The bad blood between Musk and Zuckerberg began with a bang

Published

2 years ago

June 22, 2023

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Let’s get ready to rumble — The bad blood between Musk and Zuckerberg began with a bang “I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite.”

Eric Berger – Jun 22, 2023 2:49 pm UTC Enlarge / Musk versus Zuckerberg in a cage match? Probably not.Aurich Lawson | Getty Images ( David Paul Morris | Nathan Laine) reader comments 26 with

The Internet is aflame this morning with the prospect of a cage match between two of the tech industry’s most prominent and controversial leaders. Ready to rumble in the red corner is Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. And in the blue corner, we have the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

As the BBC and multiple other outlets have confirmed, Zuckerberg was entirely serious when he accepted Musk’s offer of a cage match by saying “send me location.” On Wednesday evening, Musk then replied with “Vegas Octagon.” This was a reference to the fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts in Las Vegas.

Given the humorous nature of Musk’s other responses to the proposed fight, such as “I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus’, where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing,” it seems probable that he is not overly serious. While Musk has the definite advantage in size, he is 12 years older than Zuckerberg, and the Facebook founder frequently trains in mixed-martial arts.

Nonetheless, the feud between the two tech billionaires is absolutely legitimate. And what most of the coverage of this “cage match” exchange has missed is the origin of the dispute. It came nearly seven years ago, when Facebook leased part of the bandwidth on an Israeli-build satellite, Amos-6. Zuckerberg intended for this bandwidth to provide some areas of Africa with Internet access to Facebook. Starts with a rocket

This $200 million satellite was due to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket in early September, 2016. On the morning of September 1, to save a single day in the pre-launch preparation process, SpaceX had already affixed the satellite atop a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of its static fire test. And the countdown was going smoothly, until it wasn’t. Completely out of the blue, the rocket exploded violently, showering pieces of the vehicle into the swamplands for miles around. The satellite swan-dived to the ground, a total, fiery loss. Advertisement

The Amos-6 accidentknown internally at SpaceX as “Flight 29″was a wrenching failure for a launch company. With the destruction of the Space Launch Complex-40 pad, SpaceX had no other pads in service at the time, and it had no rockets to launch. Additionally, it was the company’s second Falcon 9 failure in 15 months.

Musk was sleeping at his home in Los Angeles at the time of the accident. He awoke to the news of the failure and arrived at the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, California, about the same time that Zuckerberg took to Facebook to vent his frustrations.

“As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent,” Zuckerberg wrote.

This was not well received at SpaceX, where employees were distraught and pulling themselves together to begin their second failure investigation in a little more than a year. The sentiment shared by Musk, the company’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, and others was essentially that Zuckerberg was an “asshole” for what he had written, and when he had done so. Delete Facebook

The emerging feud took another step forward a couple of years later, when Musk deleted the Facebook pages for SpaceX and Tesla in the midst of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal. This was in March 2018, when it was revealed that a British data firm that contracted with the Donald Trump presidential campaign had retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it.

Essentially, Musk piled onto the “Delete Facebook” movement, saying he”didnt realize” that SpaceX even had a Facebook page and that Teslas “looked lame anyway.” The two pages were promptly taken down.

The tensions between the two billionaires have ratcheted up over the last year as Musk began his adventures in Twitterland as a social media overlord. This brought him into direct competition with Facebook. Zuckerberg has responded by saying Facebook is working on its own version of a service like Twitter. reader comments 26 with Eric Berger Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to wonky NASA policy, and author of the book Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars

Politics

Utah could be first US state to pass Bitcoin reserve bill: Satoshi Action Fund

Published

3 hours ago

February 3, 2025

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Utah could be first US state to pass Bitcoin reserve bill: Satoshi Action Fund

Utah’s Bitcoin reserve bill could be the first of its kind to pass at the state level in the US because of its shorter legislative window to decide on bills, says a Bitcoin advocate.

Technology

Bitcoin slides toward $90,000 after Trump orders tariffs

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4 hours ago

February 3, 2025

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Bitcoin slides toward ,000 after Trump orders tariffs

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Bitcoin.

Cheney Orr | Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Cryptocurrencies tumbled on Sunday in a risk-off move after President Donald Trump hit Canada, Mexico and China with long-threatened import tariffs.

The price of bitcoin was last lower by 7% at $93,768.66, according to Coin Metrics. The CoinDesk 20 index, which measures the largest 20 digital assets by market cap, dropped 19%. Ether slumped 20% to its lowest level since November.

The slide began Saturday night after Trump signed an order imposing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, as well as a 10% duty on China, which will take effect Tuesday. The U.S. does about $1.6 trillion in business with the three countries.

Jeff Park, Bitwise Asset Management’s head of alpha strategies, said a sustained tariff war will be “amazing” for bitcoin in the long-run due to an eventual weakening of the dollar and U.S. rates.

While many believe bitcoin is a hedge against inflation and uncertainty over the long term, it trades like a risk asset in the short term — and is likely to respond negatively to any uncertainty around the trade war triggered by Trump’s tariffs.

Investors are watching $90,000 as the key support level in bitcoin, and some have warned of an even deeper pullback toward $80,000 should the cryptocurrency meaningfully break below its support.

Bitcoin is about 16% off its Jan. 20 record of $109,350.72. Seasoned crypto investors and traders have become accustomed over the years to corrections of around 30% during bull markets.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

Business

Keir Starmer’s 1,000 jobs pledge could take 20 years, GB Energy boss admits

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4 hours ago

February 3, 2025

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Keir Starmer's 1,000 jobs pledge could take 20 years, GB Energy boss admits

The boss of GB Energy has told Sky News it could take 20 years to deliver a Labour government pledge of 1,000 jobs for Aberdeen.

Sir Keir Starmer promised voters his flagship green initiative, which will be headquartered in the northeast of Scotland, would cut consumer energy bills by as much as £300.

It is one of Labour’s five key missions for this parliament after a manifesto commitment to “save families hundreds of pounds on their bills, not just in the short term, but for good”.

In his first broadcast interview, Juergen Maier, appointed by Downing Street as GB Energy’s start-up chairman, suggested this was a “very long-term project” spanning decades and repeatedly refused to say when household prices would be slashed.

“I know that you are asking me for a date as to when I can bring that, but GB Energy has only just been brought into creation and we will bring energy bills down,” Mr Maier said.

The state-owned company will not supply power to homes but it will invest in new renewable projects while attempting to attract private investors.

Aberdeen HQ ‘nervous’

Labour hopes GB Energy will help workers move from oil and gas and has pledged 1,000 jobs for Aberdeen, where the initiative will be based.

Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce told Sky News the estimated 50,000 local people currently employed in the industry are “nervous”.

Chief executive Russell Borthwick said: “I think the [GB Energy] ambition is good. It needs some quick wins.

“Right now, this city is nervous. We need to give the industry more confidence that things are going to start moving more quickly.

“What we do have is not a great deal of progress. We’ve had a lot of positive meetings with GB Energy. I think we are really looking over the next six months for that to be delivered on.”

1,000 jobs in 20 years? ‘Absolutely’

It comes after Energy Minister Michael Shanks MP recently said the UK government had “not moved away” from an ambition of creating “over 1,000 jobs”.

Sky News pushed Mr Maier for clarity on this pledge given the looming crisis in the North Sea industry.

He said: “Great British Energy itself is going to create over the next five years, 200 or 300 jobs in Aberdeen. That will be the size of our team. I have said in the very long term when we become a major energy champion it may be many more than that.”

Pressed to define “long term”, he replied: “Look, we grow these companies. Energy companies grow over 10 or 20 years, and we are going to be around in 20 years.”

He said “absolutely” when asked directly if it could take two decades to fulfil the commitment of 1,000 jobs.

‘Huge risk of not delivering’

Unions told Sky News there is a risk of GB Energy over-promising and under-delivering.

Unite’s Scottish Secretary Derek Thomson said: “If you look at how many jobs are going to go in the northeast, if GB energy does not pick up the pace and start to move workers in there and start to create proper green jobs, then I’m afraid we could be looking at a desolation of the northeast.”

Prospect, which represents more than 22,000 workers across the energy industry, said the current vision seems risky.

Richard Hardy, Scotland secretary, said: “I don’t want to be accused of cynicism, but I do want to see a plan.

“If what happens is that it only creates 200 or 300 jobs, then I think most people would see that as being a failure. There is a huge risk for them in not actually delivering.

“They must understand the political risk they are taking in doing this. It has to be a success for them because otherwise it is going to be a stick to beat them with.”