Can't copy/paste but that lawsuit says that he admitted to writing software that stole information and for trying to hire others to do the same when confronted about it with evidence.
As a layman, that seems pretty damming to me, but who knows, it may not mean anything. I wonder if he had an opportunity to speak with a lawyer before admitting that he did that.
Being that this is a civil suit, he has no right to counsel so anything he said can be used against him. Admitting anything was a dumb if he was planning on defending against a lawsuit.
he has no right to counsel so anything he said can be used against him
That's actually more a matter of the rules of evidence. Generally extrajudicial statements are considered inadmissible hearsay for trial purposes unless one of a number of exceptions applies. In this case, the statement against (self) interest exception would likely apply. (Other exceptions to hearsay might also apply.)
AKA the statement against self-interest exception...
I wasn't trying to give a lecture on the meaning of hearsay. But if you want to get didactic, the statement must be made by an opposing party and offered against them (i.e., is against their interests). A statement that is offered in support of an opposing party is, oddly enough, still hearsay. I have actually dealt with that issue in district court. This can happen in multi-party litigation, where you have cross-claims. For example, X, Y, and Z are parties to a lawsuit and have claims/counter-claims, cross-claims against each other. A statement by Y entered by X against Y would be admissible, but a statement by Y entered by Z could not be used in support of Y.
Right, no law can prohibit use of legal counsel (pro-bono or paid by the client) in any context.
... well, any context involving American citizens under American court jurisdiction. (Cases involving incidents in the armed forces comes to mind as an exception -- that's under a separate armed forces court jurisdiction, where the rules are different. No asking to speak to legal counsel when your Sergeant yells "go!" :-) )
You generally don't have a right to a court-appointed counsel in a criminal case, either. That only applies if you cannot afford one.
Although the parent was referring to the fact that you have a right to have an attorney present for any police questioning. But again, that does not apply here, since the police presumably weren't the ones doing the questioning.
No it is not. There are other probably more important allegations in the lawsuit as well - such as periodically exporting gbs of data outside Tesla to unnamed third parties.
> Beyond the misconduct to which Tripp admitted, he also wrote computer code to periodically export Tesla’s data off its network and into the hands of third parties. His hacking software was operating on three separate computer systems of other individuals at Tesla so that the data would be exported even after he left the company and so that those individuals would be falsely implicated as guilty parties.
Definitely possible if you start low and have potential. I've gotten promoted or raises every 6-9 mo for the last 4 years (since starting my first job). "Your young with little experience..." >>> "Oh wow you're actually good at things! Have a promotion."
And this is why I habitually fuck with peoples computers when they leave them unlocked. As annoying as it is to find your keyboard is dvorak and your mouse pointer is invisible - it's better than finding out that your credentials are being misused for properly nefarious things...
Maybe another perspective is that Tripp is a whistleblower. See:
"But Tripp told CNN he was fired within the last week and sued by Tesla because he was trying to warn investors and the public about problems at the electric carmaker. He said that he discovered that 1,100 damaged battery modules were installed in Model 3 cars that are on the road today. He said that he was also concerned about excessive scrap that is being stored in a dangerous manner on Tesla's property in Nevada that will be expensive to safely dispose of in the future. And he claims that Tesla inflated the number of Model 3's it made when it said it had built 2,020 of the cars in the seven days prior to a much anticipated April 3 report. Tripp said the actual number is closer to 1,900."
So has law enforcement been contacted or not? If what Tesla claims he did (data theft, sabotage) were true, that's definitely violating federal law. If they choose not to ask for e.g. FBI assistance, I'd be curious to know their reasoning.
Having worked at a hedge fund that suffered a data theft, I'd expect the criminal charges, if any, to come several months from now. It takes time for the police to build their case, collect evidence, interview possible witnesses or suspects, etc. All that happens before formal charges are filed. A lawsuit can be filed immediately.
Agreed, I was a minor party to a case like this and it took way longer than I expected for the wheels of justice to turn. It made me nervous for the accused just because the process almost seemed designed to let his life destroy itself even more in the months leading up to any charges being filed.
Tesla has no incentive to get law enforcement involved if they believe the crime is "over". Police poking around Tesla's internal computer systems for months and interviewing everyone is going to be terrible for productivity.
It could very well be that Tesla'd IT is working to ensure everything is secure amd backed up before they bring in the heavy hand of the law. I wouldnt trust law enforcement to come in, not just seize hard drives for forensic analysis without having a copy to 1) continue work and 2) inadvertently alter evidence. DOJ method is remove drives, that could you affect production or development depending on the drives removed. Either one could be a huge cost suck.
The lawsuit mentions a wide array of statutes the individual allegedly violated, including numerous felonies. It'd certainly be peculiar if criminal charges were not also pursued.
One would assume law enforcement would prefer for a civil suit to be filed on or after the formal criminal charges, as not to impeded the criminal investigation.
Probably true, but it could well be in the best interest of Musk and Tesla to file publicly now as far as public perception of the business is concerned.
This is a desperation move by Musk. Nothing in the complaint alleges interference with Tesla production. Just that the ex-employee leaked some data on Tesla's internal screwups. Yet Musk claimed this was an excuse for Tesla missing their 5000 units/week goal yet again. (Actual production is about 1500 units/week right now.[1])
Also, this is someone at the battery factory in Nevada, not the auto plant in Fremont. So this is totally unrelated to the auto plant problems.
Tesla will have a hard time showing actual losses from this.
For some clarification, since I got mixed up on this too, there were two separate emails this week — one about this employee, then the next morning one about this fire that "stop[ped] the body production line for several hours" (and vaguely insinuated sabotage).
Martin Tripp email, Sunday 11:57pm: "I was dismayed to learn this weekend about a Tesla employee who had conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to our operations..." (scroll down for text) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-con...
Someone conducts sabotage that is "extensive and damaging"... and you, someone who is known for being blunt and direct (questions from shareholders are "boring, yawn", etc.)...
While Tesla's claims are probably largely accurate, I agree this seems like a distraction / side narrative for when they don't hit their stated goals and need to raise more money ASAP.
Worked at a startup that used the "we had saboteurs in our midst, but they were discovered and now things will improve" story on the eve of needed new financing round. The story was somewhat accurate but had very little to do with the overall arc of growth or progress.
Tesla will need something to say about why they didn't make their targets, and this is going to be one of the things said.
And to put this in perspective, the graph shows a regular cycle of: peak, shutdown to improve the line, higher peak, shutdown to improve the line, etc. And there's a peak timed for the end of every quarter.
Animats always has the most possible negative thing to say about Tesla, and this comment is typical for him.
That may reflect the problems being upstream of final assembly. Maybe they need more than a week to accumulate enough parts to run final assembly for a week.
This occurred to me as well. It's still 'getting there', but without knowing whether the line is shutdown exclusively for improvements, or if there's some fudging involved in there as well, it's hard to say how far they are from being 'there'.
Because he made an easily-falsifiable statement. Either you believe in a massive conspiracy involving Tesla's bankers, Tesla's auditors, Tesla's employees, and members of the public pretending to be Tesla's customers, or you believe that Tesla actually produced X cars last week.
If you're going the conspiracy route, you're also assuming that Musk is willing to risk jail time for... what exactly? To satisfy his ego? It's not like he's going to run out of money if Telsa goes bankrupt.
> Elon has "said" many things for many years which have not come to fruition.
They eventually do get realized, and that in a way that many people feel will benefit society as a whole.
For example: Zuck/FB don't care a flying fuck about their userbase and only about advertisers (e.g. chronological feed, the entire handling of the "fake news"/propaganda episode, Cambridge Analytica, handing the American democracy over to Trump) and Zuck is doing nasty stuff like buying his neighbors' houses only to tear them down.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, isn't in the game for personal richness (or at least, he doesn't shove it in the face of everyone standing less than a shovel length away). He could have lived in the Bahamas and sipping Pina Colada for the rest of his life already after Paypal, but no, dude puts literally all his fortunes into SpaceX and Tesla, and makes them succeed (SpaceX at, well, providing humanity with re-usable, affordable rocketry after the corrupt, expensive, Russian-dependent clusterfuck of ULA and Tesla at proving electric-only vehicles can exist and are viable), and then still has not enough and pours more money into The Boring Company, oh and meanwhile also releasing everything regarding Hyperloop as Public Domain. And not to forget he could still exit from all the companies and spend the rest of his life sipping Pina Coladas, but not doing so.
Yes, there are valid points to flame Elon Musk on (especially the allegations of working standards violations, with massive overtime requirements etc.), but in the end Elon Musk wants to advance humanity, and Zuckerberg wants to advance his cash. Not difficult to say who deserves more support.
It states there was a fire and that Musk references possible Sabotage. Then Musk says there is a real saboteur.
> Musk said this person had conducted "quite extensive and damaging sabotage" to the company's operations, including by changing code to an internal product and exporting data to outsiders.
Most people (myself included) assumed the sabotage he hinted at was done by the saboteur they caught who was intentionally trying to slow down Model 3 production to benefit "short sellers and oil and gas companies". Instead, Tripp just offloaded some data from a completely unrelated factory.
It feels like Musk was intentionally trying to conflate the two, since another fire is obviously bad news and making people believe it was the result of sabotage (with a real saboteur already caught) rather than just poorly run operations is in his best interest.
Unless I am misreading badly, Musk does not say anywhere in this e-mail that "this was an excuse for Tesla missing their 5000 units/week goal".
Musk states that Tesla is investigating whether this person was receiving any outside impetus, and warning employees to be extra vigilant for signs of sabotage during the next few weeks, but that wasn't what OP claimed.
Any deliberate attempt by Musk at conflating these different events is up to interpretation, but note that this is an internal e-mail and not a press release. It's easiest to just interpret this message at face value.
It certainly could be interpreted that way, but if one did, one would already have made some assumptions oneself. I just don't see how this matches up with Musk's brutally direct tone on other occasions. Misleading your own employees like this seems like it would be counterproductive.
Not to mention, it would be obvious to any insider that this wasn't the reason for the struggles with ramping production - they have been behind the (admittedly heavily accelerated, since the 2015 plan) schedule for months.
That crosses into personal attack, which is a bannable offense on HN, so please don't do this again.
Edit: since we've warned you before and you've done it repeatedly since then, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
The citation was provided...Bloomberg has been estimated Tesla production based on VIN numbers, etc.
It's a rough estimate that isn't really accurate on a daily or weekly scale but tends to be accurate at the monthly level.
At any rate, Tesla is purportedly redirecting finished cars to non-US buyers or is holding back finished cars to avoid triggering the phase-out of EV-related tax rebates once they hit the 200k car milestone.
I don't really believe that he was using it as an excuse to miss production targets because a) it was an internal memo and not a public press release and b) if he was full of crap and trying to use that as an excuse, his employees would know and see through it.
Kind of off topic - but how much hands-on would someone like Musk have in this situation? Wouldn't the Tesla legal team be making the calls on this one, or is Musk the final shot caller on legal issues like this?
It really depends on the management style of the CEO. I've worked with CEOs who took great pains to make sure information and orders traveled down the chain of command. I've worked with others who have no problem getting a low-level person to do something.
It's a huge concern that Musk (via his earlier tweets) blamed an employee in the Gigafactory in Sparks, NV for issues with Tesla production at the Fremont, CA factory 240 miles away.
Not apologising for anyone. And I really could be wrong here.
But to me it sounds like these guys are making battery powered cars and the sabetour worked in a battery plant..
Doesn’t that mean that if the battery line was sabotaged then they’d be unable to ship cars that need those batteries?
Or was it alleged that there were direct and tangible sabotages committed against the cars directly?
Edit: did I say something wrong? Forgive my ignorance on the topic and please explain to me why? A pipeline is a pipeline and if a component is missing you can’t call the product finished.
Edit2: By the downvotes and lack of reply I'm going to assume that people don't like that this question is raised. Why?
Nah, you're exactly right. There's further evidence of this in Tesla's early disclosure that Model 3 production was tied to getting the Gigafactory online.
HN has a lot of great discussions and smart people, but it also has a handful of armchair engineers who are eager to tear down highly successful ones like Musk. Your comment offers a rational explanation for his concern and behavior, so naturally folks pushing ulterior narratives won't like it.
Don't let downvotes get under your skin. It's way harder, more interesting, and more dignified to think and respond critically and put your name on a comment like you did, than to click a little triangle anonymously every time someone challenges your assumptions. When an earnest question like yours turns grey, it says much more about the HN community than it says about you.
> Edit2: By the downvotes and lack of reply I'm going to assume that people don't like that this question is raised. Why?
Because some people may be looking for validation on their preconceptions (in this case, "Musk is making excuses") instead of engaging in critical debate.
Um, you realize that the battery modules for the Model 3 are produced in the Gigafactory. So problems there would definitely impact vehicle production.
Also, time that Elon and other employees spend on this guy take time away from more important things.
IP theft is a big deal regardless of whether Tesla sufferred from it or not. In the long term, Tesla will most likely suffer if other companies/countries know the trade secrets.
>This is a desperation move by Musk. Nothing in the complaint alleges interference with Tesla production.
It seems pretty obvious to me: this ex-employee stole (which is scummy) data from Tesla and leaked it to journalists (Business Insider). BI asked Tesla to comment on the data, they refused, then released an "email" that described the sabotage and data breach.
Is he a whistle-blower or a saboteur? That's the question.
> Also, this is someone at the battery factory in Nevada, not the auto plant in Fremont. So this is totally unrelated to the auto plant problems.
Right, completely unrelated, because Tesla cars do not require batteries. Or software, which was also tampered with.
Tesla has filed a lawsuit, they are not coming up with excuses. At no point in the internal memo do they say this is the reason why they are missing their targets.
> Tesla will have a hard time showing actual losses from this.
To a judge, or to shareholders? Because this employee is done for. People got criminally charged and slapped with multi-decade jail time for way less.
If we take the complaint at face value, it seems like a straightforward description. Tripp is alleged to have installed software on other employees’ computers to extract the information.
Also, giving information to the media isn’t necessarily an honest act of whistleblowing. Depends on what you’re exposing and if it’s accurate in the first place.
If he genuinely believes what he is saying is true (i.e. potentially dangerous batteries in Model 3's) then I'd say that is absolutely an honest act of whistleblowing.
But that's the rub, does he believe that or not, or was it as Tesla contends a lie to hurt an employer that passed him over for promotion? The court case is definitely one to watch, particularly if he can provide evidence of his claims.
As I understand it, genuine protected whistleblowing would require a report to the appropriate regulatory body. Disclosing a substantial amount of proprietary non-safety-related information would also tend to undermine the case for protection.
>> If he genuinely believes what he is saying is true (i.e. potentially dangerous batteries in Model 3's) then I'd say that is absolutely an honest of whistleblowing.
Whistleblowing is not simply just telling random people, or media contacts, inner workings of companies that are protected and trade secrets. That's not how that works. There are specific ways to do it to protect yourself legally, or you can leak to Wikileaks or media outlets using TOR and other methods to keep yourself safe, but the latter method is illegal while the former method is legal, if not nearly as effective.
True, it's straightforward, but knowing Musk's penchant for playing the media, it does come off as an attempt to liken this event to the Uber/Waymo affair. Which is not a fitting comparison.
Munro & Associates did a complete Tesla 3 teardown and disassembly in order to sell what they've learned to Tesla competitors for hundreds of thousands of dollars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo&t=4828s)
> Daimler (parent of Mercedes) reportedly rented Model X and disassembled it to learn how it works.
> Apparently there are plenty of companies interested in how Tesla's cars are made.
Disassembing a rental car is ..uh.. rude, but other than that this is completely ordinary, and not even done in secret.
When I worked at BMW, we once went down to a big room where an entire VW (Golf?) was disassembled and on display, all its components laid out on long rows of tables.
I can't remember any access restrictions on that room -- it was just a place you went to look at how other engineers had solved particular problems, learn new tricks, or get inspired.
It's essentially the code reading of the mechanical engineering world.
Disassembling competitor cars is a standard practice and every car maker does it to all their most important competitors. Tesla is not special in this regard.
I think, if I'm following the media reporting correctly, that they're disputing something which he didn't technically say. The BI article says that "In February, a misprogrammed robot that handles battery modules repeatedly punctured through the plastic housing (called a clamshell) and into some battery cells, the employee said, adding that instead of scrapping all the modules, some were fixed with adhesive and put back on the manufacturing line". That is, the modules were fixed and reused rather than being scrapped.
Tesla claims this is a lie because no punctured cells were ever used in vehicles. This would be true even if - as the article claims - modules were punctured, the battery cells were damaged, and those modules were fixed and put into cars rather than being scrapped, just so long as any obviously punctured cells were replaced in the process. The article is rather vague on that crucial detail. In fact, Tesla's claim would be true even if damaged cells were shipping in actual Model 3s and they knew they were, so long as those cells weren't punctured.
It also conveniently plays on the public's perception that a punctured battery cell is a terrible thing.
In reality, a lithium ion cell with a small hole will slowly have the electrolyte evaporate, the internal resistance will increase, and the cell will stop being useful. If that's one cell out of 10,000 on a car, it's no big deal.
Exactly. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many companies that employ systems sophisticated enough to catch internal sabotage without immense amounts of false positives.
"What the hell do you think you're doing??" "I just wanted to play DOTA"
Correct. I accidentally triggered an internal "hacking-prevention" system at the investment bank where I work by simply installing Anaconda. Having a cyber security agent coming to my desk and demanding I log off my machine immediately was really scary, especially considering it was my first week there.
>It would be interesting to know if this employee was also shorting Tesla stock at the same time he was leaking these allegations.
I'm skeptical that some individual blue-collar worker would risk his financial well-being and possibly freedom to make a few thousand dollars from possibly causing financial harm to Tesla and causing the stock to drop some. Seems like a stretch to me. If the suit is as alleged (passing false information to journalists) he's an attention seeking low-life.
What is with the obsession with "shorts"? I've never seen so much over-reaction to short selling in my life.
I'm wondering what percentage of Tesla fanboys knew what short-selling was before Musk started ranting about it and now are seemingly knowledgeable on the topic.
Not disagreeing, but I'd also be interested in the percentage of Tesla fanboys who did not know what short selling was before Musk's ranting. I wonder if there's some meaningful inflection point in this metric that has significance to how hype is perceived and rationalized (or not)?
>Tesla is the stock with the highest amount of short interest at the moment.
Why? Because it's an off the charts volatile basket case.
You can't talk about shorts without talking about hedging, both stocks and (convertible) bonds. This is a complicated financial play. Unfortunately, as happens, retail chumps will get roasted either way.
That's because unlike a zero-revenue startup, whose potential revenue once they start monetization may be trillions of dollars, the potential revenue trajectory of Tesla is somewhat bounded.
Yet, their stock is valued like one of those startups.
Also, once the electric car market becomes big enough for the major manufacturers to care about, Tesla will be competing with Toyota, GM, etc. for market share. When people can buy electric vehicles from Toyota or Honda, which have an established reputation for reliability and have dealerships (with repair facilities) everywhere, making sales might get much harder for Tesla. Being able to succeed in a market driven by enthusiastic early adopters does not guarantee being able to succeed in an mature market.
Not only that, but traditional car companies are already producing vehicles that a lot of people want (as far as style of vehicle, etc). Many of them have their own fan base. For example, imagine if Ford delivers a plugin-hybrid Mustang (they're already planning a hybrid Mustang with high performance for 2020, but if they do a plugin hybrid with 60 - 100 miles EV range I'm there in an instant).
Funny part is that, as far as I can tell, that would be a mission accomplished for Musk one way or the other. I mean I’m sure he’d prefer Tesla to be the long term leader there, but if it just turned out that everyone else made affordable electric cars then that would work, too.
Well, they still benefit from a world where conscious action is taken in favour of the environment we live in if the averse is maximizing personal capital gain potential.
Not only is that not relevant to the original statement, it's almost certainly not true. And getting a base car at base car price is likely almost impossible.
The Audi and Lambo aren't in as high of demand as say, a Ferrari 488 (or whatever the latest mid-engined model is, I've lost track), but you can't actually buy a 488 if you don't already have a history of Ferrari ownership. So, while I doubt Audi and Lambo have the same restrictions on who they 'allow' to buy their car, good luck buying one off the lot or in any reasonable timeframe.
Are you seroius? Someone says the market cap of Tesla is "somewhat" bounded, and you ask how? Is it totally unbounded? Is what they are doing unprecedented beyond comparison?
Do you think the market cap of Tesla is infinity? It's already multiples of companies that produce a magnitude more cars and infinite more profit. Not good enough for you? What is it that you think Tesla does so well that justifies an unlimited market cap?
This is insane. Wish HackerNews existed during the DotCom bubble. It was bad enough being accused of sexism during the Theranos bubble.
They produce the most batteries in the world and have the most extensive global charging network and the most advanced solar panel tech. They're the number one horse in the race to dominate the post-oil world.
Their solar business is a rock around their necks, that is hemorrhaging money, and laying off employees.
Their charger network's nice, but in a post oil world, every gas station will have chargers. And for some reason, Ford doesn't feel the need to own Exxon-Mobil - probably because energy is an interchangeable commodity... And they are not in the commodity business. They are in the business of building cars.
The cells and the packs are different things. The packs aren't just a bunch of cells glued together. See this[1] fun teardown discussion. Another company building battery packs would have different costs even if they were buying the same exact cells from Panasonic, and it's likely Tesla had a hand in designing the cells so I don't know if that's particularly possible.
The reason for the Gigafactory is to compress supply chains, but more importantly because there isn't enough global demand/supply for batteries to support the volumes Tesla wants. Without building their own factory, the global supply would be a constraining factor for Tesla's plans. The Gigafactory is a long-term bet that they will need that much supply in the future. This is not a problem that other carmakers have where they would want to "vertically integrate" oil refineries and gas stations, because availability of gasoline is not a problem.
> The reason for the Gigafactory is to compress supply chains, but more importantly because there isn't enough global demand/supply for batteries to support the volumes Tesla wants.
It is mitigation for a early-adopter business risk that their competitors don't have.
In any sane pricing of their stock, that risk would have lowered its value, and mitigating it would have brought it up to that of an auto manufacturer with similar volumes and margins and growth potential.
For some reason, though, people think that mitigating a risk that their competitors don't have warrants a premium.
Gigafactories (second one coming soon) are a joint effort with Panasonic and Tesla enjoys the economies of scale from them. They just recently started delivering their solar tiles. Solar -> batteries -> chargers -> cars. This level of integration makes them potentially 10 times more valuable than other car companies.
Why? Do Teslas only get charged by Elontrons, produced by a vertically integrated SolarCity panel, stored in a PowerWall, as opposed to regular electrons? What next - is Elon Musk going to start buying iron and nickel mines, so that Tesla can mine iron, to smelt it into steel, to build robots that build Teslas? Maybe a chip fab, while it's at it? And a ranch, for the leather seats?
Why hasn't GM bought an oil company, and a couple thousand gas stations? Apparently, this vertical integration would have made them 10 times more valuable.
Maybe it's because I can get the exact same gas from the Shell across the street.
Also, half of this vertical integration only 'works' (If you squint a lot) due to subsidies/loopholes in how people are billed/credited for home solar installations. When those installations become widespread, these subsidies will go away, and we'll be back to buying power wholesale, from utilities. There is no universe in which putting solar panels on your roof will be cheaper, or more efficient, then buying power from a solar utility.
GM currently makes more cars in a week, then TSLA does in a year. And it does so on positive margins.
It's certainly possible for TSLA to get to that point, but it is anything but a sure thing. Why anyone would be surprised that it is one of the most shorted stocks in the world is beyond me. If they fail to grow to GM's size, the shorts will be justified.
To put it in tech terms, it's valuing Mozilla > Apple, because Mozilla sold a million Firefox OS phones. Except that in this imaginary world, Mozilla doesn't even ship a web browser, and keeps having to ask its landlord for an extension on the rent payment due date. Obviously, Firefox OS will sweep the world by storm! Who doesn't like freedom? Surely, the users will switch en masse, and leave the old dinosaurs like Apple and Google broke.
Tesla isn't trying to become like GM, any more than Apple was trying to become like Nokia.
There's so many factors in play with the stock. Personally though, I think a lot the short sentiment is conservative ideological blindness of the anti-Obama, anti-environmentalism variety. Tesla has always been highly shorted, even when its market cap was smaller.
Tesla is also one of the best-positioned players to get into the market for grid energy storage, and unlike cars, there are no large incumbents who could show up and crush them. That's got to be worth something -- and while Panasonic did supply most of the technology, that is only relevant if we're discussing Elon's contribution to society, not Tesla's revenue prospects. Panasonic wouldn't have partnered with Tesla on the Gigafactory if they thought it was a stupid idea.
What the hell businesses do you know of that have the potential to make trillions of dollars? Because I'm willing to quit my job and work for them if they exist.
In 1999, any 'we will change the world because everything internet' startup.
In 2008, any 'we will change the world because everything social' startup.
in 2016, any 'we will change the world because everything crypto' startup.
All you need is a slide deck about how the <Whatever> market has been growing X% YoY and is worth $XYZ billion dollars, and how your <Website/App/Coin> will change everything. Hell, these days, you don't even need a slide deck, just a whitepaper.
As long as you don't actually have any revenue, you can keep people hopeful. Maybe you will grow into Amazon. Most of the time, you will grow into pets.com.
>What is with the obsession with "shorts"? I've never seen so much over-reaction to short selling in my life.
I have a question for you.
But first there is so much attention lately on Tesla shorters because they bet 10 billion on Tesla stock going down, and instead it went up, and they are about to all get wiped out.
And because inspite of the fact that Tesla is overcoming its production problems, and SpaceX is going great, the media has been flooded with stories lately about how Musk is a fraud, he is losing his mind, and Tesla is about to go bankrupt, and so many people reasonably believe the shorters are trying to save themselves from disaster by attacking Musk.
Now here is the question. Do you believe the Tesla shorters were smart when they made a prediction Tesla stock was going to go down?
> I'm skeptical that some individual blue-collar worker would risk his financial well-being and possibly freedom to make a few thousand dollars from possibly causing financial harm to Tesla
Few thousand? With insider information, you can use the power of leverage to turn a few thousand into millions within seconds.
A leveraged account + options fun and you could go from thousandaire to a millionaire with a few key strokes.
> What is with the obsession with "shorts"? I've never seen so much over-reaction to short selling in my life.
It is possible though that he was wired a certain amount of money from a off shore account tied to a fund, practically untraceable, or paid in crypto.
Part of that payment though probably includes something like, if caught, you have to give a made up reason for doing it, or otherwise your family won't get the money... or worse things may happen to your family.
This kind of stuff is real and does happen. With the kind of money at play here, people will do anything. It's the old mafia style in the modern era.
You're being down-voted but it would be foolish to ignore the possibility you bring up, especially when we consider that Tesla has competitors based in countries where the rule of law is weaker than it is in the US. Certainly if he's going to break the law and exfiltrate data it would be a small hurdle to try to profit on top of that.
Glad to hear they're suing him. The interesting question is if he was hired by some outside agency to join Tesla to do this. He was only at the company for 3-4 months before "complaining of not getting a raise". That's a very short period of time. My bet is that is that's a lie to hide the real reason. Hopefully they get access to his call history to see what companies he communicated with.
Also shame on the author for Editorializing the title. The true article title is "Tesla sues ex-employee for hacking, theft, and leaking to the press"
That's exactly what I was thinking. I don't buy that he went through all of this merely for not getting promoted. Especially since he's only been at the company for a few months. Definitely working with outside entities.
The lawsuit doesn't mention raises, it says that he was angry over, specifically, being transferred to another job after clashing with coworkers/managers.
Given that the civil suit says that Tripp transferred that information to third parties, yes, this is beginning to sound like a conspiracy. There are 5 elements of a conspiracy.
1. 2 or more persons
2. intention
3. make an agreement
4. to violate the law
5. act in furtherance of that agreement
Conspiracy is a crime and so the Feds would be responsible for investigating and then charging that. This is only a civil suit. But yes, it sounds like a conspiracy.
That's not really what the term "conspiracy theory" means. It means "a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event". In this case, an unknown company or government agency is the influential organization behind planting this guy as an employee at Tesla to steal data.
Anyways, the actual wording, I think, is "he also wrote computer code to periodically export Tesla’s data off its network and into the hands of third parties" which is vague.
It could mean that he exported the data off of the network and then gave it to third parties (news outlets). It could also just mean that he uploaded the data to an AWS server, or to his Google Drive account.
It certainly doesn't imply that he was hired by an outside agency specifically for this purpose, which is what the original comment was wondering about.
Leaking information about the inefficiency of Tesla's production line could be construed as whistleblowing. Tesla is a public company and shareholders have right to know of issues that can have an impact on the viability of the company.
Tesla claims that some of the information is false (specifically the bit about punctured cells being installed). Whether this is true or not, the manner in which the disclosure occurred doesn't seem to be in the spirit of remedying the situation. It was to harm the company.
Whistleblowing is not about doing harm, it is about preventing it.
Say you dated someone at work and it didn't work out. Say you then went on a tirade around the office indicating exactly what their problems were (true or not), even to people who have no interest in dating that person. More accurately, you'd also pass off any and all benign details (because the installed software was indiscriminately passing off information). Would that be whistleblowing or would that be slander? Say that a good friend indicated that they were interested and you warned them away in private - completely different story.
Whistleblowing is ultimately harming the company and usually done by people trying to sabotage the company. Doesn't mean stuff leak isn't the truth. This guy leaked official documents to Business Insider that related to series 3 production and cost to produce batteries. Looking at the Tesla's accelerating cash burn(1.1 billion last quarter), he was being at least partially truthful that production costs are rising.
Whistleblowing is about protecting public interest: in some cases the public is investors, yes. Whistleblowing is not disclosing information carte blanche. That is espionage.
If Tesla were using punctured cells (still up in the air, given that the defendant admitted malice), that would be valid reason to leak. If Tesla are missing targets, that is a reason to leak.
However, if those two hypothetical facts form part of a larger corpus of trade secrets and other confidential information your intent is not to be a whistleblower. You are not whistleblowing. You are harming.
Yet another analogy to drive the point home. The most your HN profile has is your location. Clearly you are using a pseudonym. Let's say that maybe you run a darknet site trading in various nefarious activities. If I were to dox you, that association would surely be part of the corpus. However, would that be whistleblowing or doxxing? Would my intent be anything else other than malicious? Furthermore, maybe my research, keylogger or what-have-you might miss that detail: meaning that I failed to disclose the information that would cause public concern over those activities. I'm just sharing your secrets. Good, bad, it doesn't matter.
Whistleblowing is altruistic.
This guy wanted to do harm and the line is, in a rare occurrence, clear as the blue sky. If Tesla is found to be falling short according to the information he disclosed, they should answer for it. In the US they may not: fruit of the forbidden tree. This means that Tesla may get off the hook because of the carte blanche disclosure - would any good come from this? However, he should absolutely pay for violating the trust of his employer merely because he got passed up for a promotion. It is a negative sum situation. Whistleblowing is zero-sum (at least in today's world).
Whistleblowers are heroes. There is, by even the most microscopic margin, not a hero here. Don't sour the sacrifices of people who took risks for the humanity, for a single person seeking selfish vengeance.
Scary to learn that Tesla's problems are so bad that they're pinning all their execution issues on a single employee who wasn't even around for most of them.
Edit: As someone else wondered...why does this guy even have the access to the systems necessary to have allegedly carry out these purported acts of sabotage? Is Tesla's security that lax? Why wasn't this detected immediately? What else does this say about their inability to control their own internal processes?
Edit 2: Deleted first paragraph. Turns out that Musk accused this employee of sabotage predating the employee's employment but Tesla isn't suing him for it.
(17 line summary is on page 2)
It's based substantially on the "scrap material" leak to Business Insider published June 4: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-scrap-waste-hig...