Meeting Elon Musk in 2009
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Meeting Elon Musk in 2009 is a story John Kiriakou tells against himself.

He had an idea for a news-based television series and mentioned it to a friend who was active in that world. The friend's best friend from school had just been named president of NBC, so a pitch was arranged: the executive would be in Washington for a fundraiser at the White House, and they would meet afterwards at a bar across the street. At nine he called to say he would be fifteen minutes late and asked whether he might bring a friend. "The more the merrier."

The two men arrived, and the executive introduced his companion simply as "my friend Elon." Kiriakou said hello, and sat while the old schoolfriends talked about high school and the girls they had dated.

The question

Bored, Kiriakou turned to the stranger and asked what he did for a living. The answer, as he tells it, arrived like a switch being thrown: a passion for technology, a company called PayPal sold for about a billion dollars, the money put into another company, a company called Tesla bought, a space company started, "and we're going to go to Mars. And we're going to colonize Mars."

"Wait a minute. Are you saying you're Elon Musk?" He was. Kiriakou's response, "the Thomas Edison of our time", got the answer "I guess so."

The rest of the evening was Mars: the first people up there probably would not make it, others would follow, and eventually the planet would be colonised. "All night long. That's all he talked about was Mars." Kiriakou's conclusion at the time, before anyone in tech knew the name, was that this was somebody special.

The assessment is one he has held to and complicated since. He describes Musk's companies as among those the Directorate of Science and Technology now works with at the cutting edge, and lists his organisations among the contracts the CIA's general counsel negotiates.

See also

- Elon Musk
- The Directorate of Science and Technology
- Kiriakou's television pilots
- Palantir Technologies
