Latest Interview of Elon Musk and DOGE team!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Elon Musk Thinking Episode: Latest Interview of Elon Musk and DOGE Team
Host: Astronaut Man
Release Date: March 28, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Interview

The episode delves into an in-depth conversation with Elon Musk and the DOGE team, focusing on their ambitious efforts to reduce government waste and fraud. Hosted by Astronaut Man, the discussion highlights the strategic initiatives undertaken by Musk and his team to overhaul federal operations, ensuring fiscal responsibility and enhanced efficiency.

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2. Deficit Reduction Goals

Elon Musk outlines the primary objective of the DOGE team:

"[Our goal is] to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion. So from a nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to 1 trillion..."
(00:45)

Musk emphasizes the feasibility of reducing federal spending from $7 trillion to $6 trillion by eliminating waste and fraud, targeting a 15% reduction without compromising critical government services.

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3. Government Waste and Fraud

Elon Musk expresses astonishment at the extent of inefficiency within government operations:

"The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind blowing."
(01:31)

He cites an example where a simple 10-question online survey cost the government nearly $1 billion, highlighting the lack of accountability and ineffective use of resources.

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4. DOGE Team's Strategies and Progress

The DOGE team employs real-time measures to curb waste, aiming to eliminate $4 billion daily:

"Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. And so far we are succeeding."
(02:36)

This proactive approach ensures continuous progress towards the deficit reduction target within the stipulated 130-day timeframe.

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5. Overhauling Government Systems

a. Retirement Process Overhaul

Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb and member of the DOGE team, discusses the modernization of the retirement process:

"We found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. So the process takes many months, and we're going to make it just many days."
(07:35)

The initiative involves transitioning from a cumbersome paper-based system to an online digital process, significantly reducing processing time and enhancing user experience.

b. Social Security and Fraud Prevention

Aram Moganassi, DOGE Engineer, sheds light on improvements to the Social Security system:

"Two improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud... and also make the experience better."
(10:45)

By addressing vulnerabilities such as 40% fraud in phone calls for changing direct deposit information, the team aims to secure benefits for legitimate recipients.

c. NIH and Medical Research Enhancements

Brad Smith from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) outlines reforms in biomedical research funding:

"If you're an NIH researcher and you get a $100 grant... we're proposing... you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15."
(14:47)

This shift ensures more funds directly support scientific research, fostering innovation and efficiency.

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6. Streamlining Operations and Reducing Overstaffing

Anthony Armstrong, DOGE’s Office of Personnel Management, highlights efforts to eliminate duplicative functions and overstaffing:

"The IRS has got 1400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones... the whole IRS could be handled once a month."
(17:55)

By dismantling redundant offices—such as the 40 communications offices in HHS—and optimizing workforce allocations, the DOGE team ensures streamlined operations and cost savings.

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7. Addressing Fraud in Federal Programs

Tom Krauss from the Treasury Department discusses the overhaul of financial operations:

"There is actually really only one bank account that's used to disperse all monies that go out of the federal government."
(19:25)

The team is implementing stringent financial controls, akin to those in public companies, to prevent fraud and ensure transparency, addressing issues like $500 billion in annual fraud and improving audit capabilities.

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8. Public and Political Reactions

The DOGE team's initiatives have faced criticism and legal challenges:

Elon Musk responds to accusations of a "fire ready, then aim" approach:

"We actually want to be careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once."
(03:09)

Despite pushback from certain lawmakers, Musk asserts that their methods are constitutional and supported across party lines when addressing specific cost-saving measures.

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9. Personal Insights and Challenges

Elon Musk shares his perspective on the political climate and personal attacks:

"They're being fed propaganda by the far left... we're going after them."
(33:40)

He emphasizes the importance of combating misinformation and protecting the integrity of government programs to ensure long-term solvency and benefit distribution.

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10. Future Plans and Optimism

In the concluding segments, the DOGE team expresses confidence in their mission:

"America will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work and it's going to be a fantastic future."
(23:10)

Elon Musk remains optimistic about achieving their goals, despite the challenges:

"We're moving like lightning... It has to be done and will greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems."
(31:54)

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Elon Musk: "Our goal is to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion." (00:45)

• Elon Musk: "The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government... it's mind blowing." (01:31)

• Elon Musk: "Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day." (02:36)

• Joe Gebbia: "We really believe that the government can have an Apple Store like experience." (07:37)

• Aram Moganassi: "40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters." (11:24)

• Brad Smith: "We're proposing that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15." (14:47)

• Elon Musk: "The retirement process is all by paper... with people carrying paper into this gigantic mine." (08:04)

• Anthony Armstrong: "The IRS has got 1400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones." (17:55)

• Tom Krauss: "There is actually really only one bank account that's used to disperse all monies." (19:25)

• Elon Musk: "If we don't do this, America is going to go insolvent to go bankrupt and nobody's going to get anything." (24:48)

• Elon Musk: "The success of DOGE is only possible with President Trump and with the outstanding cabinet that he selected." (04:46)

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Conclusion

The interview with Elon Musk and the DOGE team offers a comprehensive look into their mission to revitalize federal operations by eradicating waste and fraud. Through strategic reforms, technological integration, and a commitment to transparency, the team aims to secure America's financial future and ensure the efficient delivery of essential services to its citizens. Despite facing political resistance and public scrutiny, their unwavering dedication underscores the potential for significant positive change within government structures.

Transcript

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[Interviewer]

Thanks for having us and doing this. I know there's a lot of interest in this. You know, first, let me start with you, Elon. What are, what are the budgetary savings goals and how much do you think you've achieved so far?

[Elon Musk]

Our goal is to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion. So from a nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to 1 trillion or looked at it in total, federal spending to drop the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion. We want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud. Reduce the spending by 15% which seems really quite achievable. The government is not if not efficient and there's a lot of, lot of waste and fraud. So we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.

[Interviewer]

I'm going to talk to all making it better and talk to all the guys here about the specifics. But for you, what's the most astonishing thing you found out in this process?

[Elon Musk]

The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind blowing. Just we routinely encounter wastes of $1 billion or more casually. You know, for example, like the simple, the simple survey that was literally a 10 question survey that you could do with SurveyMonkey cost you about $10,000 was the government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that for just the survey. A billion dollars for a simple online survey. Do you like the national park? And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So the survey would just go to nothing. It was like insane.

[Interviewer]

You technically are a special government employee and you're supposed to be 130 days. Are you going to continue past that or do you, you think that's what you're going to do or.

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.

[Interviewer]

So we're in that timeframe 130 days and the process is a report at some point, 100 days, not really A report.

[Elon Musk]

We are cutting the waste in fraud in real time. So every day like that passes. Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. And so far we are succeeding.

[Interviewer]

And I'm going to talk to the specifics, but there obviously are DOGE critics who are reading all kinds of stuff. Obviously, lawmakers on the other side of the aisle are attacking you. And they characterize the approach as this. Fire ready, and then aim. And how do you approach that? How do you respond to that?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once. And actually, that is our approach. They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that. Which is not to say that we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball's got about 1,000. That's impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we. We move on.

[Interviewer]

Some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Steve Davis, you are a rocket scientist?

[Steve Davis]

Used to be, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Now essentially, you're the chief operating officer of DOGE Day to day operations.

[Steve Davis]

Fair to say, yeah.

[Elon Musk]

Part of.

[Steve Davis]

Part of the Doge team.

[Interviewer]

So how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge? You see?

[Steve Davis]

The reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country would agree that in order to have the country going bankrupt would be a very bad thing, and therefore the country going not bankrupt is a good thing that all of us are willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to do. I think the thing that's special right now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed, that there's an administration that that's supportive and a great Cabinet and just a great group that will actually make success a possible outcome. And I think that's given the inspiring mission and given the non zero chance of success, it was worth doing.

[Elon Musk]

I'd just like to sort of reemphasize that point. The success of DOGE is only possible with President Trump and with the outstanding cabinet that he selected. It would be impossible without the support of the President and the Cabinet.

[Interviewer]

But you're finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right?

[Steve Davis]

Yeah. Like Elon said, the minimum impulse bid is often a billion dollars. So for example, the $830 million, which was the online survey. That's an enormous amount of money that wouldn't have been found if the Doge team wasn't working with it, in that case, the Department of Interior. But then, taking it one step further, DOGE then publishes these things on our website for maximum transparency. So now the general public, it would have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. Now anyone can just log into doge.gov anytime and see these payments. They're not yet in real time. They're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.

[Interviewer]

But the process still involves Congress, right? At some level, we try to keep.

[Elon Musk]

Congress as informed as possible, but the law does say that money needs to be spent correctly. It should not be spent fraudulently or wastefully. It's not contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law and consistent with Congress. And we've seen actually great support, at least from the Republican side of the House and occasionally some Democrats, too. You know, it's nice to see people cross the aisle once in a while, but usually when they attack Doge, they never attack any of the specifics. So they'll say, what we're doing is somehow unconstitutional or legal or whatever. We're like, well, which line of the cost savings do you disagree with? And they can't point to any. And we list them all on doge.gov and the Doge handle on X and you'll see just outrageous things, one outrageous thing after another.

[Interviewer]

Joe, Gabby, besides Elon, you're one of several billionaires here, co founder of Airbnb, and you wanted to help out.

[Joe Gebbia]

I bumped into Anthony and Ewan, probably back in February, and they told me something about a mine that was dealt with retirement, and they said they needed somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government. I love the challenge. So I jumped on board. And it turns out there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. Now, picture this. This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper. It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70 years. And so as you dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. So the process takes many months, and we're going to make it just many days.

[Interviewer]

Will it be digitized or how?

[Joe Gebbia]

Absolutely. So this will be an online digital process that will take just A few days at most. And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. So we really believe that the government can have an Apple Store like experience, beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.

[Interviewer]

Because right now it's by hand.

[Elon Musk]

Yes, the retirement process is all by paper, literally with people carrying paper and manila envelopes into this gigantic mine.

[Interviewer]

So they can't retire more than a certain number every month?

[Anthony Armstrong]

Yes, about 8,000amonth.

[Elon Musk]

That's how we the reason we discovered it was we were saying, like, well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. They said, well, the most they could do is 8,000amonth. And even under normal circumstances, it can take six to nine months just to just to have your time and paperwork processed. And they often get the calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would it take so long to retire? And they're like, well, because of the mine. They're like, what do you mean, a mine? What's a mine got to do with retiring? And that's where we discovered that all the retirement stuff is done by, still done by paper in a process that looks identical to what occurred in the 1950s. Like, we took a snapshot of the mine when it first started in the 50s to today, it looks the same.

[Interviewer]

It's amazing. So how long do you think it'll take to turn over or working as.

[Joe Gebbia]

Fast as we can? Probably next couple of months we'll have this, this overhauled. And, you know, I really think, again, like, why are we subjecting our federal workers to processes that they actually have to go through a training just to retire from the government? There's a whole training program that people have to go through in order to retire. I think we can do better for them.

[Interviewer]

ARAM Moganassi DOGE ENGINEER you go into these places, one of the more than a dozen engineers, first people to go into the agencies and view the computer data sets. Tell me what you're finding. And for people who don't understand how that process works, explain it for them.

[Aram Moganassi]

Yeah, I'll say the first thing that got me really excited about Doge was learning basically the state of government computers. By some estimates, government it costs about $100 billion and it's funding systems that are over 50 years old in the case of something like Social Security or the irs. So really critical systems are old, they cost a lot of money to maintain, and they can be. The efforts to improve them are often very delayed. So I Thought I'm a software engineer that, that maybe can make a difference here. And that's, that's really what inspired me at a high level.

[Interviewer]

History about Social Security and a lot of words about it. From. Here's what Democrats have been saying about it.

[Steve Davis]

It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of dollars from Social Security.

[Elon Musk]

Elon Musk and President Trump have set.

[Anthony Armstrong]

Their sights on cutting Social Security.

[Elon Musk]

Their goal is clear. Destroy Social Security from within.

[Interviewer]

You're in the building. I mean, you're in the computers. What's happening there? What are you doing?

[Aram Moganassi]

Yeah, it doesn't line up with my experience on the ground. And I'll say the two improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis, and also make the experience better. And I'll give you one example is at Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.

[Interviewer]

40%?

[Aram Moganassi]

That's right. Almost half.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. And they steal people's Social Security is. What happens is they call in, they say they claim to be a retiree, then they. And they convince the Post, the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money's flowing. It actually goes to some fraudster. This is happening all day, every day. And then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security. It's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system.

[Interviewer]

How do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not going to affect their benefits?

[Elon Musk]

No, in fact, what we're doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people, as a result of the work of doge, will receive more Social Security, not less. I want to emphasize that as a result of the work of doge, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.

[Interviewer]

All right.

[Elon Musk]

I want to emphasize that point and let the record show that I said this and it will be proven out to be true. Let's. Let's check back on this in the future.

[Interviewer]

So, Washington Post, the Social Security administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded. Blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts freaked people out. Is that gonna change?

[Elon Musk]

Yes, we're gonna make sure that the website stays online.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I mean, but is it a result of going in there for something you're doing?

[Steve Davis]

No, no. The amount of issues that were with the Social Security system are enormous. As an example, There are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social Security system.

[Interviewer]

And that's an accurate figure.

[Elon Musk]

Yes, correct.

[Interviewer]

15 million.

[Steve Davis]

Correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem, again, preexisting problems since 2008, at least from an IG report. So there were some great people working at the Social Security Administration that found this 2008, and nothing was done. And so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions. There'd be no way to use those for good intentions. And so one of the things the DOGE team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.

[Interviewer]

Brad Smith, working at hhs, and obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid. Nih, what are you finding?

[Brad Smith]

Yeah, well, I'd say there's a couple things we're really committed to in our work at hhs. Number one, making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research in the world. And number two, making sure, which President Trump has said over and over again, that we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid. But there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today, if you're an NIH researcher and you get a $100 grant at your university today, you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that. The policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is Today they have 27 different centers. They got created over time by Congress and they're typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 different IT systems today at NI, 700 different IT software systems. They can't speak to each other, so.

[Interviewer]

They don't talk to one another.

[Brad Smith]

They have 27 different CIOs. And so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.

[Interviewer]

Time out, time out. You see 27 different chief information officers.

[Brad Smith]

Correct? Correct.

[Elon Musk]

And most of them are non technical.

[Interviewer]

So there's a lot there.

[Brad Smith]

There's a lot of opportunity. It will make science better, not worse.

[Elon Musk]

And when I say that our job is tech support, I really mean it. We have to Fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done. If the computers can't stay online, people won't receive their Social Security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing people from preventing research from happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud. And we're fixing it.

[Interviewer]

And does that include AI, does that include kind of changing the system overall? That's I guess what people are afraid of is they don't know what this is all looking like. And is it going to affect me in the long term?

[Elon Musk]

It's going to affect them. It's going to affect people very positively. So the changes that we're doing here will ensure the solvency of the American government, of the American, of the United States of America. This is what, this is what we're trying to do is ensure that people do receive their benefits in the future. And you can only receive your benefits if the, if the country is operating in a healthy and competent way.

[Interviewer]

Up next, how the DOGE team plans to streamline some federal jobs and agencies. And later, Elon Musk answers some of your questions that you asked via X. Anthony Armstrong, DOGE Office of Personnel Management Morgan Stanley Banker M and a guy. You know money and this is a lot of money sloshing around.

[Anthony Armstrong]

There's a lot of money sloshing around, there's a lot of money sloshing out the door. And if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce works, it's really a one way ratchet over decades. It's only going up, it's only going up. You never take it away. So that leaves you with duplicative functions, it leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places. So a couple of examples, duplicative functions. Brad mentioned 27 CIOs. If you had kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk about the communications office. I think you've got 40 distinct communications offices in HHS, right?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, 40.

[Anthony Armstrong]

Yeah. And that's not unusual by the way, multiple offices like that.

[Elon Musk]

This also does not make anyone healthy.

[Anthony Armstrong]

This is not about the employees there. There's many, many hard working, well meaning people who, who took these jobs. These jobs were out there, they applied for them, they took them, they're doing what's there. It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got that, you've got overstaffing. A good example of overstaffing would be the IRS has got 1400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join the irs, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the entire IRS in a little more than a month. So 12 times a year.

[Elon Musk]

It doesn't make sense. Why would you have 1400 people whose only job it is to give out a laptop and a phone?

[Anthony Armstrong]

Right. The whole IRS could be handled once a month. So that doesn't make any sense. And President Trump's been very clear, scalpel, not hatchet. And that's the way it's getting done. And then once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And if you look at how people have started to leave the government, it is largely through voluntary means. There's voluntary early retirement, there's voluntary separation payments. We put in place, deferred resignation, the eight month severance program. So there's a very heavy bias towards programs that are long dated, that are generous, that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector. And you've heard a lot of, a lot of news about rifts about people getting fired. At this moment in time, less than 0.15, not 1.5, less than 15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a RIF notice.

[Interviewer]

So they've selected if they're.

[Elon Musk]

It is basically almost no one's gotten fired. That's what we're saying.

[Interviewer]

Tom Krauss, working at treasury, you are having access to the payment system, oversees all the outgoing payments. Essentially, those payments were going places. We didn't know where they were going.

[Tom Krauss]

Right, yeah, unfortunately, that's the case, Brett. You know, as an ex CFO of a big public tech company, really what we're doing is we're applying public company standards to the federal government. And it is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today. There is actually really only one bank account that's used to disperse all monies that go out of the federal government.

[Interviewer]

Time out. One bank account.

[Elon Musk]

It's a big one. It's a big one.

[Interviewer]

It's a big one.

[Tom Krauss]

It's a big one. A couple of weeks ago, it had $800 billion in it. But it's the treasury general account. So when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here, what they're talking about in terms of the Fraud, you have to ask, well, why is this allowed to happen at a financial level? Well, it's actually quite simple but alarming. The treasury up until now, and thanks to President Trump, we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order that he just signed the other day, which is protecting America's bank account because it really is the taxpayer's money. You know, one, we're changing the culture. The culture is, Ben, not a lot of caring and not a lot of commitment to doing what's right relative to financial operations. There's a $500 billion of fraud every year. There's hundreds of billion dollars of improper payments and we can't pass an audit. The consolidated financial report is produced by treasury and we cannot pass an audit. We have material weaknesses. What that means is that if I was a public company cfo, I would effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I couldn't issue securities request. Can't pass an audit.

[Elon Musk]

Right. The federal government cannot pass an audit. It's impossible. In fact, in order to pass an audit, you need the information necessary to pass an audit. You need to have the payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation, and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment was made. None of those things were mandatory until, until just recently. Just a few weeks ago, in fact, maybe last week.

[Tom Krauss]

Yeah, we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very recently, effectively they could say, make the payment. And treasury just sent it out as fast as possible, no verification. And so what we're doing is what any household would do. But imagine you're a household. You have a bank account. Everyone has an ATM card connect to that account. Everyone has a checkbook, that account. It's not just your children, it's not just your parents, it's your in laws, it's your extended family. And they all can go to the account and disperse funds. No questions asked, no justification, no verification.

[Interviewer]

Up next, the Doge team targets government contracts. And we'll show you what they're finding. Tyler Hassan, Interior Department. You're a four former oil company CEO. You're reviewing contracts before they're approved for funding. What are you finding?

[Tyler Hassan]

Well, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service survey contract. I actually have an example of one right here. I could have done this in high school.

[Elon Musk]

Is that bad?

[Tyler Hassan]

I found it on the weekends. Because under the Biden administration, there was no departmental oversight within the Department of Interior whatsoever. None. We are now Reviewing every single contract, every single grant. And when things come to my attention that don't make sense, I'm bringing them to Secretary Burgum. And he's been fantastic. He's a businessman, he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful to work with him.

[Interviewer]

Is the battle between government of decades and decades of buildup and business, which you guys are, is that like a train hitting each other? I mean, it seems like it's pretty disruptive.

[Elon Musk]

Well, this is a revolution and I think it might be the, might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. But at the end of the day, America is going to be in much better shape. America will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work and it's going to be a fantastic future. But are we going to get a lot of complaints along the way? Absolutely. One of the things I learned at PayPal was, you know who complains the loudest and with the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters. It's a tell you, some of these NGOs that are crazy, like the $2 billion to Stacey Abrams NGO that basically didn't exist and suddenly gets to billion awarded from the federal government. She says, why? And there are many such cases like that.

[Interviewer]

I think that most people, common sense wise, would say the fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the 94 year old mother who skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's supposed to get.

[Elon Musk]

Right? And what we're trying to say is actually that the 94 year old grandmother is actually, as a result of Joe Doge's work, going to get her check. She's not going to be robbed by fraudsters like she's getting robbed today. And the solvency of the, of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those Social Security checks that Medicare continues to work, without which we're all doomed. The reason we're doing this is because if we don't do it, America is going to go insolvent to go bankrupt and nobody's going to get anything.

[Interviewer]

Why are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up, but you don't have to be here, right? I mean, you don't, you don't have to be doing this.

[Tom Krauss]

I have four blessed with four beautiful children, my wife and I, but we have a real fiscal crisis and this is not sustainable. And what's worse, back to my children, everyone else's children, is we are burdening them with that debt and it's Only going to grow.

[Interviewer]

Steve, there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are kind of all approaching it in different, you know, silos, but with the same kind of goal. Right. I mean, this is really Silicon Valley, private sector colliding with government.

[Steve Davis]

Yeah, exactly. And we're headed in a bad path, but the chance of success exists. And just the one that just is in my head right now, which is a fairly mundane one, but I think is very illustrative, is credit cards. There are in the federal government around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn't make sense. Right. And so one of the things all the teams have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?

[Interviewer]

I hope they're getting frequent flyers.

[Steve Davis]

Actually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal government has is actually not very good. That's a whole other.

[Interviewer]

It's a negotiation.

[Steve Davis]

Yeah, exactly. But so far the teams have worked together and they've reduced it from 4.6 million to 4.3 million.

[Elon Musk]

We're taking it easy, but clearly there should not be, you know, there should not be more credit cards than there are people.

[Interviewer]

Joe, middle level employees. Are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out bureaucracy?

[Steve Davis]

I mean, absolutely.

[Joe Gebbia]

I mean, I think what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world and bringing it into the government. We're bringing the best practices and the best methodologies and people are inspired.

[Elon Musk]

Right.

[Joe Gebbia]

Especially on the retirement processors I can speak to. They've been trying to modernize and get off of paper since early 2000s, very unsuccessfully. Every attempt has gone over budget and been canceled because it hasn't been successful. And so, you know, I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and good engineering and really create a better experience for everybody.

[Elon Musk]

We're talking about elementary financial controls that are necessary for any company to function. So like, if these can. If, if the federal government, if a commercial company operated the way the federal government does, then it would be immediately go bankrupt. It would be delisted, the officers would be arrested. The changes we're putting in place will enable the federal government to pass an audit. It will enable taxpayers to know where the money is going and know that their hard earned tax dollars are being spent. Well, the ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer Systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems don't talk to each other, then you can exploit that gap. And Ford says exploit that gap. Take advantage. For example, there were over $300 million of small business Administration loans that has been given out to people under the age of 11.

[Steve Davis]

Actually to add to it 300 million under the age of 11 and over 300 million to over the age of 120.

[Elon Musk]

Definitely.

[Interviewer]

Small business loans, correct?

[Elon Musk]

Yes. The oldest American is 114. So it's safe to say if their age is 115 or above, they're, they're fake. Or they should be in the gunnies book of world records and we should not be giving out loans to babies. So the youngest recipient of a Small Business Administration loan is a nine month year old, which is a very precocious baby we're talking about here. So obviously it was just fraudulent and they do terrible things. They actually will see that a kid's been born, they will steal that kid's Social Security number and then take out a loan and leave that kid with a bad credit rating. There was literally a baby. The terrible things are being done is what we're saying. We're stopping these terrible things.

[Interviewer]

And you can stop it.

[Elon Musk]

I mean we are stopping it.

[Anthony Armstrong]

The reason this is happening is because the two systems are not talking to each each other.

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Anthony Armstrong]

Right. And so you don't know at the Small Business Administration that you're giving a loan to a nine month old, which happened in one case because you're not cross referencing that with the Social Security Administration data that has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix.

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Anthony Armstrong]

Eliminates tremendous. And that there are multiple systems across the government where the systems are not speaking with one another. And if you just solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud.

[Elon Musk]

One of the key tricks that the fraudsters pull is that they will use the fact that someone is marked as live as sort of just that that Social Security number is marked as live in Social Security and then get disability and unemployment insurance for a dead person because the databases don't talk to each other. All they got was from Social Security is like is this person alive? Yes, they're not alive. It's falsely marked. Person is falsely marked as alive in Social Security. But they didn't. But that fraudster can now get unemployment and disability from a dead person. This is happening all the time at scale.

[Interviewer]

Are you surprised at some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's about eight or 10. Now of these cases that are at least temporary holds, they're being challenged by the DOJ. Are you surprised by that pushback?

[Elon Musk]

Well, it's. The D.C. circuit is notorious for having a very far left bias. And when you look at the people close to some of these judges who are, where are they working? Are they working at these NGOs? Oh, they're getting them. They're the ones getting this money. Does that seem like a system that lacks corruption? Sounds like corruption to me.

[Interviewer]

Last thing, do you guys all see this as a patriotic duty? Is that really what this is about?

[Elon Musk]

It's essential.

[Tyler Hassan]

I do 100%. I was running five businesses in Houston and I left that. I left great people to do this. And my wonderful wife said, go for it, and here I am. But I feel like this is me giving back to the country.

[Elon Musk]

If we don't do this, we're sunk. Unless this exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink. That's why we're doing it.

[Interviewer]

Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time today and hopefully it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the scenes.

[Elon Musk]

Thank you.

[Interviewer]

We asked Onax, your platform for some questions, and here is C. Sperling. He writes, are they happy with the speed at which they're making changes? Are there any changes they would like to make, but haven't yet?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think in the context of the government, we're moving like lightning. In the context of what I'm used to moving, it's slower than I'd like. So what seems like incredibly fast action by government standards is slower than I'd like to be totally frank. But. But we are making solid progress. A very sort of thorny problem, a tough problem, really. It's kind of like painful homework, frankly, is reconciling all of the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud. These databases don't talk to each other. And that's really the source of. That's the biggest vulnerability for fraud is the fact that these databases don't talk to each other. So we need to reconcile databases is. It's frankly painful homework, but it has to be done and will greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems.

[Interviewer]

We didn't talk about any plans to approach cuts at the Pentagon. You're in there.

[Elon Musk]

The Pentagon has not passed an audit in a very long time. I mean, as crazy as it sounds, they will lose 20, 30 billion dollars a year and they don't know where. They literally don't know where it went. I mean, Senator Collins was telling me about how she gave the Navy $12 billion for extra submarines, got zero extra submarines, and then when she held a hearing, said, Where'd the $12 billion go? They didn't know.

[Interviewer]

Talking to those guys. And you have a great team from all over the country. You don't have to be here. You don't have to be here. You know, there's now been these many cases of violence and vandalism at Tesla dealerships. How does that affect your employees, your customers? What does it mean to you? Like, how have you taken that in?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think a great wrong is being done to the people of Tesla and to our customers. Tesla is a peaceful company that has made great cars, great products. That's all it's done, hasn't harmed anyone. And yet people are committing violence. They're firebombing Tesla dealerships, they're shooting guns into stores, they're threatening people. You know, they're issuing death threats against me and other Tesla personnel. What are they doing this for? Why? And what's happening, it seems to me, is they're being fed propaganda by the far left, and they believe it. It's really unfortunate. But the real problem is not are not the people. It's not like the crazy guy that firebombs a Tesla dealership. It's the people pushing the propaganda that caused that guy to do it. Those are the real villains here, and we're going to go after them. And the President's made it clear we're going to go after them. The ones providing the money, the ones pushing the lies and propaganda. We're going after them.

[Interviewer]

And it's been this evolution. I mean, the last administration was going to mandate electric vehicles, and now you see on the far left some efforts to go after electric vehicles. It's quite something.

[Elon Musk]

It is ironic. I mean, it seems like the most ironic outcome is the most likely, but.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, personally, it's got to take a toll.

[Elon Musk]

It does. Yeah, it does. I think there's some real evil out there and we have to overcome it.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you have been called a Nazi, a white supremacist, a fascist.

[Elon Musk]

I mean, they've got the sort of.

[Interviewer]

Just to name a few. Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

I mean, they've still got it. They haven't. I guess they still need to call me Stalin, Mussolini, you know, whatever, Genghis Khan or whatever. I mean, they've called the President all these things. I think at one point there was a magazine cover which said the President was worse thanthat President Trump was worse than Hitler. Mussolini and Stalin combined. And the President hasn't killed anyone. He hasn't started any wars. In fact, he's good at stopping wars. So this is obviously they're pushing these lies and why do they push these lies? And I think that we need to hold people responsible for pushing these lies because those lies almost got the President killed.

[Interviewer]

What's something that people wouldn't know about the President? You're pretty close to him now. You spend a lot of time with him. What's something that people wouldn't know?

[Elon Musk]

I think the President is a good man. I think he is an honest man. And I have yet to see him do anything mean or anything that is wrong, that I would say morally wrong. Not even once.

[Interviewer]

You know, a lot is coming your way, but sometimes you say stuff or post stuff that gets attention, you give it out. In other words, Democratic Arizona Senator Mark Kelly posted on X about his trip to Ukraine to push for continuing to send US Weapons and support there. And you posted that he was a traitor. Why do that?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think somebody should care about the interests of the United States above the interests of another country. And if they don't, they're a traitor.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but he's a decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting U.S. senator.

[Elon Musk]

That doesn't mean he'sit's okay. For him to put the interests of another country above America.

[Interviewer]

Obviously there are some Republicans who think supporting Ukraine is the right thing still. But there is a battle back and forth about how do you think it comes to an end?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think there will be a negotiated peace. And the thing that we should be concerned about is we should have empathy for the thousands of people that are dying every day in trenches for no movement in the lines. So the borders remain the same. For the past two years, thousands of people have died every week for nothing. For what? And I take great offense at those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who virtue signal and say, oh, we can't give in to Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands of kids dying every day. They just want that to continue forever. Have contempt for such people. I don't want to make that clear.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

So you're optimistic because they're bocce signaling. And their lack of a solution means that kids don't have a father. It means that parents lost a son for what? Nothing.

[Interviewer]

So you're optimistic that the President's plan might work?

[Elon Musk]

The President's plan is the only thing that will work.