The Mythology Machine

How Tech Icons Escape Accountability

Jun 20, 2025

We live in an age of manufactured gods.

In Silicon Valley boardrooms, breathless tech coverage, and the infinite scroll of social feeds, a sophisticated apparatus is constantly at work, transforming flawed humans into untouchable icons.

It’s a deliberate system of narrative control shielding power from accountability, labeling criticism as heresy, denouncing skepticism as an attack on progress itself.

As a result, products become salvation narratives, companies become saviors, and we, desperate for heroes, buy into all of it.

When Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in 2003, they created something revolutionary. Then Elon Musk invested a year later and seized control. Today, only one man is known as Tesla’s “founder.”

In 2009, Eberhard sued Musk for defamation, accusing him of trying to “rewrite history to claim credit for founding the company.” The lawsuit was settled, allowing Musk to legally call himself a “co-founder.”

When challenged about Tesla’s origins in 2022, Musk dismissed Eberhard by claiming he “could have risked his money, but was unwilling.”

The pattern repeats across every venture. SpaceX’s rocket innovations become “Musk’s rockets.” Tesla’s engineering breakthroughs become “Musk’s genius.”

The hundreds of engineers, the decades of prior research, the collaborative nature of complex innovation, all compressed into a single heroic narrative sustained through myth-making.

The Appropriation

JB Straubel engineered Tesla’s core battery technology. Tom Mueller designed SpaceX’s rocket engines. Gwynne Shotwell manages SpaceX operations. Yet public perception attributes their collaborative innovations to a single figurehead.

When Musk describes himself as SpaceX’s “lead designer” despite having no aerospace engineering background, he’s not lying. He systematically blurs individual contribution and downplays collective achievement.

The result? A public that believes in singular genius and a workforce learning to accept credit theft as innovation’s price.

The Distraction

In 2018, as Tesla faced production chaos, missed deadlines, and safety violations, Musk deployed spectacle to distract from accountability.

The headlines followed: A red Tesla spinning through space to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

The pattern repeats:

Racism lawsuits multiply? Announce the Cybertruck.
Harassment allegations surface? Tease brain-computer interfaces.
Regulatory scrutiny intensifies? Promise Mars colonies.

Each spectacle reinforces the visionary genius narrative while making criticism feel petty. Who discusses workplace discrimination when we’re talking about making humanity multi-planetary?

Some celebrate this as brilliant marketing or strategic distraction. Others blame the media, pointing to bias. Anything but the courage to call it what it is: lies, manipulation, and deceit.

The Persecution

When the SEC charged Musk with securities fraud for his false “funding secured” tweet—a lie that manipulated markets and harmed investors—Musk reframed it as persecution.

One word capable of turning regulators into bureaucrats stifling innovation. A rhetorical move that makes the powerful appear victimized while portraying accusers as aggressive.

Suddenly, questioning a billionaire’s ethics feels like attacking an underdog. Accountability becomes oppression. Legitimate criticism becomes proof of greatness. Whistleblowers become saboteurs. Journalists become liars.

The Heroes

Buried beneath the PR machine and visionary tweets are damning truths and lives forever impacted.

Owen Diaz, a Black elevator operator at Tesla’s Fremont factory, endured “a scene straight from the Jim Crow era.” Racial slurs, swastikas and daily humiliation. When he complained, nothing changed. But when he sued, a jury awarded him $137 million in damages for egregious racism.

Martin Tripp, a Tesla technician, revealed material waste at the Nevada Gigafactory, believing he was performing a public service. Tesla’s response? According to a former security manager, they hacked his phone, spied on his messages, and planted false tips with police suggesting he might “shoot up” the factory.

When SpaceX employees wrote an open letter criticizing their CEO’s behavior as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment,” eight were fired immediately.

It’s systematic accountability evasion and psychological warfare enabled by a click-chasing media.

Your Power

Systemic issues require our participation. The mythology machine needs your attention. We are complicit every time we place heroes above truth, comfort over nuance, passive consumption over active seeking.

True innovation is always collaborative. Progress is always messy. Genius without ethics is just power with better marketing.

The most dangerous myths contain just enough truth to make us stop asking questions. So the next time you see a headline, ask whose hands built the future behind the spotlight.

Demand that innovation include ethics. Insist that progress protect people. Reject the false choice between hero worship and nihilism, between uncritical admiration and cynical dismissal.

We don’t need more gods. We need truth.

The myth may be well funded, but the truth is relentless and timeless.

The choice is yours.

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Sources:

The Streetlight

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