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Musk-read

The defamation lawsuit by British cave rescuer Vernon Unsworth against entrepreneur Elon Musk, who called him a “pedo guy” on Twitter after Unsworth mocked Musk in a television interview, makes for entertaining reading —if you’re not a Tesla shareholder.

If you haven’t been following this episode, Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed News has been doing an excellent job covering it. Musk — apparently not busy enough running three companies — volunteered an unlikely submarine contraption to help save a boy’s soccer team trapped in caves in Thailand, which officials there rejected. Unsworth said Musk could stuff his submarine somewhere. On top of the “pedo guy” insult, Musk insinuated in a series of tweets and emails that Unsworth’s mere presence in Thailand was suspicious.

It gets worse. Musk hired an apparent con man who had been convicted of fraud as a private investigator, who fed Musk and his entourage unreliable speculation about Unsworth. Musk then tried —unsuccessfully — to get Mac and other reporters to print false information about the cave explorer. “I’m a f—ing idiot,” Musk said in a deposition.

As I’ve written, Musk is who he is. He has repeatedly lied for his own aggrandizement — starting with the myth that he is a founder of the electric-car company, as opposed to an early investor who engineered the founder-CEO’s ouster. There’s also his ongoing feud with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has ordered Tesla to stop allowing Musk to tweet without legal supervision about company financials, a directive Musk has more or less blown off. The Unsworth incident is just Musk to the power of Musk.

The real question is: Why is Tesla’s board letting a self-proclaimed “idiot” who is so easily duped run a company worth $43 billion?

A board shake-up in April set the stage for several of Musk’s allies to step down after their terms expired, though that meant some like Antonio Gracias and Steve Jurvetson remain on the board. (Tesla placed Jurvetson on leave from his director position after being accused of unwelcome behavior towards women; in a Facebook post, the venture capitalist denied engaging in “sexual predation and workplace harassment.”) Elon’s brother Kimbal Musk is also, inexplicably, on the board.

I would suggest, as an exercise, that Tesla’s directors stage a dramatic reading of Musk’s deposition in the Unsworth case at the next board meeting, and ask themselves if this is really a person who should run a major car company. Musk deserves credit for having a vision that arguably accelerated the arrival of electric cars in the mainstream. But there is too much at stake to unreflectively keep him atop the company. Tesla no longer needs Musk’s wealth. His distractible imagination likewise seems to have become more of a liability than an asset.

— Owen Thomas, othomas@sfchronicle.com

Quote of the week

“Amazon is building a for-profit surveillance empire that completely skirts the democratic process.” — Evan Greer, deputy director, Fight for the Future, to Axios on the tech company’s deals to give police departments access to Ring cameras

Coming up

After a busy spring for initial public offerings, lock-ups are expiring that restrict insiders and employees from selling shares. PagerDuty’s expired Tuesday, and Pinterest’s and Zoom’s expire on Oct. 15. We’ll be watching how the shares trade, but also whether the stock sales are injecting more wealth into the already heated-up Bay Area economy.

What I’m reading

Bianca Bosker looks at how tech is making the world noisier and noisier. (The Atlantic)

Dominic Fracassa and Carolyn Said report on San Francisco’s plan to vet new technologies, and ask if it will hold back startups from innovating. (San Francisco Chronicle)

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Read More

Teddy Schleifer is hearing that Postmates will delay its IPO. (Recode)

Tech Chronicle is a thrice-weekly newsletter from Owen Thomas, The Chronicle’s business editor, and the rest of the tech team. Follow along on Twitter: @techchronicle and Instagram: @techchronicle