Pivot - BONUS EPISODE: Elon Musk at Code Conference 2021

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Kara sits down with SpaceX CEO/Tesla Technoking Elon Musk for a discussion on China, rockets, Mars colonization, and more. Recorded live at Code 2021 in Los Angeles. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the Bose Corporation. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Today, we've got a bonus episode from our Code Conference. It's my conversation with Elon Musk. I've talked to Elon many times, and I have to say, this one was really good. We talked about the size of rockets and more.

All right, we have a lot to talk about. Great. Let's do it. Where do you want to start? Anywhere you'd like to start. All right, China. Cryptocurrency. Cryptocur China cryptocurrency what they're doing that's my safe word by the way okay what they're doing cryptocurrency yeah cryptocurrency yeah it'll kill any later for us China. Yes. What they're doing around Bitcoin, etc. And then I'd like to pivot to what the US is going to do around regulation. Well it would appear that they don't love cryptocurrency.

It appears like that. Yeah. It's subtle but... Hinting in that direction. So I can't speak to exactly why they don't like it that much, but people can speculate for various reasons. China, by the way, is having some significant electricity generation issues.

Yeah. So actually I think part of it may actually be due to electricity shortages in many parts of China. So a lot of South China right now is having random power outages because the power demand is higher than expected. So crypto mining might be playing a role in that. I'm not sure. This is higher than expected. So, yeah, crypto mining might be playing a role in that. I'm not sure. This is further than that.

It is further than that. Well, I suppose cryptocurrency is fundamentally aimed at reducing the power of a centralized government. Yes, it is. And they don't like that. Okay. That's my guess. Okay, so what do you think's gonna happen? Does this... I mean, maybe the audience has... that they don't like that. Okay. That's my guess. Okay. So what do you think is going to happen?

I mean, maybe the audience has... The shares went up. It didn't matter after they announced this. They went down and they went up. You can change the shares of cryptocurrency more than China can. Yeah. Is that a good thing? If it goes up, I suppose it is.

But, I mean, I think there's an always long-term role for crypto. And, you know, really people should think of any kind of money system, whether it's historic value or currency, as really a form of information. If you apply information theory to money, whether it's cryptocurrency or some other form, and view it in terms of how good is it at bandwidth, latency, jitter, dropping packets, which is, you could say like fraud is like losing packets or something on the network. And, you know, it's overall security.

Then I think a lot of these things just seem, just make a lot of sense in that regard. Like any form of money has no power in and of itself, except as an exchange of value between people for goods or services or to translate uh things in time like a loan so is this the right thing for governments to do to take control of it is it possible it is not possible to i think to, I think, destroy crypto, but it is possible for governments to slow down its advancement. So what should the US government do? We had Gary Gensler on earlier, SEC chairman. He was calling it the Wild West of finance. What should they do, if anything?

I would say do nothing. Okay. They're not saying that. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't seriously just let it fly. Because? Well, what do you think governments can do? I think they can, like you said, they can ruin it. I don't think they can just slow it down. I think they can stop it. I don't think they can control it. therefore they may want to stop it i wouldn't say i'm some you know massive cryptocurrency expert um you know i think the there's there's some value to cryptocurrency i don't think it's like the second system, the legacy money systems, and reduce the, yeah, I mean, just, you know, governments have a habit of editing the money database, which is like probably some ancient mainframe somewhere in Virginia running COBOL, if I. It's kind of bleak to think about that. So when governments can't keep the hand out of the cookie jar and

edit the money database, there's probably some value to that. Okay. So you're saying you're not an expert, but you spend a lot of time tweeting about it now you tweet about a lot of things we'll get to that in a minute um but why is that why that's true why is that of interest to you crypto because you become i would say the crypto messiah but crypto messiah that's going to be oh no um well i mean i mostly don't tweet about crypto. This is a minority of a small number of tweets. Okay. So I do know a lot about the money system and payments and how it actually works, as opposed to, say, how economists think it works. on a practical basis, just how money, money is just a, basically the monetary system is a series of heterogeneous databases that are not real time

with the exception of PayPal and a few others and to reconcile on a batch basis, that may take anywhere from 24 hours to several days. And so it's just, it's slow. That's just a lot of latency and jitter. And the ACH system has basically no security. So, and this has just been, it was that way when PayPal started in 99, and it's still that way 22 years later. So needs reform. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I want to move on to China.

I want to stick with China for a second. You're operating there, selling there. What do you make of what they're doing to the tech entrepreneurs there, the tech moguls? Where is Jack Ma? Where is Jack Ma? I know. Do you know?

No, I'm just curious. You have some means to find out, I'm guessing. Well, maybe. I don't know. I think there are some changes afoot in China. I think part of this may be actually COVID related in the sense that it's been quite difficult to have in-person meetings in China and China really runs, the whole system is set up to run on the basis of in-person meetings. of these meetings for the past 18 months, I think has probably led to things being worse than they would be if there were more in-person meetings.

So I think as COVID lifts and the in-person meetings return, I think probably there will be an increase in the sort of trust level, and I think things will probably start heading in a more positive direction. The trust level between tech and the government? Yeah, both internally within China and with respect to people from the US and other countries going and visiting and meeting with officials in the Chinese government. Now, China is very much set up to work with in-person meetings. And so COVID,

I think, has impeded that. So I think things will improve most likely as the in-person meetings resume. So they did these antitrust actions because they couldn't say hello? I think not all of it can be ascribed to that, but some of it can be described that but it's some of it can be yeah we'll see I I suspect things will improve next year because of just better more interaction are you nervous about what you're doing there it's a big market for you it's a you operate there yeah we've got a big market for you. You operate there. Yeah. We've got a big factory in Shanghai, which is doing very well. The Tesla China team is doing great work.

And we do well with selling in the Chinese market as well as producing cars for China and for export to Europe. So overall, things are going pretty well, frankly. You're not worried about U.S.-China relations? I don't. It's not. No, not especially right now. Not especially. All right. So let's talk about space. You had a recent space. You sent up a bunch of civilians into space.

Did you not send yourself up? No, I have not sent myself up. I suppose I will at some point. But my goal is not to send myself up. My goal is to open up space for humanity and ultimately set us on a path to becoming a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species.

Yes. So you don't want to go up yourself? It's neither here nor there. I will go at some point. on a path to becoming a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species. Yes. So, you don't want to go up yourself? It's neither here nor there. I will go at some point. What do you think of the other efforts to go to suborbital? Suborbital is a step in the direction of orbit, but... But just to put things into perspective, you need about 100 times more energy to get to

orbit versus sub-orbit. And then to get back from orbit, you need to burn off that energy. So you need a heavy duty heat shield because you're coming in like a meteor. So orbit is roughly, toward its magnitude, more difficult than sub-orbit. But it's still good to do something in space. What do you think watching those, both Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos doing that? I thought it was cool that they're spending money on the advancement of space. I think we ultimately want to be, humanity wants to be, should want to be a space-faring civilization and out there among the stars.

And we want, I think we really want, you know, all these things that we see in science fiction movies and books, like, you know, we want those to to be real one day, not always fiction. Right. So I think it's good that people are spending their money advancing space technology. So last time we talked, we didn't talk a lot about space. We talked about a whole bunch. We talked about meat flaps, which was Elon's word for speaking.

Yeah. We're flapping our wings. Yeah, slow tonal wheezing. Yes, that's right. When I sound like it right now. That's what we sound like to a computer. Right. Like whale sounds slow down.

Yeah. So, we didn't talk about space. So, let's talk a little bit about where you think you've advanced with what you're doing. Because I think you're probably the most fast forward of all these efforts. Yeah. of all these efforts? Yeah, so with respect to SpaceX, let's see. There's two, besides orbital human spaceflight and providing transport for NASA of astronauts in Calgary to and from the space station, which we've been doing for a

while now, over a decade. We have something called starlink which is a global internet system and this is i think going to have some profound positive effects on the world because the starlink is really designed to serve the the least served um you have 1300 satellites up right now, is that correct? 1,500, yeah. And you want to put 30,000? Yeah. We'll get to space pollution in a minute, but explain the reasons for it. Yeah, so in order to provide high bandwidth, low latency connectivity to a large number of people, you need a lot of satellites, and they need to be at lowest orbit so that latency is low.

The problem with satellites that are at geostationary orbit is that they are around 36,000 kilometers, whereas we are at 550 kilometers. So, gigantic difference in latency. For the satellite system, you could play a competitive video game that's latency-dependent and still be able to play it with Starlink. It's like browsing

a terrestrial system, essentially. Starlink is really, just to be clear, not a threat to 5G or terrestrial fiber or anything like that. But it's very well suited to low to medium density regions of the Earth, places where it is too expensive to trench fiber or, 5G cellular base stations. And so it's really a good, it kind of takes care of the people that just didn't get internet or either the internet

is too slow or too expensive, or they just don't have it at all. It's very well suited, a space based system for serving like the least served, maybe 5% or something like that. How big a part of your space business is it, from your perspective? I mean, I think it's quite significant in that the launch side of things,

just launching other people's satellites and serving the space station, probably tops out around $3 or $4 billion a year of revenue. Whereas if we can get to, say, 3% of global internet traffic, three or four billion dollars a year of revenue whereas if we can get to say three percent of global internet traffic then that that's and that's roughly a trillion dollar a year business then we can increase our revenue by an order of magnitude to more like 30 billion or something like that um and and then we can use the proceeds from that to develop the rocket technology

necessary to get humanity to Mars and to the moon and elsewhere in the solar system. So I think Sonic is good in and of itself for providing internet access to the least served in the world. It's a fundamentally good thing in that respect. And also offering a little bit of competition in the cities, although the Starlink can really maybe serve less than 5% of people in a city. It's just because of the way the spot beams from space are very big.

So anyway, it's a very nice compliment and a necessary compliment to 5G and fiber. So, and like I said, it'll provide a revenue stream for us to develop our next generation rocket, which is Starship. With Starship, we're trying to achieve a fundamental breakthrough that is the holy grail of rocketry. That is to have a fully reusable mobile rocket. This is extremely fundamental. With Falcon 9, we have a mostly reusable rocket. She recently proved it landed, correct? We've been landing for quite a while now.

In fact, a number of our boosters are on their 10th reflight. So we've shown that reusing the boost stage can be done and that it is economically sensible to do so. What's the difference in price? Between our Falcon 9 and the Confederates? I mean using a reusable rocket. Oh yeah, sure, sure. So it's really gigantic. With Falcon 9, we still have to lose the upper stage.

And you can think of each stage being like the equivalent of a jet airplane. So the boost stage is like the big jet airplane. Upper stage is the small jet airplane. We still throw away the small jet airplane every time. So Falcon 9 is able to be the most competitive rocket in the world because we recover the boost stage and the fairing. But still, our best case marginal cost of launch, not taking into account overhead allocation, is about $15 million. Per launch? Yeah, for 15 tons to orbit, which is quite big. SpaceX, over the last year or so, has

delivered about, I think, roughly two-thirds of all payloads to orbit of Earth. And most of the remaining third is China, and then everyone else is kind of miscellaneous. So anyway, but we still have a, it's still $15 million because of the, mostly because of the- What's the cost differential between that and what you're aiming for? Yeah, so basically Falcon 9 is effectively about half to a third the cost of alternatives because of the reuse of an expendable system. So that would just be a million bucks, right?

Yeah, the marginal cost of launch we think can be potentially under a million dollars. So is anybody close? For over 100 tons to orbit. More than 15, you said 15. Yes, 100 tons likely, and with refinement of the design, probably 150 tons. So essentially it would be 10 times the payload of Falcon 9 for 15 times lower cost.

When is that happening? Hundredfold better. You know, it's really profound. Essentially, with Starship, it is possible to make the economics close for creating a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the Moon, for those who want to go there. And so it was really very, very profound development. And that's what I'm spending most of my time on is driving the development of Starship.

Starship, so you can go to Mars or you want civilization on Mars? Civilization on Mars. So what's first, the Moon base or Moon base civilization on Mars? Civilization on Mars. So what's first, the moon base or moon base first, correct? I mean, the moon is close, so we might as well. Okay. Yeah. You might as well. It's practically right there, you know.

You got a contract with the Defense Department to do a lunar lander. From NASA. From NASA, which is being disputed by Jeff Bezos. Yes. How do you feel about that? Well, I think I've expressed my thoughts on that front. You know, I think you should put more of his energy into getting to orbit than lawsuits.

You cannot sue your way to the moon. You know how good your lawyers are. Yeah. So why isn't he doing that? I don't know. He'd also like to make fun of his rocket. Y'all make fun of each other's rockets. I mean, I think it does have, I mean it could be a different shape

potentially. You know. Could you explain from a technological point of view why it's that shape? Well if you are only going to doing suborbital, then your rocket can be sort of shorter. Shorter. Yes. So, have you called him and said, cut the shit? Get bigger? What? I have encouraged him to emphasize getting to orbit.

Do you talk to him? Not verbally. What is it, mind-meld? No, just, you know. Tweet at him. Yeah, exactly. Sub-tweet if you want. Sub-tweet. So what do you do? Sub-tweet him. So what are you going to do with the lunar lander?

And how do you get the moon base there yeah so um starship is designed essentially as a general purpose uh transport system to anywhere in the solar system uh because it is a propulsive lander and with a propulsive lander, you can land anywhere that's got a solid surface. And it's also designed for orbital refilling. So you can get the Starship to orbit and then send tanker flights to refill it so that it has tremendous delta velocity. Basically, it can go very far from earth orbit because you can refill propellants the moon base is important because um well i think the moon base i mean certainly is like a lot we could learn scientifically if we had a proper laboratory in the moon um about the nature of the universe and you know

where we all came from and the early history of Earth and that kind of thing. We have a science station in Antarctica, and we're still learning a lot from our activities in Antarctica, and I think we could learn even more on the moon. So there's a lot of value, I think, to having a... I think it would be just freaking cool. I mean, come on.

It's like we've got our, you know, humanity, let's, we've got to represent here for humanity. Just have a base on the moon. I think everyone would be like, yeah, hell yeah, we've got a base on the moon, that's cool. Yeah. You know? For tourism? What do you think? No, the science.

Science. Science. I think like, a lot could be learned if you've got a sort of a science station on the moon, like we've got a science station in Antarctica and many other places. And I think there is value that shouldn't be denigrated for people who want to experience going to orbit or going to the moon.

And when they do so, and I think to some degree vicariously, we all go with them. In the Apollo program, when they landed on the moon, yeah, it was just a handful of individuals on the moon, but we all went with them vicariously. Humanity went with them. Like if you asked Peter to Paul of people on earth and said, Tommy, what do you think is humanity's greatest achievement of the, maybe ever? It's like landing on the moon.

And that's inspiring, I think, to kids everywhere. We'll be back with more from Elon Musk after the break. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore.

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And by the way, you have to be kind of rich to do it. Like from what I understand, I cannot afford to go to the moon, for example. Yeah, I mean, I think it's got a bit more gravitas than, you know, metaphorically, figuratively and literally, more gravitas than, you know, simply tourism. It's not like going to Disneyland. You know, it's like it's more profound than that. So sometimes people use tourism in that sort of a negative way but I think you know especially with the inspiration flight I think they they really I mean they you know they filmed the whole thing in real time you know they shared their experiences with the world there's a really cool group of people I recommend

watching the Netflix show countdown Mark Penney Penioff talked about it. It's awesome. I didn't have anything to do with it. And the production value on the Netflix Countdown documentary is amazing. And you learn about the backstory of the people. And it's actually super. You don't like tourism. You don't like it. This is for science and for saving humanity, presumably.

Yeah, I think tourism, I think that there's an element of tourism to it, but I think, you know, there's also, you know, the technology is expensive at first. You can't just, when you try to develop brand new technology, it doesn't instantly become cheap and affordable. Think of like cell phones, and the early cell't instantly become cheap and affordable. Think of cell phones. And the early cell phones were really expensive and sucked, frankly. Isn't it like Wall Street One where he's walking down the beach with a shoebox-sized cell phone on it, talking to... And so it was really expensive and the tech wasn't that great.

But if some number of people didn't pay for the expensive cell phones, they would not be the inexpensive cell phones that everyone can afford. So thank billionaires for going into space. I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be top of your thank you list, but, I mean, it's not. I'm just saying that when there's new technology, it is necessarily expensive until you can refine the design and you can scale things up and then you can make it more affordable. There's a common misconception that there's some new technology, especially if it's a physical object, that you can just suddenly make it cheap and available. you can just suddenly make it cheap and available. But you have to have many design iterations and you gotta scale up the production

and get economies of scale. We had this argument against Tesla for a long time because people would say like, well, why are you building this Tesla Roadster back in the day? It's basically, it's an expensive toy sports car for rich people. And we're like, yes, it is.

But there's no way we could build an affordable electric car as our first car. You know, we just didn't have the capital. We didn't have the experience. And we needed to go through several technology iterations in order to get to something like the Model 3. Right. in order to get to something like the Model 3. Right. And I actually wrote a blog about this because I knew people would be like,

why are you making sports cars rich for rich people? As though we thought there was somehow a shortage of sports cars for rich people. We're obviously not, but you just got to figure out the technology. You got to go through multiple design. How do you make something mass market and affordable? Many design iterations, many different versions of the technology. You've got to go through multiple design. How do you make something mass market and affordable? Many design iterations, many different versions of the technology, a lot of hard work. And then you've got to scale up the production rate so you get economies of

scale. And those two things are what make any given technology available to the public. And basically, every technology that we take for granted today has gone through that evolution. So the idea of getting to Mars will be affordable someday? Yes, absolutely. It has to be. In order for Mars to be a self-sustaining civilization, it has to be affordable. When you say that... Enough people need to go, you know? Why do you want people to go when you just keep saying that?

Because you're worried about this planet? Or are you just betting the odds are we'll either blow it up or it'll be the day after tomorrow moving? You know, I think it's really, you know, if you sort of look, you know, just sort of stand back, if we just step away from our sort of Antonissian squabbles and say,

let's look at the big picture here, what set of actions can we take that maximize the probability that the future is going to be good for civilization and for consciousness? And I think we should regard consciousness on Earth as delicate, not just fragile. And what sort of actions can we do to ensure that it continues and that the scope and scale of consciousness expands and I'm in favor of expansion because like you know if we want to understand what the universe is about and what's the meaning of life, we need to get out there and find out. And the more we expand the scope and scale of consciousness, the better we will be able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.

So when you get a lot of criticism, say, about Starlink, space pollution, you see a lot of stories about space pollution. Why is Elon putting so many... Astronomers get mad at you. Or with the rockets, you have these big defense contracts that you're doing, correct? First time someone's broken into the area. How do you meet those criticisms?

This is just small potatoes? Well, first of all, with respect to the astronomers, we are in constant dialogue with the leading astronomers of the world and taking great pains to ensure that our satellites do not interfere with their telescopes. And I believe at this point they are satisfied that they will not. So like I said, we're taking great pains to ensure that the satellites do not reflect

or otherwise interfere with the telescopes, including the most sensitive telescopes. So, there may be a few sort of amateur astronomers who are unhappy, but the professional ones are satisfied that we are taking reasonable steps to ensure that we are not standing in the way of science, nor would we ever want to. And we're also looking at launching some new telescopes using Starship, because Starship is a much bigger vehicle. We can launch satellites that have 10 times the resolution of the Hubble, 10 times the resolution of the Hubble, which would be great for science.

And in fact, there's an exciting program working with Sol Perlmutter at Berkeley on a big new space satellite, a space telescope, I should say. And I think we'll do more of those. So I think at the end of the day, Starship and SpaceX are going to do a lot to advance our understanding of astrophysics and astronomy. You said to me a couple of times ago, we talked, you want to die on Mars. You still want to die on Mars. Just not on landing, right? Yes. It's not an impact.

Right. Well, that would on landing, right? Yes. It's not an impact. Right. Well, that would be spectacular. Yes. But you wouldn't get to enjoy it much, just a second or so. Talking about a narrative for the rest of the show. Yeah, no, I was just asked, do you want to die on Mars? And I was like, well, I suppose if you're going to pick Earth or Mars, it'd be cool to be born on Earth and die on Mars. I'm not trying to meet a beeline from Mars and just dive or something.

It's just that, yeah, you've got to pick one. You're going to die somewhere. Sure, Mars. I've interviewed a lot of astro, I guess they're biologists, that are worried about, essentially they said you have to be under the Earth a couple hundred feet. No, no, no. You get short, stupid. Definitely not a couple hundred.

Yeah, no, you just need, first of all, half the time you're shielded by this, by Mars itself. That's half the radiation is just the planet shielding you. And then you want to maybe have like, I don't know, three feet of dirt-ish on the roof, or just kind of a thick roof. They'd be fine. So you're not worried about becoming shorter and stupider by moving to Mars? No, I think we might become taller actually on Mars.

A little bit taller, yeah, because the gravity is roughly 40% that of Earth. OK, that would be good for me. When you think about it. I do think there's one thing that's cool, if you think of the various great filters, if you're familiar with the great filter thought, one of the filters is do we become a multi-planet species

or not? So that is at least one of the filters is do we become a multi-planet species or not? So that is at least one of the great filters. And I think it would be great to pass that and be a multi-planet species where the critical threshold is for a Mars city. If the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for for any reason whether that is civilization on Earth it could be a mundane reason or could be World War three but does Mars prosper or die out and if Mars is missing anything at all like the the civilizational equivalent of vitamin C, then it will eventually die out.

So you need to get to the point where a Mars city is self-sustaining, even if the ships from Earth stop coming, then you have passed the great filter, or at least that particular great filter. I think we should endeavor to pass that great filter as soon as possible. You said pretty soon last time we talked. Yeah, I mean, I think we should really try hard to make it happen this century, before the end of the century. You'll be pretty old. I'll probably be dead.

Yeah, not on Mars. Well, I mean, I'll pop over there when I'm older or something. Okay, so one of the things you over there when I'm older or something. Okay. So one of the things you're doing is a lot of government deals. You're doing this lunar lander. You did the rocket one. You're getting billions from $2.9 billion. Is that right?

Well, right now we're not getting anything because we're being sued. Right. That's right. I'm sorry. Okay. But you're getting a lot of money. Hopefully we'll get it. Right, right. When it's over. I'm sorry. Okay. But you're getting a lot of money. Hopefully we'll get it. Right, right. When it's over.

Yeah. And he fixes it. I mean, most of our launches are commercial, to be clear. Yes, I understand that. But you're doing a lot of government work. Sure. What is that like, working with the government? Is that important to your business? Yeah, I mean, it's an important part of the business. I mean, just bear in mind, if you're in any industry, like let's say you're a pencil manufacturer,

okay, about 40% of your pencils are going to go to the government. The government's about 40% of the economy. If you're a shoe manufacturer, about 40% of your business is going to be with the government. So it's to be expected that any company is going to have, most companies are going to have a percentage of business with the government, state, federal, and local, that is proportionate to the GDP of the government. So, one of the criticisms of you is, you don't pay enough taxes, if any. Can you address that?

Because here you are getting money from the government. You obviously want a functioning government to be able to build all kinds of things and services. How do you look at that trade-off? Well, I mean, there was a bunch of very misleading stuff that was published by ProPublica. And really, that was some sort of trickery. And really, sort of trickery and Really that they did themselves no good service by doing that First of all with respect to the government contracts that that SpaceX ones Our aspiration is to do the most for the least and if you look at all the contracts we've won We've won them because we're the best price. We have a better service at a lower price. They weren't just handed to us.

I don't think they were. That's what I'm saying. In fact, you called me and said we finally got in after years of sort of this back slapping. I think it's a great thing. That is a great thing. Absolutely. I mean, for the Lunalander, just taking that as one example, our bed was half the price of the Blue Origin Lockheed bed, half.

So for a vehicle that does basically 10 times more or eight times more perhaps, our price was half. Okay. And NASA has a mandate to get back to the moon, So we save taxpayers like $3 billion relative to that contract. So I think that's a good thing. With respect to my personal taxes, I don't actually draw a salary or anything. My cash compensation is basically zero. Which is a good thing because income is a problem for most people because And because they pay taxes on income. That was the whole point of the story, I think.

Yeah, yeah. So I do have stock options that vest. And so in the years that the, but I basically, with Tesla and SpaceX, I just have not really bothered to sort of take money off the table, which is a common, most people do. They sell some of bothered to sort of take money off the table, which is a common, most people do. They sell some of their stock and they take money off the table. And for me, I just like said, you know, my money will be the sort of, it was the first in and it'll be the last out. And the success of SpaceX and Tesla was far from assured.

And there are many times when it looked like the companies would, and they did, they skirted bankruptcy many times, but I never tried to take money off the table. And now this has been trying to be turned around and made into a bad thing, and this is, it's messed up. So when my stock options, just before my stock options expire, then I am forced to exercise. And my top marginal tax rate is 53%. So I don't think that's particularly low, and it's going to go up next year.

It's like 57% or something like that. And you sell. Yes. And I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year. So a huge block of options will sell in Q4, because I have to, or they'll expire. And my top marginal tax rate is 53%. So you eventually will pay a lot of taxes.

Massive, yeah. I mean, basically the majority of what I sell will be tax. I don't think it was alleging illegality. It's that wealthy people got to borrow against their stock. Yes, they were saying that somehow borrowing is a trick to get away from paying taxes. But it's important to bear in mind that we've had a very long expansion in the economy,

maybe the longest ever. And borrowing against stock is all sort of fun and games until you have a recession and you get the margin calls. And then you go to zero, which happens basically every time there's a recession. Right. Stocks don't always go up. They go down.

Yours seems to. Most stocks have gone up, including some questionable stocks, frankly. Are you talking about yourself? I'm sorry. I think- Are you surprised by how much it's gone up and how wealthy you've become? I mean, I have literally gone on record and said I think our stock price is too high, in my opinion.

I've just done nothing to stop the rise in the stock price. Oh. So, I don't know what I was supposed to do. I'm not the one making it go up. But I think it's important to bear in mind, my actual tax rate is 53%. They're trying to make it sound like basically it was a big increase in the value of the Tesla stock, and then they added up, they just very selectively poked the numbers to make it sound like I was paying very low taxes. But in fact, my taxes are very high. They're like over half. When you pay them, when you open.

Yes. And a huge amount will be paid in the next three months because of expiring options. And there was like one year where I think my taxes were basically zero. And the reason for that was because I had overpaid taxes the year before. And I forgot to mention that. You didn't call them back. I'm not going to call them back. They have no interest in the truth. Oh, okay. All right. We'll be back with more from Elon Musk after the break. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories,

and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot.

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Here's more of my conversation with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Let me ask you a question. Twitter. Let's finish with Twitter and then let's get to questions from the audience. What's going on with you and Twitter? I am a Twitter addict. I say the wrong things all the time. Someone explained it to me, was very close to you, saying it's your release valve.

This is where you feel better. Yeah, I think I said some people use their hair to express themselves. I use Twitter. Do you regret any of it or not? You are kind of prominent yeah I mean sure walk us through when you decide to do it do we you go no no no well I think about it for hours do you and I consult with my

strategy team you just literally go yeah yeah Yeah. Or maybe I'm wasted and gone. Let me shit myself in the foot, bam. Now let me shit myself in the foot, bam. Yeah. That describes some of my tweets. Yeah. Are you worried about any SEC involvement in your tweets going forward? What does that stand for again?

I know the middle word is Elon's, but I can't remember the other two words. You need to answer me. Are you worried they're going to say, Elon, stop fucking tweeting? You're talking about the short seller enrichment commission? Yeah.

Yeah. Short seller enrichment. That's the new name. Is it? Yeah. the short seller enrichment commission yeah yeah that's the new name is it yeah i asked about the particular recent tweet you did about you did one great tweet about time saying time is the uh currency which i thought was beautiful time is the ultimate currency yes um no matter what resources you have you can't wind back the clock. It's true. Yeah.

No matter how rich you are. Yeah. But then you did the Biden tweet. Can you explain that one? Oh, one, well, yeah, I mean, so, you know, like Biden held this EV summit. Didn't invite Tesla, invited GM, Ford, Chrysler, and UAW. EV summit on the White House. Didn't mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution. So you are pissed.

Does this sound maybe a little biased or something? So, you know, just not the friendliest administration. You know, I'm from, you know, seems to be controlled by the unions, as far as I can tell. So, anyway, do you waiting to get Trump back? Uh, no. Who would you like to be president besides yourself? I would not want to be president at all.

It sounds like no fun being president. What do you think is going to bring our country together, if at all? Moving to Mars, what? Well, I think if there was some moderate, you know, sort of centrist president, then I think that would help. I think everyone just wants—I think most people want a president who is just a very competent executive, not too far left, not too far right. Most people would prefer that. When it comes out the election, you've got two choices.

Maybe you don't love either choice, but you've got to pick one. Do you think that'll happen? Do I think there will be what? Centrist. I hope so. Are you worried about democracy? I'm not super worried about democracy. Are you worried about democracy?

A little smidge. What concerns you? A lot of the dialogue is getting a little... I study propaganda. Oh, yeah? It's worrisome. The fact that it can't happen here, it certainly can. I'm a Philip Roth kind of person. But we're both having a lot of children, so we must believe in the future. We have 10 children between us, correct?

I believe yes. You're slightly ahead, but you've got to rock it. I believe yes. You're slightly ahead, but you've got a rocket. Anyway. I do think there is, you know, I think a lot of people think that there's too many people on the planet, but I think there's in fact too few and that possibly the single greatest risk to human civilization is the rapidly diminishing birth rate. And the facts are out there for anyone to look at.

But a lot of people are still stuck with, you know, Paul Ehrlich's book, Population Bomb. It's like, ah, that was a long time ago. That is not the case today. And there was a massive notch in demographics last year because the birth rate plummeted. And also this year. So more children. So, I mean, no babies, no humanity. You've got to come from somewhere.

Okay. We're going to end on that. We need questions from the audience because there's a lot of great questions. Hey, Ilana. I'm Ronan Levy from Fieldtrip. We spent a lot of time talking about outer space. We want to ask you about inner space and the question specifically is do you spend time thinking about humanity's somewhat destructive tendencies before sending people to mars and specifically you've talked about the subject of dmt and curious to know what role you think psychedelics may have in addressing some of the more destructive tendencies.

We're going to talk about this tomorrow. Okay. I think generally people should be open to psychedelics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Clearly it's a... I mean, you know, yeah.

A lot of people making laws are kind of from a different era. So I think as, you know, as the new generation gets into political power, I think we will see greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics. Does humanity's tendencies right now concern you, like about before we go to Mars? I mean, humanity's tendencies, I mean, we are at a very peaceful moment in history. So you've got to separate the news headlines from the reality. I think like Steven Pinker at Hobbit has really pointed this out, like we're actually at the lowest violence per capita in human history. It may not seem like that, but objectively those are the statistics. That's not to say there's no violence or there aren't things to be improved, but it's actually quite good.

But, you know, just like I said, big picture-wise, I think we want to take the set of actions that maximize the probability that the future is good and that civilization continues and that the sort of the small candle of consciousness in the void that is humanity continues and there's not there's not the candle does not go out okay next up here hi techno king um how do you respond to allegations you call them techno king yeah okay that my formal title. I filed that with the SEC. You've got to be respectful, Cara. How do you respond to allegations that you're a living cybergenetic organism

sent from the future to save us? And secondly... I can neither confirm nor deny that. He's good. He's good. And secondly, what do you think the probability is that general purpose blockchains that have greater utility will eclipse the value of like a finished product in Bitcoin? Actually, I'm not sure how to answer that last one. I think just generally public ledger stuff is good because I'm a fan of open source and just, you know, sunlight being a great disinfectant.

And the more, the less things occur in the dark, the better. And sort of a cryptic, basically, blockchain is just a cryptographic ledger. So I think that there's probably a lot of good things I can do with that. The first question. I said I could neither confirm nor deny. Okay. Hey, Yolande. Alex Heath with The Verge. The question's on the self-driving beta you guys are rolling out.

I'm curious why you're encouraging people to not share videos, making them sign NDAs. No, I mean, there's a lot of videos being shared. But the NDAs? Pardon me? The NDAs for the full self-driving beta? I don't know. People don't seem to listen to the NDA. I mean, I'm not sure there's...

Yeah, I don't know why there's an NDA. We probably don't need it. And people just are ignoring it anyway, so I'm not sure it matters. All right. I'm going to ignore this. I'm going to keep getting questions. Hi, I'm Zia Youssef from BCG.

Could you talk a little bit about AI and robotics? And you've expressed concerns in the past, but building some as well. What do you see as the issues that we do have to solve on that front? Well, I've said for a long time, I think AI safety is a really big deal. And we should have some regulatory agency that is overseeing AI safety. But there is not yet currently any such thing. AI safety. But there is not yet currently any such thing.

And just generally any kind of regulatory agency done by the government will usually take years to put in place. So after the population collapse issue, I think AI safety is probably the second biggest threat to the future of civilization. Like I said, I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Tesla is arguably the world's biggest robot maker, because we have basically semi-autonomous cars that will ultimately be fully autonomous. And we are building a humanoid robot

that will be basically like the car, but with legs. So I kind of held off on doing that for a while because I certainly don't want to hasten the AI apocalypse. But clearly, if you look at Boston Dynamics, those humanoid robots are going to happen. So they're really going to happen with or without Tesla. So it's like Tesla got a little bit more, I mean, a lot more ability to ensure robotics safety and AI. And I'll try my best to do that. Okay, last question. Sorry. Rick Cutter, the cloud for utilities. Thank you so much for the hard work you've done with Tesla driving the EV market.

As we move towards more green energy, utilities are getting rid of their fossil plants, coal plants, investing in renewables, there's a difference in economic output they can deliver. Are you concerned at all as the growth of EVs continue, do you think we could have a supply chain problem with energy? Yeah, that's a very good question. The full answer is lengthy. I'll try to give the short version. is lengthy. I'll try to give this the short version. The electricity demand roughly, if we go, if we shift or transport to electric, then electricity demand approximately doubles, maybe a little more than doubles. And this is going to create a lot of challenges with the grid, especially for distribution to neighborhoods.

And this is why Tesla has the product, the solar roof and solar retrofit, is because even if you increase sustainable power generation at the utility level, you're still going to have a distribution problem where you need new high power lines, new medium power lines. You need to dramatically increase the size of the substations, which means you're going to have to start knocking down houses to increase the substation size. This is really unworkable unless you have significant local power generation at houses. And this is why I think it's actually very important

that a necessary part of the solution is local power generation on the houses of homes. Very important. And then, of course, we need large, sustainable power generation developments, primarily wind and solar, but it needs to be paired with battery packs for steady state so it can provide continuous power. And a lot of good things are happening in this regard. The growth of solar in the last several years has been incredible.

I think it's like a 40% compound annual growth rate in solar and also a big growth in wind. I'm also kind of a pro-nuclear, a nuclear? Nuclear, pro-nuclear. And you know I'm sort of surprised by a lot of the public sentiment against nuclear. And you know I'm not saying we should go build a whole bunch of new nuclear plants, but I don't think we should shut down ones that are operating safely. They did this in Germany, for example, and had to create a whole bunch of coal power plants. And I don't think that was the right decision, frankly. So yeah, anyway, one way or another, though, we're going to have to have a lot more electricity the right decision, frankly. So, yeah.

Anyway, so we're one way or another, though, we're going to have to have a lot more electricity generation. And this is primarily going to come down to solar and wind. It will be our next conversation. Okay. Tesla, boring, solar. Sounds good. Okay. Can I ask you one more question?

One time we talked a couple of years ago, Code, you said we were in a simulation the past couple of years It seemed truly fucked up. Yeah It feels like a bunch of teenagers from the future Are just really smoking a lot of dope and fucking with us. Are we are we in a simulation? I? Mean my heart says no and my brain says yes. Elon Musk. Okay, that's the show for today.

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