Elon Musk told ex he needed 'a legion of children before the civil war'

Elon Musk is sowing “deliberate division” via his social media platform X that will be catastrophic unless regulated, the mother of one of the 14 confirmed children fathered by the world’s richest man has warned.

In Musk, a new documentary by veteran film-maker Alex Gibney, former Maga influencer Ashley St Clair says Musk told her in a text message he wanted to have a child with her because he needed to have “a legion of children before the civil war”.

The couple had a son in 2024 but have since separated. St Clair says Musk’s team offered her a $40m lump-sum payment and a monthly stipend of $100,000 in return for her signing a non-disclosure agreement but withdrew the offer after she refused to sign it.

Asked at the documentary’s Venice film festival premiere whether her ex-partner was just scared of a civil war or actively trying to stoke one, St Clair said: “Whatever it is, what he’s doing with this platform on X cannot be ignored, because he is stoking flames that don’t exist in the real world.”

“He is creating something that is causing real world effects with all of these inputs on X,” said the former Trump supporter, who also said she now regrets her former political activism. “I do believe that he is causing deliberate division that may be catastrophic if it’s not regulated or tamed, or if we don’t do our part in putting it down.”

Since acquiring the site formerly known as Twitter in 2022, Musk has used the platform to amplify his personal political views. On Monday, he celebrated the strong result for Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, writing “Well done!” in response to co-leader Alice Weidel’s acclamation of the lead candidate.

Film-maker Gibney, whose previous subjects include Enron, Vladimir Putin and the US military, said Musk’s preoccupation with civilisational collapse was probably rooted in his childhood in South Africa.

“He had a childhood that was very difficult and traumatic,” Gibney said in Venice. “To some extent he’s now playing out that trauma on the rest of us, if I were to psychoanalyse the situation.”

The four-hour documentary, which Gibney filmed over three years, paints a comprehensive portrait of Musk’s rise from software start-up tech bro to engineering entrepreneur selling rockets and electric cars to Maga acolyte.

“What I discovered was that the story of Musk was not a new tech story,” said Gibney. “But his story is the story of an old wine in a new bottle. His story turns out to be the story of the confidence man, the stock pumper. His wealth and power comes from inflating stock.”