Complete Interview-A Sit Down w Elon Musk at the WH Week In Review
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Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, and this is a special week in review. We had the awesome opportunity to sit down with Elon Musk at the White House, and we did it as a two-part series this week. Some of you may have missed it, or you may want to share that with your family and your friends. So if you would do us a favor, because what Elon Musk had to say, we want everyone to hear it. It's a lot of info the media refuses to cover. Now, the good news is this...

this interview went viral on X, but if you are on other social media platforms, please share this podcast right now so that everyone can hear what must said about waste, fraud and abuse in our government. He also had some amazing things to talk about when it comes to colonizing Mars and the idea that may actually become a reality. So grab this and share it. This is the entire interview on interrupted with Elon Musk at the white house.

Well, we're in the White House right now, and we're here with my friend Elon Musk, who really has not been doing much of anything, has not made any news, and nobody has noticed the impact. Welcome, Elon. Thank you. Holy crap. Yes, wow. 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 in the beginning. Let me start with a question you know a lot about. Which was worse, the mess you found at Twitter or the mess you found in the federal government? Well, it's hard to compete with the federal government. What surprised you about the federal government? I assume you came in and assumed it was bad. Is it worse than you expected? 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 people say, well, how do we 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, you can't miss. Yeah, and you're going to win.

Wow. Again, I'm sure you would agree. So a lot of folks have talked about like... You can't miss. You can't miss. This is going in any direction. A lot of the crazy expenditures, things like $2 million for sex change surgeries in Guatemala. An essential. You know, transgendered mice and Sesame Street in Iraq. A lot of that has gotten attention. But some of the stuff you've told me about,

But like tell us about computer licenses and government agencies. 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.

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

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. 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.

Or like credit cards. You found the same thing with government credit cards. 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. Is it incompetence that you're finding? Or is this like the biggest money laundering scheme in the history of the world that you're finding? Look, I think it's mostly... If you say, look, what's the waste to fraud ratio? In my opinion, it's...

It's like 80% waste, 20% fraud. But you do have these sort of gray areas. Example. 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're trying 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. Wow. Now, is that waste or fraud? Both. Both? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, both. It's sort of a great area. You know you're getting something you're not supposed to get. 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. Utter insanity. Explain that. Forget about the story. That's corrupt. That's just corrupt, I think. That's paying off cronies at that point. 1,000%. Yeah. And by the way, she knew. Like, when you get $2 billion, you don't miss that. That's not... It's not an accident. That's not... 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 oven. It's really nice. That's nice. Obviously, one of the biggest scam footholds we've uncovered, which is really crazy, is that

the government can give money to a so-called non-profit with very few controls. And there's no auditing subsequently of that non-profit.

So this is where with the $1.9 billion to 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. Live like kings and queens. Yes. On the taxpayer dime. Correct. And this is happening at scale. It's not just one or two. We're seeing this everywhere.

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

you know, it's coherent. And that the numbers, for example, that you're presented as a senator are actually the real numbers. One would think. 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. So how does that work? It just issues payments.

And you said there's something like 11 of these computers at Treasury that are sending out trillions in payments? They're mostly at Treasury. Some are 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. 14, okay. They just send money out of nothing. 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 is

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. Yeah. Like, why is getting to the computers so critical to understanding what's actually happening? Well, the government is run by computers. So you've got...

Essentially, several hundred computers that effectively run the government. And if you want to know... Did you know that, Ben? No. 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. Wow. 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. So you... That's what I call... That's what I... When I sort of...

cryptically referred to reprogramming the matrix, you have to understand what's going on at the computers. You have to reconcile the computer databases in order to identify the waste and fraud. 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. Yes.

I mean, in order for money to go to a bank account, 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 electronic money flows. In Tesla and all your companies, you have accounting and you have every expenditure. You have it coded for what it's going for. Federal government doesn't work that way. They don't code what the money's going for. They do now.

But they didn't. They didn't. 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. Yes. If it was a public company, it would be delisted immediately. It would fail its audit and the officers of the company would be imprisoned. That's the level of

Well, it's deliberately. Or do you think this is incompetence again? It's 80 percent. It's 80 percent incompetence or 20 percent malice.

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?

Not yours. 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. Yeah, you put it on the website. It's on the website. 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 unconstitutional, I'm like, well, which of these constant things... You're doing it in the daylight. Everyone knows exactly what you're doing. Extreme transparency. I don't think anything's been this transparent ever. 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 gone... I could go to a party in Hollywood and not get dirty looks. Yeah. In fact, yeah. Now you might not even get invited. I'd still get invited, but I don't know if I should go. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say today, after Donald Trump, the left hates you more than any person on earth. Yes, I appear to be number two. I mean, if you're judged by the various signs...

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 kind of weird to experience that transformation? Yes. Why do they hate you so much? 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...

The forward we're seeing is overwhelmingly on the left. It's not zero on the right, but these NGOs are almost all left-wing NGOs that are being funded, for example. They hate me because Doge is being effective and Doge is getting rid of a lot of waste that people on the left were taking advantage of. That's what it comes down to. The single biggest thing that they're

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...

This is the thing that, why they really hit my guts and want me to die. And do you think that's billions, hundreds of billions? What do you think the scale is of that? I think across the country, it's well above 100 billion, maybe 200 billion. So...

By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants. And by voters. And by voters, exactly. They 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... It's an election strategy. Yes. It's power. Yes. And it doesn't take much to turn the swing states blue. I mean, often a swing state might be won by 10,000, 20,000 votes. Sure. 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 make...

If you bring in illegals that are 10x the voter differential in a swing state, it will no longer be a swing state. And the Dems will win all the swing states, just a matter of time, and America will be a permanent, deep blue socialist state. The House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court will all go hardcore Dem. 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 permanent. One party socialist state. And it'll be much worse in California because at least California is mitigated by the fact that someone can leave California. Right, you can go to Texas. Yeah, exactly. It's what you did. But they're going to make everywhere California a bit worse. 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. 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. Wow. So they almost killed Tesla. So as a personal matter, did...

Do you ever regret it? Like five years ago, you go to the Oscars and were Mr. Cool, and now you've got death threats every day. Well, these days the Oscars are boring. I wouldn't want to go. God bless the movies they nominate no one on earth has ever seen. Could they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch? I mean, how many great movies have come out in the last several years?

Very few. Depressingly few. Yeah, very few. The last Oscars came and went. I didn't even watch it. There's nothing to see. I was sad that Gene Hackman just passed away because Unforgiven was spectacular. But that was a long time ago that Unforgiven came out. You've mentioned today here and before about the possibility of someone wanting to take you out, dealing with the death threats.

Yes, it's not in my imagination. You can just look on social media. But like, is it because... And look, I'm very familiar with that. And they've got signs. There are people with signs and demonstrations saying that I need to die. Do you think...

Are these just whack jobs, or do you think there are foreign... They're not sane people. 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? Yes, at least some of it is organized and paid for. I think by domestic, you know,

Basically, left-wing organizations in America funded by left-wing billionaires, essentially. Is it like ActBlue or what? ActBlue is one of them.

You know, Arabella, you know, the classic. It's funded by the, you know, the blue, basically the left-wing NGO cabal. How big of a threat is this to, like, 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 at the White House and the president's Tesla is parked right outside the West Wing, which is the coolest damn thing. But I mean, you've changed a generation. When you look at my kids are six and eight and they're going, Dad, buy a Cybertruck.

And I'm considering it. That's a full circle in a weird way. Yeah. Well, I do have this theory that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. So, yeah, it seems often to be true. What twist or turn of fate will generate the highest ratings? If we were a TV show, what...

Twisted Tone of Fate would generate the highest ratings, there's a good chance that happens. Well, I will say if ActBlue and Arabella Networks... ActBlue is a huge scam, next level. 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?

Well, it's not coming from a whole bunch of, from a groundswell of public support. Because when individual donors are looked at in Act Blue, they eventually turn out to be like diehard Republicans, people that have never given money in their life. So you're going to 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. What are you talking about?

Republican friends of mine found themselves on the ActBlue list. They're like, it doesn't belong to me. If it can actually be shown that they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations, that's objectively a criminal act. That is funding terrorist activity. And the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies. So that's objectively...

Let me ask AI. In 10 years, how is life going to be different because of AI for just a normal person? 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. By the way, I got to ask, how come your robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot? Was that intentional or just...

I was hoping he was going to say, yeah, just to mess with you. 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 you'd like. So there will be ultimately billions of humanoid robots. All cars will be self-driving robots.

In 10 years? In 10 years, probably 90% of miles driven will be autonomous. Huh. Wow. That fast? Yeah. In five years, probably 50% of all miles driven will be autonomous. 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 millions of people that are losing their jobs? A lot of people are understandably freaked out about that. Well, I...

Goods and services will become close to free. So it's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services. So why is that? Why are goods and services free in an AI world or close to free? Well, you have, I don't know, 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 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? Is Skynet real? Like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI. How real is the prospect of killer robots annihilating humanity? 20% likely. Maybe 10%. On what time frame? Probably 10 years.

So soon, like you see a world where that's possible. Yeah. But I mean, you can look at it like the glass is 80, 90% full, meaning like 80% likely we'll have extreme prosperity for all. 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 robots.

How likely are we winning right now? Is America winning right now? And how likely is America to win the race for AI vis-a-vis China or anyone 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 more of them are controlled by China, then China will win. More of the factories that are making the AI chips. You think that will determine it? Yes. And how are we doing versus China on that front?

Well, right now, almost all the advanced AI chip factories, they call them fabs, are in Taiwan. And what if China invades Taiwan? Which is 69 miles away from... What happens if China invades Taiwan, what happens to the world? 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. How fast can we put that online in America, and how important is that for national security? I think it's essential for national security, and we're not doing enough. You're 53 years old. I'm 118 days older than you. By the way, what the hell have I done in my life? I know, right? 53 years old. You did pretty well. So, 71 was a great year.

And I was December 70, so I was just right before. You were the summer of 71. I was born 69 days after 420. Wow.

I did ask Ben. This is true. You just opened up a can of worms. 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 smoke pot in the White House. It just turned out to be like a chocolate cigar. Yeah.

Let me ask you, if today was your last day on Earth, 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? And will you ever go to space? In the distant future, 100 or 1,000 years ago, if SpaceX got humans to Mars, that's what they would remember me for.

All right, final set of questions. Who's the smartest guy you've ever met? You hang out with some brilliant people. What's a CEO you look at other than yourself? What CEO do you say, damn, that guy's good? Larry Ellison's very smart. So I'll say Larry Ellison's one of the smartest people. 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, you know, what have they done that is difficult and significant? You know, 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. All right, final lightning round. Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Trek.

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 the first movie you ever see in a theater is Star Wars, it's going to blow your mind. Best Star Wars movie? Empire Strikes Back. The only objectively right answer. I stood in line for three hours with my dad to see it on opening day. Kirk or Picard? I like them both, 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. Best Star Trek movie? I mean, the first Star Trek movie? No, that's in... Wrath of Khan. Wrath of Khan. Actually, both Wrath of Khans were pretty good. But yeah, the original Wrath of Khan. Ricardo Montalban...

Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in space. Although I will say Rathacon is objectively the right answer, but Four is a sleeper. When they go back to San Francisco and go find the whales and Scotty picks up the mouth and talks to it and goes, a keyboard, how quaint. That's a sleeper. All right, last question. Did Han shoot first?

It seemed like he shot second. This is verdict. And by the way, I apologize, Ben. So Ben was a jock and played tennis at Ole Miss. And so occasionally when we geek out a little bit. I love watching y'all geek out over there. I think we might have a shot first, though, because the guy missed. He's still on the question. I love it. He missed his—the alien missed his blaster shot.

So why did he miss his vassal shot? It must have been because he got shot first. Nobody's missing a point-blank vassal shot unless they get knocked or killed. But it's a question of real consequence. 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. You would have had to have shot first, because otherwise, why would the alien miss a point-blank range? Are you ever going to go to outer space? Is that something in your life goals? 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. Now, that's a very good answer. The astronauts on the space station, are they political prisoners? Some of them are.

Because you could have given him a ride back and Joe Biden said no purely for politics. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some debate about this online, but the thing is that it was 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 was pro-trump uh rescuing astronauts right before the election um so they pushed it well if you're one of those astronauts you got to be pretty pissed off about that well if they're a democrat yes it's a republican yes but if they're democrat like everything's fine fair enough um so i think one of them is a republican it depends on which one you ask well thank you elon this was this was awesome and and let me say and by the way

I put out on X the day before yesterday, if you were having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything, what would you ask? And got lots of responses. The most common response people said is say thank you. Look, Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing. You don't 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.

Yeah, it's essential for the future of civilization. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it. Yes. It's not like I want to get death threats, you know? No.

What year does man first step set foot on Mars? I think the soonest would be 29 29 yes, and I don't think it's more than two to four years beyond that and that's not an unmanned That's that's a human being putting his foot on the surface. Yes, best case would be 29 And what do you what do you put the odds of? finding either alien life or evidence of alien life and

I don't think we're going to find aliens. Okay. But do we find ruins? Do we find remnants? We may find the ruins of a long dead alien civilization. That's possible. And we may find subterranean microbial life. That's possible. All right. If man lands on Mars in 29, how soon after that do you land on Mars? Remains to be seen. I'm not sure. The important thing is that we build a self-sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible.

The key threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper, even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming. At that point, even if something were to happen on Earth, it might not be World War III, but it might be that...

A bad virus. Yeah, it might not be anything. What I'm saying is, like, 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. 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. - And how close are we technologically to be able to do that, to have a self-sustaining settlement on the surface of Mars?

I think it can be done in 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? 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. So but you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years?

Yes. And what's the technology we're missing right now? When you think about a million people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water, to get food, to keep them safe? I mean, what do we need to make that happen? 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. You've got to build all that on Mars. And Mars is a hostile environment. It sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on Mars. It's quite cold. How do you prep for that?

Well, in the beginning on Mars, you have to have a life support habitation module. Right. Like you can't just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air. Like a dome, you think, is likely? Yeah, glass domes type of thing. Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely to be ideal for habitat? What might be Arcadia Planetae is one of the good options. That's what...

One of my daughters is named Arcadia after that. And what makes that attractive? My eldest son's middle name is Aries, Mars. You've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it. My eldest kid's middle name is essentially Mars. When did you get the dream? He's 20 now, turning 21 soon. This is a decades-old dream. So when you were 10, did you look up and say, I'm going to Mars? No.

No, I read a lot of science fiction books and programmed computers. But the first video game that I sold was a space video game called Blastar. Maybe I spoiled it this way. How do you...

How do you become Elon Musk? Look, you're obviously smart as hell, but there are a lot of smart people that don't do squat. And you've managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary success. Yeah. 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? Well, I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity. I want to find out the nature of the universe, understand the universe, and understand the

and in order to do that we have to travel to other planets see other star systems maybe other galaxies um 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 so let's go back

25 years, late 90s, you're at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the success it was, which then helped launch you to the next one and the next? 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 I was going to do a PhD at Stanford in physics.

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'd always go back to grad school. You know, 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 internet company. We did the first maps, directions, yellow pages, white pages on the internet. I actually wrote the first version of the 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. Wow.

So I should say, just to preface that, I graduated with about $100,000 in student debt. So it wasn't... Yeah, you and me both. Yeah. Where's my $300 million? I haven't arrived. I know. And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived with $2,500, a bag of books, and a bag of clothes. All right. So you sell the company for $300 million. How much does that change your life? Well, I got $21 million, blackjack. Yeah.

But I wanted to do more on the internet. So I 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 PayPal today was actually, I filed those incorporation documents for that company. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. 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 a lot of dreams. So it's been a heck of a journey. Yeah. Yeah. And now, obviously, Peter was involved in a coup. You know, we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation. Yeah.

where, you know, they did Kumi at PayPal. Now, did you all make peace after that? 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. So I'd not done my honeymoon earlier in the year. So I was raising money while doing a honeymoon, but I was kind of...

How'd that go over, by the way? It worked. It worked. There you go. It worked. I raised money. Yeah. And we had a honeymoon. There you go. So, yeah. But you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary. So I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway...

We patch things up and have been friends nonetheless. And these days I'll stay at his house and stuff, so obviously we're friends. And he's also invested in most of my companies.

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All right, so 2002, you start SpaceX. How do you start a rocket company? What's the first day where you're like, I want to make rockets and I want to go to Mars? What do you do on day one? So I think you have to start with some sort of philosophical premise in order to have

In order to be highly motivated, you have to have some philosophical foundation. In my case, it was that we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe.

and in order to expand consciousness we need to go beyond one planet. If we're on one planet there's too much risk. Hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future but it may not. There's always some risk that we self-annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs. There's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket so it's

going to be better if we're a multi-planet species. And then once we're a multi-planet species, the next step would be to be multi-stellar and have civilization 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 thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal. And in that case, I think it was...

about $180 million after tax, 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 moon, let alone. It's hard to believe. Let alone Mars. They'd be like, what happened? Did civilization collapse? Stop. Yeah. Like,

Like, like there would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now. If you told people this and after landing on the moon in 69. Why do you think in 50 years America never went back to the moon? Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that could take people to the moon and had the space shuttle, which could only go to low 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 you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride. So I remember you and I first met in 2013 when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah.

And I was still down in the basement office. They stick freshman senators in a basement office. It's kind of like hazing. Yeah, yeah. I was about to say, it sounds like it. There are 100 Senate offices, but for six months you stay in the basement. Put you in your place. Yeah, it's like wearing beanie. They want you to know where you're supposed to be. You know, I've got to say, now 13 years into it, I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing that. Sure, sure.

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 you 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. Yes. It's hard to believe that this is all real. Because originally...

it's consistent with my belief that we need to become a multi-planet 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, this sort of money shot, 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.

Yeah, I'm glad you did. It's a very different story. What I'm trying to say is the captivating shot would be the green plants on a red background. And then 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. So your original dream was NASA to do this? Yes. Not you? No, the 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 profit on a non-profit 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 frigging Mars. Right. Wow. Fuck.

That's what I wanted. That was the Holy Grail. That's what I wanted. I was like, damn it, why am I not going to Mars? That's what I wanted to know. When did it strike you, okay, you're going to have to do this if you want to? Well, I'll tell you, it gets crazier. All right, it gets crazier. So I couldn't afford any of the U.S. rockets because, as you know, the U.S. rockets are way too expensive. Boeing Lockheed rockets are crazy money. I didn't even, even with $180 million, there's no way I could have afforded two. How much were they back then? Well, 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 yeah so and then I didn't have enough money for that and I was sort of prepared to you know I don't know waste half the money uh

And I figured if I had $90 million left, that'd be fine. But ideally not all of it. So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs. How interesting. How'd that go? And who do you call? The Russian rocket forces. Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work? Yeah. You got to tell us a story that I want to know who I'm talking about. Turns out you can buy anything in Russia. Yeah.

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 do you tell your friends? Yeah. Listen, I'm going to rush advice in my ICBMs. I might not return, you know, depending on the situation. Literally. Yeah. So it gets slightly less insane when you understand that the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs

because of, you know, salt talks. - Yeah, right, right. - Because of basically an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the total number of ICBMs. - Sure. - Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So you took the very biggest ICBMs, you could convert those into a rocket, add an additional stage, and send something to Mars. - So those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars?

To send a small payload to Mars, yeah. So the SS-18. So you try to buy CBMs. Do you succeed or no? Or do you...

Figure out you got to build your own instead. They kept raising the price on me. So because I figured like, look, they got to throw these things in the scrapyard anyway. You should get a really good deal. Right. So the price started out at four million. Then the next conversation, they were at eight 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, was there another bid or were you the only one trying to buy them? 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 sign, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract sign. So I got pretty frustrated there. Actually, in some cases, we got into shouting matches in Moscow. Yeah.

Some guy's shouting at me in Russian. I'm shouting back at him in English. I'm very glad that you didn't go to Siberia. That put it on really badly. You know, I'm like, so you're all in. Stop rubbing me off. In Moscow. Yeah.

So, man, I should have recorded that. That would have been wonderful. How many days were you there negotiating that first time? I mean, was this like ongoing? Yeah, yeah. 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 go to Mars.

that is affordable and that doesn't break the budget. - Well, as you know, we couldn't even get to the space station. We needed the Russians to get us to our own space station. - That was embarrassing. - It really was pitiful. - 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. - Yeah. - Wow. - Yeah. For a seat that cost them like 10 million. - That was pre-Doge, obviously.

But it was the only one. It was before SpaceX. But $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them $10 million is high. Yeah. That's a lot of money. Yeah. 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. Five years ago, it was an empty beach facility.

At the southern tip of Texas. It's basically a sandbar, yeah. And it's now a city and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision. Yeah. But one of the things you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to me is you said your philosophy on intellectual property. I've talked to lots of CEOs. They're like, we fight to guard our IP. And you had a very different approach. What's your view of IP? Patents of the week.

Patents are for those who innovate slowly. I literally do not know anyone else in business who would say something like that. Like 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, we'll be five generations beyond and it won't matter. Yes. At Tesla, we actually open sourced a lot of patents. So we said our patents are...

Anyone can use them for free. Really? Yeah. We only do patents at Tesla to avoid patent trolls causing trouble. So...

We'll try to look ahead and say, okay, patent trolls are going to file patents to block certain things. We'll file patents and then open source the patent, 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 file. But then subsequently, 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 cases, I do want to single out cases like where such as a phase three clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars, but then the drugs thereafter cost $1.

a few dollars to a manufacturer. And if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars, no one will pay for the billion dollar- - There's a free rider problem. - Free rider problem, exactly. So you have to address the free rider problem. But other than that, there should be no patents. The ideas are easy. - You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get there faster and do things bigger.

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

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 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're you may even be better at execution which is how do you execute so effectively

Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything. It's not as though I wanted to insource manufacturing. It's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So the idea at 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 really wasn't feasible. Outsource manufacturing actually is...

the exception of the rule. And just over time we had to enforce 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.

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? About six hours on average. So about six. So that's...

It wouldn't have shocked me if you said three or four. So the next question is, how many hours do you work a day? I work almost every waking hour. 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 don't have social dinners, really. Right. I mean, that, yeah. I mean, you obviously eat food, but the idea of like... You're not going to a restaurant for two hours. But the idea of like, I don't...

But it was just kind of matter of fact, why would I go to dinner? Like, you work. Yeah. I literally just thought I'll have lunch and dinner brought during meetings and continue meeting. How many nights have you slept at your offices, you think, in 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?

Well, I guess it started out, even with the first company, Zip2, 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 $500 a month. And the cheapest apartment we could find was $800 a month. And we only had about $5,000 between my brother and I. So we're like, 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 shower at the YMCA down the road. And so that literally was for several months what we did.

I was in great shape, you know, working out at the Y. I still remember that YMCA at Page Mill Alcaminio in Palo Alto. So that was a long time ago. So it's been, I don't know, I've never thought to count it, but several hundred days maybe? I don't know. So you're now the richest man on earth. Do you still sleep in the office? On earth, though.

Well, that's true. Maybe Mars, we'll find someone else. I think if someone is a sovereign head of a country, they're de facto richer by a lot. Do you still sleep at the office now? I've sometimes slept at the office, yeah.

As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast so 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 on Monday morning.

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