The scariest movie of the year might actually be a four-hour documentary.
“Musk” (in theaters Oct. 16) is an exhaustive chronicle of the rise of Elon Musk
, the eccentric tech billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. Directed by Alex Gibney (“Citizen K”), the film horrifically details the dozens of deaths linked to Tesla’s driver-assistance systems, alleging that Musk has been dishonest about the technology's capabilities and shortcomings.Through interviews with journalists, Musk’s former associates and romantic partners, the movie also claims that he courted right-wing politicians around the globe to get business incentives for Tesla and SpaceX. It similarly alleges that the once-apolitical Musk, 55, has aligned himself with President
Donald Trump with the aim of halting federal investigations into his companies that started during the Biden administration.
“Elon went pretty hardcore Trump,” Ashley St. Clair, Musk’s ex-girlfriend, says in the documentary. Compared to Biden, “Trump is a much easier president to buy.”
St. Clair, 28, is a former conservative influencer who dated Musk for two years and shares a 1-year-old son, Romulus, with him. Musk is not involved in the documentary and previously asserted that Gibney was making a "hit piece" on him.
USA TODAY has reached out to Musk's representative for comment.
Elon Musk documentary raises questions about President Trump and the midterm elections
"Musk" premiered Sept. 8 at Venice Film Festival and screened for reporters simultaneously in New York. The film suggests that Musk has unparalleled access to Americans' personal data, through his 2022 acquisition of X (formerly known as Twitter) and pivotal role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which employed many of Musk's young staffers to slash funding across government agencies.
In an interview with Gibney, St. Clair remembers texting with Musk on the night of the 2024 presidential election.
“I say, ‘I think we’re gonna win,’ and he said, ‘I knew that hours ago. We have the best real-time data,'" St. Clair alleges. “The degree of certainty he had, I had never seen before.”
In one alleged text exchange shown in the documentary, Musk tells St. Clair that he has big plans for his satellite internet service Starlink. She asks him not to elaborate in fear that she’ll be “deposed,” to which Musk responds, “Very wise.”
“What is Elon building?” St. Clair tells Gibney. “What are his goals? What are his actual motivations? Do we even know this man at all?”
“Musk” also sounds the alarm that the Department of War uses Musk’s Grok, an AI tool that came under fire earlier this year for generating nonconsensual, sexualized photos of real-life women and underage girls. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI,” expressed concern about Musk’s deep government ties and how his technology could potentially be wielded for surveillance or collusion.
“It’s fairly clear to me that Trump is hellbent on corrupting the midterm elections,” Hinton says in the documentary. “If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens. And what DOGE did looked like just what you would do.”
Elon Musk allegedly cut off daughter's health insurance after she came out as trans
“Musk” features extensive interviews with St. Clair and Justine Musk, his first wife. Throughout their eight-year marriage, Justine said that he would often make her feel “insignificant” and talk down to her like she was one of his employees.
“I learned the term ‘gaslighting’ through my relationship with Elon,” Justine tells Gibney. As they danced at their wedding, “Elon told me, ‘I am the alpha in this relationship.’ … He was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking.”
Musk has 14 children with four women, one of whom, Nevada, died as an infant. In 2024, Musk claimed that his daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, now 22, had also died – saying she had been “killed by the woke mind virus” when she transitioned.
“We actually went through the actual death of an actual child – what’s happening here is Jenna is growing up,” Justine says in the film. After their daughter came out as trans, “Elon never tried to repair things. That’s not in his nature. … Elon told me, ‘Make sure Jenna knows how much I’ll always love her.’ And then the next day, he cut off her health insurance.”
Ashley St. Clair claims she refused to sign Elon Musk's $40M NDA
St. Clair tears up in the film as she alleges that she'd watched Musk block the number of his ex-partner, Grimes, as she was pleading for custody of their three children. St. Clair also claims that Musk’s right-hand man, Jared Birchall, pressured her to sign an NDA, promising that she would never reveal that Musk fathered her son, Romulus.
As part of the agreement, she would have allegedly received a lump sum of $15 million, plus monthly payments of $100,000 for 21 years. She claims the $15 million was taken away when she refused to sign, and she instead only received $20,000 each month in child support.
“Jared was very adversarial,” St. Clair says. “I don’t know how to categorize someone who degrades and borderline threatens a woman who is freshly postpartum. … This was financial retaliation for speaking out. It was almost as if he didn’t show a certain side of himself until after I had our baby.”
Musk is a pronatalist who believes that the world needs more babies in order to avoid economic and social downfall. The film alleges that he may have “many more” children than the 14 who are publicly known.
After her public spat with Musk, “I was getting messages from other young girls that Elon was [messaging], offering them children,” St. Clair says. “He told me that he wanted to use surrogates because it was the only way we could create ‘a legion of children before the civil war.’"
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Elon Musk's exes allege gaslighting, threats in explosive documentary
