What is it like to be interviewed by Elon Musk?

You’re never gonna have another interview like it.

Last semester I applied for a software internship working on Tesla’s autopilot programs. There’s so much mystique around Tesla these days. Around Elon Musk. And let me tell you, he doesn’t have time for any of that in person. He’s a busy man, and an important one.

The competition for one of his internships is one of the toughest in today’s job market, and that’s saying something. I was doing technical interviews over the phone for weeks. One day, an interviewer called in the morning and grilled me for so long that I just straight up skipped one of my classes!

Sacrifices. Elon appreciates those.

At long last I made it to the final round. It’s true what they say-- he interviews everybody who will ever work for him. They flew me out to the Fremont factory in California, and my hands started shaking as soon as I stepped into the building.

I was led into a conference room. And there he was. Elon Musk, in the flesh.

We exchanged pleasantries. Our tone was light, but Elon’s eyes never left mine. I could tell what he was doing. He was sizing me up. Testing the waters. Seeing if I would crack under the pressure.

Ever so slowly, we meandered closer to actual interview territory. “So your resume mentions app development. Tell me about that.”

I had to stop a smile from breaking out onto my face. Oh, wow, Elon Musk read my resume!

“So I, uh, had to spend a little time getting used to Swift, but--”

Elon cut me off. “You an iOS fan?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“Here. Gimme a sec.” Elon disappeared from the conference room.

I let out a shaky breath and collapsed into my chair. Was I doing great? Poorly? Incredibly poorly? I’d heard the stories. Engineers fired after screaming rages, careers snuffed out in seconds. Oh, god, he wasn’t coming back with security, was he? He was only gone for a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours.

The door crashed open. I sat back up, ramrod straight. Here came Elon, and there was something in his hands. It was a jet-black container, shiny and spherical. Except that it wasn’t a sphere, exactly. There was a dent near the top, and it flared inwards towards the bottom. What did that remind me of...?

Elon unscrewed the top and gently tapped some of the container’s contents onto the table. A whitish dust spilled out. He took his credit card out of his wallet and started chopping the pile into lines.

My eyes bugged out of my head. Elon glanced up.

“Oh, no, don’t worry, it’s not coke. Take a look! You don’t have to worry.”

He slid the open container over to me and got back to his work. I picked it up. The stuff inside was a light gray, so he was right. It probably wasn’t coke. But what the hell was it?

I heard a guttural snort, and I almost dropped the container before setting it down. Elon reared up from his desk with fire in his eyes. “Woah! Still kicks.”

He had a rolled-up dollar bill in one hand, and he shoved it into my face. “Your turn.”

“Hang on. What...what’s happening? What is this?”

Elon looked at me like I was an idiot. “What do you think it is? Guess. I went and got this because you mentioned iOS. I want you to guess.”

Then it hit me. That container. It wasn’t just a sphere, and it wasn’t just an apple.

It was an apple-shaped urn.

“Oh my God, are you snorting Steve Jobs’ ashes?”

Elon did another line and clapped his hands. “Fantastic, man! Not a lot of people even know he was cremated. I knew I had a good feeling about you.”

This was a prank. It had to be. This all had to be one big, bizarre test, so I figured I would play along. “Security wasn’t that tight around his grave, huh?”

“Nope,” said Elon, too calmly. “Security at Alta Mesa’s a joke. Couple of months ago I just stayed until midnight, dug them out myself.”

Elon dipped a finger into the jar and rubbed his gums. “You know I met him once? Steve. He was such an asshole. He hated me. My companies. Well, look who’s laughing now.” He smiled at me, then coughed. A grey, powdery cloud billowed into the air. I tried not to breathe.

“Steve’s grave was unmarked,” he continued. “But that wasn’t a problem. I could smell him.”

Elon’s eyes started to unfocus. “I could smell the animus that drove his soul. The energy. And, soon, it will be mine.”

Nobody spoke for a while.

“It will all be mine,” whispered Elon, and it was like I wasn’t even in the room.

He blinked. “Anyways. You want a hit?”

For the first time in what felt like forever I felt like I was allowed to speak. “...No, man, I’m good.”

There’s no way I can do this. I fought back the urge to gag. That’s a human being floating in the air right now. There have to be laws against that kind of thing, right? And even if there weren’t, this feels so deeply, deeply wrong. I might have to talk to the authorities after this. After all, I still have my character, my convictions--

“Listen.” Elon clapped a hand on my shoulder. “One little bump, and you’re walking out that door with a job.”

Anyways, I start next quarter.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-interviewed-by-Elon-Musk 

US Military Initiates "Global Campaign Plan For Pandemic"

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

It appears that the U.S. military is taking this coronavirus outbreak extremely seriously. 

An executive order has been issued which has initiated the implementation of “the Department of Defense Global Campaign plan for Pandemic Influenza and Infectious Diseases 3551-13”.  We don’t know all of the details of the plan, but we do know that it instructs U.S. military officials “to prepare for widespread outbreaks”.  Many in the mainstream media continue to try to convince us that this virus is not much more dangerous than the common flu, but if that is true then why is our military taking such a dramatic step?  The following comes from a Military Times article…

An executive order issued by the Joint Staff and approved by Defense Secretary Mark Esper this month directed Northern Command and geographic combatant commanders to initiate pandemic plans, which include ordering commanders to prepare for widespread outbreaks and confining service members with a history of travel to China.

The Navy and Marine Corps messages, issued Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, reference an executive order directing U.S. Northern Command to implement the Department of Defense Global Campaign plan for Pandemic Influenza and Infectious Diseases 3551-13.

For now, we are not being told the specific details of this plan, and when Northern Command was asked about it they issued a very vague statement…

“We coordinate with other combatant commands to assess potential impacts in the event of a pandemic and we ensure the U.S. military is poised to respond as required,” said Northern Command in a statement emailed to Military Times. “The military profession fosters a culture of planning, and the fact that we are coordinating planning efforts across the geographical combatant commands is consistent with how we prepare to respond, if directed.”

Thankfully, the virus is not spreading widely inside the United States so far.

But that could change at any time, and on Wednesday a 14th U.S. case was confirmed…

A second person evacuated from Wuhan, China, to a U.S. Marine base near San Diego has been diagnosed with the new coronavirus, raising the tally of confirmed cases in the United States to 14, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Wednesday.

The patient was among 232 individuals who had been placed under quarantine at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar after being airlifted from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan earlier this month, CDC spokeswoman Ana Toro said.

But 14 confirmed cases is just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to more than 59,000 confirmed cases in China.

We should be thankful for the low number of cases in this country, but Dr. Nancy Messonnier is warning that “we are likely to see community spread in the U.S.” at some point…

Top health officials prepped Americans for the prospect of novel coronavirus spreading in communities in the United States during a Wednesday news conference.

“At some point, we we are likely to see community spread in the U.S.,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

And if we do start seeing tens of thousands of confirmed cases here, the level of fear is going to rise dramatically and a lot of people are going to go completely nuts.

In fact, we are already starting to see some really strange things.

For example, a couple of “pranksters” in New York thought it would be really funny to spill a bucket of “coronavirus” in the middle of a crowded subway car…

David Flores and Morris Cordewell donned hazmats suits for the stunt while holding a container filled with liquid that had biological hazard markings on it.

In the video Cordewell gets up and spills the liquid over the floor as train passengers quickly jump out of harm’s way. However, it turns out their bucket contained Kool-Aid juice.

Who would do something like that?

Yes, they probably thought that it was quite funny, but the truth is that this sort of a stunt could have taken a very tragic turn.

Over in China, we are witnessing things that are even more frightening.

For example, one woman that has apparently caught the virus decided to walk down the street in the middle of the day and touch every car door handle she came across.

西行小宝@htommy998

2/11 #Coronavirustruth #coronavirus
ROL regulates human behavior with law; religion does the same with morality. Both can help society in order. There is none in China. Video showed a suspicious infected woman touched every door handle of the cars parking on the street. Scary!

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1:05 PM - Feb 11, 2020

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In other words, it appears that she was purposely trying to spread the virus to others.

When things get really nuts, most people will behave at least somewhat rationally, but there will always be others that will completely snap.

And without a doubt, there are always crazy people that are trying to bring unusual things into this country.  For instance, just check out this recent example from Zero Hedge…

That’s exactly what happened two weeks ago: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, seized a bag of dead birds that was being carried in the luggage of an airline passenger traveling from China to Washington D.C. on January 27.

The birds were packaged in a bag that had cartoon images on it and was seized at Dulles Airport from a passenger, who was arriving from Beijing, according to the NY Post. The passenger claimed that the birds were “cat food” and that he was planning to bring them to Maryland after his flight.

Our world is getting crazier with each passing day, and it is inevitable that we will see a lot more weird stuff happen in the months ahead.

We are in a battle with a virus that is perfect for spreading fear.  It is invisible to the naked eye, it can survive on surfaces for up to 9 days, it has an incubation period of up to 24 days, and it spreads from person to person frighteningly easily.

To a certain extent, there is comfort in being able to see your enemy.

But we cannot detect this virus with our five senses.  It could be on the next grocery cart you push, the next door handle you twist or the next hand that you shake.

That sort of uncertainty is going to drive a lot of people crazy if this virus starts spreading widely inside the United States, and so let us hope that such a scenario does not become a reality.

"Intelligence Coup Of The Century": CIA Ran Global Spy Op Using Well-Known Swiss Encryption Company

From Zero Hedge:

In a new bombshell report, The Washington Post reveals a massive covert operation which was 'hidden in plain sight' that seems straight out of Confessions of an Economic Hitman — it's yet more 'conspiracy theory' of the past now definitively proven conspiracy fact.

For the past decades, the CIA owned and operated a front company based in Switzerland for the purpose of spying on secret government communications across the globe, whether they were allies or adversaries. This according to newly unearthed 280-pages of an internal CIA history of the operation obtained by the Post along with Swiss public broadcaster SRF and German broadcaster ZDF.

Crypto AG, a Switzerland-based communications encryption firm, was secretly purchased by the CIA and West German intelligence services in 1971. The company not only made millions by selling encryption equipment to over 120 countries into the 21st century, but used the very same equipment to infiltrate each host country's communications in a 'Trojan Horse' style operation.

Crypto is headquareted in Steinhausen, Switzerland. Image source: Reuters.

Among notable clients, the report lists Iran, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and even the Vatican — all which were duped into purchasing the 'backdoor' spy hardware in a scenario which sounds a lot like what Washington is now accusing China's Huawei of doing. The global CIA surveillance operation was dubbed “Operation Rubicon”.

Ironically, while host governments thought Crypto AG's devices were securing messages users thought were encrypted, the reality was the opposite, and allowed the CIA to gather the most sensitive internal messages from governments across the world. 

"It was the intelligence coup of the century," one CIA document obtained by the Post reads. And it continues: 

"Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries."

Greg Miller

✔@gregpmiller

For more than half a century, countries all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret.

The Swiss company, Crypto AG, was secretly owned by the CIA.http://wapo.st/crypto 

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As The Hill summarizes, US intelligence didn't have a mere indirect relationship with the company, but was directly overseeing the day-to-day at every level: 

Crypto's operations — hiring decisions, designing technology, subverting algorithms and managing sales targets — were controlled by the CIA and West German intelligence until the early 1990s.

The CIA and NSA took complete control once the Germans pulled out of the program in the 1990's, reportedly over concerns risk of exposure was too great. 

Only a handful of close US allies knew about the program and were reportedly on occasion given access to its intelligence haul, including the UK, Israel, Sweden, and officially neutral Switzerland.

Older model voice encryption device from the Swiss company Crypto AG, file image.

The Washington Post also called the highly classified program the “most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War” — and it ultimately continued all the way to 2018. Neither the CIA nor the German BND have yet to comment on the revelation. 

Unsurprisingly, there were allegations going decades back that the Swiss-based company was actually a CIA front. It was first reported in 1992 by Germany's Focus magazine, which had been established as an alternative to the more established Spiegel weekly news magazine.

Via The Washington Post

Predictably, the report which originated at the time in independent media was immediately slammed as “unbelievable conspiracy theory” — as is detailed in the following astounding summary of recent history: 

The reports cite a classified CIA history to underpin the allegations, some of which date back at least to 1992, when one of Crypto’s employees was arrested and held in Iran for nine months as a suspected spy.

At the time, the company called reports that it was a secret asset of Western intelligence agencies “an unbelievable conspiracy theory,” according to a report in German magazine Focus detailing a 1994 book on the subject.

Crypto AG bills itself as "the preferred security partner for civilian and military authorities worldwide." The company further describes of its products: "The Crypto AG encryption solution is used primarily by the military, governments or organizations that need swift, secure and easily-deployable communications solutions when conventional forms of communications are not accessible."

Crypto AG radio communications encryption device. 

But again, those once at the forefront of uncovering the truth and who were quickly dismissed as quacks at the time are now vindicated by the smoking gun internal CIA documents themselves. 

Immediately after the WaPo and Swiss SRF and German ZDF broadcaster reports were published on Tuesday, the Swiss government said it is opening a formal investigation into Crypto AG.