Elon Musk & Shivon Zilis: Real Breakup or PR Move?

Drey (0:00)

Elon Musk dumping his longtime girlfriend, Shivon Zilis, was a very strategic move. And that strategy runs straight through the Pentagon. Alongside Neuralink, Shivon is also a director at Shield AI, which is an autonomous drone company that has become one of the Pentagon's fastest rising suppliers. They have also been the main supplier for Taiwan's military arm. Now, here's the thing about supplying drones to Taiwan. China is going to be pissed.

John Johnston (0:27)

Hi, everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well, was the Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis very public breakup recently? A PR move, a business move rather than personal. Now, I must say, I don't like to delve into people's personal lives. I just don't think it's relevant. It doesn't matter. I don't care about it. But this was very public and pretty bizarre. And was this more about business? Now, this is what the post was from Shivon Zilis on X. So, very public.

Why? Why would they do that? It's very bizarre, very weird. But I mean, these are weird people. Elon's a weird guy.

She starts off, it's hard to go from in love to let go in a week with no warning. But that's just how it is sometimes. It's a long post. We'll get into a bit more of it through this. Did see this this morning when I was going through my usual things. This is Alex Gibney, who's got the Musk documentary coming out on Friday in New York and Los Angeles. If you want to go and see that, I definitely would if I was there. In fact, I was saying to my wife this morning, we're good to go with some audience members if I was there, but I can't even go to the US at the moment. There's no way under the current administration, considering the videos that I make. But I digress. Alex Gibney says, very interesting perspective. Anyone interested in exploring?

I thought, what is this? This is about the public breakup from Drey, from The Drey Dossier, who investigates things like this. This is her channel, investigating how technology rewires power, politics and public life. Definitely some crossover to what I'm interested in, what I do. And she did this live stream, three-hour live stream about this.

Really getting into some details here. Like I'm not into conspiracy theories. That's what I first thought. But then Alex Skibney tweeting about it. And he obviously thinks there's something in it. And I do too, after looking at this. So what is this all about? Thankfully, she has done a summary here about what she has found out, which we will go into. But she says here on tonight's live, we're getting into the reported split between Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis, the mother of four of his children and a director at Neuralink. So that's the key here. So his other partners really weren't that involved in business that I can think of, but she really is.

Something smells off, she says, about this breakup, especially the way it's been played out in public. And I'm not convinced relationship drama is the whole story. So it's interesting. Yeah, it was pretty bizarre. I mean, I didn't think that much of it. I thought, as I said, they're weird people, but very public about it. She says on EXPOV point of view, the other woman is an autonomous drone. There's a lot packed in here from that three hour video. I'll put a link to that video, the stream, her channel there. If you want to see more about this.

Drey (3:32)

Elon Musk dumping his longtime girlfriend, Shivon Zilis, was a very strategic move. And that strategy runs straight through the Pentagon. Now, Shivon has been by Elon's side for the better part of 10 years, and she's the mother of four of his kids. And she's also the director of, you guessed it, Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain chip company. Now, for the past year or so, I've been reporting on Neuralink. So I've been following our girl, Shivon, very, very closely. And the more I learn about Shivon, the clearer it is the role that she has in Elon's life and in his companies. And let me tell you what, these two are fiercely loyal to each other. So when I read that there's this breakup post, the alarm bells in my head start going off. And I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm just not buying it. There's no way they're actually breaking up. They are too intertwined. Why was I right to be suspicious? Because this post is bizarre. It's weird. I mean, just look at the language. She says, it's hard to go from in love to let go in a week with no warning. I'm sorry, let go? What were you, like fired from your relationship or something? Then she calls their family his escape from an otherwise militant existence and his break from the battlefield. And that is a lot of war talk for a breakup. And while that is weird, it's still not nearly as weird as these green shot that she included with the breakup. Keep in mind, these are two people who have known each other for over a decade, share four children and she has had, assumingly, years of messages to choose from. And yet she picked one exchange that is dated for Thursday, September 24th at 1101 PM. She tells Elon that breakfast was wonderful and that she loves him just so very much. He writes back, love you too. And then he writes, I didn't realize this G dinner included significant other. Beijing one did not, or I would have invited you.