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0 pointsatomicUpdate8y ago0 comments

This CNBC article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-con...

It states there was a fire and that Musk references possible Sabotage. Then Musk says there is a real saboteur.

> Musk said this person had conducted "quite extensive and damaging sabotage" to the company's operations, including by changing code to an internal product and exporting data to outsiders.

Most people (myself included) assumed the sabotage he hinted at was done by the saboteur they caught who was intentionally trying to slow down Model 3 production to benefit "short sellers and oil and gas companies". Instead, Tripp just offloaded some data from a completely unrelated factory.

It feels like Musk was intentionally trying to conflate the two, since another fire is obviously bad news and making people believe it was the result of sabotage (with a real saboteur already caught) rather than just poorly run operations is in his best interest.

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marvin8y ago· 2 in thread

Unless I am misreading badly, Musk does not say anywhere in this e-mail that "this was an excuse for Tesla missing their 5000 units/week goal".

Musk states that Tesla is investigating whether this person was receiving any outside impetus, and warning employees to be extra vigilant for signs of sabotage during the next few weeks, but that wasn't what OP claimed.

Any deliberate attempt by Musk at conflating these different events is up to interpretation, but note that this is an internal e-mail and not a press release. It's easiest to just interpret this message at face value.

avs7338y ago

Yeah but thats the point...imply it through your language rather than state it explicitly. It's intellectually dishonest.

marvin8y ago

I don't read such an implication, honestly.

It certainly could be interpreted that way, but if one did, one would already have made some assumptions oneself. I just don't see how this matches up with Musk's brutally direct tone on other occasions. Misleading your own employees like this seems like it would be counterproductive.

Not to mention, it would be obvious to any insider that this wasn't the reason for the struggles with ramping production - they have been behind the (admittedly heavily accelerated, since the 2015 plan) schedule for months.

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