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Speaker 1: or support IFCJ dot org. Welcome and his Verdict with Center,
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson. With You and Today is part
Speaker 1: two of our exclusive conversation with Elon Musk, the entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and innovator who is transforming industries and is dismantling government waste,
Speaker 1: fraud and abuse With Doge must Relentless pursuit of technology
Speaker 1: and space exploration continues to capture the world's imagination. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we unravel the thoughts and aspirations of a
Speaker 1: man who defies conventional boundaries, pushing humanity towards new horizons.
Speaker 1: So join us in the White House as we continue
Speaker 1: to explore the riveting journey of Elon Musk, a modern
Speaker 1: day pioneer whose revolutionary ideas are set to redefine tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Let me start with a question. You know a lot
Speaker 2: about what year does man first set foot on Mars.
Speaker 3: I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
Speaker 3: and I don't think it's more than two to four
Speaker 3: years beyond that.
Speaker 2: And that's not an unman's 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.
Speaker 2: But do we find ruins? Do we find remnants?
Speaker 3: We may we may find the ruins of a long
Speaker 3: dead alien civilization, that's possible. And we may find subterranean
Speaker 3: microbial life, that's possible.
Speaker 2: All right. If Man lands on Mars in twenty nine,
Speaker 2: how soon after that do you land on Mars?
Speaker 4: It remains to be seen. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: The important thing is that are we build a self
Speaker 3: sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The key
Speaker 3: threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue
Speaker 3: to prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming.
Speaker 3: At that point, even if something would happen on Earth,
Speaker 3: it might might It might not be World War three,
Speaker 3: but it might be that a bad virus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it might not be anything. For those things.
Speaker 3: It's like like like say, civilization, you could die with
Speaker 3: a bang or a whimper. It maybe that civilization dies
Speaker 3: with a whimper rather than a bang or and simply
Speaker 3: loses the ability to send ships to Mars. But so
Speaker 3: you absoenly need Mars to become self sustaining and be
Speaker 3: able to grow by itself before the resupply ships from
Speaker 3: Earth stopped coming. That That is the critical a civilizational
Speaker 3: threshold beyond which the probable life span of civilization is
Speaker 3: 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 3: We don't have a few people running around the surface
Speaker 3: in a hostile environment is not going to make it
Speaker 3: self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
Speaker 3: of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.
Speaker 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 3: Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry
Speaker 3: of Earth. So you know, we're here at the top
Speaker 3: of a massive permit of industry that starts with mining
Speaker 3: a bas array of materials, those materials going through hundreds
Speaker 3: of steps of refinements. We grow food, obviously, we grow trees,
Speaker 3: we make things out of the trees. There's you know,
Speaker 3: you've got to You've got to build all that on Mars,
Speaker 3: and Mars is a hostile environment. It's you know, it
Speaker 3: sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near
Speaker 3: the equator on Mars.
Speaker 4: Meanly it's quite cold.
Speaker 2: How do you prep for that?
Speaker 4: Well, in the beginning, on Mars.
Speaker 3: You have to have a life support habitation module right
Speaker 3: like you need You can't just live outdoors.
Speaker 4: You can't breathe the air like.
Speaker 2: A dome you think is likely?
Speaker 4: Yeah, 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 3: What might be Arcadia planet? Here is one of the
Speaker 3: one of the good options. That's one of my daughters
Speaker 3: is named Arcadia after.
Speaker 2: That, and what makes that attractive.
Speaker 4: My other son's little name is uh 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 little name is essentially Mars.
Speaker 1: When did you get the dream?
Speaker 4: Like, I mean, it's twenty two to twenty one. Soon
Speaker 4: this is decades 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.
Speaker 3: I read a lot of science fiction books and program computers.
Speaker 3: But the first, finally off, the first video game that
Speaker 3: I sold was a space video game called Blastar. Maybe
Speaker 3: I spoiled 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: swat and you've managed everything you've touched has been an
Speaker 2: extraordinary success. Uh yeah, yeah, Look, I mean that's just
Speaker 2: objectively right. So what has led to that? Because there
Speaker 2: are other smart people that that's not true, and they
Speaker 2: gaze at their navel and they don't do anything. So
Speaker 2: what what do you do differently that makes you so effective?
Speaker 4: Well? I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity.
Speaker 3: I want to find out the nature of the universe,
Speaker 3: understand the universe, and in order to do that, we
Speaker 3: have to travel to other planets, see other star systems,
Speaker 3: maybe other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations, or at
Speaker 3: least the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding
Speaker 3: of worse it's universe going ready to come from and
Speaker 3: what questions do we not yet know to ask about
Speaker 3: the 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 which then helped launch you to the
Speaker 2: next one? In the next one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I studied physics and economics and college she's
Speaker 3: a good nation for understanding how the economy works and
Speaker 3: how reality works. And then I was going to do
Speaker 3: a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultra capacitors actually as
Speaker 3: a potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put
Speaker 3: that on hold to start an internet company. Essentially came
Speaker 3: to the conclusion that the Internet was one of those
Speaker 3: rare things and I could either watch it happen while
Speaker 3: a grad student or participated. And I figured, I've always
Speaker 3: go back to grad school. You know, grad school is
Speaker 3: going to be kind of the same. But I couldn't
Speaker 3: rather thought of just watching the Internet happen, So I
Speaker 3: wanted to be a part of building it. So I
Speaker 3: created an Internet Internet company. We did the first maps, directions,
Speaker 3: yellow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote
Speaker 3: the first version of Suffered just by myself and ninety
Speaker 3: five and we ended up selling that to Compact Texas company.
Speaker 2: I guess yea.
Speaker 3: For about three hundred million dollars in cash about four
Speaker 3: years after I graduated.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So I should say just to preface that I graduated
Speaker 4: with about one hundred thousand dollars a student debt. So
Speaker 4: it wasn't yeah, you and me both yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived
Speaker 3: with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and
Speaker 3: a bag of clothes.
Speaker 2: All right, So you sell the company for three hundred million,
Speaker 2: How much does that change your life?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I got twenty one million dollars black jack, and but
Speaker 3: I wanted to do more on the internet. So started
Speaker 3: a company called x dot com, which morch were a
Speaker 3: company called Confinity, which is Peter Thiel and Max Leptun yep,
Speaker 3: and we're combined. Company was actually at first little called
Speaker 3: x dot com, but we later later changed the name
Speaker 3: of the company to PayPal. Because of all the name changes,
Speaker 3: it's kind of confusing. But the company that people know
Speaker 3: is know as PayPal today. Was actually I felt those
Speaker 3: in corporation documents for that company interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and as you know, Peter Tiel and I were
Speaker 2: buddies back in the mid nineties before he went and
Speaker 2: did any of this, but you know, I became friends
Speaker 2: with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New
Speaker 2: York and just sort of a young libertarian with with
Speaker 2: a lot of dreams. So it's been a heck of
Speaker 2: a journey.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And now Peter was involved in a coup. You know,
Speaker 3: we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate
Speaker 3: situation where you know that they did cooon met at PayPal.
Speaker 2: I kind of now, did you all make peace after that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I was doing a lot of sort of
Speaker 3: risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful.
Speaker 3: But I then went on a two week trip which
Speaker 3: was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon, and said
Speaker 3: not done my honeymoon earlier in the year. So it's
Speaker 3: raising money while doing doing Hollywood honeymoon. But I was
Speaker 3: kind of awake.
Speaker 4: Did that go over by the way it worked?
Speaker 2: It worked?
Speaker 4: There, you go, kind of worked. I raised money, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: and we had honeymoon there you go.
Speaker 3: So yeah, but you don't want to be away from
Speaker 3: the battle when things are scary. So I was not
Speaker 3: there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway,
Speaker 3: we're passed things up. And I have been friends nonetheless,
Speaker 3: and yeah, these days all stay at his house and stuff.
Speaker 4: So I was super friends. And he's also invested in
Speaker 4: most of my companies.
Speaker 2: All right, So two thousand and two you start SpaceX, Like,
Speaker 2: how do you start a rocket company? Like what's the
Speaker 2: first day where you're like, I want to make rockets
Speaker 2: and I want to go to Mars? Like what do
Speaker 2: you do on day one?
Speaker 3: So I think you have to start with a some
Speaker 3: sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order
Speaker 3: for the in order to be in order to be
Speaker 3: highly motivated, you have to have some.
Speaker 4: Philosophical foundation. In my case, it was.
Speaker 3: That that we want to expand the scale, the scope
Speaker 3: and scale of consciousness.
Speaker 4: To better understand the nature of the universe.
Speaker 3: And in order to expand scale, expand consciousness, we need
Speaker 3: to go beyond one planet. If for one planet there's
Speaker 3: there's too much risk, you know, hopefully Earth civilization prosperous
Speaker 3: very far into the future.
Speaker 4: But it may not.
Speaker 3: There's always some risk that we are we self annihilate
Speaker 3: through nuclear war, or that there's a big meter that
Speaker 3: takes us out like the dinosaurs. Ye, there's always some
Speaker 3: risk if all your eggs are in one bast good.
Speaker 3: So it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.
Speaker 3: And then once we're a multiplanet species, that the next
Speaker 3: step would be to be a multi stellar and have
Speaker 3: a civilization among on many different star systems. So in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, I didn't think that I could.
Speaker 3: I didn't think I could sell a rocket company. So
Speaker 3: I thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal.
Speaker 3: In that case, I think was about one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty million dollars after tax, something like that, And I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't need a hundred and eighty million dollars,
Speaker 3: so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic
Speaker 3: Mars mission to get the public excited about going back
Speaker 3: to Mars. We're going to Mars, I should say, yeah,
Speaker 3: Mars was always going to be the destination after the Moon.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: In fact, if you told people in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 3: that it would be twenty twenty five and we've not
Speaker 3: even gone back to the Moon, let alone it's targetable leave,
Speaker 3: let alone Mars. They'd be like what happened in the
Speaker 3: civilization collapse? Top Yeah, like they would be incomprehensible that
Speaker 3: we've not been to Mars by now, if you told
Speaker 3: people this after landing on the Moon in sixty nine.
Speaker 2: Why do you think in fifty years America never went
Speaker 2: back to the moon.
Speaker 3: Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that
Speaker 3: could take people to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 3: which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there
Speaker 3: really hasn't been anything to replace any No, no vehicle
Speaker 3: has been made since then that can go to the
Speaker 3: Moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you can't go to Mars if you don't have
Speaker 3: 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 a kind of
Speaker 2: like hazy. Yeah, yeah, say it sounds like there are
Speaker 2: one hundred seared offices. But for six months you stay
Speaker 2: in the base. You're in your place it's like worrying. Mean,
Speaker 2: you know where you're supposed to you now, thirteen years
Speaker 2: into it. I think there's a lot of wisdom to
Speaker 2: doing that. But you were down in the basement office
Speaker 2: and I remember you were coming and sitting down with
Speaker 2: SpaceX and at the time, the Air Force was not
Speaker 2: letting you all bid to launch satellites, and so you
Speaker 2: were coming and saying, look, we got a company. I
Speaker 2: 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 3: Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real
Speaker 3: because originally, consistently with my belief that we need to
Speaker 3: become a mother planet species, I thought the only way
Speaker 3: to do that would be through NASA sou and I
Speaker 3: think I thought, well, if I just get the public
Speaker 3: excited about Mars, then they'll do admission to Mars. And
Speaker 3: so initially my thought was to have to send a
Speaker 3: small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then land
Speaker 3: the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see.
Speaker 4: The sort of money shot.
Speaker 3: The money shot would be green plants on a red background.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 3: I also recently know that money shot has a different
Speaker 3: meaning in some other arenas.
Speaker 2: But yeah, story.
Speaker 3: But what I'm trying to say is the captivating shot
Speaker 3: would be the green plants on a red background, and
Speaker 3: then hopefully that would if we did something like that, that
Speaker 3: would get the public excited about Mars, that would increase
Speaker 3: nasta's budget, and then we could send people to Mars.
Speaker 4: Dream was nicey to do this? Yes, not you. No.
Speaker 4: The original original plan was.
Speaker 3: Literally to take a bunch of the money from PayPal
Speaker 3: and I guess, by some people's definition, waste it with
Speaker 3: no probit on a nonprofit thing. I wanted to spend
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of my money for free to get
Speaker 3: NASA's budget to be bigger so we could.
Speaker 4: Go to friggin Mars. Right, Wow, that's what I wanted.
Speaker 4: So that was the holy Grail, That's what I wanted.
Speaker 2: I was like, so, when did you Mars?
Speaker 4: That's what I wanted to know, Well.
Speaker 2: When when did it strike you? Okay, you're going to
Speaker 2: have to do this.
Speaker 4: If you will, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: It gets crazier, all right, It gets crazier so so
Speaker 3: that I couldn't afford any of the US rockets because
Speaker 3: as you know, the US rockets are way too expensive
Speaker 3: for bying lucky rock Lucky rockets are crazy money I
Speaker 3: didn't have.
Speaker 4: I didn't even even with one hundred eighty millions. Way
Speaker 4: I could have afforded were they back then?
Speaker 3: Well, the that with the additional stage to get tomorrows,
Speaker 3: it would have been about like eighty million. So technically
Speaker 3: I could have afforded one of them, but I wanted
Speaker 3: to do too in case one of them didn't work.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So and then I didn't have enough money for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was sort of prepared to, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, waste half the money. And I figured
Speaker 3: if I had ninety million left, that'd be fine, you know,
Speaker 3: but ideally on all of it.
Speaker 4: So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.
Speaker 1: How'd that go?
Speaker 2: And who do you call?
Speaker 4: The Russian rocket forces?
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, I like, please walk you 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.
Speaker 3: Literally, Yeah, So I guess slightly less insane when you
Speaker 3: when you understand that the Russians had to demolish a
Speaker 3: bunch of their ICBMs because of uh, you know, sult
Speaker 3: talks like the peace because basically an agreement between the
Speaker 3: United States and Russia to reduce the total number of ICBMs,
Speaker 3: Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their ICBMs.
Speaker 4: So you've took it the very biggest ICBMs.
Speaker 3: You could converte those into a rocket at additional stage
Speaker 3: and send something to Mars.
Speaker 2: So those are big enough with one more stage to
Speaker 2: get to Mars.
Speaker 3: To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
Speaker 3: SS 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 3: They kept raising the price on me, so because I
Speaker 3: figured like, look, they're going to throw these things in
Speaker 3: scrappy on anyway, should get a really good deal, right,
Speaker 3: So the price started out at four million, then the
Speaker 3: next conversation there were at eight million. Then the next compsition,
Speaker 3: they were like nineteen million, and I'm like, this is
Speaker 3: before we signed a contract.
Speaker 2: By the way, was there another bit? Was there another
Speaker 2: bid or were you the only one trying to buy them?
Speaker 3: I think I don't know if there were other bids,
Speaker 3: but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
Speaker 3: if if the price is increasing this much before the
Speaker 3: contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced.
Speaker 4: After the contract sign So I got pretty frustrated there.
Speaker 3: Actually, in some cases we got into like shouting matches
Speaker 3: in Moscow. Some guy shouting at me in Russia and
Speaker 3: I'm shouting back at.
Speaker 2: Him and really badly, you know, I'm like, so you
Speaker 2: are all I mean, you're all.
Speaker 4: In Moscow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So.
Speaker 4: Man, I should have recorded that. That would have been one
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 1: How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
Speaker 1: I mean it was just like ongoing, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: This this took place.
Speaker 3: These conversations took place over probably six months or so so,
Speaker 3: and then the final trip trip there was with the
Speaker 3: with was with Mike Reffinue later became as administrator. I
Speaker 3: actually realized in the course of this that my original
Speaker 3: premise was wrong, that that America actually has plenty of
Speaker 3: will to go to Mars, but needs that. It just
Speaker 3: needs a way to Mars that is affordable and that
Speaker 3: doesn't break the budget.
Speaker 2: You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
Speaker 2: to the space station. We needed the Russians to get
Speaker 2: us to our own space station.
Speaker 4: That was embarrasing.
Speaker 2: It really was pitiful.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we're
Speaker 3: being fleeceed. Like I think they got up to like
Speaker 3: ninety million.
Speaker 2: Dollars a seat.
Speaker 3: Yeah wow, Yeah, well for a seat that custom like ten.
Speaker 2: Was predge obviously, but it was the only.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was before SpaceX.
Speaker 3: Ninety million dollars a seat for a seat that cost
Speaker 3: them ten million is high.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah, all right.
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Speaker 2: So a few months ago you and I were down
Speaker 2: in Bokuchika with a president for a starship launch, and
Speaker 2: it is incredible what you built in Bocachica. You know,
Speaker 2: five years ago it was an empty beach.
Speaker 4: At the southern tip of tex Soundbara.
Speaker 2: And it's now a city and a factory where you're
Speaker 2: building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision. But
Speaker 2: one of the things you said to me when we
Speaker 2: were down there that really stood out me is is
Speaker 2: is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talk to
Speaker 2: lots of CEOs or we fight to guard our I
Speaker 2: p and and you had a very different approach. What's
Speaker 2: what's your view.
Speaker 4: Of I P patents of the week, patterns of for
Speaker 4: those that innovation 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 and what Elon said down there
Speaker 2: is he said, look this stuff. I assume everyone will
Speaker 2: steal everything, but by the time they steal it will
Speaker 2: be five generations beyond and it won't matter.
Speaker 3: Yes, at Tesla, we actually open sourcedal Lite patents. So
Speaker 3: we said our patents are anyone can use them for free.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, uh. The only wily do patents of Tesla
Speaker 3: to to avoid patent.
Speaker 4: Trolls causing causing trouble.
Speaker 3: So we'll try to look ahead and say, okay, patent
Speaker 3: trolls are going to trial file patterns to blocks and things,
Speaker 3: will file patents and then open source to make it free.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm want to say patents for the week. Now.
Speaker 3: There are a few cases, in say with pharmaceuticals, where
Speaker 3: it might cost you billion dollars to do a Phase
Speaker 3: three human file, but then subsequently the drug is very
Speaker 3: cheap to manufacture. So cases there are some in my opinion,
Speaker 3: which would massively reduced what can be patented. And and say,
Speaker 3: because the whole point of patenting is to maximize innovation,
Speaker 3: not inhibit it. And in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion,
Speaker 3: most patents inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But
Speaker 3: there are case I want to do one a single
Speaker 3: cases like where such as a phase three clinical trial.
Speaker 3: It might cost a billion dollars, but then the drugs
Speaker 3: thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacture, and if you
Speaker 3: can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars,
Speaker 3: no one will pay for the billion dollars free writer
Speaker 3: problem exactly. So you have to address the free writer problem.
Speaker 3: But other than that, there should be no patents. The
Speaker 3: ideas 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 pot. The herd execution is
Speaker 4: the hard part.
Speaker 3: As the old saying goes, it's one percent inspiration, if
Speaker 3: not less than one percent, and nineteen 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: you you may even be better at execution, which is
Speaker 2: how do you execute so effectively?
Speaker 3: Well, I take a physics fresh principles approach to everything.
Speaker 3: It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing.
Speaker 3: It's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively.
Speaker 3: So uh, you know, the idea at the beginning of
Speaker 3: Tesla was that we would outsource.
Speaker 4: Almost all the manufacturing.
Speaker 3: But then it turned out there was no there were
Speaker 3: no good companies to outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't
Speaker 3: a really really, it wasn't peaceable outsourced manufacturing actually is
Speaker 3: the exception of the rule. And and just over time,
Speaker 3: we had to insource almost everything for Tesla and same
Speaker 3: for SpaceX. I became very good at manufacturing because I
Speaker 3: had to use no choice. At this point, I might
Speaker 3: know more about manufacturing than any any human ever has,
Speaker 3: because I've done so many. I've manufactured so many different
Speaker 3: things and so many different arenas. I think probably more
Speaker 3: than anyone 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 Norlink 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 so that's it wouldn't have shocked
Speaker 2: me if you said three or four.
Speaker 1: So the cornets rush is how many hours do you
Speaker 1: work a day?
Speaker 4: I work almost every working hour.
Speaker 2: And Ben, he's not kidding that. Like when Elan and
Speaker 2: I were first getting to know each other, I suggested,
Speaker 2: I said, hey, let let's grab dinner sometime. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if you remember what you said. You said,
Speaker 2: I don't eat dinner. I don't have social dinners really right,
Speaker 2: I mean that, Yeah, I mean you obviously eat food,
Speaker 2: but yeah, idea going to a restaurant for two hours, But
Speaker 2: the idea of like, I don't, But it was it
Speaker 2: was just kind of a matter of fact. Why would
Speaker 2: I go to dinner like you jump you work? Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I interally just I'll have lunch, and then it
Speaker 3: brought during meetings and continue being.
Speaker 1: How many nights have you slept at your offices? You
Speaker 1: think your career percentage wise where you say, I just
Speaker 1: got to take this nap basically because my body forces
Speaker 1: me to, and I got to get back to work
Speaker 1: fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it started out even with the first
Speaker 3: company two which is a terrible name, but the first
Speaker 3: interror company, we were able to rent an office which
Speaker 3: was like in a leaky attack essentially for five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could find
Speaker 3: was eight hundred dollars a month. So like, and we
Speaker 3: only had about five thousand dollars between our brother and I,
Speaker 3: so like we're not we'll we'll, we'll.
Speaker 4: Just stay in the office. Yep. So we got some.
Speaker 3: Couches that converted into beds and we'd can't sleep at night,
Speaker 3: and then we just have like turn the beds back
Speaker 3: into couches before anyone came, and then we would shout
Speaker 3: the Y M C A down the road and so
Speaker 3: that went that that that that literally was for several months.
Speaker 4: What we did, it was in great shape. You know,
Speaker 4: we work out the y.
Speaker 3: I still remember that that YFC at Page Miller al
Speaker 3: Camino in Palo Alto.
Speaker 2: So that was a long time.
Speaker 3: Again, so it's been I don't know. I've never thought
Speaker 3: to count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 2: So you're now the richest man on earth? Do you
Speaker 2: still sleep at the office, Well, that's true, maybe Mars,
Speaker 2: we'll find someone else.
Speaker 3: But I think if someone is a sovereign head of
Speaker 3: a country there to facto richer by a lot.
Speaker 2: Do you still sleep at the office now?
Speaker 4: I have sometimes slept at the office. Yeah, don't forget.
Speaker 1: We do this show Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Hit that
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Speaker 1: a pleasure. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 4: Some verdict.
Speaker 1: We'll see you guys back here in a couple of days.