Musk had no diving experience, and no knowledge of these caves. He was working from incomplete knowledge and intuition.
Almost all of Musk's critics in the matter were working from no knowledge of the caves and little to no diving experience. Some of Musk's critics were working from the best available knowledge in both areas.
But this diver points out exactly what Musk intuited. There was a much easier route for all those boys to have hiked into the cave. Musk's submarine would probably have worked over that route. But nobody had knowledge of that route at the time.
One solution would have been for Musk or somebody to build little robots that could explore the caves in zero light with sonar mapping equipment. The robots would need to navigate and operate underwater and abovewater in very difficult terrain. It seems like an impractical pursuit under the circumstances. Why even mention such a ridiculous idea? Well, why not? Why not put all options on the table. You can dismiss the "Have Scotty beam them out" stuff immediately. But they were talking about establishing supply lines for months to keep them alive until the water went down. They were talking about drilling holes 1km+ to hopefully tap the chamber where those kids were. They were talking all sorts of stuff.
And yes, somebody was talking body-sized submarines. And somebody might have been talking about dive robots. And sonar mapping.
I was glued to my news feed with a bag of potato chips and so were almost all of you. I don't know diving and I don't know those caves.
I think the divers who rescued them are mental. I mean really crazy. I mean, seriously, who in their right mind would do stuff like that? I think the effort just to find the kids was risk-taking at a scale that terrifies me. Their brains do not work like mine. Thank goodness.
Musk's brain doesn't work like mine, either. I'm not going to criticize the divers. They are clearly heroes. Musk doesn't come off as a hero in this story. But I'm not going to criticize him either. His intuition was right. He did more than click reload on his browser for two weeks. Nobody else liked his idea. Isn't that the story of his life?
In the end, his idea was one of many that were rejected. Instead they went with the crazy idea to tie everybody up, knock them out, and hope they don't accidentally knock their masks off. Who's bright idea was that? Well, it worked.
Let's not bag on the people who made tremendous efforts to rescue the kids. And let's not bag on the people who made some efforts that didn't produce results. And please don't bag on me, who did nothing.