Verdict with Ted Cruz 17. März 2025 Elon Musk trifft Senator Ted Cruz und Ben Ferguson im Weißen Haus zu einem weitreichenden Interview über DOGE, Staatsverschwendung, Raumfahrt und Mars.
Elon Musk trifft Senator Ted Cruz und Ben Ferguson im Weißen Haus zu einem weitreichenden Interview über DOGE, Staatsverschwendung, Raumfahrt und Mars.
Transkript Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is 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 Musk's 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, Senator, because we have a special guest and we're in a special place. I'm going to let you do the
Ted Cruz
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 nobody has noticed.
Ted Cruz
The impact. Welcome, Elon.
Ted Cruz
Let me just say never a dull moment. Never a dull moment. The first 50 days the President has spent in office over the top and the first 50 days you've spent. I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an impact the way you have beginning. Well, 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?
Elon Musk
Well, it's hard to compete with the federal government.
Ted Cruz
What surprised you about the federal government? I assume you came in and assumed it was bad. Is it worse than you expected?
Elon Musk
It is worse than I expected. But on the plus side, that means there's more opportunity for improvement. So look, if you look on the bright side, there's, there's actually a lot of opportunity for improvement in federal government expenditures. Because it's so bad. If it was a well run ship, it would be very difficult to improve.
Elon Musk
But, but yeah. 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 any direction.
Elon Musk
And you're canvas.
Elon Musk
I'm sure you would agree.
Ted Cruz
So a lot of folks have talked about like, like you can't miss. Yeah.
Elon Musk
This is going any direction.
Ted Cruz
A lot of the crazy expenditures, things like like 2 million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala, an essential you know, transgendered mice and. And Sesame street in Iraq. A lot of that has gotten attention. But some of the stuff you've told me about, like, tell us about computer licenses and government agencies.
Elon Musk
Yeah. So most of what Doge is finding, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes. Okay. It's very obvious. Basic stuff. So in every government department, I say every. Because we've not yet found a single exception, there are far too many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department.
Ted Cruz
Like you were saying, like an agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses.
Ted Cruz
And even of the 15,000 employees, a good chunk of them hadn't used the license, had never logged on or used the application.
Elon Musk
Yes. We found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions where there were zero logins. So it had.
Ted Cruz
And yet we were paying for it.
Elon Musk
Yes. The government was paying for thousands of licenses of software or media subscriptions, and no one had ever logged in even once.
Ted Cruz
Or, like credit cards, you found the same thing with government credit cards.
Elon Musk
We found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans. And I still don't have a good explanation for why this is the case. And these are $10,000 limit cards. So it's a lot of money.
Ben Ferguson
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?
Elon Musk
Look, I think it's mostly. If you say, look, what's the waste to fraud ratio? In my opinion, it's like 80% waste, 20% fraud. But you do have these sort of gray areas.
Elon Musk
Example would be. So we saw a lot of payments going out of treasury that had no payment code and no explanation for the payment. And then we're. We're trying to figure out what that payment is. And we'd see that, okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off, but someone forgot to shut off that contract, and so the company kept getting money.
Elon Musk
Now, is that waste or fraud?
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. You're getting something you're not supposed to get.
Elon Musk
You're not supposed to get it, but the government sent it to you, and nobody from the government asked for it back. Take, for example, the $1.9 billion given to Stacey Abrams. A fake NGO.
Ted Cruz
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.
Ben Ferguson
That's not an accident.
Elon Musk
Allegedly it was for like environmentally friendly appliances or something. And they've given like 100 appliances so far for $2 billion. It's a very expensive toaster when held
Ted Cruz
an appliance that's sub zero fridge. Boy, it's nice, right?
Elon Musk
Obviously one of the biggest scam portholes we've uncovered, which is really crazy, is that the government can give money to a so called nonprofit with very few controls. And then that, and there's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit. So there's no. So this is with the, you know, 1.9 billion. Stacey Abrams. Who's, who's. They then give themselves extremely lavish, like insane salaries, expense everything to the, to the nonprofit. You know, buy jets and homes and all sorts of things.
Ted Cruz
Live like kings and queens.
Ted Cruz
On the taxpayer dime.
Elon Musk
Correct. You mentioned this is happening at scale. It's not just one or two. We're seeing this everywhere.
Ted Cruz
Now. One of the things you told me about is crazy is what you call magic Money computers. Tell us about it, because I never heard of that until you brought that up.
Elon Musk
Okay. So you may think that these, that the government computers like all talk to each other, they synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere and it's, you know, it's coherent that, you know, there's. And that the numbers, for example, that you're presented as a senator are actually the real numbers.
Elon Musk
One would think they're not. Yeah, Okay. I mean they're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases. So I call a Magic Money computer, any computer which can just make money out of thin air. Best Magic Money.
Ted Cruz
So how does that work?
Elon Musk
It just issues payments.
Ted Cruz
And you said there's something like 11 of these computers at treasury that are sending out trillions in payments.
Elon Musk
They're mostly Treasury. Some are, but there's some at HHS, some at. There's one or two at State, there's some at DOD. I think we found out 14 Magic Money computers. They just send money out of nothing.
Ted Cruz
You have an ability to see where leverage points are and how things actually happen. So I remember back, I think it was September, October of this year, before the election. We didn't know who was going to win. And I was at your house in Austin, we were talking about it and you said, look, I don't want a job in Washington. And you said, all I want is the login for every computer. And I remember thinking at the time that sounded kind of weird, like I just didn't get it. And I have to say what's interesting on this, if I would have thought, like, okay, how do you reform government? Like, sort of the traditional way to think about it is, okay, give me an org chart. Let me sit down with the people who are running agencies. And what you saw immediately is to understand what's really going on. Get to the payment systems, get to the computers.
Ted Cruz
Like, why are. Why is getting to the computer so critical to understanding what's actually happening?
Elon Musk
Well, the government is run by computers. So you've got essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government. And if you want to know.
Ted Cruz
Did you know that, Ben?
Elon Musk
Yeah. So when somebody, like, even when the President issues an executive order, that's got to go through a whole bunch of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere. And if you want to know what the situation is with the accounting and you're trying to reconcile accounting and get rid of waste and fraud, you must be able to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise you can't figure it out because all you're doing is asking a human, who will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally usually ask some contractor, will ask another contractor to do a query on the computer.
Elon Musk
That's how it actually works. So it's many layers deep. So the only way to reconcile the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is to actually look at the computers and see what's going on.
Elon Musk
That's what I call. That's like. That's right. When I sort of cryptically refer to reprogramming the matrix, you have to understand what's going on the computers. You have to reconcile the computer databases in order to identify the waste of fraud.
Ted Cruz
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.
Elon Musk
Yes. I mean, in order for money to go to event count, it's not like we're sending truckloads of cash all over the place. We're wiring money.
Elon Musk
We're sending money through the ACH system or through the SWIFT system. So in order for money to flow, it's going to flow electronically. So that's. That's what you need to look at. You need to look at the, the actual electronic money flows and Tesla and
Ted Cruz
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.
Ted Cruz
And, and like one of the things 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.
Elon Musk
Yes. If it was a public company, it would be delisted immediately, it would fail its ordered, and the officers of the company would be imprisoned. That's the level of healthyness in the federal government, unfortunately.
Ted Cruz
It's deliberately.
Ben Ferguson
Or do you think this is confidence again?
Elon Musk
It's 80%. It's 80% incompetence or, and 20% malice.
Ben Ferguson
So 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 end game where you've seen it all, been able to process it all and fix it? I mean, are we years away, months away?
Elon Musk
Not years. I mean, I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to get a trillion dollars of waste and fraud out and that, that meaning that it will have, we'll have a net savings in FY26, which starts in October, obviously, of a trillion dollars, provided we allowed to, we're allowed to continue and our progress is not impeded and we're very public about what we do.
Ted Cruz
Yeah, you put it on the website.
Elon Musk
I don't know how we could be more transparent. Literally every action we do, small or large, we put on the doge.gov website and we post on the X handle. And when people complain about it and they say, oh, you're doing something on cost usual, I'm like, well, which of
Ted Cruz
these cost you do it in the daylight. Everyone knows exactly what you're doing.
Elon Musk
Extreme transparency. I don't think it's anything's been this transparent ever.
Ted Cruz
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 could go
Elon Musk
to a party in Hollywood and not get dirty looks. Yeah. In fact. Yeah.
Ted Cruz
And now you might not even get invited. Think it's invited.
Elon Musk
But I don't know if I should go.
Ted Cruz
And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say today after Donald Trump, the left hates you more than any person on earth.
Elon Musk
Yes. I appear to be number two. I mean, if you judge by the various signs, it's derangement.
Ted Cruz
It's Trump derangement syndrome and Elon derangement syndrome. How is that for you? That's a little bit of whiplash of going from being like Mr. Cool to the devil incarnate in just a couple of years. Is that, is that kind of weird to experience that transformation?
Ted Cruz
Why do they hate you so much?
Elon Musk
Well, because we're clearly over the target. If those was ineffective, if we were not actually getting rid of a bunch of waste and fraud and a bunch of that fraud. I mean, the fraud, Reese, we're seeing is overwhelmingly on the left. I mean, it's not zero on the right, but these NGOs are almost all left wing NGOs that are being funded, for example.
Elon Musk
So they, they hate me because DOGE is being effective and DOGE is getting rid of a lot of waste. Before that, they were. That people on the left were taking advantage of that. That's, that's, that's what it comes down to. And, and the, the, the single biggest thing that they're, that they're worried about is that DOGE is, is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements. I mean, everything from Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, disability, Small Business Administration loans, Turn them off to illegals. This is the crux of the matter. Okay. This is the thing that, why they really hit my guts and want me to die.
Ted Cruz
And do you think that's billions? Hundreds of billions? What do you think the scale is of that?
Elon Musk
I think across the country, it's well north of 100 billion, maybe 200 billion. So by using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants.
Elon Musk
And buy voters. Exactly. And basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California. This is, it's an election strategy. Yes.
Elon Musk
Yes. And it doesn't take much to turn the swing states blue. I mean, often a swing state might be won by 10, 20,000 votes.
Elon Musk
So the Dems can bring in 200,000 illegals and over Time, get them legalized. Not. Not counting any cheating that takes place. Because there is some cheating. But even without cheating, if you bring in illegals that are 10x the voter differential in a swing state, it will no longer be a swing state. And the Dems will win all the swing states. Just a matter of time and America will be permanent deep blue socialist state. The House, the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court will all go hardcore them. They will then further cement that by bringing in even more aliens. So you just. You can't vote your way out of it. Their objective is to make it one party socialist state. And it'll be much worse than California because at least California is mitigated by the fact that someone can leave California.
Ted Cruz
You can go to Texas.
Elon Musk
Yeah, exactly. You're gonna make everywhere California.
Ted Cruz
But worse, by the way, the middle of the pandemic, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Elon. He was still in California. I was walking my dog, Snowflake and trying to convince you, come to Texas. The commies in California can't stand you. We love you, we want you here. And you didn't quite go then, but you went not that long afterwards.
Elon Musk
I mean, the COVID actions almost killed Tesla because every other auto plant in the country was allowed to open, but ours, which was in California, was not allowed to open.
Elon Musk
So they almost killed Tesla.
Ted Cruz
So as a. As a personal matter, 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.
Elon Musk
Well, these days the Oscars are boring. I wouldn't want to go, God bless
Ted Cruz
the movies they nominate no one on earth has ever seen. Like, like, could they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch?
Elon Musk
I mean, the. How many great movies have come out in the last several years? Very few.
Ted Cruz
Depressingly few.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Very few last Oscars came and went. I didn't watch it. There's nothing to see.
Ted Cruz
I was sad that Gene Hackman just passed away because Unforgiven was spectacular. But that was a long time ago.
Ben Ferguson
You've mentioned today here and before, about the possibility of someone wanting to take you out dealing with the death threats we see.
Elon Musk
It's not in my imagination. You could just look on social media.
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, but like, is, is it because.
Ted Cruz
And look, I'm, I'm very familiar with it.
Elon Musk
And they've got signs. They're people with science and demonstrations saying that I need to die.
Ted Cruz
Do you think? Are these just whack. Jobs or do you think there are
Elon Musk
hopefully foreign, not sane people?
Ted Cruz
Do you think there are foreign entities behind this? Do you think they're domestic entities behind the, the threats and also the attacks to Twitter? Not Twitter, Bob T. Tesla. I mean, you know, you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire. Do you think that's organized and paid for?
Elon Musk
Yes, at least some of it is organized and paid for, I think by domestic, you know, basically left wing organizations in America funded by left wing billionaires, essentially.
Ted Cruz
Is it like Act Blue or what?
Elon Musk
Act Blue is one of them, you know, was Arabella. You know, the classic. It's funded by the, you know, the, the blue. Basically the left wing NGO cabal.
Ben Ferguson
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 a Texas guy. I'm always going to have to. That burns gas. My kids, now all three of my boys think that, that Teslas are awesome. The cybertruck is the car they want their dad to buy. Which I laugh because I never could have imagined that five years ago. And now I'm looking at, well, we're
Ted Cruz
at the White House and the President's Tesla is parked, which is the fullest damn thing.
Ben Ferguson
But I mean, you've changed a generation. When you look at my kids are 6 and 8 and they're going, dad, buy a cyber truck. And I'm considering it. That's a full circle in a weird way.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Well, I do have this theory that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. So yeah, it seems often to be true. You see, like what twist or turn of fate would generate the highest ratings if we were a TV show. What twist or turn of fate would generate the highest ratings? There's a good chance that happens.
Ted Cruz
Well, I will say if, if ActBlue and Arabella Network is a huge scam.
Ted Cruz
Do you think it's foreign money? Chinese money? Where do, where do you think the money in ActBlue is coming from? How do you figure that out?
Elon Musk
Well, it's not coming from the, from a whole bunch of, from a groundswell of public support. Because when individual donors looked at in ActBlue eventually turn out 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 $16,000 and they're like, I didn't give $16,000. We talking about this is. Well, if those conferences mine found themselves on the list, they're like.
Ted Cruz
So that's if it can actually be shown that they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations. That's objectively a criminal act that, that is funding terrorist activity. And the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualify.
Elon Musk
So that's down is a terrorist activity. Yeah.
Ted Cruz
Let me ask AI, in 10 years, how is life going to be different because of AI for, for just a normal person?
Elon Musk
Well, 10 years is a long time. In 10 years, probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively. Probably almost. I think in 10 years, based on the current rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the smartest human. There will also be a massive number of robots, so humanoid robots.
Ted Cruz
By the way, I gotta ask, how come your robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot? Was that intentional or just.
Ben Ferguson
I was hoping he was gonna say
Elon Musk
yeah, just to mess with you. It's not meant to look like any prior robot. And we'll iterate the design and you'll be able to have a lot of the robot parts of 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're dying. So there'll be ultimately billions of humanoid robots, all cars will be self roving
Elon Musk
In 10 years, probably 90% of miles driven will be autonomous.
Ted Cruz
Huh, wow, that fast?
Elon Musk
Yeah. In five years, probably 50% of all miles driven will be autonomous.
Ted Cruz
Now if AI will be smarter than any person, how many jobs go away because of that? And what do people do if you've got billions of people that are losing their jobs like that? Lot of people are understandably freaked out about that.
Elon Musk
Well, goods and services will become close to free. So it's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services.
Ted Cruz
So why is that? Why are goods and services free in an AI world or close to free?
Elon Musk
Well, you have, I don't know, tens of billions of robots. They will make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing. It's not that people will have a lower standard of living, they'll have actually a much higher standard of living. The challenge will be fulfillment. How do you drive fulfillment and meaning in life?
Ted Cruz
Is Skynet real like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI? How real is the prospect of killer robots annihilating humanity?
Elon Musk
20% likely, maybe 10% on what time
Elon Musk
five to 10 years.
Ted Cruz
So soon you see a world where that's possible.
Elon Musk
Yeah, but I mean, you can look at it like the glasses, 80 to 90% full, meaning like 80% likely will have extreme prosperity for all.
Ted Cruz
Now, I guess my view we're in a race to win AI. We're in a race with China. And my view is if they're going to be killer robots, I'd rather they be American killer robots than Chinese. How likely are we winning right now? Is America winning right now? And how likely is America to win the race for AI vis a vis
Elon Musk
China or anyone else for the next few years? I think America is likely to win. Then it will be a function of who controls the AI chip fabrication, the factories that make the AI chips. Who controls them if they are controlled. If more of them are controlled by China, then China will win more.
Ted Cruz
The factories that are making the AI chips, you think that will determine it?
Ted Cruz
And how are we doing versus China on that front?
Elon Musk
Well, right now, almost all the advanced AI chip factories, they call them fabs, are in Taiwan.
Ted Cruz
And what if China invades 29 miles away from. Yeah. What happens if China, China invades Taiwan? What happens to the world?
Elon Musk
Well, if they were to invade in the near term, the world would be cut off from advanced AI chips. Currently, 100% of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan.
Ben Ferguson
How fast could we put that online in America? And how important is that for national security?
Elon Musk
I think it's essential for national security. And we're not doing enough.
Ted Cruz
You're 53 years old. I'm 118 days older than you, by the way. What the hell have I done in my life?
Ben Ferguson
I know, right?
Elon Musk
So 71 was a great year.
Ted Cruz
And I was December 70s. I was just, Just right before you were the summer of 71.
Elon Musk
I was born 69 days after 420.
Ted Cruz
Wow. I, I did ask then.
Ben Ferguson
This is true.
Ted Cruz
Look, it was true.
Ted Cruz
I did ask then. Should I show up and pull up a joint and say, can we beat Rogan's views? But. But I was pretty sure it might cause a scandal if we.
Elon Musk
It just turned out to be like a chocolate cigar. Yeah.
Ted Cruz
Let me ask you if, if today was your last day on Earth.
Ted Cruz
What? I'm not suggesting it's going to be, but if it were, what do you think your biggest legacy would be of everything you've done 100 years from now? What do you think people would remember if, if, if, if it were zero to Today.
Ben Ferguson
And will you ever go to space
Elon Musk
in the. In the distant future? 100 or 1000 years ago, if SpaceX got humans to Mars, that's what they would remember me for.
Ted Cruz
All right, final set of questions. Who's the smartest guy you've ever met? You hang out with some brilliant people. Like, when you look. What's a CEO you look at other than yourself? What CEO do you say? Damn, that guy's good.
Elon Musk
Larry Elson's very smart, so I'll say Larry Ellison's one of the smartest people. You know, Larry Page. I mean, there are a lot of people that are very smart. It's hard to say. Like, you know, I think to some degree, smart is as smart does.
Elon Musk
what have they done that is difficult and significant? Jeff Bezos has done a lot of difficult and significant things. I mean, there are a lot of smart humans. I call them smart for a human. A lot of people who are in the smart for a human category.
Ted Cruz
All right, final lightning round. Star wars or Star Trek?
Elon Musk
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 best movie you ever see in a theater is Star Wars. That's gonna blow your mind.
Ted Cruz
Best Star wars movie.
Elon Musk
Empire Strikes Back.
Ted Cruz
The only objectively right answer. I stood in line three hours with my dad to see it on opening day. Kirk or Picard? I like them both, but Kirk, again, objectively right answer. By the way, James T. Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat. And the left gets very mad when I say that. Yeah, best Star Trek movie.
Elon Musk
I mean, the original. The first Star Trek movie.
Ted Cruz
Maybe now that's in the.
Elon Musk
Okay, Wrath of Khan. Both Wrath of Cons were pretty good, but, yeah, the original Wrath of Khan.
Ted Cruz
Ricardo Montalban. Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in space. Although I will say Wrath of Khan is objectively the right answer. But. But 4 is a sleeper. When they go back to San Francisco and go find the whales and, you know, Scotty picks up. Picks up the mouth and talks to it. Then goes a keyboard. How quaint. That's a sleeper. All right, last question. Did Han shoot first?
Elon Musk
It seemed like he shot second.
Ted Cruz
This is verdict. And by the way, I apologize. Ben. So Ben was a jock and played tennis at Ole Miss. And so. So occasionally when. When we geek out a little.
Ben Ferguson
I love watching y' all geek out
Elon Musk
over there first, though, because the guy,
Ben Ferguson
he's still on the question.
Elon Musk
He must have the alien missed his blaster shot? So why do you miss his blaster shot? Must have been because he got shot first. Now he's missing a point blank blaster shot if, unless they get knocked off kill.
Ted Cruz
But it's a question of real, which is, is Han Solo simply a hero or an anti hero? And so I'm in the Han shot first category, I think. I don't like sanitized stories.
Elon Musk
He would have had to have shot first because otherwise why, why would the alien miss a point blank range?
Ben Ferguson
Are you ever going to go to outer space? Is that thing in your life goals?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I'd like to go to Mars at some point. And people said, do I want to die on Mars? And I say yes, just not on impact.
Ted Cruz
Now that's a very good answer. The astronauts on the space station, are they political prisoners?
Elon Musk
Some of them are.
Ted Cruz
Because, because you could have given him a ride back and Joe Biden said no, purely for politics.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some debate about this online, but the thing is that it was very, a very high level decision. So it wasn't really even a NASA decision. It was just that the Biden White House did not want to have someone who was pro Trump rescuing astronauts right before the election. So they pushed it.
Ted Cruz
Well, if you're one of those astronauts, you gotta be pretty pissed off about that.
Elon Musk
Well, if they're a Democrat, yes.
Elon Musk
But if the Democrat like everything's fine, fair enough. So I think one of them is a Republican Democrat. So it depends on which one you ask.
Ted Cruz
What year does man first step set foot on Mars?
Elon Musk
I think the soonest would be 29.
Elon Musk
And I don't think it's more than two to four years beyond that.
Ted Cruz
And that's not an unmanned, that's, that's a human being putting his foot on the surface.
Elon Musk
Yes. Best case would be 29.
Ted Cruz
And what do you, what do you put the odds of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life?
Elon Musk
I don't think we're gonna find aliens.
Ted Cruz
Okay, but do we find ruins? Do we find remnants?
Elon Musk
We may, we may find the ruins of a long dead alien civilization. That's possible. And we may find subterranean microbial life. That's possible.
Ted Cruz
All right. If man lands on Mars in 29, how soon after that do you land on Mars?
Elon Musk
Remains to be seen. I'm not sure. The important thing is that we build a self sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The, the key threshold is when that city can continue to grow. Continue to prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming. At that point, even if something were to happen on Earth, it might not be World War 3, but it might be that a bad virus. Yeah, it might not be anything. Those things is like say civilization could die with a bang or a whimper. It may be that civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang or and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars. So you obviously need Mars to become self sustaining and be able to grow by itself before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming. That is the critical civilizational threshold beyond which the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater.
Ted Cruz
And how close are we technologically to be able to do that? To have a self sustaining settlement on the surface of Mars?
Elon Musk
I think it can be done in 20 years.
Ted Cruz
But it would take 20 years. So we're not in 29, we're not there. What are we missing? What are the big technologies we don't have?
Elon Musk
A few people running around the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo. So.
Ted Cruz
But you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years?
Ted Cruz
And what, what's the technology we're missing right now? When you think about a million people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water, to get food, to, to keep them safe? I mean what, what do we need to make that happen?
Elon Musk
Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry of Earth. So you know, we're here at the top of a massive pyramid of industry that starts with mining a vast array of materials. Those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement. We grow food, obviously, we grow trees. We make things out of the trees. There's, you know, you've got, you've got to build all that on Mars. And Mars is a hostile environment. It's, you know, it sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on Mars, really it's quite cold.
Ted Cruz
How do you prep for that?
Elon Musk
Well, in the beginning on Mars you have to have a life support habitation module. Right. Like you need, you can't just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air.
Ted Cruz
Like a dome you think is likely.
Elon Musk
Yeah, glass domes type of thing.
Ted Cruz
Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely to be ideal for habitat?
Elon Musk
What might be Arcadia Planetaria is one of the good options. That's one of my daughters is named Arcadia after that.
Ted Cruz
And what makes that attractive?
Elon Musk
My other son's middle name is Aries. Mars.
Ben Ferguson
You've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it.
Elon Musk
My eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars.
Ben Ferguson
When did you get the dream?
Elon Musk
Like, I mean, it's 20 now, turning 21 soon.
Ben Ferguson
This is a decades old.
Ted Cruz
So like when you were 10, did you look up and say, I'm going to Mars?
Elon Musk
No, no. I read a lot of science fiction books and program computers, but the first, funnily, if the first video game that I sold was a space video game called Blastar,
Ted Cruz
And you've managed everything you've touched, has been an extraordinary success.
Ted Cruz
look, I mean, that's just objectively right. So what has led to that? Because there are other smart people that, that's not true. And they gaze at their navel and they don't do anything. So what, what do you do differently that makes you so effective?
Elon Musk
Well, I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity. I want to find out the nature of the universe, understand the universe. And in order to do that, we have to travel to other planets, see other star systems, maybe other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations, or at least the remnants of alien civilizations. Gain a better understanding of where is this universe going? Where did it come from? And what questions do we not yet know to ask about the answer that is the universe.
Ted Cruz
So let's go back 25 years. Late 90s, you're at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the success it was, which then helped launch you to the next one and the next.
Elon Musk
Yeah, so I studied physics and economics in college, which is a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how the, how reality works. And then was going to do a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultracapacitors, actually as a potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put that on hold to start an Internet company. Essentially came to the conclusion that the Internet was one of those rare things. And I could either watch it happen while a grad student or participate. And I figured I'd always go back to grad school. You know, grad school is going to be kind of the same. But 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 an Internet company. We did the first maps, directions, yellow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote the first version of software just by myself in 95. And we ended up selling that to Compaq Texas Company, I guess for about $300 million in cash, about four years after I graduated.
Elon Musk
So I should say, just to preface that I. I graduated with about a hundred thousand dollars in student debt, so it wasn't.
Ted Cruz
Yeah, you and me both.
Ted Cruz
Where's my 300 million?
Elon Musk
And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived with $2,500, a bag of books and a bag of clothes.
Ted Cruz
All right, so you sell the company for 300 million. How much does that change your life?
Elon Musk
Well, I got $21 million. Blackjack and. But I wanted to do more on the Internet, so started a company called X.com, which merged with a company called Confinity, which is Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. Yep. And the combined company was actually at first still called x dot com, but we later changed the name of the company to PayPal because of all the name changes. It's kind of confusing, but the company that people know as. Know as PayPal today was actually. I filed those incorporation documents for that company.
Ted Cruz
Well, and as you know, Peter Thiel and I were buddies back in the mid-90s before he went and did any of this. But, you know, I became friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New York and just sort of a young libertarian with a lot of dreams. So it's been a heck of a journey.
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. And now obviously Peter was involved in a coup. You know, we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation where, you know, they did coup me at PayPal. I kind of.
Ted Cruz
Now, did you all make peace after that?
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was doing a lot of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful. But I then went on a two week trip, which was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon instead. Not done my honeymoon earlier in the year, so I was raising money while doing it, doing honeymoon, but I was kind of awake.
Ben Ferguson
How'd that go over, by the way?
Ben Ferguson
It worked. There you go.
Elon Musk
It worked. I raised money.
Elon Musk
And we had a honeymoon.
Elon Musk
So, yeah, but you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary. So I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway, we patched things up and have been friends nonetheless. And these days I like to stay at his house and stuff. So we're friends. And he. He's also invested in. In most of my companies.
Ted Cruz
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?
Elon Musk
So I think you have to start with a, some sort of philosophical premise in order to have, in order for the, in order to be, in order to be highly motivated you have to have some philosophical foundation. In my case it was that we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe. And in order to expand consciousness we need to go beyond one planet. If we're on one planet there's too much risk. You know, hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future, but it may not. There's always some risk that we are, we self annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yep, there's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket. So it's going to be better if we're multi planet species and then once we're multi planet species that the next step would be to be multi stellar and have civilization among on many different star Systems. So in 2001 I didn't think that I could, I didn't think I could sell a rocket company so I thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal. In that case I think it was about $180 million after tax, something like that. And I thought I don't need $180 million so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic Mars mission to get the public excited about going back to Mars or going to Mars I should say. Yeah, Mars was always going to be the destination after the moon. Right. In fact, if you told people in 1969 that it would be 2025 and we've not even gone back to the
Ted Cruz
moon, let alone, it's hard to believe,
Elon Musk
let alone Mars, they'd be like, what happened? Did civilization collapse?
Elon Musk
Yeah, like it would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now. If you told people this after landing on the moon in 69, why do
Ted Cruz
you think in 50 years America never went back to the moon?
Elon Musk
Well, we destroyed the Saturn V rocket that was, that could take people to the moon and had the space shuttle which could only go to low Earth orbit. And then there really hasn't been anything to replace any. No vehicle has been made since then that can go to the moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket.
Elon Musk
So can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.
Ted Cruz
So I remember you and I first met in 2013 when I was a brand new baby senator and I was still down in the basement office. They stick freshmen senators in a basement office. Kind of like hazening.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I was about to say it sounds
Ted Cruz
like there are 100 Senate offices, but for six months you stay in the basement place. It's like wearing beans.
Ben Ferguson
They want, you know, where you're supposed to be.
Ted Cruz
I gotta say, now, 13 years into it, I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing that. But you were down in the basement office and I remember you were coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air Force was not letting you all bid to launch satellites. And so you were coming and saying, look, we got a company, I think we can do a really good job of this. And yet we're locked out of this. It's a little amazing to think the journey SpaceX has gone from then to now.
Elon Musk
Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real because originally consistent with my belief that we need to become a multi planet species, I thought the only way to do that would be through NASA. And I think I thought, well, if I can just get the public excited about Mars, then they'll do a mission to Mars. And so initially my thought was to have to send a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel, then land at the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see these sort of money shot. The money shot would be green plants on a red background. I also recently learned that money shot has a different meaning in some other arenas. But yeah, I'm glad you did.
Ted Cruz
Very different story.
Elon Musk
But what I'm trying to say is the captivating shot would be the green plants on a red background and that hopefully that would, if we did something like that, that would get the public excited about Mars, that would increase NASA's budget, and then we could send people to Mars.
Ben Ferguson
Your dream was NASA to do this?
Elon Musk
The original plan was literally to take a bunch of the money from PayPal and I guess by some people's definition waste it with no, no profit on a nonprofit thing. I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money for free to get NASA's budget to be bigger so we could go to friggin Mars.
Elon Musk
That's what I wanted.
Ben Ferguson
So that was the Holy grail.
Elon Musk
That's what I want.
Ted Cruz
I was like, so when did you change? Why?
Elon Musk
That's what I wanted to know.
Ted Cruz
When? When did it strike you? Okay, you're going to have to do
Elon Musk
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 Boeing, Lockheed rocket. Lucky Rockets are crazy. Money I didn't have. I didn't Even, even with 180 million, there's no way I could have afforded.
Ben Ferguson
How much were they back then?
Elon Musk
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.
Elon Musk
So. And then I didn't have enough money for that, and I was sort of prepared to, you know, I don't know, waste half the money. And I figured if I had 90 million left, that'd be fine, you know, but ideally, not all of it. So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.
Ben Ferguson
How'd that go? And who do you call?
Elon Musk
The Russian rocket forces?
Ted Cruz
Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, you got to tell us a story then I want to know who has it.
Elon Musk
Turns out you can buy anything in Russia. Yeah, I, I like.
Ben Ferguson
Please walk me down that. I want to know how you made that phone call and when you get there, how did that work?
Elon Musk
And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm, I'm going to rush advice in my CBMs. I, I might not return, you know, depends on the situation.
Elon Musk
Yeah, so I guess slightly less insane when you, when you understand that the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because of, you know, salt talks. Like, basically an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the total number of icbm.
Elon Musk
Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So you're talking the very biggest ICBMs. You could convert those into a rocket at an additional stage and send something to Mars.
Ted Cruz
So those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars.
Elon Musk
To send a small payload to Mars.
Ted Cruz
So you try to buy CBMs. Do you succeed or no? Or do you figure out you got to build your own instead?
Elon Musk
They kept raising the price on me, so. Because I figured, like, look, they got to throw these things in scrapyard anyway. You should get a really good deal. Yeah, right. So the price started out at 4 million. Then the next conversation they were at 8 million. Then the next conversation they Were at like 19 million. And I'm like, this is before we
Ted Cruz
signed a contract, by the way. Was there another bidder? Was there another bidder or were you the only one trying to buy them?
Elon Musk
I think. I don't know if there were other bids, but they didn't mention any other bids. Yeah, but I was like, man, if the price is increasing this much before the contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract. Yeah, so. So I got pretty frustrated there, actually. In some cases. We got into, like, shouting matches in Moscow. Some guy's shouting at me in Russian. I'm shouting back at him
Elon Musk
you know, I'm like, so you are all.
Ben Ferguson
I mean, you're all in.
Elon Musk
In Moscow. Yeah. So, man, I should have recorded that. That would have been wonderful.
Ben Ferguson
How many days were you there negotiating that? First time? I mean, was this, like, ongoing?
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. This, this took place. These conversations took place over probably six months or so.
Elon Musk
So. And then the final trip there was with the. With. Was with Mike Griffin, who later became NASA administrator. I actually realized in the course of this that my original premise was wrong, that America actually has plenty of will to go to Mars, but just needs a way to Mars that is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.
Ted Cruz
As you know, we couldn't even get to the space station. We needed the Russians to get us to our own space station.
Elon Musk
That was embarrassing.
Ted Cruz
It really was pitiful.
Elon Musk
I'm not sure most Americans, though, just how much we were being fleeced. Like, I think they got up to like $90 million a seat.
Elon Musk
Yeah. For a seat that cost them like 10.
Ted Cruz
That was pre doge, obviously, but it was the only.
Elon Musk
It was before SpaceX. But $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them 10 million is high.
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, it's a lot of money.
Ted Cruz
So a few months ago, you and I were down in Boca Chica with the President for a starship launch. And. And it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica. You know, five years ago, it was an empty beach at the southern tip of Texas sandbar.
Ted Cruz
And it's now a city and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision. But one of the things you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to me is you said your philosophy on intellectual property. I've talked to lots of CEOs. They're like, we fight to guard our IP. And. And you had a very different approach. What, what's. What's Your view of IP patents for the week?
Elon Musk
Patents of. For those who innovate slowly.
Ted Cruz
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.
Elon Musk
Yes, at Tesla we actually open sourced a lot of patents. So we said our patents are, anyone can use them for free.
Elon Musk
Yeah. We only do patents at Tesla to avoid patent trolls causing trouble. So we'll try to look ahead, say, okay, patent trolls are going to file patents to block certain things. We'll file patents and then open source patent. Make it free. I mean it when I say patents for the week. Now there are a few cases in, say with pharmaceuticals where it might cost you a billion dollars to do a phase three trial, but then subsequently the drug is very cheap to manufacture. So cases. There are some, in my opinion, which is massively reduce what can be patented and say. Because the whole point of patenting is to maximize innovation, not inhibit it. And in my opinion, it's maybe a controversial opinion. Most patents inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But there are cases I want to do want to single out cases like where, such AS a phase 3 clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars, but then the drugs thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacturer. And if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars, no one will pay for the billion dollars.
Ted Cruz
It's a free rider problem.
Elon Musk
Free rider problem. Yeah, exactly. So you have to address the free rider problem, but other than that, there should be no patents. The ideas are easy.
Ben Ferguson
You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get there faster and do things bigger.
Elon Musk
The idea is the easy part. The hard execution is the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's 1% inspiration, if not less than 1% and 99% perspiration.
Ted Cruz
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 yeah, the precision you manufacture things with, how do you get that level of precision? How do you get, how do you build a culture? You're not, you're amazing at thinking outside the box. But, but what's interesting is you're you may even be better at execution, which is, how do you execute so effectively?
Elon Musk
Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything. It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing, it's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So the idea at the beginning of Tesla was that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing, but that it turned out there were no good companies to outsource manufacturing to which there wasn't really, it wasn't feasible. Outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of the rule. And, and just over time we had to insource almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX. I became very good at manufacturing because I had to. There was no choice. At this point I might know more about manufacturing than any, any human ever has because I've done so many, I've manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas. I think probably more than anyone ever has.
Ted Cruz
Look, that's. That sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's not a crazy statement. And you're somehow running Tesla and running Space X and Running X and running the boring company and running Neuralink and doing Doge. How much do you sleep in a given night?
Elon Musk
About six hours on average.
Ted Cruz
So about six. So that's. It wouldn't have shocked me if you said three or four.
Ben Ferguson
So the next question is, how many
Ted Cruz
hours do you work a day?
Elon Musk
I work almost every waking hour.
Ted Cruz
And Ben, he's not kidding that like when Elon and I were first getting to know each other, I suggested, I said, hey, let's grab dinner sometime. And I don't know if you remember what you said. You said, I don't eat dinner.
Elon Musk
I don't have social dinners. Really.
Ted Cruz
Right. I mean that. Yeah, I mean you obviously eat food, but the idea you're not going to restaurant for two hours. But the idea of, like I said, I don't. But it was, it was just kind of matter of fact, why would I go to dinner? Like I. You jump, you work.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I literally just have lunch and dinner, bro. During meetings and continue being.
Ben Ferguson
How many nights have you slept at your offices? You think your career, percentage wise, where you say, I just got to take this nap basically because my body forces me to and I got to get back to work fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.
Elon Musk
Well, I guess it started out with the first company, Zip2, which is a terrible name, but the first Internet company, we were able to rent an office which was like in a leaky attic, essentially for $500 a month. And the cheapest Apartment we could find was $800 a month, and we only had about $5,000 between our brother and I. So we're like, we're not. We'll just stay in the office. So we got some couches that converted into beds, and we'd kind of sleep at night. And then we'd just have to, like, turn the beds back into couches before anyone came. And then we'd share at the YMCA down the road. And so that went. That literally was the. For several months, what we did. I was in great shape, you know, work out the way. I still remember that. That YMCA at Page Miller, El Camino in Palo Alto.
Ted Cruz
So that was a long time ago.
Elon Musk
So it's been. I don't know. I've never thought to count it, but several hundred days maybe. I don't know.
Ted Cruz
So you're now the richest man on Earth. Do you still sleep in the office? Well, that's true. Maybe Mars will find someone else.
Elon Musk
But I think if someone is a sovereign head of a country, they're de facto richer by a lot.
Ted Cruz
Do you still sleep at the office now?
Elon Musk
I sometimes slept at the office, yeah.
Ted Cruz
Well, thank you, Elon. This was. This was awesome. And let me say. And by the way, I put out on X the day before yesterday. If you were having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything, what would you ask? And got lots of responses.
Ted Cruz
The most common response people said is. Is. Is say thank you. Look, Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing. You don't have to put up with this bs and you're doing it. I'm grateful. You're making a hell of a difference for this country. I appreciate you and the Americans appreciate you.
Elon Musk
Yeah. It's essential for the future of civilization, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
Elon Musk
It's not like I want to get death threats, you know.
Ben Ferguson
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.