A Look Inside Elon Musk's Vision: Complete Interview

Summary

Podcast Summary: The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

Episode: A Look Inside Elon Musk's Vision: Complete Interview
Release Date: January 2, 2026
Host: Ben Ferguson
Featuring: Elon Musk & Senator Ted Cruz

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Overview

This special episode features an extensive in-person interview with Elon Musk at the White House. Hosted by Ben Ferguson and joined by Senator Ted Cruz, the discussion dives into Musk’s role in uncovering government waste and fraud, major technological visions (AI, robots, Mars), and insights on his career, legacy, and the American political climate. The conversation is candid, lively, and peppered with humor and memorable anecdotes.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Musk’s Role Addressing Government Waste and Fraud

• Comparing Twitter vs. Federal Government Dysfunction
  • Musk calls federal government dysfunction “hard to compete with.” ([03:53])
  • “There’s more opportunity for improvement…if it was a well-run ship, it would be difficult. But right now it’s like being in a room where the walls, roof, and floor are all targets. You shoot in any direction, you can't miss.” — Elon Musk ([04:03])
• Shocking Examples of Waste
  • Government agencies routinely buy far more software licenses and media subscriptions than employees, often paying for services never used.
  • There are “twice as many credit cards as there are humans” in some agencies, at $10,000 limits each. ([06:02])
  • Payments with no code or explanation routinely go out, often due to contracts never shut off.
• Fraud in Nonprofits and NGOs
  • Musk and his team at Doge uncover cases where government payments (e.g., $1.9 billion to a “fake NGO” linked to Stacey Abrams) translate into lavish lifestyles and little-to-no oversight.
  • "You give money to a so-called nonprofit...there’s no auditing subsequently. So they give themselves insane salaries, expense everything to the nonprofit, buy jets, and homes.” — Elon Musk ([07:55])
• Magic Money Computers
  • Discovery of 14 “magic money computers” in agencies like Treasury and DOD, issuing payments unsupervised, sometimes trillions.
  • “Any computer which can just make money out of thin air.” — Elon Musk ([09:10])
• Data and Transparency
  • Musk emphasizes getting to the computers—“the pipes”— as the only way to truly audit, uncover waste, and enforce transparency.
  • “Congress would think of ‘give me a report’... rather than actually getting into the pipes.” — Ben Ferguson ([11:59])

2. Cultural and Political Impact

• From "Hero to the Left" to "Enemy #2"
  • Five years ago, Musk was beloved for electric cars and space. Today, “after Donald Trump, the left hates you more than any person on earth.” ([15:06])
  • “I appear to be number two... If you judge by the signs.” — Elon Musk ([15:15])
• Doge’s Mission and Political Backlash
  • Most fraud being uncovered is associated with left-leaning NGOs.
  • “The single biggest thing they’re worried about is that Doge is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements... to illegals. This is the crux of the matter.” — Elon Musk ([16:49])
  • “By using entitlements fraud, Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants... and buy voters..." — Elon Musk ([17:11])

3. AI, Robotics, and the Future

• Massively Transformative AI
  • In 10 years, AI could outperform any human cognitively; most jobs could be automated ([23:15]).
  • “In 10 years, probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively.” — Elon Musk
• Humanoid Robots and Automation
  • Billions of humanoid robots projected; 90% of miles driven will be autonomous in 10 years ([24:19]).
• Economic and Social Disruption
  • Goods/services will be “close to free”… but meaning and fulfillment will become the main personal challenge ([24:40]).
• Killer Robots and Existential Risks
  • Estimates a 10-20% chance “killer robots” could annihilate humanity within 5-10 years ([25:34]).
  • “20% likely, maybe 10%.” — Elon Musk
• Race with China and AI Chips
  • America currently leads, but dominance will depend on who controls AI chip fabrication sites (mostly in Taiwan). Chinese takeover would be catastrophic ([26:14]).

4. Space: Mars, Moon, and Musk's Legacy

• Mars Vision
  • Expected human landing: potential as soon as 2029.
  • Musk’s legacy: “If SpaceX got humans to Mars, that’s what they would remember me for.” ([28:18])
  • “The key threshold is when [a Mars city] can… prosper, even when supply ships from Earth stop coming.” — Elon Musk ([34:36])
• Technological, Logistical Challenges
  • Need a million people, million tons of cargo, full recreation of Earth’s industrial base in a hostile environment ([35:15]).
• Personal Connection
  • Musk’s children named in reference to Mars (Arcadia, Aries), showing personal investment in the vision ([36:08]).

5. Elon Musk: Work Habits, Philosophy, and Origin Story

• Relentless Work Ethic
  • Six hours of sleep per night, “work almost every waking hour,” often eating meals during meetings, eschewing social dinners ([56:32]).
  • “At this point I might know more about manufacturing than anyone ever has…” — Elon Musk ([56:32])
• First Principles and Patents
  • “Patents are for those who innovate slowly… Ideas are easy; execution is the hard part.” ([53:19])
• Career Trajectory
  • Immigrant roots: arrived with $2,500, a bag of clothes, and books ([39:10]).
  • PayPal success, then progression to SpaceX spurred by philosophical ambitions about human survival and expansion ([44:14]).
  • “We want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe. In order to do that, we must… go beyond one planet.” — Elon Musk ([44:14])

6. Memorable Quotes and Moments

• On Government Waste:
  “If any company kept its books the way the federal government does, they’d arrest the officers and put them in jail.” — Elon Musk ([13:06])
• On Transparency:
  “Every action we do… we put on the doge.gov website and we post on the X handle… I don’t think anything’s been this transparent ever.” — Elon Musk ([14:22])
• On Killer Robots:
  “20% likely, maybe 10%.” — Elon Musk on the prospect of AI turning hostile ([25:34])
• On Mars Legacy:
  “If SpaceX got humans to Mars, that’s what they would remember me for.” — Elon Musk ([28:18])
• On Work Habits:
  “I literally just… have lunch and dinner, bro, during meetings and continue the meeting.” — Elon Musk ([57:25])
• On Dying on Mars:
  “Do I want to die on Mars? Yes, just not on impact.” — Elon Musk ([31:22])
• On Patents:
  “Patents are for those who innovate slowly.” — Elon Musk ([53:19])

7. Lightning Round and Pop Culture

• Star Wars or Star Trek? First movie in a theater: Star Wars. Best movie: Empire Strikes Back ([29:19])
• “Han shot first?” Musk: “It seemed like he shot second.” Longer debate follows ([30:37])
• Wrath of Khan cited as best Trek film ([30:02])

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps and Attribution)

• On Government Dysfunction:
  “It is worse than I expected. But on the plus side, that means there’s more opportunity for improvement.”
  — Elon Musk ([04:03])

• On NGO Fraud:
  “They give themselves insane salaries, expense everything to the nonprofit, buy jets, and homes...”
  — Elon Musk ([07:55])

• On Transparency:
  “Every action we do, small or large, we put on the doge.gov website and we post on the X handle... Extreme transparency. I don’t think anything’s been this transparent ever.”
  — Elon Musk ([14:22])

• On Political Motivation:
  “They hate me because Doge is being effective... The single biggest thing that they’re worried about is that Doge is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements... to illegals. This is the crux of the matter.”
  — Elon Musk ([16:49])

• On Future of AI:
  “In 10 years, probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively.”
  — Elon Musk ([23:15])

• On Work Habits:
  “I work almost every waking hour.”
  — Elon Musk ([56:56])

• On Manufacturing:
  “At this point I might know more about manufacturing than any human ever has because I’ve manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas.”
  — Elon Musk ([56:32])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:53] -- Government waste: software & credit card abuses
• [07:55] -- Nonprofit/NGO fraud (Stacey Abrams example)
• [09:10] -- “Magic money computers” explained
• [13:06] -- If private companies kept books like the government
• [16:49] -- Dems and entitlement fraud; “this is the crux of the matter”
• [23:15] -- AI will surpass human cognitive ability within 10 years
• [25:34] -- “20% likely, maybe 10%” — killer AI risks
• [26:14] -- AI chip fabs, Taiwan, US-China race
• [28:18] -- Legacy = getting humans to Mars
• [34:36] -- Mars needs to be self-sustaining before resupplies end
• [53:19] -- On patents: "Patents are for those who innovate slowly."
• [56:32] -- Musk on work, sleep, and manufacturing expertise

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Conclusion

The episode reveals Elon Musk’s blunt assessments and bold vision—whether discussing rooting out governmental corruption with data and transparency, racing to build a multiplanetary civilization, or confronting the disruptive consequences of AI and robotics. The conversation is rich with real-world examples, humor, and rare insights into Musk’s operational philosophy, relentless work habits, and personal goals. Senator Cruz and Ben Ferguson keep the tone engaging, with plenty of geek culture and detailed probing about Musk’s motivations and the societal future.

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This summary covers the episode’s content, insights, and memorable exchanges, providing a detailed, timestamped guide for those who have not listened to the full conversation.

Transcript

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[Ted Cruz]

It is Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Happy New Year center to you as well and to everyone listening right now. And we've got a really fun show that we're going to do today on New Year's and it deals with waste, fraud and abuse that we talked about. That's now becoming a reality in Minnesota months ago with your good friend Elon Musk.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you had a fantastic New Year's Eve. I hope you stayed safe. I hope you enjoyed time with your family. You celebrated. I hope you're ready now for an incredible 2026. I hope that you accomplish something that really makes a difference, that you, you make a difference in the lives of those around you. You make a difference in the lives of your kids and your community and you make a real impact from Fighting for our country. Our country is at a pivotal time. And I hope 2026 is a time where you stand up and say, I am going to stand up and defend our nation. Like so many patriots who have preceded me on this New Year's Day, we're going to play one of my favorite podcasts that Ben and I ever did. And, and, and this was last year, last summer, we interviewed Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a good friend of mine. We sat down with him for, for an hour in the White House talking to him about Doge and what he was doing with, with President Trump, but also talking, talking to him personally about who he is, about how he, how he built Tesla, how he built SpaceX. We talked to him about AI and killer robots. And it's a fascinating show and we present it to you right now in its entirety.

[Ted Cruz]

Make sure you download it wherever you get your podcast. It's a great episode. It's out right now. Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcast.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, we're in the White House right now and we're here with my friend Elon Musk, who, who really has not been doing much of anything, has not made any news and nobody has noticed the impact. Welcome, Elon.

[Elon Musk]

Thank you.

[Ben Ferguson]

Holy crap.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. Wow.

[Ben Ferguson]

Let me just say, never a dull moment. Never a dull moment. The first 50 days the President has spent in office over the top and the first 50 days you've spent. I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an impact the way you have beginning. Let me start with a question. You know a lot about which was worse, the mess you found at Twitter or the mess you found in the federal government?

[Elon Musk]

Well, it's hard to compete with the federal government.

[Ben Ferguson]

What surprised you about the federal government? I assume you came in and assumed it was bad. Is it worse than you expected?

[Elon Musk]

It is worse than I expected. But on the plus side, that means there's more opportunity for improvement. So if you look on the bright side, there's actually a lot of opportunity for improvement in federal government expenditures. Because it's so bad. If it was a well run ship, it would be very difficult to improve. So now it's like if people say, well, how will you figure out how to save money in the federal government? Well, it's like being in a room where the walls, the roof and the floor are all targets. You shoot in any direction. Yeah. And you're going to canvas.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow.

[Elon Musk]

Again, I'm sure you would agree.

[Ben Ferguson]

So a lot of folks have talked about like, like you can't.

[Elon Musk]

You can't miss. Yeah, this is going any direction.

[Ben Ferguson]

A lot of the crazy expenditures, things like, like 2 million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala, an essential, you know, transgendered mice and. And Sesame street in Iraq, a lot of that has gotten attention. But some of the stuff you've told me about, like, tell us about computer licenses and government agencies.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. So most of what Doge is finding, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes. It's very obvious. Basic stuff. So in every government department, I say every. Because we've not yet found a single exception. There are far too many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department.

[Ben Ferguson]

Like you were saying, like an agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses.

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

And even of the 15,000 employees, a good chunk of them hadn't used the license, had never logged on or used the application.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. We found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions where there were zero logins, and yet we were paying for it. Yes. The government was paying for thousands of licenses of software or media subscriptions, and no one had ever logged in even once.

[Ben Ferguson]

Or like credit cards, you found the same thing with government credit cards.

[Elon Musk]

We found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans. And I still don't have a good explanation for why this is the case. And these are $10,000 limit cards. So it's a lot of money.

[Ted Cruz]

Is it incompetent that you're finding, or is this like the biggest money laundering scheme in the history of the world that you're finding?

[Elon Musk]

Look, I think it's mostly if you say, look, what's the waste to fraud ratio? In my opinion, it's like 80% waste, 20% fraud. But you do have these sort of gray areas. Example would be. So we saw a lot of payments going out of treasury that had no payment code and no explanation for the payment. And then we're. We'd try to figure out what that payment is, and we'd see that, okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off, but someone forgot to shut off that contract, and so the company kept getting money.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow.

[Elon Musk]

Now, is that waste or fraud?

[Ben Ferguson]

Both.

[Ted Cruz]

Both.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, you're getting something you're not supposed to get.

[Elon Musk]

You're not supposed to get it, but the government sent it to you, and nobody from the government asked for it back. Take, for example, the $1.9 billion given to Stacey Abrams. A fake NGO.

[Ben Ferguson]

Utter insanity.

[Ted Cruz]

Explain that story.

[Ben Ferguson]

That's Just corrupt. I think that's paying off cronies at that point.

[Elon Musk]

1,000%.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah, yeah. And by the way, she knew, like when you get $2 billion, you don't miss that.

[Ted Cruz]

It's not an accident.

[Elon Musk]

Allegedly. It was for like environmentally friendly appliances or something. And they've given like 100 appliances so far for $2 billion. It's a very expensive toaster.

[Ben Ferguson]

That's sub zero fridge boy. It's nice, right?

[Elon Musk]

Obviously one of the biggest scam fraud holes we've uncovered, which is really crazy, is that the government can give money to a so called nonprofit with very few controls. And there's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit. So there's no. So this is with the 1.9 billion. Stacey Abrams. They then give themselves extremely lavish, like insane salaries, expense everything to the nonprofit, buy jets and homes and all sorts of things.

[Ben Ferguson]

Live like kings and queens.

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

On the taxpayer dime.

[Elon Musk]

Correct. You mentioned this is happening at scale. It's not just one or two. We're seeing this everywhere.

[Ben Ferguson]

Now. One of the things you told me about is what you call magic money computers. Tell us about it, because I never heard of that until you brought that up.

[Elon Musk]

Okay. So you may think that the government computers all talk to each other, they synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere and it's coherent. There's. And that the numbers, for example, that you're presented as a senator are actually the real numbers.

[Ben Ferguson]

One would think.

[Elon Musk]

One would think they're not. Yeah. Okay. I mean, they're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases. So I call a Magic money computer. Any computer which can just make money out of thin air. Best Magic Money.

[Ben Ferguson]

So how does that work?

[Elon Musk]

It just issues payments.

[Ben Ferguson]

And you said there's something like 11 of these computers at treasury that are sending out trillions in payments.

[Elon Musk]

They're mostly Treasury. Some are, but there's some at HHS, some at. There's one or two at State, there's some at DOD. I think we found now 14 Magic Money computers.

[Ben Ferguson]

14, okay.

[Elon Musk]

They just send money out of nothing.

[Ben Ferguson]

You have an ability to see where leverage points are and how things actually happen. So I remember back, I think it was September, October of this year, before the election. We didn't know who was going to win. And I was at your house in Austin, we were talking about it, and you said, look, I don't want a job in Washington. And you said, all I want is the login for every computer. And I remember thinking at the time, that sounded kind of weird, like I just didn't get it. And I have to say, what's interesting on this, if I would have thought, like, okay, how do you reform government? Like, sort of the traditional way to think about it is, okay, give me an org chart. Let me sit down with the people who are running agencies. And what you saw immediately is to understand what's really going on, get to the payment systems, get to the computers. Why is getting to the computers so critical to understanding what's actually happening?

[Elon Musk]

Well, the government is run by computers. So you've got essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government. And if you want to know.

[Ben Ferguson]

Did you know that, Ben?

[Ted Cruz]

No.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. So when somebody, like, even when the President issues an executive order, that's got to go through a whole bunch of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere. And if you want to know what the situation is with the accounting, and you're trying to reconcile accounting and get rid of waste and fraud, you must be able to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise you can't figure it out because all you're doing is asking a human, who will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally usually ask some contractor who will ask another contractor to do a query on the computer.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow.

[Elon Musk]

That's how it actually works. So it's many layers deep. So the only way to reconcile the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is to actually look at the computers and see what's going on. That's what I call. That's like. That's what I, When I sort of cryptically refer to reprogramming the matrix. You have to understand what's going on the computers. You have to reconcile the computer databases in order to identify the waste of fraud.

[Ben Ferguson]

I don't know that there was anyone in Congress who understood, certainly myself included, who understood the leverage that comes from the computer and the data in particular, that Congress would think about. Give me a report on what your expenditures are rather than actually getting into the pipes. And I think that has been fascinating that it's let you uncover a bunch of crap that just nobody knew.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. I mean, in order for money to go to event count, it's not like we're sending truckloads of cash all over the place. We're wiring money, right. We're sending money through the ACH system or through the SWIFT system. So in order for money to flow, it's going to flow electronically. So that's what you need to look at. You need to look at the actual.

[Ben Ferguson]

Electronic money Flows and Tesla and all your companies, you have accounting and you have every expenditure, you have it coded for what it's going for. Federal government doesn't work that way. They don't code with the money's going for.

[Elon Musk]

They do now.

[Ben Ferguson]

But they didn't.

[Elon Musk]

They didn't.

[Ben Ferguson]

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

[Elon Musk]

Yes. If it was a public company, it would be delisted immediately, it would fail its ordered, and the officers of the company would be imprisoned. That's the level of health business in the federal government, unfortunately.

[Ben Ferguson]

It's deliberately.

[Ted Cruz]

Or do you think this is incompetence again?

[Elon Musk]

It's 80%. It's 80% incompetence and 20% malice.

[Ted Cruz]

If you look at Doge now and you look at the government and what you're finding, what percentage have you guys even gotten to and how much of it is Mars where you haven't even gotten there yet? Because there's so much you're finding out here. I mean, how many. You seem like a timeline guy when you say, all right, I want to get in there and get all these, you know, numbers and things. How far are we from the end game where you've seen it all, been able to process it all and fix it? I mean, are we years away, months away?

[Elon Musk]

Not years. I mean, I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to get a trillion dollars of waste and fraud out and that meaning that it will have. We'll have a net savings in FY26, which starts in October, obviously, of a trillion dollars, provided we're allowed to continue and our progress is not impeded and we're very public about what we do.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah, you put it out on the website.

[Ted Cruz]

It's on the website.

[Elon Musk]

I don't know how we could be more transparent. Literally every action we do, small or large, we put on the doge.gov website and we post on the X handle. And when people complain about it and they say, oh, you're doing something on costume, I'm like, well, which of these costumes you do it in the daylight?

[Ben Ferguson]

Everyone knows exactly what you're doing.

[Elon Musk]

Extreme transparency. I don't think anything's been this transparent ever.

[Ben Ferguson]

So five years ago you were a hero to the left. You were cool, you had electric cars, you had space. And in five years you've go to.

[Elon Musk]

A party in Hollywood and not get dirty looks. In fact. Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

Now you might not Even get invited.

[Elon Musk]

I should be invited, but I don't know if I should go.

[Ben Ferguson]

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say today after Donald Trump, the left hates you more than any person on earth.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. I appear to be number two. I mean, if you judge by the various signs, they are.

[Ben Ferguson]

It's derangement. It's Trump derangement syndrome and Elon derangement syndrome. How is that for you? That's a little bit of whiplash of going from being like Mr. Cool to the devil incarnate in just a couple of years. Is that, is that kind of weird to experience that transformation?

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

Why do they hate you so much?

[Elon Musk]

Well, because we're clearly over the target. If those was ineffective, if we were not actually getting rid of a bunch of waste and fraud and a bunch of that fraud. I mean, the fraud we're seeing is overwhelmingly on the, on the left. I mean, it's not zero on the right, but these NGOs are almost all left wing NGOs that are being funded, for example. Yep. So they, they hate me because Doge is being effective and Doge is getting rid of a lot of waste. And for that they were. That people on the left were taking advantage of. That's what it comes down to. And the single biggest thing that they're worried about is that Doge is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements. I mean, everything from Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, disability, Small Business Administration loans. Turn them off to illegals. This is the crux of the matter. Okay. This is the thing that why they really hit my guts, want me to die.

[Ben Ferguson]

And do you think that's billions? Hundreds of billions? What do you think the scale is of that?

[Elon Musk]

I think across the country it's well north of 100 billion, maybe 200 billion. So by using entitlements, fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants.

[Ben Ferguson]

And buy voters.

[Elon Musk]

And buy voters, exactly. Basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California. This is overwhelmingly.

[Ted Cruz]

It's an election strategy.

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

It's power.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. And it doesn't take much to turn the swing states blue. I mean, often a swing state might be won by 10, 20,000 votes.

[Ben Ferguson]

Sure.

[Elon Musk]

So if the Dems can bring in 200,000 illegals and over time get them legalized, not counting any cheating that takes place. Because there is some cheating. But even without cheating, if you bring in illegals that are 10x the voter differential in a swing state. It will no longer be a swing state.

[Ben Ferguson]

Right.

[Elon Musk]

And the Dems will win all the swing states. Just a matter of time and America will be permanent deep blue socialist state. The House, the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court will all go hardcore down. They will then further cement that by bringing in even more aliens so you can't vote your way out of it. Their objective is to make it one party socialist state. And it'll be much worse than California because at least California is mitigated by the fact that someone can leave California.

[Ben Ferguson]

Right, you can go to Texas.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, exactly. It's going to make everywhere California a bit worse.

[Ben Ferguson]

By the way, the middle of the pandemic, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Elon. He was still in California. I was walking my dog, Snowflake, and trying to convince you, come to Texas. The commies in California can't stand you. We love you, we want you here. And you didn't quite go then, but you went not that long afterwards.

[Elon Musk]

I mean, the COVID actions almost killed Tesla because every other auto plant in the country was allowed to open, but ours, which was in California, was not allowed to open.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow. Wow.

[Elon Musk]

So they almost killed Tesla.

[Ben Ferguson]

So as a personal matter, do you ever regret it? Like five years ago you go to the Oscars and we're Mr. Cool, and now you've got death threats every day.

[Elon Musk]

Well, these days the Oscars are boring. I wouldn't want to go, God bless.

[Ben Ferguson]

The movies they nominate no one on earth has ever seen. Like, like, could they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch?

[Elon Musk]

I mean, the. How many great movies have come out in the last several years? Very few.

[Ben Ferguson]

Depressingly few.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Very few last Oscars came and went. I didn't watch it. There's nothing to see.

[Ben Ferguson]

I. I was sad that Gene Hackman just passed away because Unforgiven was spectacular. But that was a long time ago when Unforgiven came out. Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

You've mentioned today here and before, about the possibility of someone wanting to take you out. Dealing with the death threats we see.

[Elon Musk]

It's not in my imagination. You could just look on social media.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah, but like, is it. Because I made that very clear.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

And look, I'm very familiar with it.

[Elon Musk]

And they've got signs. They're people with signs and demonstrations saying that I need to die.

[Ben Ferguson]

Do you think. Are these just whack jobs or do you think there are hopefully foreign. Do you think there are foreign entities behind this? Do you think There are domestic entities behind the threats and also the attacks to Twitter. Not Twitter, Tesla. I mean, you know, you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire. Do you think that's organized and paid for?

[Elon Musk]

Yes, at least some of it is organized and paid for, I think by domestic. Left wing organizations in America. Funded by left wing billionaires, essentially.

[Ben Ferguson]

Is it like ActBlue or what?

[Elon Musk]

ActBlue is one of them. You know, Arabella, you know the classic. It's funded by the blue. Basically the left wing NGO cabal.

[Ted Cruz]

How big of a threat is this to what you build at Tesla? I mean, I remember when Teslas came out, it was people that they didn't want to have gas cars. A lot of it was environmental reasons. I jokingly said, I was like, I'm a Texas guy, I'm always going to have something that burns gas. My kids, now, all three of my boys think that Teslas are awesome. The cybertruck is the car they want their dad to buy. Which I laugh because I never could have imagined that five years ago. And now I'm looking at, well, we're.

[Ben Ferguson]

At the White House in the President's Tesla's park right outside the West Spring, which is the coolest damn thing.

[Ted Cruz]

But I mean, you've changed a generation. When you look at my kids are 6 and 8 and they're going, dad, buy a cyber truck. And I'm considering it. That's a full circle in a weird way.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Well, I do have this theory that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. So yeah, that seems often to be true. You see, like what, what twist or turn of fate would generate the highest ratings? If this was, if we were a TV show, what twist or turn of fate would generate the highest ratings? There's a good chance that happens.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, I will say if ActBlue and Arabella Network ActBlue is a huge scam.

[Elon Musk]

Next level.

[Ben Ferguson]

Do you think it's foreign money? Chinese money? Where do you think the money in ActBlue is coming from? How do you figure that out?

[Elon Musk]

Well, it's not coming from a whole bunch of, from a groundswell of public support. Because when individual donors are looked at in ActBlue, a bunch of them turn out to be like die hard Republicans. People have never given money in their life. So you go and track down a bunch of these people where it says, oh, I gave $16,000 and they're like, I didn't give $16,000. We're talking about. This is. Well, if, if those conference of mine found themselves on the act blue list, they're like, it doesn't me.

[Ben Ferguson]

So that's if it can actually be shown that they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations, that's objectively a criminal act. That that is funding terrorist activity. And the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualify.

[Elon Musk]

So that's down is a terrorist activity.

[Ben Ferguson]

Let me ask AI in 10 years, how is life going to be different because of AI for just a normal person?

[Elon Musk]

Well, 10 years is a long time. In 10 years, probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively. Probably almost. I think in 10 years, based on the current rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the smartest human. There will also be a massive number of robots, so humanoid robots.

[Ben Ferguson]

By the way, I gotta ask, how come your robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot? Was that intentional or just.

[Ted Cruz]

I was hoping he was gonna say yeah, just to mess with you.

[Elon Musk]

It's not meant to look like any prior robot. And we'll iterate the design. You'll be able to have a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic. You'll be able to switch out the kind of snap on cosmetic parts of the robot, make it look like something else if you'd like. So there will be ultimately billions of humanoid robots. All cars will be self driving in 10 years. In 10 years, probably 90% of miles driven will be autonomous.

[Ben Ferguson]

Huh, wow, that fast?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. In five years, probably 50% driven will be autonomous.

[Ben Ferguson]

Now if AI will be smarter than any person, how many jobs go away because of that? And what do people do if you've got billions of people that are losing their jobs like that? A lot of people are understandably freaked out about that.

[Elon Musk]

Well, goods and services will become close to free. So it's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services.

[Ben Ferguson]

So why is that? Why are goods and services free in an AI world or close to free?

[Elon Musk]

Well, you have, I don't know, pull it. Tens of billions of robots. They will make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing. It's not that people will be will have a lower standard of living. They'll have actually a much higher standard of living. But the challenge will be fulfillment. How do you derive fulfillment and meaning in life?

[Ben Ferguson]

Is Skynet real like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI? How real is the prospect of killer robots annihilating humanity?

[Elon Musk]

20% likely, maybe 10%.

[Ben Ferguson]

On what time frame?

[Elon Musk]

5 to 10 years.

[Ben Ferguson]

So soon you see a world where that's possible?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, but you could look at it like the glasses, 80 to 90% full, meaning like 80% likely, will have extreme prosperity for all.

[Ben Ferguson]

Now, I guess my view we're in a race to win AI. We're in a race with China. And my view is if they're going to be killer robots, I'd rather they be American killer robots than Chinese. How likely are we winning right now? Is America winning right now? And how likely is America to win the race for AI? Because vis a vis China or anyone.

[Elon Musk]

Else, for the next few years, I think America is likely to win. Then it will be a function of who controls the AI chip fabrication, the factories that make the AI chips. Who controls them if they are controlled. If more of them are controlled by China, then China will win more of.

[Ben Ferguson]

The factories that are making the AI chips. You think that will determine it?

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

And how are we doing versus China on that front?

[Elon Musk]

Well, right now, almost all the advanced AI chip factories, they call them fabs, are in Taiwan.

[Ben Ferguson]

And what if China invades Taiwan?

[Elon Musk]

It's 69 miles away from.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah. What happens if China invades Taiwan? What happens to the world?

[Elon Musk]

Well, if they were to invade, in the near term, the world would be cut off from advanced AI chips. Currently, 100% of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan.

[Ted Cruz]

How fast could we put that online in America? And how important is that for national security?

[Elon Musk]

I think it's essential for national security. And we're not doing enough.

[Ben Ferguson]

You're 53 years old. I'm 118 days older than you, by the way. What the hell have I done in my life?

[Ted Cruz]

I know, right?

[Ben Ferguson]

53 years old.

[Elon Musk]

Doing pretty well. Well, so 71 was a great year.

[Ben Ferguson]

And I was December 70. So I was just. Just right before you were the summer of 71.

[Elon Musk]

I was born 69 days after 420.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow. I did ask Ben.

[Elon Musk]

This is true.

[Ben Ferguson]

Look, this is true.

[Elon Musk]

All right.

[Ben Ferguson]

You just opened up 10 words. I did ask Ben. Should I show up and pull up a joint and say, can we beat Rogan's views? But I was pretty sure it might cause a scandal if we spit a pot in the White House.

[Elon Musk]

It just turned out to be like a chocolate cigar. Yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

Let me ask you if today was your last day on Earth.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. What?

[Ben Ferguson]

I'm not suggesting it's going to be, but if it were, what do you think your biggest legacy would be of everything you've done 100 years from now? What do you think people would remember if it were zero to today?

[Ted Cruz]

And will you ever go to space.

[Elon Musk]

In the distant future, 100 or 1,000 years ago, if SpaceX got humans to Mars, that's what they would remember me for.

[Ben Ferguson]

All right, final set of questions. Who's the smartest guy you've ever met? You hang out with some brilliant people. Like. Like when you look. What's a CEO you look at other than yourself? What CEO do you say? Damn, that guy's good?

[Elon Musk]

Larry Ellison's very smart, so I'll say Larry Ellison's one of the smartest people. You know, Larry Page. I mean, there are a lot of people that are very smart. It's hard to say. Like, you know, I think to some degree, smart is as smart as. So what have they done that is difficult and significant? Jeff Bezos has done a lot of difficult and significant things. I mean, there are a lot of smart humans. I call them smart for a human. A lot of people who are in the smart for a human category.

[Ben Ferguson]

All right, final lightning round. Star wars or Star Trek?

[Elon Musk]

The first movie I saw in a theater was Star wars, so I think it had a profound effect on me. I was six years old. I think, imagine if you ever see in a theater is Star wars, it's gonna blow your mind.

[Ben Ferguson]

Best Star wars movie.

[Elon Musk]

Empire Strikes Back.

[Ben Ferguson]

The. The only objectively right answer. I stood in line for three hours with my dad to see it on opening day.

[Elon Musk]

Kirk or Picard I like the most.

[Ben Ferguson]

But Kirk, again, objectively right answer. By the way, James T. Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat. And the left gets very mad when I say that. Yeah, Best Star Trek movie.

[Elon Musk]

I mean, the original. The first Star Trek movie.

[Ben Ferguson]

Maybe that's in. Okay.

[Elon Musk]

Wrath of Khan. Both Wrath of Khans were pretty good, but yeah, the original Wrath of Khan.

[Ben Ferguson]

Ricardo Montalban. Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in space. Although I will say Wrath of Khan is objectively the right answer. But. But 4 is a sleeper. When they go back to San Francisco and. And. And go find the whales and. And, you know, Scotty picks up. Picks up the mouth and talks to it. Then goes a keyboard. How quaint. That's a sleeper. All right, last question. Did Han shoot first?

[Elon Musk]

It seemed like he shot second.

[Ben Ferguson]

This is verdict. And by the way, I apologize, Ben. So Ben was a jock and played tennis at Ole Miss. And so. So occasionally when. When we ge.

[Ted Cruz]

I love watching y' all geek out.

[Elon Musk]

Over there, because the guy, he's still on the question.

[Ted Cruz]

I love it.

[Elon Musk]

He missed his. The alien missed his blaster shot. So why did he miss his Blaster shot must have been because he got shot first. Now he's missing a point blank blasto shot unless they got knocked off kill.

[Ben Ferguson]

But it's a question of real.

[Elon Musk]

But he was going to shoot.

[Ben Ferguson]

Which is, is Han Solo simply a hero or an anti hero? And so I'm in the Han shot first category. I don't like sanitized stories.

[Elon Musk]

He would have had to have shot first because otherwise why would the alien miss a point blank range?

[Ted Cruz]

Are you ever going to go to outer space? Is that something in your life goals?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I'd like to go to Mars at some point. And people have said, do I want to die on Mars? And I say yes, just not on impact.

[Ben Ferguson]

Now that's a very good answer. The astronauts on the space station, are they political prisoners?

[Elon Musk]

Some of them are.

[Ben Ferguson]

Because. Because you could have given them a ride back and Joe Biden said no purely for politics.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some debate about this online, but the thing is that it was very, a very high level decision. So it wasn't really even a NASA decision. It was just that the Biden White House did not want to have someone who is pro Trump rescuing astronauts right before the election. So they pushed it.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, if you're one of those astronauts, you got to be pretty pissed off about that.

[Elon Musk]

Well, if they're a Democrat. Yes, Democrat, like everything's fine.

[Ben Ferguson]

Fair enough.

[Elon Musk]

So I think one of them is a Republican Democrat. So it depends on which one you ask.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, thank you. This was awesome. And let me say, and by the way, I put out on X the day before yesterday, if you were having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything, what would you ask? And got lots of responses. Yeah, the most common response people said is, is, is say thank you. Look, Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing. You don't have to put up with this BS and you're doing it. I'm grateful. You're making a hell of a difference for this country. I appreciate you and the Americans appreciate you.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. It's essential for the future of civilization. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yes.

[Elon Musk]

It's not like I want to get death threats, you know? No.

[Ben Ferguson]

What year does man first set foot on Mars?

[Elon Musk]

I think the soonest would be 29.

[Ben Ferguson]

29.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. And I don't think it's more than two to four years beyond that.

[Ben Ferguson]

And that's not an unmanned. That's. That's a human being putting his foot on the surface.

[Elon Musk]

Yes. Best case would be 29.

[Ben Ferguson]

And what do you, what do you put the odds of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life?

[Elon Musk]

I don't think we're going to find aliens.

[Ben Ferguson]

Okay, but do we find ruins? Do we find remnants?

[Elon Musk]

We may, we may find the ruins of a long dead alien civilization. That's possible. And we may find subterranean microbial life. That's possible.

[Ben Ferguson]

All right. If man lands on Mars in 29, how soon after that do you land on Mars?

[Elon Musk]

Remains to be seen. I'm not sure. The important thing is that we build a self sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper, even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming. At that point, even if something would happen on Earth, it might not be World War iii, but it might be that a bad virus. Yeah, it might not be anything. Say civilization could die with a bang or a whimper. It may be that civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars. But, so you obviously need Mars to become self sustaining and be able to grow by itself before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming. That is the critical civilizational threshold beyond which the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater.

[Ben Ferguson]

And how close are we technologically to be able to do that? To have a self sustaining settlement on the surface of Mars?

[Elon Musk]

I think it can be done in.

[Ben Ferguson]

20 years, but it would take 20 years. So we're not in 29, we're not there. What are we missing? What are the big technologies we don't have?

[Elon Musk]

A few people running around the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.

[Ben Ferguson]

So. But you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years?

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

And what, what's the technology we're missing right now? When you think about a million people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water, to get food, to, to keep them safe? I mean, what, what do we need to make that happen?

[Elon Musk]

Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry of Earth. So we're here at the top of a massive pyramid of industry that starts with mining a vast array of materials. Those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement. We grow food, obviously, we grow trees, we make things out of the trees. There's, you know, you've got to build all that on Mars. And Mars is a hostile environment. It's, you know, it sometimes gets above Zero On a warm summer day near the equator on Mars, nearly. It's quite cold.

[Ted Cruz]

How do you prep for that?

[Elon Musk]

Well, in the beginning on Mars you have to have a life support habitation module like you need. You can't just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air.

[Ben Ferguson]

Like a dome you think is likely.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, glass domes type of thing.

[Ben Ferguson]

Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely to be ideal for habitat?

[Elon Musk]

What might be Arcadia? Planetaria is one of the. One of the good options. That's one of my daughters is named Arcadia after that.

[Ben Ferguson]

And what makes that attractive?

[Elon Musk]

My eldest son's middle name is Aries. Mars.

[Ted Cruz]

You've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it.

[Elon Musk]

My eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars.

[Ted Cruz]

When did you get the dream?

[Elon Musk]

Like, I mean he's 20 now, turning 21 soon.

[Ted Cruz]

This is a decades old dream.

[Ben Ferguson]

So like when you were 10, did you look up and say I'm going to Mars?

[Elon Musk]

No, no. I read a lot of science fiction books and program computers, but the first, funny if the first video game that I sold was a space video game called Blastar, maybe I was born this way.

[Ben Ferguson]

How do you. How do you become Elon Musk? Look, you're obviously smart as hell, but. But there are, there are a lot of smart people that don't do squat. And you managed everything you've touched. Has been an extraordinary success. Yeah, look, I mean that's just objectively right. So what has led to that? Because there are other smart people that, that's not true. And they gaze at their navel and they don't do anything. So what, what do you do differently that makes you so effective?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity. I want to find out the nature of the universe, understand the universe. And in order to do that we have to travel to other planets, see other star systems, maybe other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations, or at least the remnants of alien civilizations. Gain a better understanding of where is this universe going? Where did it come from? And what questions do we not yet know to ask about the answer that is the universe?

[Ben Ferguson]

So let's go back 25 years. Late 90s, you're at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the success it was, which, which then helped launch you to the next one and the next.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, so I studied physics and economics in college, which is a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how reality works. And then was going to do a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultracapacitors. Actually, as a potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put that on hold to start an Internet company. Essentially came to the conclusion that the Internet was one of those rare things, and I could either watch it happen while a grad student or participate. And I figured I could always go back to grad school. Grad school is going to be kind of the same. But I couldn't bear the thought of just watching the Internet happen. So I wanted to be a part of building it. So I created an Internet company. We did the first maps, directions, yellow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote the first version of software just by myself in 95. And we ended up selling that to Compaq Texas Company, I guess, for about $300 million in cash about four years after I graduated.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow.

[Elon Musk]

So I should say, just to preface that I graduated with about $100,000 in student debt. So it wasn't.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah, you and me both.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

Where's my 300 million?

[Ted Cruz]

Right?

[Elon Musk]

I know. And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived with $2,500, a bag of books and a bag of clothes.

[Ben Ferguson]

All right, so you sell the company for 300 million. How much does that change your life?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I got $21 million. Blackjack. But I wanted to do more on the Internet, so started a company called X.com, which merged with a company called Confinity, which is Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. And the combined company was actually at first still called X.com, but we later changed the name of the company to PayPal because of all the name changes. It's kind of confusing, but the company that people know as. Know as PayPal today was actually. I filed those incorporation documents for that company.

[Ben Ferguson]

Interesting.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, and as you know, Peter Thiel and I were buddies back in the mid-90s before he went and did any of this. But, you know, I became friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New York and just sort of a young libertarian with. With a lot of dreams. So it's. It's been a heck of a journey.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Yeah. And now, obviously, Peter was involved in a couple. You know, we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation where, you know, that they did cure me at PayPal. I kind of.

[Ben Ferguson]

Now, did you all make peace after that?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was doing a lot of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful, But I then went on a two week trip, which was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon, and said not done my honeymoon earlier in the year, so I was raising money while doing it, doing honeymoon, but I was kind of.

[Ted Cruz]

Away from that go over.

[Elon Musk]

By the way, it worked. It worked.

[Ted Cruz]

There you go.

[Elon Musk]

Kind of.

[Ben Ferguson]

It worked.

[Elon Musk]

I raised money.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. And we had a honeymoon.

[Ben Ferguson]

There you go.

[Elon Musk]

So yeah, but you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary. So I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway, we passed things up and have been friends nonetheless. And yeah, these days I like to stay at his house and stuff. So we're friends. And he's also invested in most of my companies.

[Ted Cruz]

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[Elon Musk]

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[Ted Cruz]

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[Ben Ferguson]

2002, you start SpaceX. Like how do you start a rocket company? Like what's the first day where you're like I want to make rockets and I want to go to Mars. Like what do you do on day one?

[Elon Musk]

So I think you have to start with a, some sort of philosophical premise in order to have, in order for the, in order to be, in order to be highly motivated you have to have some philosophical foundation. In my case it was that, that we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe. And in order to expand, expand consciousness we need to go beyond one planet. For one planet. There's, there's too much risk. You know, hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future, but it may not. There's always some risk that we are, we self annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yeah, there's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket. So it's going to be better if we're multi planet species. And then once we're multi planet species the next step would be to be multi stellar and have civilization among, on, on many different star Systems. So in 2001 I didn't think that I could, I didn't think I could sell a rocket company. So I, I thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal and that case I think it was about $180 million after tax or something like that. And I thought, you know, I don't need $180 million so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic Mars mission to get the public excited about going back to Mars or going to Mars. I should say, yeah, Mars was always going to be the destination after the moon. Right. In fact, if you told people in 1969 that it would be 2025 and we've not even gone back to the.

[Ben Ferguson]

Moon, let alone, it's hard to believe.

[Elon Musk]

Let alone Mars, they'd be like, what happened? Did civilization, did civilization collapse?

[Ted Cruz]

Stop.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, like, like they would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now. If you told people this after landing on the moon in 69, why do.

[Ben Ferguson]

You think in 50 years America never went back to the moon?

[Elon Musk]

Well, we destroyed the Saturn 5 rocket that was, that could take people to the moon and had the space shuttle, which could only go to low Earth orbit. And then there really hasn't been anything to replace. No vehicle has been made since then that can go to the moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. So can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.

[Ben Ferguson]

So I remember you and I first met in 2013 when, when I was a brand new baby senator and I was still down in the basement office. They stick freshman senators in a basement office, kind of like hazing.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, yeah, I suppose it sounds like.

[Ben Ferguson]

There are 100 Senate offices, but for six months you stay in the basement.

[Elon Musk]

Put you in your place, it's like wearing a beanie.

[Ted Cruz]

They want you to know where you're supposed to be.

[Ben Ferguson]

You know, I gotta say, now, 13 years into it, I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing that. But you were down in the basement office and I remember you were coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air Force was not letting y' all bid to launch satellites. And so you were coming and saying, look, we got a company, I think we can do a really good job of this. And yet we're locked out of this. It's a little amazing to think the journey SpaceX has gone from then to now.

[Elon Musk]

Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real because originally consistent with my belief that we need to become a multi plant species, I thought the only way to do that would be through NASA. So. And I think I thought, well, if I can just get the public excited about Mars, then they'll do a mission to Mars. And so initially my thought was to have to send a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel, then land the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see these, the sort of money, the money shot would be green plants on a red background. Yeah. I also recently learned that money shot has a different meaning in some Other arenas.

[Ben Ferguson]

But anyway, I'm glad you.

[Elon Musk]

Very different story. But what I'm trying to say is the captivating shot would be the green plants on a red background and that hopefully that would, if we did something like that, that would get the public excited about Mars, that would increase NASA's budget and then we could send people to Mars.

[Ted Cruz]

So your original dream was NASA to do this?

[Elon Musk]

Yes. Not you?

[Ben Ferguson]

No.

[Elon Musk]

The original, original plan was literally to take a bunch of the money from PayPal and I guess by some people's definition waste it with no problem on a nonprofit thing. I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money for free to get NASA's budget to be bigger so we could go to friggin Mars.

[Ben Ferguson]

Right.

[Ted Cruz]

Wow.

[Elon Musk]

That's what I wanted.

[Ted Cruz]

So that was the Holy Grail.

[Elon Musk]

That's what I wanted.

[Ben Ferguson]

I was like, so when did you change?

[Elon Musk]

Why not go to Mars? That's what I wanted to know.

[Ben Ferguson]

When, when did it strike you? Okay, you're going to have to do this if you want.

[Elon Musk]

It gets crazier. All right, it gets crazier. So, so then I couldn't afford any of the US Rockets because as you know, the US rockets are way too expensive. The Boeing, Lockheed, Lockheed rockets are crazy money I didn't have, I didn't even, even with 180 million. So I could have afforded.

[Ted Cruz]

How much were they back then?

[Elon Musk]

Well, the, that with, with the additional stage to get to Mars, it would have been about like 80 million. So technically I could have afforded one of them, but I wanted to do two in case one of them didn't work.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

So. And then I didn't have enough money for that.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

And I was sort of prepared to, you know, I don't know, waste half the money. And I figured if I had 90 million left, that'd be fine, you know, but ideally, not all of it. So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.

[Ben Ferguson]

Oh, interesting.

[Ted Cruz]

How'd that go? And who do you call?

[Elon Musk]

The Russian rocket forces?

[Ben Ferguson]

Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah, you got to tell us a story that I want to know who.

[Elon Musk]

Has it Turns out you can buy anything in Russia.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah, I, I like, please walk me down that. I want to know how you made that phone call and when you get there, how did that work and what.

[Elon Musk]

Do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm, I'm going to rush advice in my ICBMs. I, I might not return, you know, depends on this situation. Literally. Yeah, so it gets slightly less Insane when you. When you understand that the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because of, you know, salt talks. Like, basically an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the total number of ICBMs. Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So you've taken the very biggest ICBMs, you could convert those into a rocket at an additional stage and send something to Mars.

[Ben Ferguson]

So those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars, to.

[Elon Musk]

Send a small payload to Mars.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

So the SS18.

[Ben Ferguson]

So you try to buy CBMs. Do you succeed or no? Or do you figure out you got to build your own instead?

[Elon Musk]

They kept raising the price on me because I figured, like, look, they got to throw these things in scrapyard anyway. You should get a really good deal, right? So the price started out at 4 million. Then the next conversation they were at 8 million. Then the next conversation they Were at like, 19 million. And I'm like, this is before we signed a contract, by the way.

[Ben Ferguson]

Was there another bidder? Was there another bidder or were you the only one trying to buy them?

[Elon Musk]

I think. I don't know if there were other bids, but they didn't mention any other bids. Yeah, but I was like, man, if the price is increasing this much before the contract signed, yeah, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

So I got pretty frustrated there, actually. In some cases. We got into, like, shouting matches in Moscow. Some guy shouting at me in Russian, shouting back at him. That.

[Ben Ferguson]

That put it really badly.

[Elon Musk]

You know, I'm like, so you are all.

[Ted Cruz]

I mean, you're all in ripping me off.

[Elon Musk]

In Moscow. Yeah. So, man, I should have recorded that. That would have been wonderfully.

[Ted Cruz]

How many days were you there negotiating that? First time. I mean, was this, like, ongoing?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, yeah. This. This took place. These conversations took place over probably six months or so. Wow. So. And then the final trip there was with the. With. Was with Mike Griffin, who later became NASA Administrator. I actually realized in the course of this that my original premise was wrong, that America actually has plenty of will to go to Mars, but it just needs a way to Mars that is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.

[Ben Ferguson]

As you know, we couldn't even get to the space station. We needed the Russians to get us to our own space station.

[Elon Musk]

That was embarrassing.

[Ben Ferguson]

It really was pitiful.

[Elon Musk]

I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we were being fleeced. Like, I think they got up to like $90 million a seat.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

Wow.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. For a seat that cost them like 10.

[Ted Cruz]

That was pre doge, obviously, but it.

[Ben Ferguson]

Was the only one.

[Elon Musk]

It was before SpaceX, but $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them 10 million is high.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah, it's a lot of money.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

So a few months ago, you and I were down in Boca Chica with the President for a starship launch. And it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica. You know, five years ago it was an empty beach at the southern tip.

[Elon Musk]

Of Texas and bar. Yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

And it's now a city and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with. With incredible precision.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Ben Ferguson]

But one of the things you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to me is, is. Is you said your philosophy on intellectual property, talk to lots of CEOs, they're like, we fight to guard our IP. And you had a very different approach. What's, what's your view of IP patents of the week?

[Elon Musk]

Patents are for those who innovate slowly.

[Ben Ferguson]

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

[Elon Musk]

Yes. At Tesla we actually open sourced a lot of patents. So we said our patents are anyone can use them for free.

[Ted Cruz]

Really?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. We only do patents at Tesla to avoid patent trolls causing trouble. So we'll try to look ahead. Say, okay, patent trolls are going to file patents to block certain things. We'll file patents and then open source that make it free. I mean it when I say patents for the week. Now there are a few cases in say with pharmaceuticals where it might cost you a billion dollars to do a phase three human trial, but then subsequently the. The drug is very cheap to manufacture. So cases. There are some in my opinion, which is massively reduce what can be patented and say. Because the whole point of patenting is to maximize innovation, not inhibit it. And in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion. Most patents inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But there are case I want to do want to single out cases like where, such AS a phase 3 clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars, but then the drugs thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacturer. And if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars, no one will pay for the billion dollars.

[Ben Ferguson]

Free rider problem.

[Elon Musk]

Free rider problem. Yeah, exactly. So you have to address the free rider problem. But other than that, there should be no patents. Ideas are easy.

[Ted Cruz]

You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get there faster and do things bigger.

[Elon Musk]

The idea is the easy part. The hard execution is the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's 1% inspiration, if not less than 1% and 99% perspiration.

[Ben Ferguson]

But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at also because you're making, you know, the companies you're building are actually building stuff. They're building cars, they're building spaceships, they're building things that if they don't work, it's a real problem. And yeah, the precision you manufacture things with, how do you get that level of precision? How do you get, how do you build a culture? You're not. You're amazing at thinking outside the box. But. But what's interesting is you may even be better at execut, which is how do you execute so effectively?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything. It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing, it's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So the idea in the beginning of Tesla was that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing. But then it turned out there were no good companies to outsource manufacturing to, which there wasn't really, it wasn't feasible. Outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of the rule. And just over time we had to insource almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX. I became very good at manufacturing because I had to. There was no choice. At this point I might know more about manufacturing than any human ever has because I've manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas. I think probably more than anyone ever has.

[Ben Ferguson]

Look, that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's not a crazy statement. And you're somehow running Tesla and running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company and running Neuralink and doing Doge. How much do you sleep in a given night?

[Elon Musk]

About six hours on average.

[Ben Ferguson]

So about six. So that's. It wouldn't have shocked me if you said three or four.

[Ted Cruz]

So the next question is, how many hours do you work a day?

[Elon Musk]

I work almost every waking hour.

[Ben Ferguson]

And Ben, he's not kidding. Like when Elon and I were first getting to know each other, I suggested, I said, hey, let's grab dinner sometime. And I don't know if you remember what you said. You said, I don't eat dinner, I.

[Elon Musk]

Don'T have social dinners.

[Ben Ferguson]

Really? Right. I mean, that. Yeah, I mean, you obviously eat food, but the idea.

[Ted Cruz]

You're not going to a restaurant for two hours.

[Ben Ferguson]

But the idea of like, I don't. But it was. It was just kind of matter of fact, why would I go to dinner? Like, you just. You work.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I literally just. I'll have lunch and dinner, bro. During meetings and continue the meeting.

[Ted Cruz]

How many nights have you slept at your offices, you think your career percentage wise, where you say, I just got to take this nap basically because my body forces me to and I got to get back to work fast and efficiently without going somewhere else?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I guess it started out even with the first company, sub2, which is a terrible name, but the first Internet company, we were able to rent an office, which was like in a leaky attic essentially for 500amonth. And the cheapest apartment we could find was 800amonth. And we only had about $5,000 between my brother and I. So we're like, we're not. We'll just stay in the office. So we got some couches that converted into beds, and we'd kind of sleep at night. And then we'd just have to turn the beds back into couches before anyone came. And then we'd shout the YMCA down the road. And so that literally was several months, what we did. I was in great shape working out the Y. I still remember that YMCA at Page Mill, El Camino in Palo Alto.

[Ben Ferguson]

So that was a long time ago.

[Elon Musk]

So it's been. I don't know, I've never thought to count it, but several hundred days maybe. I don't know.

[Ben Ferguson]

So you're now the richest man on earth. Do you still sleep in the office? Well, that's true. Maybe Mars we'll find someone else, but.

[Elon Musk]

I think if someone is a sovereign head of a country, they're de facto richer by a lot.

[Ben Ferguson]

Do you still sleep at the office now?

[Elon Musk]

I sometimes slept at the office, yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast. And you can listen to my podcast every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson Podcast. And we will see you back here tomorrow morning.

[Ben Ferguson]

Nothing in life is free except this $10 that better picks is offering. Download the better app, pick more or less on your favorite player stats, watch the games, and win some cash. It's that simple.

[Elon Musk]

Must be 21 or older in a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates, terms and conditions apply.

[Ben Ferguson]

Better Picks Sports Just got Got Better.

[Josh Whalen]

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[Elon Musk]

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