Elon Musk says Singapore’s founding PM Lee Kuan Yew was a ‘genius’ — because of air conditioning
Musk’s latest tribute to Lee Kuan Yew centres on an unlikely invention: air conditioning. — Reuters file pic
Thursday, 25 Jun 2026 5:22 PM MYT
SINGAPORE, June 25 — Tech billionaire Elon Musk has hailed Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew as a “genius”, this time for his long-held belief that air conditioning was one of the most important inventions in modern history.
Musk made the remark on X yesterday, replying to a post by content creator Trung Phan that highlighted one of Lee’s best-known observations about how air conditioning transformed Singapore’s development.
“Lee Kuan Yew was a genius,” Musk wrote.
The post resurfaced an excerpt from a 2009 interview Lee gave to New Perspectives Quarterly, in which he argued that air conditioning fundamentally changed what countries in the tropics could achieve.
“Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history,” Lee said.
“It changed the nature of civilisation by making development possible in the tropics.”
Lee explained that before widespread air conditioning, people in hot, humid climates could work efficiently only during the cooler hours of the day.
One of his earliest decisions after becoming prime minister, he said, was to install air conditioners in government offices to improve the productivity of the civil service.
“The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency,” he said.
The renewed attention on Lee’s remarks comes as Europe grapples with another severe heatwave, where soaring temperatures have renewed debate over how countries adapt workplaces, infrastructure and cities to increasingly extreme weather.
The quote has frequently been cited as an example of Lee’s pragmatic approach to nation-building, emphasising how seemingly ordinary infrastructure could have an outsized impact on economic growth and governance.
It is not the first time Musk has publicly expressed admiration for Singapore’s founding leader.
In July 2024, the Tesla and SpaceX chief shared a post praising Lee’s long-term vision in developing Singapore, particularly his role in building Changi Airport into one of the world’s leading aviation hubs, describing him then as “brilliant”.
Good business while it's hot.
ReplyDeletehttps://x.com/i/status/2069972669907317109
German air conditioner crisis explained:
Germany is currently in the midst of an intolerable heat wave. Due to regulations, it is extremely difficult to install air conditioning in Germany as a renter and in many cases you are not allowed to do it. Enter: the Midea Portasplit.
This is the air conditioner everyone wants because it will effectively cool your apartment and doesn't require you to drill a hole in the wall. Originall 800€, prices climbed to 1000€ due to demand. Then 1500€ as stocks at all major retailers vanished. People created an app that shows the locations of all known Portasplits with the option to pay to subscribe to an alert list that would notify you when one became available. Now the prices are at 1999€, none are available in stores, so your only hope is to buy them scalped.
https://x.com/i/status/2070043343032144336
Oi mate you got a loiscence for that air conditioner?
This is beyond parody:
One person was told to rip out two aircon units and instead “open the windows and balcony doors of their first-floor flat to ventilate the property “by natural means”.
Another was forced to rip out three units because “council planning inspectors made “particular note” of the “absence of ceiling fans” in their home”.
This is all part of the “net zero clampdown is part of building regulations that state “active cooling” should only ever be allowed when all other means of “passive cooling”, such as opening windows or using fans, have been exhausted.”
https://x.com/i/status/2070218657330769996
A bus driver in France crashed today because he fainted due to the heat having no AC in the bus