ELON MUSK AT SPACEX with occupy mars shirt

Elon Musk being photographed at SpaceX, one of the other companies he’d been neglecting while at DOGE (Marvin Joseph/Getty Images)

Present Tense

Elon Musk really wants you to know he’s back at Tesla

The gentleman doth attest too much.

Rani Molla

5/29/25 10:44AM

Did you know Tesla CEO Elon Musk would be returning his full attention to his companies instead of his government position at the Department of Government Efficiency? You should, because he can’t stop talking about it — a move likely geared at Tesla bulls.

Last night, Musk tweeted that his time at DOGE was coming “to an end” and that he was thankful “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”

Per The Wall Street Journal, a White House official said the “off boarding” of the world’s richest man started Wednesday.

As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.

The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2025

The media-wary Musk has been on a press blitz over the past few days, taking interviews at his factories and telling everyone he can that he’s back at the office.

“I’m physically here. This is the focus, and especially around launch,” Musk told The Washington Post from a SpaceX facility in Texas this week.

“It’s not like I left the companies,” Musk also attested to Ars Technica. “It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.

Over the weekend, Musk tweeted, “Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out. ”

Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.

I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.

As evidenced by the 𝕏 uptime issues this week, major operational…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2025

This is all after a special “live company update” at the top of Tesla’s earnings call last month, where Musk already announced that he would be significantly cutting back his time at DOGE. At the time, he said, “Starting next month, I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla.”

Why is he beating this drum so hard?

For many Tesla investors, Musk is Tesla, so his return is perceived as good news for the company. Tesla bull Dan Ives has been calling for Musk’s return since he started at DOGE earlier this year. Since the initial DOGE exit announcement, the stock has been on a tear, leaving its 2025 lows far away in the rear-view mirror.

Of course, Tesla’s stock price is even less tethered to its financial performance these days than usual. Despite terrible earnings and a spate of bad news, Tesla’s stock is up more than 30% this month.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5