Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
Speaker 2: and this is a special week in Review. We had
Speaker 2: the awesome opportunity to sit down with Elon Musk at
Speaker 2: the White House and we did it as a two
Speaker 2: part series this week. Some of you may have missed it,
Speaker 2: or you may want to share that with your family
Speaker 2: and your friends. So if you would do us a favor,
Speaker 2: because what Elon Musk had to say, we want.
Speaker 3: Everyone to hear it.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of info the media refuses to cover.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The good news is this interview went viral on x
Speaker 2: But if you are on other social media platforms, please
Speaker 2: share this podcast right now so that everyone can hear
Speaker 2: what mus said about waste, fraud and abuse in our government.
Speaker 2: He also had some amazing things to talk about when
Speaker 2: it comes to colonizing Mars and the idea that may
Speaker 2: actually become a reality.
Speaker 1: So grab this and share it.
Speaker 2: This is the entire interview, uninterrupted with Elon Musk at
Speaker 2: the White House.
Speaker 4: Well, we're in the White House right right now, and
Speaker 4: we're here with my friend Elon Musk, who really has
Speaker 4: not been doing much of anything, has not made any news.
Speaker 4: Is and nobody has noticed. Yeah, the impact.
Speaker 1: Welcome elon, thank you, Holy crap ah, yes wow. Let
Speaker 1: me just say, never a dull moment. Never a dull moment.
Speaker 4: The first fifty days the president has spent in office
Speaker 4: over the top, and the first fifty days you've spent.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an
Speaker 4: impact the way you have.
Speaker 3: At the beginning.
Speaker 1: Let me start with a question.
Speaker 4: You know a lot about which was worse the mess
Speaker 4: you found at Twitter or the mess you found in
Speaker 4: the federal government.
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard to compete with the federal government.
Speaker 4: What's surprised you about the federal government? I assume you
Speaker 4: came in and assumed it was bad. Is it worse
Speaker 4: than you expected?
Speaker 3: It is worse than I expected. But on the plus side,
Speaker 3: that means there's more opportunity for improvement. So look, if
Speaker 3: you look on the bright side, there's actually a lot
Speaker 3: of opportunity for improvement in federal goverment expenditures because it's
Speaker 3: so bad. If it was a well run ship, it
Speaker 3: would be very difficult to improve. So like, but so
Speaker 3: now it's like, people say, well, how how do you
Speaker 3: figure out how to save money in the federal government. Well,
Speaker 3: it's like being in a room where the walls, the roof,
Speaker 3: and the floor are old targets any direction. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you're your kindness. Wow, yeah, I'm sure you would agree.
Speaker 1: So a lot of folks have talked about like like.
Speaker 3: You can't right, this is going to any direction.
Speaker 1: A lot of the crazy expenditures, things like like two
Speaker 1: million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala, an essential
Speaker 1: you know, transgendered mice, and and sesame street in Iraq,
Speaker 1: A lot of that has gotten the tention. But some
Speaker 1: of the stuff you've told me about, like tell us
Speaker 1: about computer licenses and government agencies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so most of what do just finding you don't
Speaker 3: need to shock comes. It's very obvious, basic stuff. So
Speaker 3: it in every govert department. I say every because we've
Speaker 3: not yet found a single exception. There are far too
Speaker 3: many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software
Speaker 3: licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department.
Speaker 4: Like you were saying, like an agency with fifteen thousand
Speaker 4: people might have thirty thousand licenses. Yes, and even of
Speaker 4: the fifteen thousand employees, a good chunk of them hadn't
Speaker 4: used the license had never logged on or used the application.
Speaker 3: Yes, we found entire situations of software licenses or media
Speaker 3: subscriptions where there were zero logins.
Speaker 1: So it had and yet we were paying for it.
Speaker 3: Yes, the government's paying for thousands of licenses of software
Speaker 3: or media subscriptions and no one had ever logged in
Speaker 3: even once.
Speaker 1: Or credit cards. You found the same thing. With government
Speaker 1: credit cards.
Speaker 3: We found that there are twice as many credit cards
Speaker 3: as there are humans. And I still don't have a
Speaker 3: good explanation for why this is the case. And these
Speaker 3: are ten thousand dollar limit cards, so it's a lot
Speaker 3: of money.
Speaker 2: Is it incompetent that you're finding or is this like
Speaker 2: the biggest money wandering scheme in the history of the
Speaker 2: world that you're finding.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think it's mostly If you say, look, what's
Speaker 3: the waste to fraud ratio, Yeah, in my opinion, it's
Speaker 3: it's like eighty percent wist twenty percent fraud. But you
Speaker 3: do have these sort of gray areas. For example, example
Speaker 3: be so uh, we saw a lot of payments going
Speaker 3: out of treasury that had no payment code and no
Speaker 3: explanation for the payment. And then we're we're we're we're
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what that payment is and we'd
Speaker 3: see that, Okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off,
Speaker 3: but but someone forgot to shut off that that contract
Speaker 3: and so the company kept getting money. Wow. Now is
Speaker 3: that waste or fraud? Both both? Yeah, you're not supposed
Speaker 3: to get you're not supposed to get it, but you
Speaker 3: but the the government sent it to you, and nobody
Speaker 3: from the government asked for it back. Take for example,
Speaker 3: the one the one point nine billion dollars given to
Speaker 3: Stacy Abrams.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fake ng O, utter insanity.
Speaker 3: Explain the story.
Speaker 1: That's that's just corrupt. I think that's paying off cronies
Speaker 1: at that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And by the way, she knew, like when you get
Speaker 4: two billion dollars, you don't miss that.
Speaker 1: That's not on accident.
Speaker 3: That's allegedly it was for like, uh, you know, environmentally
Speaker 3: friendly appliances or something. And they've given like like a
Speaker 3: hundred appliances so far for two billion dollars. It's very
Speaker 3: expensive toast that's fridge, it's nice. Is it's just obviously
Speaker 3: one of the biggest scam fordoles we've uncovered, which is
Speaker 3: really crazy, is uh? Is that is that the government
Speaker 3: can give money to a so called nonprofit with with
Speaker 3: very few controls, and then that and there's there's no
Speaker 3: auditing subsequently of that nonprofit, so there's no So this
Speaker 3: is where with the you know, one point nine billion
Speaker 3: of Stacey Abrams, who's who's that they didn't give themselves
Speaker 3: extremely lavished like insane salaries, expense everything yep, to the
Speaker 3: to the nonprofit, you know, buy jets and homes and
Speaker 3: all sorts of.
Speaker 1: Things, live like kings and queens. Yes on the taxpayer done.
Speaker 3: Correct. You mentioned this is happening at scale. It's not
Speaker 3: just one or two. We're seeing this everywhere.
Speaker 4: Now, one of the things you told me about is
Speaker 4: at least what you call say, magic money computers. Well,
Speaker 4: so tell us about it, because I've never heard of
Speaker 4: that until you brought that up.
Speaker 3: Okay, So you may think that these the government computers
Speaker 3: like all talk to each other, they synchronize, they add
Speaker 3: up what funds are going somewhere, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's coherent that that that the you know, there's and
Speaker 3: that and that the numbers, for example, that you're presented
Speaker 3: as a senator are actually the real numbers. And one
Speaker 3: would think we would think they're not okay. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by five
Speaker 3: percent or ten percent in some cases. So I call
Speaker 3: it magic money computer. Any computer which can just make
Speaker 3: money out of thin air best magic money.
Speaker 1: So how does that work?
Speaker 3: It just issues payments.
Speaker 4: And you said something like eleven of these computers a
Speaker 4: treasury that are that are sending out trillions in payments.
Speaker 3: They're mostly a treasury. Some are with the sum at HHS,
Speaker 3: some that there's one as one or two it states
Speaker 3: there's summit at DoD. I think we found now fourteen
Speaker 3: magic money computers. Gene, Okay, they just send money out
Speaker 3: of nothing.
Speaker 4: You have an ability to see where leverage points are
Speaker 4: and how things actually happen. So I remember back I
Speaker 4: think it was September October of this year, before the election.
Speaker 4: We didn't know who was going to win, and I
Speaker 4: was at your house in Austin. We were talking about it,
Speaker 4: and you said, you said, look, I don't want a
Speaker 4: job in Washington, and you said, all I want is
Speaker 4: the log in for every computer. And I remember thinking
Speaker 4: at the time that sounded kind of weird, like I
Speaker 4: just didn't get it. And I have to say what's
Speaker 4: interesting on this. If I would have thought like, okay,
Speaker 4: how do you reform government? Like sort of the traditional
Speaker 4: way to think about it is, okay, give me an
Speaker 4: orc chart, let me sit down with the people who
Speaker 4: are running agencies. And what you saw immediately is to
Speaker 4: understand what's really going on, get to the payment systems,
Speaker 4: get to the computers. Yeah, Like, why is getting to
Speaker 4: the computers so critical to understanding what's actually happening?
Speaker 3: Well, the government is run by computers. So you've got
Speaker 3: essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government. And
Speaker 3: if you want to know, did you know that? Then no? Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: so when somebody, like even when the president issues an
Speaker 3: executive order, that's going to go through a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere.
Speaker 3: And if you want to know what the situation is
Speaker 3: with the accounting and you're trying to reconcile accounting and
Speaker 3: get rid of waste and fraud, you must be able
Speaker 3: to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise you can't figure it
Speaker 3: out because all you're doing is asking a human who
Speaker 3: will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally
Speaker 3: usually ask some contractor will ask another contractor to your
Speaker 3: query under computer. Wow, that's how it actually works. So
Speaker 3: it's many layers D So the only way to reconcile
Speaker 3: the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is
Speaker 3: to to actually look at the computers and see what's
Speaker 3: going on. So that's what I call it. That's like,
Speaker 3: that's why when I sort of cryptically referred to reprogramming
Speaker 3: the matrix. You have to understand what's going on the computers.
Speaker 3: You have to reconcile the computer databases in order to
Speaker 3: identify the waste and fraud.
Speaker 4: I don't know that there was anyone in Congress who understood,
Speaker 4: certainly myself included, who understood the leverage that.
Speaker 1: Comes from the computer and the data.
Speaker 4: In particular, that Congress would think about give me a
Speaker 4: report on what your expenditures are rather than actually getting
Speaker 4: into the pipes. And I think that has been fascinating
Speaker 4: that it's let you uncover a bunch of crap that
Speaker 4: just nobody knew.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean in order for money to go to
Speaker 3: a van account. It's it's not like we're sending truckloads
Speaker 3: of cash all over the place where it's a we're
Speaker 3: wiring money. Right, we're sending money through the ACH system
Speaker 3: or through the Swift system. So in order for money
Speaker 3: to flow, it's going to flow electronically. So that's that's
Speaker 3: what you need to look at. You need to look
Speaker 3: at the actual electronic money flows.
Speaker 4: And Tesla and all your companies, you have accounting and
Speaker 4: you have every expenditure. You have it coded for what
Speaker 4: it's going for. Federal government doesn't work that way. They
Speaker 4: don't code what the money is going for.
Speaker 3: They do know, but they didn't. They didn't.
Speaker 4: And like one of the things that that you told me,
Speaker 4: you said, if any company kept its books the way
Speaker 4: the federal government does, they'd arrest the officers and put
Speaker 4: them in jail.
Speaker 3: Yes, if it was a poly company would be dealisted immediately,
Speaker 3: it would fail, it's ordered, and the officers of the
Speaker 3: company would be imprisoned. That's level of enough easiness in
Speaker 3: the middle. Unfortunately, it's deliberately or do you think this
Speaker 3: is in competence again, it's eighty percent. It's eighty percent
Speaker 3: incompetence or in twenty percent malice.
Speaker 2: If you look at DOGE now and you look at
Speaker 2: the government and what you're finding, what percentage have you
Speaker 2: guys even gotten to and how much of it is
Speaker 2: Mars where you haven't even gotten there yet because there's
Speaker 2: so much you're finding out here. I mean, how many
Speaker 2: you seem like a timeline guy when you say all
Speaker 2: I want to get in there and get all these
Speaker 2: you know, numbers and things. How far are we from
Speaker 2: the end game where you've seen it all, been able
Speaker 2: to process it all and fix it.
Speaker 3: I mean are we years away? Months away? Not yours?
Speaker 3: I mean recently confident that we'll be able to get
Speaker 3: a trillion dollars of waste and forward opt and that
Speaker 3: meaning that it will have what we'll have a net
Speaker 3: savings in f I twenty six, which thoughts in October
Speaker 3: obviously of a trillion dollars provider were allowed to We're
Speaker 3: allowed to continue and our progress is not impeded. And
Speaker 3: we're very public about what we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put it on.
Speaker 3: The website about how we could be more transparent. Literally
Speaker 3: everything action we do, smaller, large, we put on the
Speaker 3: dose dot dot gov website and we post on the
Speaker 3: x handle. And when people complain about it and they say, oh,
Speaker 3: you're doing something costumes, I'm like, well, which of these costs?
Speaker 1: Daylight everyone knows exactly what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Extreme transparent. Yeah, I don't think it's anything's been this
Speaker 3: transparent ever.
Speaker 4: So five years ago you were a hero to the left, cool,
Speaker 4: you had electric cars, you had space, And in five
Speaker 4: years you've got.
Speaker 3: To go to a party in Hollywood and not get
Speaker 3: doddy looks. In fact, yeah, and now you might not
Speaker 3: even get invited. It's invited, but I don't know if
Speaker 3: I need to go.
Speaker 4: And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say today,
Speaker 4: after Donald Trump, the left hates you more than a
Speaker 4: person on earth.
Speaker 3: Yes, I appear to be number two. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you're judged by the various signs.
Speaker 1: They estrangements, it's Trump arrangement syndrome and Elon de arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 1: How is that for you?
Speaker 4: That's a little bit of whiplash of going from being
Speaker 4: like mister cool to the devil incarnate in just a
Speaker 4: couple of years. Is that is that kind of weird
Speaker 4: to experience that transformation?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Why do they hate you so much?
Speaker 3: Well, because we're we're clearly over the target. If those
Speaker 3: was ineffective, if we were not actually getting rid of
Speaker 3: a bunch of wasting forward and a bunch of that.
Speaker 3: For I mean, the ford we're seeing is overwhelmingly on
Speaker 3: the on the left. I mean it's not zero on
Speaker 3: the right, but these angos are almost all left wing
Speaker 3: NGOs that are being funded for example. Yep. So they
Speaker 3: hate me because Dog is being effective and Dog is
Speaker 3: getting rid of a lot of waste. For that, they
Speaker 3: were that people and left were taking advantage of that.
Speaker 3: That's that's that's where it comes out to. And and
Speaker 3: the single biggest thing that they're that they're worried about
Speaker 3: is that Dogs is going to turn off fraudulent payments
Speaker 3: of entitlements. I mean everything from Social Security, medicare, uh
Speaker 3: you know, unemployment, disability, smallpers administ registration loans, turn them
Speaker 3: off to illegals. This is that flux of the matter.
Speaker 3: Ye okay, this is this is the this is the
Speaker 3: thing that why they really hit my guts and want
Speaker 3: me to die.
Speaker 4: And do you think that's billions? Hundreds of billions? What
Speaker 4: do you think the scale is of that?
Speaker 3: I think across the country it's it's in the it's well,
Speaker 3: not of one hundred billion, maybe two hundred million. So uh,
Speaker 3: by by using entitlements fraud the Democrats have been able
Speaker 3: to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants.
Speaker 1: And buy voters and and buy.
Speaker 3: Voters exactly the basically bring in ten twenty million people
Speaker 3: who are beholden to the Democrats for governor handouts and
Speaker 3: will vote overwhelming the Democrats. Has been demonstrated in California.
Speaker 3: This is it's an election strategy. Yes, it's powered, Yes,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't take much to turn the swing states blue.
Speaker 3: I mean off in a swing state yet be won
Speaker 3: by ten twenty thousand votes. Sure, so the DAMS can
Speaker 3: bring in two hundred thousand illegals and over time get
Speaker 3: them legalized, not counting any cheating that takes place, because
Speaker 3: there is some cheating, but even without cheating, if you bake,
Speaker 3: if you if you bring in illegals that are ten
Speaker 3: x the voted differential in a swing state, it will
Speaker 3: no longer be a swing state, right, and the DAMS
Speaker 3: will win all the swing states just a matter of time,
Speaker 3: and America will be permanent deep blue socialist state. At
Speaker 3: the House, the Senate, YEP, the Presidency, and the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court will all go hardcore down. They will then further
Speaker 3: cement that by bringing even more aliens so you can't
Speaker 3: vote your way out of it. Their objement is to
Speaker 3: make it one party socialist state, and it will be
Speaker 3: much worse than California, because at least California is mitigated
Speaker 3: by the fact that someone can leave California.
Speaker 1: You can go to Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, So you're gonna make everywhere California but worse.
Speaker 4: By the way, the middle of the pandemic, I spent
Speaker 4: forty five minutes on the phone with Elon.
Speaker 1: He was still in California.
Speaker 4: I was walking my dog's snowflake and trying to convince
Speaker 4: you come to Texas. The commis in California can't stand you.
Speaker 4: We love you, we want you here, and you didn't
Speaker 4: quite go then, but you went not that long afterwards.
Speaker 3: I mean, the COVID actions almost killed Tesla because they
Speaker 3: let every other auto plant in the country was allowed
Speaker 3: to open, but ours, which was in California, was not
Speaker 3: a lot to open. Wow. Wow, So they almost killed Tesla.
Speaker 4: So as a personal matter, you do you ever regret it?
Speaker 4: Like five years ago you go to the OSCARS and
Speaker 4: mister cool and now you're you've got death threats every day,
Speaker 4: Like do you well?
Speaker 3: These days the OSCARS are boring. I wouldn't want to go.
Speaker 1: God bless the movies they nominate.
Speaker 4: No one on earth has ever seen like, like, could
Speaker 4: they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch?
Speaker 3: I mean, how many great movies have come out in
Speaker 3: the last several years.
Speaker 1: Very few, depressingly few.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very few. Last Oscars came and went I didn't
Speaker 3: watch it. There's nothing to see.
Speaker 4: I was sad that Gene Hackman just passed away because
Speaker 4: Unforgiven was spectacular, but that was a long time ago.
Speaker 3: Forgiven came out.
Speaker 2: You've mentioned today here and before about the possibility of
Speaker 2: someone wanting.
Speaker 3: To take you out, dealing with the death threats we see.
Speaker 3: It's not in my imagination. You could just look on
Speaker 3: social media. Yeah, but like is it because very clear?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And look I'm I'm very familiar with it.
Speaker 3: And they've got science. They are people with science and demonstrations, uh,
Speaker 3: saying that I need to die.
Speaker 4: Do you think are these just why jobs? Or do
Speaker 4: you think there are foreign sane people? Do you think
Speaker 4: there are foreign entities behind this? Do you think they're
Speaker 4: domestic entities behind the threats? And also the attacks to
Speaker 4: Twitter are not Twitter, but Tesla, I mean you know,
Speaker 4: you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire. Do you
Speaker 4: think that's organized and paid for?
Speaker 3: Yes, at least some of it is organized and paid
Speaker 3: for I think by domestic you know, basically left wing
Speaker 3: organizations in America funded by left wing billionaires. Essentially, is
Speaker 3: it like Act Blue or what Act Blue is one
Speaker 3: of them? You know Arabella, you know the classic it's
Speaker 3: funded by the you know, the blue basically the left
Speaker 3: wing and g O cabal.
Speaker 2: How big of a threats is to like what you
Speaker 2: build at Tesla? I mean, I remember when Tesla's came out,
Speaker 2: it was people that they didn't want to have gas cars.
Speaker 2: A lot of it was environmental reasons. I jokingly said,
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm a Texas guy, I'm always going
Speaker 2: to have something that burns gas. My kids now, all
Speaker 2: three of my boys think that that Tesla's are awesome.
Speaker 2: The cyber truck is the car they want their dad
Speaker 2: to buy, which I laugh because I never could have
Speaker 2: imagined that five years ago.
Speaker 3: And now I'm looking at We're worth.
Speaker 4: The White House in the President's Tesla sparks. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: which is the fullest dand but I mean you've you've
Speaker 4: changed a generation.
Speaker 2: When you look at my kids are six and eight
Speaker 2: and they're going Dad buy a cyber truck, and I'm
Speaker 2: considering it. That's a that's a full circle in a
Speaker 2: weird way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I do have the story that the most
Speaker 3: errantating outcome is the most likely. So yeah, it seems
Speaker 3: often to be true. I like, what, uh, what twistal
Speaker 3: turn of fate? Uh? Well, I would the highest ratings
Speaker 3: if this was if we're a TV show, what twistal
Speaker 3: turn of fate would generate the highest ratings that there's
Speaker 3: a good chance that happens.
Speaker 4: Well, I will say if if Act Blue and Arabella
Speaker 4: Network was a huge scam, next level, do you think
Speaker 4: it's foreign money? Chinese money? Where do you think the
Speaker 4: money in Act Blue is coming from? How do you
Speaker 4: figure that out?
Speaker 3: Well, it's not coming from from a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: from a ground swell of public support, because when individual
Speaker 3: donors looked at an Act Blue, they a bunually turned
Speaker 3: out to be like diehard Republicans, people have never given
Speaker 3: money in their life. So you're going to track down
Speaker 3: a bunch of these where it says, oh I gave
Speaker 3: sixteen thousand dollars and they're like, I didn't give sixteen
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. We're talking about. Well, if those whole con
Speaker 3: friends of mine, if I found themselves on the Act
Speaker 3: Blue List the like.
Speaker 4: So that's if it can actually be shown that they
Speaker 4: are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations, that's objectively a
Speaker 4: criminal act. That that is funding terrorist activity, and the
Speaker 4: statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies.
Speaker 3: So that down is a terrorist activity.
Speaker 4: Let me ask AI in ten years, how is life
Speaker 4: going to be different because of AI for just a
Speaker 4: normal person?
Speaker 3: Well, ten years is a long time. In ten years,
Speaker 3: probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively,
Speaker 3: probably almost. I think in ten years, based on the
Speaker 3: cart rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the
Speaker 3: smartest human.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There will also be a massive number of robots,
Speaker 3: so humanoid robots.
Speaker 4: By the way, I got to ask, how come your
Speaker 4: robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot?
Speaker 1: Was that intentional or.
Speaker 3: Just I was hoping he's gonna say, yeah, just to
Speaker 3: mess with you, it's not meant to look like any
Speaker 3: prior robot, and we'll iterate the design and you'll be
Speaker 3: able to have a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic.
Speaker 3: You'll be able to switch out the kind of snap
Speaker 3: on cosmetic parts of the robot make it look like
Speaker 3: something else if you lying so. There'll be ultimately billions
Speaker 3: of humanoid robots all costs will be self driving in
Speaker 3: ten years. In ten years, probably ninety percent of miles
Speaker 3: driven will be autonomous. Huh wow that fast. Yeah. In
Speaker 3: five years, probably fifty percent of miles will driven will
Speaker 3: be autonomous.
Speaker 4: Now, if AI will be smarter than any persons, how
Speaker 4: many jobs go away because of that? And what do
Speaker 4: people do if you've got billions of people that are
Speaker 4: losing their jobs like that, A lot of people are
Speaker 4: understandably freaked out about that.
Speaker 3: Well, goods and services will become close to free. So
Speaker 3: it's not as though people will be wanting in terms
Speaker 3: of goods and services.
Speaker 1: So why is that?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 4: Why are goods and services free in an AI world
Speaker 4: or close to free?
Speaker 3: Well, you have I don't know, call it tens of
Speaker 3: billions of robots. They will they will make you anything
Speaker 3: or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing.
Speaker 3: It's it's not that people will be will have a
Speaker 3: lower standable I mean, they'll have actually much higher standard
Speaker 3: of living. But the challenge will be fulfillment. How do
Speaker 3: you drive fulfillment and meeting in life?
Speaker 4: Is Skynet real? Like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI?
Speaker 4: How real is the prospect of killer robots annihilating humanity?
Speaker 3: Likely? Maybe ten percent?
Speaker 1: On what timeframe?
Speaker 3: Fat ten years so soon?
Speaker 1: Like you you see a world where that's possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean you can look at it like
Speaker 3: the glasses eighty ninety percent full, meaning like eighty percent
Speaker 3: likely will have extreme prosperity for all.
Speaker 4: Now, I guess my view, we're in a race to
Speaker 4: win AI. We're in a race with China, and my
Speaker 4: view is if they're going to be killer robots, I'd
Speaker 4: rather they be American killer robots than Chinese. How likely
Speaker 4: are we winning right now? Is America winning right now?
Speaker 4: And how likely is America to win the race for
Speaker 4: AI v to be China or anyone else?
Speaker 3: Well the next few years, I think America is likely
Speaker 3: to win. Then it will be a function of who
Speaker 3: controls the AI chip fabrication, if the factories that make
Speaker 3: the AI chifs who controls them, If they are controlled,
Speaker 3: if more of them will controlled by China than China
Speaker 3: will win.
Speaker 4: More of the factories that are making the AI chips.
Speaker 4: You think that will determine it? Yes, And how are
Speaker 4: we doing versus China on that front?
Speaker 3: Well, right now, almost all the advanced AI chip factories
Speaker 3: they call them babs are in Taiwan.
Speaker 1: And what if China invaded one miles away from what
Speaker 1: happens if China.
Speaker 4: China invades Taiwan, what happens to the world.
Speaker 3: Well, if they were to invade in the nea term,
Speaker 3: the world would be cut off from advanced AI chips.
Speaker 3: And currently one percent of advanced AI chips are made
Speaker 3: in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: How fast can we put that online in America? How
Speaker 2: important is that for national security?
Speaker 3: I think it's essential for national security, and we're not
Speaker 3: doing enough.
Speaker 4: You're fifty three years old. I'm one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 4: days older than you. By what the hell have I
Speaker 4: done in my life?
Speaker 1: I know?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Fifty three years old?
Speaker 3: Well, well, so seventy one was a great year.
Speaker 4: And I was December seventy because I was just just
Speaker 4: right before you were the summer of seventy one.
Speaker 3: I was born sixty nine days after four twenty.
Speaker 1: Wow, I did ask Ben, this is true.
Speaker 4: Look, I did ask Ben, should I show up and
Speaker 4: pull up a joint and say can we beat Rogan's views?
Speaker 4: But I was pretty sure it might cause a scandal
Speaker 4: if we spent a podcast.
Speaker 3: It just turned out to be like a chocolate cigarden. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you if today was your last day
Speaker 4: on Earth. Yeah, well, I'm not suggesting it's going to be.
Speaker 4: But if it were, what do you think your biggest
Speaker 4: legacy would be if everything you've done one hundred years
Speaker 4: from now? What do you think people would remember if
Speaker 4: if it were zero to today?
Speaker 3: And will you ever go to space in the in
Speaker 3: the distant future, one hundred or one thousand years ago?
Speaker 3: If SpaceX got humans to Mars, that's what they would
Speaker 3: remember me for.
Speaker 1: All Right, final set of questions.
Speaker 4: Who's the smartest guy you've ever met? You hang out
Speaker 4: with some brilliant people, Like like, when you look at
Speaker 4: what's a CEO? You look at other than yourself, what CEO?
Speaker 3: Do you say?
Speaker 1: Damn, that guy's good.
Speaker 3: Larry Elson's very smart. So I say, Larry Elson's one
Speaker 3: of the smartest people you know, Larry Page. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people that are very smart
Speaker 3: it's hard to say. Like, you know, I think something
Speaker 3: to be smart is as smart as so you know,
Speaker 3: what if what have they done that is difficult and significant?
Speaker 3: You know, Jeff Bezos has not a lot of difficult
Speaker 3: and significant things. I mean, there are a lot of
Speaker 3: smart humans. I call them smart for smart for a human,
Speaker 3: A lot of people who are in the smart for
Speaker 3: a human category.
Speaker 1: All right, final lightning round, Star Wars or Star Trek.
Speaker 3: The first movie I saw in the theater was Star Wars,
Speaker 3: so I think it had a profound effect on me.
Speaker 3: I'm six years old. I think, imagine, best first movie
Speaker 3: you ever see in a theater is Star Wars. It's
Speaker 3: gonna blaw her mind.
Speaker 1: Best Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Movie Empires Trucks Back.
Speaker 1: The only objectively right answer.
Speaker 4: I stood in line in three hours with my dad
Speaker 4: to see it on opening day.
Speaker 3: Kirk or Picard, I like them both.
Speaker 4: For Kirk again, objectively right answer. By the way, James T.
Speaker 4: Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat, and
Speaker 4: the left gets very mad when I say that best
Speaker 4: Star Trek.
Speaker 3: Movie, I mean the original, the first Star Trek movie.
Speaker 3: That's okay, most of both of both. Wrath of cons
Speaker 3: were pretty good. But yeah, the original wrath of kN.
Speaker 1: Ricardo Montaban revenge is a dish best served cold. It
Speaker 1: is very a.
Speaker 4: Cold in space, although I will say Rathacon is objectively
Speaker 4: the right answer. But but four is a sleeper. When
Speaker 4: they go back to San Francisco and and and go
Speaker 4: find the whales and and you know, Scotty picks up
Speaker 4: picks up the mouth and talks to it and goes
Speaker 4: a keyboard.
Speaker 1: How quaint that's a sleeper?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Last question? Did Han shoot first?
Speaker 3: It seemed like he shot second.
Speaker 1: This is verdict.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I apologize Ben so Ben was
Speaker 4: a jock and played tennis at ole miss and so
Speaker 4: so occasionally when when we geek out a little and
Speaker 4: y'all geek.
Speaker 3: Out over, there is still on the question I love
Speaker 3: you miss his The alien misses fast shot. So why
Speaker 3: do you miss his vast shot? Must have been because
Speaker 3: he got shot first and he's missing a point blank
Speaker 3: bassil shot. If they less, they got knocked off kids.
Speaker 4: But it's a question of real which is is Han
Speaker 4: Solo simply a hero or an anti hero? And and
Speaker 4: so I'm in the Han shot first category. I don't
Speaker 4: like sanitized stories would have.
Speaker 3: Had to have shot first, because otherwise, why why would
Speaker 3: the alien miss appoint blank range? Are you ever going
Speaker 3: to go to outer space? Is that saying in your
Speaker 3: life goals? Yeah, I'd like to go to Mars at
Speaker 3: some point. And people have said do I want to
Speaker 3: die in maz and I say yes, just not an impact.
Speaker 1: Now, that's a very good answer.
Speaker 4: The astronauts on the space station, are they political prisoners?
Speaker 4: Some of them are because because you could have given
Speaker 4: them a ride back, and.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden said no, purely for politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some debate about
Speaker 3: this online. But the thing is that it was very
Speaker 3: a very high level decision, so it wasn't really even
Speaker 3: an acid decision. It was just that the Biden White
Speaker 3: House did not want to have someone who is pro
Speaker 3: Trump rescuing Askrowt's rife before the election, so they pushed it.
Speaker 4: Well, if you're one of those astronauts, you got to
Speaker 4: be pretty pissed off about that.
Speaker 3: Well, if they're a Democrat, yes, a prat like everything's fine,
Speaker 3: fair enough. So I think one of them is a
Speaker 3: repulicable incident. It depends on which one you ask.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Elan, this was this was awesome.
Speaker 4: And let me say, and by the way, I put
Speaker 4: out on X the day before yesterday, if you were
Speaker 4: having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything,
Speaker 4: what would you ask? And got lots of responses. The
Speaker 4: most common response people said is is say thank you. Look,
Speaker 4: Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing. You
Speaker 4: don't have to put up with this bs, and you're
Speaker 4: doing it. I'm grateful. You're making a hell of a
Speaker 4: difference for this country. I appreciate you, and the Americans
Speaker 4: appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's essential for the future of civilization. Otherwise I
Speaker 3: wouldn't be doing it. Yes, it's not like I want
Speaker 3: to get death threats. You know, Now, what.
Speaker 4: Year does man first set foot on Mars?
Speaker 3: I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
Speaker 3: and I don't think it's more than two to four
Speaker 3: years beyond that.
Speaker 4: And that's not an unman, that's that's a human being
Speaker 4: putting his foot on the surface.
Speaker 3: Yes, best case twenty nine.
Speaker 4: And what do you put the odds of finding either
Speaker 4: alien life or evidence of alien life.
Speaker 3: I don't think we're going to find aliens.
Speaker 1: Okay, but do we find ruins, do we find remnants?
Speaker 3: We may we may find the ruins of a long
Speaker 3: dead alien civilization. That's possible, And we may find subterranean
Speaker 3: microbial life. That's possible.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 4: If man lands on Mars and twenty nine, how soon
Speaker 4: after that do you land on.
Speaker 3: Mars remains to be seen. I'm not sure. The important
Speaker 3: thing is that we build a self sustaining city on
Speaker 3: Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when
Speaker 3: that city can't continue to grow, continue to prosper even
Speaker 3: when the supply ships from Earth stopped coming. At that point,
Speaker 3: even if something would happen on Earth, it might not
Speaker 3: be World War.
Speaker 1: Three, but it might be that a bad virus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might not be anything. It's like, let's say
Speaker 3: civilization you could die with a bang or whooper. It
Speaker 3: may be that civilization is dies with a whimper rather
Speaker 3: than a bang and simply loses the ability to send
Speaker 3: ships to Mars. So you often need Mars to become
Speaker 3: self sustaining and be able to grow by itself before
Speaker 3: the recupply ships from Earth stopped coming. That is the
Speaker 3: critical a civilizational threshold, beyond which the probable last span
Speaker 3: of civilization is much greater.
Speaker 4: And how close are we technologically to be able to
Speaker 4: do that, to have a self sustaining settlement on the
Speaker 4: surface of Mars.
Speaker 3: I think it can be done in twenty years, but it.
Speaker 4: Would take twenty years, so we're not in twenty nine.
Speaker 4: We're not there. What are we missing?
Speaker 1: What are the big technologies?
Speaker 3: We don't have a few people running around the surface
Speaker 3: in a hostile environment is not going to make it
Speaker 3: self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
Speaker 3: of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.
Speaker 4: So but you think we could have a million people
Speaker 4: on Mars in twenty years, yes, And what's the technology
Speaker 4: we're missing right now? When you think about a million
Speaker 4: people on Mars? Do we have the ability to get water,
Speaker 4: to get food, to keep them safe?
Speaker 1: I mean, what what do we need to make that happen?
Speaker 3: Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry Earth.
Speaker 3: So you know, we're here at the top of a
Speaker 3: massive permitive industry that starts with mining a vast array
Speaker 3: of materials. Those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement.
Speaker 3: We grow food, obviously, we grow trees, we make things
Speaker 3: out of the trees. There's you know, you've got to
Speaker 3: you've got to build all that on Mars, and Mars
Speaker 3: is a hostile environment. It's you know, it sometimes gets
Speaker 3: above zero on a warm summer day near the equator
Speaker 3: on Mars. Meanly, it's quite cold. How do you prep
Speaker 3: for that? Well, in the beginning, on Mars, you have
Speaker 3: to have a life support habitation module, right, like you
Speaker 3: need You can't just live outdoors. You can't breathe the.
Speaker 1: Air like a dome you think is likely?
Speaker 3: Yeah, glass domes type of thing.
Speaker 4: Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely
Speaker 4: to be ideal for a habitat?
Speaker 3: What might be Arcadia planet? Here is one of the
Speaker 3: one of the good options. That's one of my daughters
Speaker 3: is named Arcadia after that.
Speaker 1: And what makes that attractive.
Speaker 3: My eldest son's middle name is Ari's Mars. You've been
Speaker 3: thinking about this for a long time. If you're name
Speaker 3: and your kids around it. My eldest kid is middle
Speaker 3: name is essentially Mars. When did you get the dream? Like,
Speaker 3: I mean it's twenty twenty one soon, this is decades old? Yeah, dream?
Speaker 4: So like when you were ten, did you look up
Speaker 4: and say I'm going to Mars.
Speaker 3: No No. I read a lot of science fiction books
Speaker 3: and program computers. But the first finally off. The first
Speaker 3: video game that I sold was a space video game
Speaker 3: called Blastar. Maybe I was born this way?
Speaker 1: How do you do?
Speaker 4: How do you become Elon Musk? Look, you're obviously smart
Speaker 4: as hell, but but there are lots there are a
Speaker 4: lot of smart people that don't do squat And you've
Speaker 4: managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary success. Yeah, yeah, Look,
Speaker 4: I mean that's just objectively right.
Speaker 1: So what has led to that?
Speaker 4: Because there are others are people that that's not true,
Speaker 4: and they gaze at their nable and they don't do anything.
Speaker 4: So what do you do differently that makes you so effective?
Speaker 3: Well, I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity. I
Speaker 3: want to find out the nature of the universe, understand
Speaker 3: the universe, And in order to do that, we have
Speaker 3: to travel to other planets, see other star systems, maybe
Speaker 3: other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations, or at least
Speaker 3: the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding of
Speaker 3: words universe going ready to come from? And what questions
Speaker 3: do we not yet know to ask about the answer
Speaker 3: that is the universe.
Speaker 4: So let's go back twenty five years, late nineties.
Speaker 1: You're at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the
Speaker 1: success it was, which which then helped launch you to
Speaker 1: the next one?
Speaker 3: In the next one. Yeah, So I studied physics and
Speaker 3: economics and college, which is a good foundation for understanding
Speaker 3: how the economy works and how reality works, and then
Speaker 3: was going to do a PhD at Stanford in advanced
Speaker 3: ultra capacitors actually as a potential means of energy storage
Speaker 3: for electric transport. Put that on hold to start an
Speaker 3: Internet company. Essentially came to the conclusion that the Internet
Speaker 3: was one of those rare things and I could either
Speaker 3: watch it happen while a grad student or participated. And
Speaker 3: I figured, I've always go back to grad school. Grad
Speaker 3: school is going to be kind of the same. But
Speaker 3: I couldn't betther thought of just watching the Internet happen.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to be a part of building it.
Speaker 3: So I created an Internet Internet company. We did the
Speaker 3: first maps, directions, yellow pages, white pages on the Internet.
Speaker 3: I actually wrote the first version of Suffered just by
Speaker 3: myself in ninety five, and we ended up selling that
Speaker 3: to Compact Texas company. I guess for about three hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars in cash about four years after I graduated. Wow.
Speaker 3: So I should say just to preface that I graduated
Speaker 3: with about one hundred thousand dollars a student debt. So
Speaker 3: it wasn't yeah you and me about yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived
Speaker 3: with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and
Speaker 3: a bag of clothes.
Speaker 4: All right, So you sell the company for three hundred million,
Speaker 4: How much does that change your life?
Speaker 3: Well, I got twenty one million dollars that jack, But
Speaker 3: I wanted to do more on the internet, so started
Speaker 3: a company called x dot com, which merch with a
Speaker 3: company called Confinity, which is Peter Teel and Max Levchun yep.
Speaker 3: And the combined company was actually at first still called
Speaker 3: x dot com, but we later later changed the name
Speaker 3: of the company to PayPal. Because of all the name changes,
Speaker 3: it's kind of confusing. But the company that people know
Speaker 3: is know as PayPal today was actually I filed those
Speaker 3: in corporation documents for that company. Interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, And as you know, Peter Tiel and I
Speaker 4: were buddies back in the mid nineties before he went
Speaker 4: and did any of this. But you know, I became
Speaker 4: friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in
Speaker 4: New York and just sort of a young libertarian with
Speaker 4: a lot of dreams.
Speaker 1: So it's been a heck of a journey.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Now, Sly Peter was involved in a coup.
Speaker 3: We had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation,
Speaker 3: uh where you know that they did Coon met at
Speaker 3: at PayPal.
Speaker 1: I kind of did you all make peace after that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I was doing a lot
Speaker 3: of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would
Speaker 3: have been successful. But I then went on a two
Speaker 3: week trip which was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon,
Speaker 3: and said not done my honeymoon earlier in the year,
Speaker 3: So it's raising money while doing doing holly honeymoon. But
Speaker 3: I was kind of awake. Did that go over by
Speaker 3: the way it worked? It worked? There you go, kind
Speaker 3: of worked. I raised money, yeah, and we had honeymoon
Speaker 3: there you go. So yeah, but you don't want to
Speaker 3: be away from the battle when things are scary, so
Speaker 3: I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops.
Speaker 3: And anyway, Uh, we passed things up, and I have
Speaker 3: been friends nonetheless, and you know these days all like
Speaker 3: stay at his house and stuff, So super friends. And
Speaker 3: he's also invested in most of my companies.
Speaker 4: All right, So two thousand and two you start SpaceX,
Speaker 4: Like how do you start a rocket company? Like what's
Speaker 4: the first day where you're like, I want to make
Speaker 4: rockets and I want to go to Mars?
Speaker 1: Like what do you do on day one?
Speaker 3: So I think you have to start with a some
Speaker 3: sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order
Speaker 3: for the in order to be in order to be
Speaker 3: highly motivated, you have to have some philosophical foundation. In
Speaker 3: my case, it was that that we want to expand
Speaker 3: the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the
Speaker 3: nature of the universe. And in order to expand scate,
Speaker 3: expand consciousness, we need to go beyond one planet. From
Speaker 3: one planet, there's there's too much risk. You know, hopefully
Speaker 3: Earth civilization prosperos very far into the future, but it
Speaker 3: may not. There's always some risk that we are we
Speaker 3: self annihilate through nuclear war, or that there's a big
Speaker 3: meter that takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yep, there's
Speaker 3: always some risk full. Your eggs are in one basket.
Speaker 3: So it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.
Speaker 3: And then once we're a multiplanet species, that the next
Speaker 3: step would be to be a multi stellar and have
Speaker 3: a civilization among on many different star systems. So in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, I didn't think that I could.
Speaker 3: I didn't think I could sell a rocket company. So
Speaker 3: I thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal
Speaker 3: in that case, I think was about one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty eight million dollars after tax, something like that, and
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, I don't need one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty million dollars, so I'll spend a bunch of it
Speaker 3: on a philanthropic Mars mission to get the public excited
Speaker 3: about going back to Mars. We're going to Mars, I
Speaker 3: should say, yeah, Mars was always going to be the
Speaker 3: destination after the Moon. Right. In fact, if you told
Speaker 3: people in nineteen sixty nine that it would be twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five and we've not even gone back to.
Speaker 1: The Moon let alone, it's hard to believe.
Speaker 3: Let alone Mars, they'd be like what happened in the
Speaker 3: civilization collapse, like they would be incomprehensible that we've not
Speaker 3: been to Mars by if you told people this after
Speaker 3: landing on the Moon in sixty nine.
Speaker 1: But what do you think in fifty years America never
Speaker 1: went back to the moon.
Speaker 3: Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that
Speaker 3: could take you to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 3: which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there
Speaker 3: really hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has
Speaker 3: been made since then that can go to the Moon
Speaker 3: or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.
Speaker 4: So I remember you and I first met in twenty
Speaker 4: thirteen when when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I was still down in the basement office. They
Speaker 4: stick freshman senators in the basement.
Speaker 1: Office, kind of like hazeny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's what say.
Speaker 1: It sounds like there aree hundred sected offices. But for
Speaker 1: six months you stay in the basement.
Speaker 3: It's like worry, mean, you know where you're supposed to know.
Speaker 1: I got to stay.
Speaker 4: Now, thirteen years into it, I think there's a lot
Speaker 4: of wisdom to doing that. But you were down in
Speaker 4: the basement office and I remember you were coming and
Speaker 4: sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air
Speaker 4: Force was not letting you all be to launch satellites,
Speaker 4: and so you were coming and saying, look, we got
Speaker 4: a company. I think we can do a really good
Speaker 4: job of this, and yet we're locked out of this.
Speaker 4: It's a little amazing to think the journey SpaceX is
Speaker 4: gone from then to now.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real
Speaker 3: because originally, consistently with my belief that we need to
Speaker 3: become a multiplant species, I thought the only way to
Speaker 3: do that would be through Nassau So and I think
Speaker 3: I thought, well, if I can just get the public
Speaker 3: excited about Mars, then they'll do a mission to Mars.
Speaker 3: And so initially my thought was to have to send
Speaker 3: a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then
Speaker 3: land the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see these
Speaker 3: the sort of money shot proof. The money shot would
Speaker 3: be green plants on a red background. I also recently
Speaker 3: known that money shot has a different meaning in some
Speaker 3: other arenas. But yeah, story, But what I'm trying to
Speaker 3: say is the captivating shot would be the green plants
Speaker 3: on a red background, and then hopefully that would if
Speaker 3: you did something like that, that would get the public excited
Speaker 3: about Mars, that would increase nasta's budget and then we
Speaker 3: could send people to Mars. Dream was nasty to do this, yes,
Speaker 3: not you. The original original plan was literally to take
Speaker 3: a bunch of the money from PayPal and I guess
Speaker 3: by some people's definition wasteed with no profit on a
Speaker 3: non profit thing. I wanted to spend a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of my money for free to get Nasta's budget to
Speaker 3: be bigger so we could go to friggin Mars. Right, Wow,
Speaker 3: that's what I wanted. So that was the holy grail,
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted. I was like, so, when did
Speaker 3: you Mars? That's what I wanted to know.
Speaker 1: Well, when when did it strike you? Okay, you're going to.
Speaker 3: Have to do this if you want, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: It gets crazier, all right, It gets crazier. So so
Speaker 3: that I couldn't afford any of the US rockets because
Speaker 3: as you know, the US rockets are way too expensive,
Speaker 3: boying lucky rock Lucky rockets are crazy money. I didn't have.
Speaker 3: I didn't even even with one hundred eight millions, so
Speaker 3: way I could have afforded sure they back then well
Speaker 3: the with with the additional stage to get tomorrows, it
Speaker 3: would have been about like eighty million. So technically I
Speaker 3: could have afforded one of them, but I wanted to
Speaker 3: do too in case one of them didn't work. Yeah. So,
Speaker 3: and then I didn't have enough money for that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I was sort of prepared to, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know, waste half the money. And I figured if
Speaker 3: I had ninety million left, that'd be fine, you know,
Speaker 3: but ideally on all of it. So I went to
Speaker 3: Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs. How'd that go?
Speaker 3: And who do you call? The Russian rocket forces?
Speaker 1: Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You got to tell us a story that I want
Speaker 2: to know who you can buy anything in Russia?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like, please walk me down that.
Speaker 2: I want to know how you made that phone call
Speaker 2: and when you get there, how did that work?
Speaker 3: And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
Speaker 3: going to Russian device in ICBMs. I might not return,
Speaker 3: you know, in this situation. Literally, Yeah, so I guess
Speaker 3: slightly less insane when when you understand that the Russians
Speaker 3: had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because of
Speaker 3: you know, Soult talks like the piece because basically an
Speaker 3: agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the
Speaker 3: total number of ICBMs, Russia was actually obligated to scrap
Speaker 3: a bunch of their ICBMs. So you took it the
Speaker 3: very biggest ICBMs. You could converte those into a rocket,
Speaker 3: added additional stage and send something to Mars.
Speaker 4: So those are big enough with one more stage to
Speaker 4: get to Mars.
Speaker 3: To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
Speaker 3: s S eighteen.
Speaker 4: So you try to buy CBMs, do you succeed or no?
Speaker 4: Or do you figure out you got to build your
Speaker 4: own instead?
Speaker 3: They kept raising the price on me, so because I
Speaker 3: figured like, look, they're going to throw these things in
Speaker 3: scrappy on anyway, you should get a really good deal, right,
Speaker 3: So the price thought out at four million. Then the
Speaker 3: next conversation they were at eight million. Then the next
Speaker 3: conversation they were at like nineteen million. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is before we signed a contract.
Speaker 4: By the way, was there another was there an they're
Speaker 4: bit or were you the only one trying to buy them?
Speaker 3: I think I don't know if there were other bits,
Speaker 3: but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
Speaker 3: if if the price is increasing this much before the
Speaker 3: contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contracts.
Speaker 3: So so I got pretty frustrated there. Actually, in some
Speaker 3: cases we got into like shouting matches in Moscow, some
Speaker 3: guys shouting at me in Russia, and I'm shouting back
Speaker 3: at him really badly, you know, I'm like, so you
Speaker 3: are all I mean, you're all.
Speaker 1: In Moscow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, uh man, I should have recorded that. That would
Speaker 3: have been one for them.
Speaker 2: How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
Speaker 2: I mean, was this like ongoing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this this took place. These conversations took place
Speaker 3: over probably six months or so. Wow. So and then
Speaker 3: the final trip trip there was with the with was
Speaker 3: with Mike Revenue later became assid administrator. I actually realized
Speaker 3: in the course of this that my original premise was wrong,
Speaker 3: that that America actually has plenty of will to go
Speaker 3: to Mars, but needs it just needs a way to
Speaker 3: Mars that is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.
Speaker 1: You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
Speaker 1: to the space station. We needed the Russians to get
Speaker 1: us to our own space station.
Speaker 3: That was embarrassing.
Speaker 1: It really was pitiful.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we
Speaker 3: were being fleeced. Like I think they got up to
Speaker 3: like ninety million dollars a seat. Yeah, wow, Yeah, for
Speaker 3: a seat that cost them like ten prege obviously, but
Speaker 3: it was the only Yeah it was before SpaceX. Ninety
Speaker 3: million dollars a seat for a seat that cost them
Speaker 3: ten million is high. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So a few months ago you and I were down
Speaker 4: in Boca Chica with a president for a starship launch,
Speaker 4: and it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica.
Speaker 4: You know, five years ago it was an empty beach.
Speaker 3: At the southern tip of the Sundbar. Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 4: Now a city and factory where you're building a rocket
Speaker 4: ship a month with with incredible precision. But one of
Speaker 4: the things you said to me when we were down
Speaker 4: there that really stood out to me is is you
Speaker 4: said your philosophy on intellectual property talked to lots of
Speaker 4: CEOs or we fight to guard our IP and you
Speaker 4: had a very different approach. What's what's your view of IP.
Speaker 3: Patents of the week, patents of for those that innovate slowly.
Speaker 4: I literally do not know anyone else in business who
Speaker 4: would say something like that, like like it was a
Speaker 4: startling and and and and what Elon said down there
Speaker 4: is he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will
Speaker 4: steal everything, but by the time they steal it will
Speaker 4: be five generations beyond and it won't matter.
Speaker 3: Yes, at Tesla, we actually open sourcial lat patents. So
Speaker 3: we said our patents are anyone can use it for free.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, uh, the only really your patents of Tesla
Speaker 3: to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble. So we'll
Speaker 3: try to look ahead and say, okay, patent trolls are
Speaker 3: going to trial pat file patents to blocks and things,
Speaker 3: will FIP patents and then open sources make it free.
Speaker 3: I mean, I want to say patents for the week. Now.
Speaker 3: There are a few cases, in say with pharmaceuticals, where
Speaker 3: it might cost you billion dollars to do a phase
Speaker 3: three human file, but then subsequently the drug is very
Speaker 3: cheap to manufacture. So cases there are some in my opinion,
Speaker 3: which would massively reduce what can be patented and and
Speaker 3: say because the whole point of patenting is to maximize innovation,
Speaker 3: not inhibit it. And in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion,
Speaker 3: most patents inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But
Speaker 3: there are case I want to do one a single
Speaker 3: cases like where such as a phase three clinical trial
Speaker 3: that might cost a billion dollars, but then the drugs
Speaker 3: thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacture, and if you
Speaker 3: can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars,
Speaker 3: no one will pay for the billion dollars free writer problem. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: So you have to address the free writer problem. But
Speaker 3: other than that, there should be no patents. The ideas
Speaker 3: are easy.
Speaker 2: You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get
Speaker 2: there faster and do things bigger.
Speaker 3: The idea is the easy part. The herd execution is
Speaker 3: the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's one
Speaker 3: percent inspiration, if not less than one percent and nineteen
Speaker 3: nine percent perspiration.
Speaker 4: But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at.
Speaker 4: Also because you're making you know, the companies you're building
Speaker 4: are actually building stuff. They're building cars, they're building spaceships,
Speaker 4: they're building things that if they don't work, it's a
Speaker 4: real problem. And the precision you manufacture things with, how
Speaker 4: do you get that level of precision? How do you
Speaker 4: get how do you build a culture? You're not You're
Speaker 4: amazing at thinking outside the box. But what's interesting is
Speaker 4: you may even be better at execution, which is how
Speaker 4: do you execute so effectively well.
Speaker 3: I take as expost principles approach to everything. It's not
Speaker 3: as though I wanted to in source manufacturering, It's just
Speaker 3: that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So, you know,
Speaker 3: the idea of the beginning of Tesla was that we
Speaker 3: would outsource almost all the manufacturing. But then it turned
Speaker 3: out there was no there were no good companies to
Speaker 3: outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't a really really, it
Speaker 3: wasn't peaceable. Outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of the rule.
Speaker 3: And uh and just over time, we had to insource
Speaker 3: almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX. I became
Speaker 3: very good at manufacturing because I had to lose no choice.
Speaker 3: At this point, I might know more about manufacturing than
Speaker 3: any any human ever has, because I've done so many
Speaker 3: I've manufactured so many different things, and so many different arenas.
Speaker 3: I think probably more than anyone ever has.
Speaker 4: Look, that's that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's
Speaker 4: not a crazy statement. And you're somehow running Tesla and
Speaker 4: running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company
Speaker 4: and running Nourlink and doing doge.
Speaker 1: How much do you sleep in a given night?
Speaker 3: About six hours and average so about.
Speaker 4: Six So that's it wouldn't have shocked me if you
Speaker 4: said three or four.
Speaker 3: So the Crenet struction is how many hours do you
Speaker 3: work a day? I work almost every working.
Speaker 4: Hour, and Ben, he's not kidding that. Like when Elan
Speaker 4: and I were first getting to know each other, I suggested,
Speaker 4: I said, hey, let let's grab dinner sometime.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you remember what you said.
Speaker 1: You said, I don't eat dinner.
Speaker 3: I don't have social dinners really.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean that, Yeah, I mean you obviously eat food, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, idea going to a restaurant for two hours, But.
Speaker 4: The idea of like, I don't, But it was it
Speaker 4: was just kind of matter of fact, why would I
Speaker 4: go to dinner like you up?
Speaker 1: You work?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I literally just thought I'll have lunch and
Speaker 3: then it brought during meetings and continue being.
Speaker 2: How many nights have you slept at your offices?
Speaker 3: You think your career percentage.
Speaker 2: Wise where you say, I just got to take this
Speaker 2: nap basically because my body forces me to, and I
Speaker 2: got to get back to work fast and efficiently without
Speaker 2: going somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it started out even with the first company,
Speaker 3: uh SO two, which is a terrible name, but the
Speaker 3: first internet company. The we're able to rent an office
Speaker 3: which was like in a leaky attack, essentially four five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could
Speaker 3: find just eight hundred dollars a month. So like, and
Speaker 3: we only had about five thousand dollars between our brother
Speaker 3: and I, so like, we're not we'll just stay in
Speaker 3: the office. Yep. So we got some couches that converted
Speaker 3: into beds and we'd can't sleep at night, and then
Speaker 3: we just have like turn the beds back into couches
Speaker 3: before anyone came, and then we would shout the YMCA
Speaker 3: down the road and so that went that that that
Speaker 3: that literally was for several months. What we did, it
Speaker 3: was in great shape, you know, work out the way.
Speaker 3: I still remember that that YMCA at page Miller al
Speaker 3: Camino in Palo Alto.
Speaker 1: So that was a long time.
Speaker 3: Again, so it's been I don't know. I've never thought
Speaker 3: to count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So you're now the richest man on earth.
Speaker 4: Do you still sleep in the office, Well, that's true,
Speaker 4: maybe Mars.
Speaker 1: We'll find someone else, but.
Speaker 3: I think if someone is a sovereign head of a country,
Speaker 3: there to facto Richard by Allot.
Speaker 1: Do you still sleep at the office now?
Speaker 3: I have sometimes slept at the office. Yeah.
Speaker 2: As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Sentner,
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal
Speaker 2: with my podcast and you can listen to my podcast
Speaker 2: every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each
Speaker 2: day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to
Speaker 2: have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson podcasts,
Speaker 2: and we will see you back here on Monday morning.