Chapter 89: Miracles: Neuralink, November 2022

This chapter covers Musk's political engagement with Trump, his tumultuous relationship with actress Amber Heard, and a painful encounter with his estranged father Errol in South Africa. It explores Musk's pattern of attraction to dramatic, toxic partners and his unresolved emotional wounds from his past.

Musk, never particularly political, had supported Obama and Clinton while criticizing Trump in 2016. However, at Peter Thiel's urging, he attended a December 2016 meeting with Trump and other tech CEOs at Trump Tower, staying afterward for a private conversation where Trump expressed vague enthusiasm for space exploration but seemed unfocused. Musk found Trump odd but friendly. After joining White House roundtables early in Trump's presidency, Musk concluded the "buffoonery" was genuine, not an act, and resigned from presidential councils when Trump withdrew from the Paris Accord on climate change.

Musk's relationship with actress Amber Heard lasted over a year and caused deep psychological turmoil. They met through a film project and grew close in 2016-2017, with Heard playing the dramatic, chaotic role that attracted Musk despite alienating his family and close associates, who found her toxic and destabilizing. They broke up in July 2017, reconciled, then ended things for good in December 2017 in Rio de Janeiro, though both recalled the incident differently—Musk's family witnessed a dramatic confrontation while Heard described a resolved argument followed by celebration. Even after the breakup, both acknowledged lingering feelings.

In 2016, Musk and Kimbal attempted reconciliation with their estranged father Errol on his seventieth birthday and Elon's forty-fifth. The lunch in Cape Town proved awkward and emotional, with Elon visibly shaken. Later that year, Errol impregnated Jana, Elon's former stepdaughter, which infuriated the brothers and ended any possibility of reconciliation. During a Rolling Stone interview in summer 2017, Musk grew emotional discussing both his breakup with Heard and his father's history of abuse and cruelty.