← Elon Musk Thinking
Elon Musk Thinking
Latest Interview of Elon Musk: The Future of Technology in Warfare!
00:40:25
Latest Interview of Elon Musk: The Future of Technology in Warfare! #ElonMusk Follow me on X https://x.com/Astronautman627?t=RFQEunSF2NwRkCOBc6PkkQ&s=09
Loading summary
Transcript121 lines
- [00:00]
A
Musk. Thank you very much for being here, sir. We appreciate it.
- [00:03]
B
It's an honor to be here. Yeah, it's really a great honor.
- [00:07]
A
Well, we're really. We're really excited for you to help us kick off our. Our intellectual theme, Human in the Machine, which is leadership on the emerging battlefield. And we want to make sure that the academy and the cadets are focused on not tomorrow, but the next 20, 30, 40 years. And underlying the entire theme is an emphasis on the importance of preparing cadets for future warfare. And really, we're humans and machines intersect. And it's as if your background was made for this theme, however.
- [00:32]
B
True.
- [00:33]
A
I actually talked to quite a few people and they really don't know who you are, so neither do I. Yeah. So I thought I should tell people a little bit about your bio. Who am I? Yeah, who are we, really? Yeah, you'll make a company that figures it out, sir. All right, so if you don't know, if you don't know, and this is ridiculous, of course you know, but I'm gonna do anyways. Elon Musk, who sitting next to me, co founded and leads or leads x Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink. Here's my favorite as an academic, the Boring Company. That was good. That was good. Come on.
- [01:05]
B
Yeah, I started as a joke.
- [01:06]
A
Yeah, it did.
- [01:07]
B
And that's real.
- [01:08]
A
Well, it's awesome. By the way, you have a new company also, xai.
- [01:12]
B
Yeah.
- [01:12]
A
And that's all of them. Unless you started one this morning. I don't know about. I'm not sure. Right. But basically what this means is everybody in this room has the opportunity, based on these companies, to drive a futuristic electric truck through a gigantic underground tunnel while using a digital connection in their brain to start a rocket while simultaneously getting updates on army football. His innovations have revolutionized electric vehicles, batteries, space exploration, advanced human machine interactions, made access to information instantaneous, and have starting to help integrate AI throughout our daily lives. After the convocation, I'm hoping to have a little bit of time so you can give me some personal tips. Because somehow you have founded and lead multiple companies, you're a father to multiple children, and I'm exhausted after two hours of coaching one kid's sport. That's.
- [02:03]
B
Sure.
- [02:04]
A
So whatever you can do to help me out, I'd appreciate it. So we have cadets and staff and faculty who can speak on multiple disciplinary perspectives. That would interest you. Drone swarms, electric batteries, molecular brain science, engineering, psychology, philosophy, law, Chinese language. But that's just the start. I think this one's particularly relevant because we can even cover the intense science of boxing with our world class Department of Physical Education, just in case. You never know, some random head of state challenges you to a fight.
- [02:33]
B
You know, I did challenge Putin to one on one combat.
- [02:37]
A
Do you take it?
- [02:38]
B
No. And I, and then I was like, I was like, I actually on, you know, the XFK Twitter, I said, I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to one on one combat. And I made sure to use his name in Russian Cyrillic. And then. And the stakes are Ukraine and the use of Ukraine. Ukrainian Cyrillic. And then the people thought I wasn't serious. Like, no, I'm absolutely serious. I mean, he does have, he has, you know, he's good at judo, I hear. And I think it would be, I mean, the pay per view and loan on that would be incredible.
- [03:16]
A
I, I could get everybody in here to start chanting, two men in or one line leaves. Yeah, two men in or.
- [03:23]
B
So I'd watch that and I'm in it.
- [03:27]
A
So I will tell you that our 31st superintendent, Douglas MacArthur, once said, there's no substitute for victory.
- [03:33]
B
Yeah.
- [03:34]
A
And when it comes to fighting, it's not just our military, but it's also the whole country and the whole industrial base.
- [03:40]
B
Yes.
- [03:40]
A
That's so important. And you've innovated across so many areas, whether it's beneath our surface to outer space and everything in between. And we're again, truly, truly grateful for you to be here. As we start to talk about some of these, some of these things that you've been working on as you look into the audience, I just want to give you a bit of context. A lot of these are the leaders who will face our nation's most complex and difficult challenges going forward. We have our cadets who will serve as army officers, leading hundreds and eventually thousands of soldiers through this complexity that we talk about. And we also have our faculty who are preparing them to do just what I just said, lead through these complex situations. And many of our faculty will also reenter the army and be required to lead. Thank you for taking the time to help us think deeper and inform us, as we start to inform our cadets, on how we can be successful not just fighting, but winning in the contemporary and future battle space. So let me start with this broad question. How do you see warfare transforming in the future?
- [04:40]
B
I mean, the biggest effect, I think by far is AI and drones. So the next. Well, in fact, the current war in Ukraine is very much a drone war already. It's sort of a contest between Russia and China to see who can deploy the most number of Drones. Now if there's a major power war, it's very much going to be a drone war. It's going to be drones and AI and you know, it's a sort of, I mean I do worry about the existential risk of AI, which is that if you, if you employ AI and drones, do you, do you go down this path where eventually you get to Terminator, you know, try to avoid that.
- [05:30]
A
That'd be good.
- [05:30]
B
That would be good.
- [05:31]
A
Yeah.
- [05:32]
B
Minimize the terminator risk. But I mean essentially if you are, when you're making military drones, you are making Terminators. And when you're, I think you'll somewhat be forced into, at the. Giving localized. The drone. Localized AI because if the AI is far away, it can't control as well as localized AI.
- [05:58]
A
So what do you mean by localized.
- [06:00]
B
AI meaning it's autonomous scaling machine, completely autonomous? Well, you give it the okay in a particular arena and it's just.
- [06:09]
A
And it goes with certain parameters.
- [06:12]
B
Yeah, hopefully.
- [06:14]
A
Do you think our adversaries will have those same type of concerns or limitations?
- [06:22]
B
Well, yeah, I mean it depends on how much existential risk there is in these wars. So if it's, if it's a regional war, I think it'll be more tempered. If it goes beyond a regional war, then it's all better off. And you know, and then you start deploying things that you really wouldn't want to deploy. So hopefully that doesn't happen.
- [06:51]
A
But you would, but you said it. And I would agree that if you just look at the contemporary conflicts that are taking place, you would agree that machines aren't just disrupting warfare, they're now commonplace.
- [07:01]
B
Drones are going to be overwhelmingly the what matters and any between, you know, any powers that have significant technology. It's so my personal belief is like that you really, it'll actually be my, I think probably too dangerous to have humans at the front. It's, it's drones. It's drones at the front.
- [07:28]
A
It's too dangerous.
- [07:28]
B
Drones don't miss because of the lethality.
- [07:31]
A
Then it's too dangerous to have humans at the front.
- [07:33]
B
Yes. I mean the, I mean if you've seen some of the computer controlled sniper rifles, I mean they just don't miss. So you're in the, you're fighting a machine that's going to, you know, aim with micron level accuracy and never gets tired.
- [07:54]
A
So how do you think the United States should be levering technology to further our national defense?
- [08:00]
B
Well, I think we probably need to invest in drones. The United States is strong in terms of technology of the items, but the production rate is low. So it's a small number of units, relatively speaking. But basically I think there's a, there's a production rate issue. Like if you say, like how fast can you make drones? If say there's a drone conflict, the outcome of that drone conflict will be how many drones does each side have in that particular skirmish times the kill ratio. So if you've got, you can have a. If let's say we were the United States would have a set of drones that have a high kill ratio, but then the other side has far more drones. If you've got a two to one kill ratio, the other side has four times as many drones, you're still going to lose.
- [08:56]
A
Do you think our industrial base can scale to make the volume of drones that you're talking about?
- [09:03]
B
I think that's going to be the biggest challenge it can scale, but it is not currently scaling.
- [09:13]
A
Why would that be?
- [09:14]
B
I think the procurement is so, I mean this is, I mean I read a lot of military history and actually the thing that I go to sleep with is usually an audio book on military history of one kind or another. So I find the subject very interesting. And one of the things that tends to happen is that countries pretty much are geared up to fight the last war, not the next war. And it's hard to change. I mean if you look at the uniforms at the start of World War I and the tactics and strategies they used at starter World War I, they were not significantly different from the Napoleonic era. The French were marching into war with brightly colored uniforms look great. That's not what you want to be when someone's trying to point a gun at you. You don't want to great looking uniform. You want, you want a uniform that blends in. So there's a tendency to be gearing up to fight the last war in the last war the US fought is kind of the Cold War, I guess. So it usually takes like some kind of shock factor to adjust. I would recommend adjusting now. And, and you are seeing some startups like Andro and a few others that are, have different mindset but it's really, it's, it's going to be can you make a lot of drones and what's the kill ratio? That's what it comes down to.
- [10:56]
A
So there was recently a report that said that President zelensky said by February 2025 there'll be a million drones produced by the Ukrainians. So it seems like it's doable and this might be A process question. And we'll talk about process in a second. But as you were, as you were just talking, I was thinking about, and you said that you can't have humans at the front. And so you haven't created a company that solved aging yet, have you?
- [11:20]
B
No.
- [11:20]
A
Okay, so 100 years.
- [11:22]
B
I wonder whether we should solve aging.
- [11:24]
A
There's a, you know, that's a great point. Yeah, I'd like to wrap it up sometimes.
- [11:29]
B
Right. Well, it's like, yeah, how long do you want Putin and Kim Jong Un to live?
- [11:35]
A
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. But let's say.
- [11:37]
B
Don't get it first.
- [11:38]
A
Let's say you go forward 150, 100 years. How do you envision this evolution? And I think this might get to neuralink. How do you see this evolution between the human who maybe can't be at the front any longer, the technology's at the front yet keeping them integrated and synchronized. How is that going to work in your mind?
- [11:59]
B
I mean, so communications is essential. Like it is actually very important to have space based communications that are, that cannot be intercepted. Which is, which is Starlink. What Starlink offers. Starlink is the backbone of the Ukrainian military communication system because it can't be blocked by the Russians, essentially, it's the only thing that can't be. So on the front lines, all the fiber connections are cut, the cell towers are blown up and the geostationary satellite links are jammed. The only thing that isn't jammed is Starlink. So it's the only thing. And then GPS is also jammed. GPS signal is very faint. But Starlink can offer location capability as well. So it is a strategic advantage that's very significant. And when you're trying to communicate with the drones, the drones need to like, basically they need to know where they are and they need to receive instructions. So if you don't have communications and positioning, then the drones don't work. That's quite important. Essential.
- [13:10]
A
But you find it important that there's still that communication between the human and the machine or the drone.
- [13:17]
B
Yeah, yes. There's like, it's a different question of like, where are things like right now versus where will things be in 10 years? But I have to say I do look at the future with some trepidation. I have to have some deliberate suspension of disbelief to sleep sometimes because I think we're headed into a pretty wild future. And I'm naturally an optimistic person. So, you know, but AI is going to be so good, including localized AI. I mean, at the current rates, you'll have, you know, something that's sort of grok level AI probably that can be run on a drone. And so you could literally say.
- [14:13]
A
You.
- [14:13]
B
Know, this is the equipment that the drone needs to destroy. Go into that thing, it'll recognize what equipment needs to be destroyed and take it out.
- [14:25]
A
It's a lot of your work at neuralink though is because what you're saying is that AI is going to quickly surpass, at least in your estimation, the human's ability to control it.
- [14:40]
B
Yeah.
- [14:42]
A
Okay.
- [14:43]
B
I mean, I'd like to say no, but the answer is yes.
- [14:47]
A
So how, first off, how long until you think that happens before that the, the, the AI has, has evolved to the point where, and I, you know, they, the AIs can start working together, even relying on computers, like in a de hobbled way, and therefore surpasses the ability for the human to be able to influence how it's working.
- [15:11]
B
Well, I think humans will be able to influence how it's working for a long time. This is an esoteric subject that really goes into pretty wild speculation. I think to some degree that the AIs, I think, will want humans as a source of will. So if you think of how the human mind works, there's limbic system and the cortex, your sort of, your kind of base instincts and the sort of thinking and planning part of your brain. But you also have a tertiary layer already which is that all of the electronics that you use, your phones, computers, applications, so you already sort of have three layers of intelligence, but all of those, the cortex and the machine intelligence, your sort of cybernetic third layer is trying to make the limbic system happy because the limbic system is a source of will. So there's some, you know, it might be that the AIs just want to make the humans happy. And part of what neuralink is trying to do is improve the communication bandwidth between the cortex and the digital tertiary layer. Because our bandwidth, output bandwidth of a human is less than one bit per second per day. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. You don't output 86,400 tokens. So the number of words that I can say at this forum, say, just like, just look at it from an information theory standpoint. How much information am I able to convey? Not that much, because I can only say a few number of words. And in order to convey an idea, I have to take a concept in my head, I have to compress it down to a small number of words, try to aspirationally model how you would decompress those words into concepts in your own mind. That's communication. So your brain is doing a lot of compression, decompression and then has a very small output bandwidth. Neuralink can increase that bandwidth by several orders of magnitude. And also you don't have to spend as much time compressing ports into a small number of words. You can do conceptual telepathy. That is the idea behind neuralink. So it is intended to be a mitigation against AI existential risk.
- [17:44]
A
You talk about alignment. Can you explain what you mean by alignment? To help everyone understand?
- [17:52]
B
Yeah, just. Is AI going to do things that make civilization better, make people happy, or will it be contrary to humanity? Will it foster humanity or not? Will be against humanity. So obviously we want an AI that will foster humanity. I think in developing an AI to foster humanity, as I've thought about AI safety for a long time, I think I've had probably a thousand hours of discussion about this. And my ultimate conclusion is that the best course for AI safety is to have an AI that is maximally truth seeking and also curious. And if you have both of those things, I think it will foster. It will naturally foster humanity because it will want to see how humanity develops. Humanity is more interesting than not humanity. You know, I like Mars, I'm a big fan of Mars, obviously and I think we should become a multi planet civilization. Like that's very important. The purpose of SpaceX is to make life multi planetary. That's the reason I created the company and that's the reason that we have the starship development in South Texas. That rocket is far too big for just satellites. It's intended to establish life on Mars, not just send astronauts there briefly, but to build a city on Mars. And that's ultimately self sustaining. So but getting back to AI, if you've got a truth seeking AI that is maximally curious. My neural net, my biological neural net says that that's going to be the safest outcome because like I said, while I like Mars, Mars is not as interesting as Earth because there's no human civilization there. Or thought of another way if you want to render Mars. Rendering Mars is pretty easy. It's basically red rocks on a. Looks kind of like some parts of Arizona. You know, there's not a lot of people, it's just, it's easy to render, it's rendering like to Mars, but rendering human civilization much harder, much more complex, much more interesting. And I. So I think a curious truth seeking AI would foster humanity and want to see where it goes.
- [20:25]
A
But that requires trust between the human and the machine. And that's. I want to ask you a question on this. So the army leaders in the army are no strangers to implementing new technologies. Think about how gps, for example, transformed navigation. It'd be unheard of not to use GPS today, but when I was a lieutenant, no one used gps. So recently I was watching this incredibly important and realistic documentary called Top Gun Maverick.
- [20:57]
B
Yeah.
- [20:58]
A
And in it I learned it's really good. Really good.
- [21:03]
B
I mean, you don't want to think about the plot too closely, but it's a great movie.
- [21:07]
A
It's a fantastic movie. I learned that Tom Cruise is actually not an actor. He's like a pilot apparently. But he taught me something really important. In it. He says it's about the pilot, not the plane and. Right, that's right before he defeats a fifth generation fighter with a 1970 F14.
- [21:24]
B
Right, yeah, yeah. So I mean, just go with the biplane.
- [21:28]
A
Yeah, there you go. Tom Cruise could do it.
- [21:30]
B
Software camel.
- [21:31]
A
But in it, you know, it's a bit of a cynicism or a cynical view of the need for technology. It's like, hey, technology is superfluous. Humans can do it. But we know that's. I mean, no, I don't, I don't question Tom Cruise. I don't ever question Tom Cruise. No, I'm just kidding. But I guess the question is, how do we get humans to be able to trust the machines? Because there is a lot of stories. For example, we just recently had a conversation where a pilot, Apache pilots were given new technology and they were like, we're not going to use it because we don't really trust it. And so they didn't use it. And so how do you get the. How do you. When new technology is implemented, we have to be able to trust, especially if it's going to be the difference maker to win. So how do we do that? How do we build the trust between the human and the machine?
- [22:17]
B
Well, I think we shouldn't just automatically trust these things. I mean, I think you want, you want to test it out and do a lot of testing and see how it actually works in a conflict at small scale and then scale it up if it's effective. But yeah, I mean, I have to say, like, I'm not sure, for example, that there is a. Fortunately, this is not an Air force gathering, but there's, there's not. I'm not sure there's a lot of room opportunity for fighter pilots because I think the. If you've got a drone swarm coming at you, the pilot's liability in the fighter plane, to be honest. So, you know, if you say like you compare a drone versus a fighter plane, how easy is it to make a drone? It's an order of magnitude, maybe at least 10, maybe 100 times easier to make the drone. And you can afford to sacrifice the drones, whereas pilots, you don't want to sacrifice the pilots. So my guess is that actually the age of human piloted fighter aircraft is coming to an end.
- [23:38]
A
If that's the case, then there's a question that is oftentimes debated in law and ethics debates about killer robots. And really are these things that, that should we be willing to lean so forward with the technology that we start to supplant the human pilot with the technology? And where does that go? And so what are your thoughts as we talk about technology replacing humans on the battlefield?
- [24:10]
B
Well, I guess what I'm saying is that at the front of the battle lines is going to be just drones and any humans caught in the crossfire are going to get. It's will be killed instantly.
- [24:21]
A
So then it's irrelevant. It's just going to be the, it's just going to be the way military operations take place. There isn't going to be. If you make the choice to be there, then you're at a significant disadvantage.
- [24:32]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just thinking like you've got drones that, you know, are constantly scanning, they're scanning in infrared, scanning invisible. If there's thousand, thousands of them or tens of thousands. You mentioned million that Ukraine's going to make. You got a million drones coming at you.
- [24:52]
A
Yeah.
- [24:53]
B
Do you, do you want to be on the there with trying to try to take out drones with an assault rifle? It's like not going to be a good situation. I mean, I think that there is, there is something where if you go fully analog, where if you can do sort of an emi like electromagnetic explosion of some kind that could trigger, take out all electronics, but then your electronics are going to go too. So you're going to go either fully analog or fully digital. So I think that there actually would be a role for a fighter plane if it was fully analog and had mechanical controls. Because then you could do an em, sort of an EMF blast, take out the drones and the analog. I mean, that could be another Tom Cruise movie maybe.
- [25:45]
A
I don't know.
- [25:48]
B
You know, it just goes on a fully analog aircraft and all the drones fall out of the sky because of an EMF bomb.
- [25:55]
A
How do you reply to those in Say industry that would say we don't want to contribute to the development of technology that could be used by the Department of Defense. Like basically we need to build trust with the industrial base and with society. Maybe something we're doing. How do we do that?
- [26:19]
B
Well, I'm very pro military, so to.
- [26:22]
A
Be clear, it's good your audience will like that.
- [26:24]
B
Yes. Yeah. So, but I, I think what, what, what if there's a significant conflict? The U. S. Industrial base will switch quickly to military, active military production, just as it did in World War II. Is it, you know, is it quick enough? I don't know, but that's what will probably happen. But yeah, AI and drones, that's, that's the future of warfare. And I mean, tell me if I'm missing something here.
- [27:03]
A
Where do you see the domain of space?
- [27:07]
B
Space? Yeah, space is, I mean space is the ultimate high ground. So it really goes. Space is big, real big. It's like, whoa.
- [27:27]
A
Yeah.
- [27:28]
B
If you ever see like earth to scale with the sun and just like, wow, we're just like a tiny little dust mote floating around space. That's earth.
- [27:38]
A
But space is becoming increasingly militarized. And so how do you see that, especially as it relates to land warfare? Like what's your thoughts on the space domain as it relates to land warfare and what are things that we should be doing to start to gain those advantages that are necessary?
- [27:55]
B
Well, I mentioned the space based communications is critical. If you can't communicate, you don't know what's going on, can't receive orders, you can't report information. And whether it's a human or a drone, they need communication. So you've got to have communications. Any ground based communications like fiber optic cables and cell phone towers will be destroyed. So it's basically only. All you've got are basically analog radios, but for any kind of data communications, it's space based. And then while GPS has been effective for a long time, GPS jamming at this point is pretty easy because the GPS signal is a weak signal. So it's easy to do GPS jamming. So having sort of a next generation system that can provide positioning is going to be very important. Space can also probably offer, you know, the, the ultimate weapons where you just have, you know, tungsten cannibals from orbit.
- [29:01]
A
How about offensive weapons in space? Do you see those?
- [29:04]
B
That's what I mean by rods from God.
- [29:06]
A
Yeah.
- [29:07]
B
So if you have like, you know, they talked about this in the Star wars program in the 80s, but this is certainly something that can be done which is you have just kinetic weapons from space or space based lasers. Starlink system technically does have lasers, but they're low power lasers for now.
- [29:31]
A
Yeah. So let me ask you about, back to this question about process. Process. So I like military history also.
- [29:43]
B
Yeah.
- [29:44]
A
So in. So I like all disciplines at West Point, by the way. I love all of them. So in 149bc there was the third Punic war is ongoing and the Roman legions are outside Carthage and they lay siege to Carthage and it's not going very well. The pro councils that are in charge are passive, risk averse and they're losing. And there's a young guy who's from the famous Scipio line of proconsuls and it is Scipio Emilianus who is the grandson, the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus. And so Scipio is the only one who's doing something. And so Cato the elder is sitting in the, in the senate and he says this, he says he alone still thinks the others flit about in the shadows. And his basically argument was I want Scipio in charge. And the problem was Scipio was too young. You had to be 42 to be a proconsul. And so Cato's like, I don't care, he's the right guy. And then what does Scipio do? He goes in and he puts juice into, he's innovative. And they, and obviously we know how the third Punic war ends because we know about Rome and not Carthage. Right. So what Cato was getting at is this need for innovative and creative and entrepreneurial leaders. Right. That's what is necessary. And so process is really as good as those who lead it. And so what are the traits you look for in those who lead your various businesses and enterprises?
- [31:18]
B
Well, I'm very much in technology. So for me if somebody is going to lead something in technology, they must themselves be good at technology. Meaning that if they going to lead something that involves complex engineering, they must themselves be good at engineering. They don't necessarily need to be the best engineer on the team, but they need to be very competent in their field. So this is incredibly important to me. If somebody's leading a given engineering field or engineering department and they are not good at that, then that would be like a cavalry captain who can't ride a horse.
- [32:03]
A
Problem, problem.
- [32:05]
B
Great leader in every way except can't ride a horse. And then you got to charge into battle and cavalry captain falls off the horse. In an instance, it's not as wiring. So Calvary captain must be able to ride A horse that's, that's so that, that, that's. Actually, they don't need to be the best horse rider, but they must be competent in this regard. Otherwise they cannot evaluate the talent of the team and they don't understand the technology that's being developed. This may seem like a simple thing, but it is often the case that this, this is overlooked. You know, I don't want to pick on the CEO of Boeing, but he's got a, you know, degree in accounting or something, which I think that's the, you know, you want to have like someone who knows how airplanes work, running the airplane company.
- [32:56]
A
I guess I cross out my job at Boeing CEO there goes. Can't do that.
- [33:01]
B
You know, it's like, it's like you want to, you want to not be the. It's just if you're running an airplane company, you should know how airplane, you should know how airplanes work and how they fly and how to design airplane. I think that's pretty important. So I think it's vital.
- [33:18]
A
But how do you create innovative intuition in those that work for you? I mean, you're famous for trying to gain efficiencies, create better processes, pushing.
- [33:33]
B
To.
- [33:34]
A
Try to, to gain those not just efficiencies, but effectiveness. So how do you, is it possible, can you build this innovative intuition in a person?
- [33:44]
B
Well, I think it is possible to learn to be innovative. You know, a lot of times for, for any given thing you have to say, did you try? This may sound, obviously, but actually try. Some of you might wonder, well, can I be innovative? Well, have you tried. Just try thinking of interesting ideas. I mean, I do find a good source of innovation is if you read about a whole bunch of fields you can cross, fertilize ideas from one field into another, and so you can Synthesize. Take say SpaceX and Tesla. The automotive industry is very good at manufacturing. In terms of manufacturing complex machines at volume. The automotive industry is the best. Now the rocket industry, space industry is very good at advanced materials and making things very light. And so taking advanced materials and mass optimization concepts from the space industry, applying it to automotive, and taking automotive mass manufacturing techniques and applying it to space was kind of like a superpower.
- [35:04]
A
But when you. That's interesting because when you think about it, when you're talking about innovating though, and you said people can try, that means you have to be willing to let them fail.
- [35:11]
B
Yes.
- [35:12]
A
And so where do you draw the line between recklessness and being overly cautious?
- [35:18]
B
No, if you're not failing, at least some of the time, you're not trying hard enough. You have to fail some of the time. So, you know, it's more like a batting average. Somebody should have a good batting average, but nobody bats a thousand. But if somebody bats zero all the time, I mean, okay, you know, you've got to take them off. So, you know, So I think I do have this sort of simple first principles algorithm that I think could be quite helpful. And I sort of say it as a mantra to myself because I've made this mistake so many times. So the first element is, for any given thing, make the requirements less dumb. So whatever problem you solve, make the requirements less dumb. And whoever gave you those requirements, even if they are the smartest person in the world, they're still dumb. So if, say this is where, say, military procurement, it goes wrong right at the outset with excess requirements. So you'll get sort of this giant document of requirements that actually should be like one page. So step one, make the requirements simplify and just make the requirements less dumb. Because if you don't make. If you don't do that as the first step, then you can get the right answer, but to the wrong question. If the question's wrong, it doesn't matter. So then the step two is delete the part or process step, delete. And if you're not putting in, if you're not adding back 10% of what you deleted, you haven't deleted enough. Again, the stuff sounds, I think, maybe very obvious, but it's very effective because the idea is like, if some of the ideas that you're doing don't fail, you're not trying hard enough. And then only the third step is to optimize the thing. And if I say, like, what's one of the mistakes that I see smart people making all the time, especially smart engineers, is optimizing a thing that should not exist. Sounds obvious. Like you could try to make, let's have the world's best biplane cloth biplane. I'm like, well, actually, no, we should have jet airplanes instead. You know, so we should optimize the thing that should not exist. And then step four is go faster. Again, this sounds really obvious, but people just don't try going faster. And the first step would be to automate something, but only automated once you've done those other four things. Now, the reason I have this mantra is because I've personally many times automated something, sped it up, optimized it, and then deleted it. And I'm like, wait, I am tired of going backwards here. So if you run that simple algorithm in many arenas of life, you will be shocked at how effective it is.
- [38:51]
A
Shockingly, we are already running out of time. Let me ask you this. If you could choose one attribute, just one attribute that would be critical for our future officers to have to be successful, what would it be?
- [39:08]
B
Curiosity. As long as you're not a cat, but curiosity. Try to read as much as possible, learn as much as possible, and in many different fields, and apply critical thinking to anything that you're told.
- [39:31]
A
Thank you. So I'd like to say on behalf of Lieutenant General Gillen and the entire academy, we're really thankful that you're here. We're really thankful you took the time to help us celebrate the excellence of the faculty and the cadets and really sharing some wisdom with us. Because we're really thinking about what do we need to do to be successful. Because we have a very important mission, which is a no fail mission, which is we have to fight and win and we're laser focused on that.
- [40:02]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, in my view, I think probably a lot of people's views, America is like Atlas holding up the free world and you are the arms of Atlas.
- [40:20]
A
So thank you, Mr. Musk.