The Tesla whistleblower and the cost of taking on Elon Musk

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, the Tesla whistleblower who exposed the truth about Elon Musk's dream factory.

0:22Sönke Iwersen:It's a Thursday afternoon. I get a call from my colleague in Tokyo. He tells me out of the blue somebody has called him who claims to have worked at Tesla and has very troubling information. This is Sönke Iversen. He heads up the investigations team at the German newspaper Handelsblatt. He only wants to talk through Threema, which is a very, very anonymous, secure messaging app. So I download that and the next morning I get this message. This is Mr. Anonymous. Is this Sönke? Am I talking to the right guy? and say yes, and then we start talking on the phone. The man on the other end of the phone doesn't want to give his name.

1:02But what he says is startling.

1:04Sönke Iwersen:He claims that anybody at Tesla can access any information, starting with private email, private phone numbers of workers, the wages. And this goes all the way up to Elon Musk. We're talking contracts, we're talking bank statements, receivables. Later we would find a stamped stop secret right there on the front pages, highly confidential. In my head I'm like, this can't possibly be true.

1:35Sönke Iwersen:Tesla had just started up a German factory. It was only and still is the only factory of Tesla in Europe. Nobody was able to get inside Tesla. Tesla was a complete black box. It was run like a cult. Elon Musk was a visionary. an icon, a genius, already the richest man in the world. While I was talking, he said, just hold on a second, check your phone. And my phone vibrates. And there it is, the first Excel sheet with information, private information, date of birth, place of birth, social security number, wages, all that stuff of 70 ,000 people. Then a couple of minutes later, he sends another with 100 ,000 people.

2:18Sönke Iwersen:I go up to my boss and tell him, look at this. This is what the source claims it is. And my boss tells me, this can't be true. That's impossible. But to keep digging and we go from there. It was the core of Tesla that was called into question. So to get behind the walls that were completely sealed off to the outside world was just staggering. we knew if this is true if we could prove this it would be massive

2:54it was true and today sunka everson will tell you how he proved it from the guardian i'm helen pidd today in focus how to take on elon musk and survive to tell the tale just about

3:14So, Nke, thanks for coming into the studio today to tell this really quite extraordinary story, which begins in November 2022 when you first make contact with this mysterious whistleblower. What did they tell you initially about their connection to Tesla?

3:28Sönke Iwersen:Only that he had been employed there until recently and that he had been let go. I didn't know his name and he doesn't want me to know his name at the point. Right, so he's not long left Tesla, but he's somehow downloaded a huge cache of files on his way out of the door. It is incredible that they let him walk out with that. That's a funny part of the story, because Tesla actually forgets to pick up the laptop. They wanted him out, and he was fighting that, and because of that, he started to collect information. He said, anybody at Tesla can access this. Slowly, the source reveals more about his time at Tesla, How he was once viewed as a hero by Elon Musk after throwing himself onto a burning Tesla and putting out the flames.

4:15I saved his business, the source writes, and he, in return, destroyed my life. Sunker is confused. What fire? And how did he save the company? He's intrigued enough to continue the conversation. It does seem extraordinary, and clearly you thought it may be too good to be true. and you went to see your editor-in-chief. What did your editor-in-chief say to you?

4:40Sönke Iwersen:Well, it's too good to be true. Exactly your words. This is too good to be true. If it is true, this will change our paper. This would be so huge. We have to take a different approach here. We are not going to try to verify this. We are going to try to prove that it's false. And then we started. LinkedIn was a great source. In the Tesla files, we can see this person works here and is in this kind of department at that time. Does that show in its own LinkedIn profile? So we start doing that and we start comparing data inside the Tesla files. And then I talk to our lawyers at Handelsberg and they say, well, this is nice, but it's not enough.

5:20Sönke Iwersen:Not by a long shot. Even if it is true, how do we know that it's actually accessible? How do we know that this is a huge hack? So you've done as much kind of cross-checking as you can, as you say, with LinkedIn and other sources to try to verify if the people in the database are real and work for Tesla. What else did your source do to try to persuade you that not only was the data real, but that it was accessible in real time to anybody in Tesla? He still didn't want me to know who he was, but he understands that he has to show us something. So he offers to tape himself, plugging into the system and opening whatever he finds.

5:59On his laptop that Tesla never asked for when he left.

6:02Sönke Iwersen:Exactly. And that's exactly what he does. He goes into a public library actually with his friend and they open the laptop and then you see them talking and let's look for this, let's look for that. But we look at this video and we say, wow, now it's becoming real. So I go down to the first floor and at Handelsblatt, I talk to the chief legal counsel. And he says, well, that's really nice, but this can be a deepfake as well. I'm saying, okay, oh, all right. So I tell the source, thank you very much. And then I keep asking questions. And now and again, I ask him, can I come over? And he always declines until a couple of days before Christmas.

6:42Sönke Iwersen:I asked him again and said, you know, we've known each other for five, six weeks now. I feel this trust has really been built. Don't you think I could visit you? Right, you want to look this guy in his eyes. Yeah. And out of the blue, he says, yeah. Yeah, actually, I don't mind. And a couple of days later, I'm in Norway. So how have you arranged to meet this mysterious person? I'm saying, okay, I'm in Dusseldorf. I'm boarding now. and then when I'm in Oslo I'm saying I'm here I'm taking the train now to Drammen and I learned his name when we shook hands and he said I'm Lukas

7:29Sönke Iwersen:At that moment I realized I had not spent one second imagining how he would look like he was a bit younger than me and about the same height and you know didn't look at all remarkable And he tells me over dinner that he's from Poland, who is 37 years old. He had just left Tesla a couple of months earlier after having started there in 2018. He's a son of a farmer, always very good with his hands and mechanic. He tells me that he would pull apart all kinds of vehicles, bikes, motorbikes, cars, lawnmowers, and put them back together. He actually had done research on electric vehicles. And there was a picture he showed me from a 2012 or so, him standing next to a Tesla Roadster.

8:16So he was a Tesla fanboy, was he?

8:18Sönke Iwersen:Completely. He called himself a disciple of Elon Musk. He said, yeah, I thought he was a genius. And so you meet him, you shake hands, go out for dinner. What happens next? Well, that's when I finally, for the first time, understand what this fire story was about. He tells me he starts the Tesla end of 2018. And it's just a couple of months in March 2019. There's a car show. Tesla is introducing the new model in Lillestorm in Norway. He turns around and there's flames coming out of one of the new cars. I mean, a burning car is always bad. But a burning electric car is the worst thing you can think of.

8:59And then he becomes a hero. He jumps over, sees what's burning.

9:05Sönke Iwersen:it's the booster so with his bare hands he grabs the booster throws it on the floor he burns his hand his colleagues then kick out the fire and he has to go to the hospital then the boss of Tesla Norway sends an email to Elon Musk saying Elon we had a problem here just so you know yeah I don't want you to hear from somebody else first but we had a problem but we also had a hero and that hero is Lukasz Kupski. And maybe he would like some warm words. And Elon does. Elon Musk does mail Lukasz, thanking him for saving the day. And Lukasz mails back, oh, well, that's what I had to do. And then Elon Musk writes back and says, oh, that's interesting.

9:49Sönke Iwersen:And let me know if there's anything else we can improve. And that's the high point. He's in heaven. Yeah, he's got an email from his hero. Exactly. And his hero is asking him for advice. Yeah, what a feeling. Yeah. And he's a lowly technician, right? When customers come into a showroom in Norway, what does he do? Just fix the lights, make sure all the screws are tight. Right. General important stuff. But he himself says he was on the lowest rank possible at Tesla. So Lukas comes up with a list of improvements and he emails Musk. His boss gets wind of it and he isn't happy. He tells Lucas, stop bothering Musk.

10:30And if you really have to tell him something, run it by me first.

10:34Sönke Iwersen:But Lucas is not that kind of guy. He writes back to Elon Musk and says, Elon, things are getting a bit tricky for me here. My boss wants to read my emails. Elon writes back, I'm sorry, but I can't read every email. I can only concentrate on important stuff. and then that really knocks Lukas back because he thinks what could be more important than the safety of our customers and two weeks later he sits at his laptop and notices it's becoming really slow saying why is it so slow why can't I write a normal letter without being interrupted without having to wait so he does what everyone would do he opens the task manager and he comes across a program that's called Code 42, and he doesn't know what that is.

11:23Sönke Iwersen:So he Googles it and he finds out it's a program that is offered to companies against employees who the company feels are a threat. So they're spying on him? Yes. So two weeks from you're a hero, Elon Musk is telling you thank you for saving day to somebody up there is thinking you're a threat to the company. You have to be monitored. So that was in 2019. Things are never really the same afterwards, and he becomes something of a thorn in the company's side. Finally, just before Christmas in 2021, he leaves Tesla. Is he sacked or does he leave voluntarily? No, he's sacked. So the next morning I text him and say, you know, my plane isn't leaving till one or so.

12:11Sönke Iwersen:You want to grab breakfast? And he says, yes. Okay, and then 20 minutes later, he's in front of the hotel. we go to a cafe we talk and talk and talk and after a while he says do you mind if we change cafes and I ask him okay what's wrong with this one and he says people can see us here we switch cafes and we end up in a children's cafe where the children can play and there's lots of toys and the adults can sip their lattes or whatever they have and so this really strange scene starts to unfold. We sit down, he opens his laptop and says, so tell me, how much data do you want? And literally watch the files going from right side to left side, from his drive to my drive.

13:02Sönke Iwersen:And when I look to my left, I see the Norwegian children, they're playing with the Paw Patrol and the people were sipping their coffees. And I'm looking right again, it's five gigabytes, six gigabytes. I'm saying, wow, It's really, really happening. Sunkano has two things to protect. Number one, his data. Number two, his source. For the data, he puts it all on a brand new laptop, never to be connected to the internet, and stores it each night in a safe that only five people at the company have the code to open. And as for Lukasz, at the paper, they make sure to never write down his name anywhere.

13:37Sönke Iwersen:But over time, we understand that because Lukasz has told us he's the only one that accesses all this data. If we use it, it won't be hard for Tesla to find out. Right, because he's left a footprint, basically. Everything he's opened, there'll be a footprint. I mean, he was monitored. I tell him, okay, if I know you want to be anonymous, I understand that. But I have to tell you, we cannot do the story and tell you, you won't be found out. and he tells me actually yeah I've thought about this and it's okay let's do it anyway okay brave guy you've got this huge cache of data that you're holding on this laptop that's never been connected to the internet to try to protect it when you open these files what are the first key big things that strike you?

14:29Sönke Iwersen:Well, first the mass. It's 23 ,000 documents and there's no order. We realized that this is going to be weeks and weeks. And Lucas was always pressing us. He kept pushing for speed and we kept pushing for veracity. So we realized we are really going to have to open each and every one of those 23 ,000 documents. Over time, we saw, okay, the very core is the autopilot complaints. So this is self-driving cars. self-driving cars, Elon Musk says the question whether Tesla is worth a lot of money in this world, meaning a trillion or zero, that's his worth, is the autopilot. Is Tesla able to promise to deliver on the promise of autonomous driving, that the car is driving you and you're not driving along?

15:17Sönke Iwersen:So we find customer complaints. Once we decoded what the abbreviations mean and the numbers mean we can see there's thousands of complaints of customers saying my car accelerated by itself my car terrifying brakes on itself when it was on autopilot yeah i drove my child to school and in the schoolyard it accelerated out of nowhere my car drove me into a wall i was in a tunnel and my car stopped and other cars crashed into me from behind musk had been claiming as early as 2016, that Tesla cars could drive themselves and that they didn't even need a driver in front of the wheel. And yet here, problems were coming up with the autopilot again and again.

16:02You started ringing employees too. How did you go about that?

16:05Sönke Iwersen:We tried in two ways. First, we tried calling them and say, we know you work at Tesla. Can we talk about your employer? And everybody, out of 200 people, they all said no, thank Thank you. So I said, in the next wave, let's try to get the people by their own curiosity. So you call up somebody and tell them, so I'd like to talk to you about Tesla. I know you're working there since May 2018. And last year you made$50 ,000.19 or so. And then there's silence on the other side of the telephone. And they say, what did you just say? How do you know that? And that's enough. just to get a talk started.

16:45Sönke Iwersen:And then you say, yeah, it's in the files we have. And same with the customers. If you say, I'm from Handelsberg, I'm from the German business newspaper. And we saw that last May you contacted customer service because your car stopped in a tunnel. And we saw that Tesla told you, you must have touched the brake yourself. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Again, silence. Then how do you know that? What, do you have my data? Uh-huh. And then you tell them, yeah, your complaint was one of 2 ,567 complaints we have. Oh, really? That's interesting. Because Tesla told him it's his fault.

17:25Yeah.

17:26Sönke Iwersen:And now a journalist tells him, no, there are 2 ,000 other people who had problems like you. And then talk start and then things open. It snowballs. So I think by the time you published, you'd been investigating this for six months. Not only did you have the data, but you'd also been talking to employees and disgruntled customers. So you had a huge range of sources. You publish your first story, but presumably before you press publish, you must have had to go to Tesla and say, what do you think? This is what we're planning on publishing. How did that go? Exactly. As a journalist, you always have to, we call that konfrontation in German.

18:04We call it fronting up in English. Fronting up, okay.

18:08Sönke Iwersen:So you ask all the questions you have to ask and you give opportunity to the other side to comment on this. So we send about 65 questions to Tesla. Okay, fair few. Quite a few. And tell them, please, if you could respond to this and this and this within a week. And at the end of the week, the very end of the week, in the middle of the night, I get an email. And attached is a letter from the legal department of Tesla saying, a disgruntled former employee give you this illegally we are going to go to the authorities to prosecute him and you must not use this data as you know this data is protected under this and this and this and only under extremely special yeah exceptional circumstances yeah this could be and so i'm saying this is really good isn't it and i'm i'm forwarding this in the morning to our lawyer and when I meet him in the morning, he's grinning, saying, yes, that's confirmation.

19:11Sönke Iwersen:Right, that it's not fake. It's not fake. They said, you have to delete it. I mean, they told us you must immediately delete it and then state that you have deleted it and all that. And he says, not in one sentence, they mentioned that this could be fake or isn't real. It's confirmation. And we do have special circumstances because public safety is the theme.

19:36Can you remember the headline on your first front page story about Tesla?

19:40Sönke Iwersen:How my autopilot tried to kill me. And once it's online, overnight, media from all around the world, I picked it up. So it was everywhere within a couple of hours. And what about Lukasz? How is he feeling? Big moment for him as well. Yeah, very, very relieved. It's finally out. So he congratulates us and I congratulate him. and then six days later, early, early morning, he gets a knock on his door and Norwegian police is in front of his home. And his home gets raided and they take all his electronics, his phone and his laptop and everything, all USB sticks, hard disks, everything. Poor guy, that must have been so scary.