Tesla CEO Elon Musk has finally apologised to the British cave diver he abused last week in a Twitter rant and called a ¡°pedo guy¡±.
In a tweet this morning, he apologised for his actions, though he still held that the diver was also to blame.
After two days with zero comment, Musk has issued his apology, though it¡¯s not exactly the most sincere one to hear. He also retweeted a Quora post with an article defending his actions. And whether any of this stops Unsworth from pursuing legal action is anyone¡¯s guess.
To give you some context, all of this went down last week while divers were attempting to rescue a group of boys in Thailand, who were trapped in a waterlogged cave. The 12 boys, part of a football team, and their coach had entered deep into the cave, and were later stranded by the rising water levels.
At the time, Musk declared his engineering team was working on a mini-submarine that the divers could use to ferry the boys out. The rescuers at the time rejected the idea, saying it wouldn¡¯t pass through cave openings as small as 15cm. In addition, by the time the sub was done and transported to the rescue site, some of the kids had already been extracted using conventional means.
That¡¯s when the former provincial governor in charge of the rescue, Narongsak Osottanakorn, told media they had rejected Musk¡¯s equipment because it wasn¡¯t practical for the mission. Unfortunately, Musk seemed to take it personally and tweeted that Osottanakorn was ¡°not the subject matter expert.¡± Meanwhile he insisted that Richard Stanton, the UK diver leading the cave rescue, had asked him to continue tweaking the capsule.
Once all 12 kids were rescued, another UK diver at the operation named Vern Unsworth was asked about Musk and his sub. He called it a blatant PR stunt and said Musk could ¡°stick his submarine where it hurts.¡± Of course, that triggered even more outrage from Musk who went on a since-deleted Twitter rant, including insinuating that Unsworth was a paedophile. Unsworth, for his part, threatened to sue, and it's still unsure whether he will continue down that path.