Verdict with Ted Cruz

[Music] welcome in his verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you and today is our exclusive conversation with Elon Musk the entrepreneur and innovator who is transforming Industries and is dismantling government waste Fraud and Abuse with Doge must Relentless pursuit of technology and space exploration continues to capture the world's imagination in this episode we unravel the thoughts and aspirations of a man who defies conventional boundaries pushing Humanity towards New Horizons so join us in the white house as we continue to explore the riveting journey of Elon Musk a modern day Pioneer whose revolutionary ideas are set to redefine tomorrow today is a really fun day CER because we have a special guest and we're in a special place I'm going

to let you do the rest of the intro 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 is and uh nobody has noticed yeah the impact welcome Elon thank you holy crap uh yes wow let me just say never at 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 I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an impact the way you have the beginning let me 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 uh what surprised you about the federal

government I I assume you came in and assumed it was bad is it worse than you expected it it is worse than I expected but on the plus side that means there's more opportunity for improvement so look if you look on the bright side um there's there's actually a lot of opportunity for improvement uh in federal government expenditure because it's so bad um if it if it was a well-run ship it would be very difficult to improve so like but but you so so now it's like people say well how how will you figure out how to save money in the federal government well it's like being in a room where the the walls the roof and the floor are all Targets so you shoot in any direction yeah and you're wi you can miss wow I'm sure you would agree so a lot of folks have talked

about like like you can't you can't miss can't miss just go any direction a lot of the crazy expenditures things like like two million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala an essential um you know transgendered mice and and Sesame Street in Iraq a lot of that has gotten attention but some of the stuff you've told me about but like tell us about computer licenses and government agencies yeah so most of what do is finding you don't need to be Sherlock Homes okay it's very obvious B basic stuff so in in every govern Department I say every because we've not yet found a single exception um there are far too many software licenses um and and media subscriptions meaning many more uh software licenses and medum 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 used the application yes we're found entire uh situations of of software licenses or media sub subscriptions with there were zero logins so it had and yet we were paying for it yes the government was paying for thousands of licenses of software uh 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 uh we found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans could just and I still don't have a good explanation for why this is the case and these are $10,000

limit cards so 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 yeah uh in my my opinion it's it's like 80% waste 20% FR but but but but you do have these sort of gray areas y example example would be so uh we saw a lot of payments uh going out of Treasury that had no um payment code and no explanation for the payment and then we we we're tra we're trying to figure out what that payment is and we'd see that okay that contract was supposed to be shut off uh but but someone forgot to shut off that that contract and so the company kept getting money wow now is that waste or fraud

yeah both both yeah yeah I mean you know you're getting something you're not supposed to get you're not supposed to get it but you but the the government sent it to you and nobody from the government asked for it back or take for example the one the $1.

9 billion given to Stacy abon's a fake NGO utter Insanity explain that story that's that's just corrupt I think that's paying off cronies at that point 1,000% yeah yeah and by the way she knew like when you get $2 billion you don't miss that that's not that's not an accident that's allegedly it was for like uh you know environmentally friendly appliances or something and they've given like like like 100 appliances so far for $2 billion it's very expensive toaster an appliance that's Subzero fridge boy it's nice right now since this just obviously one of the biggest uh scam Port holes we've uncovered which is really crazy is uh is that is that the government can give money to a so-called nonprofit uh with with very few controls and then that and there's

there's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit so there's no so this is way with the you know 1.

9 billion Stacy ABS who's they then give themselves extremely lavish like insane salaries expense everything to the to the nonprofit um you know buy Jets and homes and all sorts of things live like kings and queens yes on the taxpayer down correct you you mentioned 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 is what you called Magic Money computers at the well so tell us about because I never heard of that until you you brought that up okay so you may think that these that that the government computers uh like all talk to each other they synchronize they they add up what funds are going somewhere and it's you know um it's coherent that that that the you know there's um and

that and that the numbers for example that you're presented as a senator yeah are actually the real numbers in one would think one would think they're not yeah okay um I mean they're not totally wrong but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases um so uh I call a magic money computer any computer which can just make money out of th a best magic money so how does that work it just issues payments and you said there something like 11 of these computers at treasury that are that are sending out trillions in in payments they're mostly a treasury uh some are with the sum at HHS some at there's one one or to at State uh there's some at DOD I think we found now 14 Magic Money computers okay they just send money out of nothing you have an ability to see

where leverage points are and and how things actually happen so I remember back I think it was September or October of this year before the election we didn't know who was going to win and I I was at your h house in Austin we were talking about it and and and you said you you you said look I I I don't want a job in in Washington you said all I want is the login for every computer and 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 what's interesting on this if I would have thought like okay how do you reform government like sort of the traditional way to think about it is okay give me an orc chart let me sit down with the people who are running agencies and and what you saw immediately is

to understand what's really going on get to the payment systems get to the computers yeah like like why are are why is getting to the computer so critical to understanding what's actually happening well the government is run by computers so you've got um essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government um and if you want to know did you know that Ben no like yeah so when somebody like even when the president issues an executive order that's going to go through a whole bunch of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere and if you want to know what what the situation is with the accounting you're trying to reconcile County and get rid of waste and fraud you must be able to analyze the computer databases otherwise

you can't figure it out um 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 um so the only way to reconcile the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is to um to actually look at the computers and see what's going on so you that's what I call that's like that's what I when I sort of cryptically referred to reprogramming The Matrix you have to understand what's going at the computers you have to reconcile the computer databases uh 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 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 it's it's not like we're sending truckloads of cash all over the place we're it's a we're wiring money right we're sending money through the a system or through the Swift system so in order for money to flow it's going to flow electronically so that's that's what you need to look at you need to look at the the the the actual electronic money flows and Tesla and all your companies

you have accounting and you have every expenditure you have it coded for what it's going for federal government doesn't work that way they don't code with the money's going for they do not but they didn't they didn't and and like one of the things that that 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 it's ordered uh and the the officers of the company would be imprisoned that's level of heiness in the federal government unfortunately it's deliberately or do you think this is in confidence again it's 80% it's 80% incompetence or and 20% malice so if if you look at 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 ingame where you've seen it all been able to process it all and fix it I mean are we years away months away uh not years um I I I I mean I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to get a trillion dollars of waste and fraud out uh and that that meaning that it will have we'll have a net Savings in FY 26 which starts in October obviously um of of a trillion dollars W provided we

allowed to we're allowed to continue and and we're and our progress is not impeded and and and we're very public about what we do yeah you put it on the website on the website how we could be more transparent uh literally every action we do small or large we put on the Doge dot.

gov website uh and we post on on the X handle um and when people complain about it I I I and they say oh you're doing something on cost well which of these con doing it in the daylight everyone knows exactly what you're doing extreme transparency yeah um I don't think it's 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 g go I could could go to a party in Hollywood and not get dirty looks yeah in fact uh yeah a and now you might not even get invited 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 uh yes I appear to be number two

I mean if you're judged by the various signs they it's derangements it's Trump derangement syndrome and Elon derangement syndrome how is it that for you that's a little bit of whiplash of going from being like Mr Cool to the devil incarnate in just a couple of years is that is that kind of weird to experience that transformation yes why do they hate you so much well because we're we're clearly over the target if Doge was ineffective if we were not actually getting rid of a bunch of Wast and fraud and a bunch of that fraud uh I mean the fraud we're seeing is over overwhelmingly on the on the left m i mean there's it's not zero on the right but uh these NOS are almost all leftwing NGS that are being funded for example y um so they they because doge is being

effective um and doge is getting rid of a lot of waste and for that they were that people in left were taking advantage of that that's that's that's what it comes out to and and the the the single biggest thing that they're that they're worried about is that um doge is is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements I mean everything from Social Security Medicare uh you know unemployment disability uh small business administ registration loans turn them off to uh illegals this is the Crux of the matter y okay this is this is the this is the thing that why why they really hit my guts and want me to die um 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 it's in it's wellth

of 100 billion maybe 200 billion um so uh by by using entitlements fraud the Democrats have been able to attra ract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and and buy voters and and buy voters exactly the it basically bring in I don't know 10 20 million uh people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat as has been demonstrated in California this is over it's an election strategy yes it's power yes and and it doesn't take much to turn the swing States blue I mean often a swing state might be won by 10 20,000 votes sure so if the Dems can bring in 200,000 illegals and over time get them leg legalized not not counting any cheating that takes place because there is some cheating uh but even without

cheating if you if you if you if you have if you bring in illegals that are 10x the voter differential in in a swing state it will no longer be a swing state right um and the the dams will win all the swing States just a matter of time um and America will be permanent deep blue socialist state where at the the house the Senate yep uh the presidency and the Supreme Court will all go hardcore Den they will then further cement that by by ex bringing in even more aliens so you you can't vote your way out of it their ob one party socialist State and it'll be much worse than California because at least California is mitigated by the fact that someone can leave California you can go to Texas yeah exactly you did they going to make everywhere California but wor

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 the the co actions U almost killed Tesla uh because they they let every other Auto Plant in the country was allowed to open but ours which was in California was not allowed to open wow wow so they almost killed Tesla so as a as a personal matter did do you ever regret it like five years ago you go to the Oscars and Mr Cool and now you're you've got death threats every day like do you 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 like like could they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch I mean the how many great movies have come out in the last several years very few depressingly few yeah very few the last Oscar came and went I don't even watch it there's nothing to see I I was sad that Jee Hackman just passed away because Unforgiven was spectacular but that was a long time ago that un forgiven came out you You' mentioned today here and before about the possibility of someone wanting to take you out dealing with the death threats we see it's not in my imagination you could just look on social media yeah but like is is it because very clear yeah and look I'm I'm very familiar with that and

they've got signs people with signs and demonstrations uh saying that I need to die do do you think are these just whack jobs or do you think there are foreign sane people do you think there are foreign entities behind this do you think there are domestic entities behind the the threats and also the attacks to Twitter like or not Twitter uh Tesla I mean you know you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire do do you think that's organized and paid for yes at least some of it is organiz has paid for um I think by domestic uh you know what basically leftwing organizations in America um funded by uh leftwing billionair essentially is it like act blue or what act blue is one of them um you know Arabella you know the classic it's funded by the you

know the the the blue basically the the left wing and cabal how big of a thread 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 the that Teslas are awesome the Cyber truck 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 in the president's Tesla parked right outside the West Wing which is the fullest damn thing you've changed a generation when you look at my kids are six and eight and they're

going dad buy a cyber truck and I'm considering it that's a 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 um yeah it seems often to be true you see like what uh what twist or turn of Fate uh well I the highest ratings if this was if we were a TV show what twistter fate would generate the highest ratings that there's a good chance that happens well I will say if if act blue and Arabella networks act blue is a huge scam next level do you think it's foreign money Chinese money where where do you think the money in act blue is coming from how do you figure that out well it's not coming from the in from a whole bunch of from a a ground swell of public support uh because when individual

donors looked at in act blue they a bun turn to be like die hard Republicans right people 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 $166,000 and they're like I don't give $116,000 what are you talking about this this Republican friends of mine found themselves on the ACT blue list and they're like it defin wasn't me so that's if it can act actually be shown that they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations that's objectively a criminal act that that is funding terrorist activity and and the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies so down is a terrorist activity yeah let me ask AI in 10 years how is life going to be different because of AI for 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 yeah yeah 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 was that intentional or just uh I was hoping he was gon to say yeah just to mess with you it's not meant to look like any any prior robot uh and we'll iterate the design um you and you you'll be able to have a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic you'll be able to switch out the kind of Snap-on cosmetic parts of the robot make it look like something

else if you'd like um so there will be ultimately billions of humanoid robots uh all cars will be self-driving in 10 years uh in 10 years probably 90% of miles driven will be uh autonomous huh wow that fast yeah in 5 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 like that a lot of people are understandably freaked out about that well I Goods goods and services will become as close to free so it's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services um so why is that what why are goods and services free in an AI world or close to free well you have I don't know pull

it tens of billions of robots uh that that they will they will make you anything or provide any service you want um for basically next to nothing um it's it's not that people will be uh will have a lower standard of living they'll have actually a much higher standard of living the the challenge will be uh fulfillment how do you derive fulfillment and meaning in life is Skynet real like like like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI how real is the prospect of of Killer Robots annihilating Humanity 20% likely maybe 10% on what time frame after to 10 years so soon like you you you see a world where that's possible yeah but I mean you could look at it like the glasses 80 90% full meaning like 80% likely will have extreme prosperity for all now I guess my

view we're in a race to to win AI we're in a race with China and my view is if they're going to be killing robots I'd rather they be American Killer Robots than Chinese How likely are we winning right now is America winning right now and How likely is America to win the race for AI Vis China or anyone else for the next few years I think America is likely to win uh then it will be a function of who controls the AI chip uh fabrication the factories that make the AI chips who controls them if they're control if more of them are controlled by China then China will win more of the factories that are making the AI chips you you think that will determine it yes and how are we doing versus China on that front well right now uh almost all the advanced AI chip

uh factories they call them Fabs um are in Taiwan and what if China invades Taiwan miles away from yeah if what what happens if China if China invades Taiwan what happens to the world well if they were to invade in the near term uh the worlder would be cut off from uh Advanced AI chips and currently 100% of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan how fast could we put that online in America and how important is that for National Security I think it's essential for National Security uh and we're not doing enough you're 53 years old I'm 118 days older than you by what the hell have I done in my life I know right 53 years old she did pretty well well so 71 was a great year and I was December 70 so I was just just right before you were the summer of 71 um I

born 69 days after 420 wow I I I I did ask Ben this is true all right you just you just open up 10 words I I did ask Ben should I show up and pull up a joint and say c can we beat Rogan's views but but I was pretty sure uh it might cause a scandal if if we SP house it just turned out to be like a chocolate cigar yeah let me ask you if If Today Was Your Last Day on Earth yeah what what I'm not suggesting it's going to be but if it were what do you think your biggest Legacy would be if everything you've done a hundred years from now what do you think people would remember if if if if it were zero to today and will you ever go to space uh in the in the distant future 100 or thousand years ago if SpaceX got humans to Mars that's what they would remember me

before all right final set of questions who's the smartest guy you've ever met you hang out with some brilliant people like like when you look what's a CEO you look at other than yourself what CEO do you say damn that guy's good Larry elon's very smart um so say Larry Alison's one of the smartest people um you know Larry pagee 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 does so you know what if what have they done that is difficult uh and significant um you know Jeff feos has done a lot of difficult and significant things things um I mean there are a lot of smart humans I call them smart 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 the first movie I saw in the theater was Star Wars so I think it had a profound effect on me I was six years old I think imagine if first movie you ever see in a theater it's Star Wars it's going to BL your mind best Star Wars movie um Empire Strikes Back the the only objectively right answer I stood in line for three hours with my dad to see it on opening day Kirk or peard uh I like them both but Kirk again objectively right answer by the way James T Kirk is a Republican and peard is a Democrat and and the left gets very mad when I say that yeah uh best Star Trek movie I mean the original the first Star Trek M that's in okay R of KH actually both both both Wrath of KH were pretty good but yeah the original

Wrath of KH Ricardo monoban revenge is a dish best served cold it is very cold in space although I will say rathon is objectively the right answer but but four is a sleeper when they go back to San Francisco and and and go find the whales and and you know Scotty picks up SPS picks up the mouth and talks to it then goes a keyboard how quaint that's a sleeper all right last question did Han shoot first H it seemed like he shot second I like it this is verdict and by the way I apologize Ben so Ben was a jock and played tennis at Old Miss and so so occasionally when when we geek out a little I love watching y'all geek out over there might have first over because the guy still on the question I he missed his the alien missed his Blaster shot so why did he

missed his Blaster shot must have been because he got shot first no he's missing a point blank Bassel shot if unless they got knocked off kill but it's a question of real consequence which is is Han Solo simply a hero or an anti-hero and and so I'm in the Han shot first category I don't like sanitized stories he would have had to have shot first because otherwi why why would the alien miss a Point Blank Range are you ever going to go to outer space is that say in your life yeah I'd like to go to Mars at some point and and people have said uh uh do I want to die on Ms 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 because you could have given them

a ride back and and and Joe Biden said no purely for politics yeah I mean you know there's been some uh debate about this online but the thing is that it was very a very high level decision so uh it wasn't really even a NASA decision it was just that um the Biden White House did not want to have someone who was Pro Trump uh rescuing astronauts right before the election um so they posted well if you're one of those astronauts you got to be pretty pissed off about that well if they're a Democrat yes Republican yes if a Democrat like everything's fine fair enough um so I think one of them is a republican one is a Democrat so depends which one you asked what year does man first set 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 unman 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 I don't think we're going to find aliens okay um but do we find ruins do we find remnants we may we may find the ruins of a long dead alien civilization that's possible and we may find uh Subterranean microbial life that's possible all right if man lands on Mars in 29 how soon after that do you land on Mars it remains to be seen I'm not sure the important thing is that we uh build a self-sustaining City on MOS as quickly as possible uh the the key threshold is when that City can continue to grow continue

to prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming at that point even if something would happen on Earth it might might it might not be World War III but it might be that uh a bad virus yeah yeah it might not be say like like say civilization could die with a bang or whimper it may be that Civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang um or and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars um but so you OB need Mars to be become self- sustaining and be able to grow by itself um before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming that that is the critical civilizational threshold Beyond which uh the probable lifespan of civil ation is much greater and how close are we technologically to be able to do that to have a self-sustaining settlement

uh 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 we don't have a few people running around the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self-sustaining right so you're going to need on the order of a million people uh maybe a million tons of cargo so but you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years yes and and what are what's the technology we're missing right now when you think about a million people on Mars do we have the ability to get water to get food to to keep them safe what I mean what what do we need to make that happen well you need to recreate the entire base of Industry of Earth so um

you know we're here at the top of of a massive perative industry that starts with mining uh V array of materials those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement uh we grow food obviously uh we grow trees we make things out of the trees uh there's you know you've got to you've got to build all that on M and M is a hostile environment it's um you know it sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on M really it's quite cold and how do you prep for that well in the beginning on Mars you have to have a uh a life support habitation module right like you need 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 a habitat uh what it might be Arcadia planetara um is one of the one of the good options that's uh one of my da is his named Arcadia after that um and what makes that attractive my eldest son's middle name is uh AR M you've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it my eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars when did you get the dream like I mean it's 20 now 2021 soon this is a decades old yeah dream so like 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 uh but the first fin off the first video game that I sold was a space video game called blastar and you've managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary

success uh yeah yeah look I mean that's just objectively right so what what has led to that because there are other smart people that that's not true and they gaze at their nebal 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 um 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 um 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 which then helped launch you to the next one and the next one yeah so I studied physics and economics in college is a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how the how reality Works um and then um was going to do a PhD at Stanford in um Advanced uh Ultra capacitors actually as a uh potential means of uh energy storage for electric transport um put that on hold to start an Internet company um essentially came to the conclusion that the internet was one of those rare things and I could either watch it happen while a grad student or participate and I figured I could always go back to grad school you know grad school is going to be kind of

the same but uh I I 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 a an internet internet company we did the first Maps directions Yellow Pages White Pages um on the internet I actually wrote the first version of the software software just by myself in 95 and um we ended up selling that to compact Texas company I guess yeah um for about $300 million in cash about four years after I graduated wow so I should say just to preface that I I graduated with about $100,000 in student debt so it wasn't uh yeah you and me both yeah yeah where's my right I know um and when I first arrived in North America I arrived with $2,500 a bag of books and a and a bag of clothes all right so you sell the

company for 300 million how how much does that change your life well I got $21 million Blackjack um and but I wanted to do more on the internet so started a company called X which mer with a company called confinity uh which is Peter teal and Max Leon yeah and um the combined company was actually at First still called x.

com but we later later changed the name of the company to PayPal uh because of all the name changes it's kind of confusing but the company that people know is know as as PayPal today was actually I filed those incorporation documents for that company interesting yeah well and and as you know Peter teal and I were buddies back in the mid90s he went and of this but you know I became friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New York and just sort of a young libertarian with with a lot of dreams so it's it's been a heck of a journey uh yeah yeah and now obviously Peter was involved in a coup uh you know we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation uh where um uh you know that they did CW me at at at PayPal um I kind of now did you all

make peace after that yeah yeah yeah I mean I was doing a lot of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful but um I then went on a two we trip which was a a dual money raising trip and honeymoon since I'd not done my honeymoon earlier in the year so I was raising money while doing doing H honeymoon but I was kind of a was how did that go by the way it worked it worked there you go kind of it worked ra money yeah yeah and we had a honeymoon there you go so yeah uh but you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary um so I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops um and um anyway uh we we patched things up and have been friends uh nonetheless and um yeah know these days I like stay at his house and

stuff so obviously we're friends and he's also invested in in most of my companies all right so 2002 you you start SpaceX like how do you start a rocket company like what's the first day where you're like I want to make rockets and I want to go to Mars like what what do you do on day one so I think you have to start with a some sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order for the in order to be in order to be highly motivated you have to have some um philosophical Foundation in my case it was um that that we want to expand the SC the scope and scale of Consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe um and in order to to expand expand Consciousness we need to go beyond One Planet if we're if we're on one planet there's there's

too much risk you know hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future but it may not there's always some risk that we are uh we self annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs y there's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket so it's going to be better if uh we're multiplet species and then once we're multiplan species The Next Step would be to be multi- stellar and have uh civilization among on on many different star systems so in 2001 I didn't think that I could I didn't think I could sell a rocket company so I I thought take some of the money from um PayPal and that 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 uh a philanthropic MOS 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 um in fact if you told people in 19 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 civilation did civilization collapsed stop yeah like like they would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now if you told people L 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 5 rocket that was that that could take people the moon and had the space

shuttle which could only go to lowth orbit um and then there really hasn't been anything to replace any no no vehicle has been made since then that can go to the moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket yeah so can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride so I remember you and I first met in 2013 when when I was a brand new baby Senator and I was still down in the basement office they stick freshman senators in basement office kind of like hazing yeah yeah I about say it sounds like there are 100 Senate offices but for six months you stay in the basement put you in your place but it's like wearing beanie they just uh they want you to know where you're supposed to be you know I got to say now 13 years into it I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing

that but you were down in the basement office and I remember you were coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air Force was not letting youall bid to to launch satellites and see you're 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 uh yes it's hard to believe that this is all real um because originally consistent with my belief that we need to become a multiplan species I thought the only way to do that would be through NASA so uh and I think I thought well if if I can just get the public excited about Mars then they'll do a mission to Mars and uh so my thought was to have to send a small Greenhouse

uh with seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel then land the greenhouse hydrate the seeds and you see these this the sort of money shot the money shot would be green plants on a red background yeah um I also recently learn that mon shot uh has a different meaning in some other Arenas but yeah I'm glad you very very different story but um what I'm trying to say is the the the captivating shot um would be the green plants on a red background um and that hopefully that would if we did something like that that would get the public excited about Mars that would increase NASA's budget and then we could send people to Mars so your original dream was NASA to do this yes not you no the original original plan was uh literally to to take a bunch of the money from PayPal

um and I guess by some people's definition Wast it with no no profit uh on a nonprofit thing to I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money money for free to get NASA's budget to be bigger so we could go to fraking Mars right wow that's what I wanted so that was the Holy Grill that's what I wanted I was like so when did you change go to Mars that's what I wanted to know when when did it strike you okay you're going to have to do this if you want I tell you it gets crazier all right it gets crazier so so then I couldn't afford any of the US Rockets because as you know the US Rockets are way too expensive the bo locky rock lucky Rockets are crazy money I didn't have I didn't even even with 180 million there no way I could have afford how much were they

back then well the the with with the additional stage to get to Mars it would have been about like 80 million so technically I could have afforded one of them but I wanted to do two in case one of them didn't work yeah so uh 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' be fine you know uh but ideally not all of it so I went to Russia twice to to try to buy icbms oh interesting how'd that go and who do you call uh the Russian rocket forces do they sell icbms does that work yeah you got to tell us the story then I want to know who you can buy anything in Russia yeah I I like please walk me down that I want to know how you made that phone

call and when you get there how did that work and what do you tell your friends you know listen I'm I'm going to Russia device of ICBM I I might not you know depends on the situation literally um so I guess slightly less insane when you uh when uh you understand that uh the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their icbms because of uh you know salt talks like the peace because of basically an agreement between the United States and and Russia to reduce the total number of icbms sure Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their icbms so took the very biggest icbms you could convert those into a rocket at an additional stage and and send something to Mars so so those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars to send a small payload to

Mars yeah so the ss8 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 um because I figured like look they're going to throw these things in scrapyard anyway you should get a really good deal yeah right um so the price started out at at 4 million then the next conversation there were at 8 million then the next conversation they were at like1 million and I'm like this is before we signed a contract by the way was there another bidder was there another bidder 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 if the price is increasing this much before the contract

signed yeah I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract signed so so I got pretty frustrated there um actually in some cases we got into like shouting matches in Moscow some guy shouting at me in Russia and I'm shouting back at him in really badly you know I'm like so you are all I mean you're all ining me off in Moscow yeah so uh man I should have recorded that that would have been one for them how many days were you there negotiating that first time I mean was this like ongoing yeah yeah this this took place these conversations took place over probably six months or so wow um so um and then the final trip trip there was with the uh with was with Mike Griffin who later became Assa administrator um I actually realized in the in the course of this

that my original premise was wrong that that America actually has plenty of will to go to Mars but needs that it just needs a way to go to Mars um that is Affordable um and that doesn't break the budget you know well as you know we couldn't even get to the space station we needed the Russians to to 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 that was pre Doge obviously but it was the only before SpaceX but but $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them 10 million is high yeah that's a lot of money yeah um so a few months ago you and I were down in Bach

chica with the president for a Starship launch and it is incredible what you built in Bach chica you know five years ago it was an empty beach at the southern tip of Texas sandar yeah and it's now a city and and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with with Incredible precision yeah but one of the things you you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to me is is is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talked to lots of CEOs they're like yeah we fight to guard our IP and and you had a very different approach what what's what's your view of Ip patent of the week Pat for those who innovate slowly I I literally do not know anyone else in business who would say something like that like like it was a startling

and and and and what Elon said down there is he said look this stuff I assume everyone will steal everything but by the time they steal it will be five generations Beyond and it won't matter yes um at at at Tesla we actually open source to live patents so we said our patents are anyone can use them for free really um yeah uh the only we only do patents at Tesla to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble so we'll try to look ahead say Okay patent trolls going to Tri P file patents to block certain things will file patents and then open source patent make it free I mean it when I say patents for the week now there are a few uh cases in in say with Pharmaceuticals where it might cost you a billion dollars to do a P3 uh human trial um but then subsequently

the the drug is very cheap to manufacture so cases there are some in my opinion which should massively reduce what can be patented um and and and say because the whole point of patenting is is to maximize Innovation not inhibit it m um and in my opinion it's maybe a controversial opinion um most patents inhibit Innovation they do not help it um but there are case I want to do want to single out cases like where such as a face3 clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars but the then the drugs thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacturer and and if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars no one will pay for the billion dollar a free riter Problem free riter problem exactly so you have to address the free riter 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 uh the hard 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 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 the Precision you man facture 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 you may even be better at execution which is how do you execute so effectively well I take a post physics post principal approach to everything it's not as though I I I wanted to insource manufacturing it's just that I was unable to Outsource it effectively so uh you know the idea in the beginning of Tesla was that we would Outsource almost all the manufacturing uh but then it turned out there was no there were no good companies to Outsource manufacturing too which there wasn't uh really really wasn't Peaceable outour manufacturing actually is uh the exception of the rule um and uh and just over time we had to ensource almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX I became very good at my facturing because I had to there's no choice

at this point I might know more about manufacturing than any any human ever has because I've done so many I've manufactured so many different things in so many different Arenas um I think probably more than anyone ever has look that's that sounds like an astonishing statement but it's not a crazy statement and and you're somehow running Tesla and running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company and running norlink and doing Doge how much do you sleep in a given night about 6 hours on average so about six so 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 and Ben he he's not kidding at that like when Elon and I were first getting to know

each other um I suggested I said hey let's grab dinner sometime and I don't know if you remember what you said you said I I don't eat dinner I don't have social dinners really right I mean that yeah you obviously eat food but the idea you're not going to restaurant for two hours but the idea of like I I don't but it was it was just kind of matter of fact why would I go to dinner like I you you work uh yeah I I literally just thought I'll have lunch and dinner BR during meetings and continue the meeting how many nights have you slept at your offices you think your career percentage wise where you say I just got to take this nap basically because my body forces me to and I got to get back to work fast and efficiently without going somewhere else well I

guess it started out even with with the first company uh sub2 which is a terrible name but the first internet company um the we were able to rent an office uh which was like in a leaky attic essentially for $500 a month and the the cheapest um apartment we could find was $800 a month so like and we only had about $55,000 between brother and I MH so we're like we're not we'll we'll we'll just stay in the office yeah uh so we got some um couches that converted into beds um and we'd uh kind of sleep at night and then we just have to like uh turn the the beds back into couches uh before anyone came and then we we sh the YMCA down the road and so that went that that that that literally was the for several months what we did uh was in great shape you know uh

work out out the why um I still remember that that YMCA at Page Mill alino uh in paloalto so that was a long time ago so it's been I don't know I've never thought to count it but uh several hundred days maybe I don't know so you're now the richest man on earth do you still sleep at the office well that's true maybe Mars we we'll we'll find someone else but I think if if someone is a sovereign head of a country that in facto richer by a lot do you still sleep at the office now I have slept at the office yeah well thank you Elon this this was this was awesome and and let me say and by the way I I put out on X the day before yesterday if you were having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything what would you ask and got lots of responses yeah the most

common response people said is is is say thank you look Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing you don't have to put up with this BS and you're doing it I'm grateful you're making a hell of a difference for this country I appreciate you and the Americans appreciate you thank you 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 don't forget we do this show Monday Wednesday and Friday hit that subscribe or Auto download button from the White House it's been a pleasure thanks for being with us on verdict we'll see you guys back here in a couple days [Music]