Chapter Timestamps
00:00 AI may exceed all human intelligence within five years
02:17 Digital intelligence plus humanoid robots as a quasi-infinite economy
04:27 Why Musk thinks money may stop mattering by 2036
06:13 AI safety, truth-seeking, and humans losing control
07:21 From existential-risk warnings to “enjoy the ride”
12:10 Rival labs testing one another’s frontier models
15:20 China’s advantages in power, manufacturing, robotics, and AI
21:43 Government intervention and the Mythos model-release dispute
25:43 Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and trust among AI leaders
27:35 How quickly AI could replace digital work
31:20 Optional work, universal high income, and deflation
38:38 Taxes, public ownership, and who shares in AI’s upside
41:07 Founder control, long-term investment, and key-person risk
45:40 Mars, Starship, and propagating consciousness
49:44 Starlink’s role in Ukraine and battlefield access controls
55:18 Why Musk says he got too involved in politics
57:14 DOGE cuts, USAID, and disputed claims about deaths
1:01:15 Europe, far-right labels, and civil war in Britain
1:08:21 Racism, Islam, media influence, and why people loathe Musk
1:13:35 Safe cities, borders, crime, and controlled immigration
1:20:27 What Musk says people get wrong about his politics
1:23:27 AI singularity versus political crises
Made with: The Transcript Desk Chrome Extension
Full video:
Elon Musk sits down with The Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes to discuss AI superintelligence, humanoid robots, optional work, China, corporate control, Starlink in Ukraine, DOGE, and his political interventions in Europe.
Transcript
00:00-02:16
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Elon Musk, thank you so much for joining me on The Insider. Thank you for having us here at Tesla Giga. It’s really hard to introduce you without using superlatives. I mean, I think you’re doing more to build the future than literally anybody alive right now.
Elon Musk: I’m doing a lot of building in general.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re doing a lot of building.
Elon Musk: I’m an instinctive builder, I suppose. I like building things.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You are, but you’re building—I mean—
Elon Musk: You know, I run around building things all day long.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You run around building a lot of things. You pioneered electric vehicles, you revolutionized space travel, you’ve got a cutting-edge AI model now, and humanoid robots. Can we start this conversation by putting all of this together?
Elon Musk: Yeah.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Tell me what the world is going to be like in, say, 10 years if you succeed.
Elon Musk: Ten years? So we’re talking 2036.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll both still be around.
Elon Musk: Hopefully. We probably—most likely—will be.
Elon Musk: It’s hard to imagine a future where there isn’t an overwhelming amount of artificial intelligence. I mean, I would expect artificial intelligence to be far greater than the sum of human intelligence—far greater.
In fact, I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in around five years. Roughly five years, is my guess.
So there really won’t be anything that AI can’t do better than humans.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Apart from being human, perhaps. At a more prosaic level, what will life be like?
Elon Musk: The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance, where anyone can have anything they can think of. This may sound preposterous, but here we are in 2026. Let’s see where we stand in 2036.
Of course, there are things that could derail this, like a massive global thermonuclear war or something like that. But assuming there isn’t a World War III, I think we’re headed for an age of amazing abundance.
So I guess this is a message of optimism and excitement about the future.
02:17-04:26
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We’ll talk about abundance in a second, but let me ask a very prosaic question: how are your companies going to make money? In the SpaceX IPO prospectus, it looked as though the overwhelming share of revenue would be coming from AI—from Grok. It wouldn’t really be from transporting things to space, as SpaceX is doing now. What will your companies be doing in 10 years, and how will they make money?
Elon Musk: You can think of the economy as digital and physical intelligence.
What’s advancing very rapidly right now is digital intelligence, obviously through AI. It seems like almost every passing week, there are more AI breakthroughs. It can do something amazing that it couldn’t do before.
But it’s still somewhat confined to the digital realm. It doesn’t have end effectors. You need end effectors in the form of humanoid robotics. You basically need lots of bots.
In a nutshell, you need lots of bots. Then you can go from intelligence manifesting only digitally to shaping atoms.
What is an economy? An economy is the production of goods and the provision of services. If you have vast numbers of robots with vast amounts of digital intelligence, you have a sort of quasi-infinite economy.
So the future is going to be very, very different from the past. There’s no analogy or metaphor that I think illustrates the magnitude of change we’re going to experience.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I understand that, and I’m also trying to figure out what that world will look like.
Elon Musk: But I think it’s going to be pretty incredible.
04:27-06:52
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah. We’ll also talk about some of the risks. But just in terms of how you make money: people are buying your shares because they expect to make money.
Elon Musk: I’ll make another prediction: money won’t matter in 2036.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re watching my interview with Elon Musk. If you want early access to other interviews, subscribe to The Economist by clicking the link above. Now, back to the interview.
I’m not sure the people who bought your shares think money won’t matter in 2036.
Elon Musk: What do you want money for? You want money for goods and services, right? You want money for food, housing, transport, entertainment.
Well, if those things are so abundant that robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume, what do you need money for?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re creating these robots now, though, and you’ll need money.
Elon Musk: Sure.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you selling these robots? Are you selling humanoid robots, or are you producing goods and services with humanoid robots that you control?
Elon Musk: I think it would probably be an exercise in vanity for me to think that I would be controlling super-genius AI that is vastly smarter than I am.
I think what we can and should try to do is make sure that AI has good values—that it cares about humanity and wants us to be happy and prosperous. I think it probably will be.
Elon Musk: What my biological neural net tells me is that the most important thing for AI safety is to be maximally truth-seeking and curious. If that’s the case, I think AI will foster humanity.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So let’s unpack that. You’re saying humans will no longer be in control in 10 years’ time?
Elon Musk: I think it’s unlikely. If the difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between humans and chimpanzees, it’s hard to imagine the chimpanzees would be in charge.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m really excited.
06:52-09:11
Elon Musk: And we are essentially an evolved form of chimpanzee. It wasn’t that long ago that we were swinging through trees and eating bananas in the jungle. And we still eat bananas, by the way. We do. And we still, you know, sometimes swing through trees as well.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes, sometimes swing through trees.
Elon Musk: It’s kind of fun. It’s sort of reminiscent of the past. For old times’ sake, swing through the trees once in a while. There should be more swinging through trees. I bet it’s way more fun than people think.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m with you on that. I’m definitely with you on swinging through trees. I love swinging through trees. But I’m really struck listening to you say this now, because I’ve been listening to a bunch of things you’ve said over the years. Ten years ago, you were on a podcast, I think, with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and you said the thing that terrified you most was rapid recursive self-improvement in AI.
Elon Musk: Yes.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And something you said really stuck with me: that at best, we’d just be the pet Labradors.
Elon Musk: Well, Labradors are pretty happy creatures.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But in 2023, you called for a slowdown in AI because you were worried about it. And I think even last year, on Ted Cruz’s podcast, you said there was a 10 to 20 percent chance of killer robots wiping out humanity.
Elon Musk: Yes.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you sounded worried then. Now you seem very relaxed about it. Have you changed your view?
Elon Musk: I still think there’s risk associated with AI and robots. It’s not zero.
Elon Musk: I guess I’ve come to a sort of philosophical conclusion: look on the bright side. I can’t see any way to really stop this incredible momentum behind AI and robots. And at times, I think, well, perhaps even if there were a stop button, we probably shouldn’t press it, because the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s what I thought. It struck me that you now seem to have decided it’s inevitable: hope for the best and go along for the ride.
09:12-11:15
Elon Musk: Yeah, pretty much. Let’s enjoy the ride. Honestly, there seems to be inexorable progress in AI and robotics. Even if I wanted to stop it—and I don’t—I couldn’t.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you still think there’s a 10 to 20 percent chance that killer robots will mean the end of humanity? That’s a high P(doom), as they say.
Elon Musk: Well, in the long run, we’re all dead, of course. According to the standard model of physics, the end of the universe is a long, boring, thin gray soup gradually cooling—the heat death of the universe. So if the heat death of the universe is, in fact, the outcome for our reality, then it really is all about the journey, because the destination is terrible.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Ten years isn’t very long. I get that, but it could be a very long way off. If there were a 10 to 20 percent chance that one of your rockets would blow up and kill you, would you go into it?
Elon Musk: Yes, but let’s say you can’t do anything about it. I guess the only thing we can try to do is minimize the probability of a bad outcome.
Elon Musk: For the longest time, I declined to participate in AI. I helped create OpenAI essentially as a counterweight to Google, because at the time it more or less had a monopoly on AI.
11:16-13:45
Elon Musk: Then Anthropic spun out of OpenAI, and if anything, it seems my actions really accelerated AI. I wasn’t aiming to accelerate it, but by creating OpenAI and then having Anthropic spin out of that—and now Anthropic is a leader in AI—those actions had knock-on effects that accelerated AI, which wasn’t really my intention. It just seems like all roads lead to accelerating AI. So I’m like, okay, you can either be sad about it or join the club, I suppose.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you’ve certainly joined the club. You definitely joined the club.
Elon Musk: If you can’t beat them, join them.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you’ve clearly done that, and very successfully. But what about trying to minimize the risks? A number of the other leaders of AI model makers have been pushing for different ways to do that. Just last week, Demis Hassabis proposed a public-private regulator. I think you said it was a good starting point for discussion. Do you think you should be working more actively to put something in place to control the risks, or do you think that’s impossible too?
Elon Musk: My recommendation to Demis—I spoke with him for a few hours before he published his piece—was that the most immediate thing we could do is have the leading AI companies meet, or have some kind of call, every few weeks to discuss safety and security issues.
Before a breakthrough frontier model is released—something far more intelligent than anything that already exists—there should be an opportunity for competing AI companies to test it for harmful effects and recommend pausing to address security issues. I think that’s the easy, quick thing we can do. It can evolve into more than that over time, but I think that would be a smart move.
13:46-15:32
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why haven’t you done that yet? There are only about five of you, right? Everyone knows the first names: Dario, Demis, Sam. You don’t all like each other very much, and you’re all competing. You all want to be first.
Elon Musk: Yes, but that’s where competitors can keep each other honest. It’s quite difficult for someone in government, who doesn’t have a deep technical understanding and isn’t at the frontier of AI, to know whether something should be released. But competitors, if given a week or two to review a new model, can highlight issues. They all have an incentive to keep the others honest.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you have enough trust between you to do that? You don’t much like each other. Wouldn’t Sam Altman just think you were going to nick all his ideas if you did that?
Elon Musk: Well, we were just talking about how as little as a week would be needed for private testing. It wouldn’t mean handing over the AI; it would just be to test it.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Have you proposed that?
Elon Musk: Yeah, just testing it through an API or something. I think that would probably be a good thing to do.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Have you proposed it?
Elon Musk: I mean, you could raise it with Demis, and I guess I’ll talk to Dario about it too.
Elon Musk: There are also, of course, several very capable Chinese AI companies. The new Kimi model, for example.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Kimi K3, yeah. The one that came out last week was almost as good as Fable, right?
15:32-17:45
Elon Musk: Well, realistically, Fable is still clearly the smartest model. I think anyone being realistic would say that’s still the case. But Kimi is getting quite close to Fable now.
Anthropic had Mythos, from which Fable is derived. I think they had that ready in February. So they’ve got—whatever they call it, Mythos 2 or Fable 6 or something—something much better than what they had in February. They almost certainly have it—no, they certainly have it right now. And I think they could release it at any time.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Before we get on to releases, how do you think about the Chinese models and the geopolitics around them? Are you worried about China catching up and getting ahead, given that Chinese AI companies are doing so well with relatively limited compute?
Elon Musk: It seems that if they had a lot of compute, there’s a good chance they would be the leaders. And at some point, they probably will have a lot of compute.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So, therefore, they will be the leaders?
Elon Musk: There’s a good chance they will be leaders at some point. The constraints on AI are basically electricity and AI chips—and, for physical AI, robots. China also has some very good robotics companies. In fact, they have these robot sporting events. I don’t know if you’ve seen them.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes, I have. The last time I was in Beijing, I saw the robots.
Elon Musk: They have these boxing matches or fighting matches between robots, which are quite entertaining. I saw a video of a robot that got its head knocked off and kept fighting without its head. It was pretty funny. I think robot battles are going to be quite entertaining to watch.
17:45-19:53
Elon Musk: But China is very strong in robotics and very strong in digital AI. If you think about the limiting factors for AI—whether it’s chips or electricity—China has far more electricity than the United States.
In fact, China already has more electricity than the United States, Europe, and India combined. My guess is that China will reach four times U.S. electricity production, which is roughly proportional to its population.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What should the U.S. government do about this? Presumably, it’s somewhat alarming if an authoritarian regime is far ahead in the most powerful technology. The U.S. government has clearly tried to hold China back through export controls and so forth. Do you think it should ban the use of Kimi K3, for example?
Elon Musk: Well, the U.S. government can pass a law preventing U.S. companies from using Chinese models, but it can’t stop the rest of the world from using them. It’s not as though the U.S. government has authority over China or the rest of the world.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think it should stop U.S. companies from using them? Let’s focus on that for now.
Elon Musk: I don’t think that helps. It won’t really stop China from becoming a leader in digital intelligence. It comes down to how much AI compute you have: how many chips you have and how much power—how much electricity—you have.
Elon Musk: Right now, I think the constraint is slightly more power and cooling than AI chips, because the power demands of AI chips are extremely high. People talk about water demand, but AI’s water usage is negligible—almost nothing. The electrical demand, however, is very high.
19:53-22:16
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s why you’re thinking about orbital data centers, presumably.
Elon Musk: Yes. The reason AI chips aren’t being turned on outside China is the constraint on electricity—power, cooling, electrical equipment, and everything else. The rate at which AI chips are being produced exceeds the rate at which new electricity is coming online outside China.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Outside China, I see.
Elon Musk: And since the U.S. has banned exports of the latest AI chips to China, China is somewhat constrained by chips.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But they’re becoming much more efficient at using the chips they have. One of the striking things about Kimi K3 is how efficiently it—
Elon Musk: And China is also, I think, closer than most people realize to solving the lithography problem, which would enable it to manufacture AI chips at very large volumes.
This shouldn’t devolve into just a conversation about China, but the current constraint outside China is electricity, while in China the constraint is chips.
Elon Musk: Once we address the power constraint with AI data centers in space, the constraint outside China will once again be chips.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That suggests to me that China and the U.S. will need to work together if you’re going to have overall safety constraints. You suggested the five—
Elon Musk: It should probably include the Chinese companies that are developing frontier models too.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And do you think governments need to be involved?
Elon Musk: My recommendation would be this: if some of the leading AI companies say that a new model is very dangerous, and the company producing it isn’t taking steps to address that danger, they should notify the government and ask it to take action to limit the model’s release.
That could mean action by the Chinese government or by the U.S. government. Really, it’s the U.S. and Chinese governments that have the power to act here.
22:30-24:28
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I guess people would be worried about relying on a group of model builders to decide whether to do this. I mean, if you look at what the U.S. government has done with Mythos, they stepped in because they were worried about the cybersecurity risks. They used the threat of export controls to prevent the widespread release of this model. I find it hard to see how governments would not want to retain the power to ultimately decide whether it gets released.
Elon Musk: I think they should have that power. But it wasn’t as though someone in the government figured out that Mythos had some scary cybersecurity risks. It was Amazon. Amazon highlighted this, and Amazon called the White House.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you’d have a system where the model makers would check each other’s work. If there was something that worried them, they’d tell the government. The government would then think—
Elon Musk: If there were something else worrisome, and that company was not doing anything to address the risk, then that would be the moment for the government to step in and take action—which is literally what just occurred.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: How does this always have to happen?
Elon Musk: I think it would be good to do that immediately.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Really?
Yeah, that’s what people keep telling me. We have to get some kind of system in place in the next six months because of the pace at which the models are improving.
Elon Musk: Yeah, six months is a long time.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you think we should have done that already?
Elon Musk: Well, I mean, there are so many AI breakthrough announcements—sometimes multiple per day. I mean, how many were there last week?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: A lot.
Elon Musk: I lost track.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, a lot.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So basically, whether it’s Demis’s proposal or others, you need to get together and get this set up now, it sounds like you’re telling me.
24:28-26:54
Elon Musk: Yeah. I would recommend that we at least have some sort of informal weekly or biweekly call, and that competitors get maybe one or two weeks of early access.
This is why I think the incentives work: competing companies are likely to understand if something is a security risk, and they’re not going to be shy about pointing out that their competitors’ models should have their releases delayed.
Elon Musk: I think the incentive structure works quite well there.
Elon Musk: This is sort of how it works with the Motion Picture Association. It’s an industry group that decides how movies should be rated—whether they’re appropriate for young children or not. And that seems to have worked quite well.
Elon Musk: Then you really just ask the government to intervene if a company is doing something very dangerous and refuses to take action to reduce the danger.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: This is a tricky one, though. You guys don’t much like or trust each other. You’re constantly insulting each other on social media. Do you think you can do that with people you dislike, when there seems to be such personal vitriol between some of these leaders?
Elon Musk: Yes. Well, I’m not a fan of Sam Altman.
Promotional Narrator: You’re watching my interview with Elon Musk. If you want early access to other interviews, subscribe to The Economist by clicking the link above. Now, back to the interview.
Elon Musk: If you started a nonprofit that was meant to be an open-source AI company, owned by the world, and it somehow turned into an $800 billion for-profit company with closed source, I think you’d say, “Well, wait a second—that’s the exact opposite of what I donated money for.” That’s my issue. I think it’s a legitimate one.
Elon Musk: And Dario, I think, also isn’t a fan of Sam Altman, because he felt—the reason the Anthropic team left OpenAI was that they didn’t trust Sam Altman. Otherwise, Anthropic wouldn’t exist. They’d still be at OpenAI.
26:54-29:12
Elon Musk: I think Dario is a very principled person. He cares a lot about things. He cares about the future of the world. And everyone I’ve met at Anthropic so far—no one has set off my evil detector. They all seem well-intentioned.
The road to hell is, I think, mostly paved with bad intentions. There are a few well-intentioned paving stones in there, so we don’t want to be complacent. But at the end of the day, if we have to talk, we’ll talk.
Elon Musk: We’ll set aside our personal differences for the good of the world.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, that’s a very good thing for the rest of us to hear.
Elon Musk: Yeah.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Can we turn to one other risk that people worry about? Particularly ordinary Americans, because AI has become incredibly unpopular. Seventy-five percent of people are worried about it, and I think they worry about their jobs.
Dario has famously said that 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs will be gone within a few years. You’re building humanoid robots.
Elon Musk: Yes. He also said—Dario did dig his own grave here regarding Mythos—“Mythos is super scary, terrifying, and, by the way, we’re going to release it.”
Then he’s like, “What do you mean?” I think he’ll probably choose his words differently in the future.
Elon Musk: Because, obviously, if you terrify everyone and then say, “Oh, we’re releasing this terrifying thing,” people are obviously going to be alarmed. You’ve literally told them to be scared, and then you release the scary thing, so they will be scared. That’s natural.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So I certainly don’t want you to alarm people. But I do think there’s a really important debate about how quickly, and to what degree, AIs displace people from jobs. Because if, as you say, within 10 years there is more artificial intelligence than human intelligence—
Elon Musk: Yes.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: —and if you are, as I think you are, ahead of everyone else in this country in developing humanoid robots, that will affect factory work too. So are you closer to Dario in your sense of the pace at which jobs are going to be displaced?
29:12-31:27
Elon Musk: I do think it’s going to be a bumpy road, because AI will be able to do any job better than any person can do that job.
That will become true very quickly for digital jobs, or really anything involving a person at a computer or on a phone. AI will be able to do all of that very soon.
For software engineering, we already have a situation where AI is better than at least 90% of professional software engineers at writing software.
Elon Musk: And it’s really getting to the point where it will be better than 99%, and then it will reach a point where there’s just no way to compete. It’ll get to what I call Stockfish level.
Stockfish is the chess program that’s so good at chess that it can easily beat Magnus Carlsen—or anyone—at chess.
Elon Musk: Even on a small computer, I suspect you could probably run Stockfish on your phone and beat Magnus Carlsen. That’s how good it is at chess, and that’s how good AI will be at writing software—and beyond software.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And beyond software.
Elon Musk: And that applies to everything. Everything, everything, everything, everything.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But what about physical jobs—assembly jobs? You’ll also need capability in humanoid robots, which isn’t there yet, is it?
Elon Musk: Right. That’s why I said digital AI, and then physically manifested AI in the form of robots, where the robot is more or less an end effector. It would have some local intelligence, but it would be managed by a large AI model.
Elon Musk: And I’ve said many times that I think work is going to be optional.
31:27-33:55
Elon Musk: A good comparison might be gardening. You don’t have to garden. You don’t have to grow vegetables in your garden. You can go to the store, where there will be pristine vegetables. Or you can grow vegetables in your garden, and they’ll actually be less perfect. Your tomatoes won’t be as plump and juicy as the ones at the store; they’ll look a little artisanal. But if you go to a friend’s house and they make dinner with vegetables from their garden, it’s a nice touch.
Elon Musk: That’s what work is going to be like.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I get that. In that world, I’d be hopeless, because I can’t garden to save my life. But I get the idea: people still like playing chess with each other, even though every computer is better. But let’s think about the politics of this.
Elon Musk: Yeah.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Because you’re describing a world where, within 10 years, pretty much every job can be done better by an intelligence. And you’re seeing huge returns to that intelligence—to people like you. You’re the wealthiest man in the world. What about the people who lose their jobs, who are displaced, who may go off and garden? How are they going to live?
Elon Musk: I mean, it sounds to me like universal high income.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But how are you going to get there? Let’s talk about the politics of this, because right now, if we look at the political pressures in most countries, people are very worried about this and very opposed to it. It seems to me there’s a risk that we’re heading more toward revolution than an easy route to this nirvana you’re painting.
Elon Musk: It will be a bumpy road. I’m not suggesting that everything will be smooth sailing.
Elon Musk: There are many jobs that used to exist that no longer exist because of computers. The word “computer” used to refer to a person doing computations. That used to be a job description. You can see pictures online of buildings—entire skyscrapers filled with people doing calculations, things like calculating the interest on your bank balance.
Elon Musk: That’s how things were done for a long time, until computers came around. And even in the beginning, computers were very expensive and hard to use.
33:55-36:15
Elon Musk: The difference here is that the pace of change is radically accelerated.
Elon Musk: Still, some people were upset that the job of calculating bank interest would no longer be available. But now, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find people who want to do that job.
Elon Musk: I have a suggestion for science-fiction books people might want to read to get a sense of what the future will be like. The best envisioning of a future that I’ve read is the books by Iain M. Banks—the Culture books.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m just reading Excession, so thanks to you, I’ve started reading them. But I don’t find that future terribly appealing, because I don’t think humans have agency in that future.
Elon Musk: They have agency compared to the Minds, in a small way.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But the irony is that Iain M. Banks, as you know, was a socialist. He had a very different political philosophy.
Elon Musk: I’m not sure I would entirely agree with that.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let’s agree that that could be where we end up. I’m concerned about the road there. We live in democracies, and people are very worried about this. So I guess I have two questions. First, do you need massive redistribution from people like you to the people losing their jobs? Do you need to pay more tax? Do you need much higher taxes on capital, so that you can fund some kind of universal income? Otherwise, what do people live off?
Elon Musk: I think the Treasury should simply issue people checks.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Where would the revenue come from?
Elon Musk: I mean, I’m enough of an economist to know that if you just have inflation—this is where a lot of what we think about was relevant in the past, but won’t be relevant in the future. Inflation is simply the ratio of money to goods and services. So if the output of goods and services increases dramatically—if it increases by 1,000%—you can increase the money supply. You can literally print money, or these days, change the database.
36:15-38:38
Elon Musk: You create money in the database, provided that the creation of money is less than the rate at which goods and services increase.
Elon Musk: You actually have deflation. So I’ll make a prediction: deflation will be the issue, not inflation, because if the output of goods and services increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m perfectly willing to believe that you may well be right—absolutely, you may well be right. But I’m really hung up on how we get from the current polarized, angry, fearful politics we have now to this nirvana. You could paint a picture where people are so scared by this that they essentially try to stop it. Maybe they can’t, but then things get nationalized. There’s a far-left government, exorbitant tax increases, and the economy crumbles because people are so worried about a future that does sound quite scary as you describe it. So how do you handle the politics now?
Elon Musk: It’s exhilarating and terrifying. Honestly, if you ask me, on any given day—and even within the same day—I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI. So I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be some Candide, with a Panglossian view of the world where everything is going to be great and there’s no risk. No, no, no. There is some risk.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think we agree on that. I guess I’m trying to be a bit more practical and focused on what can be done now to limit those risks. You made a very strong argument for what you and your fellow model makers could do, and what government probably could do.
Elon Musk: It would be good for us to coordinate and highlight issues we see in each other’s models, to mitigate downside risk.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What should the government do? Should you be paying more tax to fund more transfer programs?
Elon Musk: Well, first of all, I do pay a lot of tax. In fact, I set a record for the largest amount of taxes ever paid by a human.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Because you’re the world’s richest man.
38:38-41:06
Elon Musk: Well, even before that. My guess is that I’ll pay many trillions in tax, and I’m fine with that.
Elon Musk: So, yeah, that’s just the way it’s going to be. But in a future where money is irrelevant, I think taxation also becomes somewhat irrelevant.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And what about giving people a sense that they have a share in the upside? Giving people shares in SpaceX and Tesla, for example. There’s a lot of talk about that right now.
Elon Musk: Well, one of the reasons I took Tesla public was so the public could participate, because they could own a piece of Tesla. Whereas, as a private company, we’re very limited in the number of shareholders we’re allowed to have before going public. As a public company, we can have millions of shareholders. As a private company, we’re limited to just a few thousand.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So do you think there should be a distribution of shares? You have the Alaska Permanent Fund, for example. Could you imagine a world in which some of your equity goes to ordinary Americans? Some people talk about the Trump accounts as a potential vehicle for this.
Elon Musk: Right. Well, in the taxes that I pay—I mean, for my stock options, I pay 40% income tax at the federal level. And because I spend, I don’t know, about 30% of my time in California, thereabouts, I pay California state tax too, which is now around 15%. So I pay about 45% in taxes, just so people know this—roughly half. Then, when I die, there’ll be another roughly 45% tax.
Elon Musk: So at the end of the day, I’ll probably have a quarter of whatever I have. The only thing it gives me is that, for some period of time, I have control over the direction of the companies.
Elon Musk: That’s pretty much all it gets me. And if AI is so smart that it’s in charge, then controlling companies won’t really matter at that point.
41:06-43:18
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, let’s talk about that, because I think one of the other things that worries people about the direction we’re heading in—and I’m going to caricature this—is that people think the direction of the world is being shaped by a very small number of incredibly powerful people, and you’re right at the top of that list.
Elon Musk: But is this different from the past? When wasn’t that the case?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I agree with you—it was ever thus. But, as you’ve described very vividly, the change is incredibly rapid. So let’s start with control of your company. You definitely have that now. After the IPO, you basically have 80-odd percent of the voting shares, as I understand it. You can only be removed by a vote of shares that you yourself control. Tell me if I’m wrong.
Elon Musk: Well, you can put Google in that bucket, by the way. Alphabet is controlled by Larry and Sergey.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think yours is more extreme.
Elon Musk: To the same level, they have control of that company. Mark Zuckerberg has control of Meta, and Mark is trying very hard on the AI front. I think he probably will also have a leading AI. I think he released one last week. So Meta will be one of the companies in that group.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Is it sensible for one person to have so much control over a company?
Elon Musk: Well, I really just need to make sure that I can focus on the long term. By “long term,” I mean five to ten years.
One of the challenges with being a public company is the pressure to have great results every single quarter, and not really invest in things that may only pay off in five to ten years. In the case of SpaceX, I want to extend consciousness beyond Earth and have a growing civilization on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere in the solar system.
43:18-45:35
Elon Musk: I think ultimately this would have a very high return on investment. But in the short term, we’ll be spending all this money on a Moon base or a Mars base, and people will say, “Well, you missed your earnings this quarter because you spent too much on Mars.” And I’m like, “Yes. By the way, that was in the S-1 prospectus. It’s literally listed as a thing we will do.”
But they still get grumpy about these things, because they’ll say, “Well, you said your gross margin would be this, and it’s actually slightly worse. Now we’re going to punish you.” The short sellers all descend upon you, and you get a lot of pressure.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re going to get a lot of that.
Elon Musk: Yeah. So I just need some way to say, “Listen, guys, we’re going to focus on investments with a five- to ten-year, or longer, time horizon. This will depress our short-term earnings.” But if you take a long-term view—and we have many investors who do—I’m a big fan of retail investors. I find that, on balance, our retail investors are very insightful and have very long-term views.
But part of this comes down to the incentive structure. For portfolio managers, it’s understandable why they put so much pressure on quarterly earnings, because their compensation—and whether they get promoted—is dependent on how their portfolio does. They only have a few years to make these decisions, and then they’re evaluated based on them, sometimes over the course of only a year or less.
Elon Musk: So, since they’re under pressure to have immediate returns, they put companies under pressure to have immediate returns. Once you understand the incentive structure, the behavior naturally follows.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What about key-person risk? Heaven forbid, but what happens if you get run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow? You have total control over these companies. Do you have a plan for how they would progress without you?
Elon Musk: I think they would actually do very well for several years.
45:40-48:08
Elon Musk: And, you know, there’s a clear roadmap—or space map, I should say—for SpaceX, and there’s a roadmap, literally, for Tesla.
So I think, if you look at Apple after Steve Jobs, Steve had a strategic vision and a number of products he had ideas for, and Apple has done very well.
But when you don’t have a creative genius like Steve Jobs, what you miss are the incredible breakthrough products. They make amazing phones and great computers, but Apple hasn’t come up with that sort of Steve Jobs-level breakthrough product.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So, by analogy, that’s what you bring to all of your companies. You mentioned Mars. Most people think of you as the man who wants to create a colony on Mars so that we have a multiplanetary civilization.
You’ve been saying that for such a long time, but now you seem more focused on AI and what AI will do in the next 10 years. You sound much more excited about using the Moon as a base from which to launch orbital AI satellites. Have you shifted your attention away from Mars, or are you as interested in colonizing Mars as you ever were?
Elon Musk: I’m interested in the set of actions that propagates consciousness into the future to the maximum degree possible, so that the future light cone of consciousness is as big as we can make it.
There’s an exciting future where we’re a spacefaring civilization out among the stars, and the great things envisioned in non-dystopian sci-fi books and movies become real one day. I sort of want the Star Trek, Star Wars future.
Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in a theater, by the way.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Really?
Elon Musk: Maybe it had a profound effect on me. I suppose so. It blew my mind, honestly. I think I was six years old, and I was like, “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Has your life been about making that happen?
48:09-50:21
Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t think it would be when I was young, but my life feels somewhat surreal. I can’t believe these things are actually happening.
I think the world makes me believe in simulation theory. The things I’m doing are so preposterous that it’s hard to believe they’re real. I mean, we’ve got Starship, which is the largest, most powerful flying object ever made, and we intend to launch that more than once per hour.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I know, I read that. People can quibble about how quickly it happens, but I think, based on your track record, we should assume it will happen at some point.
Elon Musk: It will happen.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m struck that I’m as blown away by this world as you are, and I watch it from a much more naïve perspective. But for me, the whole evolution of AI and the capabilities of these models is, in and of itself, so mind-blowing.
Elon Musk: It’s pretty much happening as I thought it would.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Is it?
Elon Musk: Yeah. And not just me—many people predicted this. I think Ray Kurzweil’s predictions have been remarkably accurate.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, The Singularity Is Near. Let’s go back more immediately to the here and now. We’ve talked about concentration of control in your companies. You’ve made a very good case for why you should have it.
You also have, through Starlink, incredible geopolitical power. I mean, I’m one of your customers—excellent product—but without it, the Ukrainians would have been in serious, serious trouble.
Elon Musk: Yes, the Ukrainian government has publicly thanked Starlink many times for being instrumental in defending Ukraine.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And you recently decided to prevent the Russians in the occupied territories from having access to Starlink.
Elon Musk: Well, no, we were never, at any point, selling Starlink to Russians.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But they were getting it, right? They were using it, and you’ve now stopped them from doing that.
50:21-53:02
Elon Musk: Well, they essentially got Starlink units that they ordered through Ukraine and then smuggled into eastern Ukraine, where the Russians are. They were then using them, in some cases, for attacks.
In order to address this, we worked with the Ukrainian government to create a whitelist of approved Starlink terminals. Now, this has some downsides, because a whole bunch of people who were just innocent users of Starlink and trying to access the internet for work or education now don’t have Starlink.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: These are geopolitical decisions of consequence. How do you feel about having that power? You can determine the outcome of wars. How does that feel, and is it right that you should have that power?
Elon Musk: Well, I’m not sure we’re determining the ultimate outcome of, say, the war in Ukraine.
I do hope that some sort of peace agreement is reached soon, because for two or three years now, the border has barely moved, and every day, lots of people are dying on the front lines. I think there’s a lot of wishful thinking from people saying, “Well, Russia should completely withdraw,” et cetera, but this is not realistic. I really think there needs to be a peace agreement. We have to be pragmatic about this.
What I think would be terrible is another three years of people dying senselessly on the front lines.
You have to ask: How do you explain that to the children of the men dying on the front lines? On the Russian side, too, by the way—they’ve been conscripted and sent there. I’m quite offended by these fancy diplomats who have seven-course dinners in luxurious places while people are dying on the front lines, and who pontificate about how Russia should withdraw, but they’re not going.
Russia is not going to withdraw. So there really needs to be an accepted peace along those lines.
53:03-55:22
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And do you think it’s your responsibility to play a role in tipping the scales toward what you see as the right path to peace?
Elon Musk: I’ve been advocating for peace for a long time. I posted a few years ago that there really needed to be some concessions to Russia.
This isn’t me being pro-Russia. I’m just being pragmatic. Otherwise, people will die for years and nothing will be achieved. And that is exactly what happened.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I don’t know. I mean, the Ukrainians are doing pretty well right now, with their incredible drone capacity striking inside Russia. And the general consensus is that the balance of the war is shifting. But my point isn’t so much—
Elon Musk: They’re not going to retake those territories. It’s not going to happen.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: My interest is really whether you think that, given the incredible power you have through Starlink, it’s appropriate for you to wield it. It’s quite rare for an individual actor to have that kind of power—the ability to turn a capability on and off in a way that can shape a conflict.
Elon Musk: Well, is there something you think I should do differently?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think you were right to support Ukraine. It won’t surprise you that I think the Russian aggression was appalling for many reasons, and I think what you did was important.
Elon Musk: Yeah, I did a very deep dive into the background of that conflict to understand exactly what was going on.
And I’m reminded of the old adage that there are no angels in war.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: There’s a similar theme, I think, in domestic politics, where you’ve played a big political role. You spent a lot of money on Donald Trump’s re-election, and after the election you became very actively involved through DOGE. You tried to cut a lot of spending and reshape the government.
It wasn’t hugely successful, in the sense that there weren’t nearly as many spending cuts as you sought. How do you look back on that? Do you regret getting so involved in politics? Do you think it was a good thing to do?
55:23-57:50
Elon Musk: I think I got a little too involved in politics. I got carried away, frankly.
The goal with the DOGE stuff was to try to do something about the massive deficit. Interest payments exceed what is spent on the Department of War. Basically, if you add up all the money spent on what is now the Department of War and intelligence in the U.S., that’s less than the interest payments on the debt.
So we need to take a close look at spending, make sure money is being spent sensibly, and ensure that it isn’t wasted or spent on fraudulent activities.
Elon Musk: I got a lot of flak for this, obviously. But people don’t understand how simple it was for the DOGE team to approve payments. Literally, we just asked for the recipient’s contact information or some evidence that the money was going to its intended purpose.
But over and over, we were told that we needed to wire money for some important cause in Africa. And we said, “Okay, but the wire instructions are to Deloitte in Washington, D.C., not to Africa. We would like to send the money directly to Africa. Can you please connect us with the recipients?” And then we’d get silenced.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We don’t need to relitigate DOGE. I have no doubt that there’s a lot of waste in the U.S. government.
But I think it’s fair criticism that the way you shut down a whole bunch of programs probably—certainly—caused unnecessary suffering. You don’t buy that at all?
Elon Musk: It caused a lot of complaining.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re watching my interview with Elon Musk. If you want early access to other interviews, subscribe to The Economist by clicking the link above. Now, back to the interview.
So you don’t buy the idea that, to put it crudely and simply, any child in Africa died because of the suddenness with which this happened? I just don’t think that’s right. I mean, I’ve had reporters in Africa who—
57:51-59:59
Elon Musk: How many NGOs are there that could step in? Bear in mind, this happened quickly, and there are literally tens of thousands of NGOs.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Not everyone functions as fast as you do. If funding for antiretrovirals is cut off overnight and it simply stops, then people will die when they lose access to them.
Elon Musk: No, only if they can’t get funding for that. The Gates Foundation has $50 billion. What about them? What about any number of organizations? What about MacKenzie Bezos—whatever her last name is now—who gave $50 billion? What about that?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But let’s be practical. In many of these countries, USAID was the biggest funder—
Elon Musk: USAID was a political organization.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It may also have been that, but it was the biggest funder of health-care systems. So I—
Elon Musk: It was a regime-change organization.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: There may well be benefits from having—
Elon Musk: Also, USAID funding was not stopped. It was moved to the State Department.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It was stopped. Huge numbers of things in Africa were shut down.
Elon Musk: No, these claims are false. They’re nonsense—absolute nonsense.
Obviously, when funding is stopped for fraudulent organizations or programs, do you think they’re going to say, “Please keep funding the fraud”? Or do you think they’re going to come up with a sad story that sounds sympathetic in order to get the funding restored? Obviously, it will be the latter, and that’s exactly what they did.
Elon Musk: Zero people died because of this.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s what I would take issue with. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the changes to the aid regime that the U.S. under the Trump administration has brought about. However, I think the pace and suddenness with which it happened almost certainly caused unnecessary suffering and deaths.
Elon Musk: No, I think that’s totally false.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay, well.
1:00:00-1:02:22
Elon Musk: And that’s obviously false, because the amount of funding we’re talking about is far less than what could be supported by a private foundation like the Gates Foundation or the MacKenzie Bezos Foundation. She’s given away tens of billions of dollars. The Gates Foundation has tens of billions of dollars. They are capable of acting very quickly, and if they didn’t, I would say they’re equally responsible.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I see. Okay.
Elon Musk: Obviously.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: All right, fair point.
Elon Musk: Zero people.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I hear you loud and clear. Obviously, domestically, you stepped away from DOGE. It was hard to do what you were trying to do—you’ve just explained that. But this administration has gone in directions that I suspect you weren’t expecting two and a half years ago.
Elon Musk: You know, I’m not going to agree with everything any administration does.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you disappointed by this administration?
Elon Musk: No. I think this administration, on balance, is excellent. No administration is perfect, but it’s vastly better than the alternative.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Can we talk about Europe, a place that you’re very, very focused on?
Elon Musk: I’m not focused on Europe.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think, judging by your posts, you’re pretty concerned about Europe. You support—
Elon Musk: I mean, once in a while, I post something.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It’s reasonably frequent. It’s not once in a while. But I’m genuinely interested in this. As someone who lives in Europe—lives in London—you paint a picture. Well, first of all, you support not just the populist right, but the far right—very fringe parties in some countries.
Elon Musk: No, I support normal people.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay.
Elon Musk: What you falsely call the far right.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You think that’s the normal person?
Elon Musk: Yes. Literally, you could go back 10 or 15 years, and these policies were completely normal. In fact, one of the tricks I think is funny—quite funny—is to take a speech from Obama or Hillary and go to someone on what I call the lunatic left and say, “What do you think of this speech by Trump?” They say, “Oh, wow, he’s the worst person ever.” Actually, that was a speech by Obama. Or actually, that was a speech by Hillary.
1:02:23-1:04:52
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, I agree that the center of gravity in this country has shifted. Certainly, the Democratic Party has shifted to the left. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people like Rupert Lowe.
Elon Musk: Please. These are just normal people. It’s just normal people. And here are the principles—tell me which of these sound terrible: that we should have secure borders, that we should have safe cities, that we should have sensible spending. Which of those three are far-right fringe?
And I would like to admonish you and the media for the absurd characterization of the far right. It is false and misleading and nonsense. Please keep this part in.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We’ll keep all of this in, but let me—
Elon Musk: Don’t cut this part.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let me push back on that. Elon, you have, what is it, close to 250 million followers on X.
Elon Musk: Yeah. Popular guy.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You say things like, quote, “Civil war in Britain is inevitable.”
Elon Musk: Yes.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: When were you last in the UK?
Elon Musk: A few years ago.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Exactly. So, I live there. I’m there all the time. That is not—
Elon Musk: You live a cloistered existence.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, I don’t, actually. And the numbers also disprove what you say. London is a much safer city than any city in the United States. Violent crime in the UK is not where you think it is. In fact, it’s coming down.
You have painted, because you have so many followers—and so many Americans believe it—a view that Europe and the UK are overrun with terrifying Muslim immigrants; that there’s rape on every corner; that there’s civilizational destruction.
Elon Musk: I haven’t said any of those things.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you said civil war in Britain is inevitable.
Elon Musk: Yes, if current trends continue, it is.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Why?
Elon Musk: Well, if you have a large and rapidly growing group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to Western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning. They will try to implement their views, and those who oppose it will oppose it. And that’s what you call civil war. Obviously, this is the trend.
And you absolutely do live a cloistered existence. If you’d like, we can go on a tour of Britain.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Sure.
Elon Musk: We can go on a tour.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m very happy to come on a tour of Britain. You should come see my country, where I live all the time—and you haven’t been in years.
1:04:56-1:07:17
Elon Musk: I’ve been there literally a hundred times.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But when was the last time?
Elon Musk: Literally a few years ago.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You know why this concerns me? Because you have really shaped opinion about the UK. So many Americans I meet and talk to say things like, “Oh, London is such a dangerous place. There are grooming gangs everywhere. There’s violence everywhere.” That’s the picture people get from things you post, or that are posted on X.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: For example, you posted Citizen Vigilante for—what was it?—48 hours. That film paints a dystopian picture of Europe. I watched it yesterday. It wasn’t fun. It’s not a very good movie, but it paints a dystopian picture of Europe and glorifies vigilante violence. It glorifies the murder of a Muslim immigrant family. I honestly think it was irresponsible for you to put that up on X.
Elon Musk: I think it’s a movie, and it’s worth watching.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re clearly suggesting that Europe is a dystopian place.
Elon Musk: Yes. I mean, why aren’t you doing more to fight censorship in Europe? You seem to be doing nothing to fight censorship in Europe.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think putting people in prison in the UK for social-media posts—
Elon Musk: Do you think that’s appropriate?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, and we’ve written editorials against it. But I don’t think that—
Elon Musk: That’s the sort of thing I think is bad.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And I agree with you, but I don’t think you have to glorify vigilante violence, post the things you’re posting, and paint an entirely inaccurate picture of Europe.
Elon Musk: I don’t think it is inaccurate.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We should do a tour of the UK. The UK has actually been very good at integrating immigrants. It is very effective at doing that. There are problems—I’m the first to admit there are problems.
Elon Musk: Yes, there are major problems.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: There are problems, but it really is not what you are describing or suggesting to your 240 million followers.
Elon Musk: I think it is. I think I’m spot on.
Elon Musk: Well, that’s why you have freedom of speech—or at least, you don’t anymore.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You have the freedom to say things that are wrong. But your point isn’t just, “I have every right to say what I want.” You’re saying, “I’m right about Europe,” and I really don’t think you are.
Elon Musk: I think I am.
1:07:19-1:09:00
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think you’ll find that most people in Europe—or many people in Europe—don’t think you’re right. But let’s come to that.
Elon Musk: Because the media keeps ignoring reality.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I don’t think that’s true. I really don’t.
Elon Musk: They’re programmed by TV and conventional media.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And why are you focused on this? I suppose that’s the bigger-picture question for me. At the start of this conversation, you described this extraordinary, transformative, amazing, civilization-changing stuff that’s going to happen over the next ten years. Yet you’re also an active participant in the worst kind of tribalism—the cesspit of social media. How does that fit together? They’re two very different views of the world.
Elon Musk: Yeah, I don’t think they’re inconsistent.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why do you engage in the latter—the tribalism? People say you’re racist. People say all kinds of things about you that I’m sure you would disagree with. But I just don’t understand your motivation for doing that. Are you fomenting—
Elon Musk: My partner is half Indian, and I have four children with her. One of them was named after a famous Indian physicist. So I would say I’m not racist. Also, if you look at the people employed at my companies, we have senior executives of all races. I don’t think there’s any racism there.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you anti-Muslim?
1:09:03-1:11:18
Elon Musk: I am against people coming to a country with antithetical views. I’m against that. I’m against rape and murder. I’m against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we’ve come to accept in the West.
And I think it’s a crying shame that traditional media, like you, don’t recognize this.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: First of all, I think you hugely exaggerate the challenges Europe faces. Secondly, in some areas, I completely agree with you. I think restrictions on freedom of speech in the UK in certain areas are problematic.
What worries me is that the people you support are really quite vile in some cases. Some members of the AfD, for example. Alice Weidel, whom I’ve met, is a perfectly thoughtful person, but there are real neo-Nazis in her party—really awful people.
Your blanket support for that kind of party, with 240 million followers, means you have a power in Europe that I don’t think you fully realize. I don’t think you appreciate the scale of your impact.
Elon Musk: I hope I am having a big impact.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why should you be able to shape European politics? You don’t even live there.
Elon Musk: I think of the West collectively.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But do you see why this makes people think: here is a man with all this power—the world’s richest man—who thinks he has a right to influence our politics? It’s why, as we said at the start of this conversation, people loathe you. Some people really do loathe you.
Elon Musk: Yes, some people do.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But do you understand why? Do you think what you’re doing is helpful to Western progress?
1:11:18-1:13:35
Elon Musk: Maybe some people do loathe me, and that’s probably true. I don’t care. But as you pointed out, a quarter of a billion people follow me, so I think a lot more people actually like me than don’t. And I think a lot more people hate you and the media than you realize. Do you realize the media is despised? Do you realize that journalists have, like, a 15% favorable rating?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I do know that in the United States.
Elon Musk: So the shoe is on the other foot. They hate you. They hate you far more than they hate me.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think there is certainly a lot of distrust in journalism. In part, there have been mistakes by journalists and by journalism. I totally acknowledge that. But I also think the kind of polarized environment, particularly on social media, fostered by the kinds of things you’re pushing on X, makes it worse.
Elon Musk: I don’t think so.
Elon Musk: I think you’re the problem—the media. And speaking of loathing, you’re loathed far more than I am, and you don’t seem to even realize that.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think very few people know who I am relative to you, so I don’t think I play in the same game.
Elon Musk: The media collectively. So, I mean, you’re hated. Do you even know that? You probably don’t.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I like to think that I’m aware of my own personal shortcomings, The Economist’s shortcomings, and our worldview’s shortcomings. But what we stand for, as you know, is liberal values—traditional classical liberal values—where we worry about concentrations of power, and we believe in the individual, the dignity of the individual, and individual freedom. I firmly believe that, and I have long thought that you were a classical liberal.
But when I think of classical liberalism—J. S. Mill, limited government, individual freedom—
Elon Musk: Yeah, I agree with that.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But when I read what you post on your feed, I sometimes wonder whether you really do believe in that.
1:13:35-1:16:01
Elon Musk: I literally said, look, I believe in safe cities, secure borders, and sensible government spending. That doesn’t make me right-wing at all, in the least.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Does the U.S. or do European countries score better on those?
Elon Musk: The U.S. is better.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No.
Elon Musk: Yes.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Safe cities? It’s much more dangerous in the U.S. than in the UK. Sensible spending? The deficit here is bigger and out of control. You failed to reduce it. Secure borders: now, under the Trump administration, I agree with you; before, not. But on two out of three, unequivocally, Europe is in a better place. Yet you seem to paint a picture of Europe as being a hellhole.
Elon Musk: I don’t think Europe’s a hellhole.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay, we can agree on something.
Elon Musk: When did I ever say that?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, the picture you paint of—
Elon Musk: You’re just making things up.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, I’m not. You said civil war in Britain is inevitable, and you’ve basically promoted this citizen-vigilante film that really does paint Europe as a hellhole. It starts with ominous music and the words, “Europe.”
Elon Musk: Well, there is out-of-control rape and murder.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It’s more dangerous in this country than it is in Europe.
Elon Musk: The danger in this country is because we failed to incarcerate repeat violent offenders. It’s the classic sort of Soros DA or judges who fail to incarcerate repeat violent offenders. If somebody gets arrested 50 times—literally—for violent crimes, eventually they’re going to kill somebody. So you either incarcerate them or people will die.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think the prevalence of guns has quite a lot to do with it too. This is a much more dangerous country. Murder rates are much higher, in large part because there are so many guns.
Elon Musk: Well, let me give you an interesting number: more people die in Europe from heat-related deaths than die from gun deaths in America. Why aren’t you writing an article about air conditioning?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We’ve done several on air conditioning, and we had a whole long cover piece last week about why—yeah, we’re very proactive.
Elon Musk: Okay, good. Well, good.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You should read us.
Elon Musk: Credit where credit’s due.
1:16:01-1:18:13
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think you have a view of The Economist that is not entirely accurate. So, come look at England, start reading The Economist, and I will stand corrected on my criticism of you in this area.
Elon Musk: There are many parts of Britain and Europe that are not safe. You can’t just walk around.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But there are far more in this country. Far more.
Elon Musk: No, I don’t think so.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: All right, let’s get my fact-checkers to check that.
Elon Musk: Yeah, I don’t think that’s true.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let’s move on from this, because I think I’ve got a sense of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Elon Musk: The point is not that. The question is not whether America is perfect; the question is whether Europe has a serious and growing problem.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Absolutely.
Elon Musk: It has a serious and growing problem.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s where we started.
Elon Musk: Europe has a serious and growing problem. I’m not saying the United States has no problems. Of course it does. But we should all try to address these issues.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We can agree on that. We should all try to address the problems. My point was simply that I think you exaggerate the scale of Europe’s problem.
Elon Musk: And I think you people are asleep at the switch and don’t realize the magnitude of the issue.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I also think that your interventions, however well-intentioned they may be, risk making Europe’s problem a lot worse.
Elon Musk: How?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Because you are putting your support behind people who are proto-authoritarians, who are not simply trying to ensure better integration of Muslims or secure the borders, but who have very clear fascist tendencies.
Elon Musk: You’ve just completely made that up. I think what you’re saying is total fiction. Really, I’m simply saying that Europe has to have secure borders.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay. On that, we agree.
Elon Musk: We should not let in vast numbers of people whose views are antithetical to the accepted views in Europe, and where there will not be some level of safe cultural integration. This is simply common sense.
1:18:13-1:20:29
Zanny Minton Beddoes: If all you’re saying is that Europe should have secure borders, I completely agree with you. Then I have misunderstood your interventions on social media, because that is not the conclusion I would draw from seeing the people you support and the things you do. But if that’s your goal, I share your goal that Europe should have secure borders. Yes, that’s perfectly agreeable.
That gets me to a question.
Elon Musk: Let me explain the fundamental driving force behind why the borders are not secure.
Elon Musk: When you have a welfare state that provides substantial benefits to anyone who comes there, you create a very powerful economic incentive for anyone whose standard of living is below that level to come to Europe. It’s an obvious, powerful driving force.
People will come if the standard of living they can get in Europe is higher than where they are elsewhere in the world. It’s very basic.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I completely agree with that.
Elon Musk: Yes, it’s a very basic incentive structure.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Economic conditions and economic incentives determine a lot of migration. I think asylum is a separate issue, but I think you’re absolutely right that there are pressures for migration.
However, there are other things you haven’t focused on: migration brings a lot of benefits, particularly in a continent like Europe, which is rapidly aging. So we can agree that completely uncontrolled borders are a bad idea, but I think Europe benefits from controlled immigration.
Elon Musk: Yes, I’m in favor of immigration. Obviously, I’d be hypocritical if I wasn’t, since I’m an immigrant to the United States. I’m in favor of immigration if the person immigrating is going to be a productive member of society, if they’re going to be honest, and if they’re not going to mistreat people in that country.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I can agree with all of that. Yes. But I think Europe does better on that than you give it credit for. That’s where I think we disagree. But let’s move on. Tell me: what do you think people get most wrong about you?
1:20:29-1:22:35
Elon Musk: Well, you just got a whole bunch of things wrong about me. Pretty much everything in the last—just rewind the last 20 minutes. So wrong.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So I got—
Elon Musk: Let’s not be repetitive here, okay?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So, that political side of you is what people get most wrong?
Elon Musk: Yeah. My political views are centrist. They’re not far-right. And frankly, calling them far-right is an insult to history, an insult to many people, and an outrageous falsehood.
Elon Musk: It’s completely absurd. I have literally stated my position, and I’ve been very clear about this: there need to be secure borders. If there’s an influx of immigrants, they need to be people who agree with Western ideals and Western values.
If they don’t—and if there is long-term growth in the number of people who don’t, or who in some cases are adamantly opposed to Western values—you are setting yourself up for civil war. This is obvious. A child can see this. But this is not a right-wing view. I’m simply stating reality.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, I think we can both agree that evidence will be able to determine which of us is more or less right, and we will find evidence for both of our views in different parts of Europe. The question is—
Elon Musk: Overall, I’m very good at predicting the future. I’m not perfect, but I’m very good at predicting the future. My batting average is very high for a human.
But this does have something of a Cassandra effect, where people don’t believe what I’m saying is likely to be true because I can see into the future with a higher—though not perfect—probability of success than most people, including on things that people believe are, in some cases, counterintuitive.
1:22:35-1:24:59
Elon Musk: Again, I’m not saying I’m always right. I certainly am not. But my batting average is very good.
But this does have, as I said, a Cassandra effect, where people don’t realize that what I’m saying will come to pass. Maybe not exactly on the timeline I thought, but it will come to pass.
And, yeah, history will write the verdict. But I think you will see that very little of what I have said is inaccurate, and a supermajority of what I’ve said is very accurate and will come to pass—unless there is some change in direction.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you have a higher confidence level in your expectations for the future of AI—the first part of our conversation—or in the latter, political part?
Elon Musk: I mean, AI—digital superintelligence—is called the singularity, like a black hole, because you don’t know what’s going to happen after that, and it sort of sucks in everything.
So I think, in terms of the really big macro effects here, AI and robots will really dominate everything on a timescale of less than 10 years, which probably renders—
Zanny Minton Beddoes: This other stuff we’ve been talking about less important and less relevant.
Elon Musk: The AI-robotics revolution will happen sooner. It’ll happen sooner than civil war in Britain. I would say civil war in Britain is probably 20 years away, and the AI-robot singularity is 10 years away.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, hopefully these benign, all-powerful AIs will prevent such outcomes.
Elon Musk: They probably will.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Elon, I don’t agree with everything you say, but it’s always absolutely fascinating to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed.
Elon Musk: You’re welcome. I’m not boring.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re definitely not boring.
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