Speaker 1: Well, first half, welcome it is Verdict with Ted Cruz,
Speaker 1: Ben Ferguson with you. Happy New Year's Center to you
Speaker 1: as well and to everyone listening right now. And we've
Speaker 1: got a really fun show that we're going to do
Speaker 1: to day on New Year's and it deals with Waye's
Speaker 1: fraud and abuse that we talked about that's now becoming
Speaker 1: a reality in Minnesota months ago with your good friend
Speaker 1: Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Well, Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you had
Speaker 2: a fantastic New Year's Eve. I hope you stayed safe.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed time with your family, you celebrate it.
Speaker 2: I hope you're ready now for an incredible twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: I hope that you accomplish something that really makes a difference,
Speaker 2: That you make a difference in the lives of those
Speaker 2: around you, you make a difference in the lives of
Speaker 2: your kids and your community, and you make a real
Speaker 2: impact fighting for our country. Our country is at a
Speaker 2: pivotal time, and I hope twenty twenty six is a
Speaker 2: time where you stand up and say I am going
Speaker 2: to stand up and defend our nation. Like so many
Speaker 2: patriots who have preceded me on this New Year's Day,
Speaker 2: We're going to play one of my favorite podcasts that
Speaker 2: Bet and I ever did, and this was last year.
Speaker 2: Last summer, we interviewed Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine. We sat down with him for
Speaker 2: an hour in the White House, talking to him about
Speaker 2: Doge and what he was doing with President Trump, but
Speaker 2: also talking talking to him personally about who he is,
Speaker 2: about how he built Tesla, how he built SpaceX. We
Speaker 2: talked to him about AI and killer robots. And it's
Speaker 2: a fascinating show and we present it to you right
Speaker 2: now in its entirety.
Speaker 1: Make sure you download it wherever you get your podcast
Speaker 1: It's a great episode. It's out right now. Verdict with
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Well, we're in the White House right now and we're
Speaker 2: here with my friend Elon Musk, who really has not
Speaker 2: been doing much of anything, has not made any news
Speaker 2: is and nobody has noticed the impact.
Speaker 3: Welcome Elon.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Holy crap.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, wow. Let me just say, never a dull moment.
Speaker 3: Never a dull moment.
Speaker 2: The first fifty days the president and has spent an
Speaker 2: office over the top and the first fifty days you've spent.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an
Speaker 2: impact the way you have. At the beginning, let me
Speaker 2: start with a question. You know a lot about which
Speaker 2: was worse the mess you found at Twitter or the
Speaker 2: mess you found in the federal government.
Speaker 4: Well, it's hard to compete with the federal government.
Speaker 2: What's surprised you about the federal government? I assume you
Speaker 2: came in and assumed it was bad. Is it worse
Speaker 2: than you expected?
Speaker 4: It is worse than I expected. But on the plus side,
Speaker 4: that means there's more opportunity for improvement. So look, if
Speaker 4: you look on the bright side, there's actually a lot
Speaker 4: of opportunity for improvement in federal government expenditures because it's
Speaker 4: so bad. If it was a well run ship, it
Speaker 4: would be very difficult to improve. So now it's like
Speaker 4: people say, well, how will you figure out how to
Speaker 4: save money in the federal government? Well, it's like being
Speaker 4: in a room where the walls, the roof, and the
Speaker 4: floor are old targets. Any direction, yeah, jitness, Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm sure you would agree.
Speaker 3: So a lot of folks have talked about like like.
Speaker 4: You can't right, yeah, this is going to any direction?
Speaker 2: A lot of the crazy expenditures, things like like two
Speaker 2: million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala. In essential,
Speaker 2: you know, transgendered mice and sesame street in Iraq.
Speaker 3: A lot of that has gotten attention.
Speaker 2: But some of the stuff you've told me about, like
Speaker 2: tell us about computer licenses and government agencies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so most of what do just finding. You don't
Speaker 4: need to be shock comes. It's very obvious, basic stuff.
Speaker 4: So in every goblet depopment, I say every because we've
Speaker 4: not yet found a single exception. There are far too
Speaker 4: many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software
Speaker 4: licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department.
Speaker 2: Like you were saying, like an agency with fifteen thousand
Speaker 2: people might have thirty thousand licenses. Yes, and even of
Speaker 2: the fifteen thousand employees, a good chunk of them hadn't
Speaker 2: used the license, had never logged on or used the application.
Speaker 4: Yes, we found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions.
Speaker 4: There were zero logins, so it had and yet we
Speaker 4: were paying for it. Yes, the government's paying for thousands
Speaker 4: of licenses of software or media subscriptions and no one
Speaker 4: had ever logged in even once or credit cards.
Speaker 3: You found the same thing with government credit cards.
Speaker 4: We found that there are twice as many credit cards
Speaker 4: as there are humans could and I still don't have
Speaker 4: a good explanation for why this is the case. And
Speaker 4: these are ten thousand dollars limited cards, so it's a
Speaker 4: lot of money.
Speaker 1: Is it incompetent that you're finding or is this like
Speaker 1: the biggest money wandering scheme in the history of the
Speaker 1: world that you're finding?
Speaker 4: Okay, I think it's mostly if you say, look, what's
Speaker 4: the waste to fraud ratio? Yeah, in my opinion, it's
Speaker 4: it's like eighty percent wasst twenty percent for But you
Speaker 4: do have these sort of gray areas. For example, example
Speaker 4: be so, uh, we saw a lot of payments going
Speaker 4: out of treasury that had no payment code and no
Speaker 4: explanation for the payment, and then we're we're we're trying
Speaker 4: to figure out what that payment is and we'd see
Speaker 4: that Okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off,
Speaker 4: but but someone forgot to shut off that that contract
Speaker 4: and so the company kept getting money. Wow. Now is
Speaker 4: that waste or fraud both? Both?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not.
Speaker 4: Supposed to get you're not supposed to get it, but
Speaker 4: you but the government sent it to you and nobody
Speaker 4: from the government asked for it back. Take for example,
Speaker 4: the one the one point nine billion dollars given to
Speaker 4: Stacy Abrams y fake ng O.
Speaker 5: Utter insanity, explain that story. That's that's just corrupt. I
Speaker 5: think that's paying off cronies at that point. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: by the way, she knew, like when you get two
Speaker 5: billion dollars, you don't miss that.
Speaker 4: That's not on accident. That's allegedly it was for like, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, environmentally friendly appliances or something. And they've given
Speaker 4: like like one hundred appliances so far for two billion dollars.
Speaker 4: It's very expensive toast roll that's fridge, it's nice. Is
Speaker 4: It's just obviously one of the biggest scam Ford holes
Speaker 4: we've uncovered, which is really crazy, is uh? Is that
Speaker 4: is that the government can give money to a so
Speaker 4: called nonprofit with with very few controls and then that
Speaker 4: and there's there's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit, so
Speaker 4: there's no So this is where with the you know,
Speaker 4: one point nine billion of Stacey Arams, who's who's that
Speaker 4: they didn't give themselves extremely lavished like insane salaries, expense
Speaker 4: everything yep, to the to the nonprofit you know, buy
Speaker 4: jets and homes and all sorts of things, live like
Speaker 4: kings and queens. Yes on the taxpayer, dont correct you.
Speaker 4: This is happening at scale. It's not just one or two.
Speaker 4: We're seeing this everywhere.
Speaker 2: Now, one of the things you told me about is
Speaker 2: at least what you call say, magic money computers. Well,
Speaker 2: so tell us about it, because I've never heard of
Speaker 2: that until you brought that up.
Speaker 4: Okay, So you may think that these the government computers
Speaker 4: like all talk to each other, they synchronize, they add
Speaker 4: up what funds are going somewhere, and it's you know,
Speaker 4: it's coherent that that that the you know, there's that,
Speaker 4: and that the numbers, for example, that you're presented as
Speaker 4: a senator, yeah, are actually the real numbers. And one
Speaker 4: would think we would think they're not. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 4: mean they're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by
Speaker 4: five percent or ten percent in some cases. So I
Speaker 4: call it magic money computer. Any computer which can just
Speaker 4: make money out of thin air best magic money.
Speaker 3: So how does that work?
Speaker 4: It just issues payments?
Speaker 2: And you said something like eleven of these computers of
Speaker 2: treasury that are that are sending out truellions in payments.
Speaker 4: They're mostly a treasury, some are with the sum at HHS,
Speaker 4: some that there's one one of two as states. There's
Speaker 4: some at DoD. I think we found now fourteen magic
Speaker 4: money computers Gene. Okay, they just send money out of nothing.
Speaker 2: You have an ability to see where leverage points are
Speaker 2: and how things actually happen. So I remember back I
Speaker 2: think it was September October of this year, before the election.
Speaker 2: We didn't know who was going to win, and I
Speaker 2: was at your house in Austin. We were talking about
Speaker 2: it and you said, you said, look, I don't want
Speaker 2: a job in Washington, and you said, all I want
Speaker 2: is the log in for every computer. And I remember
Speaker 2: thinking at the time that sounded kind of weird, like
Speaker 2: I just didn't get it. And I have to say,
Speaker 2: what's interesting on this. If I would have thought like, okay,
Speaker 2: how do you reform government, like sort of the traditional
Speaker 2: way to think about it is, okay, give me an
Speaker 2: ORC chart, let me sit down with the people who
Speaker 2: are running agencies. And what you saw immediately is to
Speaker 2: understand what's really going on, get to the payment systems,
Speaker 2: get to the computers. Yeah, Like, why is getting to
Speaker 2: the computers so critical to understanding what's actually happening?
Speaker 4: Well, the government is run by computers, so you've got
Speaker 4: essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government. And
Speaker 4: if you want to know, did you know that then no? Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: so when somebody, like even when the president issues an
Speaker 4: executive order, that's going to go through a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere.
Speaker 4: And if you want to know what the situation is
Speaker 4: with the accounting and you're trying to reconcile accounting and
Speaker 4: get rid of waist and fraud, you must be able
Speaker 4: to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise you can't figure it
Speaker 4: out because all you're doing is asking a human who
Speaker 4: will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally
Speaker 4: usually ask some contractor will ask another contractor to your
Speaker 4: query on the computer. Wow, that's out. Actually, look so
Speaker 4: it's many layers d. So the only way to reconcile
Speaker 4: the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is
Speaker 4: to to actually look at the computers and see what's
Speaker 4: going on. So that's what I call it. That's like,
Speaker 4: that's what when I sort of cryptically referred to reprogramming
Speaker 4: the matrix. You have to understand what's going on the computers.
Speaker 4: You have to reconcile the computer databases in order to
Speaker 4: identify the waste and fraud.
Speaker 2: I don't know that there was anyone in Congress who understood,
Speaker 2: certainly myself included, who understood the leverage that comes from
Speaker 2: the computer and the data. In particular, that that Congress
Speaker 2: would think about give me a report on what your
Speaker 2: expenditures are rather than actually getting into the pipes. And
Speaker 2: I think that has been fascinating that it's let you
Speaker 2: uncover a bunch of craft that just nobody knew.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, in order for money to go to
Speaker 4: a van acount, it's it's not like we're standing truckloads
Speaker 4: of cash all over the place where it's a where
Speaker 4: hiring money. Right, it was sending money through the ach
Speaker 4: system or through the Swift system. So in order for
Speaker 4: money to flow, it's going to flow electronically. So that's
Speaker 4: that's what you need to look at. You can look
Speaker 4: at the actual electronic money flows.
Speaker 2: And Tesla and all your companies you have accounting and
Speaker 2: you have every expenditure. You have it coded for what
Speaker 2: it's going for. Federal government doesn't work that way. They
Speaker 2: don't code what.
Speaker 3: The money's going for.
Speaker 4: They do not, but they didn't. They didn't.
Speaker 2: And like one of the things that that you told me,
Speaker 2: you said, if any company kept its books the way
Speaker 2: the federal government does, they'd arrest the officers and put
Speaker 2: them in jail.
Speaker 4: Yes, if it was a poly company would be dealisted immediately.
Speaker 4: It would fail, it's ordered, and the officers of the
Speaker 4: company would be imprisoned. That's the level of enough business
Speaker 4: in the Unfortunately it's deliberately or do you think this
Speaker 4: is in competence again, it's eighty percent. It's eighty percent
Speaker 4: incompetence or in twenty percent malice.
Speaker 1: If you look at DOGE now and you look at
Speaker 1: the government and what you're finding, what percentage have you
Speaker 1: guys even gotten to and how much of it is
Speaker 1: mars where you haven't even gotten there yet? Because there's
Speaker 1: so much you're finding out here, I mean, how many
Speaker 1: you seem like a timeline guy when you say, all right,
Speaker 1: I want to get in there and get all these
Speaker 1: you know, numbers and things. How far are we from
Speaker 1: the in game where you've seen it all, been able
Speaker 1: to process it all and fix it. I mean are
Speaker 1: we years away, months away.
Speaker 4: Not yours, I mean recently confident that we'll be able
Speaker 4: to get a trillion dollars of waste and forward out,
Speaker 4: and that meaning that it will have what we'll have
Speaker 4: a net savings in f I twenty six, which thoughts
Speaker 4: in October obviously of a trillion dollars provider were allowed
Speaker 4: to We're allowed to continue and and our progress is
Speaker 4: not impeded. And we're very public about what we do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you put it out on the website about.
Speaker 4: How we could be more transparent. Literally everything action we do,
Speaker 4: smaller lodge we put on the doorst dot gov website,
Speaker 4: and we post on the x handle. And when people
Speaker 4: complain about it and they say, oh, you're doing something costumes,
Speaker 4: I'm like, well, which of these costs?
Speaker 3: Everyone knows exactly what you're doing.
Speaker 4: Extreme transparent. Yeah, I don't think it's anything's been this
Speaker 4: transparent ever.
Speaker 2: So five years ago you were a hero to the left, cool,
Speaker 2: you had electric cars, you had space, And in five
Speaker 2: years you've got.
Speaker 4: To go to a party in Hollywood and not getduddy looks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, yeah, and you might's invited, but I don't
Speaker 2: know if I need to go. And I don't think
Speaker 2: it's an exaggeration to say today after Donald Trump, the
Speaker 2: left hates you more than a person on earth.
Speaker 4: Yes, I appear to be number two. I mean, if
Speaker 4: you're judged by the various signs.
Speaker 2: The estrangements, it's Trump arrangement syndrome and elon de arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 3: How is that for you?
Speaker 2: That's a little bit of whiplash of going from being
Speaker 2: like mister cool to the devil incarnate in just a
Speaker 2: couple of years. Is that is that kind of weird experience,
Speaker 2: that transformation?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Why do they hate you so much?
Speaker 4: Well, because we're we're clearly over the target if those
Speaker 4: was ineffective, if we were not actually getting rid of
Speaker 4: a bunch of wasting forward and a bunch of that
Speaker 4: for I mean, the forward reason we're seeing is overwhelmingly
Speaker 4: on the on the left. I mean, it's it's there's
Speaker 4: it's not zero on the right. But these NGOs are
Speaker 4: almost all left wing NGOs that are being funded for example,
Speaker 4: So they hate me because Doge is being effective and
Speaker 4: dog is getting rid of a lot of waste for
Speaker 4: that they were the people and left were taking advantage
Speaker 4: of that. That's that's that's what it comes out to you.
Speaker 4: And and the single biggest thing that they're that they're
Speaker 4: worried about is that doge is is going to turn
Speaker 4: off fraudulent payments of entitlements. I mean everything from Social Security, medicare, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, unemployment does ability, smallpers administ registration loans turn
Speaker 4: them off to illegals. This is that flux of the matter. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: this is this is the this is the thing that
Speaker 4: why they really hit my guts, want me to die.
Speaker 2: And do you think that's billions, hundreds of billions? What
Speaker 2: do you think the scale is of that?
Speaker 4: I think across the country it's in the it's well,
Speaker 4: notth of one hundred billion, maybe two hundred million. So
Speaker 4: by using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to
Speaker 4: attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and buy voters,
Speaker 4: and buy voters exactly the basically bring in ten twenty
Speaker 4: million people who are beholden to the Democrats for governor
Speaker 4: handouts and will vote overwhelming the Democrat as has been
Speaker 4: demonstrated in California. This is it's an election strategy. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's powered. Yes, and it doesn't take much to turn
Speaker 4: the swing states blue. I mean off in a swing
Speaker 4: state yet be won by ten twenty thousand votes. Sure,
Speaker 4: so if the DAMS can bring in two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: illegals and over time get them legal legalized, not counting
Speaker 4: any cheating that takes place, because there is some cheating,
Speaker 4: but even without cheating, if you bake, if you if
Speaker 4: you bring in illegals that are ten x the voted
Speaker 4: differential in a swing state, it will no longer be
Speaker 4: a swing state, right, and the DAMS will win all
Speaker 4: the swing states just a matter of time, and America
Speaker 4: will be permanent deep blue socialist state. At the House,
Speaker 4: the Senate, YEP, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court will
Speaker 4: all go hardcore down. They will then further cement that
Speaker 4: by bringing even more aliens so you can't vote your
Speaker 4: way out of it.
Speaker 3: Their objeman is to make one.
Speaker 4: Party socialist state, and it will be much worse than California,
Speaker 4: because at least California is mitigated by the fact that
Speaker 4: someone can leave California.
Speaker 3: You can go to Texas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, you did go to make everywhere California, but
Speaker 4: worse by the way.
Speaker 2: The middle of the pandemic, I spent forty five minutes
Speaker 2: on the phone with Elon. He was still in California.
Speaker 2: I was walking my dog's snowflake and trying to convince
Speaker 2: you come to Texas. The commis in California can't stand you.
Speaker 2: We love you, we want you here. And you didn't
Speaker 2: quite go then, but you went not that long afterwards.
Speaker 4: I mean, the COVID actions almost killed Tesla because every
Speaker 4: other auto plant in the country was a lot of open,
Speaker 4: but ours, which was in California, was not a lot
Speaker 4: of open. Wow wow. So they almost killed Tesla.
Speaker 2: So as a personal matter, do you ever regret it?
Speaker 2: Like five years ago you go to the Oscars and
Speaker 2: mister cool and now you've got death threats every day,
Speaker 2: Like do you well?
Speaker 4: These days the Oscars are boring. I wouldn't want to go.
Speaker 3: God bless the movies they nominate.
Speaker 2: No one on earth has ever seen, Like could they
Speaker 2: actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch?
Speaker 4: I mean, how many great movies have come out and
Speaker 4: last your very.
Speaker 3: Few, depressingly few, yeah, very few.
Speaker 4: Last Oscars came and went. I didn't watch it. There's
Speaker 4: nothing to see.
Speaker 2: I was sad that Gene Hackman just passed away because
Speaker 2: Unforgiven was spectacular, but that was a long time ago.
Speaker 4: Un Forgiven came out.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned today here and before about the possibility of
Speaker 1: someone wanting to take you out, dealing with the death threats,
Speaker 1: we see.
Speaker 4: It's not in my imagination. You can just look on
Speaker 4: social media. Yeah, but like is it because very clear?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And look I'm I'm very familiar with it.
Speaker 4: And they've got science. They are people with science and
Speaker 4: demonstrations saying that I need to die.
Speaker 2: Do you think are these just whack jobs or do
Speaker 2: you think there are hopefull foreign people? Do you think
Speaker 2: there are foreign entities behind this? Do you think they're
Speaker 2: domestic entities behind the threats? And also the attacks to
Speaker 2: Twitter are not Twitter but Tesla. I mean, you know
Speaker 2: you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire. Do you
Speaker 2: think that's organized and paid for?
Speaker 4: Yes, at least some of it is organized and hate
Speaker 4: for I think by domestic you know, basically left wing
Speaker 4: organizations in America funded by uh, left wing billionaires essentially.
Speaker 3: Is it like Act Blue or what.
Speaker 4: Act Blue is one of them? You know, Arabella. You
Speaker 4: know the classic it's funded by the you know, the
Speaker 4: blue basically the left wing ANDNGO cabal.
Speaker 1: How big of a threads is to like what you
Speaker 1: build at Tesla. I mean, I remember when Tesla's came out,
Speaker 1: it was people that they didn't want to have gas cars.
Speaker 1: A lot of it was environmental reasons. I jokingly said,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm a Texas guy, I'm always going
Speaker 1: to have something that burns gas. My kids now, all
Speaker 1: three of my boys think that that Tesla's are awesome.
Speaker 1: The cyber truck is the car they want their dad
Speaker 1: to buy, which I laugh because I never could have
Speaker 1: imagined that five years ago.
Speaker 3: And now I'm looking at.
Speaker 2: We're worth the White House in the President's Tesla sparks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, meaning which is the fullest damp.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you've changed a generation when you look
Speaker 1: at my kids are six and eight and they're going
Speaker 1: Dad buy a cyber truck and I'm considering it. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a full circle in a weird way.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I do have this story that the most
Speaker 4: errantating outcome is the most likely, So yeah, it seems
Speaker 4: often to be true. What what twist or turn of fate. Well,
Speaker 4: I would the highest ratings if this was if we're
Speaker 4: a TV show, what twistal turn of fate would generate
Speaker 4: the highest ratings that there's a good chance that happens.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say if if Act Blue and Arabella.
Speaker 4: Network Blue is a huge scam X level, do you.
Speaker 2: Think it's foreign money? Chinese money? Where do you think
Speaker 2: the money in Act Blue is coming from? How do
Speaker 2: you figure that out?
Speaker 4: Well, it's not coming from the from a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of from a ground swell of public support, because when
Speaker 4: individual donors looked at and Act Blue, they aventually turned
Speaker 4: out to be like diehard Republicans, people have never given
Speaker 4: in their life. So you're going to track down a
Speaker 4: bunch of thesee where it says, oh, I gave sixteen
Speaker 4: thousand dollars and they're like, I didn't give sixteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: We're talking about this is Well, if those whole con
Speaker 4: friends of mine, if I found themselves on the Act
Speaker 4: Blue list, they.
Speaker 2: Like So that's if it can actually be shown that
Speaker 2: they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations, that's objectively
Speaker 2: a criminal act, that that is funding terrorist activity, and
Speaker 2: the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies.
Speaker 3: So thats down is a terrorist activity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Let me ask AI in ten years, how is life
Speaker 2: going to be different because of AI for just a
Speaker 2: normal person.
Speaker 4: Well, ten years is a long time. In ten years,
Speaker 4: probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively,
Speaker 4: probably almost. I think in ten years, based on the
Speaker 4: cart rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the
Speaker 4: smartest human. Yeah. Yeah. There will also be a massive
Speaker 4: number of robots, So humanoid robots.
Speaker 2: By the way, I got to ask, how come your
Speaker 2: robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot?
Speaker 3: Was that intentional or just.
Speaker 1: I was hoping he's gonna say, yeah, just to mess
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 4: It's not meant to look like any prior robot. And
Speaker 4: we'll iterate the design and you'll be able to have
Speaker 4: a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic. You'll be
Speaker 4: able to switch out the kind of snap on cosmetic
Speaker 4: parts of the robot make it look like something else.
Speaker 4: I you lying. So there'll be ultimately billions of humanoid
Speaker 4: robots all costs will be self driving in ten years.
Speaker 4: In ten years, probably ninety percent of miles driven will
Speaker 4: be autonomous. Huh wow that fast. Yeah, in five years,
Speaker 4: probably fifty percent of all miles driven will be autonomous.
Speaker 2: Now, if AI will be smarter than any persons, how
Speaker 2: many jobs go away because of that? And what do
Speaker 2: people do if you've got billions of people that are
Speaker 2: losing their jobs like that, a lot of people are
Speaker 2: understandably freaked out about that.
Speaker 4: Well, goods, goods and services will become close to free.
Speaker 4: So it's not as though people will be wanting in
Speaker 4: terms of goods and services. So why is that? What?
Speaker 2: Why are goods and services free in an AI world
Speaker 2: or close to free?
Speaker 4: Well, you have I don't know, call it tens of
Speaker 4: billions of robots that they will They will make you
Speaker 4: anything or provide any service you want for basically next
Speaker 4: to nothing. It's it's not that people will be will
Speaker 4: have a lower stand of living. They'll have actually much
Speaker 4: higher standard of living. But the challenge will be fulfillment.
Speaker 4: How do you drive fulfillment and meeting in life?
Speaker 2: Is skynet real like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI?
Speaker 2: How real is the prospect of killer robots annihilating humanity?
Speaker 4: Twenty percent likely? Maybe ten percent on what timeframe fifty
Speaker 4: ten years so soon.
Speaker 3: Like you you see a world where that's possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean you can look at it like
Speaker 4: the glasses eighty ninety percent full, meaning like eighty percent
Speaker 4: likely will have extreme prosperity for all.
Speaker 2: Now, I guess my view, we're in a race to
Speaker 2: win AI. We're in a race with China, and my
Speaker 2: view is, if they're going to be killer robots, I'd
Speaker 2: rather they be American killer robots than Chinese. How likely
Speaker 2: are we winning right now? Is America winning right now?
Speaker 2: And how likely is America to win the race for
Speaker 2: AI visa v.
Speaker 3: China or anyone else?
Speaker 4: Well, the next few years, I think America is likely
Speaker 4: to win. Then it will be a function of who
Speaker 4: controls the AI chip fabrication, the factories that make the
Speaker 4: AI chiefs, who controls them if they are controlled, If
Speaker 4: more of them will controlled by China, than China will win.
Speaker 2: More of the factories that are making the AI chip.
Speaker 2: So you think that will determine it?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: And how are we doing versus China on that front?
Speaker 4: Well, right now almost all the advanced AI chip factories
Speaker 4: they call them fabs are in Taiwan.
Speaker 3: And what if China invades one miles away from Yeah,
Speaker 3: what happens if China?
Speaker 2: If China invades Taiwan, what happens to the world.
Speaker 4: Well, if they were to invade in the niatom, the
Speaker 4: world would be cuttle from advanced AI chips. And currently
Speaker 4: one of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan.
Speaker 1: How fast can we put that online in America? How
Speaker 1: important is that for national security?
Speaker 4: I think it's essential for national security, and we're not
Speaker 4: doing enough.
Speaker 2: You're fifty three years old. I'm one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 2: days older than you. By what the hell have I
Speaker 2: done in my life?
Speaker 3: I know?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Fifty three years old?
Speaker 4: Pretty well?
Speaker 2: Well, so seventy one was a great year, and I
Speaker 2: was December seventy because I was just just right before
Speaker 2: you were the summer of seventy one.
Speaker 4: I was born sixty nine days after four twenty.
Speaker 3: Wow, I did ask Ben.
Speaker 4: This is look.
Speaker 3: I did ask Ben.
Speaker 2: Should I show up and pull up a joint and say,
Speaker 2: can we beat Rogan's views? But I was pretty sure
Speaker 2: it might cause a scandal if we speak a podcast.
Speaker 4: It just turned out to be like a chocolate cigard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me ask you if if today was your
Speaker 2: last day on Earth?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what what?
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting it's going to be.
Speaker 2: But if it were, what do you think your biggest
Speaker 2: legacy would be if everything you've done one hundred years
Speaker 2: from now? What do you think people would remember if
Speaker 2: if if it were zero to today.
Speaker 1: And were you ever going to space in the.
Speaker 4: In the distant future one hundred or one thousand years ago,
Speaker 4: if SpaceX got humans to Mars, that's what they would
Speaker 4: remember me for. All right, final set of questions.
Speaker 2: Who's the smartest guy you've ever met? You hang out
Speaker 2: with some brilliant people, Like like when you look at
Speaker 2: what's the CEO you look at than yourself?
Speaker 4: What CEO? Do you say?
Speaker 3: Damn, that guy's good.
Speaker 4: Larry Elson's very smart. So I say, Larry Elison's one
Speaker 4: of the smartest people. You know, Larry Page. I mean,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of people that are very smart.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say, Like, you know, I think something
Speaker 4: Toree smart is as smart as so you know what
Speaker 4: if what have they done that is difficult and significant?
Speaker 4: You know, Jeff Bezos has not a lot of difficult
Speaker 4: and significant things. I mean, there are a lot of
Speaker 4: smart humans. I call them smart for smart for a
Speaker 4: human A lot of people who are in the smart
Speaker 4: for a human category.
Speaker 2: All right, final lightning round, Star Wars or Star Trek.
Speaker 4: The first movie I said in a theater was Star Wars,
Speaker 4: so I think it had a profound effect on me.
Speaker 4: I was six years old. I think, imagine, best first
Speaker 4: movie you ever see in a theater is Star Wars.
Speaker 4: It's gonna blaw your mind.
Speaker 3: Best Star Wars.
Speaker 4: Movie Empires tracks Back.
Speaker 3: The only objectively right answer.
Speaker 2: I stood in line in three hours with my dad
Speaker 2: to see it on opening day.
Speaker 4: Kirk or Picard, I like them both.
Speaker 2: For Kirk again, objectively right answer. By the way, James T.
Speaker 2: Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat, and
Speaker 2: the left gets very mad when I say that best
Speaker 2: Star Trek.
Speaker 4: Movie, I mean the original, the first Star Trek movie.
Speaker 4: That's okayons. Both of both Ratha coons were pretty good.
Speaker 4: But yeah, the original Wratha Khon.
Speaker 3: Ricardo Montalbaan Revenge is a dish best served cold. It
Speaker 3: is very cold in space, although I will say Wrathacon
Speaker 3: is objectively the right answer. But but four as a
Speaker 3: sleeper when they go back to San Francisco and and
Speaker 3: and go find the whales and and you know, Scotty
Speaker 3: picks up spicks, picks up the mouth and talks to
Speaker 3: it and goes a keyboard. How quaint that's a sleeper?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 3: Last question? Did Han shoot first?
Speaker 4: It seemed like he shot second. This is verdict.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I apologized Ben so Ben was
Speaker 2: a jock and played tennis at ole miss and so
Speaker 2: so occasionally when when we geek out a little, I.
Speaker 3: Love watching y'all geek out over.
Speaker 4: There is still on the question, I love you missed
Speaker 4: his The alien miss is flaster shot, So why do
Speaker 4: you miss his flaster shot? Must have been because he
Speaker 4: got shot first. He's missing a point blank bastel shot.
Speaker 4: If they less, they got knocked off kids.
Speaker 2: But it's a question of real shot, which is is
Speaker 2: Han Solo simply a hero or an anti hero? And
Speaker 2: and so I'm in the Han shot first category. I
Speaker 2: think I don't like sanitized stories.
Speaker 4: You would have had to shot first because other way,
Speaker 4: why why would the alien miss a point blank range?
Speaker 3: Are you ever going to go to outer space?
Speaker 1: Is that thing in your life goals?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd like to go to Mars at some point,
Speaker 4: And people have said do I want to dine maz
Speaker 4: and I say, yes, just not an impact.
Speaker 2: Now that's a very good answer. The astronauts on the
Speaker 2: space station are they political prisoners? Some of them are
Speaker 2: because because you could have given them a ride back,
Speaker 2: and Joe Biden said no, purely for politics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some debate about
Speaker 4: this online. But the thing is that it was very
Speaker 4: a very high level of decision, so it wasn't really
Speaker 4: even an acid decision. It was just that the Biden
Speaker 4: White House did not want to have someone who is
Speaker 4: pro Trump rescuing askorate's rifle before the election, so they
Speaker 4: pushed it.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're one of those astronauts, you got to
Speaker 2: be pretty pissed off about that.
Speaker 4: Well if they're a Democrat, yes, a Democrat, like everything's fine,
Speaker 4: fair enough. So I think one of them is a
Speaker 4: republicable is a Democrat, So it depends on which one
Speaker 4: you ask.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Elon, this was this was awesome. And
Speaker 2: let me say, and by the way, I put out
Speaker 2: on X the day before yesterday, if you were having
Speaker 2: a beer with Elon and could ask him anything, what
Speaker 2: would you ask? And got lots of responses. The most
Speaker 2: common response people said is say thank you. Look, Texans
Speaker 2: and the American people appreciate what you're doing. You don't
Speaker 2: have to put up with this BS, and you're doing it.
Speaker 2: I'm grateful you're making a hell of a difference for
Speaker 2: this country. I appreciate you, and the Americans appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's essential for the future of civilization. Otherwise I
Speaker 4: wouldn't be doing it. Yes, it's not like I want
Speaker 4: to get death threats.
Speaker 2: You know, Now, what year does man first set foot
Speaker 2: on Mars?
Speaker 4: I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
Speaker 4: and I don't think it's more than two to four
Speaker 4: years beyond that.
Speaker 2: And that's not an unman, that's a human being putting
Speaker 2: his foot on the surface.
Speaker 4: Yes, best case would be twenty nine.
Speaker 2: And what do you put the odds of finding either
Speaker 2: alien life or evidence of alien life.
Speaker 4: I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay, but.
Speaker 2: Do we find ruins, do we find remnants?
Speaker 4: We may we may find the ruins of a long
Speaker 4: dead alien civilization. That's possible, and we may find subterranean
Speaker 4: microbial life. That's possible.
Speaker 2: All right, if man lands on Mars and twenty nine
Speaker 2: how soon after that do you land on.
Speaker 4: Mars remains to be seen. I'm not sure. The important
Speaker 4: thing is that we build a self sustaining city on
Speaker 4: Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when
Speaker 4: that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper even
Speaker 4: when the supply ships from Earth stopped coming. At that point,
Speaker 4: even if something would happen on Earth, it might It
Speaker 4: might not be World War.
Speaker 3: Three, but it might be that a bad virus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it might not be anything for those things. It's like,
Speaker 4: lets say, civilization, you could die with a bang or whimper.
Speaker 4: It may be that civilization dies with a whimper rather
Speaker 4: than a bang or and simply loses the ability to
Speaker 4: send ships to Mars. But so you often need Mars
Speaker 4: to become self sustaining and be able to grow by
Speaker 4: itself before the resupply ships from Earth stopped coming. That
Speaker 4: is the critical a civilizational threshold, beyond which the probable
Speaker 4: life span of civilization is much greater.
Speaker 2: And how close are we technologically to be able to
Speaker 2: do that, To have a self sustaining settlement on the
Speaker 2: surface of Mars.
Speaker 4: I think it can be done in twenty years, but.
Speaker 2: It would take twenty years, So we're not in twenty nine,
Speaker 2: We're not there. What are we missing? What are the
Speaker 2: big technologies?
Speaker 4: We don't have a few people running around the surface
Speaker 4: in a hostile environment is not going to make it
Speaker 4: self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
Speaker 4: of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.
Speaker 2: So but you think we could have a million people
Speaker 2: on Mars in twenty years, Yes, And what's the technology
Speaker 2: we're missing right now? When you think about a million
Speaker 2: people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water,
Speaker 2: to get food, to keep them safe? I mean, what
Speaker 2: do we need to make that happen?
Speaker 4: Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry both.
Speaker 4: So you know, we're here at the top of a
Speaker 4: massive permit of industry that starts with mining a vas
Speaker 4: array of materials, those materials going through hundreds of steps
Speaker 4: of refinement. We grow food, obviously, we grow trees, We
Speaker 4: make things out of the trees. There's you know, you've
Speaker 4: got to You've got to build all that on Mars,
Speaker 4: and Mars is a hostile environment. It's you know, it
Speaker 4: sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near
Speaker 4: the equator on Mars, mean it's quite cold. How do
Speaker 4: you prep for that? Well, in the beginning, on Mars,
Speaker 4: you have to have a life support habitation module right
Speaker 4: like you need you can't just live outdoors. You can't
Speaker 4: breathe the air like a dome you think is likely? Yeah,
Speaker 4: glass domes type of thing.
Speaker 2: Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely
Speaker 2: to be ideal for a habitat?
Speaker 4: What might be Arcadia planetare is one of the one
Speaker 4: of the good options. That's one of my daughters is
Speaker 4: named Arcadia after that, and what makes that attractive? My
Speaker 4: eldest son's middle name is Ari's Mars.
Speaker 1: You've been thinking about this for a long time. If
Speaker 1: you're name and your kids around it.
Speaker 4: My eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars.
Speaker 1: When did you get the dream?
Speaker 4: Like, I mean, there's twenty twenty one soon.
Speaker 1: This is a decad it's old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dream So like when you were ten, did you
Speaker 2: look up and say I'm going to Mars?
Speaker 4: No? No. I read a lot of science fiction books
Speaker 4: and program computers. But the first finally off, the first
Speaker 4: video game that I sold was a space video game
Speaker 4: called Blastar. Maybe I was born this way?
Speaker 2: How do you do how do you become elon musk? Look,
Speaker 2: you're obviously smart as hell, but but there are lots
Speaker 2: there are a lot of smart people that don't do
Speaker 2: squat and you've managed everything you've touched has been an
Speaker 2: extraordinary success. Yeah, yeah, Look, I mean that's just objectively right.
Speaker 3: So what has led to that?
Speaker 2: Because there are other smart people that that's not true
Speaker 2: and they gaze at their nabel and they don't do anything.
Speaker 2: So what what do you do differently that makes you
Speaker 2: so effective?
Speaker 4: Well, I suppose to have a philosophy of curiosity. I
Speaker 4: want to find out the nature of the universe, understand
Speaker 4: the universe. And in order to do that, we have
Speaker 4: to travel to other planets, see other staw systems, maybe
Speaker 4: other galaxies, find perhaps other aian civilizations or at least
Speaker 4: the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding of
Speaker 4: worse it's universe going, wherey to come from? And what
Speaker 4: questions do we not yet know to ask about the
Speaker 4: answer that is the universe.
Speaker 2: So let's go back twenty five years, late nineties. You're
Speaker 2: at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the success
Speaker 2: it was which then helped launch you to the next one?
Speaker 4: And the next one. Yeah. So I studied physics and
Speaker 4: economics and college, which is a good foundation for understanding
Speaker 4: how the economy works and how reality works. And then
Speaker 4: was going to do a PhD at Stanford in advanced
Speaker 4: ultra capacitors actually as a potential means of energy storage
Speaker 4: for electric transport. Put that on hold to start an
Speaker 4: Internet company. Essentially came to the conclusion that the Internet
Speaker 4: was one of those rare things and I could either
Speaker 4: watch it happen while a grad student or anticipate. And
Speaker 4: I figured, I've always go to back to grad school.
Speaker 4: Grad school is going to be kind of the same.
Speaker 4: But I couldn't bear the thought of just watching the
Speaker 4: Internet happen. So I wanted to be a part of
Speaker 4: building it. So I created an Internet Internet company. We
Speaker 4: did the first maps, directions, yealow pages, white pages on
Speaker 4: the Internet. I actually wrote the first motion of suffware
Speaker 4: just by myself in ninety five, and we ended up
Speaker 4: selling that to Compac Texas Company. I can yeah, for
Speaker 4: about three hundred million dollars in cash about four years
Speaker 4: after I graduated. Wow. So I should say just to
Speaker 4: preface that I graduated with about one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a student debt. So it wasn't yeah you and me
Speaker 4: a both, yeah, yeah, right, I know. And when I
Speaker 4: first arrived in North America, I arrived with twenty five
Speaker 4: hundred dollars, a bag of books and a bag of clothes.
Speaker 2: All right, so you sell the company for three hundred million,
Speaker 2: How much does that change your life?
Speaker 4: Well? I got twenty one million dollars that jack, But
Speaker 4: I wanted to do more on the internet, so started
Speaker 4: a company called x dot com, which merch with a
Speaker 4: company called Confinity, which is Peter Teel and Max leftun yep.
Speaker 4: And the combined company was actually at first sttle called
Speaker 4: x dot com, but we later later changed the name
Speaker 4: of the company to PayPal. Because of all the name changes,
Speaker 4: it's kind of confusing. But the company that people know
Speaker 4: is know as PayPal today was actually I filed those
Speaker 4: in corporation documents for that company. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, And as you know, Peter Tiel and I
Speaker 2: were buddies back in the mid nineties before he went
Speaker 2: and did any of this. But you know, I became
Speaker 2: friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in
Speaker 2: New York and just sort of a young libertarian with
Speaker 2: a lot of dreams.
Speaker 4: So it's been a heck of a journey. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: And nously, Peter was involved in a coup. You know,
Speaker 4: we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate
Speaker 4: situation where you know that they did cooon met at PayPal.
Speaker 3: I kind of now, did you all make peace after that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, yeah. I mean I was doing a lot
Speaker 4: of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would
Speaker 4: have been successful. But I then went on a two
Speaker 4: week trip which was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon,
Speaker 4: and said not done my honeymoon earlier in the year,
Speaker 4: So it's raising money while doing doing holly honeymoon. But
Speaker 4: I was kind of awake. Did that go over by
Speaker 4: the way it worked? It worked, there you go, kind
Speaker 4: of worked. I raised money, yeah, yeah, and we had
Speaker 4: honeymoon there you go. So yeah, but you don't want
Speaker 4: to be away from the battle when things are scary,
Speaker 4: so I was not there to assuage the concerns of
Speaker 4: the troops. And anyway, we passed things up. And I
Speaker 4: have been friends nonetheless, and you know these days all
Speaker 4: like stay at his house and stuff. So I was
Speaker 4: super friends. And he's also invested in most of my companies.
Speaker 2: All right, So two thousand and two, you start SpaceX,
Speaker 2: Like how do you start a rocket company? Like what's
Speaker 2: the first day where you're like, I want to make
Speaker 2: rockets and I want to go to Mars?
Speaker 3: Like what do you do on day one?
Speaker 4: So I think you have to start with a some
Speaker 4: sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order
Speaker 4: for the in order to be in order to be
Speaker 4: highly motivated, you have to have some philosophical foundation. In
Speaker 4: my case, it was that that we want to expand
Speaker 4: the scale, the scope and scale of consciousness to better
Speaker 4: understand the nature of the universe. And in order to
Speaker 4: expand scale, expand consciousness, we need to go beyond one planet.
Speaker 4: If from one planet there's there's too much risk. You know,
Speaker 4: hopefully Earth civilization prosperos very far into the future, but
Speaker 4: it may not. There's always some risk that we are
Speaker 4: we self annihilate through nuclear war, or that there's a
Speaker 4: big meter that takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yep,
Speaker 4: there's always some risk if all your eggs are in
Speaker 4: one basket. So it's going to be better if we're
Speaker 4: a multiplanet species. And then once we're a multiplanet species
Speaker 4: that the next step would be to be a multi
Speaker 4: stellar and have civilization among on many different star systems.
Speaker 4: So in two thousand and one, I didn't think that
Speaker 4: I could. I didn't think I could sell a rocket companies.
Speaker 4: So I thought I'd take some of the money from paypall.
Speaker 4: In that case, I think it was about one hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty eight million dollars after tax, something like that,
Speaker 4: and I thought, you know, I don't need one hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty million dollars, so I'll spend a bunch of
Speaker 4: it on a philanthropic Mars mission to get the public
Speaker 4: excited about going back to Mars. We're going to Mars,
Speaker 4: I should say, Yeah, Mars was always going to be
Speaker 4: the destination after the Moon. Right. In fact, if you
Speaker 4: told people in nineteen sixty nine that it would be
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five and we've not even gone back to.
Speaker 3: The Moon, let alone, it's hard to believe.
Speaker 4: Let alone Mars, they'd be like what happened in the
Speaker 4: civilization collapse? Top Yeah, Like they would be incomprehensible that
Speaker 4: we've not been to Mars. By now, if you told
Speaker 4: people this after landing on the Moon in sixty.
Speaker 3: Nine, why do you think in fifty years America never
Speaker 3: went back to the moon.
Speaker 4: Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that could take
Speaker 4: people to the moon, and had the Space Shuttle, which
Speaker 4: could only go to lowth orbit, and then there really
Speaker 4: hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has been
Speaker 4: made since then that can go to the Moon or
Speaker 4: to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so you
Speaker 4: can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.
Speaker 2: So I remember you and I first met in twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen when when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I was still down in the basement office. They
Speaker 2: stick freshman senators in the basement office kind of like hazey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's what say.
Speaker 3: It sounds like there are one hundred seared offices. But
Speaker 3: for six months you stay in the basement.
Speaker 1: It's like worry, mean, you know where you're supposed to
Speaker 1: you know, I got to stay.
Speaker 2: Now, thirteen years into it, I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of wisdom to doing that. But you were down in
Speaker 2: the basement office, and I remember you were coming and
Speaker 2: sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air
Speaker 2: Force was not letting y'all bid to launch satellites, and
Speaker 2: so you were coming and saying, look, we got a company.
Speaker 2: I think we can do a really good job of this,
Speaker 2: and yet we're locked out of this. It's a little
Speaker 2: amazing to think the journey SpaceX is gone from then
Speaker 2: to now.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real
Speaker 4: because originally, consistently with I believe that we need to
Speaker 4: become a multiplant species, I thought the only way to
Speaker 4: do that would be through NASA sou and I think
Speaker 4: I thought, well, if I just get the public excited
Speaker 4: about Mars, then they'll do a mission to Mars. And
Speaker 4: so initially my thought was to have to send a
Speaker 4: small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then land
Speaker 4: the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see these the
Speaker 4: sort of money shot proof. The money shot would be
Speaker 4: green plants on a red background. I also recently knowned
Speaker 4: that money shot has a different meaning in some other arenas.
Speaker 4: But yeah, story, But what I'm trying to say is
Speaker 4: the captivating shot would be the green plants on a
Speaker 4: red background. And then hopefully that would if you did
Speaker 4: something like that, that would get the public excited about Mars,
Speaker 4: that would increase NASA's budget and then we could send
Speaker 4: people to Mars. Dream was nasty to do this? Yes,
Speaker 4: not you No, The original original plan was literally to
Speaker 4: take a bunch of the money from PayPal and I
Speaker 4: guess by some people's definition way with no profit on
Speaker 4: a non profit thing to I wanted to spend a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of my money for free to get nasta's
Speaker 4: budget to be bigger so we could go to friggin Mars. Right, wow,
Speaker 4: that's what I wanted. So that was the holy Grail,
Speaker 4: That's what I wanted. I was like, so when did
Speaker 4: I Mars? That's what I wanted to know? Well, when
Speaker 4: when did.
Speaker 3: It strike you? Okay, you're going to have to do this.
Speaker 4: If you want, I'll tell you. It gets crazier, all right,
Speaker 4: it gets crazier so so that I couldn't afford any
Speaker 4: of the US rockets because as you know, the US
Speaker 4: rockets are way too expensive, boying rock Lucky rockets are
Speaker 4: crazy money. I didn't have. I didn't even even with
Speaker 4: one hundred eighty millions, So way I could have afforded
Speaker 4: they back then, well, the with with the additional stage
Speaker 4: to get to Mars, it would have been about like
Speaker 4: eighty million, So technically I could have afforded one of them,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to do too in case one of
Speaker 4: them didn't work. Yeah. So and then I didn't have
Speaker 4: enough money for that. Yeah, and I was sort of
Speaker 4: prepared to, you know, I don't know, waste half the money.
Speaker 4: And I think if I had ninety million left, that'd
Speaker 4: be fine, you know, but ideally on all of it.
Speaker 4: So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.
Speaker 3: How did that go?
Speaker 4: And who do you call? The Russian rocket forces?
Speaker 3: Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You got to tell us a story that I want
Speaker 1: to know who you can buy anything in Russia?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like, please walk me down that.
Speaker 1: I want to know how you made that phone call
Speaker 1: and when you get there, how did that work?
Speaker 4: And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
Speaker 4: going to Russian device in ICBMs. I might not return,
Speaker 4: you know, in this situation. Literally, Yeah, So I guess
Speaker 4: slightly less insane when you when you understand that the
Speaker 4: Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because
Speaker 4: of uh, you know, soul talks like the people because
Speaker 4: basically an agreementtween the United States and Russia to reduce
Speaker 4: the total number of ICBMs. Russia was actually obligated to
Speaker 4: scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So you took it
Speaker 4: the very biggest CBMs. You could converte those into a rocket,
Speaker 4: added additional stage and send something to Mars.
Speaker 3: So those are big enough with one more stage to
Speaker 3: get to Mars.
Speaker 4: To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
Speaker 4: s S eighteen.
Speaker 2: So you try to buy CBMs, do you succeed or no?
Speaker 2: Or do you figure out you got to build your
Speaker 2: own instead?
Speaker 4: They kept raising the price on me, so because I
Speaker 4: figured like, look, they're going to throw these things to
Speaker 4: scrappy on anyway, you should get a really good deal, right.
Speaker 4: So the price thoughted out at four million, Then the
Speaker 4: next conversation they were at eight million. Then the next
Speaker 4: conversation they were at like nineteen million, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: this is before we signed a contract.
Speaker 2: By the way, was there another Was there another bidd
Speaker 2: or were you the only one trying to buy them?
Speaker 4: I think I don't know if there were other bits,
Speaker 4: but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
Speaker 4: if the price is increasing this much before the contract signed.
Speaker 4: I'm really going to get fleeced after the contracts. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so I got pretty frustrated there. Actually, in some cases
Speaker 4: we got into like shouting matches in Moscow, some guys
Speaker 4: shouting at me in Russian and I'm shouting back at
Speaker 4: him really badly, you know, I'm like.
Speaker 1: So you are all I mean, you're all.
Speaker 4: In Moscow? Yeah, so uh man, I should have recorded
Speaker 4: that. That would have been one for them.
Speaker 1: How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
Speaker 1: I mean was just like ongoing, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is this this took place. These conversations took place
Speaker 4: over probably six months or so. Wow. So and then
Speaker 4: the final trip trip there was with the with was
Speaker 4: with Mike Revenue later became as administrator. I actually realized
Speaker 4: in the course of this that my original premise was wrong,
Speaker 4: that that America actually has plenty of will to go
Speaker 4: to Mars, but needs that it just needs a way
Speaker 4: to Mars that is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.
Speaker 3: You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
Speaker 3: to the space station. We needed the Russians to to
Speaker 3: get us to our own space station.
Speaker 4: That was Parsonal.
Speaker 3: It really was pitiful.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we're
Speaker 4: being fleeced. Like I think they got up to like
Speaker 4: ninety million dollars a seat, Yeah wow, Yeah, for a
Speaker 4: seat that.
Speaker 3: Cost them like tenre obviously, but it was the only Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was before SpaceX's ninety million dollars a seat for
Speaker 4: a seat that cost him ten million. Is high. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a lot of money. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So a few months ago you and I were down
Speaker 2: in Bocachica with a president for a starship launch, and
Speaker 2: it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica. You know,
Speaker 2: five years ago it was an empty beach.
Speaker 4: At the southern tip of this soundbar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's now a city and a factory where
Speaker 2: you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision.
Speaker 2: But one of the things you said to me when
Speaker 2: we were down there that really stood out to me
Speaker 2: is is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talked
Speaker 2: to lots of CEOs or like we fight to guard
Speaker 2: our IP, and you had a very different approach. What's
Speaker 2: what's your view of IP?
Speaker 4: Patterns of the week patents for those who innovate slowly.
Speaker 2: I literally do not know anyone else in business who
Speaker 2: would say something like that, like like it was a
Speaker 2: startling and and and what Elon said down there is
Speaker 2: he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,
Speaker 2: but by the time they steal it will be five
Speaker 2: generations beyond and it won't matter.
Speaker 4: Yes, at Tesla, we actually open sourced law of patents.
Speaker 4: So we said our patents are anyone can use it
Speaker 4: for free. Really yeah, uh, the only we only do
Speaker 4: patents at Tesla to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble.
Speaker 4: So we'll try to look ahead and say, okay, patent
Speaker 4: trolls are going to trial patent file patterns to blocks
Speaker 4: and things, will file patents and then open source to
Speaker 4: make it free. I mean, I'm gonna say patents for
Speaker 4: the week. Now. There are a few cases, in say
Speaker 4: with pharmaceuticals, where it might cost you a billion dollars
Speaker 4: to do a phase three human file, but then subsequently
Speaker 4: the drug is very cheap to manufacture. So cases there
Speaker 4: are some, in my opinion, which would massively reduce what
Speaker 4: can be patented. And and say, because the whole point
Speaker 4: of patenting is to maximize innovation, not inhibit it. And
Speaker 4: in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion. Most patents inhibit innovation,
Speaker 4: they do not help it. But there are case I
Speaker 4: want to do one a single cases like we're such
Speaker 4: as a phase three clinical trial that might cost a
Speaker 4: billion dollars, but then the drugs thereafter cost a few
Speaker 4: dollars to manufacture, and if you can then immediately copy
Speaker 4: those drugs for a few dollars, no one will pay
Speaker 4: for the billion dollars. Write problem. Free writer problem, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: So you have to address the free writer problem. But
Speaker 4: other than that, there should be no patents. The ideas
Speaker 4: are easy.
Speaker 1: You want ideas to flow maximum to people, to get
Speaker 1: there faster and do things bigger.
Speaker 4: The idea is the easy part. The herd execution is
Speaker 4: the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's one
Speaker 4: percent inspiration, if not less than one percent, and nineteen
Speaker 4: nine percent perspiration.
Speaker 2: But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at.
Speaker 2: Also because you're making. You know, the companies you're building
Speaker 2: are actually building stuff. They're building cars, they're building spaceships,
Speaker 2: they're building things that if they don't work, it's a
Speaker 2: real problem. And the precision you manufacture things with, how
Speaker 2: do you get that level of precision? How do you
Speaker 2: get how do you build a culture? You're not You're
Speaker 2: amazing at thinking outside the box. But what's interesting is
Speaker 2: your you may even be better at execution, which is
Speaker 2: how do you execute so effectively?
Speaker 4: Well? I take as express principles approach to everything. It's
Speaker 4: not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing. It's
Speaker 4: just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So uh.
Speaker 4: You know, the idea of the beginning of Tesla was
Speaker 4: that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing. But then
Speaker 4: it turned out there was no there were no good
Speaker 4: companies to outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't a really really,
Speaker 4: it wasn't peaceable outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of
Speaker 4: the rule. And uh. And just over time, we had
Speaker 4: to in source almost everything for Tesla, and same for SpaceX.
Speaker 4: It became very good at manufacturing because I had to
Speaker 4: was no choice. At this point. I might know more
Speaker 4: about manufacturing than any any human ever has, because I've
Speaker 4: done so many I've manufactured so many different things and
Speaker 4: so many different arenas. I think probably more than anyone
Speaker 4: ever has.
Speaker 2: Look, that's that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's
Speaker 2: not a crazy statement, and you're somehow running Tesla and
Speaker 2: running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company
Speaker 2: and running Dourlink and doing doge. How much do you
Speaker 2: sleep in a given night?
Speaker 4: About six hours and average.
Speaker 2: So about six So that's it wouldn't have shocked me
Speaker 2: if you said three or four.
Speaker 3: So the Crenet question is how many hours do you
Speaker 3: work a day?
Speaker 4: I work almost every working.
Speaker 3: Hour, and Ben, he's not kidding at that.
Speaker 2: Like when Elan and I were first getting to know
Speaker 2: each other, I suggested, I said, hey, let's grab dinner sometime.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if you remember what you said.
Speaker 3: You said, I don't eat dinner.
Speaker 4: I don't have social dinners really.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean that, yeah, I mean you obviously eat food,
Speaker 3: but yeah, idea going to a restaurant for two hours.
Speaker 2: But the idea like, I don't, But it was it
Speaker 2: was just kind of matter of fact. Why would I
Speaker 2: go to dinner like you'd jump you work?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I literally just thought I'll have lunch, and then
Speaker 4: it brought during meetings and continue being.
Speaker 1: How many nights have you slept at your offices?
Speaker 4: You think your career percentage.
Speaker 1: Wise where you say, I just got to take this
Speaker 1: nap basically because my body forces me to, and I
Speaker 1: got to get back to work fast and efficiently without
Speaker 1: going somewhere else.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess it started out. Even with the first
Speaker 4: company H two, which is a terrible name, but the
Speaker 4: first internet company. We were able to rent an office,
Speaker 4: which was like in a leaky attack essentially for five
Speaker 4: hundred dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could
Speaker 4: find was eight hundred dollars a month. So like and
Speaker 4: we only had about five thousand dollars between our brother
Speaker 4: and I. Oh, so like we're not We'll just stay
Speaker 4: in the office. Yeah, So we got some couches that
Speaker 4: converted into beds and we'd can't sleep at night, and
Speaker 4: then we just have like turn the beds back into
Speaker 4: couches before anyone came, and then we would shout the
Speaker 4: YMCA down the road and so that went that. That
Speaker 4: literally was for several months. What we did, it was
Speaker 4: in great shape, you know, work out the way. I
Speaker 4: still remember that that ymcau Page Miller al Camino in
Speaker 4: Palo Alto. So that was a long time. Again, so
Speaker 4: it's been I don't know, I've never thought to count it,
Speaker 4: but several hundred days maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2: So you're now the richest man on earth. Do you
Speaker 2: still sleep in the office?
Speaker 3: Well, that's true.
Speaker 2: Maybe Mars, we'll find someone else, but I think if.
Speaker 4: Someone is a sovereign head of a country, there to
Speaker 4: facto richer by a lot.
Speaker 3: Do you still sleep at the office now?
Speaker 4: I have sometimes left at the office.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with center
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to down
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