Your Enron example is worthwhile for the opposite reason you intended: there was a massive short position against Enron too, and corporate management accused the shorts of all manner of conspiracy, and the shorts were right.

"People invested deeply in something" describes the management of fraudulent companies far more than it does short sellers. There's a quote from David Einhorn's book (that I think he attributes to Warren Buffet) that is something to the effect of: "When you're short a fraudulent company, you'll be surprised at the ends they'll go to defend themselves. Because to you this is 5% or whatever of your portfolio, but to them it is everything."

"Her questions were so pointed that Enron's chief executive, Jeffrey K. Skilling, called her unethical for failing to do more research. Three Enron executives flew to New York in an unsuccessful effort to convince her editors that she was wrongheaded. Enron's chairman, Kenneth L. Lay, called Fortune's managing editor, Rik Kirkland, to complain that Fortune was relying on a source who stood to profit if the share price fell."

The thing about the sniper was addressing paranoia and reassuring staff that every suggestion is being taken seriously, and besides following a lead that is easy to dismiss means you get an early cheap win: a great way to relieve stress.

>There's a $10+ billion short position against TSLA, constituting over 25% of outstanding shares.

Where do you get these stats?

Is there some place where we can see how many people are shorting different stocks?

It's educated guessing, from analysts, according to what I've seen.[1] That said, it's not just a large short position, it's the largest (recently surpassing Apple shorts). Given that Apple's market cap is 15 times that of Tesla, that's quite a lot.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/04/15/tesla-has...

Look up a stock on WSJ, for example: https://quotes.wsj.com/TSLA

Note 'Shares Sold Short', multiply by value of stock.