Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / 47 Morning Update Exclusive Part 2: 1-on-1 w Elon from the White House

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47 Morning Update Exclusive Part 2: 1-on-1 w Elon from the White House · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: You gotta tell us a story that I want to
• 0:07
  Speaker 3: know who.
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  Speaker 2: Anything in Russia?
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  Speaker 4: And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
• 0:12
  Speaker 4: going to rush a device and mice.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, you are listening to a forty seven Morning Update
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  Speaker 3: exclusive with Ben Ferguson. Good Wednesday morning, Ben Ferguson, with you.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: It's so nice to have you on the forty seven
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  Speaker 3: Morning Update. And this morning is part two of the
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  Speaker 3: sit down interview that I was a part of with
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  Speaker 3: Elon Musk. This part of the interview you're gonna love
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: because we talk about the astronauts that were caught as
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  Speaker 3: political prisoners in outer space. As you know, the astronauts
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  Speaker 3: stuck in space for nine months after what was supposed
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  Speaker 3: to be a simple eight day mission. Well they're finally home.
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  Speaker 3: Why because of Elon Musk in space x. So here
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: is part two of that interview with Elon Musk.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: What does man first set foot on Mars?
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  Speaker 4: I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
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  Speaker 4: and I don't think it's more than two to four
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  Speaker 4: years beyond that.
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  Speaker 1: And that's not an unman, that's that's a human being.
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  Speaker 1: Putting his foot on the surface.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, best case would be twenty nine.
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  Speaker 1: And what do you what do you put the odds
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  Speaker 1: of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay, but do.
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  Speaker 1: We find ruins? Do we find remnants?
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  Speaker 4: We may We may find the ruins of a long
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  Speaker 4: dead alien civilization, that's possible. And we may find subterranean
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  Speaker 4: microbial life.
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  Speaker 2: That's possible.
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  Speaker 1: All right. If man lands on Mars in twenty nine,
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  Speaker 1: how soon after that do you land on Mars?
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  Speaker 2: It remains to be seen. I'm not sure.
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  Speaker 4: The important thing is that are we uh both a
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  Speaker 4: self sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The
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  Speaker 4: key threshold is when that city can't continue to grow,
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  Speaker 4: continue to prosper, even when the supply ships from Earth
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  Speaker 4: stop coming. At that point, even if something would happen
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  Speaker 4: on Earth, it might, it might. It might not be
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  Speaker 4: World War three, but it might be that.
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  Speaker 1: A bad virus.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it might not be anything. For those things.
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  Speaker 4: It's like like like say, civilization, you could die with
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  Speaker 4: a bang or a whimper. It may be that civilization
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  Speaker 4: dies with a whimper rather than a bang or and
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  Speaker 4: simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars. But
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  Speaker 4: so you obviously need Mars to become self sustaining and
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  Speaker 4: be able to grow by itself before the resupply ships
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  Speaker 4: from Earth stopped coming. That that is the critical a
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  Speaker 4: civilizational threshold beyond which the probable life span of civilization
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  Speaker 4: is much greater.
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  Speaker 1: And how close are we technologically to be able to
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  Speaker 1: do that, to have a self sustaining settlement on the
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  Speaker 1: surface of Mars.
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  Speaker 2: I think it can be done in twenty years.
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  Speaker 1: How do you turn PayPal into the success it was,
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  Speaker 1: which then helped launch you to the next one and
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  Speaker 1: the next one.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So I studied physics and economics and college. She's a
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  Speaker 4: good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how
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  Speaker 4: reality works. And then I was going to do a
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  Speaker 4: PhD at Stanford in advanced ultra capacitors actually as a
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  Speaker 4: potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put that
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  Speaker 4: on hold to start an Internet company. Essentially came to
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  Speaker 4: the conclusion that the Internet was one of those rare
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  Speaker 4: things and I could either watch it happen while a
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  Speaker 4: grad student or participate. And I figured I've always go
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  Speaker 4: to act to grad school you know, grad school is
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  Speaker 4: going to be kind of the same. But I couldn't
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  Speaker 4: rather thought of just watching the Internet happen, so I
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  Speaker 4: wanted to be a part of building it. So I
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  Speaker 4: created an Internet Internet company. We did the first maps, directions,
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  Speaker 4: yellow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote
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  Speaker 4: the first version of software just by myself in ninety five,
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  Speaker 4: and we ended up selling that to Compact Texas company
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  Speaker 4: I guess YEP for about three hundred million dollars in
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  Speaker 4: cash about four years after I graduated. Wow, So I
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  Speaker 4: should say just to preface that I graduated with about
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  Speaker 4: one hundred thousand dollars a student debt.
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  Speaker 2: So it wasn't yeah you and me both yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: where right? I know?
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  Speaker 4: And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived
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  Speaker 4: with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and
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  Speaker 4: a bag of clothes.
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  Speaker 2: All right.
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  Speaker 1: So two thousand and two you start SpaceX, Like, how
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  Speaker 1: do you start a rocket compan Like what's the first
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  Speaker 1: day where you're like, I want to make rockets and
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  Speaker 1: I want to go to Mars? Like what do you
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  Speaker 1: do on day one?
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  Speaker 4: So I think you have to start with a some
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  Speaker 4: sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order
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  Speaker 4: for the in order to be in order to be
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  Speaker 4: highly motivated, you have to have some.
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  Speaker 2: Philosophical foundation. In my case, it was.
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  Speaker 4: That that we want to expand the scale, the scope
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  Speaker 4: and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of
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  Speaker 4: the universe. And in order to expand scale, expand consciousness,
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  Speaker 4: we need to go beyond one planet. If for one
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  Speaker 4: planet there's there's too much risk. You know, hopefully Earth
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  Speaker 4: civilization prospers very far into the future, but it may not.
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  Speaker 4: There's always some risk that we are we self annihilate
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  Speaker 4: through nuclear war, or that there's a big meter that
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  Speaker 4: takes us out like the dinosaurs. Ye, there's always some
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  Speaker 4: risk if all your eggit are in one basket. So
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  Speaker 4: it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.
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  Speaker 4: And then once we're a multiplanet species, that the next
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  Speaker 4: step would be to be a multi stellar and have
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  Speaker 4: a civilization on many different star systems. So in two
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  Speaker 4: thousand and one, I didn't think that I could I
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  Speaker 4: didn't think I could sell a rock company, so I
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  Speaker 4: thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal. In
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  Speaker 4: that case, I think was about one hundred and eighty
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  Speaker 4: million dollars after tax something like that, and I thought,
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  Speaker 4: you know, I don't need one hundred and eighty million dollars,
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  Speaker 4: so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic
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  Speaker 4: Mars mission to get the public excited about going back
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  Speaker 4: to Mars. We're going to Mars, I should say. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: Mars was always going to be the destination after the Moon. Right.
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  Speaker 4: In fact, if you told people in nineteen sixty nine
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  Speaker 4: that it would be twenty twenty five and we've not
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  Speaker 4: even gone back to the Moon, let alone, it's hard
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  Speaker 4: to believe, let alone Mars, they'd be like what happened
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  Speaker 4: in the civilization collapse top, Yeah, like they would be
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  Speaker 4: incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars. By now, if
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  Speaker 4: you told people listen, after landing on the Moon in
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  Speaker 4: sixty nine.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think in fifty years America never went
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: back to the Moon.
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  Speaker 4: Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that
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  Speaker 4: could take people to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,
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  Speaker 4: which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there
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  Speaker 4: really hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has
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  Speaker 4: been made since then that can go to the Moon
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  Speaker 4: or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so
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  Speaker 4: you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.
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  Speaker 1: So a few months ago you and I were down
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  Speaker 1: in Boca Chica with a president for a starship launch.
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  Speaker 1: And it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica.
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  Speaker 1: You know, five years ago it was an empty beach
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  Speaker 1: at the southern tip of this sandbar. Yeah, and it's
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  Speaker 1: now a city and a factory where you're building a
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  Speaker 1: rocket ship a month within incredible precision. But one of
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  Speaker 1: the things you said to me when we were down
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  Speaker 1: there that really stood out to me is is you said,
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  Speaker 1: your philosophy on intellectual property talked to lots of CEOs
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  Speaker 1: or we fight to guard our i P. And and
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  Speaker 1: you had a very different approach. What's what's your view.
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  Speaker 4: Of i P, patents of the week, patterents of for
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  Speaker 4: those innovation slowly.
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  Speaker 1: I literally do not know anyone else in business who
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  Speaker 1: would say something like that, like like it was a
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  Speaker 1: startling and and and what Elon said down there is
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  Speaker 1: he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,
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  Speaker 1: but by the time they steal it will be five
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  Speaker 1: generations beyond and it won't matter.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, at Tesla, we actually opened sourcialte patents, so we
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  Speaker 4: said our patents are anyone can use them for free.
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  Speaker 4: Really yeah, uh, the only really your patents of Tesla
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  Speaker 4: to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble. So we'll
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  Speaker 4: try to look ahead and say, okay, patent trolls are
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  Speaker 4: going to trial file patents to blocks and things, will
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  Speaker 4: file patents and then open source to patent make it free.
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  Speaker 2: I mean I when I say patents for the week.
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  Speaker 4: Now, there are a few cases, in say with pharmaceuticals,
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  Speaker 4: where it might cost you billion dollars to do a
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  Speaker 4: Phase three human file, but then subsequently the drug is
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  Speaker 4: very cheap to manufacture. So cases there are some, in
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  Speaker 4: my opinion, which its massively reduced what can be patented.
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  Speaker 4: And and say, because the whole point of patenting is
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  Speaker 4: to maximize innovation, not inhibit it. And in my opinion,
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  Speaker 4: maybe a controversial opinion, most patents inhibit innovation, they do
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  Speaker 4: not help it.
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  Speaker 5: How many nights have you slept at your offices? You
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: think your career percentage wise where you say I just
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  Speaker 5: got to take this nap basically because my body forces
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: me to and I got to get back to work
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  Speaker 5: fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I guess it started out.
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  Speaker 4: Even with the first company, so two, which is a
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  Speaker 4: terrible name, but the first internet company. We're able to
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  Speaker 4: rent an office, which was like in a leaky attack
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  Speaker 4: essentially for five hundred dollars a month, and the cheapest
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: apartment we could find was eight hundred dollars a month.
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  Speaker 4: So like, and we only had about five thousand dollars
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  Speaker 4: between our brother and I, so like, we're not we'll.
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  Speaker 2: We'll, we'll just stay in the office. Yep. So we
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  Speaker 2: got some.
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  Speaker 4: Couches that converted into beds and we'd can't sleep at night,
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  Speaker 4: and then we just have like turn the beds back
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  Speaker 4: into couches before anyone came, and then we would shout
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  Speaker 4: the YMCA down the road and so that went that
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  Speaker 4: that that that literally was for several months what we did.
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  Speaker 4: I was in great shape, you know, work out the
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  Speaker 4: y I still remember that that YMCA at Page Mill
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  Speaker 4: al Camino in Palo Alto.
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  Speaker 1: So that was a long time.
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  Speaker 4: Again, so it's been I don't know, I've never thought
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  Speaker 4: to count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: Now, if you'd like to hear the rest of the conversation.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Make sure you download Verdict with Ted Cruz right now
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: wherever you're listening to this podcast, and you can hear
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Part two in its entirety. And I'll see you back
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: here tomorrow