Jeff Bezos Reportedly Has Secretive “Personal Reasons” for Wanting to Escape to Mars

“There’s no democracy in space.”

Deep Lore

At some point, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos reportedly made a cryptic admission to a power broker — and that strange comment is taking on new significance in light of another recent message he’s sending to the public.

Following WaPo‘s surprise decision not to endorse either candidate for president — reportedly because its billionaire owner vetoed staff’s decision to name Kamala Harris as its pick — New Yorker journalist Sarah Larson recounted her own Bezos lore.

“Once again I’m reflecting on the time I interviewed a powerful guy who knows Jeff Bezos,” she wrote on X, “and who offhandedly told me, ‘Jeff has personal reasons for wanting to get to Mars… I’m not comfortable sharing what they are.'”

Larson jokingly followed up her own tweet with a seeming reference to the newspaper’s tagline, “Democracy dies in darkness,” which was taken up in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s first presidential win in 2016.

“There’s no democracy in space,” the New Yorker writer quipped.

Larson’s has an impressive portfolio at the magazine, but the fact that she’s not naming her source makes it impossible to know which powerful Bezos acquaintance she’s referring to — or what Bezos’ secretive personal reasons may be, for that matter.

On the Record

Bezos has seemed to distance himself from Martian colonizing ambitions as his rival apparent, Elon Musk, goes all-in on the vision.

Years after stepping down as CEO of Amazon to spend more time on his space launch company, Blue Origin, the billionaire told podcaster Lex Fridman that he thinks that humans will likely live inside massive cylindrical space stations.

“I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system,” Bezos told Fridman last December. “If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.”

“The only way to get to that vision is with giant space stations,” he continued. “The planetary surfaces are just way too small.”

While the how of becoming an off-world species seems to be “throwing all your wealth at it till it sticks,” the why of the WaPo owner’s quest for space is anyone’s guess.

More on Mars weirdness: Elon Musk Makes Embarrassingly Stupid Claim: If Trump Loses, Humanity Will Never Make It to Mars