A Look Inside Elon Musk's Vision: Complete Interview

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, first half, welcome it is Verdict with Ted Cruz,
Ben Ferguson with you. Happy New Year's Center to you
as well and to everyone listening right now. And we've
got a really fun show that we're going to do
to day on New Year's and it deals with Waye's
fraud and abuse that we talked about that's now becoming
a reality in Minnesota months ago with your good friend

(00:20):
Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you had
a fantastic New Year's Eve. I hope you stayed safe.
I hope you enjoyed time with your family, you celebrate it.
I hope you're ready now for an incredible twenty twenty six.
I hope that you accomplish something that really makes a difference,
That you make a difference in the lives of those
around you, you make a difference in the lives of
your kids and your community, and you make a real

(00:43):
impact fighting for our country. Our country is at a
pivotal time, and I hope twenty twenty six is a
time where you stand up and say I am going
to stand up and defend our nation. Like so many
patriots who have preceded me on this New Year's Day,
We're going to play one of my favorite podcasts that
Bet and I ever did, and this was last year.
Last summer, we interviewed Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a

(01:06):
good friend of mine. We sat down with him for
an hour in the White House, talking to him about
Doge and what he was doing with President Trump, but
also talking talking to him personally about who he is,
about how he built Tesla, how he built SpaceX. We
talked to him about AI and killer robots. And it's
a fascinating show and we present it to you right

(01:27):
now in its entirety.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Make sure you download it wherever you get your podcast
It's a great episode. It's out right now. Verdict with
Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, we're in the White House right now and we're
here with my friend Elon Musk, who really has not
been doing much of anything, has not made any news
is and nobody has noticed the impact.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Welcome Elon.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Holy crap.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Oh yes, wow. Let me just say, never a dull moment.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Never a dull moment.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
The first fifty days the president and has spent an
office over the top and the first fifty days you've spent.
I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an
impact the way you have. At the beginning, let me
start with a question. You know a lot about which
was worse the mess you found at Twitter or the
mess you found in the federal government.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
Well, it's hard to compete with the federal government.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
What's surprised you about the federal government? I assume you
came in and assumed it was bad. Is it worse
than you expected?

Speaker 4 (02:28):
It is worse than I expected. But on the plus side,
that means there's more opportunity for improvement. So look, if
you look on the bright side, there's actually a lot
of opportunity for improvement in federal government expenditures because it's
so bad. If it was a well run ship, it
would be very difficult to improve. So now it's like

(02:49):
people say, well, how will you figure out how to
save money in the federal government? Well, it's like being
in a room where the walls, the roof, and the
floor are old targets. Any direction, yeah, jitness, Wow, Yeah,
I'm sure you would agree.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
So a lot of folks have talked about like like.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
You can't right, yeah, this is going to any direction?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
A lot of the crazy expenditures, things like like two
million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala. In essential,
you know, transgendered mice and sesame street in Iraq.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
A lot of that has gotten attention.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
But some of the stuff you've told me about, like
tell us about computer licenses and government agencies.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah, so most of what do just finding. You don't
need to be shock comes. It's very obvious, basic stuff.
So in every goblet depopment, I say every because we've
not yet found a single exception. There are far too
many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software
licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Like you were saying, like an agency with fifteen thousand
people might have thirty thousand licenses. Yes, and even of
the fifteen thousand employees, a good chunk of them hadn't
used the license, had never logged on or used the application.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Yes, we found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions.
There were zero logins, so it had and yet we
were paying for it. Yes, the government's paying for thousands
of licenses of software or media subscriptions and no one
had ever logged in even once or credit cards.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
You found the same thing with government credit cards.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
We found that there are twice as many credit cards
as there are humans could and I still don't have
a good explanation for why this is the case. And
these are ten thousand dollars limited cards, so it's a
lot of money.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Is it incompetent that you're finding or is this like
the biggest money wandering scheme in the history of the
world that you're finding?

Speaker 4 (04:50):
Okay, I think it's mostly if you say, look, what's
the waste to fraud ratio? Yeah, in my opinion, it's
it's like eighty percent wasst twenty percent for But you
do have these sort of gray areas. For example, example
be so, uh, we saw a lot of payments going
out of treasury that had no payment code and no

(05:13):
explanation for the payment, and then we're we're we're trying
to figure out what that payment is and we'd see
that Okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off,
but but someone forgot to shut off that that contract
and so the company kept getting money. Wow. Now is
that waste or fraud both? Both?

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, you're not.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
Supposed to get you're not supposed to get it, but
you but the government sent it to you and nobody
from the government asked for it back. Take for example,
the one the one point nine billion dollars given to
Stacy Abrams y fake ng O.

Speaker 5 (05:49):
Utter insanity, explain that story. That's that's just corrupt. I
think that's paying off cronies at that point. Yeah, and
by the way, she knew, like when you get two
billion dollars, you don't miss that.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
That's not on accident. That's allegedly it was for like, uh,
you know, environmentally friendly appliances or something. And they've given
like like one hundred appliances so far for two billion dollars.
It's very expensive toast roll that's fridge, it's nice. Is
It's just obviously one of the biggest scam Ford holes

(06:24):
we've uncovered, which is really crazy, is uh? Is that
is that the government can give money to a so
called nonprofit with with very few controls and then that
and there's there's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit, so
there's no So this is where with the you know,
one point nine billion of Stacey Arams, who's who's that

(06:45):
they didn't give themselves extremely lavished like insane salaries, expense
everything yep, to the to the nonprofit you know, buy
jets and homes and all sorts of things, live like
kings and queens. Yes on the taxpayer, dont correct you.
This is happening at scale. It's not just one or two.
We're seeing this everywhere.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Now, one of the things you told me about is
at least what you call say, magic money computers. Well,
so tell us about it, because I've never heard of
that until you brought that up.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
Okay, So you may think that these the government computers
like all talk to each other, they synchronize, they add
up what funds are going somewhere, and it's you know,
it's coherent that that that the you know, there's that,
and that the numbers, for example, that you're presented as
a senator, yeah, are actually the real numbers. And one

(07:35):
would think we would think they're not. Yeah, okay, I
mean they're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by
five percent or ten percent in some cases. So I
call it magic money computer. Any computer which can just
make money out of thin air best magic money.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
So how does that work?

Speaker 4 (07:53):
It just issues payments?

Speaker 2 (07:55):
And you said something like eleven of these computers of
treasury that are that are sending out truellions in payments.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
They're mostly a treasury, some are with the sum at HHS,
some that there's one one of two as states. There's
some at DoD. I think we found now fourteen magic
money computers Gene. Okay, they just send money out of nothing.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
You have an ability to see where leverage points are
and how things actually happen. So I remember back I
think it was September October of this year, before the election.
We didn't know who was going to win, and I
was at your house in Austin. We were talking about
it and you said, you said, look, I don't want
a job in Washington, and you said, all I want

(08:39):
is the log in for every computer. And I remember
thinking at the time that sounded kind of weird, like
I just didn't get it. And I have to say,
what's interesting on this. If I would have thought like, okay,
how do you reform government, like sort of the traditional
way to think about it is, okay, give me an
ORC chart, let me sit down with the people who
are running agencies. And what you saw immediately is to

(09:02):
understand what's really going on, get to the payment systems,
get to the computers. Yeah, Like, why is getting to
the computers so critical to understanding what's actually happening?

Speaker 4 (09:16):
Well, the government is run by computers, so you've got
essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government. And
if you want to know, did you know that then no? Like, yeah,
so when somebody, like even when the president issues an
executive order, that's going to go through a whole bunch
of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere.

(09:36):
And if you want to know what the situation is
with the accounting and you're trying to reconcile accounting and
get rid of waist and fraud, you must be able
to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise you can't figure it
out because all you're doing is asking a human who
will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally
usually ask some contractor will ask another contractor to your
query on the computer. Wow, that's out. Actually, look so

(10:00):
it's many layers d. So the only way to reconcile
the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is
to to actually look at the computers and see what's
going on. So that's what I call it. That's like,
that's what when I sort of cryptically referred to reprogramming
the matrix. You have to understand what's going on the computers.
You have to reconcile the computer databases in order to

(10:22):
identify the waste and fraud.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
I don't know that there was anyone in Congress who understood,
certainly myself included, who understood the leverage that comes from
the computer and the data. In particular, that that Congress
would think about give me a report on what your
expenditures are rather than actually getting into the pipes. And
I think that has been fascinating that it's let you

(10:47):
uncover a bunch of craft that just nobody knew.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
Yes, I mean, in order for money to go to
a van acount, it's it's not like we're standing truckloads
of cash all over the place where it's a where
hiring money. Right, it was sending money through the ach
system or through the Swift system. So in order for
money to flow, it's going to flow electronically. So that's
that's what you need to look at. You can look
at the actual electronic money flows.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
And Tesla and all your companies you have accounting and
you have every expenditure. You have it coded for what
it's going for. Federal government doesn't work that way. They
don't code what.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
The money's going for.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
They do not, but they didn't. They didn't.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
And like one of the things that that you told me,
you said, if any company kept its books the way
the federal government does, they'd arrest the officers and put
them in jail.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
Yes, if it was a poly company would be dealisted immediately.
It would fail, it's ordered, and the officers of the
company would be imprisoned. That's the level of enough business
in the Unfortunately it's deliberately or do you think this
is in competence again, it's eighty percent. It's eighty percent
incompetence or in twenty percent malice.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
If you look at DOGE now and you look at
the government and what you're finding, what percentage have you
guys even gotten to and how much of it is
mars where you haven't even gotten there yet? Because there's
so much you're finding out here, I mean, how many
you seem like a timeline guy when you say, all right,
I want to get in there and get all these
you know, numbers and things. How far are we from
the in game where you've seen it all, been able

(12:15):
to process it all and fix it. I mean are
we years away, months away.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Not yours, I mean recently confident that we'll be able
to get a trillion dollars of waste and forward out,
and that meaning that it will have what we'll have
a net savings in f I twenty six, which thoughts
in October obviously of a trillion dollars provider were allowed
to We're allowed to continue and and our progress is

(12:43):
not impeded. And we're very public about what we do.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah, you put it out on the website about.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
How we could be more transparent. Literally everything action we do,
smaller lodge we put on the doorst dot gov website,
and we post on the x handle. And when people
complain about it and they say, oh, you're doing something costumes,
I'm like, well, which of these costs?

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Everyone knows exactly what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (13:07):
Extreme transparent. Yeah, I don't think it's anything's been this
transparent ever.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
So five years ago you were a hero to the left, cool,
you had electric cars, you had space, And in five
years you've got.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
To go to a party in Hollywood and not getduddy looks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
In fact, yeah, and you might's invited, but I don't
know if I need to go. And I don't think
it's an exaggeration to say today after Donald Trump, the
left hates you more than a person on earth.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Yes, I appear to be number two. I mean, if
you're judged by the various signs.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
The estrangements, it's Trump arrangement syndrome and elon de arrangement syndrome.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
How is that for you?

Speaker 2 (13:51):
That's a little bit of whiplash of going from being
like mister cool to the devil incarnate in just a
couple of years. Is that is that kind of weird experience,
that transformation?

Speaker 4 (14:01):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Why do they hate you so much?

Speaker 4 (14:05):
Well, because we're we're clearly over the target if those
was ineffective, if we were not actually getting rid of
a bunch of wasting forward and a bunch of that
for I mean, the forward reason we're seeing is overwhelmingly
on the on the left. I mean, it's it's there's
it's not zero on the right. But these NGOs are

(14:25):
almost all left wing NGOs that are being funded for example,
So they hate me because Doge is being effective and
dog is getting rid of a lot of waste for
that they were the people and left were taking advantage
of that. That's that's that's what it comes out to you.
And and the single biggest thing that they're that they're

(14:46):
worried about is that doge is is going to turn
off fraudulent payments of entitlements. I mean everything from Social Security, medicare, uh,
you know, unemployment does ability, smallpers administ registration loans turn
them off to illegals. This is that flux of the matter. Yeah, okay,

(15:09):
this is this is the this is the thing that
why they really hit my guts, want me to die.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
And do you think that's billions, hundreds of billions? What
do you think the scale is of that?

Speaker 4 (15:19):
I think across the country it's in the it's well,
notth of one hundred billion, maybe two hundred million. So
by using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to
attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and buy voters,
and buy voters exactly the basically bring in ten twenty

(15:45):
million people who are beholden to the Democrats for governor
handouts and will vote overwhelming the Democrat as has been
demonstrated in California. This is it's an election strategy. Yes,
it's powered. Yes, and it doesn't take much to turn
the swing states blue. I mean off in a swing
state yet be won by ten twenty thousand votes. Sure,

(16:06):
so if the DAMS can bring in two hundred thousand
illegals and over time get them legal legalized, not counting
any cheating that takes place, because there is some cheating,
but even without cheating, if you bake, if you if
you bring in illegals that are ten x the voted
differential in a swing state, it will no longer be
a swing state, right, and the DAMS will win all

(16:27):
the swing states just a matter of time, and America
will be permanent deep blue socialist state. At the House,
the Senate, YEP, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court will
all go hardcore down. They will then further cement that
by bringing even more aliens so you can't vote your

(16:47):
way out of it.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Their objeman is to make one.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
Party socialist state, and it will be much worse than California,
because at least California is mitigated by the fact that
someone can leave California.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
You can go to Texas.

Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, exactly, you did go to make everywhere California, but
worse by the way.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
The middle of the pandemic, I spent forty five minutes
on the phone with Elon. He was still in California.
I was walking my dog's snowflake and trying to convince
you come to Texas. The commis in California can't stand you.
We love you, we want you here. And you didn't
quite go then, but you went not that long afterwards.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
I mean, the COVID actions almost killed Tesla because every
other auto plant in the country was a lot of open,
but ours, which was in California, was not a lot
of open. Wow wow. So they almost killed Tesla.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
So as a personal matter, do you ever regret it?
Like five years ago you go to the Oscars and
mister cool and now you've got death threats every day,
Like do you well?

Speaker 4 (17:46):
These days the Oscars are boring. I wouldn't want to go.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
God bless the movies they nominate.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
No one on earth has ever seen, Like could they
actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch?

Speaker 4 (17:56):
I mean, how many great movies have come out and
last your very.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Few, depressingly few, yeah, very few.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
Last Oscars came and went. I didn't watch it. There's
nothing to see.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
I was sad that Gene Hackman just passed away because
Unforgiven was spectacular, but that was a long time ago.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
Un Forgiven came out.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
You've mentioned today here and before about the possibility of
someone wanting to take you out, dealing with the death threats,
we see.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
It's not in my imagination. You can just look on
social media. Yeah, but like is it because very clear?

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, And look I'm I'm very familiar with it.

Speaker 4 (18:31):
And they've got science. They are people with science and
demonstrations saying that I need to die.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Do you think are these just whack jobs or do
you think there are hopefull foreign people? Do you think
there are foreign entities behind this? Do you think they're
domestic entities behind the threats? And also the attacks to
Twitter are not Twitter but Tesla. I mean, you know
you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire. Do you

(18:57):
think that's organized and paid for?

Speaker 4 (19:00):
Yes, at least some of it is organized and hate
for I think by domestic you know, basically left wing
organizations in America funded by uh, left wing billionaires essentially.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Is it like Act Blue or what.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
Act Blue is one of them? You know, Arabella. You
know the classic it's funded by the you know, the
blue basically the left wing ANDNGO cabal.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
How big of a threads is to like what you
build at Tesla. I mean, I remember when Tesla's came out,
it was people that they didn't want to have gas cars.
A lot of it was environmental reasons. I jokingly said,
I was like, I'm a Texas guy, I'm always going
to have something that burns gas. My kids now, all
three of my boys think that that Tesla's are awesome.
The cyber truck is the car they want their dad

(19:53):
to buy, which I laugh because I never could have
imagined that five years ago.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
And now I'm looking at.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
We're worth the White House in the President's Tesla sparks.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yeah, meaning which is the fullest damp.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
But I mean, you've changed a generation when you look
at my kids are six and eight and they're going
Dad buy a cyber truck and I'm considering it. That's
a that's a full circle in a weird way.

Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah. Well, I do have this story that the most
errantating outcome is the most likely, So yeah, it seems
often to be true. What what twist or turn of fate. Well,
I would the highest ratings if this was if we're
a TV show, what twistal turn of fate would generate
the highest ratings that there's a good chance that happens.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Well, I will say if if Act Blue and Arabella.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Network Blue is a huge scam X level, do you.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Think it's foreign money? Chinese money? Where do you think
the money in Act Blue is coming from? How do
you figure that out?

Speaker 4 (20:46):
Well, it's not coming from the from a whole bunch
of from a ground swell of public support, because when
individual donors looked at and Act Blue, they aventually turned
out to be like diehard Republicans, people have never given
in their life. So you're going to track down a
bunch of thesee where it says, oh, I gave sixteen
thousand dollars and they're like, I didn't give sixteen thousand dollars.

(21:06):
We're talking about this is Well, if those whole con
friends of mine, if I found themselves on the Act
Blue list, they.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Like So that's if it can actually be shown that
they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations, that's objectively
a criminal act, that that is funding terrorist activity, and
the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
So thats down is a terrorist activity.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Let me ask AI in ten years, how is life
going to be different because of AI for just a
normal person.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
Well, ten years is a long time. In ten years,
probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively,
probably almost. I think in ten years, based on the
cart rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the
smartest human. Yeah. Yeah. There will also be a massive
number of robots, So humanoid robots.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
By the way, I got to ask, how come your
robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot?

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Was that intentional or just.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I was hoping he's gonna say, yeah, just to mess
with you.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
It's not meant to look like any prior robot. And
we'll iterate the design and you'll be able to have
a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic. You'll be
able to switch out the kind of snap on cosmetic
parts of the robot make it look like something else.
I you lying. So there'll be ultimately billions of humanoid

(22:35):
robots all costs will be self driving in ten years.
In ten years, probably ninety percent of miles driven will
be autonomous. Huh wow that fast. Yeah, in five years,
probably fifty percent of all miles driven will be autonomous.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Now, if AI will be smarter than any persons, how
many jobs go away because of that? And what do
people do if you've got billions of people that are
losing their jobs like that, a lot of people are
understandably freaked out about that.

Speaker 4 (23:05):
Well, goods, goods and services will become close to free.
So it's not as though people will be wanting in
terms of goods and services. So why is that? What?

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Why are goods and services free in an AI world
or close to free?

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Well, you have I don't know, call it tens of
billions of robots that they will They will make you
anything or provide any service you want for basically next
to nothing. It's it's not that people will be will
have a lower stand of living. They'll have actually much
higher standard of living. But the challenge will be fulfillment.

(23:45):
How do you drive fulfillment and meeting in life?

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Is skynet real like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI?
How real is the prospect of killer robots annihilating humanity?

Speaker 4 (24:00):
Twenty percent likely? Maybe ten percent on what timeframe fifty
ten years so soon.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Like you you see a world where that's possible.

Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, but I mean you can look at it like
the glasses eighty ninety percent full, meaning like eighty percent
likely will have extreme prosperity for all.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Now, I guess my view, we're in a race to
win AI. We're in a race with China, and my
view is, if they're going to be killer robots, I'd
rather they be American killer robots than Chinese. How likely
are we winning right now? Is America winning right now?
And how likely is America to win the race for
AI visa v.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
China or anyone else?

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Well, the next few years, I think America is likely
to win. Then it will be a function of who
controls the AI chip fabrication, the factories that make the
AI chiefs, who controls them if they are controlled, If
more of them will controlled by China, than China will win.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
More of the factories that are making the AI chip.
So you think that will determine it?

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (25:02):
And how are we doing versus China on that front?

Speaker 4 (25:05):
Well, right now almost all the advanced AI chip factories
they call them fabs are in Taiwan.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
And what if China invades one miles away from Yeah,
what happens if China?

Speaker 2 (25:19):
If China invades Taiwan, what happens to the world.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
Well, if they were to invade in the niatom, the
world would be cuttle from advanced AI chips. And currently
one of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
How fast can we put that online in America? How
important is that for national security?

Speaker 4 (25:37):
I think it's essential for national security, and we're not
doing enough.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
You're fifty three years old. I'm one hundred and eighteen
days older than you. By what the hell have I
done in my life?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
I know?

Speaker 4 (25:47):
Right?

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Fifty three years old?

Speaker 4 (25:49):
Pretty well?

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Well, so seventy one was a great year, and I
was December seventy because I was just just right before
you were the summer of seventy one.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
I was born sixty nine days after four twenty.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Wow, I did ask Ben.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
This is look.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
I did ask Ben.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Should I show up and pull up a joint and say,
can we beat Rogan's views? But I was pretty sure
it might cause a scandal if we speak a podcast.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
It just turned out to be like a chocolate cigard.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, let me ask you if if today was your
last day on Earth?

Speaker 4 (26:27):
Yeah, what what?

Speaker 3 (26:29):
I'm not suggesting it's going to be.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
But if it were, what do you think your biggest
legacy would be if everything you've done one hundred years
from now? What do you think people would remember if
if if it were zero to today.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
And were you ever going to space in the.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
In the distant future one hundred or one thousand years ago,
if SpaceX got humans to Mars, that's what they would
remember me for. All right, final set of questions.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Who's the smartest guy you've ever met? You hang out
with some brilliant people, Like like when you look at
what's the CEO you look at than yourself?

Speaker 4 (27:01):
What CEO? Do you say?

Speaker 3 (27:03):
Damn, that guy's good.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
Larry Elson's very smart. So I say, Larry Elison's one
of the smartest people. You know, Larry Page. I mean,
there are a lot of people that are very smart.
It's hard to say, Like, you know, I think something
Toree smart is as smart as so you know what
if what have they done that is difficult and significant?

(27:28):
You know, Jeff Bezos has not a lot of difficult
and significant things. I mean, there are a lot of
smart humans. I call them smart for smart for a
human A lot of people who are in the smart
for a human category.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
All right, final lightning round, Star Wars or Star Trek.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
The first movie I said in a theater was Star Wars,
so I think it had a profound effect on me.
I was six years old. I think, imagine, best first
movie you ever see in a theater is Star Wars.
It's gonna blaw your mind.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Best Star Wars.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
Movie Empires tracks Back.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
The only objectively right answer.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
I stood in line in three hours with my dad
to see it on opening day.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
Kirk or Picard, I like them both.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
For Kirk again, objectively right answer. By the way, James T.
Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat, and
the left gets very mad when I say that best
Star Trek.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Movie, I mean the original, the first Star Trek movie.
That's okayons. Both of both Ratha coons were pretty good.
But yeah, the original Wratha Khon.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Ricardo Montalbaan Revenge is a dish best served cold. It
is very cold in space, although I will say Wrathacon
is objectively the right answer. But but four as a
sleeper when they go back to San Francisco and and
and go find the whales and and you know, Scotty
picks up spicks, picks up the mouth and talks to

(28:54):
it and goes a keyboard. How quaint that's a sleeper?

Speaker 4 (28:58):
All right?

Speaker 3 (28:59):
Last question? Did Han shoot first?

Speaker 4 (29:03):
It seemed like he shot second. This is verdict.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
And by the way, I apologized Ben so Ben was
a jock and played tennis at ole miss and so
so occasionally when when we geek out a little, I.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Love watching y'all geek out over.

Speaker 4 (29:14):
There is still on the question, I love you missed
his The alien miss is flaster shot, So why do
you miss his flaster shot? Must have been because he
got shot first. He's missing a point blank bastel shot.
If they less, they got knocked off kids.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
But it's a question of real shot, which is is
Han Solo simply a hero or an anti hero? And
and so I'm in the Han shot first category. I
think I don't like sanitized stories.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
You would have had to shot first because other way,
why why would the alien miss a point blank range?

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Are you ever going to go to outer space?

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Is that thing in your life goals?

Speaker 4 (29:47):
Yeah, I'd like to go to Mars at some point,
And people have said do I want to dine maz
and I say, yes, just not an impact.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Now that's a very good answer. The astronauts on the
space station are they political prisoners? Some of them are
because because you could have given them a ride back,
and Joe Biden said no, purely for politics.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some debate about
this online. But the thing is that it was very
a very high level of decision, so it wasn't really
even an acid decision. It was just that the Biden
White House did not want to have someone who is
pro Trump rescuing askorate's rifle before the election, so they

(30:31):
pushed it.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Well, if you're one of those astronauts, you got to
be pretty pissed off about that.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
Well if they're a Democrat, yes, a Democrat, like everything's fine,
fair enough. So I think one of them is a
republicable is a Democrat, So it depends on which one
you ask.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Well, thank you, Elon, this was this was awesome. And
let me say, and by the way, I put out
on X the day before yesterday, if you were having
a beer with Elon and could ask him anything, what
would you ask? And got lots of responses. The most
common response people said is say thank you. Look, Texans
and the American people appreciate what you're doing. You don't

(31:06):
have to put up with this BS, and you're doing it.
I'm grateful you're making a hell of a difference for
this country. I appreciate you, and the Americans appreciate you.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
Yeah, it's essential for the future of civilization. Otherwise I
wouldn't be doing it. Yes, it's not like I want
to get death threats.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
You know, Now, what year does man first set foot
on Mars?

Speaker 4 (31:25):
I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
and I don't think it's more than two to four
years beyond that.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
And that's not an unman, that's a human being putting
his foot on the surface.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
Yes, best case would be twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
And what do you put the odds of finding either
alien life or evidence of alien life.

Speaker 4 (31:46):
I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay, but.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Do we find ruins, do we find remnants?

Speaker 4 (31:51):
We may we may find the ruins of a long
dead alien civilization. That's possible, and we may find subterranean
microbial life. That's possible.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
All right, if man lands on Mars and twenty nine
how soon after that do you land on.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
Mars remains to be seen. I'm not sure. The important
thing is that we build a self sustaining city on
Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when
that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper even
when the supply ships from Earth stopped coming. At that point,
even if something would happen on Earth, it might It

(32:28):
might not be World War.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Three, but it might be that a bad virus.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
Yeah, it might not be anything for those things. It's like,
lets say, civilization, you could die with a bang or whimper.
It may be that civilization dies with a whimper rather
than a bang or and simply loses the ability to
send ships to Mars. But so you often need Mars
to become self sustaining and be able to grow by
itself before the resupply ships from Earth stopped coming. That

(32:54):
is the critical a civilizational threshold, beyond which the probable
life span of civilization is much greater.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
And how close are we technologically to be able to
do that, To have a self sustaining settlement on the
surface of Mars.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
I think it can be done in twenty years, but.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
It would take twenty years, So we're not in twenty nine,
We're not there. What are we missing? What are the
big technologies?

Speaker 4 (33:16):
We don't have a few people running around the surface
in a hostile environment is not going to make it
self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
So but you think we could have a million people
on Mars in twenty years, Yes, And what's the technology
we're missing right now? When you think about a million
people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water,
to get food, to keep them safe? I mean, what
do we need to make that happen?

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry both.
So you know, we're here at the top of a
massive permit of industry that starts with mining a vas
array of materials, those materials going through hundreds of steps
of refinement. We grow food, obviously, we grow trees, We
make things out of the trees. There's you know, you've

(34:03):
got to You've got to build all that on Mars,
and Mars is a hostile environment. It's you know, it
sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near
the equator on Mars, mean it's quite cold. How do
you prep for that? Well, in the beginning, on Mars,
you have to have a life support habitation module right
like you need you can't just live outdoors. You can't
breathe the air like a dome you think is likely? Yeah,

(34:26):
glass domes type of thing.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely
to be ideal for a habitat?

Speaker 4 (34:33):
What might be Arcadia planetare is one of the one
of the good options. That's one of my daughters is
named Arcadia after that, and what makes that attractive? My
eldest son's middle name is Ari's Mars.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
You've been thinking about this for a long time. If
you're name and your kids around it.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
My eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
When did you get the dream?

Speaker 4 (34:56):
Like, I mean, there's twenty twenty one soon.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
This is a decad it's old.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, dream So like when you were ten, did you
look up and say I'm going to Mars?

Speaker 4 (35:04):
No? No. I read a lot of science fiction books
and program computers. But the first finally off, the first
video game that I sold was a space video game
called Blastar. Maybe I was born this way?

Speaker 2 (35:18):
How do you do how do you become elon musk? Look,
you're obviously smart as hell, but but there are lots
there are a lot of smart people that don't do
squat and you've managed everything you've touched has been an
extraordinary success. Yeah, yeah, Look, I mean that's just objectively right.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
So what has led to that?

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Because there are other smart people that that's not true
and they gaze at their nabel and they don't do anything.
So what what do you do differently that makes you
so effective?

Speaker 4 (35:46):
Well, I suppose to have a philosophy of curiosity. I
want to find out the nature of the universe, understand
the universe. And in order to do that, we have
to travel to other planets, see other staw systems, maybe
other galaxies, find perhaps other aian civilizations or at least
the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding of
worse it's universe going, wherey to come from? And what

(36:07):
questions do we not yet know to ask about the
answer that is the universe.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
So let's go back twenty five years, late nineties. You're
at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the success
it was which then helped launch you to the next one?

Speaker 4 (36:21):
And the next one. Yeah. So I studied physics and
economics and college, which is a good foundation for understanding
how the economy works and how reality works. And then
was going to do a PhD at Stanford in advanced
ultra capacitors actually as a potential means of energy storage

(36:41):
for electric transport. Put that on hold to start an
Internet company. Essentially came to the conclusion that the Internet
was one of those rare things and I could either
watch it happen while a grad student or anticipate. And
I figured, I've always go to back to grad school.
Grad school is going to be kind of the same.
But I couldn't bear the thought of just watching the
Internet happen. So I wanted to be a part of

(37:03):
building it. So I created an Internet Internet company. We
did the first maps, directions, yealow pages, white pages on
the Internet. I actually wrote the first motion of suffware
just by myself in ninety five, and we ended up
selling that to Compac Texas Company. I can yeah, for
about three hundred million dollars in cash about four years
after I graduated. Wow. So I should say just to

(37:27):
preface that I graduated with about one hundred thousand dollars
a student debt. So it wasn't yeah you and me
a both, yeah, yeah, right, I know. And when I
first arrived in North America, I arrived with twenty five
hundred dollars, a bag of books and a bag of clothes.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
All right, so you sell the company for three hundred million,
How much does that change your life?

Speaker 4 (37:46):
Well? I got twenty one million dollars that jack, But
I wanted to do more on the internet, so started
a company called x dot com, which merch with a
company called Confinity, which is Peter Teel and Max leftun yep.
And the combined company was actually at first sttle called
x dot com, but we later later changed the name

(38:08):
of the company to PayPal. Because of all the name changes,
it's kind of confusing. But the company that people know
is know as PayPal today was actually I filed those
in corporation documents for that company. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, well, And as you know, Peter Tiel and I
were buddies back in the mid nineties before he went
and did any of this. But you know, I became
friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in
New York and just sort of a young libertarian with
a lot of dreams.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
So it's been a heck of a journey. Yeah yeah,
And nously, Peter was involved in a coup. You know,
we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate
situation where you know that they did cooon met at PayPal.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
I kind of now, did you all make peace after that?

Speaker 4 (38:54):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah. I mean I was doing a lot
of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would
have been successful. But I then went on a two
week trip which was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon,
and said not done my honeymoon earlier in the year,
So it's raising money while doing doing holly honeymoon. But
I was kind of awake. Did that go over by

(39:14):
the way it worked? It worked, there you go, kind
of worked. I raised money, yeah, yeah, and we had
honeymoon there you go. So yeah, but you don't want
to be away from the battle when things are scary,
so I was not there to assuage the concerns of
the troops. And anyway, we passed things up. And I

(39:36):
have been friends nonetheless, and you know these days all
like stay at his house and stuff. So I was
super friends. And he's also invested in most of my companies.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
All right, So two thousand and two, you start SpaceX,
Like how do you start a rocket company? Like what's
the first day where you're like, I want to make
rockets and I want to go to Mars?

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Like what do you do on day one?

Speaker 4 (39:57):
So I think you have to start with a some
sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order
for the in order to be in order to be
highly motivated, you have to have some philosophical foundation. In
my case, it was that that we want to expand
the scale, the scope and scale of consciousness to better
understand the nature of the universe. And in order to

(40:20):
expand scale, expand consciousness, we need to go beyond one planet.
If from one planet there's there's too much risk. You know,
hopefully Earth civilization prosperos very far into the future, but
it may not. There's always some risk that we are
we self annihilate through nuclear war, or that there's a
big meter that takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yep,
there's always some risk if all your eggs are in

(40:40):
one basket. So it's going to be better if we're
a multiplanet species. And then once we're a multiplanet species
that the next step would be to be a multi
stellar and have civilization among on many different star systems.
So in two thousand and one, I didn't think that
I could. I didn't think I could sell a rocket companies.
So I thought I'd take some of the money from paypall.

(41:00):
In that case, I think it was about one hundred
and eighty eight million dollars after tax, something like that,
and I thought, you know, I don't need one hundred
and eighty million dollars, so I'll spend a bunch of
it on a philanthropic Mars mission to get the public
excited about going back to Mars. We're going to Mars,
I should say, Yeah, Mars was always going to be

(41:21):
the destination after the Moon. Right. In fact, if you
told people in nineteen sixty nine that it would be
twenty twenty five and we've not even gone back to.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
The Moon, let alone, it's hard to believe.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Let alone Mars, they'd be like what happened in the
civilization collapse? Top Yeah, Like they would be incomprehensible that
we've not been to Mars. By now, if you told
people this after landing on the Moon in sixty.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Nine, why do you think in fifty years America never
went back to the moon.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that could take
people to the moon, and had the Space Shuttle, which
could only go to lowth orbit, and then there really
hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has been
made since then that can go to the Moon or
to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so you
can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
So I remember you and I first met in twenty
thirteen when when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah,
and I was still down in the basement office. They
stick freshman senators in the basement office kind of like hazey.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
Yeah, yeah, that's what say.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
It sounds like there are one hundred seared offices. But
for six months you stay in the basement.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
It's like worry, mean, you know where you're supposed to
you know, I got to stay.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Now, thirteen years into it, I think there's a lot
of wisdom to doing that. But you were down in
the basement office, and I remember you were coming and
sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air
Force was not letting y'all bid to launch satellites, and
so you were coming and saying, look, we got a company.
I think we can do a really good job of this,
and yet we're locked out of this. It's a little
amazing to think the journey SpaceX is gone from then

(42:50):
to now.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real
because originally, consistently with I believe that we need to
become a multiplant species, I thought the only way to
do that would be through NASA sou and I think
I thought, well, if I just get the public excited
about Mars, then they'll do a mission to Mars. And
so initially my thought was to have to send a
small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then land

(43:16):
the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see these the
sort of money shot proof. The money shot would be
green plants on a red background. I also recently knowned
that money shot has a different meaning in some other arenas.
But yeah, story, But what I'm trying to say is

(43:36):
the captivating shot would be the green plants on a
red background. And then hopefully that would if you did
something like that, that would get the public excited about Mars,
that would increase NASA's budget and then we could send
people to Mars. Dream was nasty to do this? Yes,
not you No, The original original plan was literally to
take a bunch of the money from PayPal and I

(43:58):
guess by some people's definition way with no profit on
a non profit thing to I wanted to spend a
whole bunch of my money for free to get nasta's
budget to be bigger so we could go to friggin Mars. Right, wow,
that's what I wanted. So that was the holy Grail,
That's what I wanted. I was like, so when did
I Mars? That's what I wanted to know? Well, when

(44:18):
when did.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
It strike you? Okay, you're going to have to do this.

Speaker 4 (44:20):
If you want, I'll tell you. It gets crazier, all right,
it gets crazier so so that I couldn't afford any
of the US rockets because as you know, the US
rockets are way too expensive, boying rock Lucky rockets are
crazy money. I didn't have. I didn't even even with
one hundred eighty millions, So way I could have afforded
they back then, well, the with with the additional stage
to get to Mars, it would have been about like

(44:41):
eighty million, So technically I could have afforded one of them,
but I wanted to do too in case one of
them didn't work. Yeah. So and then I didn't have
enough money for that. Yeah, and I was sort of
prepared to, you know, I don't know, waste half the money.
And I think if I had ninety million left, that'd
be fine, you know, but ideally on all of it.
So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
How did that go?

Speaker 4 (45:05):
And who do you call? The Russian rocket forces?

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?

Speaker 4 (45:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (45:13):
You got to tell us a story that I want
to know who you can buy anything in Russia?

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah, I like, please walk me down that.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
I want to know how you made that phone call
and when you get there, how did that work?

Speaker 4 (45:24):
And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
going to Russian device in ICBMs. I might not return,
you know, in this situation. Literally, Yeah, So I guess
slightly less insane when you when you understand that the
Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because

(45:45):
of uh, you know, soul talks like the people because
basically an agreementtween the United States and Russia to reduce
the total number of ICBMs. Russia was actually obligated to
scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So you took it
the very biggest CBMs. You could converte those into a rocket,
added additional stage and send something to Mars.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
So those are big enough with one more stage to
get to Mars.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
s S eighteen.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
So you try to buy CBMs, do you succeed or no?
Or do you figure out you got to build your
own instead?

Speaker 4 (46:17):
They kept raising the price on me, so because I
figured like, look, they're going to throw these things to
scrappy on anyway, you should get a really good deal, right.
So the price thoughted out at four million, Then the
next conversation they were at eight million. Then the next
conversation they were at like nineteen million, and I'm like,
this is before we signed a contract.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
By the way, was there another Was there another bidd
or were you the only one trying to buy them?

Speaker 4 (46:41):
I think I don't know if there were other bits,
but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
if the price is increasing this much before the contract signed.
I'm really going to get fleeced after the contracts. Yeah,
so I got pretty frustrated there. Actually, in some cases
we got into like shouting matches in Moscow, some guys
shouting at me in Russian and I'm shouting back at

(47:03):
him really badly, you know, I'm like.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
So you are all I mean, you're all.

Speaker 4 (47:14):
In Moscow? Yeah, so uh man, I should have recorded
that. That would have been one for them.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
I mean was just like ongoing, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
Yeah, is this this took place. These conversations took place
over probably six months or so. Wow. So and then
the final trip trip there was with the with was
with Mike Revenue later became as administrator. I actually realized
in the course of this that my original premise was wrong,
that that America actually has plenty of will to go

(47:47):
to Mars, but needs that it just needs a way
to Mars that is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
to the space station. We needed the Russians to to
get us to our own space station.

Speaker 4 (47:59):
That was Parsonal.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
It really was pitiful.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we're
being fleeced. Like I think they got up to like
ninety million dollars a seat, Yeah wow, Yeah, for a
seat that.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Cost them like tenre obviously, but it was the only Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
It was before SpaceX's ninety million dollars a seat for
a seat that cost him ten million. Is high. Yeah,
that's a lot of money. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
So a few months ago you and I were down
in Bocachica with a president for a starship launch, and
it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica. You know,
five years ago it was an empty beach.

Speaker 4 (48:35):
At the southern tip of this soundbar.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, and it's now a city and a factory where
you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision.
But one of the things you said to me when
we were down there that really stood out to me
is is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talked
to lots of CEOs or like we fight to guard
our IP, and you had a very different approach. What's

(48:57):
what's your view of IP?

Speaker 4 (48:58):
Patterns of the week patents for those who innovate slowly.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
I literally do not know anyone else in business who
would say something like that, like like it was a
startling and and and what Elon said down there is
he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,
but by the time they steal it will be five
generations beyond and it won't matter.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
Yes, at Tesla, we actually open sourced law of patents.
So we said our patents are anyone can use it
for free. Really yeah, uh, the only we only do
patents at Tesla to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble.
So we'll try to look ahead and say, okay, patent
trolls are going to trial patent file patterns to blocks

(49:38):
and things, will file patents and then open source to
make it free. I mean, I'm gonna say patents for
the week. Now. There are a few cases, in say
with pharmaceuticals, where it might cost you a billion dollars
to do a phase three human file, but then subsequently
the drug is very cheap to manufacture. So cases there
are some, in my opinion, which would massively reduce what

(49:59):
can be patented. And and say, because the whole point
of patenting is to maximize innovation, not inhibit it. And
in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion. Most patents inhibit innovation,
they do not help it. But there are case I
want to do one a single cases like we're such
as a phase three clinical trial that might cost a

(50:19):
billion dollars, but then the drugs thereafter cost a few
dollars to manufacture, and if you can then immediately copy
those drugs for a few dollars, no one will pay
for the billion dollars. Write problem. Free writer problem, yeah, exactly,
So you have to address the free writer problem. But
other than that, there should be no patents. The ideas
are easy.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
You want ideas to flow maximum to people, to get
there faster and do things bigger.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
The idea is the easy part. The herd execution is
the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's one
percent inspiration, if not less than one percent, and nineteen
nine percent perspiration.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at.
Also because you're making. You know, the companies you're building
are actually building stuff. They're building cars, they're building spaceships,
they're building things that if they don't work, it's a
real problem. And the precision you manufacture things with, how
do you get that level of precision? How do you
get how do you build a culture? You're not You're

(51:15):
amazing at thinking outside the box. But what's interesting is
your you may even be better at execution, which is
how do you execute so effectively?

Speaker 4 (51:24):
Well? I take as express principles approach to everything. It's
not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing. It's
just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So uh.
You know, the idea of the beginning of Tesla was
that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing. But then
it turned out there was no there were no good

(51:45):
companies to outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't a really really,
it wasn't peaceable outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of
the rule. And uh. And just over time, we had
to in source almost everything for Tesla, and same for SpaceX.
It became very good at manufacturing because I had to
was no choice. At this point. I might know more
about manufacturing than any any human ever has, because I've

(52:08):
done so many I've manufactured so many different things and
so many different arenas. I think probably more than anyone
ever has.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Look, that's that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's
not a crazy statement, and you're somehow running Tesla and
running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company
and running Dourlink and doing doge. How much do you
sleep in a given night?

Speaker 4 (52:31):
About six hours and average.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
So about six So that's it wouldn't have shocked me
if you said three or four.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
So the Crenet question is how many hours do you
work a day?

Speaker 4 (52:38):
I work almost every working.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Hour, and Ben, he's not kidding at that.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Like when Elan and I were first getting to know
each other, I suggested, I said, hey, let's grab dinner sometime.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
And I don't know if you remember what you said.
You said, I don't eat dinner.

Speaker 4 (52:52):
I don't have social dinners really.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Right, I mean that, yeah, I mean you obviously eat food,
but yeah, idea going to a restaurant for two hours.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
But the idea like, I don't, But it was it
was just kind of matter of fact. Why would I
go to dinner like you'd jump you work?

Speaker 4 (53:08):
Yeah, I literally just thought I'll have lunch, and then
it brought during meetings and continue being.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
How many nights have you slept at your offices?

Speaker 4 (53:16):
You think your career percentage.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Wise where you say, I just got to take this
nap basically because my body forces me to, and I
got to get back to work fast and efficiently without
going somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Well, I guess it started out. Even with the first
company H two, which is a terrible name, but the
first internet company. We were able to rent an office,
which was like in a leaky attack essentially for five
hundred dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could
find was eight hundred dollars a month. So like and

(53:47):
we only had about five thousand dollars between our brother
and I. Oh, so like we're not We'll just stay
in the office. Yeah, So we got some couches that
converted into beds and we'd can't sleep at night, and
then we just have like turn the beds back into
couches before anyone came, and then we would shout the

(54:07):
YMCA down the road and so that went that. That
literally was for several months. What we did, it was
in great shape, you know, work out the way. I
still remember that that ymcau Page Miller al Camino in
Palo Alto. So that was a long time. Again, so
it's been I don't know, I've never thought to count it,
but several hundred days maybe I don't know.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
So you're now the richest man on earth. Do you
still sleep in the office?

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Well, that's true.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
Maybe Mars, we'll find someone else, but I think if.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
Someone is a sovereign head of a country, there to
facto richer by a lot.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Do you still sleep at the office now?

Speaker 4 (54:44):
I have sometimes left at the office.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with center
Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to down
with my podcast and you can listen to my podcast
every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each
day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to
have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson podcasts,
and we will see you back here tomorrow morning.

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