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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Rhian Lubin

Inside Musk’s plan to make a ‘legion’ of babies and get to Mars to save civilization — while paying moms to keep quiet

Elon Musk has a plan to populate the world with more babies of “high intelligence” — and it’s all part of his wider mission to one day occupy Mars to save civilization.

That is according to an explosive report by the Wall Street Journal about the world’s richest man and how MAGA influencer Ashley St Clair found herself caught up in his “harem drama.”

St Clair, 26, went public with her claims that she and Musk share a child in February. Now she has claimed that the billionaire offered her a one-time payment of $15 million, plus $100,000 a month until her child turns 21, in exchange for her silence.

She rejected the offer. “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret,” St Clair reportedly told Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall, who runs Musk’s family office.

St Clair claimed that Musk has used his wealth to silence some of the other women who have had his children, according to the report.

Musk, who has at least 14 children with four women, previously maintained that he does not know “for sure” whether St Clair’s child is his but the “Probability of Paternity was 99.9999%,” according to test results that came back last Friday, the Journal reports.

St Clair gained an insight into Musk’s “paranoid” way of thinking when they dated in 2023 after meeting in the spring of that year. Their romance began on Musk’s social media platform X after he began to interact with her posts. (@stclairashley/X)

Musk has four children — Strider, Azure, Arcadia, and Seldon Lycurgus — with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, as well as three — X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl, and Tau Techno Mechanicus — with music artist Grimes. And he has six children with Justine Wilson, who was married to Musk for eight years from 2000.

According to multiple sources close to the tech mogul, the number of Musk’s children is “much higher than publicly known,” they told the outlet.

Musk did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment but made light of it on his social media platform X by comparing the Journal to celebrity tabloidTMZ.

“TMZ >> WSJ,” Musk posted late Tuesday. The Independent has contacted representatives of Musk for comment.

The report contains extraordinary claims about how Musk believes a declining population is a grave threat to civilization. “He is driven to correct the historic moment by helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence,” the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

St Clair gained an insight into Musk’s “paranoid” way of thinking when they dated in 2023 after meeting in the spring of that year, she claimed. Their romance began on Musk’s social media platform X after he began to interact with her posts.

St Clair claimed that Musk offered her $15 million and $100,000 a month until her son turns 21 in exchange for her silence. She refused the offer. (@stclairashley/X)

She was invited by Musk to visit X’s headquarters in San Francisco. From there, he took her on a separate trip to Rhode Island on his private plane, where the Space X CEO was visiting one of his sons at college, and then later on a getaway to St. Barts for New Year.

During their time together, Musk frequently talked to St Clair about having children, she claimed. “The first time they had sex, Musk joked that they should ‘pick a name’ for their future child,” the outlet reports.

On the trip to St. Barts, she told Musk that she was ovulating. “What are we waiting for?” he reportedly replied, and their son was conceived, according to St Clair.

During St Clair’s pregnancy, she claimed Musk suggested they “bring in other women to have even more of their children faster” in his mission to save civilization.

“To reach legion-level before the apocalypse,” Musk told St Clair in a text message seen by the Journal. “We will need to use surrogates,” he added.

Musk believes a declining population is a grave threat to civilization. ‘He is driven to correct the historic moment by helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence,’ the Journal reports. (Getty Images)

Once visibly pregnant, St Clair stayed inside her apartment in New York City to avoid speculation. Birchall was instructed by Musk to send her $2 million for expenses, the Journal reports, which she used in part to pay for security.

Birchall also reportedly warned St Clair that Musk expected “privacy and confidentiality” about the child. After the birth, St Clair was “pushed” again to sign the $15 million agreement in exchange for her discretion, according to the outlet.

Musk then reportedly weighed in and told St Clair that it was dangerous to reveal his relationship to the baby. He described himself as the “#2 after Trump for assassination” in text messages seen by the Journal. “Only the paranoid survive,” he added.

St Clair didn’t sign the agreement. “One of the main sticking points, she said, was that it would make her son feel illegitimate,” the outlet reports.

When she learned a newspaper was planning to publish a story about the child, St Clair went public.

“Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father,” she wrote in February. “I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child’s privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause.”

Musk revoked the $15 million offer, according to the outlet, and the case went to court to discuss paternity testing. In the meantime, Musk dropped his support to $40,000 a month while St Clair’s legal fees soared.

After the publication of the Journal’s report, St Clair claimed the amount Musk paid in child support had dropped to $20,000.

Mars ambitions are part of Musk’s ‘baby-making project’

Elon Musk has ambitions to get humans to Mars. He believes the declining population is a grave threat to humanity and views it as his responsibility to help repopulate. (Getty Images)

Musk’s ambition to get humans to Mars is driven by his fears of a declining population. He believes, people close to him told the outlet, that a solution is for educated people to have more children.

“I think for most countries, they should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem they need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter,” Musk said at a conference last year in Saudi Arabia.

Musk’s baby-making project is relevant to his ambition for NASA, which he wants to move faster to go to Mars,” the Journal reports. Musk sees it as his responsibility to help “seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence.”

“What is important is that we establish a self-sustaining city on Mars,” Musk said previously. “This is important for the long-term future of humanity or consciousness as we know it.”

And his multi-billion dollar companies will help him achieve the goal.

Through SpaceX, he aims to build a rocket capable of reaching Mars while his other businesses will finance the lofty plans.

He has predicted that humans could land on Mars in the next 20 to 30 years — though some NASA scientists have said the plans are highly unlikely.

Musk ‘asked cryptocurrency influencer if she was interested in having his child’

Since acquiring X, Musk has used the app to interact with lesser known users — and has solicited some of them to have his babies, according to the Journal.

One of them reportedly included the cryptocurrency influencer and journalist Tiffany Fong, who Musk began interacting with on X while she was covering the fall of crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried.

As Fong shared more pro-Trump content on her profile, Musk became interested. He followed her account last summer, according to the Journal, which in turn boosted her earnings because she was paid through a program on X to share content.

She earned $21,000 on X in a two-week period, the outlet reports. According to people familiar with the matter, Musk reached out to her and asked if she was interested in having his child, despite never meeting in person, they told the Journal.

Fong reportedly confided in St Clair about the offer, but didn’t take Musk up on the proposal. After learning that Fong had told other people about his request, he rebuked her for a lack of discretion and unfollowed her. As a result, her engagement on X dropped and her earnings declined.

When contacted for comment, Fong told The Independent that she “did not feed this story” to the Journal. She added that she “would have rather kept it private.”

Musk wanted St Clair to spend time at his compound in Austin, Texas

Musk wanted his children and their mothers to live in a compound in Austin, Texas. The gated community is where Shivon Zilis and their four children live. (Shivon Zilis/X)

The billionaire envisaged a world where the mothers of all his children would live together among multiple residences in a compound in Austin, Texas, according to the Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter. But the dream hasn’t materialized.

St Clair revealed that Musk intended for her to spend time in Austin “with our kid legion,” he told her over a text seen by the outlet.

The gated community is where Shivon Zilis, the mother of four of Musk’s children, lives. The SpaceX CEO “comes and goes.” Zilis, an executive at Musk’s brain computer company Neuralink, is held in high regard by him and has “special status.”

“He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” Zilis told Musk’s biographer. Musk has brought Zilis to high-profile events, including a meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the presidential guesthouse Blair House.

Grimes refused to move to the compound and has endured her own court battles with Musk over custody of their three children, a fight which St Clair witnessed when she was dating Musk in 2023. Grimes has publicly called him out for allowing their four-year-old son X to be on national television with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

Who is Elon Musk’s fixer and baby momma go-between, Jared Birchall?

Musk’s longtime fixer and financial manager Jared Birchall also acts as a go-between with the mothers of Musk’s children behind the scenes, ensuring they keep their silence, according to the Journal’s report.

Birchall, a practicing Mormon with a big family, is one of Musk’s trusted confidantes and is also the CEO of his company Neuralink. Unlike Musk, he works very hard to keep a low profile. Birchall also helped organize Musk’s $250 million campaign in support of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to the outlet.

Birchall also manages property deals across Musk’s businesses and in his personal life. The former Morgan Stanley banker acquired the Austin property where Musk hoped the mothers of his children would all live.

St Clair shared details of exchanges she had with Birchall during her pregnancy and after the birth of her son last September. She largely dealt with Birchall when Musk stopped communicating with her directly, she claimed.

When presented with the offer of $15 million and $100,000 a month in support, Birchall allegedly told St Clair that similar agreements had been negotiated with the other mothers of Musk’s children, she told the Journal.

“Privacy and confidentiality is the top of the list in every aspect of his life, every aspect, and his entire world is set up to be, like, a meritocracy,” Birchall reportedly told St Clair during a two-hour phone call in December. “Benefits flow when ‘people do good work,’” he said.

He pressed upon St Clair the importance of her discretion and said Musk “cannot allow people to just go and share his life information. He is the biggest lightning rod on the entire planet.”

Birchall also warned her not to hire attorney, but she did.

He also featured in Musk’s custody battle with Grimes and acted as a go-between, according to the report.

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