Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Part 2: Elon Musk 1-on-1 Exclusive at the White House-DOGE, AI, Trump, Mars & Killer Robots

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Part 2: Elon Musk 1-on-1 Exclusive at the White House-DOGE, AI, Trump, Mars & Killer Robots · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

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  Speaker 1: eight IFCJ that's eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ
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  Speaker 1: or support IFCJ dot org. Welcome and his Verdict with Center,
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  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson. With You and Today is part
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  Speaker 1: two of our exclusive conversation with Elon Musk, the entrepreneur
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  Speaker 1: and innovator who is transforming industries and is dismantling government waste,
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  Speaker 1: fraud and abuse With Doge must Relentless pursuit of technology
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and space exploration continues to capture the world's imagination. In
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  Speaker 1: this episode, we unravel the thoughts and aspirations of a
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  Speaker 1: man who defies conventional boundaries, pushing humanity towards new horizons.
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  Speaker 1: So join us in the White House as we continue
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  Speaker 1: to explore the riveting journey of Elon Musk, a modern
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  Speaker 1: day pioneer whose revolutionary ideas are set to redefine tomorrow.
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  Speaker 2: Let me start with a question. You know a lot
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  Speaker 2: about what year does man first set foot on Mars.
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  Speaker 3: I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
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  Speaker 3: and I don't think it's more than two to four
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  Speaker 3: years beyond that.
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  Speaker 2: And that's not an unman's that's a human being putting
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  Speaker 2: his foot on the surface.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, best case would be twenty nine.
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  Speaker 2: And what do you put the odds of finding either
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  Speaker 2: alien life or evidence of alien life.
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  Speaker 4: I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay.
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  Speaker 2: But do we find ruins? Do we find remnants?
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  Speaker 3: We may we may find the ruins of a long
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  Speaker 3: dead alien civilization, that's possible. And we may find subterranean
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  Speaker 3: microbial life, that's possible.
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  Speaker 2: All right. If Man lands on Mars in twenty nine,
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  Speaker 2: how soon after that do you land on Mars?
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  Speaker 4: It remains to be seen. I'm not sure.
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  Speaker 3: The important thing is that are we build a self
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  Speaker 3: sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The key
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  Speaker 3: threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue
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  Speaker 3: to prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming.
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  Speaker 3: At that point, even if something would happen on Earth,
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  Speaker 3: it might might It might not be World War three,
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  Speaker 3: but it might be that a bad virus.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it might not be anything. For those things.
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  Speaker 3: It's like like like say, civilization, you could die with
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  Speaker 3: a bang or a whimper. It maybe that civilization dies
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  Speaker 3: with a whimper rather than a bang or and simply
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  Speaker 3: loses the ability to send ships to Mars. But so
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  Speaker 3: you absoenly need Mars to become self sustaining and be
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  Speaker 3: able to grow by itself before the resupply ships from
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  Speaker 3: Earth stopped coming. That That is the critical a civilizational
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  Speaker 3: threshold beyond which the probable life span of civilization is
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  Speaker 3: much greater.
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  Speaker 2: And how close are we technologically to be able to
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  Speaker 2: do that, to have a self sustaining settlement on the
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  Speaker 2: surface of Mars.
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  Speaker 4: I think it can be done in twenty years, But.
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  Speaker 2: It would take twenty years, so we're not in twenty nine.
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  Speaker 2: We're not there. What are we missing? What are the
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  Speaker 2: big technologies?
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  Speaker 3: We don't have a few people running around the surface
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  Speaker 3: in a hostile environment is not going to make it
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  Speaker 3: self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
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  Speaker 3: of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.
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  Speaker 2: So but you think we could have a million people
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  Speaker 2: on Mars in twenty years? Yes, And what's the technology
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  Speaker 2: we're missing right now? When you think about a million
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  Speaker 2: people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water,
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  Speaker 2: to get food, to keep them safe? I mean, what
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  Speaker 2: do we need to make that happen?
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  Speaker 3: Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry
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  Speaker 3: of Earth. So you know, we're here at the top
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  Speaker 3: of a massive permit of industry that starts with mining
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  Speaker 3: a bas array of materials, those materials going through hundreds
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  Speaker 3: of steps of refinements. We grow food, obviously, we grow trees,
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  Speaker 3: we make things out of the trees. There's you know,
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  Speaker 3: you've got to You've got to build all that on Mars,
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  Speaker 3: and Mars is a hostile environment. It's you know, it
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  Speaker 3: sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near
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  Speaker 3: the equator on Mars.
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  Speaker 4: Meanly it's quite cold.
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  Speaker 2: How do you prep for that?
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  Speaker 4: Well, in the beginning, on Mars.
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  Speaker 3: You have to have a life support habitation module right
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  Speaker 3: like you need You can't just live outdoors.
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  Speaker 4: You can't breathe the air like.
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  Speaker 2: A dome you think is likely?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, glass domes type of thing.
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  Speaker 2: Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely
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  Speaker 2: to be ideal for a habitat?
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  Speaker 3: What might be Arcadia planet? Here is one of the
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  Speaker 3: one of the good options. That's one of my daughters
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  Speaker 3: is named Arcadia after.
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  Speaker 2: That, and what makes that attractive.
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  Speaker 4: My other son's little name is uh Ari's Mars.
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  Speaker 1: You've been thinking about this for a long time. If
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  Speaker 1: you're name and your kids around it.
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  Speaker 4: My eldest kid is little name is essentially Mars.
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  Speaker 1: When did you get the dream?
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  Speaker 4: Like, I mean, it's twenty two to twenty one. Soon
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  Speaker 4: this is decades old.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, dream So like when you were ten, did you
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  Speaker 2: look up and say I'm going to Mars?
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  Speaker 4: No? No.
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  Speaker 3: I read a lot of science fiction books and program computers.
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  Speaker 3: But the first, finally off, the first video game that
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  Speaker 3: I sold was a space video game called Blastar. Maybe
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  Speaker 3: I spoiled this way.
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  Speaker 2: How do you do? How do you become Elon Musk? Look,
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  Speaker 2: you're obviously smart as hell, but but there are lots
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  Speaker 2: there are a lot of smart people that don't do
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  Speaker 2: swat and you've managed everything you've touched has been an
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  Speaker 2: extraordinary success. Uh yeah, yeah, Look, I mean that's just
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  Speaker 2: objectively right. So what has led to that? Because there
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  Speaker 2: are other smart people that that's not true, and they
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  Speaker 2: gaze at their navel and they don't do anything. So
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  Speaker 2: what what do you do differently that makes you so effective?
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  Speaker 4: Well? I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity.
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  Speaker 3: I want to find out the nature of the universe,
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  Speaker 3: understand the universe, and in order to do that, we
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  Speaker 3: have to travel to other planets, see other star systems,
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  Speaker 3: maybe other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations, or at
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  Speaker 3: least the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding
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  Speaker 3: of worse it's universe going ready to come from and
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  Speaker 3: what questions do we not yet know to ask about
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  Speaker 3: the answer that is the universe.
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  Speaker 2: So let's go back twenty five years, late nineties. You're
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  Speaker 2: at PayPal. How do you turn PayPal into the success
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  Speaker 2: it was, which which then helped launch you to the
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  Speaker 2: next one? In the next one.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I studied physics and economics and college she's
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  Speaker 3: a good nation for understanding how the economy works and
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  Speaker 3: how reality works. And then I was going to do
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  Speaker 3: a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultra capacitors actually as
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  Speaker 3: a potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put
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  Speaker 3: that on hold to start an internet company. Essentially came
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  Speaker 3: to the conclusion that the Internet was one of those
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  Speaker 3: rare things and I could either watch it happen while
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  Speaker 3: a grad student or participated. And I figured, I've always
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  Speaker 3: go back to grad school. You know, grad school is
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  Speaker 3: going to be kind of the same. But I couldn't
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  Speaker 3: rather thought of just watching the Internet happen, So I
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  Speaker 3: wanted to be a part of building it. So I
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  Speaker 3: created an Internet Internet company. We did the first maps, directions,
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  Speaker 3: yellow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote
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  Speaker 3: the first version of Suffered just by myself and ninety
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  Speaker 3: five and we ended up selling that to Compact Texas company.
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  Speaker 2: I guess yea.
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  Speaker 3: For about three hundred million dollars in cash about four
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  Speaker 3: years after I graduated.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 4: So I should say just to preface that I graduated
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  Speaker 4: with about one hundred thousand dollars a student debt. So
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  Speaker 4: it wasn't yeah, you and me both yeah, yeah, right,
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  Speaker 4: I know.
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  Speaker 3: And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived
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  Speaker 3: with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and
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  Speaker 3: a bag of clothes.
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  Speaker 2: All right, So you sell the company for three hundred million,
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  Speaker 2: How much does that change your life?
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  Speaker 4: Well?
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  Speaker 3: I got twenty one million dollars black jack, and but
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  Speaker 3: I wanted to do more on the internet. So started
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  Speaker 3: a company called x dot com, which morch were a
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  Speaker 3: company called Confinity, which is Peter Thiel and Max Leptun yep,
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  Speaker 3: and we're combined. Company was actually at first little called
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  Speaker 3: x dot com, but we later later changed the name
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  Speaker 3: of the company to PayPal. Because of all the name changes,
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  Speaker 3: it's kind of confusing. But the company that people know
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  Speaker 3: is know as PayPal today. Was actually I felt those
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  Speaker 3: in corporation documents for that company interesting.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and as you know, Peter Tiel and I were
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  Speaker 2: buddies back in the mid nineties before he went and
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  Speaker 2: did any of this, but you know, I became friends
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  Speaker 2: with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New
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  Speaker 2: York and just sort of a young libertarian with with
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  Speaker 2: a lot of dreams. So it's been a heck of
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  Speaker 2: a journey.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And now Peter was involved in a coup. You know,
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate
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  Speaker 3: situation where you know that they did cooon met at PayPal.
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  Speaker 2: I kind of now, did you all make peace after that? Yeah?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean I was doing a lot of sort of
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful.
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  Speaker 3: But I then went on a two week trip which
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: was a dual money raising trip and honeymoon, and said
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: not done my honeymoon earlier in the year. So it's
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  Speaker 3: raising money while doing doing Hollywood honeymoon. But I was
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  Speaker 3: kind of awake.
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  Speaker 4: Did that go over by the way it worked?
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  Speaker 2: It worked?
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  Speaker 4: There, you go, kind of worked. I raised money, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: and we had honeymoon there you go.
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  Speaker 3: So yeah, but you don't want to be away from
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  Speaker 3: the battle when things are scary. So I was not
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway,
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  Speaker 3: we're passed things up. And I have been friends nonetheless,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: and yeah, these days all stay at his house and stuff.
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  Speaker 4: So I was super friends. And he's also invested in
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  Speaker 4: most of my companies.
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  Speaker 2: All right, So two thousand and two you start SpaceX, Like,
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  Speaker 2: how do you start a rocket company? Like what's the
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  Speaker 2: first day where you're like, I want to make rockets
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  Speaker 2: and I want to go to Mars? Like what do
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: you do on day one?
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  Speaker 3: So I think you have to start with a some
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order
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  Speaker 3: for the in order to be in order to be
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  Speaker 3: highly motivated, you have to have some.
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  Speaker 4: Philosophical foundation. In my case, it was.
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  Speaker 3: That that we want to expand the scale, the scope
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  Speaker 3: and scale of consciousness.
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  Speaker 4: To better understand the nature of the universe.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: And in order to expand scale, expand consciousness, we need
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: to go beyond one planet. If for one planet there's
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  Speaker 3: there's too much risk, you know, hopefully Earth civilization prosperous
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  Speaker 3: very far into the future.
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  Speaker 4: But it may not.
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  Speaker 3: There's always some risk that we are we self annihilate
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  Speaker 3: through nuclear war, or that there's a big meter that
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  Speaker 3: takes us out like the dinosaurs. Ye, there's always some
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  Speaker 3: risk if all your eggs are in one bast good.
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  Speaker 3: So it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: And then once we're a multiplanet species, that the next
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  Speaker 3: step would be to be a multi stellar and have
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  Speaker 3: a civilization among on many different star systems. So in
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  Speaker 3: two thousand and one, I didn't think that I could.
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  Speaker 3: I didn't think I could sell a rocket company. So
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  Speaker 3: I thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal.
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  Speaker 3: In that case, I think was about one hundred and
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: eighty million dollars after tax, something like that, And I thought,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I don't need a hundred and eighty million dollars,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic
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  Speaker 3: Mars mission to get the public excited about going back
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  Speaker 3: to Mars. We're going to Mars, I should say, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: Mars was always going to be the destination after the Moon.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: In fact, if you told people in nineteen sixty nine
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  Speaker 3: that it would be twenty twenty five and we've not
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  Speaker 3: even gone back to the Moon, let alone it's targetable leave,
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  Speaker 3: let alone Mars. They'd be like what happened in the
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: civilization collapse? Top Yeah, like they would be incomprehensible that
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: we've not been to Mars by now, if you told
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: people this after landing on the Moon in sixty nine.
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  Speaker 2: Why do you think in fifty years America never went
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: back to the moon.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: could take people to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: really hasn't been anything to replace any No, no vehicle
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: has been made since then that can go to the
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: so you can't go to Mars if you don't have
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: the ride.
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  Speaker 2: So I remember you and I first met in twenty
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: thirteen when when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: and I was still down in the basement office. They
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: stick freshman senators in the basement office a kind of
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: like hazy. Yeah, yeah, say it sounds like there are
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: one hundred seared offices. But for six months you stay
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: in the base. You're in your place it's like worrying. Mean,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: you know where you're supposed to you now, thirteen years
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: into it. I think there's a lot of wisdom to
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: doing that. But you were down in the basement office
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: and I remember you were coming and sitting down with
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: SpaceX and at the time, the Air Force was not
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: letting you all bid to launch satellites, and so you
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: were coming and saying, look, we got a company. I
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: think we can do a really good job of this,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: and yet we're locked out of this. It's a little
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: amazing to think the journey SpaceX is gone from then
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: to now.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's hard to believe that this is all real
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: because originally, consistently with my belief that we need to
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: become a mother planet species, I thought the only way
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: to do that would be through NASA sou and I
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: think I thought, well, if I just get the public
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: excited about Mars, then they'll do admission to Mars. And
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: so initially my thought was to have to send a
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then land
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you see.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: The sort of money shot.
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  Speaker 3: The money shot would be green plants on a red background.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: Ye.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: I also recently know that money shot has a different
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: meaning in some other arenas.
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  Speaker 2: But yeah, story.
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  Speaker 3: But what I'm trying to say is the captivating shot
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: would be the green plants on a red background, and
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: then hopefully that would if we did something like that, that
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: would get the public excited about Mars, that would increase
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: nasta's budget, and then we could send people to Mars.
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: Dream was nicey to do this? Yes, not you. No.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: The original original plan was.
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  Speaker 3: Literally to take a bunch of the money from PayPal
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: and I guess, by some people's definition, waste it with
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: no probit on a nonprofit thing. I wanted to spend
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of my money for free to get
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: NASA's budget to be bigger so we could.
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: Go to friggin Mars. Right, Wow, that's what I wanted.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: So that was the holy Grail, That's what I wanted.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I was like, so, when did you Mars?
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: That's what I wanted to know, Well.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: When when did it strike you? Okay, you're going to
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: have to do this.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: If you will, I'll tell you.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: It gets crazier, all right, It gets crazier so so
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: that I couldn't afford any of the US rockets because
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: as you know, the US rockets are way too expensive
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: for bying lucky rock Lucky rockets are crazy money I
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: didn't have.
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  Speaker 4: I didn't even even with one hundred eighty millions. Way
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: I could have afforded were they back then?
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  Speaker 3: Well, the that with the additional stage to get tomorrows,
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: it would have been about like eighty million. So technically
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: I could have afforded one of them, but I wanted
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: to do too in case one of them didn't work.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So and then I didn't have enough money for that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was sort of prepared to, you know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know, waste half the money. And I figured
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: if I had ninety million left, that'd be fine, you know,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: but ideally on all of it.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: So I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: How'd that go?
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: And who do you call?
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: The Russian rocket forces?
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: They sell ICBMs? Does that work?
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: You got to tell us a story that I want
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: to know who you can buy anything in Russia?
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like, please walk you down that.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I want to know how you made that phone call
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and when you get there, how did that work?
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: going to Russian device in ICBMs. I might not return,
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: you know, in this situation.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Literally, Yeah, So I guess slightly less insane when you
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: when you understand that the Russians had to demolish a
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: bunch of their ICBMs because of uh, you know, sult
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: talks like the peace because basically an agreement between the
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: United States and Russia to reduce the total number of ICBMs,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their ICBMs.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: So you've took it the very biggest ICBMs.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: You could converte those into a rocket at additional stage
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: and send something to Mars.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: So those are big enough with one more stage to
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: get to Mars.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: SS eighteen.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: So you try to buy CBMs, do you succeed or no?
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Or do you figure out you got to build your
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: own instead.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: They kept raising the price on me, so because I
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: figured like, look, they're going to throw these things in
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: scrappy on anyway, should get a really good deal, right,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: So the price started out at four million, then the
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: next conversation there were at eight million. Then the next compsition,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: they were like nineteen million, and I'm like, this is
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: before we signed a contract.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: By the way, was there another bit? Was there another
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: bid or were you the only one trying to buy them?
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: I think I don't know if there were other bids,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: if if the price is increasing this much before the
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: After the contract sign So I got pretty frustrated there.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Actually, in some cases we got into like shouting matches
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: in Moscow. Some guy shouting at me in Russia and
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: I'm shouting back at.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Him and really badly, you know, I'm like, so you
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: are all I mean, you're all.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: In Moscow.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: Man, I should have recorded that. That would have been one
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: for them.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I mean it was just like ongoing, yeah, yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: This this took place.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: These conversations took place over probably six months or so so,
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: and then the final trip trip there was with the
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: with was with Mike Reffinue later became as administrator. I
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: actually realized in the course of this that my original
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: premise was wrong, that that America actually has plenty of
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: will to go to Mars, but needs that. It just
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: needs a way to Mars that is affordable and that
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: doesn't break the budget.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: to the space station. We needed the Russians to get
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: us to our own space station.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: That was embarrasing.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: It really was pitiful.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we're
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: being fleeceed. Like I think they got up to like
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: ninety million.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Dollars a seat.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah wow, Yeah, well for a seat that custom like ten.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Was predge obviously, but it was the only.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah it was before SpaceX.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Ninety million dollars a seat for a seat that cost
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: them ten million is high.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah, all right.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to tell you real
• 21:32
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• 21:46
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• 23:35
  Speaker 2: So a few months ago you and I were down
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: in Bokuchika with a president for a starship launch, and
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: it is incredible what you built in Bocachica. You know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: five years ago it was an empty beach.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: At the southern tip of tex Soundbara.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: And it's now a city and a factory where you're
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision. But
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: one of the things you said to me when we
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: were down there that really stood out me is is
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talk to
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: lots of CEOs or we fight to guard our I
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: p and and you had a very different approach. What's
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: what's your view.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Of I P patents of the week, patterns of for
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: those that innovation slowly.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: I literally do not know anyone else in business who
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: would say something like that, like like it was a
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: startling and and and and what Elon said down there
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: is he said, look this stuff. I assume everyone will
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: steal everything, but by the time they steal it will
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: be five generations beyond and it won't matter.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Yes, at Tesla, we actually open sourcedal Lite patents. So
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: we said our patents are anyone can use them for free.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Really yeah, uh. The only wily do patents of Tesla
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: to to avoid patent.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Trolls causing causing trouble.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: So we'll try to look ahead and say, okay, patent
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: trolls are going to trial file patterns to blocks and things,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: will file patents and then open source to make it free.
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm want to say patents for the week. Now.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: There are a few cases, in say with pharmaceuticals, where
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: it might cost you billion dollars to do a Phase
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: three human file, but then subsequently the drug is very
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: cheap to manufacture. So cases there are some in my opinion,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: which would massively reduced what can be patented. And and say,
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: because the whole point of patenting is to maximize innovation,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: not inhibit it. And in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: most patents inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: there are case I want to do one a single
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: cases like where such as a phase three clinical trial.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: It might cost a billion dollars, but then the drugs
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacture, and if you
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: no one will pay for the billion dollars free writer
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: problem exactly. So you have to address the free writer problem.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: But other than that, there should be no patents. The
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: ideas are easy.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: You want ideas to flow maximum to people, to get
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: there faster and do things bigger.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: The idea is the easy pot. The herd execution is
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: the hard part.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: As the old saying goes, it's one percent inspiration, if
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: not less than one percent, and nineteen nine percent perspiration.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Also because you're making you know, the companies you're building
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: are actually building stuff they're building cars, they're building spaceships,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: they're building things that if they don't work, it's a
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: real problem. And the precision you manufacture things with, how
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: do you get that level of precision? How do you
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: get how do you build a culture? You're not You're
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: amazing at thinking outside the box. But what's interesting is
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: you you may even be better at execution, which is
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: how do you execute so effectively?
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Well, I take a physics fresh principles approach to everything.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: It's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: So uh, you know, the idea at the beginning of
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Tesla was that we would outsource.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: Almost all the manufacturing.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: But then it turned out there was no there were
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: no good companies to outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: a really really, it wasn't peaceable outsourced manufacturing actually is
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: the exception of the rule. And and just over time,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: we had to insource almost everything for Tesla and same
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: for SpaceX. I became very good at manufacturing because I
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: had to use no choice. At this point, I might
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: know more about manufacturing than any any human ever has,
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: because I've done so many. I've manufactured so many different
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: things and so many different arenas. I think probably more
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: than anyone ever has.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Look, that's that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: not a crazy statement. And you're somehow running Tesla and
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: running SpaceX and running X and running the Boring Company
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: and running Norlink and doing doge. How much do you
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: sleep in a given night?
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: About six hours and average.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: So about six So so that's it wouldn't have shocked
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: me if you said three or four.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So the cornets rush is how many hours do you
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: work a day?
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: I work almost every working hour.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: And Ben, he's not kidding that. Like when Elan and
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I were first getting to know each other, I suggested,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, let let's grab dinner sometime. And I
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: don't know if you remember what you said. You said,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I don't eat dinner. I don't have social dinners really right,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: I mean that, Yeah, I mean you obviously eat food,
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: but yeah, idea going to a restaurant for two hours, But
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the idea of like, I don't, But it was it
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: was just kind of a matter of fact. Why would
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: I go to dinner like you jump you work? Uh?
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I interally just I'll have lunch, and then it
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: brought during meetings and continue being.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: How many nights have you slept at your offices? You
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: think your career percentage wise where you say, I just
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: got to take this nap basically because my body forces
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: me to, and I got to get back to work
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess it started out even with the first
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: company two which is a terrible name, but the first
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: interror company, we were able to rent an office which
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: was like in a leaky attack essentially for five hundred
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could find
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: was eight hundred dollars a month. So like, and we
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: only had about five thousand dollars between our brother and I,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: so like we're not we'll we'll, we'll.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: Just stay in the office. Yep. So we got some.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Couches that converted into beds and we'd can't sleep at night,
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: and then we just have like turn the beds back
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: into couches before anyone came, and then we would shout
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: the Y M C A down the road and so
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: that went that that that that literally was for several months.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: What we did, it was in great shape. You know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: we work out the y.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: I still remember that that YFC at Page Miller al
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: Camino in Palo Alto.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: So that was a long time.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: Again, so it's been I don't know. I've never thought
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: to count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: So you're now the richest man on earth? Do you
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: still sleep at the office, Well, that's true, maybe Mars,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: we'll find someone else.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: But I think if someone is a sovereign head of
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: a country there to facto richer by a lot.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Do you still sleep at the office now?
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: I have sometimes slept at the office. Yeah, don't forget.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: We do this show Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Hit that
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: subscriber auto download button from the White House. It's been
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a pleasure. Thanks for being with us.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: Some verdict.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: We'll see you guys back here in a couple of days.