Axel Springer Award

foreign this is your captain speaking welcome aboard our vessel to Mars boarding is completed as all systems are set and we're sure that we don't take the coronavirus to outer space for your cooperation by the way we are ready to launch first rule don't panic cabin crew prepare for takeoff [Music] thank you [Music] 20 seconds till left off 15 seconds [Music] foreign this is your captain with an update from the cockpit we arrived in Earth's orbit safe and sound let me please especially welcome one very special passenger an extraordinary Visionary a multi-talented engineer a super smart entrepreneur and not at least the man who made this Mission to Mars possible please give a very warm welcome to Mr Elon Musk please take a look at our wonderful Planet isn't

it gorgeous as curious as I am to see Mars I'm really looking forward to come back to our old Homestead [Music] South Africa in the 70s a boy from Pretoria facing childhood problems he reads 10 hours a day Star Wars and science fiction but this one's got talent for machines and for money at the age of 12 he programmed his first computer game on the good old Commodore young Elon sold blastar for five hundred dollars develop stuff Let It Grow sell it soon this is how we made his fortune and his opportunity to go even further this is the way one sentence he never wanted to hear you're in the Army now so he got himself a passport moved to Canada leaving the South African apartheid regime behind he was 16 years old after some time in Kinston he left Canada

went to Pennsylvania got his Bachelor and then moved south ah Stanford University Palo Alto where all the Silicon dreams were about to come true Elon was one of those who founded the legend of the valley two thousand dollars a car and a computer and nothing more he and his brother Kimball founded zip2 a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers four years later he sold it to Compaq for 307 million dollars quite a story but just the start a typical story of those times develop and invest find allies merge disrupt rise of PayPal his first vision of making things easier for people using the digitization Elon Musk helped to change the financial industry forever PayPal was sold for 1.

5 billion dollars to eBay Elon held 11.

7 percent of the shares a big winner in the big game money that he uses to make the world a better place he attacks on the world's best settled Market the automotive industry we created Tesla to make a difference in the world Tesla disruption at its best not everything worked out perfect well but his long breath proved him right he is pushing all his competitors forward he is expanding Elites technology leads infrastructure and Logistics and if necessary he works in sleeps at the factory foreign ER [Music] soon very soon we've decided to put the Tesla gigafactory Europe uh in the Berlin area yeah and Tesla is just on The Cutting Edge of an idea autonomous driving is bored so for us being a little startup we had to start off with a car that was in in low

production and necessarily expensive their idea of an electric car is something that doesn't look good isn't fast it doesn't have high performance we wanted to break them all of all of that that's what we sought to achieve big time for important things saving time for stuff that is fun well it is fun to drive a Tesla but on an endless Motorway even riding gets tiring it's human we're bored very soon let the car drive and get some food for the brain while it does the work and last but not least fuel it with energy that is not harmful to the planet Elon Embraces his responsibility but this is never enough much more is needed Elon can't stop thinking about the future of making things work better more efficient a Visionary a man who never gives up although

there would have been a few moments when giving up would have been a more than plausible option foreign SpaceX is not only a business it's Hobby it's a passion Elon is CEO and its first spaceship designer it is all rocket science really many laughed at him NASA with its billions the Russians with their ruthless and dead serious Ambitions the whole call of SpaceX was the first space exploration technology and that's uh helping make Humanity a space Bank civilization transported Americans to the ISS UE private economy is more effective and sustainable than State economy crew dragon is a gentle slap in the face for over-the-top institutional rocketeers the Russians took it personal Elon Musk must not be quoted by them too successful Russia some things never

change can one man change the world yeah sure Elon Musk did it and he doesn't stop there and I think that's one of the things that you know makes people excited about the future and we want the things that are in science fiction novels and movies not to be science fiction forever we want to be real one day what if one could help handicapped people by connecting the body with machines to reconnect neural disorders a presto neuralink what if we could get rid of traffic on our city streets dig a deep long tunnel beneath them and shoot the cars from one side of the town to the other hey Presto the boring company the name by the way is one of the best puns ever and stop if we can do that with cars why shouldn't we do it with goods and people full speed 600

kilometers in 35 minutes just do it hey Presto hyperloop but all that's Earthbound reach for the stars and planets we're already on our way to Mars [Music] this is your captain speaking well rather gasping what a trip that was and it's not over yet let's hear it from the man himself I'd kindly ask you now Elon to come on stage and join actually Springer CEO Matthias Dafna for a little chat [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well that was fun yeah I'm glad that you enjoyed it yeah it's like a ride I mean I think you could charge money for this this is great I mean yeah it's really makes a difference to have this two screens and the angle change it's like that felt great like Disney right Elon apart from this special trip to Mars this evening when do you think

realistically human beings will land on Mars for the first time um I think it I feel fairly confident about six years from now so every the Mars uh Earth Mod synchronization occurs roughly every 26 months so we had one this year this summer and so that means in roughly like about two years there'll be another one um and then two years after that so I think I'd say if you say six years from now I think highly confident uh if we get lucky maybe four years and then we want to try to send a an uh uncrewed vehicle there in two years when will your first trip to orbit who will take place I don't know possibly in two or three years I mean I'm mostly concerned with developing the technology that can enable a lot of people to go to Mars and make life multi-planetary

have a base on the moon a city on Mars and I think it's important that we strive to have a self-sustaining City on Mars as soon as possible I mean I'm optimistic about the future on Earth but it's important to have life insurance for Life as a whole is it going to be a business kind of tourism in in orbit or is it more a kind of plan B if things owners do not develop as well it's not exactly a plan B uh it's it's more that I think I think there's two two aspects to this uh one is that we want to have a future that is inspiring and exciting and what are the things that you find inspiring and exciting about the future I think one future where we are a space-bearing civilization and out there Among the Stars I think that's every kid gets excited about that

you don't even need to teach them they just get it it's like instinctive and so it's very important for us to have reasons to like reasons to be excited about life like when you wake up in the morning it can't just be about problems okay I know everyone in this room deals with a lot of tough problems but you know it's got to be more than that so you know I think a future where you can say hey even if it's not you there's going to be people out there that can we can have a base on the moon we're going to have a you know a city on Mars maybe go further the moons of Jupiter and everything I think that's a very exciting future and and then and I think most people do um and you seriously want to be buried on Mars just not an impact [Laughter] uh yeah I mean

if you're gonna listen we're all gonna die someday um so if you're gonna die someday I'm like okay do you want to be buried on a monster with I'm like Mars sounds cool born on Earth Dion was that's uh you know if you got the choice um two years ago I had a conversation with Jake Ma and we spoke about Jeff Bezos plans with regards to uh orbit and he said well let's uh Jeff Bezos take care uh for the orbit I take care for the Earth you seem to take care for both yeah basically Tesla is about trying to make sure things are good for the future on Earth and then SpaceX is about a good future beyond Earth basically um and so obviously we have to have sustainable energy uh both consumption and production of energy uh so like hazardous solar panels and batteries

I think that's one of the key uh ways to have sustainable energy generation and also the batteries are useful for wind power so and then elect you then you need to Consumer via consumed electricity so electric vehicles um and um you know I think look at these things like say okay if you look back from the future and say what's the fundamental good of uh Tesla I would say it's probably should be assessed as by how many by how many years did Tesla accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy like that's like I would measure the goodness of Tesla in that in that way and then for SpaceX it's like okay to what degree did we improve the probability of humanity being a space bearing civilization I remember very well the year 2014 when we were hosting the gold

steering wheel here at Oxford and you got the uh award for Lifetime Achievement and I was sitting in the first row with the then very successful and famous CEO of a very big German car company and I asked him while you were on stage isn't this guy dangerous for you I mean this looks really serious he said oh no don't worry first of all the whole idea of electric driving is never going to be a mass Market sure second These Guys these guys in Silicon Valley they have no clue about engineering about building really beautiful and great cars so we don't have to worry by then Tesla's market cap was 23 billion today it's 536 billion US Dollars the market Capital VW then was 86 and to today at 77 and you could you you are with Tesla two and a half times bigger

than BMW VW and Daimler I even said it's ever too high I mean what am I supposed to do you like have you ever considered that stock is too high a long time like when it was like it 100 800 pre-split and then listen to me but you know I'll tell you in the SEC complained again I mean like you know is it a serious option to buy one of the incumbents one of the big car companies for you well I I think we're definitely not going to launch a hostile takeover so I suppose if there was a friendly one if somebody said hey we think it would be a good idea to merge with Tesla we certainly have that conversation um but you know we don't want to you know be a hostile hostile takeover sort of situation did you feel a lot of complacency uh these days that the incumbents

length let you feel that you are I mean the kind of hopeless disrupter but they know how to do it or where they're very polite and nice with you do you mean back then or not then oh no no today everybody it's super nice I would not say there was a run now yeah we're difficult to characterize their responses super nice um they use a lot of adjectives um I don't think that any of them were positive so we try we really tried hard to convince a lot of companies uh honestly I was in so many panels uh but um they generally were yeah generally the sediment that was expressed that you mentioned earlier that was pretty much Universal especially uh if back in say 2008 or 2007 like when we first unveiled the roads from 2007 um yeah I mean it was just basically they

just said well you're basically a bunch of fools well I mean generally they say like well who starting a car company is crazy you're going to lose all your money I was like I think I probably will lose all my money I agree I it wasn't like I thought it would be successful I thought we had maybe a 10 chance of success so then people would say you're it's gonna fail and you're going to lose lose everything it's like yeah probably true yeah what else is new a couple of years ago we we we saw each other in America and the guy asks you on a panel uh when uh autonomous driving will be approved and you said I do not care so much when it's going to be approved I care more when uh human beings in cars will be forbidden and then the guy said well that's really

unrealistic it's never going to happen in uh in cars people want to do something actively and then you said well 100 years ago nobody could imagine uh uh elevator without a lift boy today nobody could imagine a lift with a lift boy yeah so when is autonomous driving really really going to happen and when when are you able to do it and when is it going to be approved okay just between us yeah it's a very discreet Circle here yeah um so well first of all I'm not I'm not against people driving to be clear uh so I think people will drive cars basically as far into the future as I can imagine it's just that it's going to be increasingly unusual to to drive your own car and while it's fun to drive a you know a well handling car on a Winding Road in beautiful

terrain of course that's that's fun um but it's not fun to drive a car in a terrible gridlock traffic like you know going through extreme traffic that's no fun driving a car so I think people are unlikely to most of the time want to commute or with it with their uh and drive themselves um and you know people are typically spending hour and a half a day maybe two hours uh on average driving um especially say like California or something like that it's very common um and some people will actually commute like three hours a day sometimes it's pretty crazy so uh so I so I think I think uh um if you say fast forward to like 10 years from now I think 10 years from now almost all cars will be will have a full autonomy capability uh that all new costs produced

so there's there's about two billion cars and trucks in the in the existing Fleet um and the new vehicle production is about five percent of the fleet size so about 100 million so even the point which all cars are autonomous they'll still take you know 20 years to replace all the cars assuming that the number of cars and trucks trucks in the fleet stays constant um but like say 10 years from now I would say vast majority of cars electric like maybe 70 80 percent or more uh and uh almost all cause autonomous electric autonomy is absolutely the future no question and just a question of when um but then like I said as soon as people think that that means the global Fleet gets replaced instantly and it's like nope you have to go 20 years beyond that point

before 20 years from the point at which all cars are new cars are electric then the fleet will be replaced um it was just an important it's not like some people are used to like mobile phones and that kind of thing is like two year or three year replacement rate but cars are much uh more expensive asset to longer life uh anyway to actually answer your question um I'm I'm extremely confident uh of achieving full autonomy uh and releasing it to the Tesla customer base uh next year now the there's a uncertain period of time for when regulatory approval will be will take how long will it take but I think if you are able to accumulate uh billions of kilometers of autonomous driving then it's difficult to argue and look at the accident rate uh when the car

is autonomous versus non-autonomous and in fact our our statistics already show a massive difference when the car is on autopilot or not on autopilot if the safety is much greater even with the current autopilot software and we are discussing level 5 autonomy so really full autonomy will Euro black behind or will it be approved here at the same time like in America or China it's hard to say uh exactly when it will be approved I I mean just to and our customers already know this but the the the the EU Regulators are the most conservative um and uh I don't know if people want that to be the case or not our customers are sort of unhappy about it but um yeah they only meet every six months maybe meet more often I don't know um so yeah but I think at least

some jurisdictions will allow full self-driving next year okay exactly a year ago you were announcing In This Very building that you're planning to build a new site near Berlin yeah and a couple of months later and Junior started you want to finish it by July next year we did a little tour this morning it's impressive how advanced it is and it's almost unbelievable Germany and Piccadilly particularly Berlin is not world famous for finishing construction sites in time and in budget yeah so you've created a kind of entire Berlin airport project why Berlin why did you go to Germany and to Berlin to get that big project done sure um well first of all I'm actually a big fan of Germany I love Germany it's great I would you know um I have a lot of friends um

uh German friends and I think Berlin is a very fun city um and uh I think it's there's there's also it's from a location standpoint uh people like say young people can live in apartments at a reasonable price in the city of Berlin uh but if somebody's got a family they can still have an affordable house so it's a good location offering um you know good living for people of all ages and incomes and and um I believe it's not that poor but but it's definitely sexy could you imagine so we're gonna have like uh when we open the uh you're all invited by the way uh when we have the opening for gigabolin we're gonna have uh just a big party um you know we're gonna have like start off from the day have more sort of Family Music uh and uh and then gradually get

more hardcore and then go you know midnight techno Till Dawn dude do you plan to spend more time in Berlin yourself you want to partly live here in fact I yes I'll be spending a lot of time here where do you sleep tonight in the in the tonight's in the factory in the factory well technically in a conference room in the factory but yeah you sleep in a conference room in the not finished Factory tonight yeah it gives me a good feel for what's going on alone or yeah I assume so it's an invitation um yeah okay Elon you have so many projects it's not only Tesla or SpaceX it's neuraling it's the boring company so many things and when we discussed last time I asked you what is the most important project or the most important topic for you to deal with in the

foreseeable future and you said that is truly the role that AI is going to play in our society could you explain why and why that is a big opportunity but also seems to worry you uh yeah I think well I mean humans have been the smallest creature on Earth for a long time and that is going to change with what's typically called artificial general intelligence uh so this is say an AI that is uh smarter than a human in every way it could even simulate a human so you know this is something we should be concerned about I think there should be a government oversight of AI developments especially super Advanced AI it's just this is anything that is a potential uh danger to the public we generally agree that this should have uh government oversight to ensure that

the the public safety is taken care of because you feel that one day the mankind could serve the machines and not the other way around honestly when I see people on their phones that I think we already serve with the machine yeah it's like everyone's uh answering the questions you know every time you do a search or add information you're sort of building this the the digital group mind um but yeah uh the Advent of artificial general intelligence is called The Singularity for a reason because just like a black hole which is a single Singularity it's difficult to predict what will happen um so it's not as though the Advent of AGI is necessarily bad but it's bad is one of the possible outcomes and when is singularity in the in the definition of Ray quotes

why are going to happen um well I think you're saying he he's predicting 2025.

I think that's uh reasonably accurate and how can it be avoided that is then uh more a threat for Humanity than an opportunity is it a question of governance so that there is not too much power in one or in few hands or how would you how would you make sure that it goes into the right direction I think we should have a a government oversight just like we do we have uh government oversight and regulation of cars and aircraft and uh food and pharmaceuticals these are all uh you know there's a there are Regulators that oversee these developments to ensure Public Safety um and I think digital super intelligence would also be potentially a public safety risk and so it should be it's I think it's very important to for Regulators to keep an eye on that who should

own the data data by then I think everyone should own their own data like individuals here on their data um and it certainly shouldn't be tricked by some terms and conditions of a website and suddenly you don't own your data that's crazy uh who reads those terms and conditions anyway so uh but I think it's just you know like we wouldn't let people develop a nuclear bomb in the backyard just for the hell of it you know that that seems crazy so digital super intelligence I think has the potential to be more dangerous than a nuclear bomb so yeah we should just somebody should be keeping an eye so we can't have the inmates running the Asylum here which is a global issue because if we do well but China has other rules and a different regulatory framework that

is another uh yeah I don't I don't think college yeah I generally like that this is one of the rebuttals I get from those developing Ai and Tesla is also developing a form of AI with self-driving but it's a very narrow form of AI just like um like the car is not going to wake up Sunday one day and take over the world um so so it's uh but the rebuttal I get is like well you know China is going to have unfettered uh AI development and so if we have regulations and it slows us down then China will have it and I'm like look I from my conversations with government officials in China they are they they're quite concerned about AI as well and they uh the fact that they're probably more likely to have a good oversight than I think other countries what is the

biggest uh challenge uh ahead of us in general not only with regard to AI what is the biggest problem that needs to be solved what's the biggest threat to Humanity's future [Music] well AI is certainly one of the biggest risks it could be the biggest risk um I think we need to watch out about population collapse this is a somewhat counter-intuitive to most people they think that well there's so many humans maybe too many humans but that's just because they live in a city yeah if you're an aircraft and you look down they say if you dropped a a cannibal how often would you hit a person basically never in fact the stuff falling in from space all the time natural meteorites old rocket stages all the time but nobody worries about it because the the actual

in fact um there's a good a cool website called wait but why and Scott Tim Urban like he actually just did the math and and uh all humans on Earth uh could fit in the city of New York on one floor don't even need the upper floors so that's actually the cross-section of of humans as seen from Earth is extremely tiny basically vanishingly small almost nothing um so we need to watch out about population collapse low growth rates I think is a big risk and it's also not exactly top secret you can go look at the Wikipedia you know growth rate so and and this this is actually this this is this is definitely the civilization ends with the with a whimper not a bang uh because it would be a sad ending um where the the average age becomes very high and really the

youth are effectively uh de facto enslaved to take care of the old people this is not a good way to go and do you have any new projects dealing with these topics that you've just addressed um well I'm trying to set a good example on the kid front six kids yes for now how much time do you spend with them I I spent about as much time as they want to spend with me yeah I mean they're not well one's just a baby and now there's a 14 and 16 and teenagers um don't usually want to hang out with their parents that much you know we just had Thanksgiving weekend so all the kids were over um so you know if they want to spend more time with me I said like oh you should I actually asked them are sure we don't want to hang out more like no so I think it's probably the

right amount then since they that's about the they don't want to hang out more so I think we really should take this seriously the population collapse artificial intelligence obviously sustainable energy is important uh the faster we transition to sustainable energy the less of a gamble we're taking with climate and um I think there's going to be a lot of breakthroughs on the medical front particularly around synthetic mRNA you can basically do anything with the synthetic RNA DNA it's really it's like a computer program so I mean I think with enough with with uh with effort that's not too crazy you could probably stop aging reverse it if you weren't um these are you can basically join you can turn someone into a free and Butterfly if you want with the

right DNA sequence so I mean caterpillars do it so yeah but your project neuralink is in a way empowering human intelligence versus artificial intelligence that's the purpose of it is that correct yeah so neuralink the uh in a short to medium term neuralink is really just going to help cure uh brain injuries brain and spine injuries so it's like if somebody is a in fact our first uh implanted devices in humans will be for uh quadriplegics tetraplegics allowing them to control a computer or a phone just using they might so like you can imagine like if Stephen Hawking could just talk uh and at a normal speed or even faster than normal speed looking back for the last thousands of years what is the most important invention of mankind so far in the past Thousand

Years um I I guess it's millions of millions um well I think language I would be able to talk and express Concepts and um this this is a probably the biggest invention of humanities language it's an answer that we like very much in the publishing yeah absolutely you know writing is yeah exactly just incredible right writing really made a big difference that guy Gutenberg you really know what he's doing you have one thing in common with Nicolas Tesla that's a photographic memory is that only a gift or sometimes a burden because you memorize too much I have a photographic memory in some respects um for technical stuff I have a very good memory so for a human yeah you know computers are much better at memory computer is a really good memory why is music

so important for you techno music in particular well it's pretty fun I think it's a you know you want to I don't know feel maximum human you know and uh so I think when people have like sort of a Rave and good music it can be like hey maximum human you know you want to really feel uh you know it's like like what really gets you to feel you know and I think that uh you know having fun with friends and you know just crazy crazy dancing is fun perhaps you know how techno music is the secret reason why you are building big projects in Berlin yeah honestly that's a it's a significant factor okay Elon last question you you celebrated your 30th birthday with a masked ball in Venice for your 40th birthday I was told you had a fight with a samurai sword fighter

what is your plan for your 15th birthday next year um well so my 40th birthday was the was in Venice uh it was it was technically a post-apocalyptic masked wall uh after the apocalypse how much clothing do you really have you know it's not going to be a little ragged a little burnt you know um so um no plans for the 50th yeah the half century party um I'll have to think of something um usually go with some kind of crazy theme the the the the party where I ended up to wrestling with the world champion tumor wrestler which by the way also caused me to boast a disc in my neck so yeah five minutes of Glory for five years of pain um that was that really hurt um so that party was um Victorian Japanese steampunk so that was cool uh I have to think of something

for the half century report you have a little time to think being on Earth for a half century that's okay I'm still alive wow cool one very last question when I asked you what is the meaning of life during a dinner 42 you said after a while after a while well probably this wonderful French cheese could you please explain oh well I was just saying that you know you want to take a moment to appreciate things in life and the sensations um food's incredible uh and uh like there's just so many good things that you can experience some of them cost nothing really um you know have a walk in nature or just a nice meal and it's like wow it was pretty great you know and uh we should take a moment to appreciate these These Little Things the big things um the things

that move your heart I think that's probably the meaning of life was close definitions as I can think thank you very much Elon all right this is your captain speaking again thank you Elon and thank you Matthias it's a pleasure having you on board and learning so much about our future before I come back with some information about our flights I'm now honored to welcome secretary Yen span and ask him on stage and share his thoughts about Elon musk's achievements and responsibilities the vessel's floor is yours Mr secretary [Applause] thank you so a wonderful evening to all of you in the evening between the struggles on earth and the vision towards Mars and regarding Earth we are meeting here today in a very special time we are experiencing the worst pandemics

since the Spanish Flu for roughly 10 months now governments but Above All citizens worldwide have been combating the virus and its consequences people are experiencing a great deal of suffering hardship and sacrifice yet today at the beginning of December we also have a reason for optimism we can be very optimistic that we will have an effective vaccine against the new virus faster than ever before in human history with a vaccine we can finally hope to have a tool that will help us beat the virus it is true that some people have misgivings about vaccination to the point of rejecting it at all costs this is an attitude I find very difficult to understand it was only vaccination that first made it possible for humankind to liberate itself from many of the

Fatal diseases that had plagued our ancestors for centuries plagues that had led to fear and Superstition and then obstacle to progress vaccination is progress and today that word progress is for many synonymous with one name that of Elon Musk Mr mask I'm pleased to have the honor of paying tribute to you in these very special times you are without doubt a visionary the name mask stands for ideas that were often far ahead of their time paying online with PayPal Electro mobility and sustainable energy with Tesla and not seldom does the name mask also represent ideas that at first glance might seem a little crazy the HIPAA Loop project is one of those the vision that persons and goods can be accelerated in the double tube to speeds of up to 1 200 kilometers

per hours this also includes connecting the human brain to a computer the subject of neuro links just discussed the rulings research since 2016 and of course private space travel with SpaceX is also an integral part of the mission thanks to Elon Musk seemingly crazy ideas become reality Elon Musk has realized the most powerful thing we as human beings possess is our ideas Tesla's ability to rise to become the world's most valuable car manufacturer was not primarily the result of itself's figures Tesla's worse is a reflection of an idea a vision an idea that allows many people to have faith in progress in a better future it is supported of course by business expertise Elon Musk is building his newest gigafactory in brunberg on Mark land many Germans associate

bronberg with the poet teodor Fontana who once walked the sense of the mark Fontana wrote between arrogance and humility lies a third trait that is part of life and that simply put is courage should you not yet know Fontana by the way for your Douglas Adam non-digital bookshelf I hope there is one Fontana should you not yet know him Mr mask I think that fits you quite well because courage you most certainly have as at the same time your choice of Germany as the location for your factory is hardly you only a question of Courage but just as much the result of keen calculation Germany is a country of automobile automobile Pioneers Carl and better Benz Rudolph diesel Gottlieb Daimler very Nan Porsche the list of achievements by Germans are made in Germany

is long Mr mask you know that Germany still possesses great Innovative strange today many well-trained creative people and a solid infrastructure great conditions for courageous entrepreneurship for tomorrow's innovators and Pioneers in the meantime you probably also recognize the word birkati in German indeed indeed constructing a factory from scratch in only a few months that is a new experience even for our country at least an experience we seem to have forgotten we need a bit more of the mass courage on our side to reduce bureaucratic obstacles and thereby promote innovation because also it is true that Innovation needs a reliable framework it also needs freedom to flourish in the 70 years since the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany we have

often succeeded in Striking this balance Germany is an economically strong country Cosmopolitan and free an anchor of stability and enmity in Europe it is something we can be proud of today however at the start of the 20s of the 21st century there are a number of questions we also ask ourselves do we the 20s what do we want the 20s to look like how can we find the right answers and complicated times what Legacy do we want to leave to our children how can we maintain the German success model sustain and expand our prosperity as well as the freedom and security associated with it in times where it is under threats from many sites so we need a strong state that encourage economic activity because German firms can't some because German firms suffered some

clear disadvantages when competing with monopolies from the U.

S and with a state economy like China's in return our state should invest massively in education infrastructure and research and should launch support programs not for individual companies but for entire branches of the economy in the 20s we want to remain expert Champion a master of innovation push forward digitalization promote research and strenging entrepreneurial culture only progress will ensure that the next generation will have it even better it's all about making space for ideas to flourish from all that we've heard Ellen musk knows this and tries to implement it in his businesses being a Visionary does not necessarily mean always being right nor does it mean being free of contradiction it was only recently that Elon Musk and I got to meet each

other personally and we're also able to talk about the pandemic situation Tesla is through the subsidiary groom and automated automation a partner of the German Dutch biotech company curac which is doing research on the coronavirus vaccine Quebec is using RNA bioreactors developed by Elon Musk companies I'm very pleased to see this commitment however I have read that Elon Musk himself does not intend to get vaccinated oh like me but still I also know that lmas takes a critical view of many of the measures that we as governments are taking to control the pandemic and to protect our citizens one of his statements struck me especially that anyone who is at risk should be in quarantine until the storm passes in connection with the observation you just met

again tonight that everyone has to die sometime yes Health protection does not take precedence over all else in the pandemic it all it is always about balance no matter how we Act or do not act harm will occur we must therefore strike a balance as minister of Health I think it is only right for us to weight the Health's protection very highly I for one would have great difficult difficulty doing otherwise at the same time it is legitimate to demand a different rating such debates are an indispensable part of our free societies and it is important that we are not implacable in these discussions but we listen to each other and are willing to assume at least sometimes that the other way the other one might have a point or that their arguments could be valid

debates that deteriorate into moralizing seldom reflect reality in all its diversity so it would be highly unfair to imply that Elon Musk might care too little through his private Foundation Elon Musk funds Research into renewable energy space travel child health education and Mathematics computer science natural science technology as well as safe AI in its private capacity he is consistently donating large sums of money to charity projects such as for planting 1 million trees looking at Elon Musk means repeatedly encountering a seemingly insatiable test for action and Discovery the many articles about the supposedly declining Innovative power of our Western World and societies then just seems to be Worlds Away in such instances Elon Musk stands in the

Limelight he is the spare head of an entire generation of courageous entrepreneurs and bold scientists people who believe in the power of ideas and that progress is possible in spite of resistance and setbacks this gives us courage despite the great challenges that we as humans are currently facing we are living in a time of great opportunity and an economically successful environmentally responsible and socially balanced world is possible it is possible through Innovation and courage not through individual austerity or through fear experiences and encounters with Innovative and creative people such as Elon Musk we confirm my basic optimism time after time we do have the power to shape our future Elon Musk wanted to change the world a little and ended

up revolutionizing it this teaches us that everything in our is in our own hands it is up to each and every one of us above all now in this often difficult time we may not lose sight of the future ahead of us with all of its alarming disastrous aspects in many areas the current pandemic strengthens precisely the willingness to shape the future it is leading us faster than ever down some appropriate and necessary path as the old saying goes crisis presents opportunity in this pandemic we are learning more on a daily base together in other words in public we are adapting our strategies we are consistently trying to act in a targeted and proportionate way starting afresh every day based on the largest knowledge this Spirit of progress this openness this

willingness to learn is something we must sustain in the future I'm convinced that Germany has a great deal of this Visionary power that drives you Mr Musk we simply need to more often have the courage to believe in it ourselves in this respect you are a great example to us congratulations on the 2020 Axel Springer award I wish you the greatest possible success for the future and even more stay healthy all the best [Applause] obviously we can get closer all the best thank you Mr span this is again your captain speaking some information about the flight outside temperature is about 1600 Kelvin so I kindly ask you not to open the windows as we leave hyperspace foreign Welcome To Mars orbit we will reach our final destination Mars surface in the scheduled

time the temperature will be between zero degrees Celsius and minus 100 degrees Celsius so first rule don't panic please excuse me I just got the information that we have a special delivery right now right here this is rather unusual but please let me check foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening good evening Elon good evening everybody I'm your captain tonight would you please hold my helmet thank you very much WoW it feels so comfortable I never felt that comfortable before thank you it's your Originals Basics overall and I will wear it many times from now on because I never felt so free I can breathe I have oxygen in my head and I've experienced that before standing on the stage it's

a bit of a tear you know it does make me slim but it's it's okay it's it's it's okay for me tonight I'm really happy to be here and I'm really thankful to meet you because I'm also thankful for your work and achievement for different reasons because as you might remember we've seen it in the movie I held the microphone I was the one it was my hand holding the microphone when you announced that you're gonna build Tesla here in Berlin Brandenburg and so thanks to you I made it in every German news show not me but parts of me made it into every German you show which made me really famous my hands are now one of the most famous hands we have in Germany and my hands are holding your present now the present we were thinking about what can we I mean what can

we give you as a present it's really difficult you know it's really difficult we were thinking about a spa weekend in Brandenburg not too good a helicopter flight over Berlin a fancy set of steak knives you might have it already so we were thinking about what could be nice for you and can you guess what's inside come on stage I tell you come on no it's no cake and it's no book come on stage and as we heard you are a visionaire and you're a businessman but you are also if you don't not only like to listen to music but you also do music yeah it's a record okay you compose music great there is one famous song it didn't make it to the charts but it's really famous it's really ranked on Soundcloud but the song is don't doubt your Vibe yes you recognize yeah

don't dare your Vibe because it's true because it's you oh that's good it has so many possibilities to really go right through the ceiling yeah yeah um if you do enough auto-tune it works yeah yeah yeah we will when did you write it when did you compose it well actually I just woke up one morning and uh I was singing the lyrics uh they're not very complicated um and uh and then my girlfriend Grimes recorded it on her phone yeah and she said this is great we should make a song out of this yeah and so then uh we called our friend Mike uh who is a great producer and and we went to the studio uh to the the Muppet studio Jim Henson Studio yeah and uh we we made the song yeah and then um I created a fake record label label called Emoji records Emoji within

a minute yeah like that um and uh on Soundcloud and then I uploaded it to SoundCloud and uh that's how it went perfect yeah on which occasion should it be played I guess if you're doubting your Vibe yeah you know or anytime did you ever doubt your vibe yeah really what was it yeah um December uh second uh I don't know 92.

can we expect more can we expect not more it's very promising I mean well I do think that it would be kind of fun to do a cover of uh Barbie Girl by Aqua you know that song Barbie girl Barbie girl yeah Viagra I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world um plastic it's fantastic you know it breaks me everywhere so you know the lyrics yeah I know the lyrics right no no um but but I think it would be fun to do a cover of Barbie girl but cyber girl I'm a cyber girl yeah in a cyber world perfect yeah okay you you have to invest in you it's fantastic in the future there's no plastic you know that kind of thing yeah I I doubt that so but now hold on to your seat we have the honor to have one of the most famous DJs in the world cool he's here and he remixed your song

right and we have him here so then fair to see it tonight all right Ben could you come up on stage hello he he um he did this original it's inside here Sven yes how was it to work with the material how was the material how did you yeah with this title and I made out of the best with a friend of mine and I hope you like it and but it's not just about that that's it's the it's the whole box yeah what is quite interesting who designed it who designed it my son okay my son draw the cover and his his name is Tegan is 10 years old he is by the way big fan of your work well it's an absolute original when would you play it on your DJ set would you play it it's rather beginning or more house myself so we have where would it be we have unique printed vinyls and

I choose turntables in your conference room on there construction site so I actually so essential Tech note tracks from the last 30 years right Graphics included and friends of mine yeah craft work is great what's that music so is that this is unique and that's great wow only one very thoughtful thank you for you and enjoy I hope you have a turntable and I do there is a QR code inside okay thank you very much thank you thank you thank you tonight all right it's a pleasure having you yeah it's it's really uh thank you for doing this it's really fun and wow great production value um this is I feel like I'm on like a cool Disney ride or something um so um but I I do want to just say to uh acknowledge the great people at Tesla and SpaceX neurolink boring

company um really I accept this award uh on on your behalf for all the great things that that you've done so um super super appreciated um but I really want to acknowledge very strongly the people at the companies who made it happen thank you very much thank you [Applause] because ladies and gentlemen we're about to land please fasten your seatbelts again [Music] foreign [Music] going down [Music] welcome Mars we just landed after this uh yeah exhausting and exciting and surprising and wonderful Journey um looks great doesn't it yes um you can follow our Assistance or Mr Daphne he's he's the tallest guy here just walk after him and uh we have a little refreshment for you and you don't even have to choose between salty and sweet or ham or or cheese you

can take both tonight which is just great just have a nice evening and enjoy good night thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]