Elon Musk says Singapore’s founding PM Lee Kuan Yew was a ‘genius’ — because of air conditioning

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”.