I remember Musk even posting a picture of him and Brin partying after this story came out. Seems like another WSJ hit piece to discredit Musk for no good reason (other than to appease short sellers)
Musk was filmed with Brins ex wife, we all saw it. Musk unfortunately takes after his father.
The Venn diagram overlap between philanthropic foundation, tax shelter and influence operation seems to be rather large these days.
That's because charity is an awesome tax shelter. You avoid tax putting your assets in there but the charity is founded and controlled by you so you have full control still in return for agreeing to give away some portion of the money every year that usually works out to a lower cost than paying tax and holding the assets yourself anyway. In addition, instead of giving that portion to the government in the form of tax you get to pick and choose where you put it up to and including buying political influence. On top of that you can pay yourself and/or your kids and/or whoever you want to work at the charity so it ends up also being great estate planning because instead of having a lump sum for your useless trust fund kids to blow on drugs in a generation you can doll it out to them in the form of salaries at your charity over many generations protecting the assets.