Elon Musk and Vinod Khosla engage in another ugly war of words in public, ‘you are dumb’ vs ‘macho brain’

Indian American billionaire Vinod Khosla and Tesla Chairman Elon Musk don’t see eye to eye, and their recent exchange over Argentina's employment rate has only escalated the tension between the two.

The social media banter started after Vinod Khosla shared his views on Argentina's economy under its new conservative president, Javier Milei -much admired by Elon Musk, and linked him to Donald Trump.

“Argentinas unemployment rate soars to 52% under Mileis dictatorial austerity program. Same will happen under @realDonaldTrump as he slashes spending. His tariffs will simultaneously increase inflation,” Khosla posted with a link to Financial Times article on the country's poverty rate at 52%.

To which Musk responded, “you are dumb”, considering he referred to poverty data as unemployment data.

The Financial Times report stated that Argentina's poverty rate has surged to almost 53% under libertarian President Javier Milei after his popularity took a dip. The rate was termed worst in two decades, asserting 3.4 mn Argentines have fallen into poverty this year.

Khosla's claims faced further scrutiny from community notes, which pointed out, “The unemployment rate in Argentina fell to 7.6% in the second quarter of 2024, down from 7.7% in the previous period and below estimates of 7.9%.”

Musk criticized Khosla's comments as misinformation, even though community notes only provided data from the past year.

‘You’re dumb' vs ‘Macho brani’

He escalated the exchange by referencing another commenter, Adam Lowisz, who questioned how Khosla could assert a 52% unemployment rate, calling it “absurd.” Musk replied, “seriously,” as he awaited Khosla's response.

Khosla then returned to state, “Poverty is gross underemployment. Too nuanced for macho brains to understand. My nuance vs. your outright posting of false pics? I get a community comment and yours didn’t. I thought you were above this kind of bias at X.”

Musk's supporters countered, “False pics also known as SATIRE,” to which Musk added, “Vinod is just actually not smart.”

Khosla retorted, “Plenty of proof of that.”