Elon Musk riffed on Oppenheimer's iconic quote to declare a meme war on Tesla short sellers. They still won't give up, he says.

• Elon Musk riffed on J. Robert Oppenheimer's iconic quote years before the release of "Oppenheimer."
• The Tesla boss joked he was destroying short sellers with memes, and recently tweeted he still is.
• Michael Burry, Jim Chanos and others have bet against Tesla stock, which has skyrocketed since 2020.

Elon Musk nodded to the "father of the atomic bomb" more than two years before the release of "Oppenheimer" in cinemas last weekend. He joked his deployment of memes had decimated the investors betting against Tesla stock - and has now posted a fresh warning to short sellers.

"I am become meme, Destroyer of shorts," Musk tweeted in February 2021, riffing on J. Robert Oppenheimer's famous quote after he witnessed the first explosion of a nuclear bomb in July 1945.