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By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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Elon Musk only became the world's richest person some three or so years ago, but for more than two decades, his intellect has been hailed as a defining characteristic of the tech visionary.
Now, as he emerges as a political power broker with unparalleled access to the president — while also maintaining a near-constant presence on social media, where he is prone to delve into conspiracy theories and promote outright falsehoods — some pundits are questioning whether Musk is really all that "smart."
"As an Elon Musk biographer, I would peg his IQ as between 100 and 110. There's zero evidence in his biography of anything higher," Seth Abramson wrote on X, formerly Twitter, last week in a post that sparked the current debate. "And I want to repeat that now, lest you think it a typo. There's zero evidence, from his life history, of Musk having anything higher than a 110 IQ."
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If Musk's IQ is really below 110, he, like the the majority of Americans, would be rated as "average intelligence." Such a score would put him nowhere close to being "gifted" or "superior."
To be sure, Musk's IQ — whatever it is — is not necessarily representative of much. IQ readings are hotly debated among sociologists and others, with many believing they are antiquated ways of determining a person's true intellect.
But Abramson's post echoes the very criticisms that have been hurled at Musk since the billionaire moved further into right-wing politics over the last several years, becoming President Donald Trump's self-proclaimed "first buddy."
Newsweek reached out to Musk via a press contact at X, but did not immediately receive a response.
Musk, who has been helping the new commander-in-chief dismantle the federal bureaucracy, is often mocked by his critics as an immature, temper-tantrum-throwing "man child" lacking the qualifications or experience to remake the federal government in his image. (After spending more than a reported quarter-billion dollars to help Trump in the 2024 election, the president put him in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE).
But claims that the man who played a pivotal role in the resurrection of both the electric car and the U.S. space industry — to say nothing of his other ventures, from PayPal to Neuralink — is actually not that bright?
Enter the Substackers.
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'New heights of success'
Economic blogger Noah Smith, one of the most-read authors on the platform, titled the Sunday edition of his Noahpinion newsletter, "Only fools think Elon is incompetent."
In his piece, Smith argued that aside from the fact that Musk got a 1400 on the SATs (as reported in Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography, and which would put his IQ score somewhere higher in the mid-130s).
"IQ is not a great measure of competence at the kind of things Elon is best at — building and improving organizations, identifying talent, managing large numbers of people, fundraising, creating and communicating a vision for the future, and so on."
"As an industrialist, Elon is unmatched by any American in the country's entire history — Henry Ford, his closest competitor for the title, failed in the aerospace industry," Smith, whose views lean liberal, wrote.
He added that neither he, nor Abramson, nor even a mathematics savant like Terence Tao, could build any of the things Musk has built over the span of his career, even if they had the type of funds Musk has access to.
"I've been watching Elon succeed at building seemingly impossible companies and driving them to new heights of success for over a decade. And at every turn, there were hecklers on social media calling him an idiot, a fraud, and a huckster, and claiming that his companies were about to collapse and die. Although Elon didn't deliver on every promise he ever made, again and again he has made his hecklers eat their words," Smith wrote.
'Spiky intelligence'
Pollster Nate Silver then published his own analysis on the Musk intelligence debate, writing that even though he believed the tech disrupter was "obviously pretty bright," Musk exhibited something Silver coined as "spiky intelligence." Silver outlined that the term applies to individuals who are good at abstract, analytic reasoning, but lack other forms of intelligence like empathy, judgment and self-awareness.
"That Elon is highly intelligent in several ways does not mean that everything he does is brilliant," Silver wrote in a Tuesday edition of his Silver Bulletin newsletter. "Some things he does are exceptionally dumb or dangerous — and we shouldn't make excuses for these or pretend that it's all part of some master plan."
He continued, "But likewise, it's absurd to suggest that Elon isn't brilliant in many respects just because he isn't in others. And if he has merely very good SAT scores, I don't care; he's demonstrated his intelligence through his accomplishments. This is a bit like criticizing Tom Brady because he had mediocre ratings in the NFL combine."
Brady famously put up underwhelming statistics in the 2000 NFL scouting combine, before he went on to win seven Super Bowls, the most of any player in league history.
Surveying Musk's behavior, Silver's pointed to four traits—Musk's ability to always be "on," citing his apparent knack of being actively engaged online at all hours of the day, his pattern of snap judgements, his problem-solving abilities and the ways he can figure out the most efficient ways to get what he wants—as arguments in favor of high intellect.
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At the same time, Silver argued that Musk exhibited low intellect with his middlebrow areas of expertise, lack of wisdom and failure to see the world for how it really is. He also suggested that Musk had low emotional intelligence.
Abramson, meanwhile, doubled down on his argument that Musk was far from genius.
On Tuesday, he waded back into the debate, arguing on X (which Musk owns) that while the billionaire is a "good hype man," "every time he hyped something he used a brand he had purchased to get the earned media for that hype, meaning he was not starting from nothing."
Abramson argued that Musk has paid for other people to do many of the things that have made his ventures successful, including the hiring, managing and collaborating of his various employees.
"There's no doubt Musk is rich. There's no doubt his companies have achieved a lot. There's no doubt that he's audacious and thinks big. None of that has anything to do with intelligence," he concluded.
"Many con men are rich, in certain limited respects successful, and are known for audacity."
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