaced at a Christmas Party with his dick hanging out, doing the helicopter.

 

[Alfadawg]

Is it irrational to want Tesla to fail?

I just don't like Musk or the company or it's fans.

Hopefully based BMW and VAG are able to defeat the young pretender.

Let's make Tesla the next Delorean!

 

[Rentahamster]

Is it irrational to want Tesla to fail?

I just don't like Musk or the company or it's fans.

That depends on what your priorities are.

1. Do you think Tesla is capable of manufacturing products that will improve our environment and encourage consumer behavior that has a net positive impact on our environment?

2. Do you want companies that are good for the environment to succeed?

If you said "yes" to both of those, then wanting Tesla to fail would probably be irrational.

 

[Raynes]

Is it irrational to want Tesla to fail?

I just don't like Musk or the company or it's fans.

Hopefully based BMW and VAG are able to defeat the young pretender.

Let's make Tesla the next Delorean!

This guy are sick.

 

[Alfadawg]

That depends on what your priorities are.

1. Do you think Tesla is capable of manufacturing products that will improve our environment and encourage consumer behavior that has a net positive impact on our environment?

2. Do you want companies that are good for the environment to succeed?

If you said "yes" to both of those, then wanting Tesla to fail would probably be irrational.

Tesla are just toys for rich people to feel like they are helping the world.

Musk is just a snake oil salesperson. He is just shifting the pollution source from the car to the powerplant generating the electricity and to China where the toxic batteries are made.

 

[Gander]

I want a Tesla, Model 3 or otherwise but I don't want any if they are not safe. I hope these aren't just excuses for incompetence.

 

[Bolivar687]

China

 

[Rentahamster]

Tesla are just toys for rich people to feel like they are helping the world.

Musk is just a snake oil salesperson. He is just shifting the pollution source from the car to the powerplant generating the electricity and to China where the toxic batteries are made.

Oftentimes, generating power at a large scale is more efficient than the relatively small combustion engine in a normal car. Unless your local power plant is dirty coal.

As time goes on, more and more power plants will be renewable energy, which will make electric cars that are already in service even greener. This will never change with gas cars.

If we're ever going to transition to a fossil fuel free society, they need to be phased out at all levels eventually. Cars are a big part of it.

Even if the pollution shift was 1:1, it would still be better to have most of the pollution out of the densely populated city center and shifted to somewhere else.

As technology progresses, battery manufacturing will become better and less toxic. Stopping electric cars now for that reason is ignorant of future gains.

 

[Grinchy]

Tesla are just toys for rich people to feel like they are helping the world.

Musk is just a snake oil salesperson. He is just shifting the pollution source from the car to the powerplant generating the electricity and to China where the toxic batteries are made.

If only the self-made billionaire would listen to "alfadawg" from the internet.

 

[michaelius]

Sounds like nice scapegoat when they have to report missing targets again to investors. Or another way to force people to work longer hours.

 

[Sakura Doritos]

Oftentimes, generating power at a large scale is more efficient than the relatively small combustion engine in a normal car. Unless your local power plant is dirty coal.

As time goes on, more and more power plants will be renewable energy, which will make electric cars that are already in service even greener. This will never change with gas cars.

If we're ever going to transition to a fossil fuel free society, they need to be phased out at all levels eventually. Cars are a big part of it.

Even if the pollution shift was 1:1, it would still be better to have most of the pollution out of the densely populated city center and shifted to somewhere else.

As technology progresses, battery manufacturing will become better and less toxic. Stopping electric cars now for that reason is ignorant of future gains.

Biodiesel from algae any day over lithium.

 

[oagboghi2]

Tesla are just toys for rich people to feel like they are helping the world.

Musk is just a snake oil salesperson. He is just shifting the pollution source from the car to the powerplant generating the electricity and to China where the toxic batteries are made.

Sorry to burst your bubble, buts that's the case for all electric cars.

 

[llien]

Sounds like nice scapegoat when they have to report missing targets again to investors. Or another way to force people to work longer hours.

My thoughts, frankly.

Goals E.M. set were very far in highly adventurous area, he would have faced numerous problems without anyone "sabotaging" him.

It is also hard to imagine "other company" sabotaging him.

At most I could imagine disgruntled worker getting mad at the way he was treated, but hey, "logging in under a different username" and "sending out data" is... commercial espionage, not "sabotage". It would reveal your secrets (what secrets, frankly? Full electric vehicles are trivial, compared to traditional cars and as far as "self-driving" goes, Tesla is not ahead) to someone, not cause you to fail short on "5k vehicles per week" promise.

 

[WaterAstro]

Is it irrational to want Tesla to fail?

I just don't like Musk or the company or it's fans.

Hopefully based BMW and VAG are able to defeat the young pretender.

Let's make Tesla the next Delorean!

I want Space X to fail because going to Mars is stupid.
Tesla is like meh. I rather wait for other manufacturers.
I'm into the solar panel company though.

 

[Makariel]

Tesla are just toys for rich people to feel like they are helping the world.

True, but that doesn't mean they are bad cars. I would only want them to fail if the product they deliver is garbage on wheels. Other than that the market will decide and judging by how many other companies jump onto the electric hype train now they seemed to have some impact. I'm quite certain without the rockstar status of Tesla EVs would not receive quite as much interest and would have gone the same way they twice before: nearly extinct.

And I rather see a company like Telsa succeed than a morally bancrupt entity like Volkswagen, who seeminly see no problem in cheating in emissions tests and don't want to take any responsibility for their actions. Even after their plan of putting monkeys in gas chambers was exposed:

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

This dude better serve life in prison or be executed. To sabotage a company that is fighting to make the environment better, this dude literally committed a crime against humanity.

Calm down

 

[Rentahamster]

I want Space X to fail because going to Mars is stupid.

What, in particular, do you find stupid about going to Mars?

In your opinion,

Scenario 1 - Space X fails and doesn't go to Mars: What is the net positive benefit?

Scenario 2 - Space X succeeds and goes to Mars: What is the net negative effect?

 

[techblogger911]

I want Space X to fail because going to Mars is stupid.
Tesla is like meh. I rather wait for other manufacturers.
I'm into the solar panel company though.

Tesla is meh but you want other manufacturers to produce the same thing that they do. Going to mars is stupid? Why exactly do you think that it's stupid?

 

[iconmaster]

Interesting twist: the saboteur claims he’s actually a whistleblower.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...oyee-as-elon-musk-signals-hunt-for-saboteurs/

 

[Grinchy]

Interesting twist: the saboteur claims he’s actually a whistleblower.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...oyee-as-elon-musk-signals-hunt-for-saboteurs/

This is a weird thing to take away from that, but when he says "I could literally care less" it makes me cringe. It means he doesn't understand that simple phrase and he's also one of those people who think that injecting "literally" into every sentence makes him sound smarter. It's like a double hit of stupidity.

 

[camelCase]

Interesting twist: the saboteur claims he’s actually a whistleblower.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...oyee-as-elon-musk-signals-hunt-for-saboteurs/

Eh, I don't doubt there was some shit there that is worth uncovering. It's a shame this is an utter backfire.

 

[McCheese]

I have a friend who works for SpaceX.

(yup, this is one of those 'my uncle who works for Nintendo' stories. but trust me)

He loves the company and his job but shared a story with me once that seems relevant. The second time a Falcon exploded during take-off, they couldn't find an immediate fault for it. whilst they were investigating, Elon convinced himself (and some others) that their competitors were shooting it with some sort of lasers during take-off to make the fuel overheat and explode. To be fair, one of their main competitors is within viewing distance of where they used to launch the rockets.

This is the real reason why they moved the location they take off from.

 

[Alfadawg]

Musk is so amazing and so ahead of everyone else with his badly made cars that he thinks everyone has it in for him?

 

[EviLore]

Musk is so amazing and so ahead of everyone else with his badly made cars that he thinks everyone has it in for him?

More like he's a dreamer with a big ego and a lot of real accomplishments and enemies in the mix alongside a fair share of failed pipe dreams and broken promises that were unrealistic or too convoluted to work as planned.

At the end of the day he's a smart, driven guy who hit it big with Paypal and leveraged that wealth toward highly ambitious projects that no one else was putting Elon Musk level commitment into...because it was irrational to do what Elon was doing. Smart, pragmatic people didn't think it would pan out based on the available evidence or the market would have filled these niches on their own. Elon isn't the smartest man in the world. I don't say that as a mean-spirited thing in any way. He's just obviously not. It's not like he's sitting there writing the guidance system for the self-landing rocket himself. He's a passionate risk taker who's been able to ride the line so far. So many people believe in him irrationally too, though, and constantly reinforce the notion that he is the world's foremost brilliant visionary. Plus he has rational evidence of accomplishing things that no one else is doing. There's very little to ground him in reality. It can't be healthy for his worldview tbh.

A lot of people work for his companies because they believe in him and/or the ideas. In some ways it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that implausible stuff finds a way to work out. It's all dependent on Elon believing strongly enough for everyone else to believe and work twice as hard for half the pay to see it through and investors to bet on him. If Elon Musk were a down-to-earth guy he'd do down-to-earth things and would have down-to-earth employees and there wouldn't be SpaceX and Tesla.

Dunno about this particular thing; we'll see soon enough probably. What we do know is that those Tesla factory employees are pushed really hard to try to hit Elon's ambitious targets, and Elon almost always misses his target dates no matter how hard people work to make them come true.

 

[oagboghi2]

Musk is so amazing and so ahead of everyone else with his badly made cars that he thinks everyone has it in for him?

Rather he be rash and arrogant and do ambitious things than be "realistic" and do nothing.

 

[WaterAstro]

What, in particular, do you find stupid about going to Mars?

In your opinion,

Scenario 1 - Space X fails and doesn't go to Mars: What is the net positive benefit?
Scenario 2 - Space X succeeds and goes to Mars: What is the net negative effect?

Whether Space X fails or succeeds, money is being funneled into pointless space programs when Earth is in huge shit. Going to Mars isn't going to solve Climate Change, and a man mission going to Mars is impossible without powerful radiation shielding tech.

Tesla is meh but you want other manufacturers to produce the same thing that they do. Going to mars is stupid? Why exactly do you think that it's stupid?

Tesla is meh because the build quality is bad.

 

[caffeware]

Whats the Mars plan anyway?
Once you get there, what do you do?
Excuse my ignorance.

Last time I checked, the idea was to make Mars Earth-like before traveling there.

 

[ilfait]

This dude better serve life in prison or be executed. To sabotage a company that is fighting to make the environment better, this dude literally committed a crime against humanity.

Well what was the actual damage that he did? Did the changes the OS cause any actual damage, or did they only allow the data export? If the data's being shared with competitors then I'm not seeing the harm to humanity; only potentially to Tesla's finances. But if I'm missing something let me know.

 

[bitbydeath]

I don't care what ya'll say, this is still one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

I don't like being a cynic but if that memo in the OP really was written by Elon Musk it does rather read like it is laying the foundations for more bad news in the future.

I mean it starts off as an announcement about a bad egg employee and then rambles on about everyone and his dog wanting Tesla to fail?

May be a stupid question but will ask anyway. Has this employee been arrested and charged with sabotage or whatever the crime would be locally?

 

[michaelius]

More like he's a dreamer with a big ego and a lot of real accomplishments and enemies in the mix alongside a fair share of failed pipe dreams and broken promises that were unrealistic or too convoluted to work as planned.
...

Still much like Amazon a lot of his success rides on exploitation of poor guys working for him.

 

[infinitys_7th]

Whether Space X fails or succeeds, money is being funneled into pointless space programs when Earth is in huge shit. Going to Mars isn't going to solve Climate Change, and a man mission going to Mars is impossible without powerful radiation shielding tech.

Tesla is meh because the build quality is bad.

Actually, the best thing humans can do is leave the planet ASAP if climate change is not reversible (which it is not now, nor probably until we reach Type I).

Mars could use some greenhouse gases (and a constant supply of them to replenish the constantly stripped atmosphere) - we could just start to move industry there and warm it up a little in about the same time it would take us to reach Type 1. Tons of resources waiting to be refined there too.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

I am short Tesla. I do not have much faith in these aggressively subsidized companies that have wrought such success from central bank, easy monetary policy. I think dark times are ahead for the cabal of Musk companies. Musk is not to be confused with someone like Henry Ford.

 

[iamblades]

I am short Tesla. I do not have much faith in these aggressively subsidized companies that have wrought such success from central bank, easy monetary policy. I think dark times are ahead for the cabal of Musk companies. Musk is not to be confused with someone like Henry Ford.

I am ambivalent on Tesla, they could be drastically overvalued, or they could not, it really depends on whether their solar roof and infrastructure business does well. If they just turn out to be a midsize car manufacturer, they are WAY overvalued. If their other businesses scale up, they may be undervalued, because those are way larger markets than vehicle manufacturing. I wouldn't bet heavily either way, there are just too many variables.

SpaceX on the other hand is already a success, it's just a question of how big of a success they will be, and how they will be able to sustain it if and when the established players get their act together.

The boring company is way too early to tell.

 

[WaterAstro]

Actually, the best thing humans can do is leave the planet ASAP if climate change is not reversible (which it is not now, nor probably until we reach Type I).

Mars could use some greenhouse gases (and a constant supply of them to replenish the constantly stripped atmosphere) - we could just start to move industry there and warm it up a little in about the same time it would take us to reach Type 1. Tons of resources waiting to be refined there too.

No. Mars is not habitable. Without Earth's magenetosphere, radiation will constantly be battering Mars. Not only that, it will be way colder in the outer part of the golden zone. We'd have to be living in caves with no eco system. We'd eventually die off because our biological evolution will just be destroyed. We need Star Trek levels of technology to make it livable. We'd need Star Trek technology to even get there with enough people.

Earth is one in a zillion of habitable worlds, so we have to reverse the climate change because it is possible. Living on Mars is not possible.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

I am ambivalent on Tesla, they could be drastically overvalued, or they could not, it really depends on whether their solar roof and infrastructure business does well. If they just turn out to be a midsize car manufacturer, they are WAY overvalued. If their other businesses scale up, they may be undervalued, because those are way larger markets than vehicle manufacturing. I wouldn't bet heavily either way, there are just too many variables.

SpaceX on the other hand is already a success, it's just a question of how big of a success they will be, and how they will be able to sustain it if and when the established players get their act together.

The boring company is way too early to tell.

He is building factories in tents.. Doesn't indicate long term solution to me, indicates attempts to hit production targets by any means necessary. Musk is not a trustworthy individual. Solar City was founded by his relatives, the buyout questionable... The whole ordeal screams scam to me.

 

[M. Crassus]

He is building factories in tents.. Doesn't indicate long term solution to me, indicates attempts to hit production targets by any means necessary. Musk is not a trustworthy individual. Solar City was founded by his relatives, the buyout questionable... The whole ordeal screams scam to me.

It shows that he has the entrepreneurial competency to make shit happen no matter what. Obviously it's not a long term solution.