"Not Growing Up with Subordinates" 'The Big Short' Burry Targets Musk, Father of 9 Children

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla [Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] Michael Burry, the real-life protagonist of the movie The Big Short and a famous Wall Street investor, targeted Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, after news broke that Musk had twins with an executive 15 years his junior. Burry pointed out that Musk’s usual solution to the low birthrate problem is not dating a subordinate.

On the 7th (local time), according to U.S. economic media Business Insider and others, Burry tweeted, "The birthrate in the United States remains at the level of the 1950s," adding, "That does not mean that the solution to this situation is for a boss to have children with a subordinate." He further stated, "The bigger problem is the nuclear family at the 1959 level. More children in broken families are not the solution."

Burry’s remarks came after news broke the previous day that Musk had new twins. Business Insider reported that Musk had twins with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his neurotechnology company Neuralink, in November last year. This increased Musk’s number of children from seven to nine. Zilis, a Yale graduate, first met Musk in 2015 as an artificial intelligence (AI) expert and worked at Tesla from 2017 to 2019.

The news that the world’s richest man Musk had additional children attracted attention in itself, but it especially caught the public’s eye because it came amid Musk’s ongoing comments about the low birthrate problem. Since 2017, Musk has expressed concern about global population decline, tweeting more than ten times about population issues just this year. In May, he said, "If the birthrate does not rise, Japan will eventually disappear," and warned, "If the current birthrate continues, South Korea’s population will drop to less than 6% of its current level within three generations, with the majority of the population aged 60 or older."

Meanwhile, Burry, who targeted Musk, is the figure who bet against the mortgage (housing loan) market just before the 2008 financial crisis, gaining astronomical wealth and fame. His story was made into the Hollywood movie The Big Short. The term "big short" refers to a large-scale short sale, and in the movie, Christian Bale played the role of Burry.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.