Hey everybody, Friedberg here.
What you're about to hear is a discussion from our All In Summit, recording LA on September 9.
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After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk's time as CEO has been a whirlwind.
Shares of Musk's other major company, Tesla, have plummeted more than 30 % since he took over Twitter.
As is often the case, his next move is unclear.
I go as far as to say that he's demonstrating some erratic behavior.
Go fuck yourself. Is that clear?
I hope it is. Hey Bob.
Here in the audience.
Elon Musk's cooperation and or relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.
The Biden administration has just announced its second investigation into Elon Musk in less than a week.
Both the Tesla and SpaceX, there's a product roadmap that they're on and that whether Elon is in the building or not is not going to impact the plan that they have.
People said he'd never get the rocket in space.
He did that. People said the roads here would never get delivered.
He did that. People said he'd never get a hundred of them done.
He's got 200 done. As an entrepreneur, you can't listen to the noise and you certainly can't listen to losers who have never accomplished anything with their life who are obsessing about you.
Please. We're out there among the stars and we're a multi planet species across many planets and many star systems.
This is a great future and that's what we should strive for.
To our customer support at your service.
Nearly every VC I speak with, every CEO is looking to Elon's behavior and saying that's a model for how you can challenge your team to achieve the impossible in an impossibly difficult environment.
And you can see those grid fins on your left hand screen rotating and turning to guide the booster and there's that landing gun.
Landing gun has begun and you can see the water below and we have blast out.
He's just a visionary like I've never seen.
How on earth would you bet against him?
Elon seems to be on track to be not only the world's richest man but the world's first trillionaire.
Elon basically has had over the last 10 or 15 years an incredible amount of challenges that he's overcome, probably had to deal with stuff that most of us would have broken under and he just fought through it and the guy just basically bended all the haters until he crushed their souls and I just think that that's
incredible. I'm going to take this.
Thanks for taking the time.
How are you doing brother?
You keeping busy? Yeah.
I mean. It's rarely a slow week.
I mean in the world as well.
I mean any given week it just seems like the things get better.
It's definitely a simulation.
We've agreed on this at this point.
I mean, look if we are in some alien Netflix series I think the ratings are high.
Yes. The ratings are high.
How are the freedom of speech wars going?
This is a, you've been at war for two years now.
Yes. The price of freedom of speech is not cheap is it?
I think it's like 44 billion something like that.
Just give her take of time.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Round of numbers.
It's pretty nutty. There is like this weird movement to quell free speech kind of around the world and this is something we should be very concerned about.
You know, you have to ask why was the first amendment like a high priority?
You know, it was like number one.
Because people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or killed.
And they were like well we'd like to not have that here.
Because that was terrible.
And actually you know there's a lot of places in the world right now if you're critical of the government you get imprisoned or killed.
Right. We'd like to not have that.
Are you concerned? I suspect this is a receptive audience to that message.
I think we always thought that the West was the exception to that.
That we knew there were authoritarian places around the world but we thought that in the West we'd have freedom of speech.
And we've seen like you said it seems like a global movement.
In Britain you've got teenagers being put in prison for memes.
It's like you like to you like to Facebook post.
Throw them in the prison.
Yeah. It's like people have got an actual you know prison for like obscure comments on social media.
Not even shit posting.
Not even. It's crazy.
I'm like that's pretty strict about that.
I was like what is the massive crime that.
And France and then of course we got Brazil with Judge Voldemort.
That one seems like the one that impacts you the most.
Can you. What's the latest on that.
Well we I guess we are trying to figure out is there some reasonable solution in Brazil.
The you know the concern I mean I want to make sure that this is framed correctly.
And you know funny memes aside the nature of the concern was that at least at Excorp we had the perception that we were being asked to do things that violated Brazilian law.
So obviously we cannot as an American company impose American laws and values on other countries that you wouldn't get very far if we did that.
But but we do you know think that if a country's law laws are a particular way and we're being asked to what we we think we think we're being asked to break them then and be silent about it then obviously that is no good.
So I just want to be clear because sometimes sometimes comes across as Elon's trying to just be a crazy whatever billionaire and demand outrageous things from other countries.
And you know while that is true.
In addition there are other things that I think are valid which is like we obviously can't you know I think any given thing that we do at Excorp we've got to be able to explain in the light of day and and not feel that it was dishonorable or you know we we did the wrong thing you know.
So we don't we that that that that was the that's the nature of the concern.
So we actually are in sort of discussions with the judicial authorities in Brazil to try to you know run this to ground like what's actually going on.
If we're being asked to break the law the Brazilian law then that's that that obviously should not be sure it should not sit well with the resilient judiciary and if we're not mistaken we'd like to understand how we're mistaken.
I think that's a that's a pretty reasonable position.
I'm a bit concerned as your friend that you're going to go to one of these countries and I'm going to one day you're going to get arrested and like I'm going to have to go bail you out or something like this is feels very acute like yes I mean it's not a joke now like they're literally saying like you
know it's not just Biden saying like we have to look into that guy.
Now it's become quite literal like this.
Who was the guy who just wrote the was it the Guardian piece about like oh yeah.
There have been three articles and I think in the past three weeks Robert Reich but it wasn't just him.
Yeah. Three different articles.
It doesn't. That's a trend.
Calling for me to be imprisoned in the Guardian.
You know, Guardian of what.
Guardian of I don't know.
Guardian of censorship censorship.
Premise here is that you bought this thing this online forum this communication platform and you're allowing people to use it to express themselves.
Therefore you have to be jailed.
I don't understand the logic here.
There's what do you think they're actually afraid of at this point.
What's the moral issue here.
I mean I think the if somebody is afraid if somebody is sort of trying to push a false premise on the world then and then that and that premise can be undermined with public dialogue then they will be opposed to public dialogue on that premise because they wish that false premise to prevail.
So that's I think you know the issue there is if they don't like the truth then we want to suppress it.
So now you know the sort of what we're trying to do with the X Corp is I'd distinguish that from my son who's also called X.
Yes. You have parental goals and everything is just called X.
Basically it's a very difficult disambiguation the sun.
Yeah it's everything.
So what we're trying to do is simply adhere to the laws in a country.
So so if something is illegal in the United States or if it's illegal in Europe or Brazil or wherever it might be then then we will take it down and we'll suspend the account because we're not there to make the law as we but if speech is not illegal then then what are we doing.
OK now we're injecting ourselves in as as a censor and where does it stop and who decides.
So where does that path lead.
I think leads to a bad place.
So if the people in a country want the lowest to be different they should make the lowest different.
But otherwise we're going to obey the law in each jurisdiction.
Right. And some of these you're saying that's it.
It's not more complicated.
We're not we're not trying to flout the law or be clear about that.
We're trying to adhere to the law.
If laws change we will change.
And if the laws don't change we we want we're just literally trying to adhere to the law.
Pretty straightforward.
Yes. Very straightforward.
If somebody doesn't think we're not adhering to law well they can file a lawsuit.
Also very straightforward.
I mean there are European countries that don't want people to promote Nazi propaganda.
Yes. They have some sensitivity to it.
It is illegal. It is illegal in those countries.
In those countries if somebody puts that up you take it down.
But they typically file something and say yes.
No it's in some cases it is just obviously illegal.
But you don't need to file a lawsuit for you know if something is just you know unequivocally illegal.
We can literally read the law.
This violates the law.
You know anyone. Anyone can see that.
Like you know you don't need like if somebody is stealing you don't need.
Let me check the law on that.
OK. No they're they're stealing.
That's not right. We had we had J .D.
Vance here this morning.
He did a great job.
And you know one of the things is there's this image on acts of like basically like you Bobby.
Trump and J .D. or like the Avengers I guess.
And then there's another meme where you're in front of a desk where it says D .O .G .E.
Department of Governmental Efficiency.
Yes yes I pushed that one.
Tell us. I made it using Grog the Grog image image generator.
And I posted it. Tell us about the image of my profile.
How do you do it. Well I mean I.
I think with great difficulty but you know look it's been a long time since there was a serious effort to reduce the size of government and to remove absurd regulations.
And you know the last time there was a really concerted effort on that front was Reagan in the early 80s were 40 years away from a serious effort to remove you know not regulations that don't serve the greater good and and reduce the size of government.
And I think it's just if we don't do that then what's what's happening is that we get regulations and laws accumulating every year until eventually everything's illegal.
And that's why we can't get major infrastructure projects done in the United States.
Like you look at the absurdity of the California high speed rail I think they they spent seven billion dollars and have a 16 hundred foot segment that doesn't actually have rail in it.
I mean your tax dollars at work.
I mean yeah what are we doing at the expense of 16 feet of concrete.
And I mean I think it's like you know I realize sometimes I'm perhaps a little optimistic with schedules but I wouldn't be doing the things I'm doing if I was you know not an optimist.
So but but but but at the current trend you know California has to dwell might finish sometime next century maybe.
Probably not. We'll have teleportation by the time.
Yeah exactly. I do everything at that point.
So so it's so I think you really think of you know the United States and many countries it's arguably worse in the EU as being like Gulliver tied down by a million little strings.
And like any one given regulation is not it's not that bad but you've got a million of them and or millions actually and then eventually just can't get anything done.
And this is a this is a massive tax on the on the consumer on the people.
It's just they don't they don't realize that there's this this massive tax in the form of irrational regulations.
I'm not give you a recent example that you know is just insane.
Is that like SpaceX was fined by the EPA one hundred forty thousand dollars for they claimed dumping portable water on the ground drinking water.
So we're like this is that Starbase and we're like it's we're in a truck of tropical thunderstorm region.
That stuff comes from the sky all the time.
And and there was no actual harm done.
You know it was just water to cool the launch pad during liftoff and the zero harm done like they're like they agree yes to zero harm done.
We're like OK. So there's no harm done.
And you want us to pay one hundred forty thousand fine.
It's like yes because you don't have a permit.
OK. We didn't know there was a permit needed for zero harm.
Freshwater being on the ground in a place that where freshwater falls from the sky all the time.
Next to the ocean. Next to the ocean because there's a little bit of water there too.
I was trying to rain so much.
The roads are flooded.
So we're like you know how does this make any sense.
Yeah and then and then they were like well we're not going to process any more of your any more of your applications for launch for Starship launch unless you pay this hundred forty thousand dollars.
It was ransom dusting like OK.
So we paid one hundred forty thousand dollars but it was it's like this is no good.
I mean at this rate we're never going to get to Mars.
I mean that's the. That's the confounding part here.
Is we're acting against our own self interest.
You know when you look at.
We do have to make putting aside freshwater but hey you know they're the rocket makes a lot of noise.
So I'm certain there's some complaints about noise once in a while but sometimes you want to have a party where you want to make progress and there's a little bit of noise therefore you know we trade off a little bit of noise for massive progress or even fun.
So like when did we stop being able to make those tradeoffs.
But talk about the difference between California and Texas where you and I now reside.
Texas you were able to build the gigafactory.
I remember when you got the plot of land and there are.
It seemed like it was less than two years when you had the party to open it.
Yeah we were starting construction to completion was 14 months 14 14 months.
Is there anywhere on the planet I would go faster is like China faster than that.
China was 11 months.
Got it. So Texas China 11 and 14 months California.
How many months and just give you a sense of size.
The Tesla Gigafactory in China is three times the size of the Pentagon which was the biggest building in America.
No there are bigger buildings but the Pentagon is pretty big one.
Yeah. Where was it.
In units of Pentagon it's like three.
OK three pentagons.
In 14 months the just the just the regulatory approvals in California would have taken two years.
Yeah so that's that's the issue.
Where do you think the regulation helps.
Like for the people that will say we need some checks and balances.
We can't have some because for every good actor like you there'll be a bad actor.
So where is that line.
Yeah I mean I haven't.
Sort of. You know. Instead of doing some sensible deregulation and reduction the size of government is just like be very public about it and say like which of these rules do you think.
If the public is really excited about a rule and wants to keep it we'll just keep it.
And here the thing about the rules if like if the rule is you know turns out to be a bad we'll just put it right back.
OK and then you know problem solved.
It's like it's easy to add rules but we don't actually have a process for getting rid of them.
That's the issue. There's no garbage collection for rules.
When we were watching you work.
David and I and Antonio in that first month at Twitter which was all hands on deck and you were doing zero based budgeting.
Really quickly got the costs under control and then miraculously everybody said this site will go down and you added 50 more features.
So maybe yeah because this is the first time they're like.
So many articles like the that this is Twitter is dead forever.
There's no way I could possibly even continue at all.
It was almost like the press was rooting for you to let's write the obituary because there were saying there are goodbyes on Twitter.
Remember that. Yeah yeah yeah they were all leaving and saying there are buys because the site was going to melt down and totally failing and all the journalists left.
Which is if you ever want to like hang out with a bunch of hall monitors.
Oh my God threads is amazing.
Every time I go over there and post they're like they're really triggered.
But yeah I mean if you like being condemned repeatedly then yes you know for reasons that make no sense and threads is the way to go.
It's really it's the most miserable place on earth if Disney's the happiest.
This is the anti Disney.
But if we were to go into government you went into the Department of Education or pick the department.
You've worked with a lot of them actually.
You can't go in there and zero based budget.
OK we get it. But if you could just pair 2 3 4 5 percent of those organizations what kind of impact that have.
Yeah I mean I think we'd need to do more than that.
I think ideally yeah.
Compounding every year 2 3 percent a year.
I mean it would be better than what's happening now.
Yeah look I think we've.
You know. If Trump wins and obviously this is this I suspect there are people with mixed feelings about whether that should happen.
But but if but we do have an opportunity to do kind of a once in a lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of government because the other thing besides the regulations America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly.
And nobody seems to everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one.
But they're all grabbing the silverware everyone stuff in their pockets of the silverware before this Titanic six.
Well you know the the Defense Department budget is a very big budget.
OK it's a trillion dollars a year.
D .O .D. until it's a trillion dollars and interest payments on the national debt just exceeded the defense department budget.
They're over a trillion dollars a year just in interest and rising.
We're adding a trillion dollars to the net to our debt which our you know kids and grandkids are going to have to pay somehow.
Every every three months.
And then soon it's going to be every two months and then every month.
And then the only thing we'll be able to pay is interest.
And if this is just you know it's just like a person at scale that has racked up too much credit card debt.
And this this this is not this does not have a good ending.
So we have to reduce the spending.
Let me ask one question because I've brought this up a lot in the counter argument I hear which I disagree with.
But the counter argument I hear from a lot of politicians is if we reduce spending because right now if you add up federal state and local government spending it's between 40 and 50 percent of GDP.
So nearly half of our economy is supported by government spending and nearly half of people in the United States are dependent directly or indirectly on government checks.
And either through contractors that the government pays or they're employed by government entity.
So if you go in and you take two harden acts too fast you will have significant contraction job loss and recession.
What's the balancing act.
Just thinking realistically because I'm 100 percent on board with you the steps the next set of steps.
However assume Trump wins and you become the chief DOJ.
Do you like double G.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the challenge is how quickly can we.
Yeah. How quickly can we go in.
How quickly can these change and without without.
I want that on my business card.
Yeah without all the lot without all the contraction and job Scott.
Yeah. So so I guess how do you really address it when so much of the economy and so many people's jobs and livelihoods are dependent on government spending.
Well I mean I do think it's sort of.
You know it's a false dichotomy it's not like no government spending is going to happen.
You really have to say like it's at the right level.
And just remember that that you know any any given person if they are doing things in a less efficient organization versus more efficient organization their contribution to the economy their net output of goods and services will reduce.
I mean you've got a couple of clear examples between East Germany and West Germany North Korea and South Korea.
I mean North Korea they're starving South Korea.
It's like amazing. The compounding effect of productivity gains.
Yeah it's night and day.
And so in the North North Korea you've got 100 percent government in this in South Korea you've got probably on a 40 percent government.
It's not zero. And yet you've got a standard of living that is played 10 times higher in South Korea at least exactly.
And then East and West Germany in West Germany you had just thinking in terms of cars.
I mean you had BMW Porsche Audi Mercedes and East Germany which is a random line on a map.
The only car you could get was a travant which is basically a lawnmower with a shell on it.
And it was extremely unsafe.
There was a 20 year wait.
So you know put your kid on the list as soon as they're conceived.
And even then only I think a quarter of people maybe got got this lousy car.
And so that's just an interesting example of like basically the same people different operating system.
And it's not like West Germany was some you know you know a capitalist heaven.
It was it's quite socialist actually.
So so when you look at you know probably it was half half government in West Germany and 100 percent government in East Germany and again sort of a five to.
Call at least a five to 10 X standard of living difference and even qualitatively vastly better.
And it's obviously you know so many people have these amazingly in this modern era this debate as to which system is better.
Well I'll tell you which system is better.
The one that doesn't need to build the world keep people in.
OK. That's that's how you can tell.
It's a dead giveaway.
Spoiler alert. Dead giveaway.
Are they climbing to the wall to get out or come in?
You have to build a barrier to keep people in.
That is the bad system.
It wasn't West West Berlin that built the wall.
They're like you know anyone who wants to flee West Berlin go ahead.
Speaking of walls. And if you look at sort of the flux of boats from Cuba there is a large number of boats from Cuba and there's a bunch of free boats that anyone can take to to Cuba.
Plenty of seats. There's like hey wow an abandoned boat.
I could use this boat to go to Cuba where they have communism.
And yet nobody nobody picks up those boats and does it.
Amazing. So. Given this a lot of fun.
Yeah. Wait. So your point is jobs will be created if we cut government spending half.
Jobs will be created fast enough to make up for right.
Just the county. Obviously you know I'm not suggesting that people have like immediately to you know tossed out with no severance and you know can't cannot pay their mortgage.
Then you see some reasonable off ramp where.
Yeah. So reasonable off ramp where you know they're still you know earning they're still receiving money but have like a year or two to find to find jobs in the private sector which they will find.
And then there will be in a different operating system.
Again you can see the difference East Germany was incorporated into West Germany.
Living standards in East Germany rose dramatically.
So in four years if you could shrink the size of the size of the government with Trump.
What would be a good target just in terms of like ballpark.
I mean are you trying to get me assassinated before this even happens.
No no. Pick a low number.
I mean you know there's that old phrase go postal.
I mean it's like they might.
Yeah. Me. So we'll keep the post office.
I mean I'm going to need a half a security detail.
Guys. So your number of disgruntled workers for former government employees is quite a scary number.
I mean I might not make it you know.
I was saying a low low digits every year for four years would be palatable.
Yeah. And I like your idea.
The thing is that if it's not done like if you have a once once in a lifetime or once in a generation opportunity and you don't take serious action and then you have four years to get it done.
And then it doesn't get done then how serious is Trump about this.
You've talked to him about it.
Yeah. Yeah. He is very serious about it.
Got it. And no I think actually the reality is that if you get rid of nonsense regulations and shift people from the government sector to the private sector we will have immense prosperity.
And I think we will have a golden age in this country and it'll be fantastic.
You have a bunch of critical milestones coming up.
Yeah. In fact there's an important a very exciting launch that is maybe happening tonight.
If the weather is holding up then I'm going to leave here head to Cape Canaveral for the the Plaras Dawn mission which is a private mission.
So funded by Jarrad Isaacman and he's a boy some guy.
And and they're this will be the first time the first private first first commercial spacewalk and it'll be at the highest altitude since Apollo.
So it's the furthest from earth that anyone's gone.
Let's assume that successful.
Sure. I hope so man.
No pressure. Yeah absolutely.
You know Ashmore prior Ashmore safety is man if I had like all the all the wishes I could say about that would be the one to put on.
So you know space is dangerous.
So the. Yeah. I mean the next milestone after that would be the next flight of Starship which is Starship is the next flight.
Starship is ready to fly.
We are waiting for regulatory approval.
You know it really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another.
A stamp is really hard.
Approved. Yeah. You see that movie.
You ever see that movie Zootopia.
There's like a sloth coming in for the approval.
Accidentally tell a joke.
And I was like oh no here we go.
You take a long time.
But yeah Zootopia. You know if you know the funny things like so I went to the DMV.
About I don't know a year later after Zootopia and to get my one of the license renewal and the guy in an exercise of incredible self -awareness had the sloth from Zootopia in his cube.
In his cube and he was actually swift.
Yeah with that with the mandate beat the sloth.
Yeah. No personal agency personal agency.
No I mean it sounds people like think the you know the government is more competent than it than it is.
I'm not saying that there aren't competent people in the government.
They're just in an operating system that is inefficient.
Once you move them to a more efficient operating system they their output is dramatically greater as we've seen exactly.
You know when East Germany was reintegrated to it with West Germany and and the same people were vastly more prosperous.
With a basically half capitalist operating system.
So but I mean for a lot of people live there like the most direct experience with the government is the DMV and then the point thing to remember is the government is the DMV at scale.
Right. That's government.
Got the mental how much do you want to scale it.
Yeah. You like sorry can you go back to a question on Star.
So you announced just the other day Starship going to Mars in two years.
And by the way. Yeah yeah yeah.
Yeah yeah. And then four years for a crewed aspirational launch an excellent and how much is the government involved.
I'm not saying like say you watch by these not you know but these.
But it based on our current progress where with Starship we're able to successfully reach over the velocity twice.
We're able to achieve soft landings of the booster and the ship in water.
And that's despite the ship having you know half its flaps cooked off.
You see the video on the platform it's quite exciting.
So you know we think we'll be able to have to launch reliably and repeatedly and quite quickly.
And the the fundamental holy grail breakthrough for rocketry for what the fundamental breakthrough that is needed for life to become multiplanetary is a rapidly reusable reliable rocket.
With a part. So fired in there.
So with Starship is the first rocket design where.
Success is one of the possible outcomes with full reusability.
So if we have any given project you have to say this is the circle to write a diagram.
There's a circle and it is success that success dot in the circle.
Is success in the set of possible outcomes that.
You know sounds pretty obvious but they're often projects where that that is success is not in the set of possible outcomes.
And so so Starship not only is fully for reusability in the set of possible outcomes it is being proven with each launch and and I'm confident will succeed a simply matter of time and.
You know if we can get some improvement in the speed of regulation we could actually move a lot faster.
So that would that would be very helpful and in fact if this if not something isn't done about.
Reducing regulation and sort of speeding up approvals and to be clear I'm not about anything unsafe it's simply the processing of the safe thing.
Can be done at a as fast as the rocket is both not slower than.
Then we could become a space -faring civilization and a multi planet species ultimate and be out there among the stars in the future and there's.
It's just very like it's incredibly important that we have things that that we find inspiring that you look to the future and say the future is going to be better than the past things to look forward to like like kids are a good.
A good way to assess this like what are kids fired up about and if you can say you know you could you know you could be an astronaut on mars you could maybe one day.
Go beyond the solar system we could make star trek star for the academy real.
That is an exciting future that is inspiring.
You know you need things that move your heart.
I mean. Life can't just be about solving one miserable problem after another it's got to be things that you look forward to as well.
Yeah and do you think you might have to move it to a different jurisdiction to move faster I've always wondered if like.
It's rocket technology is considered in fast weapons technology so we can't just go do it you know in another country yes in it you interesting and if we don't do it other countries could do it.
I mean they are so far behind us but theoretically there is a national security you know justification here if somebody can put their thinking caps on like do we want to have this technology that you're building the team's work is hard on stolen by other countries and then you know maybe they don't
have as much red tape.
I would I wish people were trying to steal it.
So that no one's trying to steal it it's just too.
If this is too crazy.
And that's for you yeah it's way too.
You know what do you think is going on that led to Boeing.
Building the Star Line the way that they did they were able to get it up.
But not complete but can't complete they can't finish can't finish and now we're going to have to go up and finish.
Well I mean I think burning is a company that is.
They actually do so much business with the government they have sort of impedance match to the government.
So they're like basically one notch away from the government maybe too.
They're not far from the government from an efficiency standpoint because they derive so much of the revenue from the government.
A lot of people think more space X is super dependent on the government and actually know most of our revenue is commercial.
And there's. I think at least up until perhaps recently because then a new CEO who actually shows up in the factory.
And the CEO before that I think had a degree in accounting and it never went to the factory and didn't know how airplanes flew.
So I think if you are in charge of a company that makes airplanes fly and.
Spacecraft go to orbit you need to then it can't be a total mystery as to how they work.
So you know. I'm like sure if somebody is like running coco Pepsi and they're like great at marketing or whatever that's that's fine because you know it's not a sort of technology dependent business.
You know or if they're running a you know financial consulting in their degrees in accounting that makes sense.
But I think you know if you're going to feel the cavalry captain is you know how to write a horse.
Pretty basic yeah yeah.
Just concerning it the cavalry captain was full of the horse.
He's not going to inspire the team.
Sorry I'm scared of horses gets on backwards and like.
Shifting gears to a I Peter is here earlier and he was talking about how so far the only company to really make money off a eyes and video with the chips.
Do you have a sense yet of where you think the big applications will be from a is again be an enabling self driving is going to be enabling robots is it transforming industries I mean it's still I think early in terms of where the big business impacts going to be give a sense, yeah.
I mean I think I think they the spending on a I probably runs ahead of I mean does run ahead of the revenue right now there's no question about that.
But the rate of improvement of a I as faster than any technology I've ever seen by far and.
And it's. I mean like the for example a touring test used to be a thing.
Now you know your basic open source random LM you're writing on a friggin raspberry pie probably could you know be deterring test.
So there's. I think actually.
They think the good future of a I is one of immense prosperity where.
There is an age of abundance no shortage of goods and services everyone can have whatever they want unless except for things we are officially defined to be scarce like some special artwork.
But but anything that is a manufacturer girl provided service will I think with the admin of a plus robotics that the cost of goods and services will be will.
Trend to zero like I'm not saying it'd be actually zero but it'll be.
It. Everything everyone will be able to have anything they want that that's the good future of course you know in my view that's probably 80 percent likely look on the bright side.
On the 20 % 20 % probably even on the nothing.
Is it is the 20 % like what does that look like man I mean frankly I do have to go engage in some degree of deliberate suspension of disbelief with respect to AI.
In order to sleep well and even then.
Because I think the actual issue the most likely issue is like well how do we find meaning in a world where I can do everything we can do better that that is perhaps the bigger challenge.
Although you know at this point I know more and more people who are retired and they seem to enjoy that life so.
But I think that that may be maybe there'll be some crisis of meaning like because the computer can do everything you can do but better submit maybe that'll be a challenge.
But but really. You know you need you need this sort of end effectors you need the the autonomous cars and you need the sort of humanoid robots or your general purpose robots.
But once you have general purpose humanoid robots and autonomous vehicles.
You really you you you can build anything.
And and this this I think that there's no actual limit to the size of the economy I mean there's obviously the massive earth you know like that will be alone one limit.
But you know the economy is really just the average productivity per person times number of people that's the economy and if you've if you've got humanoid robots that can do you know where there's no real limit on the number of humanoid robots.
And and they they can operate very intelligently then then there's no actual limit to the economy in it is no meaningful limit to the economy.
You guys just turned on Colossus.
Yes like the largest private compute cluster I guess of GPUs anywhere so it's the most powerful supercomputer of any kind.
Which sort of speaks to what David said and kind of what Peter said which is a lot of the kind of economic value so far of a by a has entirely gone to in video but there are people with alternatives and you're actually one with an alternative now you have a very specific case because dojos really about images
and. Large images huge video.
Yeah I mean the Tesla problem is different from the.
You know the sort of LLM problem that the nature of the intelligence actually is actually and.
The what matters in the eye is different.
To to the point you just made which is that in the intelligence case the context like is very long so we've got gigabytes of context context windows yeah yeah you're going you know.
Sort of. Just bringing it up kind of billions of tokens of context not not the amount of context because you've got.
Seven seven cameras and if you've got several you know let's say for a minute of several hide hide if cameras then that's gigabytes so you need to compress it so the Tesla problem is going to compress a gigantic context.
Into the the pixels that are that actually matter and.
You know and and condense that over a time and so you've got to in both the time dimension space dimension you've got to compress the pixels.
In space and pixels over in time.
And then and then have that inference done on a tiny computer relatively speaking a smaller.
You know a few hundred what.
The Tesla designed AI and first computer which about I still the best there isn't a better thing we could buy from suppliers, so the Tesla designed AI and first computer that's in the cars is better than anything we could buy from any supplier just by the way that's kind of by the way.
Tesla ad ad trip to you is extremely good you guys in the design, there is a technical paper and there is a deck that somebody on your team from Tesla.
Published and it was stunning to me you designed your own transport control like layer over ethernet you're like I ethernet's not good enough for us yeah you got this.
Coe or something and you're like oh we're just going to reinvent ethernet and like string these chips it's pretty incredible stuff that's happening over there yeah.
Now the team, the test of chip design team is extremely extremely good.
So. But is there a world where, for example, other people over time that need you know some sort of like video use case or image theoretically you know you'd say Oh, why not you know, I have some extra cycles over here so we should kind of make you a competitor of it is not intentionally, per se, but.
yeah, I mean the. The.
You know there's this training and inference and we do have the two those two projects at tells we've got dojo which is the training computer and then.
You know our inference chip which is in every every car and first computer.
So and dojo we've only had dojo one dojo two is.
It should be we should have dojo to and volume towards the end of next year.
And that that that will be we think sort of comparable to.
sort of a b 200 type type system a training system.
And. You know so this I guess there's some potential for for that to be used as a service.
And like. Dojo service is just kind of like I mean we're I guess I guess I have like some improved confidence in dojo.
But I think we won't really know how good dojo is until probably version three like usually takes three major iterations on a technology for it to be to be excellent and will only have the second major iteration next year.
The third iteration I don't know maybe late you know 26 or something like that.
How's the how's the optimist project going I remember we talked last you said this publicly that it's in doing some light testing inside the factory.
Yeah it's actually being useful what's the build of materials and when you know for something like that at scale so when you start making it like you're making the model three now and there's a million of them coming off the factory line.
What would the cost 20 30 40 thousand dollars you think.
Yeah I mean what I've discovered that really that you know anything made in sufficient volume will asymptotically approach the cost of its of its materials.
So now there's the best I should say that there's it says some things are constrained by cost of intellectual property and like painful patents and stuff so a lot of you know what's in a chip is like paying paying royalties.
And depreciation of the chip out so but the actual marginal cost the chips is very low.
So so so optimist it obviously is more humanoid robot it it is it weighs much less than it's much smaller than a car.
So the you could expect that in high volume.
And I'd say that you also probably need three three production versions of optimists so you need to refine the design three at least three major times and then you need to scale production to.
Sort of the million unit plus per year level.
And I think at that point the cost the.
You know the labor materials on optimists is probably not much more than ten thousand dollars.
And that's a decade long journey basically think of it like that optimist will cost less than a a small car right so at scale volume with three major iterations of technology and so for small car.
It costs twenty five thousand dollars you know it's probably like twenty thousand dollars for an optimist for a human I drove out that can be your your body like a combination of R2 D2 and C3 feel a bit better.
You know that's that's that's that I think people are going to get really attached to their humanoid robot because I mean like you're looking sort of what's always is like R2 D2 and C3 I love those guys.
You know they're awesome.
And their personality and I mean all R2 could do is just beep at you.
Can speak English. And you see three people to translate the beeps you know so you're in your two of that if you did two or three years per iteration or something it's a decade long journey for this to hit some sort of.
Scale and I would say mid major iterations are less than two years so.
It's probably on the order of five years yeah.
Maybe six to get to a million units here and that that price point everybody can afford one.
Planet Earth I mean it's going to be that one to one two to one what do you think ultimately we're sitting here in 30 years.
The number of robots on the planet versus humans yeah I think the number of robots will vastly exceed the number of humans vastly yeah.
I mean you have to say Who who would not want their robot buddy everyone wants a robot buddy.
You know it's like it especially but you know.
You know it can take care of your your take your dog for a walk it could you know mow the lawn it could watch your kids it could you know like you could teach your kids it could it could.
Also send it to Mars yeah absolutely send a lot of robots to Mars to do the work needed to yeah make it a colonized planet for Mars is already the robot planet plays like a whole bunch of robots like rovers and only helicopter yes only robots.
So yeah the. No, I think that the sort of useful humanoid robot.
opportunity is the single biggest opportunity.
Ever. Because if you seem like that I mean the ratio of human robots to humans is going to be at least two to one maybe three to one.
Because I really everybody will want one and then there'll be a bunch of robots that you don't see that are making good some services and you think it's a general one generalized robot that then learns how to do different tasks or yeah.
Hey, I mean we are a generalized yeah we're just we're just made of meat.
You know. yeah I mean I'm operating my meat puppet unit.
So yeah we are actually.
And rather it turns out like as we're designing optimists we sort of learn more and more about why humans are shaped the way they're shaped and you know and why we have five fingers and why your little finger is smaller than you know your index finger.
You know obviously we have opposable thumbs but also what why for example your the muscles the major muscles that operate your hand are actually in your forearm and and your fingers are primarily operated.
Your muscles that actually eat your fingers are located the vast majority of your fingers trying to actually come in for your forearm and your fingers are being operated by.
Tendence little strings that that's and so the current version of the optimist hand.
Has the actuators in the hand and has only 11 degrees of freedom, so it can't it's not as doesn't have all the degrees of freedom of human hand, which has depending on how you count it a roughly 25 degrees of freedom.
And. And and and it's also like not strong enough in certain ways, because the actuators have to fit in the hand.
So the next generation optimist hand, which we have in prototype form the actuators have moved to the forearm, just like a human and operate the fingers through cables, just like the human hand.
And and then the next generation hand has 22 degrees of freedom.
Which we think is it enough to do almost anything that human can do.
And presumably, I think it was written that.
Accent Tesla may work together and you know provide services, but my immediate thought went to all if you just provide a grok to the robot and the robot has a personality and can process voice and video and images and all of that stuff.
So yeah, it's rewrap here.
I think you know, everybody talks about all the projects are working on, but people don't know you have a great sense of humor.
That's not true. Oh, you do.
People don't see it, but I would say what I know for me, the funniest week of my life, or one of the funniest was when you did SNL and we got and you I got to tag along.
Maybe you saw it. Maybe behind the scenes like some of your funniest recollections of that chaotic insane week when we laughed for 12 hours a day, it's a little terrorizing on the first couple of days, but.
Yes, I was a bit worried in the beginning there because, frankly, nothing was funny.
Day one was rough. Yeah, so I mean, it was like a rule, but can't you guys just say it just say the stuff that got on the cutting.
The funniest skits were the ones that let you do.
So I'm saying, can you just say you can say it so that he doesn't get.
I mean, how much time we have here.
One or two. In your mind, which one do we regret most not getting on air.
You really want to hear that?
I mean, I mean, it was a little spicy.
It was a little funny.
All right, here we go, guys.
All right. So one of the things that I think everyone's been sort of wondering this whole time is, is Saturday Night Live actually live?
Like live live live live or do they have like a delay or like just in case, you know, there's a wardrobe malfunction or something like that.
Is it like a, you know, truly like five second delay?
What's really going on?
But there's a there's a way to test this, right?
We came up with a way.
There's a way to test this, which is we don't tell them what's going on.
I walk on and say, this is the script I throw on the ground.
We're going to find out tonight.
Right now, if Saturday Night Live is actually live.
And the way that we're going to do this is I'm going to take my cock out.
This is the greatest pitch ever.
And if if you see my car, you know, it's true.
And if you don't, it's been a lie.
A lie all these years, all these years.
This is we're going to bust them right now.
And this we're pitching this.
Yeah, yeah. So we're pitching this on Zoom.
Yeah, I'm putting this on Zoom on like a Monday after like we're like kind of hung over for the weekend and we're like pitching this.
We're in Miami, yeah.
And it's it's Jason's on and Mike.
Yeah. And Mike, you know, since she got like, you know, my friends, I think a sort of, you know, quite funny, you know, Jason's quite funny.
I think like Jason's the closest thing to Cartman that exists in the real.
Yeah, we have a joke going that he's butters in our apartment.
So and I heard Mike's pretty funny, too.
So we come in like just like guns blazing with that, with like ideas.
And we didn't realize like, actually, you know, that's not how it works.
And that's, that's normally like actors and they just get told what to do.
And like, oh, right.
You mean we can't just like do funny things that we thought of?
What? They're they're watching this and on the Zoom.
They're a guest. It's pitch.
Yeah. That's silence like so and I'm like, and I'm like, is this thing working?
Is this like a we knew it is on my god.
I mean, like we hear you.
Yeah. And then after a long silence, like Mike's Mike just says the word crickets.
And they're not laughing.
They're not even a trouble.
I'm like, what's going on here?
Elon explains the punch line.
Yes, exactly. So there's more to it.
OK, that's just the beginning.
So Elon says so so then I'm like, so so I said, like, I'm going to I'm going to reach down.
Into my pants, in my pants and I stick my hands on my pants and I'm going to and I'm and I'm going to pull my card and I tell this to the audience and the audience is going to go, what?
And and then and then and then and then I pull out a baby rooster.
You know, yes. And it's like, OK, this is kind of PG.
You know, it's like that's not that bad.
It's like this is my tiny cock.
And and. And it's like, what do you think?
It's then. And do you think it's a nice I mean, I like it.
You know, like and then Kate McKinnon walks out.
Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, oh, no, but you haven't heard half of it.
It's a kid McKinnon comes out.
Yeah. And she says, Elon, I expected you would have a bigger cock.
Yeah. I was like, I don't mean to just point you, Kate, but yeah, but I hope you like it anyway.
But Kate's got to come out with with with her cat.
OK, right. So you can see where this is going.
And I say, nice. Wow.
That's that's that's a that's a nice pussy you've got there.
OK. Wow. That's amazing.
It looks a little wet.
Was it raining outside?
Do you mind if I stroke your pussy?
Is that cool? It's like, oh no.
You want to actually do.
Can I hold your cock?
Of course. Of course.
Kate, you're then they trade my car.
And then, you know, we exchange.
And I think just the audio version of this is pretty good.
Right. And and, you know, it's just like, wow, you I really like stroking your cock.
And I was like, I. And you listen, I'm really enjoying your pussy.
Yes, of course. And.
Yeah. So, you know, they're looking at it.
Like, oh my God, what have we done inviting these lunatics on the program?
Yeah, they said, like, well, it is it is Mother's Day.
It's Mother's Day. We might not want to go with this.
What a mom in the audience.
I'm like, well, that's a good point.
Well, fair, fair. It might be a bit uncomfortable for all the moms in the audience.
Maybe I don't know.
I don't know. Maybe they'll dig it.
Maybe like it. So, yeah, that was.
That's the that's that's the that's the cold open that didn't make it.
We didn't get that on the air, but we did fight for doge.
Yes. And we got doge.
Well, I mean, there's a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script.
Like if they have these like cue cards for what you're supposed to say.
And I just didn't say it.
I just went off the rails.
Yeah. They didn't see that coming.
It's live. Well, it's live.
And so the Elon wanted to do doge.
This is the other one.
And he wanted to do doge on late night.
And he says, Hey, Jake, how can you make sure?
Oh, yeah. I want to.
Yeah. I want to do the doge father.
Like you sort of redo the, you know, that scene from the the Godfather.
I mean, you kind of need the music to cue things up.
You bring me on my daughter's wedding.
This and you ask for dogs.
Yeah, you got Marlon Brando.
They give you Bitcoin, but you want dogs.
You really got to set the mood.
You got to have a tuxedo and this whole concept in the doge father.
You got to have like Marlon Brando.
I said, You come to me on the stay of my doge's wedding.
And you ask me for your private keys.
Are you even a friend?
You call me the doge father.
So. Buon asera, buon asera.
So that's potential.
They had great potential.
So they come to me and I'm talking to Colin and Joe, who's got a great sense of humor.
He's amazing. He loves Elon.
And he's like, we can't do it because of the law and stuff like that.
The law? The law and applyability.
So I said, it's OK.
Elon called Comcast.
Yeah, he put in an offer and they just accepted it.
Just bought NBC. So it's fine.
Yeah. And Colin Joes looks at me.
I told him it's so good.
He's like. You're serious.
Yeah, we own NBC now.
Yeah. And he's like, OK, well, that kind of changes things, doesn't it?
I'm like, absolutely.
We're a go on on doge.
Yeah. And then he's like, you're fucking with me.
I'm fucking with you.
Or are we? Or are we?
It was the greatest week of that.
Like is like two of 10 stories.
Yeah, we've got to.
Yeah, we'll save the other eight.
Yeah. But it was. And it was just so happy for you to see you have a great week of just joy and fun and letting go because you were launching rockets.
You're dealing with so much bullshit in your life to have those moments.
To share them and just laugh.
It was just so great.
Yeah. More of those moments.
I think we've got to we've got to get you back on SNL.
Who wants to back on SNL one more time?
All right, ladies and gentlemen, our bestie Elon Musk.
