In the final part of the series, Dwarkesh Patel and John Collison ask Elon about government efficiency, waste and fraud, the role of AI and robotics in America’s long-term future, and his closing thoughts on optimism.

Transcript:

AI, Robotics, and the National Debt

Dwarkesh Patel asked about the point of DOGE cuts if AI and robotics are expected to drive strong economic growth in the coming years.

Elon Musk: “Well, I think like waste and fraud are not good things to have. You know, I was actually pretty worried about, I guess, I mean, I think in the absence of AI and robotics, we’re actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy.

Now our interest payments, the interest payments, the national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. So over a trillion dollars just in interest payments. I was like, okay, pretty concerned about that. Maybe if I spend some time we can slow down the bankruptcy of the United States and give us enough time for the AI and robots to help solve the national debt. Or not. Help solve. It’s the only thing that could solve the national debt.

Like we are 1000% going to go bankrupt as a country and fail as a country. Without AI and robots, nothing else will solve the national debt. We’d like to. Well, we need enough time to build the AI and robots and not go bankrupt before then.”

Government Fraud and Waste

Dwarkesh Patel asked why it had been so difficult to cut obvious waste and fraud from the government.

Elon Musk: “I’m not the president and it’s very hard to cut. To cut, to even to cut things that are obvious waste and fraud. Like ridiculous waste and fraud. What I discovered is it’s extremely difficult even to cut very obvious waste from the government because the government has to operate on who’s complaining.

If you cut off payments to fraudsters, they immediately come up with the most sympathetic sounding reasons to continue the payment. They don’t say, “please keep the fraud going.” They say, you know, they’re like, “you’re killing baby pandas.” Meanwhile there’s no baby pandas are dying. They’re just making it up.

The forces are capable of coming up with extremely compelling, sort of heart wrenching stories that are false but nonetheless sound sympathetic. And that’s what happened.”

Elon Musk gave an example of fraud involving Social Security records:

Elon Musk: “Maybe there shouldn’t be 20 million people marked as alive in Social Security who are indefinitely dead and over the age of 115. The oldest American is 114. So it’s safe to say if somebody is 115 and marked as alive in the Social Security database, something is wrong. There’s either a typo, somebody should call them and say, “we seem to have your birthday wrong,” or we need to mark you as dead. One of the two things, very intimidating call to get.”

Dwarkesh Patel asked for an estimate of total fraud from this mechanism.

Elon Musk: “My guess is, by the way, The Government Accountability Office has done these estimates before. I’m not the only one. It was not coming out of this. You know, in fact, I think they, they did, the GAO did analysis a rough estimate of fraud during the Biden administration and calculated at roughly half a trillion dollars. So don’t take my word for it. Take it. A report issued during the Biden administration. How about that?”

The Challenge of Government Efficiency

Dwarkesh Patel asked why it had been difficult to cut hundreds of billions in fraud if it was so obvious.

Elon Musk: “Because when. When essentially we did, we actually. Look, you really have to stand back and recalibrate your expectations for competence because you’re operating in a world where, you know, you’ve got to sort of make ends meet. Like, you know, you got to pay your bills, you got to, you know, buy the microphones.

So it’s like there’s a giant, largely uncaring monster bureaucracy. It’s not even a bunch of macronistic computers that are just sending payments. Like one of the things that those teams are. There was and sounds so simple that probably will save, let’s say 100 billion, maybe 200 billion a year, is simply requiring that payments from the main treasury computer, which is called PAM, it’s like Payment Accounts Master or something like that.

There’s 5 trillion payments here requiring that any payment that goes out have a payment appropriation code, make it mandatory, not optional, and that you have anything at all in the comment field because you see, you have to recalibrate how dumb things are. Payments were being sent out with no appropriation code, not checking back to any congressional appropriation, and no explanation.

And this is why the Department of War, formerly Department of Defense, cannot pass an audit because the information is literally not there. Recalibrate your expectations.”

Reflections on Politics and X

John Collison asked how Elon feels looking back on his involvement in politics and the acquisition of Twitter, noting both the impact and the personal cost.

Elon Musk: “Well, I think those things needed to be done to maximize the probability that the future is good. Politics generally is very tribal and it’s very tribal and people lose their objectivity. Usually with politics, they generally have trouble seeing the good on the other side or the bad on their own side. That’s generally how it goes.

That, I guess, was one of the things that surprised me the most, is you often simply cannot reason with people if they’re in one tribe or the other. They simply believe that everything their tribe does is good and anything the other political tribe does is bad. And persuading them is otherwise, it’s almost impossible.

So anyway, but I think overall those actions, acquiring Twitter, getting Trump elected, even though it makes a lot of people angry, I think those actions are good for civilization.”

AI, Government, and Corporate Power

Dwarkesh Patel asked how Elon thinks about the risk of governments using advanced AI and robotics to suppress populations, and whether private companies should set limits on what governments can do with their technology.

Elon Musk: “I think probably the biggest danger of AI, or maybe the biggest danger of for AI and robotics going wrong is government.

You know, I mean, the way like, like people who are opposed to corporations or worried about corporations, should really worry about the most about government, because government is just a corporation in the limit. It’s a government. It is. Government is just the biggest corporation with a monopoly on violence.

So I always find it like a strange dichotomy where people would think corporations are bad, but the government is good. When the government is simply the biggest and worst corporation. But people have that dichotomy. They somehow think at the same time the government can be good, but corporations bad. And this is not true. Corporations have better morality than the government.

So I actually think it’s, you know, that is the thing to be worried about. It’s like if the government should not. Like the government could potentially use AI and robotics to suppress the population. Like that is a serious concern.”

Dwarkesh asked what Elon can do as someone building these technologies to prevent misuse by governments.

Elon Musk: “Well, I think if you have a limited government, if you limit the powers of government, which is like really what the US Constitution is intended to do, it’s intended to limit the powers of government, then you’re probably going to have a better outcome than if you have.

Not about all governments. I mean it’s difficult to predict the. Like I said, what’s the end endpoint or what is many years in the future. But it’s difficult to predict this sort of path. Along that way, if civilization progresses, AI will vastly exceed the sum of all human intelligence and there will be far more robots than humans along the way. What happens? It’s very difficult to predict.

I will do my best to ensure that anything that’s within my control maximizes the good outcome for humanity. I think anything else would be short sighted because obviously I’m part of humanity. So I like humans. Pro human. Pro human.”

Final Reflections

John Collison reflected on the theme of leaning into acute pain to solve bottlenecks rather than enduring chronic pain.

Elon Musk: “I have a high pain threshold. That’s helpful.

Yes. So, you know, one thing I can say is like, I think the future is going to be very interesting. And as I said, the Davos I’ve only been to, I was looking at Davos. I think it was on the ground for like three hours or something.

It’s better to be, it’s better to err on the side of optimism and be wrong than err on the side of pessimism and be right for quality of life. So, you know, your happiness will be, you’ll be happier if you, if you are on the side of optimism rather than erring on the side of pessimism. And so I recommend erring on the side of optimism. That’s cool.”

Dwarkesh Patel: “Elon, thanks for doing this.”

John Collison: “Thank you.”

Elon Musk: “All right.”

This concludes the 14-part transcript series of Elon Musk’s conversation with Dwarkesh Patel and John Collison. Elon shares his views on government efficiency, the risks of concentrated power, and why he believes erring on the side of optimism leads to a better life and a better future.