X Spaces: Vivek Ramaswamy mit Musk & Sacks 29. Juli 2023 Der republikanische Präsidentschaftskandidat Vivek Ramaswamy sprach mit Musk und David Sacks in einem X Space über seine Kampagne und politischen Positionen — Teil von Musks Reihe von Kandidatengesprächen.
Der republikanische Präsidentschaftskandidat Vivek Ramaswamy sprach mit Musk und David Sacks in einem X Space über seine Kampagne und politischen Positionen — Teil von Musks Reihe von Kandidatengesprächen.
Transkript Elon Musk
All right, David, do you want to take it off?
David Sacks
Yeah. Hey everyone, thanks for joining us today. We're here with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is an American business leader and New York Times best selling author. He's the founder of Strive, which is an Ohio based asset management firm that competes with BlackRock, State Street Vanguard. Before that, he founded and led a successful biotech company called Roiven Sciences, where he oversaw the development of new drugs that went on to become FDA approved. Bloomberg has called him a leading anti ESG crusader and the New Yorker dubbed him the CEO of Anti Woke Inc. He's a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School. He is the son of two immigrants. He's married to Apoorva, who is a throat surgeon and he's the father of two sons, age 3 and 1. So with that, Vivek, thanks for joining us today.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes. Good to be on guys. I'm looking forward to more of a conversation than just a pre scripted speech here. But David, can you hear me pretty well? Yeah, yeah, we can hear you.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sweet. Nealon, it's good to, good to finally meet you, man.
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah, I look forward to meeting. Yeah, looking forward to this. Yeah, it's good. But I mean that was a great intro by David and I to say I agree with all those, everything that was articulated and congratulations on everything you achieved so far. And I think, you know, actually I think people would just like to know more, you know, more about you and, and yeah, I guess whatever you'd like
Vivek Ramaswamy
to say sounds good. We'll, we'll kick this off. Most people have barely heard of me and, and this presidential race is, is just getting warmed up. But yeah, my parents came to this country 40 years ago with almost no money and I've gone on to found multibillion dollar companies, not, not Elon Musk level yet, but, but nonetheless, companies that have, you know, impacted people's lives in a positive way. And I did it while getting married, following my faith in God and bringing two sons into this world who we raise today. And I am genuinely worried that that American dream will not exist for my two sons and their generation unless we do something about it. I think for a long time we've been running from something. And the reason I entered this race, I did not expect to be running for president, but I saw a field certainly on the Republican side forming where I saw a lot of people who were running from something. I didn't see anybody who was running to something. And I think that's what we need to do.
Elon Musk
Well, I Think you've got a really sort of a point there in that. Like, I think there's this. There's actually sometimes quite a pessimism about the future. And with people like, well, I think there's some degree, like, well, what should we do? Like, what is the good future? You know, um. And, you know, obviously, both. There's both those that are religious, and that's. I certainly respect that. But then there's. There's also, like, you know, just if you're not necessarily religious or even if you are, it's like. It's like, well, okay, what's the. What's the point of existence? Yeah. You know, what. What should we be doing? And how would we know if it was better?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. I think that these are the questions we should be asking. And I think we live in a moment, Elon, where, like, I'm speaking to you, right. As a member of my generation, in some ways, I'm 37. I'm the first millennial ever to run for US president as a Republican. And I think that the thing that's going on in our generation is that we are all so starved for purpose and meaning and identity. Yeah, I think that. And I think we're hungering to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and yet we haven't yet identified what that is. You know, I think some of this is beyond my pay grade. Right. I think some of this is for pastors to take on the revival of God, the revival of faith in something truly higher. That is true. But I'm doing one small part of this. Okay. There's some small role for the revival of national identity, too. Right? Answer. What it means to be an American. That's something. That's. People, you know, my age or younger, what does it mean to be an American? You get a deer in the headlights response, like, whoa, what was that? What did you just ask me? And I think if we fill even that vacuum of national identity with a clear answer to that question, that's what it means to be a citizen of this nation. And if it's a different nation, so be it. That nation has a clear answer to their question, too. But I'm worried about this country that fills part of that vacuum, that void. And that's what I think. That's. That's what I'm saying. That's what gets me going. And I think that's part of the answer to the question.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I think we should, like. We should, like, aspire to be the good guys, you know?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, what do you mean by that. Yeah, I don't know.
Elon Musk
I mean just, you know, like I kind of, you know, grew up watching a lot of American movies and TVs and reading comics and whatnot. And you know, I actually sort of the, I like the. There was a morality to America that I think is actually quite good. It's like, like this notion that there is actually good. There is not, it's not, it's not just all relative, you know, sort of a relative morality that there is good and the good and the absolute and that. And that we, you know, we should try strive to be a good civilization, a good, good people that, you know, where we treat each other well and work hard and you know, build great new things. And that seems like, you know, what we should be trying to do and just trying to understand more about the nature of the universe and like our place in it and you know, where are we today? You know, like that's why I'm like a big fan of expanding the scope and scale of humanity, of expanding consciousness and saying that civilization is a good thing, not a bad thing. And, and it's, you know, and really it's something we should further and, and ultimately, you know, be a multi planet species, like a space frame civilization, you know, and make true the things that we see, we've seen in science fiction that let that, but let that not always be fiction.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So and I love that because I think that you and I are in some ways on a similar mission but going in, in complementary but different directions. Right. I think that there is such a thing as truth. There is such a thing as the good. And.
Elon Musk
Well, yes, I think, I think if you say like this truth with acknowledged error, like is important. Which you know, to say like we think this is true might be wrong. You know, generally speaking I think is. But I think one can aspire to get closer to the truth.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Absolutely. And there's. What are the conditions that allow one to aspire to truth? I think that this platform we're having this conversation on, I think you bought it at least with part of the aspiration of believing that the free exchange of ideas is part of the path that leads to truth. And you know, I think each of us is different. It is interested in different spheres. Right. I think part of your passion, it seems is expanding to the frontiers of the universe beyond this earth being, exploring, being the pioneers, the explorers, even on other planets. I look at. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elon Musk
And to be totally clear, I like, I for sure am fan of like hey, let's not mess this planet up.
Vivek Ramaswamy
You know, fair enough, fair enough.
Elon Musk
You know, it's not like, you know, I'm like, hey, let's escape to another planet.
Elon Musk
I'm like, let's just make sure things are cool on Earth. But then, like, hey, it'd be nice if like Star Trek and, and, you know, was real one day. You know, like the cool science fiction,
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think that'd be. I think that'd be phenomenal. And, and I think that for me, my passion is all right, leaving those two, again, a higher pay grade than mine. But I think part of the truth we can rediscover, part of what is good is the revival of things like individual self worth on this planet, a sense of grounding in family, a sense of grounding in the nation. And I think that all of this too is even. Even long before we get to Mars or long before we get to another frontier, as I think would be great for expanding the frontier of human achievement and exploration. There's exploration within, right? I think we're like, you know, we, the analogy sometimes uses, we're like, you know, we're like a bunch of blind bats flying around in a cave trying to figure out where we are, right? And that cave could be the universe, and that cave could just be a cave on this Earth. But, you know, we send out sonar signals and they bounce back and they say, hey, this is where I am. Because I'm blind, I can't really see where I am. And so what are those things that bounces off of? Could be family. Could be my grounding in the fact that I'm a citizen of this nation. That is true. That means something to me. Could be my faith that I believe in God, that, you know, I'm a person of this faith. I'm an individual. I worked hard, I created something. Could be the company that I work for or that I created, that bounces back and tells me this is where I am. And so I think there's a lot of that to do at home. And I just think that, you know, our pursuits are in some ways complimentary, Elon. But I think that we live in a moment where a lot of those other pillars right here at home on Earth, even in the United States of America, even in central Iowa, where I am today, those pillars have disappeared. And I think part of what's happening is we send out these sonar signals and then nothing comes back and we're lost. And that's where I think we are. And so my mission is to rebuild some of those basics.
Elon Musk
Okay, well, I mean, I Think we should definitely not lose like pride in America. Like we should be proud to be American. And I certainly am. And you know, you know, sometimes it feels like there's like quite a weird, like anti American, self destructive element, especially in like the, you know, elite circles within the US which seems kind of crazy to me. And at some of the colleges and high schools, they like, in a lot of cases they're like teaching it's bad to be an American. I'm like, this is insane. You know, it's like, it's not true.
David Sacks
Well, in San Francisco, they ripped Abraham Lincoln's name off one of the high schools.
David Sacks
other examples where George Washington statue is being ripped down.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Right. And I think this is just a symptom of, you know, we say we hate America, but it's really a form of self hatred, even at the individual level. Yeah, right. We want to flog ourselves for success. It's the same mentality for why kids in school. A kid who graduates at the top of his class in high school and most public schools in this country has to hide his achievement because achievement isn't cool. Well, America is about achievement in many ways, and so America's not cool. So I think it's a symptom of the loss of self worth. And it's not an easy thing to ask how we revive that. Right. I think we observe the problem and that part's in some ways easy to do. I think what we do to build up that self confidence that we've lost is whether it's the self confidence to start a small business or the self confidence to set out to mars, or at least the self confidence to say, I'm a citizen of the nation founded on the most admirable ideals in human history and I'm gonna be proud of that. That ain't gonna be easy, but I think that is the challenge that, you know, whoever leads this country, and I'm aiming to be that person next, I think in the next 20 years, if we don't get this right, I don't think we're gonna have a country of the same kind of that we will be talking about American exceptionalism anymore. And I think that will be not just a loss for the United States of America. I think that will be a loss for the world. Because part of America's role in the world is to provide an example of what is possible when you have a country founded on those ideals. And once you start apologizing for those ideals, I think that's going to be a permanent loss for history. And so, you know, I have thoughts on this. Maybe you have thoughts on this too. But identifying the problem, I think we're all seeing it with clear eyes. What we do about it, I think is going to be a. Is a tougher question. And I have my views on it. But, you know, Elon, maybe you do too. Yeah, yeah.
Elon Musk
Stop this nonsense immediately and castigate the educational system for teaching kids such nonsense. You know, like, what the hell's going on? And like the donors to these universities and, you know, high schools and whatnot should be like rescinding their donations and saying, what the hell are you guys doing?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, that's a start. You know, a big part of this is the federal government.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Federal government's a big problem too. I mean, you talk about those local schools, what the heck are they doing? That comes from the US Department of Education. So it's a little bit invisible to a lot of people. It's not just the school boards that parents are happily now engaged in. The US Government says you don't get money from the federal government, which covers about 10% of public school budgets in this country, unless you adopt these toxic self hating, you know, racial and gender ideologies. But it's broader, broadly, more of a national self loathing ideology. And I think that like many things, this is solvable.
Elon Musk
We're paying people to hate America.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, we are. Yes, we are. And I think that's solvable. That piece of. It's solvable. Yeah. I mean, this is like we're just
Elon Musk
punching ourselves in the face here. I suggest we stop punching ourselves in
Vivek Ramaswamy
the face and this gets back to religion. Elon, you want to know why? Because it's like a self flogging, right? It's like wearing a hair shirt. This is sort of religious practice people, you know, engage in. This is an interesting feature of. Exist in certain Christian tradition, exist in certain Hindu traditions, exist in basically every major tradition in the world is there's some sect that does engage in a short form of self flogging. And so I think what's happening here is we have a group of people in our country right now who are again, hungry to be part of something bigger than themselves, have a hole the size of God in their heart and traditional religion or God doesn't fill it. They engage in a different kind of self flogging instead. I believe, by the way, I believe that's much of what the climate cult internationally is all about, is a substitute for religion, self flogging. But I Think the same goes for American self hatred. It's complicated.
Elon Musk
Completely disagree with the climate stuff.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We can go into that. You want to go into that a little bit?
Elon Musk
I think as an individual I might have, as an individual I think I might have done more to help with climate things than any, any other individual by pretty, pretty big margin. And so sometimes people like will bizarrely think I'm like right wing or something. I'm like, I've been like literally pouring blood, sweat and tears next level into saving the environment. What are you talking about? It was so insane. So I, I, I, at least I perceive myself to be a moderate and I, and I, and I aspire to be a moderate and, and, and reasonable and, and not to take and like just to you know, care about our fellow humans and further civilization. And, and you know, I think part of it also is that the United States has been the on top for such a long time that there's a certain complacency that results when you've been winning for like the United States really has been winning for so long and it's like, it's like a pro sports team that has been winning for so long, you get a little complacent, you know, and, and that's, I think we should be wary of that. We should not be complacent. And you start thinking like there aren't any external enemies. Just like with ancient Rome. If Rome didn't have an external enemy, they would have civil war.
Elon Musk
And so in the absence of, you know, if you just perceive yourself to be essentially invulnerable, then it become internal conflict is a natural consequence of that because there are no external enemies. Well, look, I think in reality there sort of are, or at least there is external competitors, you know, and we're obviously facing a huge transition that's happening in the world today is obviously the rise of China and the fact that the Chinese economy is probably going to be two to three times the size of the US economy. This is really a big change because for as long as anyone's been alive, the United States has the biggest economy in the world. But if in the case of China you simply said assume a DP per capita efficiency relative to the US of 70%, that would be roughly equivalent to a billion people in the US or three times our current population. So the probability is like really trying to, we will be in a rather odd situation that no one actually can even remember where there is an economy twice our size.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, so I think that that's correct on the Trajectories. I think there's a couple points in there, Elon, really important points that. That are actually encouraging for the United States, oddly enough. What was your point about? The fact that our success bred our entitlement. Right. It's inevitable. It is just history. Right. Success breeds entitlement.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And it's normal for.
Elon Musk
It's a human thing.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's a human thing. And then entitlement breeds laziness. And then, of course, victimhood, culture follows because victimhood vindicates laziness. And you saw this in Rome too. And so I appreciate the Ancient Roman Empire analogy. Actually, my second book was all about exploring whether or not we are at the equivalent of the end of the Roman Empire. Yeah. And which we should be worried about. I think we should be talking about it. We should be talking about it. So I had took a dark turn during that book midway through Nation of Victims, and halfway through the book, I concluded that actually we should be so lucky as to be Rome, because Rome lasted a couple thousand years. Right. If you go in the second half and you know, we might be more like Carthage, which only lasted a few hundred. Yeah. But I. Well, actually depends for quite a long
Elon Musk
time, but definitely got short circuited there.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, it did. It did. And so. And so I think that that was one version of it. But actually my more careful study of it was that we talk about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It turns out there were many rises and many falls, actually.
Vivek Ramaswamy
There was no one rise and one fall. And I kind of see the rise of this American experiment the same way. I think there will be many rises and there will be many falls. But I don't think we're done with this ball game yet. I think we are still can. We still can be in our ascent. And so just the arithmetic of it, Elon, you're right. If you extrapolate the existing GDP growth rate curves and linearly play them out on a compounding rate. It's exactly what you said for China in relation to the US that is a big part of the reason why, leading the country as US President. One of the core things I've prioritized is actually making GDP growth a metric that we actually care about in this country. And in some ways, I'd rather measure economic prosperity than some other metric that we've chosen, carbon emissions, or whatever the metric of the day may be. Let's actually choose the one that better tracks the prosperity and might of our country over the next 50 years. And I think it's actually going to be more achievable than we've made it out to be.
Elon Musk
Well, I mean, we want to make sure that the United States remains very much a meritocracy, that that is a function of someone's skill and hard work that results in their success and that we do not have any sort of an entrenched, you know, rich class effectively. So this is very important because otherwise results in sort of ossification of society. So we want to remain really merit focused. We want to obviously, I think, try to attract the people from around the world who are also merit focused and wish to join the country and we should make it much easier for them to join.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I agree with that. I actually fully agree with that. And that's one of the things where I think the Republican Party needs to define where we actually stand. There is an anti legal immigration current that, you know, which is. Which, which. Which I'm going to be on the debate stage in a month. And this is going to be something that if anybody has any, any qualms with this, you know, I think I'm going to have a real problem with that because merit based immigration is one of the fixes to economic growth in this country. But merit is the key though, really.
Elon Musk
In fact, I think I want to say it in a way that I think everyone can understand, which is imagine America's a pro sports team. We want to win the championship, we want to keep winning the championship. And there's some ace players on another team and they really want to join our team. And now we can make them fight us or we can have them join our team and just crush. And I think if eighth players want to join our team, please do. That is the way to continue success.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Exactly. And welcome back.
Elon Musk
And not have all these ridiculous obstacles.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I think part of the reason you have that reaction is to play your analogy. Instead, what we have is somebody who doesn't even sign up for the team just gets to show up on the field. And that's what we have now, which creates a backlash from the existing team members to say we don't want any more, when in fact what we should be saying is we want the best ones who come and follow the process for actually training and joining the team. And that's what I think merit based legal immigration ought to be about. But I do think that this is achievable. Right. I think that if you view it, even if you play the Roman analogy, just to think about this in the big arc of history, if you count the eastern half, it's 2,000 years. And in that case, here's what I think is going on is as a nation, we're not at the end of the Roman Empire. We're really just a little young actually going through our own version of adolescence, figuring out who we're going to be when we grow up. And then when you view it through that lens, Elon, it kind of takes the temperature down a little bit where yes, we're going through this identity crisis. Yes, we're going through this national self flogging, a self loathing, the kind that most people, including me, certainly did experience a little bit when going through adolescence. But you get to the other side of it stronger if you actually get there to our national adulthood. And so I'd like to think that's where we are not in decline, but in our ascent. Maybe not even at base camp yet, on our way to the mountaintop.
Elon Musk
Definitely take that attitude. I agree. That's like totally the right attitude to have. Like, I, I hate this. I just know this defeatist BS that's right. That they're teaching kids needs to stop. That's why I'm saying like, you know, funders should revoke funding from schools that teach this nonsense. And a lot of it is happening. So that's people donors are unaware of and they should just go, hey, hey. Like, hey, go pay attention to what your money's doing. And it's, it's doing some very foolish things and revoke funding. You know, if they keep teaching, you know, kids that America is somehow evil, which is insane.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's donors, Elon. It's school people. Donors to schools. It's also, frankly, people who don't know this. I know you know this, but many people don't. Is their own retirement accounts are causing corporate America to adopt the same philosophy too. Right. Voting for equity audits at a corporate board is in some ways a manifestation of that same philosophy. And what we don't know is our own money is being used to do it. Be a taxpayer money or 401k money. And some of this is easily solvable.
Elon Musk
Yes. I mean, there's a fundamental governance issue that you've highlighted here where because I think it's roughly half the stock market are passive or index funds, meaning they're just following, you know, an index or something. And these will be at Fidelity, blackrock, T. Rowe, all the normal sort of, you know, retirement places.
Elon Musk
But when. But those votes are then outsourced to usually one of two organizations, Institutional Shareholder Services, who I sometimes call the isis.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's about the right use case. I always wondered what the difference was between isil. ISIL and isis. Now I know which one's isis. That's good.
Elon Musk
Yes. Sometimes they behave like corporate isis. And then this glass Lewis, those are the two main ones. There are a few others. But effectively when the, you know, when half the stock market is outsourcing the voting decisions to what amount to a handful of activists or people who certainly have an agenda at these glass doors and iss, you've essentially got a handful of people voting half of the public software.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And Elon, you are aware of my last company before running for president or you know, you strive. I mean this was my whole premise, right? Taking this off. So I started, I mean my, my bigger company that I founded is a biotech company. Got a bunch of medicines that are FDA approved. But this is a different, this is a different adventure. Last year, last August and actually our, you know, mutual friend Peter was one of the, one of the backers of the company to help get it off the ground, but was an index fund provider actually, which created index funds where the premise of the index funds was that you actually vote according to whatever maximizes value by providing excellent products and services. By literally not saying that there's, you're going to divest from certain companies or invest in others. Many people play that game, but just say no. It's the same passive exposure. Oh, and then by the way, there's a separate arm of it that does proxy voting on behalf of people who don't want to be stuck with the duopoly. And so I believe all else equal, I want to see the government stay out of this as minimally as they can to solve these problems. This should be solved through the market. People gravitated to it, you know, you know, got, got off the ground pretty quickly. But it's, it's going to require seeing these complicated challenges which are different than the classical threats to liberty or culture that we saw half a century ago.
Elon Musk
Yeah, Well, I think like fundamentally here the public is, is being misled and they don't realize they're being misled in that they've given their savings to these 401k plans and these index funds and that's what really constitutes half the market. And they're on the assumption that the way that those shares will be voted is in the shareholder interest that will maximize their ultimate return and have the best sort of retirement savings and that kind of thing. But actually that is not what is occurring. In fact, the votes are in many cases contrary to the shareholders interest.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Oh, they're directly contrary to them. So I'll give you two funny examples.
Elon Musk
But the public doesn't know this.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's totally invisible. It's totally invisible. So I mean this is been. I've tried my best. I wrote two books in the last couple of years about it. But you reach it's their technical subjects. And the thing I've realized is it is designed to be technical for a reason. And that says a lot about why we see technocratic abbreviations like esg. It sounds boring. You know, cbdc, whatever it is, it's designed to sound boring for a reason is we want to make it difficult for people to see the way in which their own investment accounts say are weaponized against their own best interests on that particular case. Elon, this is probably, I think I'm an antitrust skeptic mostly, but if you believe in antitrust law, this is arguably the largest antitrust violation in human history of the same three firms being the largest shareholders of major competitors and of each other at the same time using their votes in a coordinated dogma as a signatory of the same social commitments because the same pension funds are interested in them or invested in them. But the real question is, yeah, no,
Elon Musk
I think all those like, you know, blackrock, Fidelity, T. Rowe, all need to be like, hey look, the boats are going to be to maximize shareholder value, not for some, you know, random sort of work or other agenda that the, these outsourced shareholder services companies are promoting. Which is, is that, that's basically what I'm saying is like, you know, Tiro, Black, blackrock, Fidelity, they're breaking the deal.
Elon Musk
With the, with their customers.
Elon Musk
Okay, they're breaking the deal because the deal is the. And if you, if the deal is maximize shareholder value, the deal is not go make a bunch of social changes.
Vivek Ramaswamy
That's right. And you know what they say now? Of course. So I always believe in getting the best arguments for the other side on the table. So they'll say, no, no, you don't understand. This is maximizing value. It's about long run value rather than short run value. And we understand that more diverse teams, of course it's B.S. we got to cut through it. And so the funniest thing is like take Apple, right? Your friend Tim over there is, you know, so, so Apple. So there's this proposal, this is a funny story actually. So there's a group that puts up this proposal for a racial equity audit at Apple.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's like it's like they own, like they want two shares and it's like nonprofit group. And so Apple's board of course, rather sensibly says hell no. We meritocracy is part of what our hiring philosophy is for our engineering talent. So no, thank you to the racial equity audit. And then what happens is though that random proposal, guess who votes for it? BlackRock votes for it, State street votes for it. A bunch of other financial institutions vote for it. So many that it gets over 50% shareholder support. But then Apple, to avoid embarrassment, the board says, oh, oh no, no, just kidding guys. You know, this is about long run value maximization. So then now if somebody new shows up at the table, right, you know, so strive, say the firm, I found it right, that the experience that we had was you'll then show up at the very company that even two years before was saying hell no to this nonsense because they've been forced to bend the knee and been chastened and in their sense and experience of it, publicly shamed by it. Then if somebody says no, no, no, why don't we just undo that very thing you didn't want to adopt? What they say is no, no, no, no, this is now about, they've been almost with the ardents of the converted. This is about long run value maximization perpetuating that culture of self flogging. And so that's, that's where the frontier of the ESG debate is right now, is behind this farce of long runism, which is really just, really just that it's a farce but we have to be able to cut through it with reality. It's false.
Elon Musk
It's false. Yeah. And obviously I'm very pro environment. You know, it's hard to get more pro environments than me. But like we just don't know, like we don't want basically some sort of like bizarre like communism rebranded thing, which is like a lot of what ESG is and to be inflicted upon corporate America without the knowledge of the actual shareholders, which is what's going on. And so I'm saying the public is being lied to by their, really, they're being lied to. And I'm naming names here because I know blackrock, Fidelity, Tiro, and I know you guys. And you need to tell your customers that you're not making the optimal decisions for shareholder value because that's what's going on.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And this is part of what the difference was between and you know, the US and Europe over the last 50 years. I'm not saying this was the sole difference. But I think it was a factor, Elon, where US stocks over like a 50 year period have outperformed European stocks. And the fundamental model of corporate governance in the US was value maximization. The fundamental model of corporate governance in Europe was the multi stakeholder model. I think our side won. Why on earth now, to play your basketball team analogy, would the basketball team adopt the strategy of the losing team to adopt that as its own? If it's playing the next quarter of the game? That's exactly what we're doing. Which, which I think is a problem.
Elon Musk
I'll actually say one other thing about this ESG thing is that I think the, the, the big, the big firms, the T blackrock, you know, you know, Vanguard, all of them, they're like they're setting themselves up for the, the biggest class action lawsuit in the history of class action lawsuits by an order of magnitude. Yes, because if, if they, because they're, they're, they're not, they're not, they're breaking the deal with, with their, their customers and they're not maximizing shareholder value.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, you know who's really setting themselves up for the, for the lawsuits, Elon, is the problem is it's not even the people who are giving them the money aren't even giving them their own money.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Those are either pension funds or they are intermediaries like investment advisors across the country. Right. They're like the local guy that hung a shingle at Raymond James or wherever. They're the ones sending somebody else's money. And so BlackRock and Vanguard, their excuses. Well, we now disclose all of this stuff to clients and they're still sending us the money. Well, that client, the problem with that was not himself the owner of capital. And so actually the wave of lawsuits is first going to probably come to the blackrocks and Vanguards and state streets of the world. They're going to kick it upstream and say no, no, we disclosed it and our clients still sent the money. But their clients were themselves money managers for other people. That's what happens when you have an industry that's so intermediated that there's so many layers to the waterfall that's actually ripe for corruption. But the deeper point that you mentioned is, and it has far implications far beyond just the ESG question is we're being lied to. I think you said it again and I think that gets to the heart of the moment where it's like the movie, right?
Elon Musk
The average investor is being misled.
Vivek Ramaswamy
The average investor is being misled. Elon let's just be real. The average citizen is being misled by the government in the same way that the average investor is being misled by the leaders of the woke industrial complex or asset management firms or whatever you
David Sacks
want to call it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And it comes down to. You ever watch that movie A Few Good Men is, you know, it comes down to the question of, you know, Jack Nicholson character, right? We can handle the truth, actually. And I think that is the moment we're in as Americans. We can handle the truth of where a virus came from, or whether masks work or whether vaccines have side effects, or whether a Hunter Biden laptop story was real, or whether you're using my money.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We can handle the truth. And that's the moment we live in. And that's the American. I mean, that was the American Revolution, actually. Because the old world vision was that we the people could not handle the truth. We could not be trusted. It had to be a small group of people in the back of palace halls that made the decisions for the rest of society at large. But on this side of the pond, in 1776, we said that, you know what? No, we reject that. Sometimes we might get it wrong, sometimes we might get it right. But for better or worse, we the people decide how we govern ourselves. That was what the American Revolution was about. And unlike you, Elon, I'm not a moderate, actually. I don't like those labels. I don't use those labels. But I'm in because the American ideals are kind of extreme, actually. Right. Free speech. I don't think you're a moderate either, but I don't think that. I don't view this as a partisan exercise. My whole point is the American ideals are themselves rather extreme ideals. Right? Free speech, self governance, the fact that we the people can handle the truth, that's extreme. For most of human history. It was done the other way for most of human history. But that extreme set of ideals, that is what unites us. That is what makes us American. That is what makes us great. That is what makes America itself. And in some ways, I think that's actually how I think we're more likely, Elon, to get to national unity in this country is actually not by necessarily saying we're gonna, you know, Compromise at the 50 yard line, hold hands and sing Kumbaya and compromise. I actually think it is by being in some measure uncompromising about the ideals that unite us. And yes, those are extreme ideals, but that's cool. That's America, that's us. And I think that's the moment we live in is do we want incremental reform which a lot of politicians are claiming to offer, including in this race that I'm running in a Republican primary? Or in some sense do you want the American Revolution, the ideals of the American Revolution? And I, I stand on the side of the American Revolution. And I think that's actually our last best chance of uniting and rediscovering who we are. And we should be proud of it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So it's, it's, it's important to not fall into the trap of thinking that all these solutions are going to come from government. I mean the things you're doing, working on, on a given day. Right. What you're doing with X right now.
Elon Musk
I mean generally speaking, I think we want the government percentage of the economy to be smaller rather than larger just because the government is really a corporation in the limit. Sometimes people think a government is different from a corporation, but it's really just the government is a corporation in the limit. It is the most corporation corporation and it's got a monopoly on violence. And so you have to like say okay, how much do you want a giant monopoly on violence to do? Yep, you know, not that much less generally, not more. And you know, we've, you know, shown over and over again that the power of free enterprise and comp. And competition. We do need to make sure that there's good competition in these markets. Competition, you know, makes companies honest and makes them work harder to serve their customers, which is, that's what, you know, makes people happy and makes for a better world. You know, if you wouldn't want to have just like one car company, you know, one airline, you know, you want, you want them to compete and you know, and that that's what makes things better and have that across the board. So whenever something moves to the government, the important like then it's like saying okay, now we've now got rid of competition and, and the feedback loop for improvement is, is very small and, and you know, so the same person in government or in, in, in private industry, they're going to be, is far more productive in private industry.
Elon Musk
So we, we just want to make sure our personnel allocation is towards that which is most productive, yields the best standard of living for the people.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And by the way, I'm totally down to take questions. I'm actually very bad co host of a. This is actually the first spaces that I have been a host of. So that's actually, actually I don't know how to take it but if you guys, your sacks want to take questions. Yeah, go for it.
David Sacks
So. Well, I'm just gonna try to stay out of it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, we had a good one, Saxon. All in. I liked that. And actually, we didn't. We. We left off on Ukraine last with you and I spoke. But. Well, I'm happy to go wherever you guys want.
David Sacks
Yeah. And by the way, everyone should check out the last pod that we did. The all in pod. We did two hours of Vivek about a week and a half ago, so everyone should check that out. But speaking of truths the public can't handle, I'm seeing on Twitter, reported by Michael Tracy and Glenn Greenwald retweeted him that the Senate just voted down having an accountant for Ukraine. You know, they call it an inspector, generally. A fancy term for an account. Exactly.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We can handle the truth. We can handle the truth that our money was siphoned to play a bunch of Ukrainian corrupt people, including the. Including the government bills. A lot of people, Elon, in terms of our money not knowing how money is being used. Here's another one. People in the US don't know this, but our taxpayer money is literally paying the salaries of the people who work for the Ukrainian government. And if we're going to do it, let's at least see it, right? Let's at least be able to account for it and see the dollars.
Elon Musk
Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, like, I think I believe in supporting Ukraine, but we just, yeah, we want to know that the money is actually going to help.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So why? Why, Elon, can I ask you that?
Elon Musk
It's not. We just want to make sure. Are we enriching some. A handful of oligarchs or are we actually helping the people of Ukraine? And we just need to make sure we're actually helping the people of Ukraine as much as possible. I think I wouldn't even accept sale as like some impossible standard for like, no, no corruption. Because I think we have some corruption even in the US So it can't be like, no corruption, but let's just like, say, like, you know, what percentage is going to like a warlord versus the people, you know, and the people should get most of it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, speaking of warlords, though, and I would love to hear your perspective, Elon, which I respect, but I haven't heard it on this issue, on why you think it's important for us to be there. You talk about the word warlords. I think the way this is going to end and possibly like in the next 12 months is it's not going to end well for Ukraine. All that money we poured in is much of it in the form of military equipment that's going to end up in the hand of some post Zelensky warlord. And then we have exactly a repetition of exactly what we did when we armed the Mujahideen after the USSR invaded Afghanistan. We've seen this movie time and again and I'm a little bit worried that among other reasons why I personally do not come down on the side of supporting the US supporting Ukraine, which we can go into as a practical matter, I think that is where we're currently on track to head is about 200 billion of military equipment ending up in somebody's hands. Who. We have no idea who that really is. And we're only going to find out after the fact, like we have so many times in the last 50 years of failed interventionist strategy. But open mind league. Curious what your perspective is on this.
David Sacks
Well, can I just. Can I just remind everyone that Elon posted a poll on Ukraine, I think this is in September of last year, about nine months ago. And it was basically a poll, a peace process proposal which proposed peace on the following terms. It was roughly that Ukraine would remain neutral, which is to say it wouldn't join NATO or any other military alliance, and the territories of Crimea and Donbass would be decided by the right of self determination, basically to hold free and
Elon Musk
fair elections, arbitrated, supervised, internationally supervised. Exactly.
David Sacks
So the people of those territories would decide and then assuming Crimea went with Russia, because historically it has been Russian and you know, it's 80 to 90% Russian, that their water rights would be secured. So they didn't, you know, they didn't die of famine or something. And that was basically the peace proposal. And it was massively shouted down on Twitter, including by no less a person than Zelensky himself, who said that this was a pro Russian proposal. And anyone proposing peace really over the last year has been pretty much shouted down and called the worst names, called an appeaser, you know, called, you know, a Putin puppet and all sorts of things like that, when really we just wanted to figure out a amicable or reasonable compromise to the situation. And, you know, about 60% of the people voted against the peace proposal. But now if you look at the situation, what we're getting is not better. It's much worse.
Elon Musk
Yeah, it's going to get worse from here, not better. Exactly. The reason I put that for that proposal was for the benefit of Ukraine, not the benefit of Russia. So it's like I want to Be clear, I'm on Ukraine's side here big time. And I've demonstrated that with, you know, actions, you know, with the massive support that starlink has provided, which the Ukrainian government has been acknowledged many times, frankly, it was instrumental in, you know, in the war.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So this is a fun one, actually, probably because the three of us have kind of complementary perspectives here. I'm on America's side on this because I'm running to be the US President, but I'm not. I'm not sure that the cut and dry Ukraine side of this versus Russia side of this is as clean as we make it out to be in the sense that there's a lot of history here in the Donbass region, and there's a lot of history for, you know, NATO saying that we would not expand. This is James Baker, the US secretary of state's commitment to Gorbachev in 1991, that we would not expand one inch. That was the famous not one inch commitment beyond Germany. And yet here we are now, even, not only admitting more nations to NATO after the fall of the USSR than we ever did during the ussr, but now even entertaining the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, which was the one hard commitment that Putin required or at least appeared to demand prior to his decision to actually pull the trigger and invade Ukraine. And so I guess I'd be curious, Elon, like, why. Why are you on the side of Ukraine?
Elon Musk
Yeah, well, first of all, let me just make it clear that, you know, when I look at a subject, I'll often get, like, just OCD on it and go, like, just to insane levels of detail to understand exactly what is going on at a precise level and minimize the error of my understanding. And the. So I actually read almost the entire history of the region. So, you know, starting from, you know, Oleg, who, you know, seized Kiev in 1882 and essentially formed the beginning of Kiev and Rus, and it goes on and on from there, you know, and. And the. I think it was Catherine the great in, like, 1893, tried to force all of Ukraine to speak Russian. There's, like. There's so much. There's so much back and forth. Like, the grudge list is so long that.
Elon Musk
That if it would take hours to just even summarize the grudge list. So the. The. The thing is that people in Ukraine and in. And Russia can find a million reasons to hate the other side if you just look at the history. So this is why, you know, the Christian principle of turn the other cheek is a very wise one, because if you do not ultimately forgive your enemy. You're stuck in a cycle of retribution forever. And so even though your enemy, they might have done really bad things, if you just, if you keep wanting to get revenge, back and back, back forth and back forth, you know, an eye for an eye, eventually everyone's blind. So that's why there has to be forgiveness and there has to be some realism. And we need to also look at Ukraine and Russia not as Russia is pure devil and Ukraine is pure angel. This is. There are no angels in war. Neither side. There have been terrible things done by both sides, of course. Course. Now, on balance, I think obviously the, you know, I still support. Support Ukraine, but, but I think there's, there's, you know, if we have to be realistic about what's going forward. And, and, and, and we, you know, as we speak, the flower of Ukrainian youth is dying in trenches. So the metaphysical damn good reason for that, it actually doesn't matter. Why are these boys dying?
Vivek Ramaswamy
For what? And that's a good question we haven't ourselves answered and to the point about forgiveness. Ilan And I thought you beautifully just said about the endless list of grievances. It's very complicated and depends on where you start the plot and where you end the plot, depending on what you see is the US So the thing that bothers the heck out of me is that I think it was in April of the first year of the war, In April of 2022, Zelensky was ready to come to the table for peace negotiations. And Boris Johnson, because he was facing his own, you know, party gate thing, appeared to want to deflect attention from that and shows up. And then the US Convinces Zelensky to fight on by saying, no, no, we're going to arm you. And I think that was actually the real mistake because I don't think that Putin's goal so much is to conquer Ukraine. He's not even going after Kyiv.
Vivek Ramaswamy
He's much more focused on Kharkiv and the Donbas region. And so I think we've made this worse is my concern actually, relative to the two nations just working it out amongst themselves.
Elon Musk
Yes. The thing is, as you progress further westward, the local support for Russia drops exponentially. So obviously for Ukrainian speakers, they're generally going to be very anti, you know, anti Russian. But, but I think most of the Russian speakers are actually pro Russian. And it's hard to believe that when you read American media.
Elon Musk
So. And it's, it's also, it's not true that all Russians are evil. This is false. We should stop and we should, you know, and we should, we should be also sad that, that there are Russian boys dying in those trenches, not just that there are Ukrainian boys, because do they want to actually be there either? Why are these young men dying? Because of disagreements among old men. Why in French warfare where only a few miles are exchanged, at what price? How many lives per mile ultimately is it worth?
Vivek Ramaswamy
And I think that the reality is for the U.S. i mean, Russia has more of a national interest at stake here than the US Does. China is also coming to Russia's aid that there's no version of this that is, you know, I'm not looking at this from a view from nowhere. I'm looking at this from a US View because that's the hat I wear here. As from a US View, there's no way this is going to end well. And I do think that that sort of getting to peace quickly and ending and reaching a peaceable resolution where we make, among other things, a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to. NATO is absolutely a must and an imperative. And the weirdest thing is that you and I were talking about. This is, this is the one bipartisan consensus, right. We talk about actually a time of deep national division between Republicans and Democrats in the United States. This is one where Biden in his ranks and, you know, most of the gop, save for me and maybe one or two, you know, you know, Tucker, maybe one or two other people, we're barely part of the GOP at all, have actually a defecting view from what is otherwise the single greatest bipartisan consensus that we have in the United States, which is to pour more money into a war where we do not have an identifiable national interest at stake. And, you know, I think that's one of the things about studying history. And I, I appreciate, Elon, that you talked about the fact that you bothered to study the history. It's a good example for other people, is you realize that this story doesn't end well even if you study the recent history of the United States.
Elon Musk
Yeah. So anyway, I think in the Ukraine
Elon Musk
there needs to be a realistic peace negotiation and the sooner the better. And that is what we should be pushing from the west to do is come up with something sensible and stop sending boys to die in the trenches
Vivek Ramaswamy
and don't blow up the Nord Stream pipeline. And maybe even as part of this, it would be a good idea to get Nord Stream 1 and 2 operational again. And then having restored economic relations between Western Europe and Russia, can actually be a good thing rather than a bad thing by pushing Russia into a corner with.
David Sacks
And I think one of the things we learned is, Vivek, you referenced the Istanbul agreement, which Boris Johnson did, basically travel to Kiev to shoot down. Those details came out subsequently. And the substance of that Istanbul agreement was very similar to the peace proposal that Elon floated in that Twitter poll. Again, it was based on neutrality for Ukraine plus self determination for the people in those eastern regions of Ukraine. And so they could have had that deal. I mean, that deal was on the table and the west rejected it because frankly, the military industrial complex is hell bent on NATO expansion. It has been our central policy, like you mentioned, going back to the 90s when we broke our pledge to Gorbachev not to expand NATO. That NATO expansion is absolutely the policy of the US and the West. And they are hell bent on this expansion. And that is why we have rejected every proposal both before the war and after the start of the war. I mean, this was known. This is one of the biggest areas of media gaslighting really since COVID is this idea that this war has nothing to do with NATO expansion. In every conversation, diplomatic conversation that we've had with the Russians, this has been the central issue for them is that they do not want what they regard as a hostile military alliance directly on their most vulnerable border with troops, weapons, bases, biolabs, nuclear weapons, even, you name it. That is completely unacceptable to them. That is a red line for them. They said it many, many times. And our own diplomats, including the current head of the CIA, Bo Burns, said it. So it's not just the Russians saying it. Our experts said for many years that our desire, our crusade really to expand NATO right to Russia's borders would eventually result in hostilities with Russia. And that is what has brought us to this day. And we are on the brink of continually escalating this into something that could turn into World War three. So, Vivek, I do applaud you for saying explicitly that we need to stop this crusade of NATO expansion and recognize that the path to peace here is for Ukraine to be neutral. And you know, there are precious few presidential candidates saying it. You're saying it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is saying it. I think you guys might be the only two. I think that's it said that.
Vivek Ramaswamy
That's it. That's the whole ball game.
David Sacks
So I really applaud you for that. And we have to stop the gaslighting on this subject. This was known, it was said by experts for decades. And now we're pretending like NATO has nothing to do with this conflict. It really does. And you just saw that at Vilnius again. So, you know, we need to get the truth out there that that is a major component of the root of this. This conflict in this war. And therefore, it's going to be an essential component to the solution, and we're never going to have peace without it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
There's an interesting deeper line to connect, because I think this relates to a separate issue here that we, all three of us care about certainly is free speech in this country. And it's not just the threats to free speech from the government. And, you know, I loved the Twitter files, by the way, Elon. And I have said that when I'm in the White House or if I, you know, fortunately get there in a year and a half or whatever, we'll do the state action files, which is the other side of this, which is anytime a government official has pressured any company, not just Twitter, any company in the last five years, at least, we will publish it, at least for the public to see. Yeah, but, but, but it's not just the governmental censorship. It's sort of this cultural censorship on Ukraine. When I say the things that Sachs just said, right, which is literally talking about NATO expansionism and what are our objectives here? To expand NATO in violation of prior commitments we made, the feel that I get right. Just, just, just the, you know, the ethos of it. It feels a lot like when those of us who said it said that the virus likely originated in a lab in Wuhan in mid-2020. There's something about it that it's sort of beyond the pale to accept. And I think one of the things we've learned in the last few years is, you know, at least the muscle memory of that is. Is useful, which is any time you sort of feel a cultural closing of ranks around you saying something that's grounded in reason and fact, what Sachs just mentioned, grounded in history, you know, a lab, original virus originating in a place where they do research, gain of function, research on exactly that very place where a global pandemic originates. It just sort of feels right. Sounds about right. But then you feel the cultural forces around you telling you that, no, no, no, you got to shut up, sit down, and go back to doing as you're told. I think that's. Those are actually some of the most important questions for us to actually double and triple click on and actually get to the bottom of. And in some ways, you know, there's many issues around the world that the US I think has views on. But that's part of what's drawn me to this issue. Even more is the cultural closing of ranks on this question.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I think this was just this feel somewhat overestimate how much ground Russia can take if there's not without support of the local population. So in the case of Donbass and Crimea, there was significant support from the local population. They were able to make significant progress. This is obviously not true of western Ukraine. And if you look at say the Winter War where Stalin, you know, who's a hard driving personality to say the least, you know, try to invade Finland and failed. Okay. So yep. Like when you have severe resistance from the, the local population and basically everyone's against you, the entire population is the army. So then, then you're like, oh, we've got a 300,000 person army. Well they've got a 2 million person army because the entire population's opposed to it. You will not make progress in that situation. This notion that Russia can just steamroll in these countries as false.
Vivek Ramaswamy
That's right. Or that they would have a desire to, I mean, take Poland, who unlike the rest of NATO actually pays for their own defense. There's no reason why Russia would have to go after Poland if we've actually reached a peace treaty that's backstopped by interests of the U.S. and so, you know, I do think that, I do think it's, you know, Zelensky I think is betraying, I think Ukraine's long run interests based on the short run here only. Frank.
Elon Musk
I think. So it's gone to his head, you know, you know, he's been faded too many times. Like if he keeps telling someone they're awesome 17 times a day, it's, you know, it's gone to his head to be totally frank, like so, you know, and, and so we're going to stop that and we're going to say like, look, your people are dying. You know, it's as you point out, it's not the long, it's really not a long term smart thing. Those people, those kids are never coming back, you know, so, and that we're dying for a mile of territory, like this is insane.
Vivek Ramaswamy
You know, here's something funny on this is I haven't shared this story broadly before but you know, there's actually a weird and I think promising and encouraging alliance hiding in plain sight between those on the so called far right and those on the so called far left on this issue actually. So, you know, many people on the, on the, you know, anti Iraq, far left. I mean, folks like Bernie Sanders, I believe I haven't heard him say as much as I would like, but I think do agree with folks like myself who otherwise disagree on a lot else. And so, you know, actually just a few weeks ago I was coming out of an event and it occurred to me I couldn't find a single Republican and even many moderate Democrats to agree with me on this topic. And so I actually gave Bernie a call and thought we could actually talk it out. But I think he thought it was a prank call and so he, he didn't want to actually discuss it. Let's just say, to put it mildly is the way the conversation went. But I hope I get to talk to him another time because it's actually an interesting way that we can reshuffle and redraw the boundaries where one positive silver lining coming out of, I think the reaching of reason on the question of Ukraine is that we do not live in a single axis to pole political partisan divide in the United States of America. It is artificial. It is made up. And much of what we're trying to retrofit into that, right, the struggle between the managerial class and the citizen, the, even the questions of foreign policy about which priorities the US should and should not actually risk our military equipment or our young men and women to defend, these do not track traditional Republican and Democrat boundaries. And I think that that also in the sense of taking a step back, that should actually be hopeful for us as a country, if we have the courage to actually step back and see it's not about black versus white or red versus blue, if we're able to actually have a reasoned debate in the open about what are I think the most difficult questions of our time. And so I am personally hopeful that that is one of the side effects. So one of the net positive side effects to come out of our yet to be had open debate as a country on what actually we should do in Ukraine is that it calls the bluff on the otherwise artificial retrofitted model of right versus left, Republican versus Democrat, which I think in large measure doesn't exist. It's antiquated. And you know, hopefully this is one of those issues that helps us smoke that out. So Zach, we already went through the hour. You want to take up questions or do you want to. We can rock and roll and do this again another time too. I'm down to. I got another half hour.
David Sacks
Well, let's see if there's folks out there.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I'm good to the bottom of the hour.
David Sacks
Yeah, yeah, okay, great. Well, let's see. I know Richard Hanani has got a book on woke coming out. It's called the Origins of Woke. And Richard, you have a question on. Yeah, sure.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Hey, David. Hey, Vivek, both of you guys. I appreciate you guys are both giving me blurbs on the book and. Hey, hey, Elon. It's nice to, you know, it's nice to talk to you, Vivek. Man, I've been so impressed with you. I mean, we, we've been talking, you know, from before you ran, and when
David Sacks
you said you were going to run, I was, you know, skeptical.
Vivek Ramaswamy
As someone who's knows a little bit of political science, knows a little bit about the history. Not that I didn't think you had
David Sacks
a great personality and potentially a great
Vivek Ramaswamy
message, but it's just, it's always a long shot. I mean, the president, you know, you weren't, you know, you weren't, you weren't on training wheels. You weren't starting out with something, you know, something easy. You were going straight for the big job. And you've, you've impressed me.
David Sacks
I mean, the message is, you know, the, the positive sort of culture war message.
Vivek Ramaswamy
The, you know, the idea that there's
David Sacks
not just a culture war, but there's like some kind of excellence we could be moving towards.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's really hit with people.
David Sacks
And I just want to say, you
Vivek Ramaswamy
know, you've been, you know, you've really, really impressed me and I'm glad to see what's been going on. And thank you.
David Sacks
Yeah, absolutely.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And thank you. Thank you also for saying, you know, mentioning how poor Europe is relative to the U.S. i think that's a point that doesn't get made often enough. You just give people the numbers on Twitter and they don't like it very much. But I like, you know, I like
David Sacks
the fact that you just, you know,
Vivek Ramaswamy
you're putting it out there that, yeah, we, you know, this experiment has been tried. The big government, you know, 50% of GDP, government spending, large tax rates,
Vivek Ramaswamy
labor regulations, those are a problem.
David Sacks
They've tried it and it hasn't worked. So for all our problems, I'll take
Vivek Ramaswamy
the US Any day. And I appreciate the Ukraine discussion. I just wanted to ask about, you know, you've talked about the civil rights law and you've talked about sort of the importance of getting back to merit. We've talked about that, like the executive order 11246 and the, the government affirmative action and government contracting. And I just wanted to know if you've sort of fleshed out these ideas to any great extent. Once you do get into office, it's
David Sacks
not, it's not too early to start talking about these things.
David Sacks
What do you see as sort of
Vivek Ramaswamy
the main, the main initiatives to take on civil rights? What offices are you looking at?
David Sacks
I mean, have you started thinking about
Vivek Ramaswamy
personnel, any kind of thing like that?
David Sacks
I just want to know how you're
Vivek Ramaswamy
thoughts have developed over time on this. Yeah, well, first of all, man, your book has been instrumental in affecting my thinking and even the articles you wrote leading up to it. And you know, I think you're able to expand the Overton window on this. Right? I think you're, you're in many ways cracking that open further on issues that were previously untouchable, like even the undesired or unintended effects of civil Rights Acts of 1964. I think that that's actually something that we ought to be able to talk about in the open. So let me just tell you the simplest thing on day one, and that'll give you a sense for how I think you referred to Executive Order 11246. Most people outside of, you know, nerdy civil rights law scholars or students like you and I won't know it is an executive order that Lyndon Johnson signed. It didn't go through Congress. The U.S. president just sort of penned it into action. That said that if you do business with the US government today, that includes about 20% of the US workforce, that you have to adopt quota systems for race, gender and other metrics. Every president since Lyndon Johnson could have taken a pen and crossed it out. Actually, Nixon, a Republican president, made it worse, went in the other direction as part of his battle against unions, which, which is, I think, an untold part of this story too. This is a bipartisan problem. Problem. What I've said is I would take a pen and cross it out on day one. I do believe in such a thing as colorblind meritocracy in the US I do believe in the dream that no matter who you are or where your parents came from or what your skin color is, you should be judged not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions and rewarded accordingly. And so much of what I see is, is, is, you know, a violation of civil rights law. And we'll, we'll, you know, just like the Harvard case that came out is one tailwind. We'll use the law to make sure that we do it. Restore colorblind meritocracy in the country. Are you know, saying something. I just wanted to follow that.
Vivek Ramaswamy
What do you think about, you know, the Civil Rights act is sort of a sacrosanct, right? I like to frame it as civil rights law. But I, you know, I understand that there's going to be, you know, there's going to be difficulties here. How confident are you that you could take that back message and, you know,
David Sacks
you could sell it? Because I don't think it's going to be easy, even though I do think it's worth doing and it's doable.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I'm going to sell it. And whether I succeed or not depends on the responses of people of this country. But my whole premise is I'd rather speak truth and lose the election than to win by playing some political snakes and ladders. So far, it's been working. Got me from zero to, you know, third in the polls or whatever we are now. You're nipping on DeSantis's heels, man. I see the, see the polls, but we'll see. I'm not, I'm not attached to a particular result. I'm attached to the truth. And my view is, look, actually pushed. I might as well just share this with people. I pushed Trump's people on this, right? I asked them why they didn't just take a pen and cross it out. And what they said is that was a political hill they didn't want to die on. And my view is if you're grounded in principle and you're grounded in moral foundations and first principles, not vengeance or grievance or animus towards anyone, but really just gravity and first principles, then you should not have to worry about what the political fallout is. And people tend to follow leaders rather than people who are afraid of the people they're leading. And, you know, my bet is, Richard, I think we're going to be successful. I think a lot of the jurisprudence of so called hostile work environment lawsuits, somehow non discrimination on the basis of race or gender became interpreted to say, you can't create a hostile work environment, which means you say things that people disagree with, or else you're violating the civil rights laws. No, I don't think that's the way it was supposed to work. You know, I say this tongue in cheek as a Hindu, but as an expression. There are no sacred cows here for me, you know, not when it comes to the US Laws, at least. I think we have to go to the heart of the heart of the matter. And I do think that there were many unintended consequences where even if the people who voted for the Civil Rights Acts then knew that they were being applied the way they are today, I think they'd be shuddering. And I think we have to at least take that history into account.
Elon Musk
Exactly. Yes. We're actually violating the spirit of those who put the laws in.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. There's a great story. I mean, in the book, I go over this a little bit about the original intent of the Civil Rights Act. I mean, they put a.
Vivek Ramaswamy
They put a provision right in there. They were worried about disparate impact.
David Sacks
They were worried, oh, what if somebody has a test and somebody does better than someone else?
Vivek Ramaswamy
You know, one race does better than the other?
David Sacks
Is that going to be illegal? It came up because in Illinois, they had a kind of a version of the Civil Rights act, and they went
Vivek Ramaswamy
after Motorola for this, and they actually put a provision into the Civil Rights act specifically so this would not happen. The New York Times editorialized against disparate impact. Everyone thought that this was original, ridiculous concept. There's the.
David Sacks
You can look at the.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Some of the senators who voted on the bill said things like, you know, you could still have. If whites have more education than blacks and your workforce is all whites, you
David Sacks
could set the standard as high as you want.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It doesn't matter, as long as you know you're hiring by merit. I mean, the historical record is absolutely clear.
David Sacks
You look at those court cases that
Vivek Ramaswamy
have ruled on this, they basically ignore that historical record. They've torn it up.
David Sacks
We've got a good. We've got a good Supreme Court now that's willing to, you know, move us.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Move us in a better direction on these matters. So, yeah, you're absolutely right.
David Sacks
I mean, the history here is crystal
Vivek Ramaswamy
clear in the legal specifics to one side. I mean, not to be. I try not to get too angry about this stuff because I want to just stay focused on what we're running to. You know, it's interesting. Even America, right. The word. Not a lot of people know this. It was. You know, it's. I used to. I was on a quest to say, does it have anything to do with merit? Sounds like it. Merit America. And it turns out merit comes from a Latin root, and America comes from, you know, America Vespucci, who was named after his grandfather, whose name was Amalric. Amalric is an old Gothic word. Rick means master, and Amal means work.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So it's like sort of the master of work that is almost America's heritage.
Elon Musk
Kind of cool, actually. I wasn't aware of that. I actually literally own etymology to and I wasn't aware of that etymology.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So you own etymology.com?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Wow. Would you be willing to sell it, Elon? I don't know.
Elon Musk
We could, yeah. If somebody wants to really go hardcore
Vivek Ramaswamy
on etymology, yes, that's good. But anyway, it's, it's, it's a good reminder that that's who we are as Americans. Get ahead through hard work, colorblind meritocracy. It's who we are. Yeah.
David Sacks
All right, let me try. So I've just been calling on people who I recognize are of interest. Interesting. You know, X accounts. So why don't we go to Amid next and then we'll hear from Mario. Ian Alx.
Elon Musk
Yeah, thanks guys. Thanks David. Thanks Alon, for doing this again. Awesome stuff. Vec.
David Sacks
How you been man?
Elon Musk
Good to talk to you.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Hey, good man.
Elon Musk
So just one thing you mentioned on hoping that Democrats are anti war. That ship is sailed. Don't forget that the Congressional Progressive Congress caucus withdrew their letter asking for diplomacy. That's how co opted Sanders and his ilk are. But the one thing I wanted to ask you about was ftx, largest Ponzi scheme in US history. You probably aren't surprised. Its ESG score was higher than ExxonMobil.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But Sam Bankman Fried donated over $100
Elon Musk
million to Democratic linked causes. And yesterday the Department of Justice announced that it was withdrawing all campaign finance related charges against him. What will you do as president to address the weaponization of the Department of Justice to stop things like this and the fiasco that is Hunter Biden from happening ever again?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I do think amid that, you know, what good is an insurance policy if it doesn't pay out? You know, so the problem with SBF's problem is going to be he didn't buy the Cadillac plan because I think he, he actually committed some like ungodly sum of money he was going to give and that he only gave a fraction of it. And so I think they're going to ultimately make sure that he gets punished for not buying the full Cadillac policy because had he bought the full Cadillac policy, he'd already be off the hook. But for the partial policy, it paid out to let go the campaign finance charges. So, you know, obviously cynical and only, and only half joking here. But the real. So I actually want to take this chance to go into a proposal I've made that a lot of people view as extreme. But then the more you learn about it, the less extreme it actually is. It's actually very practical. I think we need to shut down the FBI.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Like take the FBI. So stay with me for a sec. Stay with me for a sec. And Elon, you're a reader, right? So I'm going to recommend a book to you. My wife's, my wife's a faster reader than me. She's ahead of me on it, but it's called G Man. It's a Pulitzer Prize winning book. It's about the history of this institution and J. Edgar Hoover and the way in which the institution was built. And it's fascinating. But yeah, he had some issues. It's still the J. Edgar Hoover building of the FBI. So it's still an institution that celebrates his legacy. But as a practical matter, right, at the local level, you have local police and you've got local prosecutors. You don't have this separate giant bureaucratic morass sitting in between.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, it turns out at the federal level you have institutions like the U.S. marshals, which have, I think, by and large have no evidence to suggest has been corrupted at all. They carry, they bust up child sex trafficking rings. They did a lot of good work. You got the DEA on the drug cases, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in the Treasury. So if you take that FBI, right. There's 35,000 people who work there. 20,000 of them are in back office functions, but are really have taken on a policy making role.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's not like they're enforcing the law. They're kind of deciding what the policy ought to be. I'm going to send them packing and they got to find honest work in the private sector or whatever they'd like to do, but it's not going to be working for the taxpayer. But the 15,000 people who are actually on the front lines will move them to the US Marshals, to the DEA and so on. And then you actually have drained the lifeblood out of a bureaucracy. Where to bring it back to Omid's question, where a lot of the original sin in the weaponization of government in these cases, not just today, I mean, dating back to threatening Martin Luther King with suicide, blackmailing him. It's an institution that was built when you have a redundant bureaucracy. It's almost like a law of physics.
Vivek Ramaswamy
A redundant bureaucracy is a formula for corruption. So, you know, it's less extreme than it sounds.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, just, just by the way, for the record, I, I've met a lot of people at the CIA and FBI and, and they've all been really high integrity people. I just want to be, you know, like, I'm not Saying that there aren't some bad apples in any organization. But man, I, I, I really, I've not, I've not really met a bad person.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And I think the 15, 000, I mean, so when I say shut it down, that doesn't mean that, that everyone's a bad person. Yeah, any of them are a bad person. It's something about the nature of a redundant bureaucracy where, like Elon, I think what's happened is specialization. Right. When people are specialized, they tend to be more effective. When they become generalists, maybe less so, at least in government, I think. And those 15,000, if we move them to their specialized functions, you know, I think that actually becomes a more practical way of effectuating the laws rather than the sort of armchair manner.
Elon Musk
You're saying basically that, that all the bases are covered by other organizations and so we distribute the personnel to those organizations rather than have the redundancy that that exists today. But, but you're confident that if we did so, that there would not be gaps in, in, you know, important crimes that need to be dealt with, and
Vivek Ramaswamy
not only would there not be gaps, we would actually be more effective.
Elon Musk
That's what you're saying. Just phrasing, is that, is that what you're saying?
Vivek Ramaswamy
That's exactly right.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I want to go back, David, if you don't mind, I'll ask my question. And Good to see you again.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Good see you again, Vivek. Appreciate the invite. You said something when we're talking about the Ukraine war, about the US made the war worst. And you know, we've had discussions in previous spaces about the establishment or the military industrial complex. I'm relatively naive, less naive after what I saw happen in Ukraine. But if you do become president, is there anything you can do? Because it does seem systemic to me. And how big of a risk is it when it comes to the tensions with China, which you've been pretty concerned about. Yes. So, look, I think that the managerial class at the Pentagon, it's time to go. I think that this is a antiquated group where. Kind of like the analogy we just had about the FBI. Most people I haven't met, somebody who has served or serves currently in the US military that isn't in it, whose heart is in it for the right reasons. But I think that's just the truth. Right. Any of us, 1.3 million of them. Yeah, but there's the managerial class of the Pentagon where they haven't offered a clear statement of mission and purpose. And so when you have a vacuum of mission and purpose.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think the purpose of the US Military should be to deter wars and win wars in order of priority, deter wars being most important, and then win them when we get into them. And most importantly, prioritize protecting the lives of Americans on American soil. With that clear mission statement, we could measure up what we have done in Iraq or now in Ukraine, which I think is destined to be in Iraq or a Vietnam all over again if we keep going in the current direction. That's part of what we need is a restoration of purpose. And so it's not that these are bad people as individuals, but when an institution continues to exist without a purpose, then the institution finds new things to do that outlive its purpose, and that itself creates a form of corruption that maybe no one individual is actually responsible for, but was just a nature, a feature of the beast itself. And so one of the things I would say is that's a tiny fraction of the people who serve in the US Military that actually work in the Pentagon. But I'm going to, you know, largely be cleaning house there and bringing in, you know, a new form of talent, really flushing the toilet on the neocon sort of dogma that I think pervades much of the Pentagon today. And to come back to, let's just say, get some Cold War realists in there, you know, the George Kennan's, the James Bakers, that doesn't really exist in today's foreign policy establishment or military establishment. And those would be the kinds of talents. And by the way, we are working on identifying the kinds of talents we're going to staff the top layers of every part of the federal government with. But that would give you a flavor of the kinds of people I would put as a new sort of leadership at the Pentagon and the job of the commander in chief, that'd be my job if I'm elected, is to offer a clear statement of mission and purpose of what the US Military is even supposed to be concerned about, which for me is protecting American lives foremost on American soil. Deter wars and when necessary, win wars, and that's it. And whether you care about what we're doing in Ukraine or the rise of wokeism in the military, these are symptoms of that deeper loss of purpose, in my view.
David Sacks
Yeah, you're here.
David Sacks
Yeah. I think one of Trump's biggest mistakes was hiring all these neocons. I don't really get it, because his instincts were to keep us out of wars. In fact, he did keep us out of wars. New Wars. And, you know, I think he had more realist and non interventionist instincts, but yet he appointed all these people like Bolton and Pompeo and on and on, who want to get us involved in all these, you know, new conflicts. Maybe there wasn't, you know, maybe the foreign policy establishment is just so rife with groupthink, sort of neocon group think that he didn't have enough talent to choose from. But I don't know.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think that's part of the problem, David, actually, because looking at this now, and we're, we're already beginning. It's also one of Trump's mistakes was transition planning began way too late. So we're already, I've got a guy in charge who's already putting together our plans for what the staffing would look like. And this is one area where the benches lie. I mean, Baker and Kennan, I mean, these guys are dead. Right.
David Sacks
Exactly. Well, but those are the right types of people. I mean, George Kennan was a genius. He was the architect of our Cold War containment policy. He also was against us getting involved in the Vietnam War. He said so in advance. He testified before Congress. And in the late 90s, one of the last interviews he did, he talked about what a huge mistake we were making with NATO expansion, that it was going to undo his life's work, that we had won the Cold War, we had a peaceful situation with the Russians, but bringing NATO up to his border was going to result in new antagonism and it was going to unwind everything. And he used the word tragic mistake. So he kind of foresaw everything for decades. And James Baker, similarly, was very competent. It does seem like we have a dearth of those highly competent diplomatic figures who know how to negotiate peaceful arrangements. It just seems like the people we have now just rattled a saber and, you know, are crusaders looking for new wars to get us into.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Maybe we need some venture capitalists in there who actually understand how to do deals. Yeah.
Elon Musk
I think also, just like the public doesn't appreciate it fully that the US State Department is quite belligerent. It's really like.
David Sacks
You know, well, they just promoted Victoria Nuland to number two after.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Are you serious?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Who is literally responsible for much of what's going on in Ukraine today. Right. She's the head of the snake. She's the head of the snake on this. Absolutely. She's a total warmonger.
Elon Musk
So, yeah, I mean, it's insane. The State Department's supposed to be the place of the diplomats, not the warmongers. But we're actually in this ironic situation where the warriors want peace, the Pentagon wants peace, and the diplomats want war, which, by the way, also happened in Dr. Strangelove. So, you know, and we just need to tell our damn State Department to stop this bullshit because they're not informing the public. They're like taking actions on behalf of the American public. But I don't think the public's aware of this, you know, so we're going
Vivek Ramaswamy
to make them aware. This is the answer. It's the only solution. Yeah, it's like.
Elon Musk
Like we're interfering in all these other countries and, you know, and putting a lot of sort of US Resources against it and I think also creating a lot of resentment against America. Yes. So, you know, because, you know, if. If there's some, you know, we're like. We're like, like sort of a giant. We're like a. Somewhat of an ogre, you know, economically. And so it's easy for us to accidentally step on or, you know, or bump into small countries, not really realize it. And so then we're like, doing bad things and, and people are dying and we're generating bad blood. And this is all happening without the knowledge of the public.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It's just waddling in, sloppily waddling in and then, and then making a mess in a clumsy way. Now, I think succeeding and not even succeeding. It's one thing if you were good at it, even still might be against it, but it'd be one thing if you were good at it. At least there would be a tougher argument. And yet, how has regime change gone?
Elon Musk
Let's see, let's see. Cuba, Fidel Castro outlived all American presidents that try to assassinate him, which, by
Vivek Ramaswamy
the way, let's say the quiet part out loud. I do think that that is the latent impetus in Russia here. I mean, when you. When you sort of get to the heart of the intuition, right, what are we actually solving for? It's, you know, we don't. We don't. It's a bit of bad words like esg. They don't say ESG anymore. They make up some new words for it. It's like we don't see regime change anymore. But functionally, that's. That's what we're playing for in Russia. We will not stop until we're done. And I think it's a shame and it's a lesson we haven't learned. It's.
Elon Musk
It's very foolish because anyone, anyone who is going to take Out Putin is not going to be some peace neck are probably they're even more hardcore than Putin because they killed him.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Okay, that's right, that's right. And either way, does that mean I trust Putin? No, I do not trust Putin, but I trust him to follow his self interest and he can trust us to follow ours. Which is why I also want us to abandon this thing where we selectively invoke the fact that we're somehow protecting democracy around the world, when in fact, if I'm in the position to leave, here's what I'm going to say is my job, and I'll say it internally, but I'll say it externally too is I'm in this to advance America's interests. And so now you know you can trust me because that's how I'm going to make my decisions. And I expect that you are going to advance Russia's interests or you are going to advance Poland's interests. And then we can all have a deal, whatever that deal may be, to be able to make sure each person gets something out of the trade. That's how good deals work. Everyone has to emerge with something they didn't have going in and we can be more honest about it rather than dowsing it in this moral veneer which is otherwise so hypocritical that we immediately called out on it because it was obviously false in the first place.
David Sacks
Well, how about an executive order that prohibits the US from being involved in regime change operations, period, end of story. I mean, this whole conflict in Ukraine basically started in 2014 with a couple the Maidan coup against the democratically elected leader of the country with the backings of the United States. Now, the extent of our backing is in dispute and people debate it, but I don't think there's any question that the US did back it and our involvement at a minimum, tainted. If it was a, if it was a legitimate expression of the will of the people of Ukraine, we should have just let it happen without our involvement whatsoever.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Oh, there's no question about it. I mean they were kind about that, David. There's no question about it. Listen to the leaked tapes of Nuland. The Right, those were the very person we were just talking about a moment ago in our role in picking Ukraine's next leader. She didn't know those were, you know, being taped calls. But now we understand that we were absolutely driving that.
David Sacks
So, yes, yeah.
Vivek Ramaswamy
You know, all that said, I'm, I, I can be cheerful about this if we learn the lesson and we behave differently. Going forward as a consequence. But I do not think suppressing the information and tricking the public to fail to learn that lesson is going to be the right answer for us.
Elon Musk
No, exactly. And I can think like. So on the Ukraine front, our larger concern should just be, when all said and done, like, you know, where the. Where are the boundaries going to be and how many people died. And I think we should just think hard about that and not sacrifice the flower of Ukrainian Ruth, not sacrifice the flower of Ukrainian youth in trenches to achieve nothing, which is currently what we're pushing them to do. And that's insane. So. And that. That needs to stop. Yeah,
Vivek Ramaswamy
I'm into it. Sax, you want to take one or two more? I'm having too much fun, but yeah, I could take a couple more. I'm having too much fun, but unfortunately I gotta, you know. Okay. I could talk to you guys all day, but I'm. But, you know, gotta roll pretty soon.
David Sacks
Alx, you have a question? Yeah.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So you mentioned that if you became president, that you would release like a similar style Twitter files or Facebook files type thing, but you do it for all companies that the government has interacted with and sort of tried to pressure. How would that, how would that look like? Yeah, so basically a lot of what I think is happening today is the government is deputizing private companies to do through the back door what the government couldn't directly do through the front door. Right. So Elon releasing the Twitter files confirmed what I, you know, on the page of the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, surmised and everyone dismissed as a conspiracy theory that absolutely this was happening and at a scale unimaginable with social media companies, you responding to government threats and in some cases, inducements, carrots and sticks to censor speech that the government could not censor directly. I mean, even down to individuals like by name. Alex Berenson, why didn't you shut down his Twitter account, this individual, in a meeting in the White House? Well, it's just. It's just this is. If the first Amendment was created to do one thing, like literally, there's just one thing the first Amendment exists for. It is to protect people, to be able to criticize the government and its policies. That's what this guy's high crime was, is he criticized government policies on COVID 19. And then the government is saying, no, this guy needs to be shut down. How could you possibly end with an implicit threat of regulation over Twitter if they Twitter didn't follow through? And so the pre Elon, Twitter, you know, managerial class did indeed follow through on the threat. And then they get an attaboy on the back from the government. So that's one example. But it's not just limited to social media. I think this is pervasive across the US economy, actually. I think it's much of what's going on, say with John Kerry in his role as the climate czar. He's somebody who they could not pass the Green New Deal through Congress. And so he has boasted about meeting with the banking CEOs of this country, the CEOs of most major banks, getting them to sign a pledge, a sort of climate pledge, to join a North American Net zero alliance. I'll remind you that banks are not charitable institutions. Right. This is a two way relationship. So what are they getting in return for signing that pledge? Again, it's a backdoor way of getting done what the politically accountable class people we elect in Congress would have never been able to do through the front door. Even Joe Manchin would not have stood by and let them do it. And so what I've said is that if you're a federal employee, so I'm a State Action doctrine guy, which is if, if it's state action in disguise, then I think the Constitution still applies, which means that the government can't use a puppet in the private sector to get done its dirty work. It's bound by the same constraints as the federal government. So we should know about it. So what I would say is that on pain of criminal penalties, any evidence of a documented evidence of a government employee who has pressured a private actor to achieve a goal that the government couldn't achieve, have achieved itself. We just have a sunshine law applied to it. Let the public see it. Roll that log over, let's see what crawls out. And that's it for that particular provision, right? I mean, I have a lot of different views on rescinding a lot of unconstitutional federal regulations and reorganizing the federal government. But on this one, it's that simple. And I think that the first step of restoring truth back to that principle, we can handle the truth. Just tell us, tell us what the truth is. We can deal with it, we can process it, we can handle it. But let's at least see how deep that rot runs. And the fact that I'm sitting here as a private citizen observing small examples of it bubbling up to the surface, it's like a broken windows theory, which is if you see a broken window, it means that there's something else wrong. In the neighborhood. That's what I think is going on. And so hopefully that addresses your question. That's doable, it's easy. It's what you would expect and hope for of a chief executive who's in charge of the executive branch of the government. And that's an easy thing to at least be able to deliver on to help rebuild public trust, which is, I think, something we've been badly lacking. And so whether it's, whether it's UFOs, whether it's the Jeffrey Epstein client lists, whether it is the effectiveness of vaccines, whether it's what we just talked about, my view is we can handle the truth, trust the public with it, and then that's going to actually ironically rebuild trust in institutions that the public has otherwise now long correctly lost. Hey, Vivek.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Thank you. Given the problem with the last election cycle, we had the election infrastructure problems. Take one last one, David, and then we'll wrap.
Elon Musk
Yeah, let's go to ask.
David Sacks
Well, we have, we have Eon, Ian and Nuance, bro.
Vivek Ramaswamy
How about, how about American together?
Elon Musk
Is that possible?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Oh, come on. Obviously there were problems with election infrastructure during the last election cycle, but I think one of the nuance. Oh, Ian, I don't think Nuance. You go first, David. You can hear new ones. Yeah, I don't think Vivek can hear me. Yeah, so.
Elon Musk
David, Vivek, great conversation. Thanks for having me up. I think the audience is really enjoying this whole back and forth.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I feel it's a real breath of
Elon Musk
fresh air to have such an open conversation on Xspaces. So my question for you, and this ties back to one of our conversations that we had on Mario Space. You mentioned that if you were elected, you'd want for American businesses to be banned from doing business in China. Now, you didn't really elaborate on that. And so my question is how you know that work for companies like Apple or even Tesla, which, you know, operate over there? In my opinion, it makes sense for large American companies to hit the world's largest market. But crucially, can you clarify your policy on American businesses in China?
Vivek Ramaswamy
How would you deal with that? Sure. And, and I want to actually, I want to be clear. I actually think that the best state of the world would be everybody playing by the same set of rules in an economy where just like I think we're going to be, your Western Europe and Russia are going to be better off by opening economic relations through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That's what I want to see here. As well. But we've got to make sure that everybody's actually playing by the same set of rules. And to me it's very important that no more forced IP transfers, no more forced data transfers, no more forced, you know, effectively service of non economic nature turning companies into lobbying pawns, you know, effectively having a nice little condition to be able to get a domestic license to do business. If you're blackrock selling mutual funds in China to make sure that you don't apply the same standards to Chinese companies as you apply to American ones. That's what I basically stand for is level playing field. That's what we need. And I think that that doesn't exist. I think that most people acknowledge that. I think that that's not going to happen automatically. That's going to require by the way, a policy that I think is also really important that goes straight along with it is re entering the Pacific trade relationships around the rest of the rim of the Pacific. The cptpp. I think we should re enter it. I think this is a little bit different than what, you know, the course of action taken by Trump and exiting the tpp. I think that was actually, maybe it
Elon Musk
makes more sense for the people over here, right. Because I think Trump canceled it because first of all it wasn't fair to Americans. Right, it really wasn't.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But also fair to people over here,
Elon Musk
it was beneficial to corporations, but not to the local farmers, your mom and pop stores who would have completely been obliterated by the tpp. So maybe a fair version of that would make sense.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Exactly. And I think that I'm a silver lining guy. I think that I can use the leverage of the fact that we did exit it to be able to say, all right, here's what we need done differently in a number of the countries from Japan on down to be able to say here's how we reenter that on fairer terms. And so that's what I'd like to see. And I think that's one of the things early on actually even in relation forgetting about where we get to on China. The first thing that's easiest to do is actually to re enter the rest of that pacific trade relationship, including the other members of the cptpp. That puts us in then a strong position from a trade perspective to then take a look at where we stand vis a vis China. So I could go on for hours on this one and you know, we could, but I want to. We'll take one last question.
Elon Musk
Yeah, let's grill you on China. You know because you mentioned once that you were appreciated. And that's a concern of mine because I criticize them quite a bit. And I'm always worried about, you know, traveling through Hong Kong. I mean, have they given you a
Vivek Ramaswamy
reason why they ban you?
David Sacks
But just in the interest of time, I just want to make sure we can get to the last question here. I know I personally.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, no, that was the last question. Okay, you can hear me now, right? Yes. How you doing, man? Awesome. So election infrastructure was obviously like a big issue in the last election cycle, but I think even more so is election just funding for candidates.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So the left was outraising the right pretty significantly in a lot of races. What do you plan to do in the upcoming election, both in the primary and the general, if you, you are nominated? You know, so you can outraise people like Soros, who in the last election cycle, I mean, 170 million, he was the top person out of any individual. And then including on top of the 170 million, 140 million and other things, another 60 million. His not even getting into open society foundations that did about a billion dollars during that time. Do you think the richest man in the world should get involved to maybe, you know, take over Soros and that? I don't know if Elon has any thoughts about that, but what are your thoughts on that? How are you gonna, you know, beat the left at their own game? Well, that's, that's. I'm not going to speak on behalf of Elon. Elon, you want to go first?
Elon Musk
Well, sure. And you know, I think this is an important discussion and I think you're winning over a lot of people, I should say, I think with your position, because I think, you know, what I've heard you say makes, makes a ton of sense. Like, anyway, like I think, I think this, I think you're running up a lot of people actually in this, in this, this conversation. So, you know. Yeah, so my apologies. I actually lost track of.
Vivek Ramaswamy
He was just asking about the influence of money in politics.
Elon Musk
Is these sort of. There are a bunch of things which have these, these misnomers of like that sound like they're pro democracy, but they're actually basically ballot harvesting. And there is like this crazy, this sort of hack that, you know, I mean, George Soros is really like an incredibly talented arbitrage. And he's, you know, he's. That applied that talent monetarily and politically. And so he figured out that through charitable organizations you can promote causes with pre tax money. And that doesn't count in any of the political stuff. So it's actually extremely effective. You don't actually attack the candidate, you just attack the positions that they hold. And then you sort of hire a big team to go and harvest ballots from nursing homes and all that sort of stuff. These are real things that have happened. And so, you know, there's, you know, what, like, I don't think we should like, you know, counter corruption with corruption, but, you know, I think we do need to, there does need to be like a get out the vote campaign and, you know. Yeah, yeah. Certainly Republicans need to work harder at winning, at winning over voters and especially in the key sort of Senate races and House races and presidency. But it's, you know,
Vivek Ramaswamy
I appreciate you saying that, Elon. And for me, you know, the real distinction isn't even between Republicans and Democrats. If we're pro American, we stand for the same, stand for the principles this nation was founded on. The way I look at it is we're on the same team. And for me, in this journey, this is, I think, part of why I came into this as an outsider. I think it will take some measure of people who didn't grow up in professional politics to change that game. This country has blessed me with much. Right. And so I've lived, like so many of you on this call, live the full American dream. And I have so far before. I wanted to ask anybody else to invest money in this campaign, want to invest my own first. And so I've put in over $15 million of my hard earned money already precisely because I did not want to take a tin can asking a bunch of other people for permission to run. And that, that does come with expectations. And the funny thing is, you know, even in the Democrat party, many people on a principled basis used to say keep mega money out of politics. You don't hear that anymore. And that does come with certain ties and expectations that I do think corrupt the way our democratic process works. That being said, a guy like me, if I want to succeed, has to be able to compete. The old saying in tennis, you know, you got to either win or you leave blood on the court. And I don't want to leave blood on the court. I want to win. And you know, if you guys, you know, I think, I mean, this is this little bit self interested plug, to be honest with you, but just to be totally transparent as well, you know, other candidates have mega super PACs that have ads on television. We're a third in the Republican primary. We haven't bought TV ads. But it's going to be whoever wins this election, it's going to be about $2 billion that gets spent in order to do it. That was my question. That's sort of the gist. How are you going to do it? That was basically my question. So here's so I hope we do it. But the way, here's how I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it by turning into somebody's puppet. I'd rather lose this election than to, you know, bow down to I think a lot of the special interests that have broken the system. That being said, here's how we're doing it so far. We got 70,000 small dollar donors in the first few months of this campaign. I'm literally an outside. I've never had a donor or donor list in my life. And 40,000 was the threshold for reaching the first Republican debate by August, sitting in early July where it 70,000 and so 40% of them are first time ever donors to the Republican Party. Normally that number is 2% actually. And so you know, give a lot of business minded folks on this call, I'll give you kind of a metric, you want to know how to predict an election. I'll give you going to give you the best metric to predict an election result. And Trump proved it in 2015. It's not the current polls, right? I mean people look at the polls and I'm grateful in the recent versions of them, I'm doing okay, I'm doing well. But that's not what matters. Look at how much dollars are being spent per unit in the polls. So for every percentage point in the polls, look at how many ad dollars are being spent for that percentage point. For most candidates in the 2015 election, Jeb Bush, you want to talk about Scott Walker, Chris Christie back then, millions of dollars per percentage point in the polls. For Donald Trump, back then it was thousands, three orders of magnitude lower. And in this race we're seeing the same thing. There's the other candidates in the Republican field. Millions of dollars in ad buys per percentage point in the polls in my case right now is literally in the thousands. And so what do we say there? The message is lifting us up now. The bet is we hope that if you build it they will come. But that's where I need people. And so the maximum anybody else can give to the campaign directly is 6600 bucks. And somebody wants to go to vivek2024.com right now and do it, we would appreciate it but there's all kinds of, you know, I mean, there's this, the game is so complicated. There's all kinds of other organizations that get, that spend money supporting candidates. And my model is, you know, we, we will build it, which is to say, deliver a clear message that is honest, that is transparent, that trusts the public, believes the public can handle the truth, that wants to restore the 1776 principles that made this country great without apologizing for it. Do it earnestly, do it sincerely, and bet that the system works as it's supposed to, and at least gratefully I'm able to put in. You know, I mean, I don't have billions of dollars to put in. But short of that, what I do have will stop at nothing, which gives us a good advantage to start. But it's going to take a lot of really everybody, whether it's a dollar or whether it's people putting in massive amounts of money to actually lift this across the finish line. And so I'm hoping for a chance to introduce myself to the country on the debate stage starting in a few weeks. I think that's going to be critical in this race. I'm going to continue to use, frankly forums like this one. I mean, this is great. Think about it. There's no separate media intermediating our messages, right? There's nothing, nothing pre filtered. A guy like me couldn't compete, Elon, if it weren't for modern media like this. And so here's to hoping that that changes the game.
Elon Musk
Yeah, no, I mean it says something like you can, you can actually, you know, you're quick on your feet and you can, you can handle a rapid fire conversation on difficult subjects. I mean, that's, you know, couldn't be said for everyone. And you actually speak, you know, you speak with conviction and, and, and you're not just, you know, playing the old same old political tapes and that everyone's, and the tropes that everyone's heard a million times and, and are honestly unconvincing. So I think that actually this is, you know, you know, I certainly have a high opinion of you after this, this, this conversation. And, and I, I suspect a lot of people, other people do too.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I appreciate that, man. And you know, I think I'll just say this in closing because I hope it's good for our country. And you know, you and I or anybody else on this call, we're not going to agree on 100% of things and that's okay. Right? Yeah, of course, you know, you and I will, I mean, me and Sachs don't agree on 100% of things, and, you know, you and Sachs don't agree on 100% of things. And so for every other combination of people on this call, but, you know, let's say you agree with me most of the time, but you at least know, I'm telling you what I believe 100% of the time, that's. That's the best you can ask of an elected leader, and I'll at least give you that. And that's going to be, hopefully, something that attracts enough support. Yes. To allow me to serve as the next president of this country and, you know, lead a. Lead a national revival. Leaving office in January 2033. My kids will be in high school. Maybe we'll move on to. Maybe we'll be going to Mars by then. But, you know, in the meantime, we'll see if we can revive this country. And. And I'm optimistic that we can.
Elon Musk
Well, it's rare to meet a politician that's not an npc, and so please take that as a high compliment.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I appreciate it, brother.
David Sacks
Thank you. All right, well, thank you both for being so generous with your time. We almost went for two hours here. I think it was only scheduled to be an hour, and we just, you know, time went flying by, so. Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Vivek, and thanks, everyone, for joining.
Elon Musk
I appreciate it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Thanks, guys. Thanks, David. Thank you, guys.