Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: we have a new star.
Speaker 2: A star is born Elon pumped up on mars Uson Kennedy.
Speaker 3: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 4: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5: I feel for the guy.
Speaker 1: I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 1: But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
Speaker 1: pit in four post.
Speaker 6: We are meant for great things in the United States
Speaker 6: of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 7: Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
Speaker 7: governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 8: Welcome to Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 8: It's Tuesday, February twenty fifth. I'm Max Chafkin, and today
Speaker 8: we have.
Speaker 9: Another special episode.
Speaker 8: We are bringing you a conversation we had live on
Speaker 8: stage at the on Air Fest in Brooklyn on Thursday,
Speaker 8: and it was all about Doge, featuring me your normal host,
Speaker 8: David Papadopolis, Bloomberg's Elon Musk reporter Dana Hall, and a
Speaker 8: special guest, McKenna Kelly of Wired Magazine, who, along with
Speaker 8: a bunch of other reporters at Wired has really been
Speaker 8: all over the Doge story. We were so excited to
Speaker 8: talk to her about Elon's journey through the federal government,
Speaker 8: but before we get there, it was another chaotic, fascinating,
Speaker 8: wild weekend of Musk news, especially Musk news around Trump.
Speaker 8: On Saturday night, federal workers, including judges, nurses, office works,
Speaker 8: everyone received an email from the Office of Personnel Management
Speaker 8: the OPM, asking them to list five bullet points of
Speaker 8: their accomplishments of the past week. And then on X
Speaker 8: Elon said if you didn't do that, then you would
Speaker 8: be fired. And there was confusion in the days hours
Speaker 8: of followed. You had government officials saying they didn't have
Speaker 8: to respond, Musk saying they would definitely be fired. And
Speaker 8: so we're going to break that all down and to
Speaker 8: do that. Joining me is Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg social media
Speaker 8: reporter and of course the QB one of this podcast.
Speaker 4: Hey, Kurt, QB one, I appreciate that, IMAX.
Speaker 9: Hey Kurt, all right, so Kurt, you read this email.
Speaker 8: Let's start just tell us what happened, and I want
Speaker 8: to hear what you think is kind of going on,
Speaker 8: what Elon must be trying to do here.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, as you mentioned on Saturday, federal employees received
Speaker 6: this email with the subject line what did you do
Speaker 6: last week? And the directive was to essentially reply to
Speaker 6: the email with a bullet pointed list of five things
Speaker 6: that they accomplished in their job. And I think it's
Speaker 6: sort of twofold here, right. The first is perhaps the obvious,
Speaker 6: like Elon is simply challenging people to justify their existence
Speaker 6: in the federal government, justify their job, justify their role.
Speaker 6: And it's some thing that we can talk about, but
Speaker 6: that we've seen him do at Twitter over the years
Speaker 6: and some of his other businesses. The other thing that's
Speaker 6: sort of more interesting here, and again a bit of
Speaker 6: a repeat from Elon, is he believes that there are
Speaker 6: people who work at the federal government who actually do
Speaker 6: not exist.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: His sort of theory is, if you don't reply to
Speaker 6: the email, maybe that's because you're not a real person,
Speaker 6: and therefore you know, we shouldn't be paying you. And again,
Speaker 6: this is something when he took over Twitter, before he
Speaker 6: paid out a big lump sum of restricted stock units.
Speaker 6: Right after he took over, he actually had executives at
Speaker 6: the company combing through to make sure, like are we
Speaker 6: paying real people. He's sort of paranoid at this idea
Speaker 6: that companies have like ghost employees on the books or
Speaker 6: something like that, and so this would be a way
Speaker 6: to like find those people and eliminate them.
Speaker 8: Apparently, the experience of being an employee receiving an email
Speaker 8: on a mysterious email on Saturday afternoon from a random
Speaker 8: email address not not signed by person saying you need
Speaker 8: to like come up with five bullet points and send
Speaker 8: this by Monday or you might be fired Like that?
Speaker 9: Would I would? I would not.
Speaker 1: This would be the.
Speaker 8: Only thing I would think about for the next like
Speaker 8: seventy two hours if I were in their shoes, Like
Speaker 8: this seems like just pretty much an effort to like
Speaker 8: drive workers crazy, Like beyond verifying that they're real, is
Speaker 8: the idea just to like make them feel bad or something.
Speaker 6: Well, I think there's an element of that, right, And
Speaker 6: you have to remember why this is happening in sort
Speaker 6: of the broader context that's going on right now, which
Speaker 6: is that elon Is is aggressively slashing the budget. He's
Speaker 6: looking for people to take buyouts, he's looking for people
Speaker 6: to resign and leave, right, and so the more kind
Speaker 6: of pressure you can apply to the workforce, be it
Speaker 6: implicit or in this case very explicit, right like do
Speaker 6: this or you are fired. I think the more he
Speaker 6: thinks he's going to weed out sort of the people
Speaker 6: who don't really want to be there, those long time
Speaker 6: you know, kind of lifetime bureaucrats, if you will, who
Speaker 6: maybe are just arresting investing, as we would say in
Speaker 6: the tech industry. And so I do think part of
Speaker 6: this is the strategy just keep his thumb on people,
Speaker 6: make sure that they feel that there's constantly somebody looking
Speaker 6: over their shoulder, and you know, eventually people will weed
Speaker 6: themselves out. That makes his job of cutting the budget
Speaker 6: even easier.
Speaker 8: And just like with the fork in the road email,
Speaker 8: this was the email he sent about a month ago
Speaker 8: from the same email address. And Kurt, there's the other
Speaker 8: sort of point of comparison, which is that when you're
Speaker 8: talking about a private company, of course, like firing employees,
Speaker 8: laying people off is a pretty effective way of cutting costs.
Speaker 8: Not clear at least when we're talking about the federal budget.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think to your point, in a private company,
Speaker 6: usually salary benefits, you know, for one K match those
Speaker 6: types of like, employee costs are a much are pretty
Speaker 6: significant percentage of the overall budget, right, But I think
Speaker 6: and I don't know the specifics, unfortunately, but I think
Speaker 6: when you look at the scale of the federal budge,
Speaker 6: you're not going to have the same percentage of that
Speaker 6: sort of be wrapped up in employee and HR related costs, right.
Speaker 6: And so again, I think this is as as much
Speaker 6: symbolism as anything, right Max, I mean, like, his whole
Speaker 6: thing here is that the government has bloated, that he's challenged,
Speaker 6: that these workers don't do anything, that they've sort of
Speaker 6: just been kicking back and cash and paychecks, you know,
Speaker 6: on the American taxpayer's dime for years. And so I
Speaker 6: think part of this is cutting you know, budget, but
Speaker 6: I think a bigger part of this might just be
Speaker 6: the symbolism of what it means to significantly reduce headcount at.
Speaker 9: The federal post as HR strategy, right.
Speaker 8: I mean, like, and I think that's part of why
Speaker 8: we're seeing so much confusion. That's why he's saying, Oh,
Speaker 8: you have to do this, Well, maybe you don't have
Speaker 8: to do this, maybe you do have to do this. Like,
Speaker 8: the point is not to get any kind of response.
Speaker 8: And clearly Musk has said already that they're not going
Speaker 8: to really read these responses. It's just the act of saying, look, you,
Speaker 8: federal workers, you're not doing anything.
Speaker 4: I think that's right.
Speaker 6: I think that there's a huge part of this that
Speaker 6: is reformative theater as much as it is effective government cutting.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and it's a rhetorical question.
Speaker 8: The goal here is not to legitimately find out, you know, hey,
Speaker 8: what are the two million federal workers doing, is to
Speaker 8: show them that he thinks that they're doing nothing. And
Speaker 8: I think more importantly, to show Donald Trump Republican voters,
Speaker 8: you know, Congress, that he is he is really doing
Speaker 8: something here. He's he's going to war with the quote
Speaker 8: unquote administrative state.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 6: And I think these supporters of this strategy, their argument
Speaker 6: has been, well, hey, this takes what five minutes, Right, Like,
Speaker 6: if you're actually doing your job all week, you should
Speaker 6: somewhat easily be able to send over, hey, here's a
Speaker 6: list of five things. But to your point, Max, Like,
Speaker 6: that is not the intention of this, right Like, part
Speaker 6: of it is to say, justify your job. But again,
Speaker 6: part of this is a sort of psychological warfare, right,
Speaker 6: make people uncomfortable, make people, remind people that he's sitting
Speaker 6: there watching every move that you make, and sort of,
Speaker 6: you know, challenge them in a way that I don't
Speaker 6: think a lot of people are used to being challenged.
Speaker 8: So, Kurt, we're talking about like what Elon Musk may
Speaker 8: be trying to do in terms of his in terms
Speaker 8: of politically, in terms of the messaging, but like do
Speaker 8: you understand the plan practically? Like what are they going
Speaker 8: to do with these responses? And like is this really
Speaker 8: a money saving measure?
Speaker 6: So I think it's a good question, right, because if
Speaker 6: you have two million people sending in five bullet points,
Speaker 6: like just manually to review that stuff in any meaningful
Speaker 6: well way seems almost impossible. And actually, again to go
Speaker 6: back to the Twitter days, I mentioned the whole challenge
Speaker 6: to engineers, Hey, print out your code to prove that
Speaker 6: you've been doing something over the last thirty days. You know,
Speaker 6: a couple hours after that, they were telling people, hey,
Speaker 6: shred this code.
Speaker 4: We're not actually going to do these reviews. Right.
Speaker 6: It was again sort of like a scare tactic that
Speaker 6: in that regard nothing came of it. So part of
Speaker 6: me wonders if this will ultimately you know, fall into
Speaker 6: that same bucket. If anyone will actually manually review this stuff,
Speaker 6: they'll just simply see, okay, who responded and who didn't
Speaker 6: and kind of draw a line there there was a report,
Speaker 6: and forgive me because I can't remember who who reported this.
Speaker 6: That perhaps AI right, right, they would use GROC to like,
Speaker 6: you know, quickly analyze this stuff.
Speaker 4: I suppose that is a possibility.
Speaker 6: But again, if we're looking at what he's done, historically,
Speaker 6: these types of challenges have mostly been performative, right, And
Speaker 6: so I part of me thinks that, especially with the
Speaker 6: scale we're dealing with here, with two million government employees,
Speaker 6: they just want people to reply to the email, prove
Speaker 6: that they are a real human being that exists within
Speaker 6: this government, and take all the people who didn't reply
Speaker 6: and deal with them separately.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about the political fallout and the legal fallout, right,
Speaker 8: So one thing that happened is.
Speaker 9: You had, you had some lawsuits. You had you had
Speaker 9: employee unions.
Speaker 8: Who are already I've already tried to oppose Musk's authority
Speaker 8: to do this and OPM's authority to do this, adding
Speaker 8: this email into their you know, into the litigation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And advising federal workers to ignore this too, right,
Speaker 6: saying basically, don't take the bait, don't don't respond to
Speaker 6: this thing. There's a lot of confusion as to what
Speaker 6: people should or shouldn't do. And again, let's look back
Speaker 6: at a little history lesson we have from Twitter.
Speaker 4: Max s.
Speaker 6: You'll remember in November of twenty twenty two, shortly after
Speaker 6: Elon took over, he sent that fork in the Road
Speaker 6: email that we're all now familiar with because of the
Speaker 6: government example. But he sent this email fork in the
Speaker 6: Road to employees and said basically, click this button to
Speaker 6: commit to being hardcore and staying with the company. If
Speaker 6: you don't click the button, I will take that as
Speaker 6: your resignation, and you know there's the door. Well, he
Speaker 6: is being sued, he being Elon is being sued by
Speaker 6: hundreds of employees who did not click the button, right
Speaker 6: and where they're terminated. And their argument, which has actually
Speaker 6: been pretty successful in court thus far, is that not
Speaker 6: replying to an email does not equate to a resignation.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So even if Elon says, hey, if you don't reply,
Speaker 6: you resign, lawyers and judges are not agreeing with that analysis.
Speaker 6: They're basically saying, you know, that's the equivalent of being
Speaker 6: laid off. And being laid off and voluntarily resigning are
Speaker 6: two very different things in the world of corporate America,
Speaker 6: because one of them yields a lot bigger and more
Speaker 6: valuable severance than the other. It just got an update,
Speaker 6: believe it or not, this morning, heard from a former
Speaker 6: employee who's part of this sort of mass lawsuit that's
Speaker 6: going on. It's slowly but surely working in the employees' favor.
Speaker 6: Twenty for twenty twenty employees who have gone through arbitration
Speaker 6: have all won full severance from Twitter for their layoffs,
Speaker 6: and so they're setting a precedent right now that the
Speaker 6: strategy that Elon used to cut costs at Twitter did
Speaker 6: not really work, or at least it delayed the payments, right,
Speaker 6: but he's still going to have to, it seems like,
Speaker 6: pay all these employees what they're owed, and so again
Speaker 6: sets sort of a bit of a precedent for what
Speaker 6: we might see here with the government as well.
Speaker 8: There's another factor here too, which is that one of
Speaker 8: the cool things about taking over Twitter and sending out
Speaker 8: these aggressive tweets is that you are the decider, right
Speaker 8: like Elon Muskuld just like more or less. You know,
Speaker 8: of course, there was litigation he could just get away with,
Speaker 8: like firing people willy nilly. Now he has all these
Speaker 8: other constituents. And I think that's one of the most
Speaker 8: interesting things about this episode.
Speaker 9: We had.
Speaker 8: First of all, we had zero PM, perhaps because of
Speaker 8: the issue you just brought up, put out a memo
Speaker 8: essentially saying, actually, this is voluntary. We also had a
Speaker 8: bunch of cabinet officials, including cash Tell, the new director
Speaker 8: of the FBI, saying publicly or semi publicly, that staff
Speaker 8: should hold off right. And this to me feels like
Speaker 8: a real first of all, a difference between what's happening
Speaker 8: at Doze and what happened at Twitter, but also perhaps
Speaker 8: you know, the beginnings of a real rift between Musk
Speaker 8: and other members of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think you hit the nail on the
Speaker 6: head with the most obvious difference here, which is that
Speaker 6: with Twitter and with all of his businesses, Musk is
Speaker 6: the boss, right, He is the official decider of things
Speaker 6: and has that control and power, and people might disagree
Speaker 6: with how he wields that power, but those are private
Speaker 6: businesses for the most part that he can do with
Speaker 6: what he wants. He is, now, to your point, sort
Speaker 6: of operating in a federal government position, and not only that,
Speaker 6: but a position that people are very confused about in
Speaker 6: terms of the legality of all of these things that
Speaker 6: he's doing. Right, a lot of what he's doing is
Speaker 6: being challenged in courts, are being challenged by other politicians,
Speaker 6: So the landscape is not equivalent. Even though he's sort
Speaker 6: of taking the same playbook that he's used as a
Speaker 6: CEO of a private company and applied it to a
Speaker 6: federal government situation, those are two very different arenas for
Speaker 6: him to be doing this, and so I think that
Speaker 6: is adding to a lot of the confusion and will
Speaker 6: add eventually to the inevitable legal situation that arises from this.
Speaker 8: All right, So we'll be following this closely, Kurt, and
Speaker 8: we want to come back to you very soon to
Speaker 8: check in on all the other developments that are happening
Speaker 8: in the world of X. We've seen controversies around community notes,
Speaker 8: there's some weirdness around rock and I think we'll have
Speaker 8: to get to that all at another time, but for now,
Speaker 8: thank you for coming in.
Speaker 9: We'll talk soon, but I still want you by the
Speaker 9: end of.
Speaker 8: The day, Kurt to put together that list, So please
Speaker 8: get to work or ask Rock to do it for you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, easy, easy. You can expect my resignation very shortly.
Speaker 11: Max.
Speaker 9: Thank you all right, Kurt Wagner, thanks for coming.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys.
Speaker 9: So Doge, we've been talking about Doge.
Speaker 8: It has been operating as much as you can say
Speaker 8: it's operating anyway. For the past month, We've had a
Speaker 8: lot of things happen and we wanted with this next segment,
Speaker 8: which is from the live taping we did last week
Speaker 8: at the on Air Festival in Brooklyn, to kind of
Speaker 8: take a step back, give people sort of a recap.
Speaker 9: On what's happened and a primer.
Speaker 8: And again we brought in McKenna Kelly, who is a
Speaker 8: reporter from Wired has been doing a ton of reporting
Speaker 8: talking to federal workers it seems every day, to kind
Speaker 8: of help us do that. A couple of notes on
Speaker 8: this taping we were recording just as it was revealed
Speaker 8: that Elon Musk would be speaking at Seapack and that
Speaker 8: he had fathered another child, So you'll hear those come up.
Speaker 8: Although there have been a couple of beats to the
Speaker 8: story that we will not hit. We will not hit
Speaker 8: Musk's kind of surreal appearance at Seapack. He looked, I
Speaker 8: don't know how to say this. He was more detached
Speaker 8: from reality than usual, wielding a chainsaw.
Speaker 9: We also did not get at.
Speaker 8: The paternity dispute that has since unfolded. I have no
Speaker 8: doubt we will get on to both of those topics
Speaker 8: on a later episode, but the conversation as a whole
Speaker 8: was really great and we thought you'd want to hear it.
Speaker 1: Welcome Dylan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, David Papatoppols, and we are live on AirFest
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. I'm joined on stage by two stalwarts of
Speaker 1: the podcast. We have our number one muscologist at Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: Dana Hull. Daniel Welcome, he did. And we have Business
Speaker 1: Week writer Max Chafkin, Maxilo.
Speaker 9: Hello.
Speaker 1: And we have a special guest with this as well,
Speaker 1: from Wired, McKenna. Kelly.
Speaker 5: Good to be here.
Speaker 1: McKenna, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 9: Don't forget the crowd, David.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people in your crowd, right, and
Speaker 1: we also have an enormous crowd here. Now it's standards
Speaker 1: thank you for having good Are you guys ready ready? Okay,
Speaker 1: So we are indeed gonna spend plenty of time talking
Speaker 1: doze here under a relentlessly pressing and driving Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Doze has suddenly become perhaps the biggest story in the US,
Speaker 1: and you will come away I swear from this session
Speaker 1: as a doge expert. But we're gonna break the ice
Speaker 1: a little with some non doze news, actual non doze news,
Speaker 1: if there could be such a thing. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go around here. I'm gonna ask each of you to
Speaker 1: tell me the biggest non doge in the world of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, of course, the biggest non doge story you're
Speaker 1: tracking this week, Dana Hall.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 3: So, so Elon has spent a lot of time in
Speaker 3: the last twenty four hours tweeting about the astronauts that
Speaker 3: are on the space station, and also that he thinks
Speaker 3: the space station program in general should be ended two
Speaker 3: or three years earlier than originally intended.
Speaker 1: These astronauts in the space station are soon.
Speaker 3: Where So these two NASA astronauts have been on the
Speaker 3: space station since June. They went up there on.
Speaker 1: A Boeing craft, and they want to come home.
Speaker 3: No, they actually are very happy doing research. They are
Speaker 3: going to come home on a SpaceX vehicle.
Speaker 5: And Elon is.
Speaker 3: Like they've been stranded up there because of politics, which
Speaker 3: is not true, like NASA has said very clearly, like
Speaker 3: they're not stranded. They're doing research. The whole point of
Speaker 3: the ISS is like international cooperation. But Elon is fixated
Speaker 3: on this idea that the astronauts are somehow stuck there.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Boeing's supposed to take them home.
Speaker 3: Boeing was supposed to take them home, and NASA made
Speaker 3: the decision that it was safer not to send them
Speaker 3: home on a fire. They didn't fire them, they just
Speaker 3: made the decision let's keep them up here. We'll send
Speaker 3: them home on a SpaceX craft. But now Musk is like, oh,
Speaker 3: the reason why they're there is because of politics, which
Speaker 3: is not true. Like if it was because of politics,
Speaker 3: they could have come home earlier.
Speaker 1: But they're atsuts happening though as soon as this week,
Speaker 1: and he's taking bringing them back to Earth. He's not
Speaker 1: taking them directly to Mars.
Speaker 3: Correct, So SpaceX is going to bring the astronauts home
Speaker 3: problem in March. That's the latest. But Separately, Musk is
Speaker 3: also saying that the whole International Space Station program should
Speaker 3: be ended earlier, and ultimately he just wants to focus
Speaker 3: on Mars.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what you got there now, Max Chafkin.
Speaker 8: So I wanted to pick a story that had nothing
Speaker 8: to do with which truly and it's clearly baby number thirteen.
Speaker 3: But wait a minute, he's that's political too because of
Speaker 3: his whole like nadalism.
Speaker 5: It's a conservative influencer.
Speaker 1: You came here to talk about baby number thirteen. That's
Speaker 1: what you're bringing.
Speaker 9: I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1: Baby number thirteen. Elon Musk is danna say, girl?
Speaker 5: Do we know it's a boy?
Speaker 1: Okay? Cool?
Speaker 9: All right? So anyway, basically, keep a long story short.
Speaker 8: He has been having all these babies, and we learned,
Speaker 8: we learned of a new baby. And I say thirteen
Speaker 8: as if it's a definitive number, and I guess I
Speaker 8: feel compelled to add and Dana would do it if
Speaker 8: I didn't that that's thirteen that we know of, right,
Speaker 8: because he has said we.
Speaker 1: Know the floor, we don't know what the sea is exactly.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so but mckennath hinted at it.
Speaker 8: But yeah, he's got this idea, and this is an
Speaker 8: idea that now I'm drifting into politics, but that has
Speaker 8: is taking off in kind of conservative intellectual circles that
Speaker 8: everyone needs to have more babies. It's called natalism, and
Speaker 8: Elon has kind of put a spin on that that
Speaker 8: involves repopulating the planet personally.
Speaker 3: I guess tell us who the mom is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well it's it's Ashley Sainclair, who is a columnist
Speaker 8: or a media personality or whatever. For the Babylon Bee,
Speaker 8: which was the This is going deep into like Elon lore,
Speaker 8: but the Babylon Bee is like an Onion knockoff if
Speaker 8: you don't know it, it's kind of like an anti
Speaker 8: woke onion or something. And one theory for like why
Speaker 8: Elon Musk bought Twitter for forty four billion dollars, laid
Speaker 8: off all the employees, became a conservative media personality, put
Speaker 8: three hundred million dollars in Donald Trump started taking apart
Speaker 8: all the stuff that we're doing today is that he
Speaker 8: was mad that Twitter banned the Babylon b So it
Speaker 8: all kind of comes together.
Speaker 1: Okay, baby number thirteen McKenna.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not moving away from the politics unfortunately, but
Speaker 5: it does not don't relate it as much breaking news.
Speaker 5: Musk is going to speak at Seapack tonight. Wow, And
Speaker 5: it's wild to think about. Just like a year ago,
Speaker 5: before the first assassination attempt on Trump, Musk was still
Speaker 5: flip flopping right. He was this free speech warrior, bought Twitter,
Speaker 5: so he's leaning in this kind of like right word direction,
Speaker 5: this anti censorship brigade that he had. But now he
Speaker 5: is just a full out. He's in a Republican white house,
Speaker 5: he is running all of this stuff, and he has
Speaker 5: made the full switch. And tonight he is one of
Speaker 5: the figureheads speaking at spe Seapack.
Speaker 1: Well, he truly is all in. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: So you are you breaking this as we speak?
Speaker 5: Breaking it as we speak?
Speaker 1: So who's sending the headlines on that? We got to
Speaker 1: get that out there.
Speaker 3: Okay, Seapack if you don't know, it's the Conservative Political
Speaker 3: Action Committee And they're like very like Project twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five adjacent, Heritage Foundation adjacent, like there's they do Seapack
Speaker 3: and hungry Like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean this is where all the conservatives go
Speaker 5: to talk policy, meet each other, mix every year. It's
Speaker 5: like the conference for the whole party.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got astronauts coming back from the moon.
Speaker 1: Max thinks he's got a baby over there. He's tracking,
Speaker 1: and we got must showing up at seapack. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to move on to doge, and we're going to
Speaker 1: go back as we think about dose. We're going to
Speaker 1: go back to the very beginning when the whole doze
Speaker 1: thing began. August of last year. Elon Musk is quote
Speaker 1: unquote interviewing Donald Trump, and as he's interviewing him, he
Speaker 1: raises the idea about, Hey, what about this doge thing?
Speaker 1: I got this idea? What say you, mister President? And
Speaker 1: let's listen to that audio clip.
Speaker 2: I think it'd be great to just have a government
Speaker 2: efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and
Speaker 2: and just ensures that the taxpayer money that the taxpayers
Speaker 2: are harder money, is spent in a good way.
Speaker 11: And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.
Speaker 1: I'd love it if when.
Speaker 10: You you're the greatest cutter, I mean, I look at
Speaker 10: what you do, you want to they go I won't
Speaker 10: mention the name of the company, but they go on strike,
Speaker 10: and you say that's.
Speaker 1: Okay, You're all gone.
Speaker 10: You're all gone, So every one of you is gone,
Speaker 10: and you are the greatest. You would be very good,
Speaker 10: Oh you would love it.
Speaker 1: For a second, here in the audience, I want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Clap if you feel like you have
Speaker 1: a good understanding of what doze is. Clap mak Okay, now,
Speaker 1: clap if you feel like you really kind of don't
Speaker 1: have a very good understanding at all. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: more who don't than do? Kenna? You are all doze
Speaker 1: all the time right now? Wired, Tell these folks what
Speaker 1: they need to know about dose? What is dog? Give
Speaker 1: me a letter by letter the D the O.
Speaker 5: Tell you what is the most granular level? True? It
Speaker 5: stands for the Department of Government Efficiency. It is in
Speaker 5: fact based on the shiba Inu DOJ meme coin whatever,
Speaker 5: a meme that Elon has used profusely over several several years.
Speaker 5: And first of all, it is a so called agency.
Speaker 5: It is not an actual agent. Well, it's real in
Speaker 5: some people's hearts and minds, but it is not an
Speaker 5: actual Well.
Speaker 1: What makes an actual agency an actual agency? What do
Speaker 1: you need?
Speaker 5: An Act of Congress? An Act of Congress? And so instead,
Speaker 5: I mean, I think he did this incredibly creatively, being
Speaker 5: able to subsume what was previously the United States Digital Service,
Speaker 5: which already was doing. It was created by Obama in
Speaker 5: the twenty tens to fix healthcare dot gov. If we remember,
Speaker 5: healthcare dot gov when it first rolled out, was completely unstable.
Speaker 5: It was like one of the biggest talking points Republicans
Speaker 5: had against healthcare dot gov. So said, let's get a
Speaker 5: bunch of technologists from the private sector, Let's bring them
Speaker 5: in put them on two to three year tours. Right,
Speaker 5: this is like a tour in government because they could
Speaker 5: be making so much more money elsewhere in the private
Speaker 5: sector and brought them into government to make government more efficient.
Speaker 5: Like this is what it was doing like ten plus yearsage.
Speaker 5: It was Doge before Doge, and so Doge has now
Speaker 5: subsumed USDs as of this week. I heard they have
Speaker 5: their all you know standing staff meeting on Tuesdays. And
Speaker 5: from what I heard about that meeting is that now
Speaker 5: Dough has created a bit of a firewall between like
Speaker 5: legacy USDs and then like the new Doge folks.
Speaker 1: How many legacy people are still around?
Speaker 5: There was originally two hundred and so one fifty of
Speaker 5: them now after Friday's layoffs, and now we have how
Speaker 5: many Doge people, which is not very clear. And they
Speaker 5: had the Doge folks that created essentially a firewall between
Speaker 5: Legacy USDs and Doge. They were not interacting. They had
Speaker 5: one meeting with a Doge representative in the whole month
Speaker 5: that it's been around. And so this Tuesday and the
Speaker 5: meeting that I'm talking about, these Doge folks, they had
Speaker 5: a meeting with these people and told them that it's
Speaker 5: all Doge going forward, Like the teams are merging. If
Speaker 5: you're still here, you have not been terminated. Yeah, these
Speaker 5: teams are together, We're going to do.
Speaker 1: You're going to be subsumed.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And so it's official. Everything has become Dune.
Speaker 8: Did they all have to change their screen names to obscene?
Speaker 9: Did they all require to be big balls or whatever?
Speaker 11: You know?
Speaker 1: I wish they could because now I'm thinking, wait, you
Speaker 1: can't just throw big balls in there like that without
Speaker 1: explaining Hold on one second, Max.
Speaker 8: Many of the Doge employees are people that Musk and
Speaker 8: his associates found basically like on the Internet. They're like
Speaker 8: edge lord types, like like Elon Musk and I guess
Speaker 8: the most famous one is this gentleman the big balls.
Speaker 1: So presumably not his god given no surprised.
Speaker 8: I mean, it is weirdly like a kind of bizarro
Speaker 8: version of that moment that you're describing back in the
Speaker 8: Obama years, where a bunch of tech guys were like, yeah,
Speaker 8: government doesn't work, we are the ones to fix it,
Speaker 8: and they descend it on Washington, and I mean, I
Speaker 8: don't know, you actually probably have a better understanding of
Speaker 8: how well it worked. I don't think the Healthcare dot
Speaker 8: gov thing, although they did seem to keep it online,
Speaker 8: but it wasn't like some kind of shine.
Speaker 9: I'm not sure that worked all that great.
Speaker 8: I don't know if we all remember that as like
Speaker 8: the greatest moment of Silicon Valley's performance in history. And
Speaker 8: it's kind of happening again, but with this new weird
Speaker 8: elon Musk's beIN on it well, where everyone's like super
Speaker 8: mad at the establishment and tweel Max.
Speaker 1: But if it's happening again, but it's I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know that anybody realized that that service was even
Speaker 1: a thing back, you know, ten years ago. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody in Western're in Washington, probably nobody noticed. Everybody
Speaker 1: has noticed OGE. It's certainly much more, much more high
Speaker 1: profile and making a lot more waves than its predecessor did. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how the group was created. What is like the
Speaker 1: one thing they should know about it in terms of
Speaker 1: how DOSEE is going about its business on Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: guidance day in and day out.
Speaker 5: Well, now that they moved it outside of the opposite
Speaker 5: management and budget, this is all very boring bureaucratic stuff.
Speaker 5: Funny enough the fact that they hate bureaucracy, but they
Speaker 5: moved it underneath the executive opposite of the president, which
Speaker 5: means that they are reporting directly to the White House,
Speaker 5: which means like a lot of the records that they
Speaker 5: have are no longer for you.
Speaker 1: So by not being foiable, they're not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that the press can say, hey, we would like
Speaker 1: to put in a request for greater information.
Speaker 3: Well, there's no transparency at all. Like the transparency is
Speaker 3: there is a website where it's.
Speaker 1: Like a live feed from X or doge website, a.
Speaker 3: Doge website where they're purporting to cut costs, but there's
Speaker 3: no transparency about like who DOGE is. So like an
Speaker 3: enormous amount of reporting firepower has been spent. Like who
Speaker 3: from Doge is showing up at your agency? Like, you know,
Speaker 3: have you seen their badges? Like are they like some
Speaker 3: of them are not even wearing badges, Like they're being
Speaker 3: very like circumspect about who they actually are, which flies
Speaker 3: in the face of this whole idea that this is
Speaker 3: a transparent effort.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the way that it's been put to me, when
Speaker 5: like these Doge folks show up, they are boys in
Speaker 5: jeans wearing backpacks full of laptops.
Speaker 1: Like this is how it's like they're literally that young.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like nineteen to twenty five is the ages of
Speaker 5: a lot of these folks.
Speaker 8: That they've hired, big balls.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he is one of the youngest, that's right.
Speaker 3: And then some of them are like venture capitalists who
Speaker 3: have like experience with private equity or like relative some
Speaker 3: of them are McKinsey consultants, Like there are like adult
Speaker 3: spit like in some cases.
Speaker 5: Helped cut Twitter, right, Like see Davis who is one
Speaker 5: of the big cots cutters when the Twitter takeover happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so now, Dana, you like to remind me frequently
Speaker 1: and you've drilled it into my head. How as we
Speaker 1: heard on that clip at the beginning. This idea of
Speaker 1: creating Doge to go out and gut the government and
Speaker 1: bring down spending is not a Donald Trump idea. It
Speaker 1: is an Elon Musk idea that he put in Trump's
Speaker 1: head and then he effectively appointed himself. Why is that
Speaker 1: for you such a crucial thing as we try to
Speaker 1: understand and conceptualize of what they're up to.
Speaker 5: Well, two things.
Speaker 3: I think that one thing to just know is just
Speaker 3: even the fact that we're all saying the name Doge
Speaker 3: is like Musk has already won because he's invented something
Speaker 3: that's not a department. He calls it a department, and
Speaker 3: now we're all using doge. It's entered the lexicon. So
Speaker 3: it's given is to give. It's been given this like gravitas.
Speaker 3: But for him, well, i mean, now the you know, no,
Speaker 3: but I mean, I'm just saying, it's like it's very
Speaker 3: clever how he got this, got this off the ground.
Speaker 3: But for for Musk, it's all about regulation. So Musk
Speaker 3: has said over and over again that like, you know,
Speaker 3: he feels like the giant being held down, like American
Speaker 3: promise is being held down by all these like strings
Speaker 3: of regulation. And bureaucracy and we just need to like
Speaker 3: cut the strings in America will be great again. And
Speaker 3: all of his companies are highly regulated, like you cannot
Speaker 3: launch a rocket without the FAA approval, the fish and
Speaker 3: wildlife has to sign off on, like how it's you know,
Speaker 3: messing up the wetlands. Tesla's autonomous or semi autonomous cars,
Speaker 3: like NITSA is investigating them. I mean every like he's
Speaker 3: got six companies, you know, the FDA in neural so
Speaker 3: he's very interested in what these agencies are doing. And
Speaker 3: if he can cut regulations, that is just going to
Speaker 3: help his businesses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, very much the case. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: for sure he had just about all of his companies
Speaker 1: I would think, in one form or another are subject
Speaker 1: to government regulation in some cases, the case of Tesla
Speaker 1: and SpaceX quite a bit. I mean, I guess for me,
Speaker 1: the one thing that stands out to me a little
Speaker 1: bit is whether ultimately Musk's Doze group is the right
Speaker 1: group to be doing this and this is the right
Speaker 1: way to go about it or not. Obviously that is
Speaker 1: a question that's very very very much still out there.
Speaker 1: But the fact that it comes now and that there
Speaker 1: appears to be a certain amount of political will to
Speaker 1: tolerate it. That it comes in the wake of the
Speaker 1: greatest inflation surge in this country in a half century.
Speaker 1: I do not think is a coincidence. I think that's
Speaker 1: the way historians will look at it. I mean Musk
Speaker 1: in that interview back in August that when he states
Speaker 1: he does not talk about I want you to stop
Speaker 1: regulating my companies. He says, you know, runaway government spending
Speaker 1: is driving inflation, and that's attacks on the American people.
Speaker 1: And it's true, parties of both sides, Republicans and Democrats,
Speaker 1: have driven the US fiscal accounts to the point where
Speaker 1: we are running absolutely unprecedented budget deficits, and that seemed
Speaker 1: to be to a certain extent untenable. Again, the big
Speaker 1: issue is whether we all feel like the American people
Speaker 1: feel like it's the Doze Committee that should be going
Speaker 1: about bringing that under control. I mean, Max, I guess
Speaker 1: the question I'd have for you is whether you love
Speaker 1: Elon Musk or hate him. It is it's so seemingly
Speaker 1: improbable when we were doing this podcast as innocent young
Speaker 1: people a year or so ago, if somebody said to us, hey,
Speaker 1: in February of twenty twenty five. You're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about this and how Musk is running the show
Speaker 1: and he's the biggest story in the world. He's in
Speaker 1: the White House, he's doing all these things. We would
Speaker 1: have said it's absurd. It does speak to his force
Speaker 1: of nature. Demon mode kind of aspect of demon mode
Speaker 1: is what he himself calls it.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, I don't think I would have said it
Speaker 8: was absurd. I feel like part.
Speaker 1: Of you coming why don't you tell us?
Speaker 8: I mean, I just I think people who followed Elon Musk,
Speaker 8: although it is, I think there are aspects of this
Speaker 8: that are surprising. It's it's surprising that he is somebody
Speaker 8: who was ideologically McKenna brought this up earlier, you know,
Speaker 8: ideologically fairly centrist slash kind of like trying to be slippery.
Speaker 8: Is just like so full bore into maga Like that
Speaker 8: is surprising, But it's not surprising that he is trying
Speaker 8: to work it politically, like his entire career has been this.
Speaker 5: He's just doing this.
Speaker 1: But at such a different gale.
Speaker 8: The way he has made money throughout his career basically
Speaker 8: is by some combination of politics and technology, like.
Speaker 9: Working the levers of power. He did this with SpaceX.
Speaker 8: SpaceX was as much as Musk likes to talk about
Speaker 8: it as this thing that he created or whatever, like
Speaker 8: the federal government essentially paid him to create it, We
Speaker 8: taxpayers paid him to create it, and Tesla is kind
Speaker 8: of it's a similar story. I mean, obviously Tesla has
Speaker 8: done some amazing things. I'd say clearly it's Musk's greatest
Speaker 8: achievement of his career, maybe one of the great companies
Speaker 8: built over the last twenty years. But it's also one
Speaker 8: that was very much built on the back of federal
Speaker 8: policy and.
Speaker 9: Federal tax dollars.
Speaker 4: So, like, you know, he's doing that again.
Speaker 8: He's just he's just found this like really kind of
Speaker 8: amazing opportunity in terms of the moment that you described,
Speaker 8: the political moment, and maybe in Donald Trump, somebody who
Speaker 8: is perhaps uniquely open to these ideas, who's going to
Speaker 8: see the value of Elon Musk and he's going to
Speaker 8: be ideologically flexible enough to like divert his whole presidency.
Speaker 8: He's like diverted the whole Trump agenda into Elon Musk Land.
Speaker 8: Like that is that's kind of wild when you think
Speaker 8: about it.
Speaker 1: No, that's fair enough. But I just want to say
Speaker 1: that I know you two think I don't listen to
Speaker 1: you guys. I listen to you guys, and so I
Speaker 1: know you always indeed describe Musk in that he's got
Speaker 1: that chameleon quality as right as an operator. What you know,
Speaker 1: he was tight with Obama, he was tight with maybe
Speaker 1: Big Bush to a certain extent. Right, he was Mine
Speaker 1: was like, he's like, I'm super pumped to work five, right,
Speaker 1: and then with Trump won, he was there. But like
Speaker 1: I guess my question is, is this simply the chameleon
Speaker 1: changing his colors again, it's and going with the vibe
Speaker 1: in Washington, or it feels to me like he's become
Speaker 1: the vibe, he's setting the vibe. Is this a break?
Speaker 3: I think I think that Max and I have talked
Speaker 3: for years now about how like he really shifted during
Speaker 3: the pandemic, and you saw like he started being flirting
Speaker 3: with COVID denihalism, He moved to Texas, he became increasingly
Speaker 3: anti immigrant, the whole thing with his trans daughter, and
Speaker 3: this is just sort of the culmination of that. But
Speaker 3: the other thing at play here that I'm going to
Speaker 3: keep hammering on is he does not want NASA to
Speaker 3: go to the Moon. He just wants to go to Mars.
Speaker 1: Those two that are on the moon get him to Mars, right,
Speaker 1: Like why are they thing to come back?
Speaker 3: And if you watch the inauguration speech, Trump said We're
Speaker 3: going to plant the stars and pypes on Mars by
Speaker 3: the end of my first term.
Speaker 5: And Musk was like, yes, how awesome.
Speaker 9: This is all about Mars.
Speaker 3: This is all about Mars. And it's a quid pro quo,
Speaker 3: Like I gave you three hundred million dollars to get elected.
Speaker 5: What I want return?
Speaker 8: I want Doge and I want so much money, right,
Speaker 8: Like people are so focused on these like what could
Speaker 8: Musk get out of the CFTC maruld be?
Speaker 1: How much is it going to cost to get to Mars?
Speaker 8: I mean I haven't checked with my local Mars dealer lately,
Speaker 8: but like it's it's billions, if not tens of billions
Speaker 8: of dollars in contracts to SpaceX.
Speaker 9: That's what it would be worth.
Speaker 1: All right. Listen, speaking of big numbers, we got another
Speaker 1: clip that we're going to play on Doge cost cutting
Speaker 1: and what they're trying to do this is Elon and
Speaker 1: Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity earlier this week.
Speaker 1: Let's listen.
Speaker 7: How much do you believe Elon and you've identified and
Speaker 7: waste for aud of vi as corruption now, and how
Speaker 7: much do you anticipate you sure, well, I think no,
Speaker 7: because it's so massive.
Speaker 4: This is huge money. So which about.
Speaker 12: As hard as they are, they're not going to find
Speaker 12: some contract that was crooked, you know, crooked as hell.
Speaker 12: I mean, there's going to be so much, isn't faut?
Speaker 5: But what is that?
Speaker 12: I think he's going to find a trillion dollars, but
Speaker 12: I think it's a very small percentage compared to what
Speaker 12: it is.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the president says he's going to find a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars, presumably this is annually. I don't know, mckennath,
Speaker 1: what as far as your reporting shows and as far
Speaker 1: as with the Doze team is saying, how much have
Speaker 1: they cut so far from the US federal budget?
Speaker 5: If you look at the website, it says fifty five billion.
Speaker 1: Dollars five billion with the.
Speaker 5: B yes, okay, and that is not accurate.
Speaker 1: And we know that's not accurate.
Speaker 5: How because we can look at the itemized feed and
Speaker 5: see that numbers. There was a figure they don't add.
Speaker 1: What do so what in the itemized side, what does
Speaker 1: it add up to?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, was like sixteen right,
Speaker 5: sixteen billion.
Speaker 8: But yeah, but even that's a little dice, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 8: because like one of the there's an eight billion dollar
Speaker 8: contract in there, right, that's actually.
Speaker 5: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion contract for the DHS. That's actually
Speaker 5: worth eight million, right, Yeah, it's eight million. Eight billion,
Speaker 5: which is eight billion is like how much the CDC
Speaker 5: has to spend every year.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, just so everyone's clear, the US federal
Speaker 1: annual budget is just shy of seven trillion dollars a year, right.
Speaker 1: When they throw around that trillion dollar number, it actually started.
Speaker 1: You guys were there at Madison Square Garden. You guys
Speaker 1: were there, and I think he threw out a two
Speaker 1: trillion dollar number.
Speaker 9: At least he said at least fairly.
Speaker 1: I think he said like fair.
Speaker 3: Easy, fairly easy, which is basically cutting.
Speaker 5: Like a third.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's obviously which you.
Speaker 3: Can't do unless you go after entitlement spending. So that's
Speaker 3: the other thing I want people to really think about.
Speaker 3: Like we were talking about Medicare, Social Security, the IRS,
Speaker 3: student loan program, like like, ultimately, McKenna, do you think
Speaker 3: that the goal is just to privatize wholesale pieces of this?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, like I think that's a fair assumption
Speaker 5: to make.
Speaker 1: And every single privatize what like what would we be
Speaker 1: privately well, all kinds of.
Speaker 5: So we've been seeing the first thing that these doage
Speaker 5: kids do when they get in is they attack contracts.
Speaker 5: Either they send one person in or a group of
Speaker 5: people in and they get to the acquisition service like
Speaker 5: whatever system each agency uses, and then they look at
Speaker 5: that and then they just start cutting things across the board.
Speaker 5: They're like control effing for like diversity, even if it's
Speaker 5: like biodivers And.
Speaker 1: Do they have the power to unilaterally they have the
Speaker 1: power to unilaterally just pause it, stop it, block it.
Speaker 5: Do they have the authority to do that? I think
Speaker 5: that's a legal question. But they are doing it right now.
Speaker 1: How much pushback are we seeing increasing pushback from Congress
Speaker 1: and from the courts to say, hey.
Speaker 3: Congress is totally supine. I mean, let's be honest, Like
Speaker 3: you are starting to see some Democratic members of Congress
Speaker 3: like get out the bullhorn and be upset about it.
Speaker 3: But in general, like Trump and Musk have support for
Speaker 3: this from Republicans, and the Democratic opposition has not been
Speaker 3: that strong. I mean, so the courts are like trying.
Speaker 3: I mean, the courts are like the check out and
Speaker 3: balance that's left. But Doge is moving faster than the
Speaker 3: courts can move.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I also want to point out too, like to think
Speaker 5: about how serious this all is, but also at the
Speaker 5: same time how unseerious it is, like the name Doge
Speaker 5: right as the name of this agency. And then the
Speaker 5: Democratic response. The first Democratic response was Chuck Schumer and
Speaker 5: Hawking Jeffreys having this presser where they announced a new
Speaker 5: bill that they jokingly called Stop the Steal. And then
Speaker 5: at that at that press conference, Schumor had like a
Speaker 5: little laugh you went he he he, and everyone else
Speaker 5: in the press court and that presser said he he
Speaker 5: he too. So like it's it's very clear, like how
Speaker 5: unseerious people are acting about this.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess when you're opening Salvos name it dose
Speaker 1: it's true. Okay. I want to move us on to
Speaker 1: the Musk Trump relationship, which appears by all accounts to
Speaker 1: still be going strong. We also have audio from that
Speaker 1: from that Trump Musk interview with Hannity earlier this week.
Speaker 1: Let's listen. Elon called me.
Speaker 12: He said, you know they're trying to drive us apart.
Speaker 12: I said absolutely. Now they said we have breaking as
Speaker 12: Donald Trump has seated control of the presidency to Elon Musk.
Speaker 12: President Musk will be attending a cabinet reading eight. And
Speaker 12: I say, it's just so obvious. It's so bad at it.
Speaker 12: I used to think they were good at it. They're
Speaker 12: actually bad at it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there is actually another line in there, the
Speaker 1: very very beginning of the interview, almost right out of
Speaker 1: the gate Max, where Musk turns to Hannity and he says,
Speaker 1: is basically his opening statement is well, I love the president.
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear about that. And I
Speaker 1: I was sort of it was pretty shocking for me.
Speaker 1: The fealty, Like it's not the kind of posture and
Speaker 1: body language you usually get from Elon Musk.
Speaker 9: Uh No, uh, it's it's kind of that.
Speaker 8: That has been another surprise here, I guess is the
Speaker 8: is the relationship. I mean that clip to me is
Speaker 8: that's what they wanted out of the interview. They wanted
Speaker 8: to signal that Trump is in charge and Musk is
Speaker 8: okay with that, and and I think what's honestly like
Speaker 8: a little bit surprising if you followed Musk is that
Speaker 8: that he is has been willing more or less to
Speaker 8: in certain situations. You know, play second fiddle, b do
Speaker 8: the thing that you have to do if you want
Speaker 8: to keep Trump happy, which is defer to him.
Speaker 11: So there, you know.
Speaker 5: He's sure that said tech support.
Speaker 3: I mean, throughout his life, Musk has always been the
Speaker 3: alpha male. But like in Trump, he's almost got this
Speaker 3: like dad figure, right, because Trump broke the mold for
Speaker 3: what a politician could be, and then Elon followed that
Speaker 3: and broke the mold of what corporate ceo could be.
Speaker 3: And they play off each other. I mean, Elon also
Speaker 3: tweeted some thing like I love him more as much
Speaker 3: as a straight man can love another man, and like.
Speaker 8: I should go with thirteen children. So he you know,
Speaker 8: he's got a lot of people to love.
Speaker 1: Okay, So one year from now we're on this stage again,
Speaker 1: will the Trump Musk alliance remain intact? Just yes or no?
Speaker 1: I don't want you guys usually give me these caveats
Speaker 1: and bolsh yes or.
Speaker 9: No, yes, yeah, yeah, Okay, there we are.
Speaker 1: The audience, do you agree with this? Yes? Is audience
Speaker 1: hates your aunt there there's no chance in how Okay,
Speaker 1: we're now gonna play the game. Enough about this doze stuff.
Speaker 1: And we're here at on AirFest surrounded by podcast enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna end with this game. Elon also is
Speaker 1: a big podcast fan and he appears on them all
Speaker 1: the time. So we pulled some clips, okay from Elon
Speaker 1: podcasts in twenty twenty four, and we're gonna play the
Speaker 1: clip now. The clip is pretty brief, it's pretty tight,
Speaker 1: and it's short, and it's in what you guys have
Speaker 1: to do. I'm gonna go turn. You're gonna tell me
Speaker 1: what the hell he's talking about, what it's about, and you,
Speaker 1: Leach will give me a guess, and then we'll go.
Speaker 1: We have three of them, super confident here. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: Number one, hit it.
Speaker 2: Like I said, it's it's not like it's not gonna
Speaker 2: happen like overnight, but it's twenty years from now.
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 3: But all right, Dana, I have no idea. I think
Speaker 3: he's talking about Mars. Maybe building a civilization on Mars.
Speaker 1: Is gonna be a Mars max humanoid robots, humanoid robots McKenna.
Speaker 5: Xually everything app becoming Actually.
Speaker 1: Okay, who's with Dana mars in twenty years? Yeah, it's here.
Speaker 1: Let's let's hear noose. Okay, the humanoid robot? What were you? X?
Speaker 1: The everything out?
Speaker 5: It's finally the everything appen, the everything.
Speaker 1: App in twenty years.
Speaker 5: Okay, the good ones were taken first.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it twenty years from now.
Speaker 2: I think there's gonna be more more humanoid robots than
Speaker 2: they are here.
Speaker 10: What I got.
Speaker 8: Honestly, I'm shocked because I feel like in his head,
Speaker 8: twenty years is way?
Speaker 1: Do you get the other two right? As well? We
Speaker 1: know the fix is in? Okay, number two?
Speaker 2: Like He'll be like a good test if if you
Speaker 2: took a plane from Ellie to New York and you
Speaker 2: try to drop a bowling ball and hit somebody, your
Speaker 2: chances of success are basically zero.
Speaker 1: By the way, I happen to know that's the case.
Speaker 1: I've tried that. It's really hard.
Speaker 8: So success is hitting a person, I guess.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is he talking about? It's really really
Speaker 1: hard to hit someone in the head with the bowling
Speaker 1: ball if you drop it from a plane.
Speaker 3: Is he talking about Starship eventually being city City?
Speaker 13: I think, so you go Starship Starship FAA regulations around
Speaker 13: dropping things from airplanes or parts falling or whatever, or
Speaker 13: his rocket breaking, I.
Speaker 1: Think I think you have an opportunity.
Speaker 5: Was it when the rocket recently fell apart? And that
Speaker 5: was like the likelihood of one of the pieces over
Speaker 5: that island hitting someone who.
Speaker 1: Likes to in his answer, nobody, crickets.
Speaker 5: Max, you're the same.
Speaker 11: They're all the same answer.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is you're all wrong. Hit
Speaker 1: it now.
Speaker 2: The reality is Earth can actually kindle a human population
Speaker 2: probably ten times longer than the current population.
Speaker 1: You know, because you know you've got too many humans
Speaker 1: when you drop the bowling ball from the plane and
Speaker 1: you hit right, but until then, just keep going.
Speaker 3: Should have gotten that long.
Speaker 1: You did an entire story of you know.
Speaker 8: Because he has talked about and that was f a A.
Speaker 8: But yeah, this is about we should all have more children.
Speaker 1: I guess you did a big piece on this. I'm
Speaker 1: disappointed that. Okay, number three.
Speaker 11: I speak with some authority and analogy in this area.
Speaker 11: This is.
Speaker 1: This is impossible. This is our producer Magnus is trolling you, guys,
Speaker 1: this is impossible. If any of you get this, I
Speaker 1: will take from Mike Bloomberg a check for ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and I'll handle to you. Okay, again, the quote
Speaker 1: is I speak with some authority and knowledge, and there's
Speaker 1: no chance you're gonna get this. Kenny, it's it's pretty obscure.
Speaker 1: So think the think obscure.
Speaker 5: The video game Diabolo Force just a good guess parenting.
Speaker 1: So that's a These are funny guesses? Is anybody Dana's answer, Well,
Speaker 1: you have a guess? I think it's sections sections. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that? I think? Okay, cesarean section? So
Speaker 1: who likes no? Maxis got this audience stuff. Mechanic's should
Speaker 1: in the front, our random in the front with the
Speaker 1: with the black hat. Anybody like that Cesarian section? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's play the clip.
Speaker 11: There's absolutely no need to do anything to farming change,
Speaker 11: no effect on the environment. It's it's totally fine. Stop
Speaker 11: attacking the farmers.
Speaker 1: Cows about how does he know? What does he know
Speaker 1: about farm?
Speaker 3: Well, Kimball, you know, it's like a big foodie.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 5: He wears the cowboy. There's some authority there from Kimball.
Speaker 5: But wait, what's the full quote?
Speaker 3: Don't have to worry about the cows because why he's.
Speaker 9: Talking about climate change?
Speaker 5: This was the member.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's saying, you know, don't like climate change, don't
Speaker 8: worry about don't.
Speaker 1: Worry about the.
Speaker 3: Possible We're getting the signal that we have to wrap.
Speaker 1: We're getting We're getting the gong on the Gong Show. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we shall end it there. A big thanks to Dana,
Speaker 1: Max McKenna, and thank you all for joining us for
Speaker 1: this special episode of el in at on Air Fest.
Speaker 1: Keep tuning in. We'll see you next week Humanoid Robots.
Speaker 8: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Masarakis is
Speaker 8: our editor, and Rayhan Harmanci is our senior editor. Blake
Speaker 8: Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell factchecks. Our supervising producer
Speaker 8: is Magnus Henrickson. The Eloning theme is written and performed
Speaker 8: by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Saguiera. Brendan Francis Newdham is
Speaker 8: our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of
Speaker 8: Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to Joel Weber and Bradstone.
Speaker 8: I'm Max Schaffkin. If you have a minute, rate and
Speaker 8: review our show, it'll help other listeners find us, and
Speaker 8: we will see you next week.