Musk's Razor

As we collectively try to decide if Elon Musk is playing 3D chess with Twitter or just being bipolar, it's worth remembering Occam's Razor.

Do not attribute to malice which can easily be explained by stupidity.

In the case of Elon Musk, though, stupidity is certainly not the proper qualificative. But we could argue that lack of cultural intelligence is. The thing is, for Twitter, Musk might perfectly well understand the cultural element at play. And. Just. Doesn't. Care.

You see, technically, firing a large part of the staff and putting under terrible pressure the few survivors is efficient. Step in, shock and awe, break the company before anyone has time to process whatever, and then only rebuild it as you see fit. I'd go as far as to believe that if you just want to reboot Twitter as a cash machine, this might be the quickest way to get there. Musk might just be trying to solve Twitter as a math equation. He min-maxed out of every other possible option with only one output in mind: market cap.

I give you Musk's Razor:

Do not attribute to stupidity, which can easily be explained by greed.

By comparison, seeing how both Satya Nadella and Tim Cook respectively turned around Microsoft and pushed Apple to new heights should be praised. There is no playbook for turning around such tech behemoths. No one is seriously trying to lay out a step-by-step methodology to do so in any given business school. As of just today, we're seeing Bob Iger stepping back as Disney's CEO after himself selecting Bob Chapek as his successor and finally deciding it was not working out.

These things are beyond hard.  

And for Musk? He also has to deal with how he's jeopardizing a $560B market cap global automotive company to acquire a social platform that peaked at a $60B valuation. Hey, no pressure.

I'm trying not to be so judgemental with what's going on at Twitter. I do hate the output of it and the fact that Musk knows that bringing back Trump and just being a troll does bring engagement (to the point that I not going back on it for the foreseeable future), but I understand how I kind of make sense in a psychopathic way. It's still just about greed. Musk doesn't want to move fast and break things as a tradeoff for speed. He strategically breaks things to create momentum. And democracy, decency, or simply being the 'global town square' are just fuel to burn along the way.

Don't even think it's only Musk, though. He's just a symptom of US vision of "tech."

If only Europe would wake up and shake off its Stockholm syndrome about US tech and innovation culture.