Musk is no engineer

Elon Musk has carefully cultivated the image of a genius engineer, a modern-day Edison or Edwin Land, leading humanity into a technological utopia. But beneath the bravado and the bombastic claims, Musk is not the brilliant technologist he pretends to be. He is not a great engineer, nor an inventor. He is, at best, a salesman—a Silicon Valley P.T. Barnum who knows how to hype a product but lacks the discipline, methodical rigor, and intellectual depth of a true innovator. It’s so obvious to myself and my engineering friends, but clearly not to the press and to those that idolize him.

The myth of Musk as an engineering guru falls apart under scrutiny. He did not found Tesla—he bought his way in. The actual founders of Tesla, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, developed the company’s early vision and technology. Musk was an early investor who forced his way into the leadership role and then used lawsuits and corporate maneuvering to rewrite history, eventually having himself officially declared a “co-founder.” While he loves to talk about sleeping on the factory floor and personally fixing problems, Tesla’s success has always relied on the talent and hard work of actual engineers—many of whom have left, fed up with his erratic decision-making and credit-stealing.

The same pattern is visible across his other ventures. SpaceX, for example, is often cited as proof of Musk’s engineering brilliance, yet the company’s breakthroughs—reusable rockets, efficient launch systems—have been developed by teams of highly skilled aerospace engineers. Musk’s primary contribution has been setting ambitious goals and taking bold financial risks, not designing engines or solving complex aerodynamics problems.

His other ventures expose his lack of true technical abilities even more starkly. The Boring Company, hyped as a revolutionary answer to traffic congestion, has produced little more than a glorified tunnel for Teslas that moves fewer people than a subway. Neuralink, his brain-chip company, remains largely a sci-fi fantasy plagued with ethical concerns and unproven claims. His promises of full self-driving Teslas remain unfulfilled after years of missed deadlines and misleading marketing.

Musk’s lack of true technical expertise extends to his chaotic leadership. He operates not with the precision of an engineer but with the impulsivity of a gambler. Nowhere has this been more evident than in his disastrous takeover of Twitter, where he fired key employees at random, gutted content moderation teams without understanding their function, and made sweeping changes without testing the consequences. This isn’t how an engineer approaches problem-solving—this is how a reckless opportunist acts.

This same flawed approach is now being applied to the U.S. government under Trump. As one of Trump’s most powerful allies, Musk has been involved in gutting key agencies, particularly the FAA and others that provide oversight on issues like air safety, labor regulations, environmental protection, and technology standards. His influence in these decisions follows the same pattern he applied at Twitter: fire the experts, hollow out the institutions, and assume that brute force and arrogance will solve complex problems. He fails to apply the careful, methodical approach of a trained engineer. He does not test hypotheses, collect data, or refine solutions. Instead, he makes sweeping, ideological decisions based on gut instinct and then blames others when they fail.

And now he wants to rejigger the airline navigation system using his Starlink satellites. Let those who believe he is an engineer continue to fly, trusting this charlatan who is quick to dismiss an occasional crash of a self-driving Tesla

Musk’s talents lie not in engineering, but in myth-making. He is exceptional at selling a vision, at making people believe in grand possibilities. Like P.T. Barnum, he thrives on spectacle, on the promise of something revolutionary just over the horizon—whether it’s Mars colonization, brain implants, or self-driving cars. But hype is not the same as execution, and in Musk’s case, the gap between the two is growing wider by the day for everyone to see… if they chose to look.

Will it continue? Tesla’s stock is plummeting, investors are losing faith, and his companies are struggling to keep up with competitors who focus on real innovation rather than empty promises. As Musk icontinues to be exposed as a con artist rather than a creator, will more people will begin to see the truth? That’s the big question, because many today love to be entertained and want to believe the lies they are fed.