Dan O’Dowd is a leading authority on software systems that are not only failproof but also impervious to hacking. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has developed secure operating systems for some of the world’s most high-stakes projects, including Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, the Boeing B1-B Intercontinental Nuclear Bomber, and NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology, O’Dowd has dedicated his career to pioneering safety-critical and unhackable software, setting industry standards in embedded security.

Beyond his technical expertise, O’Dowd has emerged as a vocal critic of Tesla’s approach to safety and corporate accountability. He points to a troubling pattern of retaliation against those who challenge the company’s practices. He highlights the case of Missy Cummings, a safety expert whose appointment to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was reportedly blocked due to Elon Musk’s influence. He also sheds light on the plight of Christina Balan, a former Tesla employee who was allegedly forced to resign after raising safety concerns. Whistleblowers within the company, O’Dowd argues, have faced severe repercussions—whether through legal battles, smear campaigns, or, in the case of former Tesla technician Martin Tripp, a false report that led to an armed police response.

O’Dowd further critiques Tesla’s marketing tactics, arguing that staged product demonstrations for Full Self-Driving, the Cybertruck, and solar roofing systems have misled consumers and regulators alike. He warns that the company’s pattern of deception, coupled with a lack of accountability, poses serious ethical and safety risks.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: On the topic of progress, I’d like to discuss Tesla’s critics. What typically happens to those who have publicly scrutinized Tesla or its products? This isn’t about Elon Musk’s personality or politics, but rather about product-based critiques. When someone systematically evaluates Tesla’s claims, gathers evidence, and reports on the real-world performance of its products, what kind of response do they usually face?

Dan O’Dowd: It depends, but there’s a troubling trend. Let me give you an example. There’s a woman named Missy Cummings, a former fighter pilot and a professor at Duke University. Her expertise lies in safety and automotive engineering, though I don’t recall her specialty. About three or four years ago, she put a couple of her grad students on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta program to evaluate it. They wrote up a report detailing how bad the system was, and the response was vicious.

She was inundated with attacks—vicious ones. We’ve got documentation of tweets sent to her. She was accused of being a porn star, among other absurd and offensive things. It was a ridiculous smear campaign aimed at discrediting her because she’s an authoritative figure in her field.

Jacobsen: Did that affect her career or ability to continue her work?

O’Dowd: It did. At one point, NHTSA—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—tried to hire her. She’s a respected expert, after all. However, Elon Musk called the heads of NHTSA and screamed at them, demanding that she be disqualified because, according to him, she was “biased” against Tesla.

The irony is that she was critical of Tesla because the product is terrible. Yet Musk essentially got to choose his regulator, saying, “This person can’t oversee us because they’re critical of our product.” She was disqualified.

Jacobsen: What is she doing now?

O’Dowd: She works for the California DMV and attends a new university—though I don’t recall which one. We’ve got all of that documented if you want it.

Another example is Christina Balan. She worked for Tesla and received an email from Elon Musk—not just her, but the entire company. The email said, “If you ever identify a safety issue, report it to your boss or whoever handles such matters—but also email me directly because I want to ensure it gets followed up.”

If you sent safety concerns directly to Elon, the issues would be taken seriously. Employees knew that the responsible parties would be pressured to follow up once it reached Elon. One employee, Christina Balan, found a safety defect in the car. It involved the floor mats, which would curl up and potentially block the accelerator or brake pedal. She wrote a report, sent it to the appropriate department, and, as instructed, also sent a copy to Elon Musk.

The next day, she was called in and asked to “come with us.” They put her in a room with no windows and interrogated her with security personnel present. She asked, “What is going on?” They accused her of claiming that Tesla was unsafe. She responded, “What? I was following instructions. I have the email that said to send safety concerns directly to Elon.”

Jacobsen: What happened next?

O’Dowd: They told her she had to resign. She said, “I don’t want to resign. I’m not leaving the company.” But they insisted, saying, “You have to resign.” According to her story—which, to be clear, I’m recounting as she told it—they then threatened to revoke the green card applications for everyone in her department if she didn’t resign immediately.

Christina was an immigrant on an H-1B visa, and they used that as leverage. Essentially, they told her that not only would her green card application be jeopardized, but so would those of her colleagues. Under that pressure, she left the company. Since then, there have been numerous lawsuits, and it’s turned into a gigantic mess. You can verify this. We have all the documentation.

Jacobsen: That’s shocking.

O’Dowd: It gets worse. There’s another case involving a former Tesla employee in Norway. To be clear, what he did was not legal, but it highlights internal issues at Tesla.

This employee was upset with Tesla over some unresolved matter—I don’t recall the exact details—and decided to take a copy of Tesla’s customer support database and send it to a European newspaper, Der Spiegel or another major European outlet. The newspaper started digging through the database, and the findings were shocking. There were numerous documented cases of questionable practices.

For example, customer support employees were trained to gaslight customers who came in with complaints. If someone said their car wasn’t achieving the advertised mileage per charge, the support staff were instructed to talk the customer out of filing a claim.

Here’s the kicker: every time a staff member successfully persuaded a customer not to file a complaint, they’d ring a bell to celebrate. It was a culture of rewarding employees for dismissing legitimate customer concerns.

Jacobsen: That’s appalling.

O’Dowd: Absolutely. There’s more, too, like issues with the front axle. These problems and the culture around them have been documented in articles, and the fallout has been significant. There was a claim that the front axle on Model X vehicles could break. The regulators investigated and issued a recall in China, requiring Tesla to fix the problem.

When American regulators found out about the Chinese recall, they decided to open an investigation and potentially issue a recall in the U.S. Tesla, however, pushed back, saying, “No, we’re not going to do a recall.” Their argument? “That’s bullshit. We were forced to do that in China. Those regulators hate us and want to put us out of business. It’s unfair.” Tesla denied any front axle or suspension issue, calling the entire claim “ridiculous.”

Jacobsen: That’s an incredibly toxic culture.

O’Dowd: It was, and the whistleblower paid a heavy price. He was blasted from all sides, received death threats, and his life was completely upended.

Another case involves Martin Tripp, who worked at Tesla’s Nevada factory. He claimed significant waste and fraud was happening inside the company. Tripp leaked technical data to a reporter, which was likely illegal. Still, the reporter published a series of stories based on the information.

Jacobsen: How did Tesla respond?

O’Dowd: Tesla was furious. They read the stories and immediately tried to find out who the leaker was. They tapped employees’ phones and conducted internal surveillance until they identified Tripp as the source.

Jacobsen: That’s incredibly invasive.

O’Dowd: These cases highlight how Tesla deals with criticism—through aggressive tactics aimed at silencing critics and whistleblowers rather than addressing the underlying issues.

They eventually confronted him, though I’m unsure if he was officially fired. Regardless, it became a big issue, and Tesla was upset about it. What happened next was outrageous. Tesla allegedly told the police that Martin Tripp had threatened to return to the factory and “shoot the place up,” which he hadn’t.

Tripp, terrified, had holed up in a motel in Reno, Nevada because he feared for his safety. The police couldn’t find him initially, so they put out a BOLO—“Be On the Lookout”—for a potential shooter.

Jacobsen: How did they figure out where he was?

O’Dowd: That’s the questionable part. It’s speculated that Tesla told the police where Tripp was hiding, but how did they know? Most likely, they had hacked his phone or used some other surveillance method to track him down.

There’s a podcast series—three or four episodes—dedicated to investigating Musk’s tactics, including accusations of spying on critics, stalking them, and gathering personal information about anyone who speaks out against him. From what I’ve heard, the reporting on this is very thorough.

Jacobsen: What happened after they located him?

O’Dowd: Tesla informed the police that Tripp was holed up in a specific motel room in Reno. The SWAT team was deployed, with officers arriving armed and ready, fingers on triggers, under the impression that Tripp was a dangerous shooter planning to attack the factory.

They dragged him out of the motel room. He was crying as they pulled him out, understandably terrified. Thankfully, the officers didn’t shoot him, but this was effectively a case of swatting. Filing a false shooter report like that is incredibly dangerous—it could have easily ended in someone being killed.

Jacobsen: That’s horrifying.

O’Dowd: What Tripp did was wrong—he took proprietary data from Tesla and gave it to a reporter, which he shouldn’t have done. But swatting someone, putting their life at risk like that, is far worse. All it takes is one overanxious officer pulling the trigger for it to end in tragedy.

Jacobsen: Were there other incidents like this?

O’Dowd: Another one involving Elon Musk when he took over Twitter. When Musk took over Twitter, the “Trust and Safety Team” was in place. It was a euphemism for censorship—deciding what content could stay up and what needed to be taken down. When Musk bought Twitter, he initially didn’t fire the team’s head. Musk publicly praised him, saying he was a great guy doing a fantastic job and that he’d keep him around to continue his work.

However, as Musk started implementing new policies, the dynamic changed. The guy, realizing he no longer fit in, quietly left. He didn’t make a scene, didn’t badmouth Musk, didn’t go to the press. He wanted to move on, find another job, and start fresh.

Jacobsen: That seems like a reasonable approach.

O’Dowd: You’d think so. But Elon, being Elon, had a fit. He got pissed off and sent the hordes after the guy. Suddenly, the man was being harassed—people showed up at his house, issued threats, and made him fear for his safety. It got so bad that he had to move. He left his home and relocated to escape the storm Musk unleashed.

Jacobsen: That’s extreme.

O’Dowd: It is. And the ironic part is that this guy wasn’t looking to cause trouble. He wasn’t like others who went to the press with accusations or tried to stir things up. He just wanted to leave quietly. But Elon, true to form, made it personal and turned it into a crisis.

Jacobsen: This behaviour seems to be a recurring theme with Musk.

O’Dowd: During his recent drama involving lawsuits—or “lawsuit, no lawsuit, lawsuit, no lawsuit”—Sam Altman publicly said on a prominent news show, “Elon is a bully.” Altman also listed several prominent figures in the tech space who have been victimized in similar ways. Musk’s behaviour—getting into fights, chasing people down, and harassing them—seems entirely in character.

Jacobsen: Do you have examples of Musk acknowledging this kind of behaviour?

O’Dowd: He’s made some chilling statements. One of his tweets reads, “There is a large graveyard full of my enemies.” Another says, “I don’t start fights, but I always finish them.” These are classic mafia-don-style threats, and they reflect his approach to conflict.

Jacobsen: Is it true that Tesla has been involved in hundreds of lawsuits ranging from alleged fraud to labour disputes?

O’Dowd: Yes, I believe that’s true. I don’t have an exact count, but Tesla has been sued for fraud, labour disputes, safety issues, and other issues. The number of lawsuits is likely staggering.

Jacobsen: How do Elon Musk’s political affiliations, along with customers’ discomfort with some of these perceived or actual affiliations, impact Tesla’s image and, therefore, its sales? We discussed this earlier, but I’d like to explore it further.

O’Dowd: It’s clear that the people most likely to buy an electric car are typically liberals, environmentally conscious individuals, and those concerned about climate change. That’s been the core demographic. These customers wanted an alternative to gas-powered vehicles. When Elon Musk delivered an electric car, they lined up to buy it and were happy with their purchases.

But now, Musk’s recent opinions—opinions he’s been moderately open about—are creating friction. For example, he has said publicly that he voted for Biden and was a Democrat, supporting environmental causes and the reduction of CO₂ emissions. But recently, he’s made comments that contradict those earlier positions.

Jacobsen: What kind of comments?

O’Dowd: He’s said things like, “We shouldn’t be so hard on oil and gas companies because without them, we’d be doomed.” He’s also pointed out that most electricity used to power electric cars comes from the electric grid, which still relies heavily on fossil fuels. Essentially, he’s suggesting that if everyone switched to electric vehicles tomorrow, the grid wouldn’t be able to handle the demand. We’d need to build many more power plants—many of which would still burn fossil fuels.

These comments represent a shift in his public stance, and they’ve alienated many of his earlier supporters. The people who once saw him as a champion of environmentalism are now questioning his motives and direction. Some are saying, “I don’t recognize this guy anymore. I don’t support anything he’s doing.”

Jacobsen: Twitter is another factor that’s caused controversy.

O’Dowd: The acquisition caused much backlash when he bought Twitter, but let’s set that aside for now. He fired half the staff on day two—or shortly after taking over. There couldn’t have been enough time to do any meaningful analysis to determine who should stay and who should go.

Typically, a manager would take at least a day or two to review team structures, evaluate performance, and decide who to retain. Musk didn’t bother. He sent an email to the entire staff with two options: Check the first box to agree to work 80 hours a week, be “super hardcore,” and spend at least 40 hours a week in the office. Check the second box to accept a three-month severance package and leave the company.

Thousands of employees were fired this way without any real review or evaluation. Within a few months, Musk cut 75% of Twitter’s workforce.

Jacobsen: That’s a staggering number.

O’Dowd: It is. And what’s interesting is that he made these drastic cuts so quickly, without regard for the platform’s long-term implications or immediate functionality. It wasn’t just controversial—it was unprecedented.

Jacobsen: How did Elon Musk make those decisions and implement such drastic changes on Twitter?

O’Dowd: It’s interesting. There’s a theory supported by some recent evidence: Musk may have relied heavily on employees with H-1B visas or those on green card pathways because they couldn’t leave.

Here’s how it works: If someone is on an H-1B visa or in the green card process leaves their company—whether by quitting or being fired—they must start over. They need to find another company willing to sponsor them, fill out all the paperwork again, and reset the clock on a process that takes three to five years. Essentially, they’re stuck.

The theory is that Musk rebuilt Twitter around these employees because they didn’t have the option to leave. When he told them to work 80 hours a week, they responded, “I’ll do it until I get my green card, and then I can quit.” They were too invested in the process to walk away, so they had no choice but to comply.

Jacobsen: That’s a pretty grim strategy.

O’Dowd: It is. This approach is in stark contrast to how Twitter used to operate. Before Musk, Twitter focused on making employees as comfortable as possible—offering generous time off, flexible work conditions, and various perks. Musk eliminated all of that within days.

It was a complete cultural overhaul, similar to Donald Trump’s issuing executive orders. Musk essentially rewrote Twitter’s playbook, cutting perks, firing thousands, and demanding extreme work hours. Despite widespread complaints and staff departures, the company is still alive, but the workplace culture is now unrecognizable.

Jacobsen: It reflects his broader, “brutal” approach to leadership.

O’Dowd: This “brutal” approach isn’t limited to Twitter. Tesla has faced significant labour issues, including sexual harassment allegations. Musk has made some telling statements about lawsuits. At two different times, he’s said something like this: “We would never settle if we were not guilty, and we would always settle if we were guilty.”

Jacobsen: That’s quite an admission.

O’Dowd: It is. By Musk’s logic, if Tesla settles a case, it implies guilt. Take, for example, the case involving a private jet flight attendant who alleged Musk asked for a sexual massage after a regular massage. She claimed he offered her a horse in return. Tesla ended up settling the case.

Jacobsen: And people pointed to his earlier statement, right?

O’Dowd: Many people concluded, “Well, if Musk says they’d never settle unless they were guilty, then settling this case makes them look guilty.” Whether or not that’s the whole story, it certainly doesn’t help Tesla’s image.

Jacobsen: Based on Musk’s statements, if Tesla wanted to avoid the appearance of guilt, they would need to fight lawsuits to the end instead of settling. But Tesla has faced numerous complaints.

O’Dowd: There have been countless complaints, particularly about harassment. There are also ongoing lawsuits related to racial discrimination, and if you read those complaints, they’re horrifying. It’s like reading about 1950s Alabama or 1980s apartheid. I’m serious—you need to read them.

Jacobsen: That bad?

O’Dowd: Yes. State-level and federal complaints have been filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The allegations are shocking, and the cases are still ongoing. It’s been years, and nothing has been fully resolved yet.

Jacobsen: What about data privacy concerns? In 2023, there were lawsuits about Tesla employees allegedly sharing sensitive videos and images captured by customers’ car cameras. Do you have any reflections on this issue?

O’Dowd: Yes, those reports are true. Tesla vehicles have eight cameras, which are always recording. The company can turn those cameras on at any time. Employees had access to the footage, and when they found something they thought was “fun” or “interesting,” they shared it internally.

Jacobsen: What kind of footage are we talking about?

O’Dowd: It ranged from bizarre to deeply invasive. For example, there were videos of people having sex in their garages or even inside their cars. There were also videos capturing private conversations and other personal moments. Because the cameras always record in all directions, they also pick up nearby activities, like people walking or interacting near the car.

In some cases, the footage included horrific car crashes—sometimes not involving the Tesla itself, but incidents the Tesla’s cameras witnessed. Employees reportedly shared videos of these crashes, including those where people died. These videos circulated internally within Tesla, though I don’t recall if there were allegations of employees sharing them outside the company.

Jacobsen: That’s a serious breach of privacy.

O’Dowd: The fact that employees had access to such sensitive and personal footage—and could share it casually—raises major concerns about internal controls and data privacy at Tesla.

Putting eight cameras on your car is a problem—someone is always watching. In China, Teslas were restricted from certain government buildings because officials expressed security concerns that the vehicles’ external cameras could be used for surveillance. The Chinese government, citing national security risks, decided to limit Tesla vehicles near sensitive sites.

Jacobsen: Many ambitious or overhyped targets and delivery dates often fail to be met. Based on your analysis and expertise, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) is the quintessential example. However, there have also been significant delays in Model 3 production and solar-powered Superchargers. Specifically, in terms of marketing and business ethics—what are your thoughts?

O’Dowd: Yes, Tesla has missed many deadlines. The solar-powered Superchargers are a good example. Initially, Musk claimed they would be implemented. However, people pointed out that using electricity from the grid still meant relying on fossil fuels, which undermined the environmental benefit. In response, Musk stated, “No, no, no. We’re going to use solar panels to charge at the Superchargers.” However, only a handful of Supercharger locations have been equipped with solar panels, and they generate a fraction of the required energy.

A large solar array would be necessary to fully power a Supercharger station, likely requiring an acre or more of panels to provide sufficient energy. Thus, the promise of widespread solar-powered Superchargers was significantly overstated.

Another example is Tesla’s solar roof. This is a somewhat complex story, but SolarCity—a company in which Elon Musk was the largest shareholder—was struggling financially. His cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, were running a business that was losing money on solar panel installations. The company was on the verge of collapse, which would have reflected poorly on Musk. To prevent this, Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016, a controversial move among investors, as it bailed out a financially unstable company.

To promote the concept of Tesla’s solar roof, Musk staged a demonstration on the set of Desperate Housewives at Universal Studios. The event showcased what appeared to be functioning solar roof tiles. Still, later reports suggested that the display tiles were not operational. The idea was to create roofing materials integrated with solar cells, eliminating the need for traditional panels mounted on top of roofs. While Tesla does sell solar roof tiles, their production and installation have been slow, with significant challenges in scaling the technology.

So you didn’t have to have a roof and then put solar panels on it. Instead, you tiled the roof with these solar tiles, which were supposed to be cheaper, faster, and revolutionary.

When Musk inspected the prototype, he told them to build a solar roof, but they had no idea what he was talking about. They improvised something hastily, and when he saw it, he said, “This looks terrible. You can’t put this on a roof.” Aesthetics are important to him, so he immediately rejected it.

He then instructed his team to fabricate something entirely fake—ceramic tiles with no solar capability whatsoever—no wires, no photovoltaic cells, nothing. These were just ceramic tiles in various interesting colors. He ordered the entire Desperate Housewives set—six houses or so—to be reroofed with these fake tiles to showcase his “great new solar roof” concept, which he claimed would revolutionize solar installations worldwide.

Musk announced that Tesla would produce 5,000 of these per week or some other exaggerated number. He invited the press—all the business and technology media—and unveiled his big revelation. He declared, “Look at these houses. These are the solar panels of the future.” The media ran with it, publishing glowing stories about how this would change the world.

But all the roofs were fake. The solar panels were fake—completely. That entire event is documented in Elon Musk, the biography by Walter Isaacson. There’s a whole section in the book that covers this. The entire thing was fabricated.

When Musk ordered the tiles to be installed, his team did not follow his instructions blindly. Instead, they installed a single roof with real prototype solar tiles—the ones they were actually working on. But when Musk arrived for the inspection before the event, he looked at them and said, “What the hell is this? These look terrible.” When told they were the real solar tiles, he ordered them removed immediately and replaced with fake ones.

So he knowingly swapped out non-functional prototypes—at least an attempt at a real product—for completely fake tiles for showmanship. It’s the same pattern with Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus. At its unveiling, people in robot suits performed behind Musk. It was totally staged.

That’s how he operates. Every demo is a fake.

I almost forgot—the Cybertruck. I have to say, when I first saw it, the demonstration was impressive. Musk wanted to race a Porsche 911 against the Cybertruck. A real sports car versus an electric pickup—who would win? So, he set it up, filmed the whole thing, and put on a big show.

The surprising part came when the Cybertruck beat the Porsche in a quarter-mile race. It looked incredible. Then, the camera panned out, and the big reveal happened—the Porsche 911 was towing another Porsche 911. That’s right. A Cybertruck towing another vehicle supposedly beat a standalone Porsche 911 in a drag race. It was an impressive stunt, and it got press coverage worldwide. People were calling the Cybertruck revolutionary.

But then the details started coming out. First, the Porsche 911 they used was reportedly one of the cheapest, weakest models available. Second, Musk claimed it was a quarter-mile race, but it wasn’t—it was an eighth-mile. Once people analyzed the footage and reconstructed the distance, they realized the deception. What is the reason for calling it a “quarter-mile”? Because that’s the standard measure for drag racing. An eighth mile isn’t the same, but he had to claim to add legitimacy.

Why shorten the race? Because in a full quarter-mile, the Cybertruck loses. They must have tested it and realized it couldn’t beat the Porsche over that distance. So, they adjusted the race to an eighth mile—just enough for the Cybertruck to pull ahead while towing. It was completely misleading. Later, real Porsche 911s, driven properly, easily outperformed the Cybertruck in actual drag races. The entire thing was a staged marketing stunt designed to make the Cybertruck look like the fastest truck on the planet.

Then there was another fake test—a Cybertruck versus a Ford F-150 in a tug-of-war. They showed the Cybertruck dragging the F-150 backward as if it were effortlessly superior. However, there was a major problem: Tesla used a two-wheel-drive F-150 against a four-wheel-drive Cybertruck. Once someone brought in a proper four-wheel-drive F-150 for the same test, it outmatched the Cybertruck. Again, this is another staged demo—completely misleading.

Everything was fake—all fake.

Then you have 2016—the infamous Full Self-Driving (FSD) announcement. Elon Musk tweeted, “Here’s a video of a Tesla driving itself from a house to an office—no human input—navigating surface streets, highways, and even parking itself.” The video made it look like FSD was already a reality.

Years later, during a lawsuit, the head of Tesla’s FSD engineering was put under oath in a deposition. He was asked about that video. His response? The test Tesla used to film the video crashed into a fence. They had to cut that footage out.

The car wasn’t truly driving itself—it was a carefully curated and edited presentation. They had staged the entire thing to make it appear functional, even though the technology wasn’t there.

They did dozens and dozens of runs. They took clips where the system didn’t fail, cut out the mistakes, and pieced together a fake drive that looked like the car could go autonomously from Point A to Point B. They removed all the parts where it failed, used camera cuts to hide errors, and manufactured the illusion that Full Self-Driving (FSD) was fully operational.

Seven years later, we tried the same thing. Within 100 yards, the car got stuck on the sidewalk. It decided to drive up the curb, got stuck, and failed repeatedly. There was no way the technology worked as advertised in that original video. It was a complete lie.

Even the head of Tesla’s own FSD engineering team later admitted it. Musk had called him and said, “I want a video of how great Full Self-Driving will be someday. I know it doesn’t do everything today—we’re fixing that—but I want a video of what it will look like in the future.”

So, the engineers put together what they thought was a concept video—a vision of the technology’s potential. But when Musk got it, he released it as reality, claiming this was what FSD could already do. The engineers had been misled, thinking they were making a prototype demo, and Musk sold it as a finished product. The entire thing was a fraud.

That was Full Self-Driving. Then there was the robot, the solar roofs, the Cybertruck tug-of-war, the quarter-mile race, and Optimus folding a shirt.

That was a good one. Musk posted a video of Optimus, the humanoid robot, folding a shirt. The idea was that these robots could eventually work as household assistants—cleaning, organizing, and doing chores. The video made it look like Tesla had built a breakthrough AI-powered robot capable of delicate, precise tasks.

Then, people took a closer look. Someone noticed a human hand in the lower-left corner of the frame, moving in perfect sync with Optimus. They had put a guy in a haptic suit, directly controlling the robot’s movements in real-time. Optimus wasn’t folding the shirt—the human was. The entire demonstration was staged—another complete fake.

Everything Musk does is fake. Every major product launch includes some misleading demo. It’s incredible. Every time Tesla unveils something new, it looks groundbreaking—until you realize it doesn’t work as shown.

And yet, he’s still standing. How many SEC violations is this? How many consumer fraud cases? He tells people that the product exists, that it works today, and that they can buy it now. Customers pay, and then—nothing. None of it works as promised. It’s astonishing.

And that’s not even getting into the other problems—like allegations of workplace discrimination and safety violations.