Chamath Palihapitiya (2:31)

Right?

Elon Musk (2:32)

Yeah, we'd like to not have that.

Scott Galloway (2:35)

Are you concerned?

Elon Musk (2:38)

I mean, I suspect this is a receptive audience to that message. Yeah.

Scott Galloway (2:47)

Your honor, I think we always thought that the west was the exception to that, that we knew there were authoritarian place around the world, but we thought that in the west we'd have freedom of speech. And we've seen, like you said, it seems like a global movement. In Britain you've got teenagers being put in prison for memes opposing.

Elon Musk (3:06)

It's like you liked a Facebook post, throw them in the prison. Yeah, it's like people have got an actual prison for obscure comments on social media.

David Sacks (3:19)

Not even shitposting yet.

Elon Musk (3:20)

Not even. Yeah, it's crazy. Pavel got thrown in prison recently and I'm like, that was pretty shook about. I was like, what is the massive.

Scott Galloway (3:30)

Crime that Pavel in France. And then of course, we got Brazil with Judge Voldemort. That one seems like the one that impacts you the most. Can you. What's the latest on that?

Elon Musk (3:45)

Well, I guess we are trying to figure out is there some reasonable solution in Brazil? The concern, I mean, I want to just make sure that this is framed correctly. And funny memes aside, the nature of the concern was that at least at XCorp, we had the perception that we were being asked to do things that violated Brazilian law. So obviously we cannot, as an American company, impose American laws and values on other countries that we wouldn't get very far if we did that. But we do think that if a country's laws are a particular way and we're being asked. We think we're being asked to break them and be silent about it, then obviously that is no good. So I just want to be clear. Sometimes. Sometimes comes across as Elon's trying to just be a crazy, whatever, billionaire and demand outrageous things from other countries. And, you know, while that is true, in addition, there are other things that I think are valid, which is like, we obviously can't. I think any given thing that we do at X Corp, we've got to be able to explain in the light of day and not feel that it was dishonorable or we did the wrong thing. So we don't. That was the. That's the nature of the concern. So we actually are in sort of discussions with the, you know, judicial authorities in Brazil to try to, you know, run this to ground. Like, what's actually going on? Like, if we're being asked to break the law, Brazilian law, then that obviously should not be. Should not sit well with the resilient judiciary. And if we're not and we're mistaken, we'd like to understand how we are mistaken. I think that's a pretty reasonable position.

Chamath Palihapitiya (6:13)

I'm a bit concerned as your friend that you're going to go to one of these countries and I'm gonna wake up one day and you're gonna get arrested and, like, I'm gonna have to go bail you out or something like this feels very acute.

Elon Musk (6:26)

Like, yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya (6:27)

I mean, it's not a joke now. Like they're literally saying, you know, it's not just Biden saying, like, we have to look into that guy now. It's become quite literal like this. I don't know who was the guy who just wrote the. Was it the Guardian piece about, like.

Elon Musk (6:41)

Oh, yeah, yeah. There have been three articles and I think in the past three weeks.

Chamath Palihapitiya (6:46)

Robert Reich.

Elon Musk (6:47)

But it wasn't just him. It was three different articles.

David Sacks (6:50)

Three different articles.

Chamath Palihapitiya (6:51)

It doesn't.

Elon Musk (6:52)

That's a trend calling for me to be imprisoned in the Guardian, you know, Guardian of what?

Chamath Palihapitiya (7:00)

What are they protecting exactly?

Elon Musk (7:02)

Guard. Guardian of. I don't know.

Chamath Palihapitiya (7:05)

Authoritarianism.

Elon Musk (7:06)

Yeah. Guardian of Censorship. Censorship.

Chamath Palihapitiya (7:11)

But the premise here is that you bought this thing, this online forum, this communication platform, and you're allowing people to use it to express themselves. Therefore you have to be jailed. I don't understand the logic here.

Elon Musk (7:26)

Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya (7:27)

What do you think they're actually afraid of at this point? What's the motivation here?

Elon Musk (7:32)

I mean, I think if somebody is sort of trying to push a false premise on the world, then. And then that premise can be undermined with public dialogue, then they will be opposed to public dialogue on that premise because they wish that false premise to prevail. Right. So that's. I think, you know, the issue there is if they don't like the truth, you know, then we want to suppress it. So now what we're trying to do with X Corp is I distinguish that from my son, who's also called X. Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya (8:14)

You have parental goals.

Elon Musk (8:17)

Everything's just called X, basically. It's very difficult. Disambiguation.

Chamath Palihapitiya (8:21)

Star of the Sun.

Elon Musk (8:22)

Yeah, it's X everything. So what we're trying to do is simply adhere to the, you know, the laws in a country. So if something is illegal in the United States or if it's illegal in, you know, Europe or Brazil or wherever it might be, then we will take it down and we'll suspend the account because we're not there to make the laws. We. But if speech is not illegal, then what are we doing? Okay, now we're injecting ourselves in as a sensor, and where does it stop? And who decides? So where does that path lead? I think it leads to a bad place. So if the people in a country want the laws to be different, they should make the laws different, but otherwise we're going to obey the law in each jurisdiction.

Chamath Palihapitiya (9:21)

Right. And some of these Europeans, that's it.

Elon Musk (9:23)

It's not more complicated that we're not trying to flout the law. We're going to be clear about that. But we're trying to adhere to the law. And if laws change, we will change. And if the laws don't change, we won't. We're just literally trying to adhere to the law.

Chamath Palihapitiya (9:35)

It's pretty straightforward.

Elon Musk (9:36)

Yes, very straightforward. And if somebody thinks we're not adhering to law, well, they can file a lawsuit. Bingo.

Chamath Palihapitiya (9:43)

Also very straightforward.

Elon Musk (9:44)

Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya (9:45)

I mean there are European countries that don't want people to promote Nazi propaganda. Yes, they have some sensitivity to it.

Elon Musk (9:50)

Well, it is illegal.

Chamath Palihapitiya (9:52)

It is illegal in those countries. If somebody puts that up, you take it down. Yes, but they typically file something and say no.

Elon Musk (10:00)

In some cases it is just obviously illegal. Like you don't need to file a lawsuit for, you know, if something is just, you know, unequivocally illegal, we can literally read the law. This violates the law. You know, anyone, anyone can see that. Like, you know, you don't need, like if somebody is stealing, you don't need. Let me check the law on that. Yeah, okay. They're stealing San Francisco. Let's talk about it.

David Sacks (10:24)

So we had J.D. vance here this morning. He did a great job. And you know, one of the things is there's this image on X of like basically like you, Bobby Trump and JD are like the Avengers, I guess. And then there's another meme where you're in front of a desk where it says D O G E. The Department of Governmental Efficiency.

Elon Musk (10:47)

Yes, yes, I posted that one.

David Sacks (10:49)

Tell us about.

Elon Musk (10:50)

I made it using Grok, the Grok image generator and I posted it.

David Sacks (10:56)

Tell us about.

Elon Musk (10:56)

I put it to my profile.

Chamath Palihapitiya (10:57)

Seek for efficiency.

David Sacks (11:01)

How do you do it?

Elon Musk (11:03)

Well, I mean, I think with great difficulty, but it's been a long time since there was a serious effort to reduce the size of government and to remove absurd regulations. And last time there was a really concerted effort on that front was Reagan in the early 80s. So we're 40 years away from a serious effort to remove regulations that don't serve the greater good and reduce the size of government. And I think it's just if we don't do that, then what's happening is that we get regulations and laws accumulating every year until eventually everything's illegal. And that's why we can't get major infrastructure projects done in the United States. Like if you look at the absurdity of the California high speed rail, I think they've spent $7 billion and have a 1600 foot segment that doesn't actually have rail in it. I mean your tax dollars at work, I mean, yeah, what are we doing? That's an expensive 16 hour feet of concrete, you know, And I mean I think it's like if, you know, I realize sometimes I'm perhaps a little optimistic with schedules, but you know, I mean, I wouldn't be doing the things I'm doing if I was, you know, not an optimist. So. But at the current trend, you know, California high speed rail might finish sometime next century, maybe probably not. We're just going to.

Chamath Palihapitiya (12:44)

We'll have teleportation by that time.

Elon Musk (12:46)

Yeah, exactly. AI do everything @ that point. So I think you really think of the United States and many countries, it's arguably worse than the EU as being like Gulliver, tied down by a million little strings. And any one given regulation is not that bad, but you've got a million of them or millions actually, and, and then eventually just can't get anything done. And this is a massive tax on the consumer, on the people. It's just they don't realize that there's this massive tax in the form of irrational regulations. I'll give you a recent example that is just insane is that SpaceX was fined by the EPA $140,000 for they claimed dumping potable water on the ground, drinking water. So, and we're like, this is at Starbase. And we're like, we're in a tropical thunderstorm region. That stuff comes from the sky all the time. And there was no actual harm done. You know, it was just water to cool the launch pad during liftoff. And there's zero harm done. Like, and they're like, they agree. Yes, there's zero harm done. And we're like, okay, so there's no harm done and you want us to pay $140,000 fine? It's like, yes, because you didn't have a permit. Okay. We didn't know there was a permit needed for zero harm. Fresh water being on the ground in a place that, where fresh water falls from the sky all the time.

Chamath Palihapitiya (14:24)

Got it. Next to the ocean.

Elon Musk (14:27)

Next to the ocean.

Chamath Palihapitiya (14:28)

Because there's a little bit of water there too.

Elon Musk (14:29)

Yeah. I mean as long as it rains so much, the roads are flooded. So we're like, you know, how does this make any sense? Yeah. And then they were like, well, we're not going to process any more of your applications for launch, for Starship launch unless you pay this $140,000. They just ransomed us. And we're like, okay, so we paid $140,000, but it's like, this is no good. I mean, at this rate we're never going to get to Mars.

Chamath Palihapitiya (14:55)

I mean, that's the confounding part here is we're acting against our own self interest. When you look at, we do have to make putting aside fresh water. But hey, you know, they're. The rocket makes a lot of noise. So I'm certain there's some complaints about noise once in a while, but sometimes you want to have a party where you want to make progress and there's a little bit of noise. Therefore, you know, we trade off a little bit of noise for massive progress or even fun. So like, when did we stop being able to make those trade offs? But talk about the difference between California and Texas, where you and I now reside. Texas, you were able to build the gigafactory. I remember when you got the plot of land and then it seemed like it was less than two years when you had the party to open it.

Elon Musk (15:45)

Yeah. From starter construction to completion was 14 months.

Chamath Palihapitiya (15:52)

14.

Elon Musk (15:53)

14 months.

Chamath Palihapitiya (15:54)

Is there anywhere on the planet that would go faster? Is like China faster than that?

Elon Musk (15:58)

China was 11 months.

Chamath Palihapitiya (16:00)

Got it. So Texas, China, 11 and 14 months. California, how many months?

Elon Musk (16:06)

And just to give you a sense of size, the Tesla Gigafactory in China is three times the size of the.

Chamath Palihapitiya (16:11)

Pentagon, which was the biggest building in America.

Elon Musk (16:14)

No, there were bigger buildings, but the Pentagon's pretty big one.

Chamath Palihapitiya (16:16)

Yeah.

Elon Musk (16:17)

Or it was the biggest building in units of pentagon. It's like three.

Chamath Palihapitiya (16:20)

Okay, three pentagons and counting.

Elon Musk (16:23)

Yeah, got it in 14 months. Just the regulatory approvals in California would have taken two years. So that's the issue.

David Sacks (16:36)

Where do you think the regulation helps? Like for the people that will say, we need some checks and balances. We can't have some because for every good actor like you, there'll be a bad actor. So where is that line then?

Elon Musk (16:46)

Yeah, I mean, I haven't sort of, you know, in sort of doing sensible deregulation and reduction in the size of government is just like be very public about it and say, like, which of these rules do you. If the public is really excited about a rule and wants to keep it, we'll just keep it. And here's the thing about the rules. If the rule turns out to be a bad, we'll just put it right back. Okay. And then problem solved. It's like, it's easy to add rules, but we don't actually have a process for getting rid of them. That's the issue. There's no garbage collection pool.

Chamath Palihapitiya (17:25)

When we were watching you work, David and I and Antonio, in that first month at Twitter, which was all hands on deck and you were doing zero based budgeting really quickly, got the cost under control and then miraculously, everybody said this site will go down and you added 50 more features. So maybe explain because this is the.

Elon Musk (17:48)

First time there were like so many articles like that. This is Twitter is dead forever. There's no way it could possibly even continue at all.

Chamath Palihapitiya (17:57)

It was almost like the press was rooting for you to fail.

Elon Musk (17:59)

Let's write the obituary. Here's the obituary.

Scott Galloway (18:01)

They were all saying their goodbyes on Twitter. Remember that?

Elon Musk (18:04)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott Galloway (18:05)

They were all leaving and saying their goodbyes because the site was going to melt down.

Elon Musk (18:07)

Yeah, totally failing.

Friedberg (18:10)

All the journalists left.

Elon Musk (18:11)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (18:12)

Which is if you ever want to, like, hang out with a bunch of hall monitors. Oh, my God, Threads is amazing. Every time I go over there and post, they're like, they're really triggered.

Elon Musk (18:22)

But yeah, I mean, if you like being condemned repeatedly, then for reasons that make no sense, then Threads is the way to go.

Chamath Palihapitiya (18:29)

Yeah, it's really. It's the most miserable place on earth. If Disney's the happiest, this is the anti Disney. But if we were to go into government, you went into the Department of Education or pick the department you've worked with, a lot of them actually. You can't go in there and. Zero based budget. Okay, we get it. But if you could just pair 2, 3, 4, 5% of those organizations, what kind of impact would that have?

Elon Musk (18:57)

Yeah, I mean, I think we'd need to do more than that.

Chamath Palihapitiya (18:59)

I think ideally, but compounding every year, 2, 3% a year, I mean, it would be better than what's happening now.

Elon Musk (19:08)

Yeah, look, I think, you know, if Trump wins, and obviously I suspect there are people with mixed feelings about whether that should happen, but we do have an opportunity to do kind of a once in a lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of government. Because the other thing, besides the regulations, America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly. And nobody seems. Everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one.

Friedberg (19:43)

They're all grabbing the silverware. Everyone's stuffing their pockets in the silverware before the Titanic sinks.

Elon Musk (19:48)

Well, you know, the Defense Department budget is a very big budget. Okay. It's a trillion dollars a year. DoD intel, it's a trillion dollars. And interest payments on the national debt just exceeded the Defense Department budget. They're over a trillion dollars a year just in interest and rising. We're adding a trillion dollars to the net, to our debt, which our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay somehow every three months. And then soon it's going to be every two months and then every month. And then the only thing we'll be able to pay is interesting. And if this. It's just like a person at scale that has racked up too much credit Card debt, and this does not have a good ending. How can we. And so we have to reduce the spending.

Friedberg (20:50)

Let me ask one question, because I've brought this up a lot, and the counterargument I hear, which I disagree with, but the counterargument I hear from a lot of politicians is if we reduce spending, because right now, if you add up federal, state and local government spending, it's between 40 and 50% of GDP. So nearly half of our economy is supported by government spending. And nearly half of people in the United States are dependent directly or indirectly, on government checks and either through contractors that the government pays or they're employed by government entity. So if you go in and you take too hard an axe too fast, you will have significant contraction, job loss and recession. What's the balancing act? Elon? Just thinking realistically, because I'm 100% on board with you. The next set of steps, however, assume Trump wins and you become the chief doge. Like double G. Yeah. And I think the challenge is how quickly can we go in? How quickly can things change? And without.

Elon Musk (22:03)

I want that on my business card.

Friedberg (22:07)

Without all the contraction and job loss.

Chamath Palihapitiya (22:08)

Scott.

Friedberg (22:09)

Yeah. So I guess how do you really address it when so much of the economy and so many people's jobs and livelihoods are dependent on government spending?

Elon Musk (22:17)

Well, I mean, I do think it's sort of false dichotomy. It's not like no government spending is going to happen. You really have to say, like, is it the right level? And just remember that, you know, any given person, if they are doing things in a less efficient organization versus a more efficient organization, their contribution to the economy, their net output of goods and services will reduce. I mean, you've got a couple of clear examples between East Germany and West Germany, North Korea and South Korea. I mean, North Korea, they're starving. South Korea, it's like, amazing. It's the future.

Friedberg (22:56)

It's the compounding effect of productivity gains.

Elon Musk (22:59)

Yeah. It's night and day. And so in North Korea, you've got 100% government. In South Korea, you've got probably, I don't know, 40% government. It's not zero. And yet you've got a standard of living that is probably 10 times higher in South Korea, at least. Exactly. And then east and West Germany. In West Germany, you had, just thinking in terms of cars. I mean, you had BMW, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, and East Germany, which is a random line on a map, the only car you could get was a Trabant, which is basically a lawnmower with A shell in it. And it was extremely unsafe. There was a 20 year wait. So you like put your kid on the list as soon as they're conceived. And even then, only I think, you know, a quarter of people maybe got this lousy car. And so that's just an interesting example of like basically the same people, different operating system. And it's not like West Germany was some, you know, you know, a capitalist heaven. It was, it's quite socialist actually. So, so when you look, you know, probably it was half, half government in West Germany and 100% government in East Germany. And again, sort of a 5 to, I'd like to call it at least a 5 to 10x standard of living difference and even qualitatively, vastly better. And it's obviously, you know, so many people have these amazingly in this modern era, this debate as to which system is better. Well, I'll tell you which system is better. The one that doesn't need to build the wall to keep people in. Okay. That's how you can tell. Okay. Yeah, it's a dead giveaway. Spoiler alert, dead giveaway.

Chamath Palihapitiya (24:50)

Are they climbing the wall to get out or come in?

Elon Musk (24:52)

You have to build a barrier to key people in. That is the bad system. It wasn't West Berlin that built the wall. Okay. They were like, you know, anyone who wants to flee West Berlin, go ahead.

Chamath Palihapitiya (25:06)

Speaking of walls.

Elon Musk (25:07)

So, you know, and if you look at sort of the flux of boats from Cuba, there's a large number of boats from Cuba and there's a bunch of free boats that anyone can take to go back to Cuba.

Chamath Palihapitiya (25:21)

Plenty of seats.

Elon Musk (25:22)

There's like, hey, wow, an abandoned boat. I could use this boat to go to Cuba where they have communism. Awesome. Yes. And yet nobody picks up those boats and does it. Amazing. So you've given this a lot of thought. Yeah.

Friedberg (25:37)

Wait, so your point is jobs will be created if we cut government spending in half. Jobs will be created fast enough to make up for. Right. Just to count.

Elon Musk (25:44)

Yes. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that people have immediately tossed out with no severance and can't pay their mortgage. They need to see some reasonable off ramp where. So reasonable off ramp where they're still, you know, earning, they're still receiving money, but have like, I don't know, a year or two to find jobs in the private sector, which they will find. And then they will be in a different operating system again. You can see the difference. East Germany was incorporated into West Germany. Living standards in East Germany rose dramatically.

Chamath Palihapitiya (26:21)

Well, in four years, if you could Shrink the size of the government. With Trump, what would be a good target just in terms of like ballpark?

Elon Musk (26:29)

I mean, are you trying to get me assassinated before this even happens?

Chamath Palihapitiya (26:32)

No, no. Pick a loan number.

Elon Musk (26:34)

I mean, you know, there's that old phrase, go postal. I mean, it's like they might. Yeah, on me.

Chamath Palihapitiya (26:39)

So we'll keep the post office.

Elon Musk (26:41)

I mean, I'm gonna need a hell of a security detail, guys.

Chamath Palihapitiya (26:43)

Yes.

Elon Musk (26:44)

I mean, the sheer number of disgruntled workers, former government employees is, you know, quite a scary number. I mean, I might not make it.

Chamath Palihapitiya (26:54)

You know, I was saying low digits every year for four years would be palatable. Yeah. And I like your idea of an.

Elon Musk (26:59)

All, but the thing is that if it's not done, like if you have a once in a lifetime, once in a generation opportunity and you don't take serious action, and then you have four years to get it done, and then if it doesn't get done, then.

Chamath Palihapitiya (27:15)

How serious is Trump about this? Like you've talked to him about it?

Elon Musk (27:17)

Yeah, yeah, I think he is very serious about it. Got it. And no, I think actually the reality is that if we get rid of nonsense regulations and shift people from the government sector to the private sector, we will have immense prosperity and I think we will have a golden age in this country and it will be fantastic.

Friedberg (27:40)

Can we talk about SpaceX?

David Sacks (27:45)

You have a bunch of critical milestones coming up.

Elon Musk (27:48)

Yeah. In fact, there's a very exciting launch that is maybe happening tonight. So if the weather is holding up, then I'm going to leave here, head to Cape Canaveral for the Polaris dawn mission, which is the pirate mission funded by Jared Isaacman. And he's awesome guy. And this will be the first time, the first private, first commercial spacewalk and will be at the highest altitude since Apollo. So it's the furthest from Earth that anyone's gone.

David Sacks (28:29)

What comes after that? Let's assume that's successful.

Elon Musk (28:32)

I sure hope so, man. No pressure. Yeah, you know, absolutely. You know, astronaut prior, astronaut safety is. Man, if I had like all the wishes I could save up, that'd be the one to put on. So space is dangerous. So the. Yeah, I mean, the next milestone after that would be the next flight of Starship, which, you know, Starship is. The next flight of starship is ready to fly. We are waiting for regulatory approval, you know. Yeah, it really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another.

Chamath Palihapitiya (29:33)

That stamp is really hard. Approved.

Elon Musk (29:38)

Yeah.

Friedberg (29:39)

You ever see that? Movie Zootopia. You ever see that movie Zootopia? There's like a sloth coming in for the approval.

Elon Musk (29:47)

Yeah. And then accidentally tell a joke. And I was like oh no, this is. No, here we go. This is going to take a long time. Sorry, sorry. But yeah, Zootopia. The funny thing is, so I went to the DMV about. I don't know, a year later after Zootopia and to get my license renewal. And the guy in an exercise of incredible self awareness had the sloth from Zootopia in his cube. In his cube. And he was actually swift.

Chamath Palihapitiya (30:17)

Yeah. With the mandate beat the sloth.

Elon Musk (30:21)

Yeah, yeah.

Friedberg (30:22)

No, personal agency. Personal agency.

Elon Musk (30:24)

No, I mean sometimes people like think the, you know, the government is more competent than it is. I'm not saying that there aren't competent people in the government. They're just in an operating system that is inefficient. Once you move them to a more efficient operating system, their output is dramatically greater. As we've seen when East Germany was reintegrated with West Germany and the same people were vastly more prosperous with a basically half capitalist operating system. So. But I mean for a lot of people live there like their maybe most direct experience with the government is the dmv. And then the important thing to remember is that the government is the DMV at scale.

Chamath Palihapitiya (31:15)

Right.

Elon Musk (31:16)

That's the government.

Chamath Palihapitiya (31:17)

Got the mental picture.

Elon Musk (31:18)

How much do you want to scale it? Yeah, yeah.

Friedberg (31:23)

Elon, sorry, can you go back to Chamath's question on Starship? So you announced just the other day, starship going to Mars in two years, by the way.

Elon Musk (31:34)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Friedberg (31:35)

And then four years for a crude aspirational launch in the next window. And how much is the government involved?

Elon Musk (31:42)

I'm not saying like set your watch by these, not you know, but these. But based on our current progress where with Starship we were able to successfully reach oval of velocity twice, we were able to achieve soft landings of the booster and the ship in water. And that's despite the ship having half its flaps cooked off. You can see the video on the X platform. It's quite exciting. So we think we'll be able to have to launch reliably and repeatedly and quite quickly. And the fundamental holy grail breakthrough for rocketry, for the fundamental breakthrough that is needed for life to become multiplanetary is a rapidly reusable reliable rocket. Rrrr. For the pirate. Somehow throw a pirate in there. The. So with Starship is the first rocket design where success is one of the possible outcomes with full reusability. So for any given project you have to say this is the circle. So we've got Venn diagrams, here's a circle, and it is the success.in the circle is success in the set of possible outcomes. That sounds pretty obvious, but there are often projects where success is not in the set of possible outcomes. And so Starship not only is full reusability in the set of possible outcomes, it is being proven with each launch. And I'm confident it will succeed. It's simply a matter of time. And you know, if we can get some improvement in the speed of regulation, we could actually move a lot faster. So that would be very helpful. And in fact, if something isn't done about reducing regulation and sort of speeding up approvals. And to be clear, I'm not talking about anything unsafe. It's simply the processing of the safe thing can be done as fast as the rocket is built, not slower than we could become a space faring civilization and a multiplied species and be out there among the stars in the future. And there's, you know, it's just very like, it's incredibly important that we have things that, that we find inspiring, that you look to the future and say the future is going to be better than the past. Things to look forward to. And kids are a good way to assess this. What are kids fired up about? And if you could say you could be an astronaut on Mars, you could maybe one day go beyond the solar system. We could make Star Trek, Starfleet Academy real. That is an exciting future. That is inspiring. I mean, you need things that move your heart, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya (35:07)

Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Let's do it.

Elon Musk (35:11)

I mean, life can't just be about solving one miserable problem after another. There's got to be things that you look forward to as well.

Chamath Palihapitiya (35:18)

Yeah. And do you think you might have to move it to a different jurisdiction to move faster?

Elon Musk (35:24)

I've always wondered if like rocket technology is considered an advanced weapons technology. So we can't just go do it, you know, in another country. Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya (35:33)

Yeah, interesting. And if we don't do it, other countries could do it. I mean, they're so far behind us. But theoretically there is a national security, you know, justification here. If somebody can put their thinking caps on, like do we want to have this technology that you're building the team's working so hard on stolen by other countries and then, you know, maybe they don't have as much red tape.

Elon Musk (35:55)

I wish people were trying to steal it so that no one's trying to steal it. It's just too, it's too crazy basically.

Chamath Palihapitiya (36:08)

And that's for you. Yeah, it's way too easy.

David Sacks (36:10)

Elon, what do you think is going on that led to Boeing building the Star line the way that they did? They were able to get it up.

Chamath Palihapitiya (36:23)

But not complete.

David Sacks (36:24)

But can't complete.

Chamath Palihapitiya (36:25)

They can't finish, can't finish.

David Sacks (36:27)

And now you're gonna have to go up and finish.

Elon Musk (36:34)

Well, I mean, I think Boeing is a company that is. They actually do so much business with the government, they have sort of impedance match to the government. So they're like basically one notch away from the government. Maybe they're not far from the government from an efficiency standpoint because they derive so much of the revenue from the government. And a lot of people think, well SpaceX is super dependent on the government. And actually no, most of our revenue is commercial. So. And there's been, I think at least up until perhaps recently because they have a new CEO who actually shows up in the factory and the CEO before that I think had a degree in accounting and never went to the factory and didn't know how airplanes flew. So I think if you are in charge of a company that makes airplanes fly and a spacecraft go to orbit, you need to know that it can't be a total mystery as to how they work. So you know, I'm like, sure, if somebody's like running Coke or Pepsi and they're like great at marketing or whatever, that's that's fine because it's not a sort of technology dependent business. Or if they're running financial consulting and their degrees in accounting, that makes sense. But I think if you're the cavalry captain, you should know how to ride a horse.

Chamath Palihapitiya (38:10)

Pretty basic.

Elon Musk (38:11)

Yeah, yeah, it's disconcerting if the cavalry captain just falls off the horse, he's not going to inspire the team. I'm sorry, I'm scared of horses. Gets on backwards. I'm like, oops.

Scott Galloway (38:28)

Shifting gears to AI. Peter was here earlier and he was talking about how so far the only company to really make money off AI is Nvidia with the chips. Do you have a sense yet of where you think the big applications will be from AI? Is it going to be an enabling self driving? Is it going to be enabling robots? Is it transforming industries? I mean it's still, I think early in terms of where the big business impact is going to be. Do you have a sense yet?

Elon Musk (39:06)

I mean, I think, I think the spending on AI probably runs ahead of, I mean does run ahead of the revenue right now. There's no question about that. But the rate of improvement of AI is faster than any technology I've ever seen by far. And it's, I mean like for example, the Turing Test used to be a thing. Now your basic open source random LLM you're writing on a friggin Raspberry PI probably could, you know, beat the Turing Test. So there's, I think actually like the good future of AI is one of immense prosperity, where there is an age of abundance, no shortage of goods and services, everyone can have whatever they want, unless, except for things we artificially define to be scarce, like some special artwork. But anything that is a manufactured good or provided service will. I think with the advent of AI plus robotics that the cost of goods and services will trend to zero. I'm not saying it would be actually zero, but it'll be. Everyone will be able to have anything they want. That's the good future. Of course, in my View that's probably 80% likely. So look on the bright side, only 20%, 20% probability of annihilation.

Scott Galloway (40:52)

Nothing is the 20%. What does that look like?

Elon Musk (40:56)

I don't know, man. Frankly, I do have to go engage in some degree of, of deliberate suspension of disbelief with respect to AI in order to sleep well. And even then, because I think the actual issue, the most likely issue is like, well, how do we find meaning in a world where AI can do everything we can do, but better? That is perhaps the bigger challenge. Although at this point I know more and more people who are retired and they seem to enjoy that life. So. But I think that that may be, maybe there'll be some crisis of meaning, like because the computer can do everything you can do, but better. So maybe that'll be a challenge. But, but really, you know, you need, you need the sort of end effectors, you need the autonomous cars and you need the sort of humanoid robots or your general purpose robots. But once you have general purpose humanoid robots and autonomous vehicles, really you can build anything. And I think that there's no actual limit to the size of the economy. I mean there's obviously the mass of Earth, like that would be one limit, but the economy is really just the average productivity per person times number of people. That's the economy. And if you've got humanoid robots that can do, where there's no real limit on the number of humanoid robots and they can operate very intelligently, then there's no actual limit to the economy. There's no meaningful limit to the economy.

David Sacks (42:45)

You guys just turned on Colossus which is like the largest private compute cluster, I guess, of GPUs anywhere.

Elon Musk (42:53)

Is that right? It's the most powerful supercomputer of any kind.

David Sacks (42:58)

Which sort of speaks to what David said and kind of what Peter said, which is a lot of the kind of economic value so far of AI has entirely gone to Nvidia. But there are people with alternatives and you're actually one with an alternative. Now you have a very specific case because Dojo is really about images and large images, huge video.

Elon Musk (43:19)

Yeah, I mean the Tesla problem is different from the, you know, the sort of LLM problem. The nature of the intelligence actually is actually. And what matters in the AI is different to the point you just made, which is that in Tez's case the context length is very long. So we've got gigabytes of context.

Friedberg (43:43)

Gigabytes of context.

David Sacks (43:43)

Windows.

Elon Musk (43:44)

Yeah, yeah, you've got, you know, sort of, I was just bringing it up kind of billions of tokens of context, not 90amount of context. Because you've got seven, seven cameras and if you've got several, you know, let's say you've got a minute of several high def cameras, then that's gigabytes. So you need to compress. So the Tesla problem is you've got to compress a gigantic context into the pixels that actually matter and condense that over a time. So you've got, in both the time dimension and the space dimension, you've got to compress the pixels in space and the pixels over in time and then have that inference done on a tiny computer. Relatively speaking, a small, like, you know, a few hundred watts. It's a Tesla designed AI inference computer, which is, by the way, still the best. There isn't a better thing we could buy from suppliers. So the Tesla designed AI inference computer that's in the cars is better than anything we could buy from any supplier. Just by the way. That's kind of by the way. Tesla chip team is extremely good, you guys.

David Sacks (44:57)

In the design. There is a technical paper and there was a deck that somebody on your team from Tesla published and it was stunning to me. You designed your own transport control, like layer over Ethernet. You're like, ah, Ethernet's not good enough for us. You had this TT Coe or something and you're like, oh, we're just going to reinvent Ethernet and like string these chips. It's pretty incredible stuff that's happening over there.

Elon Musk (45:17)

Yeah, no, the team, the Tesla chip design team is extremely, extremely good. So.

David Sacks (45:27)

But is there a world where, for example, other People over time that need, you know, some sort of like video use case or image use case. Theoretically, you know, you'd say, oh, why not? You know, I have some extra cycles over here. So we should kind of make you a competitor of Nvidia. It's not intentionally per se, but.

Elon Musk (45:44)

Yeah, I mean, the, you know, there's this training and inference and we do have those two projects at Tesla. We've got Dojo, which is the training computer, and then, you know, our inference chip, which is in every car. Inference computer. So. And Dojo. We've only had Dojo 1. Dojo 2 is, you know, should be. We should have Dojo 2 in volume towards the end of next year. And that will be, we think, sort of comparable to sort of a B200 type system, a training system. And, you know, so there's, I guess there's some potential for that to be used as a service. But Dojo is just kind of like. I mean, I guess I have like some improved confidence in Dojo, but I think we won't really know how good Dojo is until probably version three. Like usually takes three major iterations on a technology for it to be excellent. And we'll only have the second major iteration next year, the third iteration. I don't know, maybe late 26 or something like that.

Chamath Palihapitiya (47:11)

How's the Optimus project going? I remember when we talked last and you said this publicly that it's in doing some light testing inside the factory, so it's actually being useful. What's the build of materials and when, you know, for something like that at scale. So when you start making it like you're making the Model 3 now and there's a million of them coming off the factory line, what would they cost? 20, 30, $40,000, you think?

Elon Musk (47:35)

Yeah, I mean, what. I mean, I've discovered that really that, you know, anything made in sufficient volume will asymptotically approach the cost of its materials. So now I should say some things are constrained by the cost of intellectual property and like paying for patents and stuff. So a lot of, you know, what's in a chip is like paying royalties and depreciation of the chip. Fab. But the actual marginal cost of the chips is very low. So Optimus obviously is a humanoid robot. It weighs much less and is much smaller than a car. So you could expect that in high volume. And I'd say that you also probably need three production versions of Optimus. So you need to refine the design at least three major times and then you need to scale Production to sort of the million unit plus per year level. And I think at that point the cost, you know, the labor and materials on Optimus is probably not much more than $10,000.

Chamath Palihapitiya (48:51)

And that's a decade long journey maybe.

Elon Musk (48:53)

Basically think of it like Optimus will cost less than a small car. So at scale volume, with three major iterations of technology. And so if a small car, you know, costs $25,000, you know, it's probably like, I don't know, $20,000 for an optimist for a humanoid robot that can be your buddy. Like a combination of R2, D2 and C3PO, but better. I mean, honestly, I think people are going to get really attached to their humanoid robot because I mean, like you look at sort of, you watch Star wars and it's like R2, D2 and C3, I love those guys, you know, they're awesome and their personality and I mean, all R2 could do is just beep at you guys couldn't speak English. C3PO to translate the beeps, you know.

Chamath Palihapitiya (49:48)

So you're in year two of that. If you did two or three years per iteration or something, it's a decade long journey for this to hit some sort of scale.

Elon Musk (49:56)

And I would say major iterations are less than two years. So it's probably on the order of five years, maybe six to get to a million units a year.

Chamath Palihapitiya (50:10)

And at that price point, everybody can afford one on planet Earth. I mean, it's going to be that 1 to 1, 2 to 1. What do you think? Ultimately, if we're sitting here in 30 years, the number of robots on the planet versus humans.

Elon Musk (50:23)

Yeah, I think the number of robots will vastly exceed the number of humans.

Chamath Palihapitiya (50:26)

Vastly.

Elon Musk (50:26)

Yeah, vastly exceed. I mean, you have to say, like, who, who would not want their robot buddy? Everyone wants a robot buddy. You know, this is like, especially if it can, you know, you know, it can take care of your. Take your dog for a walk. It could, you know, mow the lawn, it could watch your kids. It could, you know, like, it could teach your kids. It could, it could.

Friedberg (50:54)

We could also send it to Mars.

Elon Musk (50:55)

Yeah, absolutely.

Friedberg (50:56)

We could send a lot of robots to Mars to do the work needed to make it a colonized planet for humanity.

Elon Musk (51:01)

And Mars is already the robot planet. There's like a whole bunch of, you know, robots like rovers and helicopter. Yes. Only robots. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I think the sort of useful humanoid robot opportunity is the single biggest opportunity ever. Because if you assume like that, I mean, the ratio of humanoid robots to humans is going to be at least 2 to 1, maybe 3 to 1, because everybody will want one. And then there will be a bunch of robots that you don't see that are making goods and services.

David Sacks (51:38)

And you think it's one generalized robot that then learns how to do different tasks or.

Elon Musk (51:43)

Yeah, hey, I mean, we are a generalized.

David Sacks (51:47)

Yeah, we're a generalized.

Elon Musk (51:49)

We're just made of meat.

David Sacks (51:49)

Yeah, exactly. We're a meat butt.

Elon Musk (51:52)

A generalized meat butt, Yeah. I mean, operating my meat puppet, you know, so, yeah, we are actually, it turns out, like, as we're designing optimists, we sort of learn more and more about why humans are shaped the way they're shaped and, you know, and why we have five fingers and why your little finger is smaller than, you know, your index finger, you know, you know, obviously why you have opposable thumbs, but also why, for example, your. The muscles, the major muscles that operate your hand are actually in your forearm, and your fingers are primarily operated like the muscles that actuate your fingers are located. The vast majority of your finger strength is actually coming from your forearm, and your fingers are being operated by tendons, little strings. And so the current version of the Optimus hand has the actuators in the hand and has only 11 degrees of freedom. So it doesn't have all the degrees of freedom of human hand, which has, depending on how you count it, roughly 25 degrees of freedom. And it's also, like, not strong enough in certain ways because the actuators have to fit in the hand. So the next generation Optimus hand, which we have in prototype form, the actuators have moved to the forearm just like a human, and they operate the fingers through cables just like the human hand. And the next Generation hand has 22 degrees of freedom, which we think is enough to do almost anything that a human can do.

David Sacks (53:42)

And presumably, I think it was written that X and Tesla may work together and, you know, provide services, but my immediate thought went to, oh, if you just provide a grok to the robot, then the robot has a personality and can process voice and video and images and all of that stuff as we wrap here.

Chamath Palihapitiya (54:00)

Yeah, I think, you know, everybody talks about all the projects you're working on, but people don't know. You have a great sense of humor.

Elon Musk (54:09)

That's not true.

Chamath Palihapitiya (54:10)

Oh, you do, you do. People don't see it, but I would say. I know for me, the funniest week of my life, or one of the funniest was when you did SNL and we got. And you. I got to tag along Maybe you saw it maybe behind the scenes, like some of your funniest recollections of that chaotic, insane week when we laughed for 12 hours a day. It was a little terrorizing on the first couple of days, but, yeah, I.

Elon Musk (54:38)

Was a bit worried in the beginning there because, frankly, nothing was funny.

Chamath Palihapitiya (54:44)

Day one was rough.

Elon Musk (54:46)

Rough. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like a rule.

David Sacks (54:51)

But can't you guys just say it? Just say the stuff that got on the cutting.

Scott Galloway (54:55)

Some of the funniest skits were the ones they didn't let you do.

David Sacks (54:58)

That's what I'm saying. Can you just say there were a.

Chamath Palihapitiya (54:59)

Couple of funny ones.

Elon Musk (55:00)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (55:00)

That they didn't let you do.

David Sacks (55:01)

You can say it so that he doesn't get.

Elon Musk (55:03)

I mean, how much time do we have here?

Chamath Palihapitiya (55:05)

Well, we should just give him one or two because it was in your mind. Which one do we regret most? Not getting on air.

Elon Musk (55:14)

You really want to hear that? I mean.

Chamath Palihapitiya (55:18)

I mean, it was a little spicy. It was a little funny.

Elon Musk (55:23)

Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya (55:26)

Here we go.

Elon Musk (55:26)

All right, Here we go, guys. All right. So one of the things that I think everyone's been sort of wondering this whole time is Saturday Night Live actually live, Live. Live, Live, live. Or do they have, like, a delay or, like, just in case there's a wardrobe malfunction or something like that? Is it, like a, you know, five second delay? What's really going on? But there's a way to test this, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya (55:59)

We came up with a way.

Elon Musk (56:00)

There's a way to test it, which is we don't tell them what's going on. I walk on and says, this is the script. I'll throw it on the ground. We're going to find out tonight right now if Saturday Night Live, if Saturday Night Live is actually live. And the way that we're going to do this is I'm going to take my cock out.

Chamath Palihapitiya (56:28)

This is the greatest ever.

Elon Musk (56:31)

And if you see my cock, you know it's true. And if you don't, it's been a lie.

Chamath Palihapitiya (56:41)

It's been a lie all these years.

Elon Musk (56:43)

All these years.

Chamath Palihapitiya (56:44)

Now this is.

Elon Musk (56:45)

We're gonna bust them right now.

Chamath Palihapitiya (56:47)

And this. We're pitching this.

Elon Musk (56:49)

Yeah, yeah. So we're pitching this on Zoom. Yeah, Pitching this on Zoom. On like a Monday afternoon. We're, like, kind of hungover from the weekend. And we're, like, pitching this. And it's Jason's on. And Mike and you. Yeah, and Mike, you know, so essentially got like. You know, my friends who I think are sort of, you know, quite Funny. You know, Jason's quite funny. I think Jason's the closest thing to Cartman that exists in real life.

Chamath Palihapitiya (57:19)

We have a joke going that he's Butters and I'm Cartman.

Elon Musk (57:22)

Yeah. So. And then my friend Mike's pretty funny too. So we come in, like, just like, guns blazing. Guns blazing. With, like, ideas. And we didn't realize, like, actually, you know, that's not how it works. And that's normally, like, actors and they just get told what to do. And, like. Oh, right. You mean we can't just, like, do funny things that we thought of? What?

Chamath Palihapitiya (57:49)

They're watching this, and on the zoom, they're aghast at pitch. Yeah.

Elon Musk (57:54)

That's silence, like. So I'm like. And I'm like. And I was like, is this thing working? Is this. Are we muted? Is our mic on?

Chamath Palihapitiya (58:01)

And they're like, we hear you.

Elon Musk (58:02)

Yeah. And then after a long silence, like, Mike just says the word crickets. Crickets.

Chamath Palihapitiya (58:08)

And they're not laughing.

Elon Musk (58:09)

They're not even a chuckle. I'm like, what's going on?

Chamath Palihapitiya (58:12)

And then Elon explains the punchline, which is.

Elon Musk (58:15)

Exactly. So there's more to it. Okay. Yes. That's just the beginning.

Chamath Palihapitiya (58:23)

So Elon says.

Elon Musk (58:24)

So then I'm like. So I say, I'm going to. I'm going to reach down.

Chamath Palihapitiya (58:34)

Into my pants.

Elon Musk (58:35)

Into my pants. And I stick my hand in my pants and I'm going to. And I'm. And I'm going to pour my cock and I tell this to the audience. And the audience is going to be like, what? Right. And then. And then. And then. And then I pull out a baby rooster, you know?

Chamath Palihapitiya (58:54)

Yes.

Elon Musk (58:55)

And it's like, okay, this is kind of pg, you know, it's like that. Not that bad. It's like, this is my tiny cock. And it's like, what do you think it's a van? And do you think it's an ice cock? I mean, I like it. I'm like.

Chamath Palihapitiya (59:14)

And then Kate McKinnon walks out.

Elon Musk (59:16)

Yeah, exactly.

Chamath Palihapitiya (59:17)

And I'm like, oh, no. But you haven't heard half of it. So Kate McKinnon comes out.

Elon Musk (59:20)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (59:20)

And she says, elon, you would have a bigger cock.

Elon Musk (59:25)

Yeah. I don't mean to disappoint you, Kate, but. Yeah, but I hope you like it anyway. But Kate's gotta come out with her cat. Okay, Right. So. And Kate says, you can see where this is going. And I say, nice. Wow, that's a nice pussy you've got there, Kate. Wow, that's amazing. It Looks a little wet. Was it raining outside?

Chamath Palihapitiya (59:56)

And then.

Elon Musk (59:58)

Do you mind if I stroke your pussy? Is that cool? It's like, oh, no, Elon, actually, can I hold your cock? Of course. Of course, Kate. And they train, hold my cock. And then, you know, we exchanged. And I think just the audio version of this is pretty good, right? And, you know, and she's like, wow, I really like stroking your cock. And I was like.

Friedberg (60:25)

And then Eli.

Chamath Palihapitiya (60:26)

Says, I'm really enjoying stroking your pussy.

Elon Musk (60:29)

Yes, of course. And, yeah. So, you know, they're looking at us.

Chamath Palihapitiya (60:35)

Like, oh, my God, what have we done, inviting these lunatics on the program.

Elon Musk (60:40)

Yeah. They said like, well, it is Mother's Day.

Chamath Palihapitiya (60:48)

It's Mother's Day. We might not want to go with this. Mother's Day.

Elon Musk (60:51)

A lot of moms in the audience. And I'm like, well, that's a good point.

Friedberg (60:54)

Fair. Fair.

Elon Musk (60:55)

It might be a bit uncomfortable for all the moms in the audience. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know.

Chamath Palihapitiya (60:59)

Maybe they'll dig it.

Elon Musk (60:59)

Maybe they'll like it. So, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (61:02)

Yeah, that was. That's the. That's the. That's the. That's the cold open that didn't make it. We didn't get that on the air. But we did fight for Doge.

Elon Musk (61:17)

Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya (61:18)

And we got Doge on air.

Elon Musk (61:19)

I mean, there's a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script. Like, they have these, like, cue cards for what you're supposed to say, and I just didn't say it. I just went off the rails.

Chamath Palihapitiya (61:26)

Yeah.

David Sacks (61:27)

They didn't see that coming.

Elon Musk (61:29)

Yeah, it's live.

Chamath Palihapitiya (61:30)

Well, it's live. And so Elon wanted to do Doge. This is the other one. He wanted to do Doge on Late Night. And he says, hey, Jake, Al, can you make sure.

Elon Musk (61:43)

Oh, yeah. I wanted to do the Doge father, like, you sort of redo the. You know, that scene from the Godfather. I mean, you kind of need the music to cue things up.

Chamath Palihapitiya (61:56)

You bring me on my daughter's wedding. Listen, you asked for Doge.

Elon Musk (62:01)

Yeah. You got Marlon Brando.

Chamath Palihapitiya (62:02)

Can I give you Bitcoin?

Elon Musk (62:03)

But you want dollars. Exactly. You really got to set the mood. You have to have a tuxedo. You gotta have, like, Marlon Brando.

Chamath Palihapitiya (62:13)

Yeah.

Elon Musk (62:16)

You come to me on this day of my Doge's wedding, and you ask me for your private keys. Are you even a friend? You call me the Deutsch father. Bueno, Sera. Bueno sera. No. So that's potential.

Chamath Palihapitiya (62:37)

They had great potential. So they come to me, and I'm talking to Colin and Joe, who's got a great sense of humor, and he's amazing. He loves Elon. And he's like, we can't do it because of the law and stuff like that.

Elon Musk (62:49)

The law.

Chamath Palihapitiya (62:49)

The law and liability. So I said, it's okay. Elon called Comcast and he put in an offer, and they just accepted it. He just bought NBC, so it's fine.

Elon Musk (63:02)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (63:03)

And Colin Jones looks at me, and I sold it so good. And he's like, you're serious? I'm like, yep, we own NBC now.

Elon Musk (63:13)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (63:14)

And he's like, okay. Well, that kind of changes things, doesn't it? I'm like, absolutely. Where a go on. On Doge?

Elon Musk (63:20)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (63:21)

And then he's like, you're fucking with me. And I'm like, I'm fucking with you.

Elon Musk (63:25)

Or are we? Or are we?

Chamath Palihapitiya (63:27)

It was the greatest week of. And that, like, is, like, two of 10 stories.

Elon Musk (63:33)

Yeah, we gotta. Yeah, we gotta.

Chamath Palihapitiya (63:34)

We'll save the other eight.

Elon Musk (63:35)

Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya (63:36)

But it was. And I was just so happy for you, to see you have a great week of just joy and fun and letting go because you were launching rockets. You're dealing with so much bullshit in your life. To have those moments, to share them and just laugh. It was just so great. More of those moments. I think we gotta. We gotta get you back on snl. Who wants to back on SNL one more time? All right. Ladies and gentlemen, our bestie, Elon Musk.