Good morning. Michal Lev-Ram, Fortune editor-at-large, here, filling in for Alan today.
Back in the early iPhone days, I covered the then-fledgling smartphone beat. I remember going to conferences like CTIA, Mobile World Congress, and CES, where the talk of the town was the only device maker that wasn’t actually there—Apple. Its coveted new phone never had a presence at any of these industry confabs. I had a similar experience at this week’s APEC CEO Summit, which took place alongside the main APEC Leaders event in San Francisco, for very different reasons.
Here's who was in attendance at the Summit: The heads of Pfizer, Citi, Mastercard, GM, OpenAI, Google, FedEx, Uber, Microsoft, and other leading companies. (Oh yeah, and President Joe Biden spoke too!). And here’s who wasn’t there: Elon Musk.
The increasingly controversial owner of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, was originally slated to speak alongside Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Thursday afternoon. But earlier in the day, the APEC CEO Summit issued a statement saying that Musk had a “schedule change.” (APEC organizers said Musk offered to appear virtually, but that was against their speaker policy.) Over the course of the event, I’d had several conversations with attendees who were eager to hear from the polarizing innovator. After the cancellation was announced, the Musk buzz only grew, as people pontificated on the “real” reason he might have pulled out.
There was plenty of fodder to fuel the speculation; Musk and X have some serious issues on their hands. The day before his planned appearance in San Francisco, Musk had endorsed an antisemitic post on X. By the next morning, tech giant IBM had yanked its ads from the social media platform, X CEO Linda Yaccarino was on clean-up duty, and Tesla’s stock (where Musk is CEO) had tumbled.
There is no doubt that being a leader in the global spotlight is no easy task in today’s world. That much was evident at this week’s APEC event, which was flanked by multiple protests—some even attempted to block attendees from entering the venue, and others shut down traffic on the nearby Bay Bridge. But Musk’s no-show, regardless of the reason, is a risky move when there are some serious questions to be asked of him and X.
Being the most talked-about entity that’s not in the room is great when you’re Apple, and you’ve just launched the envy of all mobile devices. But it’s not so great when you’re in the spotlight for the wrong reasons and, at least theoretically, trying to avoid more scrutiny.
More news below.
Michal Lev-Ram
michal.levram@fortune.com
