After taking a short Twitter hiatus, Elon Musk is back and making jokes at his own expense, it would appear.
The billionaire Tesla CEO shared a familiar take on the crisis of declining birth rates, an issue that he’s raised before. What made this time significant is that his tweet came one day after reports surfaced that Musk had secretly fathered twins with a top executive at his neurotechnology firm, Neuralink.
While the richest man in the world didn’t reference the report directly, his message seemed to confirm it was true.
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” Musk tweeted Thursday. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.
A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022
“Mark my words, they are sadly true,” he wrote in a follow-up.
The Daily Wire reported on Wednesday that Musk, 51, had welcomed twins late last year, just weeks before he had his second child with then-girlfriend Claire Boucher, who is a musician known as Grimes.
The twin babies were born to Shivon Zilis, 36, who serves as the youngest member of OpenAI’s board of directors. A petition was filed to have Musk’s last name and Zilis’s last name as part of their middle name, per reports from Business Insider.
The twins would bring the grand total to nine children that the billionaire claims as his own. Musk has fathered children with several women over the years and boasts offspring including Nevada Musk, Griffin Musk, Xavier Musk, Kai Musk, Saxon Musk, Damian Musk, X AE A-Xii Musk, and Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.
It’s clear that the SpaceX CEO is worried about population collapse while most celebrities warn about overpopulation.
“I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people,” Musk told The Wall Street Journal during an interview. “And I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birth rate.”
“And yet, so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control,” the billionaire continued.
“It’s completely the opposite,” Musk concluded. “Please look at the numbers. If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words.”