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EXCLUSIVE: Elon Musk’s former friend, polymath Philip Low, has committed $250 million to litigating tech bros over mail tampering and false advertising. By Paola Totaro.

Philip Low: The neuroscientist taking on Elon Musk

NeuroVigil founder and chief executive Philip Low.

Credit: Business Wire

Philip Low, founder and chief executive of NeuroVigil, said to be the world’s most valuable neurotechnology company, is impeccably polite, even apologetic, as he settles into a peacock chair.

Known for working impossibly long hours, he has spent the past three months at war with Elon Musk, and it seems pertinent to ask how he is faring. “Well, I’m not in El Salvador… yet!” he says with a peal of satisfied laughter.

Low, 45, was mentored by the late, great molecular biologist Francis Crick, the previous owner of the flamboyant wicker chair in which he is now seated. He earnt his PhD in computational neurobiology by presenting a mathematical technique to map brainwaves, leading to a doctorate with a single page in its body, the shortest in the history of the University of California.

In 2012, his Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, a demonstration that some brain structures and networks related to consciousness are not unique to humans and that animals are sentient, was signed and proclaimed by a group of eminent neuroscientists and biologists. Among them was Stephen Hawking, who had helped Low collect data for one of his inventions, iBrain, a non-invasive monitor that helps interpret brainwaves to monitor sleep, decipher intention and help communication.

In April last year, iBrain launched in four American states and 1.4 per cent of its stock was sold for more than $85 million, valuing the company at more than $6 billion, reportedly the highest second-round venture capital funding in history. For comparison, this is 12 times Facebook’s valuation at the same point.

On January 24, however, Low was catapulted into the stratosphere of a different kind of fame when he published a skin-blistering, 1900-word takedown of his old friend Elon Musk on Facebook. An abridged version was uploaded to LinkedIn and within hours both posts – and key lines describing Musk as a narcissist with an obsessive “lust for power” and a “total, miserable, self-loathing poser” – went viral.

“Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else,” wrote Low. “Elon believes he is above everyone else. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far-right parties, because they are easier to control.”

Low is now using the reaction of tech giants to his post about Musk to build a potential case over freedom of speech and consumer law.

“I am not an activist; I am just a scientist … I report data, you know. As scientists we have a duty to speak and I am speaking on things which I believe need to be said. And if I’m wrong, I’m more than happy to be corrected,” he tells The Saturday Paper.

“I was very critical in the phase when there was radio silence everywhere … Congress was in a coma and I went after Elon in a way nobody else could … If nobody rises, it’s very clear that one should not wait and something has to be said.”

I remember reading Low’s Musk essay almost as soon as it appeared. Like tens of thousands of people around the world, I felt an immediate sense of elation and relief that someone, anyone, let alone a brilliant and uberwealthy mathematician neuroscientist, finally had the guts to call out Musk, and Trump, publicly.

Instinctively, I hit share with the words “Pass the popcorn”. Yet looking back to find the Facebook post, I realised it had completely disappeared. It would emerge later that it had been shared nearly 50,000 times and viewed by millions before being removed. Low also found himself locked out of his LinkedIn account and reinstated only after threatening litigation.

“Apparently Elon called the CEO of Reddit to ask him to remove related threads he disliked,” Low says. Meta worked towards the same end but in a way Low describes as “even more insidious”. Posts were suppressed, shares and likes were removed to stymie engagement, and messages were intercepted even after their receipt.

Low had no inkling that his essay would go viral and seems incredulous still at the global response to his campaign. He wrote it simply “for the record” but warns that mail tampering is a criminal offence that carries a prison sentence and in some states, such as California, there are tough sanctions and prison sentences for false advertising, even if a service is provided free.

“They’re in an ocean of trouble and I’ve put $250 million aside to go after them ... When Mark Zuckerberg told everyone he was dispensing with fact checkers, going to community notes and that Facebook was going back to free speech, that was a complete lie. Again, these social media platforms do not owe anybody free speech, but when they say that that’s what they’re providing and they’re not, that is false advertising, and that’s when they’re liable.”

Low says Musk’s modus operandi has long been to deliberately and strategically target and weaken the very organisations that could weaken him. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was monitoring the Tesla loan program and preparing to regulate X is an example, as is USAID, which was examining his Starlink business.

“He’s gone after [them] while pretending that he was saving American taxpayer money. Let’s put an end to this charade … he’s now part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution and that’s very unfortunate, as someone who admired him and cheered him on,” Low says.

“When the richest man in the world appears to be depriving the most vulnerable children on Earth of basic sustenance and succour – that’s not a good look and it’s not an American value.”

Musk’s grandfather was part of the so-called “technocracy movement”, a group of 1930s non-conformists with big ideas about how to rebuild American society based on science and technology, underpinned by a grand plan to merge the US with Canada and Greenland.

“Elon was caught up in this euphoria after Trump’s win and thought maybe he could pull this off …” Low says, “and now we have a country that is threatening its allies and it is very dangerous.”

Low says it has been intriguing to watch the unmasking of Musk, seeing him be stripped of the tech-genius persona he had created for himself.

“Elon is not the guru he portrays himself to be. And I know that because I’ve known him for so many years. I remember him when he would tell me that he didn’t understand … didn’t have the technical expertise to understand some data. Over the years, he has created this techno king mythology, or whatever we wish to call it, but he was fired by PayPal, fired from Zip2.

“In Silicon Valley, the business-trained CEOs tend to be more, should I say, replaceable in the eyes of investors, whereas the tech CEOs have more staying power. So, he wanted to present himself as that, and he went from someone with the humility of saying that he didn’t fathom some data to being a person who pretended to be an expert on pretty much anything. I have shattered that illusion, you know. I’ve made it very clear that that’s not who he is.”

Low, whose late father was a Holocaust survivor, wants it understood that he confronted Musk privately before going public, asking him to issue a public apology after he performed a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration rally.

“I told him to read Crime and Punishment and reminded him of Raskolnikov’s fate. I told him he had the same mistaken notion: that one validates one’s sense of superiority by breaking the rules. But it only works so far and then reality catches up … that was the message I was sending him. Now Tesla’s stock has been broken in half.”

Despite everything, despite the unelected technocrats who have ensconced themselves within political power structures, who exhort people to do their own research on platforms filled with propaganda and disinformation, Low’s view of Silicon Valley remains tinged with optimism.

“An entrepreneur is a dealer of hope, because you have to sell people on a different future and tell them what must be done in order to get there,” he says.

“One of the reasons I have continued doing this is that so many people wrote to me and said that I was giving them hope. And the extent that I can give people hope – with a good use of reality – I am more than happy to do that.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 31, 2025 as "A total, miserable poser".

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