It sounds like the plot of a James Bond movie: A charismatic billionaire wants to build a network of high tech tunnels beneath America's cities and slay an enemy in the process. But this isn't a summer blockbuster. It's Elon Musk's latest Big Idea. In addition to building electric vehicles, launching rockets, and colonizing Mars, Musk wants to reinvent tunneling and destroy soul-sucking traffic.

Just how Musk's latest venture, the wonderfully named Boring Company, will do that remains rather opaque, perhaps even to Musk himself. “We’re just going to figure out what it takes to improve tunneling speed by, I think, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 percent,” he said in February, with the nonchalance of someone ordering a latte. “We have no idea what we’re doing—I want to be clear about that.”

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