Verdict with Ted Cruz - Part 2： Elon Musk 1-on-1 Exclusive at the White House-DOGE, AI, Trump, Mars & Killer Robots

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00:01:15.180 Welcome.

00:01:15.620 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:01:18.200 Today is part two of our exclusive conversation with Elon Musk,

00:01:22.480 the entrepreneur and innovator who is transforming industries

00:01:25.640 and is dismantling government waste, fraud, and abuse with Doge.

00:01:31.300 Musk's relentless pursuit of technology and space exploration

00:01:34.720 continues to capture the world's imagination.

00:01:37.700 In this episode, we unravel the thoughts and aspirations of a man

00:01:41.180 who defies conventional boundaries, pushing humanity towards new horizons.

00:01:46.080 So join us in the White House as we continue to explore the riveting journey of Elon Musk,

00:01:51.800 a modern-day pioneer whose revolutionary ideas are set to redefine tomorrow.

00:01:56.800 Let me start with a question you know a lot about.

00:01:59.440 What year does man first set foot on Mars?

00:02:04.060 I think the soonest would be 29.

00:02:08.240 29?

00:02:09.360 Yes.

00:02:10.580 And I don't think it's more than two to four years beyond that.

00:02:14.400 And that's not an unmanned.

00:02:16.140 That's a human being putting his foot on the surface.

00:02:20.980 Yes.

00:02:21.260 Best case would be 29. 0.58

00:02:23.800 And what do you put the odds of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life?

00:02:31.060 I don't think we're going to find aliens.

00:02:32.840 Okay.

00:02:33.000 But do we find ruins?

00:02:35.320 Do we find remnants?

00:02:36.800 We may find the ruins of a long-dead alien civilization.

00:02:40.120 That's possible.

00:02:41.080 And we may find subterranean microbial life.

00:02:45.620 That's possible.

00:02:46.940 All right.

00:02:47.260 If man lands on Mars in 29, how soon after that do you land on Mars?

00:02:54.000 It remains to be seen.

00:02:55.080 I'm not sure.

00:02:55.500 The important thing is that we build a self-sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible.

00:03:04.140 The key threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper, even when the

00:03:14.260 supply ships from Earth stop coming.

00:03:16.780 At that point, even if something were to happen on Earth, it might not be World War III, but it might be that...

00:03:26.780 A bad virus.

00:03:28.120 Yeah.

00:03:28.420 It might not be anything.

00:03:29.420 An asteroid.

00:03:29.860 I was saying it's like, say, civilization could die with a bang or a whimper.

00:03:32.800 It may be that civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars.

00:03:40.340 So you obviously need Mars to become self-sustaining and be able to grow by itself before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming.

00:03:50.340 That is the critical civilizational threshold beyond which the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater.

00:03:59.680 And how close are we technologically to be able to do that, to have a self-sustaining settlement on the surface of Mars?

00:04:08.340 I think it can be done in 20 years.

00:04:11.220 But it would take 20 years.

00:04:12.600 So we're not...

00:04:13.340 In 29, we're not there.

00:04:14.760 What are we missing?

00:04:15.500 What are the big technologies we don't have?

00:04:18.220 A few people running around the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self-sustaining.

00:04:22.760 So you're going to need, on the order of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.

00:04:27.880 But you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years?

00:04:31.020 Yes.

00:04:32.020 And what's the technology we're missing right now?

00:04:35.200 When you think about a million people on Mars, do we have the ability to get water, to get food, to keep them safe?

00:04:41.940 I mean, what do we need to make that happen?

00:04:44.480 Well, you need to recreate the entire base of industry of Earth.

00:04:46.780 So, you know, we're here at the top of a massive pyramid of industry.

00:04:53.260 That starts with mining a vast array of materials, those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement.

00:05:04.920 We grow food, obviously.

00:05:06.480 We grow trees.

00:05:08.900 We make things out of the trees.

00:05:11.200 There's, you know, you've got to build all that on Mars.

00:05:14.300 And Mars is a hostile environment.

00:05:16.360 It's, you know, it sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on Mars.

00:05:23.980 You know, it's quite cold.

00:05:25.860 And how do you prep for that?

00:05:27.720 Well, in the beginning on Mars, you have to have a life support habitation module.

00:05:34.540 Like, you can't just live outdoors.

00:05:36.840 You can't breathe the air.

00:05:37.900 Like a dome, you think, is likely?

00:05:39.660 Yeah.

00:05:40.360 Glass domes type of thing.

00:05:42.100 Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely to be ideal for a habitat?

00:05:48.960 What might be Arcadia Planetae is one of the good options.

00:05:55.640 One of my daughters is named Arcadia after that.

00:06:00.640 And what makes that attractive?

00:06:02.240 My eldest son's middle name is Ari's, Mars.

00:06:08.060 You've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it.

00:06:11.500 My eldest kid's middle name is essentially Mars.

00:06:15.600 When did you get the dream?

00:06:16.940 Like, I mean...

00:06:17.560 He's 20 now.

00:06:18.520 2021 soon.

00:06:20.260 This is a decades-old dream.

00:06:23.480 So, like, when you were 10, did you look up and say, I'm going to Mars?

00:06:26.380 No.

00:06:29.140 No, I read a lot of science fiction books and programmed computers.

00:06:32.960 But the first video game that I sold was a space video game called Blastar.

00:06:40.860 Maybe I was born this way.

00:06:41.800 How do you become Elon Musk?

00:06:47.120 Look, you're obviously smart as hell.

00:06:49.160 But there are a lot of smart people that don't do SWAT.

00:06:52.840 And you've managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary success.

00:06:58.920 Yeah.

00:06:59.240 Yeah, look, I mean, that's just objectively right.

00:07:03.200 So, what has led to that?

00:07:04.600 Because there are other smart people that that's not true.

00:07:06.800 And they gaze at their navel and they don't do anything.

00:07:09.180 So, what do you do differently that makes you so effective?

00:07:13.740 Well, I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity.

00:07:16.620 I want to find out the nature of the universe, understand the universe.

00:07:20.180 And in order to do that, we have to travel to other planets, see other star systems, maybe other galaxies.

00:07:31.180 Find perhaps other alien civilizations or at least the remnants of alien civilizations.

00:07:38.360 Gain a better understanding of where is the universe going, ready to come from.

00:07:42.200 And what questions do we not yet know to ask about the answer that is the universe?

00:07:47.360 So, let's go back 25 years, late 90s.

00:07:52.920 You're at PayPal.

00:07:54.320 How do you turn PayPal into the success it was, which then helped launch you to the next one and the next one?

00:08:00.260 Yeah.

00:08:00.520 So, I studied physics and economics in college, which is a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how reality works.

00:08:08.040 And then was going to do a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultracapacitors, actually, as a potential means of energy storage for electric transport.

00:08:27.280 I put that on hold to start an internet company.

00:08:34.600 I essentially came to the conclusion that the internet was one of those rare things, and I could either watch it happen while a grad student or anticipate.

00:08:42.540 And I figured I'd always go back to grad school.

00:08:44.440 You know, grad school is going to be kind of the same.

00:08:45.980 But I couldn't bear the thought of just watching the internet happen.

00:08:50.860 So, I wanted to be a part of building it.

00:08:53.080 So, I created an internet company.

00:08:56.420 We did the first maps, directions, yellow pages, white pages on the internet.

00:09:01.340 I actually wrote the first version of the software just by myself in 1995.

00:09:05.120 And we ended up selling that to Compaq, a Texas company, I guess, for about $300 million in cash about four years after I graduated.

00:09:18.960 Wow.

00:09:19.720 So, I should say, just to preface that, I graduated with about $100,000 in student debt.

00:09:25.260 So, it wasn't…

00:09:26.160 Yeah, you and me both.

00:09:27.200 Yeah.

00:09:28.220 Yeah.

00:09:28.620 Where's my $300 million?

00:09:29.560 I haven't arrived.

00:09:30.180 I know.

00:09:30.440 And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived with $2,500, a bag of books, and a bag of clothes.

00:09:38.980 All right.

00:09:39.540 So, you sell the company for $300 million.

00:09:41.360 How much does that change your life?

00:09:43.480 Well, I got $21 million, blackjack.

00:09:48.860 But I wanted to do more on the internet.

00:09:53.360 So, I started a company called X.com, which merged with a company called Confinity,

00:09:59.180 which is Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.

00:10:02.420 Yeah.

00:10:02.700 And the combined company was actually, at first, still called X.com,

00:10:07.040 but we later changed the name of the company to PayPal.

00:10:11.380 Because of all the name changes, it's kind of confusing.

00:10:13.580 But the company that people know as PayPal today was actually…

00:10:18.280 I filed those incorporation documents for that company.

00:10:20.620 Interesting.

00:10:21.300 Yeah.

00:10:21.520 Well, and as you know, Peter Thiel and I were buddies back in the mid-90s before he went

00:10:27.780 and did any of this.

00:10:28.660 But, you know, I became friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New York and just

00:10:33.040 sort of a young libertarian with a lot of dreams.

00:10:35.940 So, it's been a heck of a journey.

00:10:38.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:38.680 And now, obviously, Peter was involved in a coup.

00:10:40.880 So, you know, we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation where, you know,

00:10:51.680 they did coup me at PayPal.

00:10:55.580 I kind of…

00:10:56.260 Now, did you all make peace after that?

00:10:57.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:58.400 Yeah.

00:10:59.380 I mean, I was doing a lot of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would have been

00:11:03.140 successful, but I then went on a two-week trip, which was a dual money-raising trip and

00:11:12.200 honeymoon.

00:11:13.540 Because I'd not done my honeymoon earlier in the year.

00:11:16.800 So, I was raising money while doing a honeymoon, but I was kind of away from…

00:11:20.280 How did that go over, by the way?

00:11:22.600 It worked.

00:11:23.560 It worked.

00:11:24.220 There you go.

00:11:24.920 It worked.

00:11:25.600 I raised money.

00:11:26.260 Yeah.

00:11:26.520 Yeah.

00:11:26.980 And we had a honeymoon.

00:11:27.920 There you go.

00:11:28.560 So, yeah.

00:11:29.580 But you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary.

00:11:36.360 So, I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops.

00:11:40.340 And anyway, we passed things up and have been friends nonetheless.

00:11:50.400 And, you know, these days I'll, like, stay at his house and stuff.

00:11:53.320 So, obviously, we're friends.

00:11:54.220 And he's also invested in most of my companies.

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00:12:28.860 All right.

00:12:29.380 So, 2002, you start SpaceX.

00:12:32.040 Like, how do you start a rocket company?

00:12:33.720 Like, what's the first day where you're like, I want to make rockets and I want to go to Mars?

00:12:38.200 Like, what do you do on day one?

00:12:39.420 So, I think you have to start with some sort of philosophical premise in order to have, in order for the, in order to be highly motivated, you have to have some philosophical foundation.

00:12:55.620 In my case, it was that we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe.

00:13:11.280 And in order to expand consciousness, we need to go beyond one planet.

00:13:17.080 If we're on one planet, there's too much risk.

00:13:20.000 You know, hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future, but it may not.

00:13:24.640 There's always some risk that we are, we self-annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs.

00:13:32.580 Yep.

00:13:33.280 There's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket.

00:13:35.500 So, it's going to be better if we're a multi-planet species.

00:13:39.300 And then, once we're a multi-planet species, the next step would be to be multi-stellar and have civilization among, on many different star systems.

00:13:50.060 So, in 2001, I didn't think that I could, I didn't think I could sell a rocket company.

00:13:54.820 So, I thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal.

00:14:00.820 In that case, I think it was about $180 million after tax, something like that.

00:14:06.500 And, I thought, you know, I don't need $180 million, so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic Mars mission to get the public excited about going back to Mars.

00:14:21.080 Or, going to Mars, I should say.

00:14:23.120 Yeah.

00:14:24.040 Mars was always going to be the destination after the moon.

00:14:26.480 Right.

00:14:27.360 In fact, if you told people in 1969 that it would be 2025, and we've not even gone back to the moon, let alone...

00:14:34.660 It's hard to believe.

00:14:35.540 Let alone Mars.

00:14:36.700 They'd be like, what happened?

00:14:37.800 Did civilization collapse?

00:14:39.900 Stop, yeah.

00:14:40.700 Like, there would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now, if you told people this after landing on the moon in 1969.

00:14:48.620 Why do you think in 50 years, America never went back to the moon?

00:14:52.380 Well, we destroyed the Saturn V rocket that was, that could take people to the moon, and had the space shuttle, which could only go to low Earth orbit.

00:14:58.920 And then, there really hasn't been anything to replace, no vehicle has been made since then that can go to the moon or to Mars until the SpaceX starship rocket.

00:15:12.620 Yeah.

00:15:12.720 So, you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.

00:15:16.540 So, I remember, you and I first met in 2013, when I was a brand new baby senator.

00:15:23.040 Yeah.

00:15:24.160 And I was still down in the basement office.

00:15:26.200 They stick freshman senators in the basement office, kind of like hazing.

00:15:29.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:29.940 I was about to say, it sounds like it.

00:15:31.640 There are 100 senate offices, but for six months, you stay in the basement.

00:15:34.320 Put you in your place.

00:15:34.960 Yeah, it's like wearing beanie.

00:15:36.220 They just, they want you to know where you're supposed to be.

00:15:38.680 You know, I got to say, now 13 years into it, I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing that.

00:15:42.260 Sure, sure.

00:15:43.260 But, you were down in the basement office, and I remember you were coming and sitting down with SpaceX, and at the time, the Air Force was not letting y'all bid to launch satellites.

00:15:51.940 True.

00:15:52.040 And so, you were coming and saying, look, we got a company, I think we can do a really good job of this, and yet we're locked out of this.

00:15:58.180 It's a little amazing to think the journey SpaceX has gone from then to now.

00:16:02.960 Well, yes.

00:16:05.100 It's hard to believe that this is all real.

00:16:08.080 Because, originally, if it's consistent with my belief that we need to become a multi-planet species, I thought the only way to do that would be through NASA.

00:16:16.360 So, and I think, I thought, well, if I can just get the public excited about Mars, then they'll do a mission to Mars.

00:16:23.340 And, so initially, my thought was to have, to send a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel, then land the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds, and you'd see these, the sort of money shot.

00:16:37.300 The money shot would be green plants on a red background.

00:16:39.800 Yeah.

00:16:39.860 I also recently know that money shot has a different meaning in some other arenas.

00:16:47.000 Yeah, I'm glad you didn't get it to that.

00:16:49.380 It's a very different story.

00:16:51.540 But, what I'm trying to say is, the captivating shot would be the green plants on a red background.

00:16:59.420 And then, hopefully, that would, if we did something like that, that would get the public excited about Mars, that would increase NASA's budget, and then we could send people to Mars.

00:17:05.920 So, your original dream was NASA to do this?

00:17:08.280 Yes.

00:17:08.980 Not you?

00:17:10.000 No, the original plan was literally to take a bunch of the money from PayPal, and, I guess, by some people's definition, waste it with no profit on a non-profit thing.

00:17:24.660 I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money for free to get NASA's budget to be bigger so we could go to frigging Mars.

00:17:29.420 Right.

00:17:29.860 Wow.

00:17:30.860 That's what I wanted.

00:17:32.700 That was the Holy Grail.

00:17:34.040 That's what I wanted. 0.98

00:17:34.600 I was like, damn it, why am I going to go to Mars? 0.98

00:17:37.580 That's what I wanted to know. 0.98

00:17:38.880 When did it strike you, okay, you're going to have to do this if you want to?

00:17:42.080 Well, I'll tell you, it gets crazier.

00:17:43.600 All right, it gets crazier.

00:17:44.720 So, I couldn't afford any of the U.S. rockets, because, as you know, the U.S. rockets are way too expensive.

00:17:49.380 Boeing Lockheed rockets are crazy money.

00:17:52.080 Even with $180 million, there's no way I could have afforded to.

00:17:54.640 How much were they back then?

00:17:55.680 Well, with the additional stage to get to Mars, it would have been about like $80 million.

00:18:04.000 So, technically, I could have afforded one of them, but I wanted to do two in case one of them didn't work.

00:18:09.240 Yeah.

00:18:09.340 So, and then I didn't have enough money for that.

00:18:12.720 And I was sort of prepared to, you know, I don't know, waste half the money.

00:18:18.840 And I figured if I had $90 million left, that would be fine, you know.

00:18:21.780 But ideally not all of it.

00:18:23.920 So, I went to Russia twice to try to buy ICBMs.

00:18:28.420 How interesting.

00:18:29.160 How'd that go?

00:18:30.640 And who do you call?

00:18:32.500 The Russian rocket forces.

00:18:34.920 Do they sell ICBMs?

00:18:36.400 Does that work?

00:18:36.960 Yeah.

00:18:38.820 You've got to tell us a story that I want to know.

00:18:41.820 Turns out you can buy anything in Russia.

00:18:43.600 Yeah.

00:18:45.020 Like, please walk me down that.

00:18:47.460 I want to know how you made that phone call.

00:18:49.400 And when you get there, how did that work?

00:18:51.280 And what do you tell your friends?

00:18:52.440 Yeah.

00:18:52.880 Listen, I'm going to Russia twice to my ICBMs.

00:18:55.220 I might not return, you know, depends on the situation.

00:18:59.640 Literally.

00:19:01.100 Yeah.

00:19:01.460 So, it gets slightly less insane when you understand that the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because of, you know, salt talks. 0.62

00:19:15.100 Yeah, right.

00:19:15.700 Because of basically an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the total number of ICBMs.

00:19:21.740 Sure.

00:19:22.120 Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their ICBMs.

00:19:25.820 So, if you're talking to the very biggest ICBMs, you could convert those into a rocket, add an additional stage, and send something to Mars.

00:19:32.900 So, those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars?

00:19:36.420 To send a small payload to Mars, yeah.

00:19:38.060 Oh.

00:19:38.860 So, the SS-18.

00:19:40.280 So, you try to buy ICBMs, do you succeed or no?

00:19:43.000 Or do you figure out you've got to build your own instead?

00:19:45.860 They kept raising the price on me.

00:19:48.260 So, because I figured, like, look, they've got to throw these things in the scrapyard anyway.

00:19:54.360 Yeah.

00:19:54.520 You should get a really good deal.

00:19:55.780 Yeah, yeah.

00:19:56.000 Right?

00:19:58.100 So, the price started out at $4 million.

00:20:01.560 Then, the next conversation, they were at $8 million.

00:20:03.780 Then, the next conversation, they were at, like, $19 million.

00:20:07.300 And I'm like, this is before we signed a contract.

00:20:09.180 By the way, was there another bidder, or were you the only one trying to buy them?

00:20:13.820 I think, I don't know if there were other bids, but they didn't mention any other bids.

00:20:17.200 Yeah.

00:20:17.700 But, I was like, man, if the price is increasing this much before the contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract signed.

00:20:24.080 Yeah.

00:20:24.180 So, I got pretty frustrated there.

00:20:31.120 Actually, in some cases, we got into, like, shouting matches in Moscow.

00:20:36.000 So, some guy's shouting at me in Russian.

00:20:38.660 I'm shouting back at him in English.

00:20:39.560 I'm very glad that you didn't get a sign.

00:20:40.980 In Moscow area.

00:20:41.640 Yeah.

00:20:41.880 That put it in really badly.

00:20:44.260 You know, I'm like...

00:20:45.120 So, you are all...

00:20:46.120 I mean, you're all in.

00:20:47.360 Stop rubbing me off.

00:20:50.680 In Moscow.

00:20:51.760 Yeah.

00:20:53.520 So, man, I should have recorded that.

00:20:56.540 That would have been one for the...

00:20:57.700 How many days were you there negotiating that first time?

00:21:00.160 I mean, was this, like, ongoing?

00:21:01.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:02.120 This took place...

00:21:03.880 These conversations took place over probably six months or so.

00:21:07.060 Wow.

00:21:08.680 So, and then the final trip there was with Mike Griffin, who later became NASA administrator.

00:21:19.840 I actually realized in the course of this that my original premise was wrong.

00:21:24.520 That America actually has plenty of will to go to Mars.

00:21:29.620 But it just needs a way to go to Mars.

00:21:32.120 That is affordable, and that doesn't break the budget.

00:21:36.480 Well, as you know, we couldn't even get to the space station.

00:21:38.560 We needed the Russians to get us to our own space station. 0.95

00:21:41.180 That was embarrassing.

00:21:41.980 It really was pitiful.

00:21:43.240 I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we were being fleeced.

00:21:46.360 Like, I think they got up to, like, $90 million a seat.

00:21:48.640 Yeah.

00:21:49.220 Wow.

00:21:49.860 Yeah.

00:21:50.540 For a seat that cost them, like, $10 million.

00:21:51.880 That was pre-Nodge, obviously.

00:21:53.680 But it was the only one.

00:21:54.520 It was pre-Nodge.

00:21:54.960 Yeah.

00:21:55.360 It was before SpaceX.

00:21:56.580 Yeah.

00:21:57.120 But $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them $10 million is high.

00:22:02.120 Yeah.

00:22:03.240 That's a lot of money.

00:22:04.680 Yeah.

00:22:05.660 All right.

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00:24:10.320 So a few months ago, you and I were down in Boca Chica with the president for a Starship

00:24:16.020 launch, and it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica.

00:24:19.880 Yeah.

00:24:20.000 You know, five years ago, it was an empty beach at the southern tip of Texas.

00:24:23.920 Basically a soundbar, yeah.

00:24:25.240 And it's now a city and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible

00:24:30.660 precision.

00:24:31.640 Yeah.

00:24:31.840 Well, one of the things you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to

00:24:35.340 me is you said your philosophy on intellectual property.

00:24:39.380 I've talked to lots of CEOs.

00:24:40.820 They're like, we fight to guard our IP.

00:24:43.200 And you had a very different approach.

00:24:44.980 What's your view of IP?

00:24:46.640 Patents for the weak.

00:24:50.500 Patents for those who innovate slowly.

00:24:52.400 I literally do not know anyone else in business who would say something like that.

00:24:56.600 Like, it was a startling.

00:24:59.140 And what Elon said down there is he said, look, this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,

00:25:04.380 but by the time they steal it, we'll be five generations beyond and it won't matter.

00:25:07.500 Yes.

00:25:08.700 At Tesla, we actually open sourced all our patents.

00:25:11.120 So we said our patents are anyone can use them for free.

00:25:13.920 Really?

00:25:14.940 Yeah.

00:25:16.120 We only do patents at Tesla to avoid patent trolls causing trouble.

00:25:22.380 So we'll try to look ahead and say, okay, patent trolls are going to file patents to block 0.55

00:25:27.940 certain things.

00:25:28.420 We'll file patents and then open source the patent, make it free.

00:25:31.020 I mean it when I say patents for the weak.

00:25:32.880 Now, there are a few cases in, say, with pharmaceuticals where it might cost you a billion

00:25:38.060 dollars to do a phase three human file.

00:25:41.480 But then subsequently, the drug is very cheap to manufacture.

00:25:44.980 So cases, there are some, in my opinion, which is massively reduced what can be patented.

00:25:49.700 Um, and, and, and say, because the whole point of patenting is, is to maximize innovation,

00:25:55.700 not inhibit it.

00:25:56.580 Um, and in my opinion, it's maybe a controversial opinion, uh, most patents inhibit innovation.

00:26:02.580 They do not help it.

00:26:04.080 Um, but there are cases, I want to do want to single out cases like where such as a phase

00:26:09.060 three clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars, but the, then the drugs thereafter

00:26:12.460 cost a few dollars to a manufacturer.

00:26:14.980 And, and if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars, no one will pay for

00:26:19.640 the billion dollars.

00:26:20.080 There's a free rider problem.

00:26:21.300 Free rider problem.

00:26:22.060 Yeah.

00:26:22.260 Exactly.

00:26:22.720 So you have to address the free rider problem.

00:26:24.600 But other than that, there should be no patents.

00:26:26.600 Ideas are easy.

00:26:27.860 You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get there faster and do things bigger.

00:26:33.640 The idea is the easy part.

00:26:35.380 Uh, the hard, execution is the hard part.

00:26:37.680 As the old saying goes, it's 1% inspiration, uh, if not less than 1%, and 99% perspiration.

00:26:43.520 But I'll say the perspiration part, you're really damn good at also, because you're making,

00:26:49.200 you know, the companies you're building are actually building stuff.

00:26:54.400 They're building cars, they're building spaceships, they're building things that if they don't

00:26:57.520 work, it's a real problem.

00:26:58.840 And, and the precision you manufacture things with, how do you get that level of precision?

00:27:04.320 How do you get, how do you build a culture?

00:27:07.220 You're not, you're amazing at thinking outside the box, but, but what's interesting is you're,

00:27:11.980 you may even be better at execution, which is, how do you execute so effectively?

00:27:17.920 Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything.

00:27:21.520 It's not as though I, I wanted to insource manufacturing.

00:27:25.820 It's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively.

00:27:29.660 So, uh, you know, the idea at the beginning of Tesla was that we would outsource almost

00:27:36.720 all the manufacturing, uh, but then it turned out there was no, there were no good companies

00:27:42.520 to outsource manufacturing to, which there wasn't a, really, really, it wasn't feasible.

00:27:47.920 Outsource manufacturing actually is, uh, the exception of the rule.

00:27:52.060 Um, and, uh, and just over time we had to insource almost everything for Tesla and same

00:27:57.960 for SpaceX.

00:27:58.440 I became very good at manufacturing because I had to, there was no choice at this point.

00:28:04.460 I might know more about manufacturing than any, any human ever has, because I've done

00:28:09.300 so many, I've manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas.

00:28:13.280 Um, I think probably more than anyone ever has.

00:28:16.960 Look, that's, that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's not a crazy statement and

00:28:21.740 you're somehow running Tesla and running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company

00:28:29.140 and running Neuralink and doing Doge.

00:28:32.580 How much do you sleep in a given night?

00:28:34.940 About six hours on average.

00:28:36.280 So about six.

00:28:36.900 So, so that's, it wouldn't have shocked me if you said three or four.

00:28:39.920 So the next question is how many hours do you work a day?

00:28:42.960 I work almost every waking hour.

00:28:45.960 And Ben, he, he's not kidding at that.

00:28:48.120 Like when Elon and I were first getting to know each other, um, I suggested, I said,

00:28:52.460 Hey, let, let, let's grab dinner sometime.

00:28:54.180 And I don't know if you remember what you said.

00:28:55.260 You said, I don't eat dinner.

00:28:57.380 I don't have social dinners really.

00:28:59.580 Right.

00:28:59.800 I mean that, yeah.

00:29:00.680 I mean, you obviously eat food, but the idea of like, I don't, but it was, it was just

00:29:08.660 kind of matter of fact, what, why would I go to dinner?

00:29:11.140 Like I, you just, you work.

00:29:14.660 Uh, yeah.

00:29:15.940 I literally just thought I'll have lunch and dinner brought during meetings and continue

00:29:19.340 being.

00:29:20.300 How many nights have you slept at your offices?

00:29:23.700 You think your career percentage wise, where you say, I just got to take this nap basically

00:29:28.700 because my body forces me to, and I got to get back to work fast and efficiently without

00:29:32.860 going somewhere else.

00:29:33.920 Well, I guess it started out even with, with the first company, uh, Zip2, which is a terrible

00:29:42.280 name, but the first internet company, um, the, we were able to rent an office, uh, which

00:29:48.500 was like in a leaky attic essentially for $500 a month.

00:29:52.420 And the, the cheapest, um, apartment we could find was $800 a month.

00:29:56.720 So like, and we only had about $5,000 between our brother and I.

00:30:01.800 So like, we're not, we'll, we'll, we'll just stay in the office.

00:30:05.420 Yeah.

00:30:06.020 Uh, so we got some, um, couches that converted into beds.

00:30:11.220 Um, and we'd, uh, kind of sleep at night and then we just have to like, uh, turn the beds

00:30:17.560 back into couches, uh, before anyone came.

00:30:20.640 And then we'd, we'd shower at the YMCA down the road.

00:30:24.480 And so that went, that, that, that literally was the, for several months, what we did.

00:30:30.380 I was in great shape, you know, uh, work out at the Y.

00:30:34.020 Um, but I still remember that, that YMCA, uh, at, uh, Page Mill at Al Camino, uh, in Palo Alto.

00:30:41.460 So that was a long time ago.

00:30:43.020 So it's been, I don't know, I've, I've never thought to count it, but, uh, several hundred

00:30:48.160 days, maybe, I don't know.

00:30:49.100 So you're now the richest man on earth.

00:30:52.100 Do you still sleep at the office?

00:30:53.920 Well, that's true.

00:30:55.260 Maybe Mars, we'll, we'll, we'll find someone else.

00:30:57.540 But I think if so, if someone is a sovereign head of a country, they're de facto richer

00:31:01.380 by a lot.

00:31:02.660 Do you still sleep at the office now?

00:31:04.800 I've sometimes slept at the office.

00:31:06.020 Yeah.

00:31:06.880 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

00:31:09.200 Hit that subscriber auto download button from the White House.

00:31:12.220 It's been a pleasure.

00:31:13.200 Thanks for being with us on Verdict.

00:31:14.480 We'll see you guys back here in a couple of days.

00:31:17.080 This is an iHeart podcast.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - March 19, 2025

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

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