Billionaire Elon Musk's bold dreams for the future include extraterrestrials, deep tunnels, and space tourism. Musk appeared in the dark, wearing a traditional Indonesian Batik shirt and surrounded by candles, as if bodiless, to address businessmen in Bali on the sidelines of the G20 summit. Only his face and hands were visible against a black background. He told Indonesian businessman Anindya Bakrie, “The power went out for us three minutes before this call. That’s why I’m in the dark.”
When asked why he did not travel to the Indonesian island, Musk jokingly remarked that “the workload has increased a lot lately” after acquiring the social media platform Twitter. He had nothing further to say about the controversial acquisition, which involved the dismissal of thousands of employees and imposing fees on verified accounts. However, he expressed support for increasing the length of videos on Twitter and boosting revenue from content creators’ posts.
Putting the Twitter issue aside, the conversation shifted to more complex topics, such as digging deep underground tunnels to combat traffic congestion, traveling by rocket across the world in less than an hour, and discovering life beyond Earth in space. He stated, “We may find strange civilizations or discover civilizations that existed millions of years ago.” He added, “I think going there and exploring the galaxy would be very enjoyable.”
Musk, the head of Tesla, discussed the benefits of underground tunnels compared to flying cars for tackling traffic jams, saying that cars “would fall on your heads” and would be bad in terms of privacy. He continued, “Electric cars and tunnels are definitely the solution for the worst traffic congestion that could happen in any city because you can go down as many layers deep as needed to eliminate the congestion.”
Aside from his “optimistic” view of Indonesia as a developing country, his remarks largely focused on his strange and bold vision for the future of Earth. Jakarta invited Elon Musk to use Indonesia as a launch site for SpaceX rockets, highlighting the benefits of its proximity to the equator. However, Musk expressed his desire to create launch platforms around the world that would enable people to travel “to the other side of the world” at speeds 20 times the speed of sound. He clarified, “I think this would really open up the world if you could travel anywhere in under an hour.”
The world's richest billionaire could not resist joking about being at the mercy of energy fluctuations on Earth. He said, “Just look at this video; it’s very strange. I’m sitting here in the dark surrounded by candles. This is the funniest thing.”
