Elon Musk at Code Conference 2021
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (5)
Transcript
0:07Kara SwisherWe were Bond is opening today. It's my favorite movie, so I felt like I had to do something like that. Anyway, how you doing?
0:14Elon MuskGood. How are you?
0:15Kara SwisherGood. What's the mood of Elon today?
0:17Elon MuskThe mood?
0:18Kara SwisherIt could be anything.
0:19Elon MuskI feel good.
0:20Kara SwisherHear you.
0:21Elon MuskYeah.
0:21Kara SwisherAll right. We have a lot to talk about.
0:22Elon MuskGreat.
0:23Kara SwisherWhere do you want to start?
0:24Elon MuskAnywhere you'd like to.
0:26Kara SwisherAll right. China, Cryptocurrency, what they're doing.
0:33Elon MuskThat's my safe word, by the way.
0:34Kara SwisherOkay. What they're doing. Cryptocurrency.
0:39Elon MuskYeah.
0:39Kara SwisherCryptocurrency.
0:40Audience MemberYeah.
0:40Kara SwisherIt'll kill any later for us. Go ahead.
0:45Elon MuskCryptocurrency in China.
0:46Kara SwisherYes. What they're doing around Bitcoin, etc. And I'd like to pivot to what the US is going to do around regulation.
0:56Elon MuskWell, it would appear that they don't love cryptocurrency. Yeah. It's subtle, but hinting in that direction. Yeah. So I can't speak to exactly why they don't like it that much, but people can speculate for various reasons.
1:21Elon MuskChina, by the way, is having some significant electricity generation issues.
1:26Kara SwisherYeah.
1:26Elon MuskSo 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.
1:46Elon MuskSo crypto mining might be playing a role in that.
1:49Kara SwisherI'm not sure this is further than that.
1:51Elon MuskIt is further than that. Well, I suppose cryptocurrency is fundamentally aimed at reducing the power of a centralized government.
2:01Kara SwisherYes, it is.
2:02Elon MuskAnd that they don't like that. Okay, that's my guess.
2:06Kara SwisherOkay. So what do you think?
2:08Elon MuskDoes this change? I mean, maybe the audience has.
2:11Kara SwisherOtherwise years 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.
2:21Elon MuskYeah.
2:22Kara SwisherIs that a good thing
2:26Elon Muskif it goes up? I suppose, but I mean, I think there's an always long term role for. For crypto and you know, really people should think of any kind of money system, whether it's a store of value or currency, as really a form of information.
2:50Elon MuskIf you apply information theory to money, whether it's cryptocurrency or some other form, and view it in terms of, you know, how good is it at, you know, sort of bandwidth latency, jitter, dropping packets, which is, you'd say like fraud is like losing packets or something on the network.
3:12Elon MuskAnd, you know, it's Overall security then I think a lot of these things just seem. Just make. 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 things in time like a loan.
3:36Kara SwisherSo is this the right thing for governments to do? To take control of it? Is it possible?
3:41Elon MuskIt is not possible to, I think, destroy crypto, but it is possible for governments to slow down its advancement.
3:53Kara SwisherSo 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?
4:04Elon MuskI would say do nothing.
4:06Kara SwisherOkay, they're not saying that.
4:08Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I wouldn't seriously just let.
4:12Kara SwisherLet apply because.
4:18Elon MuskWell, what, what do you think governs can do?
4:20Kara SwisherI 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.
4:28Kara SwisherAnd therefore they may want to stop it.
4:31Elon MuskYeah, I wouldn't say that. I'm some massive cryptocurrency expert. I think there's some value to cryptocurrency. I don't think it's like the second coming of the Messiah, which some people seem to think, you know, it's.
4:52Elon MuskIt will hopefully reduce the error and latency in the money 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.
5:11Elon MuskRyan Cobol, fy. It's kind of bleak to think about that, but. So, you know, when governments can't keep the hand out of the cookie jar and edit the money database, there's probably some value to that.
5:26Kara SwisherOkay, so what are you. 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.
5:35Kara SwisherBut why is that? It's true. Why is that of interest to you, crypto? Because you become, say, the crypto messiah.
5:43Elon MuskBut crypto messiah, that's going to be. Oh, no. Well, I mean, I mostly don't tweet about crypto. This is a minority of 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.
6:09Elon MuskJust how money. Money's 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.
6:20Elon MuskAnd Engage and to reconcile on a batch basis, you know, that 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 in jitter.
6:34Elon MuskAnd the ACH system is. 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.
6:48Kara SwisherIt needs reform.
6:50Elon MuskYeah, got it.
6:53Kara SwisherSo I want to move on to when 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?
7:07Elon MuskWell,
7:12Elon MuskWhere is Jack Ma?
7:13Kara SwisherWhere is Jack? You know. Do you know?
7:16Elon MuskNo. I was curious.
7:21Kara SwisherWe have some means to find out. I'm guessing.
7:23Elon MuskI. 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.
7:49Elon MuskA whole system is set up to run on the basis of in person meetings. And the absence 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.
8:09Elon MuskSo I think as Covid lifts and the in person meetings return, I think the. I think probably there will be an increase in the sort of trust level and I think things will probably, probably start heading in a more positive direction.
8:23Kara SwisherTrust level between tech and the government?
8:26Elon MuskYeah, 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 it's just China is very much set up to work with in person meetings and so Covid I think has impeded that.
8:45Elon MuskSo I think things will improve most likely as the in person meetings resume.
8:51Kara SwisherSo they did these antitrust actions because they couldn't say hello?
8:57Elon MuskI think not all of it can be ascribed to that, but it's. Some of it can be,
9:08Elon MuskYeah, we'll see. I suspect things will improve next year because of just better, more interaction.
9:17Kara SwisherAre you nervous about what you're doing there? It's a big market for you. You operate there?
9:24Elon MuskYeah, 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 selling in the Chinese market as well as producing cars for China and for export.
9:40Elon MuskTo Europe. So overall things are going pretty well, frankly.
9:45Kara SwisherYou're not worried about US China relations?
9:49Elon MuskI don't. It's not. No, not, not especially right now.
9:54Kara SwisherEspecially Ari. So let's talk about space. You had a recent space. You sent up a bunch of civilians into space. You not send yourself up?
10:07Elon MuskNo, I've not set 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.
10:22Kara SwisherYes. So you don't want to go up yourself?
10:26Elon MuskIt's neither here nor there. I will go at some point.
10:28Kara SwisherWhat do you think of the other efforts to go suborbital?
10:34Elon MuskSuborbital is a step in the direction of orbit. But.
10:43Elon MuskSo, 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.
10:56Elon MuskSo you need a like heavy duty heat shield because you're coming in like a meteor. So. So like orbit is roughly toward U.S. magnitude more difficult than, than some would.
11:08Elon MuskBut it's still, you know, good to do something in space.
11:12Kara SwisherWhat did you think watching those, both Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos doing that?
11:19Elon MuskI 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.
11:33Elon MuskAnd 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 be like real one day, not always fiction.
11:46Kara SwisherRight.
11:47Elon MuskSo I think it's good that people are spending their money advancing space technology.
11:52Kara SwisherSo 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.
12:00Elon MuskYeah.
12:01Kara SwisherOr flapping arm.
12:02Audience MemberYeah.
12:02Elon MuskSlow tonal wheezing.
12:04Kara SwisherYes, that's right. When I sound like it right now
12:07Elon Muskthat's what we sound like to a computer, like whale sounds. Slow down.
12:10Kara SwisherYeah. So we can 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.
12:22Elon MuskYeah. So with respect to SpaceX,
12:27Audience Membersee
12:30Elon Muskthere's two besides overlooking the spaceflight and providing transport for NASA of astronauts and cargo to and from the space station, which we've been doing for a while now, over a decade.
12:45Elon MuskWe are, 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 Starlink is really designed to serve the least served.
13:00Kara SwisherYou have 1300 satellites up right now, is that correct?
13:03Elon Musk1500.
13:04Kara SwisherYou want to put 30,000. Yeah, we'll get to space pollution in a minute, but explain what were the reasons for it.
13:13Elon MuskYeah, 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 low Earth orbit so that latency is low.
13:29Elon MuskThe problem with satellites that are at geostationary orbit is that they are, you know, around 36,000 kilometers, whereas we are at 550 kilometers. So gigantic difference in latency. For Starlink system.
13:47Elon MuskYou could play like 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. But Starlink is really, just to be clear, not a threat to 5G or terrestrial fiber or anything like that.
14:10Elon MuskBut it's very well suited to low to medium density regions of the Earth, places that, where it is too expensive to trench fiber or put cells, 5G cellular base stations.
14:26Elon MuskAnd so it's really a good, it kind of takes care of the people that just didn't get Internet or either the Internet's too slow or too expensive or they just don't have it at all.
14:38Elon MuskIt's very well suited, a space based system for serving like the least served, maybe 5% or something like that.
14:45Kara SwisherHow big a part of your space business is it from your perspective?
14:50Elon MuskI mean, I think it's quite significant in that the launch side of things, just, just launching other people's satellites and serving the space station probably tops out around, you know, three or four billion dollars a year of revenue.
15:03Elon MuskWhereas if we can get to say 3% of global Internet traffic, then that's, and that's roughly a trillion dollar a year business. Then we can increase our revenue by order of magnitude to more like 30 billion or something like that.
15:19Elon MuskAnd 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.
15:31Elon MuskSo that's. So I think Sonic is good in and of itself for providing, like I said, providing Internet access to the least served in the world. It's a fundamentally good thing in that respect.
15:48Elon MuskAnd also offering a little bit of competition in the cities. Although the, you Know, Stalin 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.
16:02Elon MuskSo anyway, it's a very nice compliment and a necessary complement 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.
16:22Elon MuskWith Starship, we're trying to achieve the, a fundamental breakthrough that is the holy grail of rocketry, that is to have a fully reusable orbital rocket. This is, this is extremely fundamental.
16:40Elon MuskWith Falcon 9 we have a mostly reusable rocket.
16:44Kara SwisherYou recently proved it landed correct.
16:46Elon MuskWe've been landing for quite a while now, but so we, 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.
17:07Kara SwisherWhat's the difference in price between our
17:10Elon MuskFalcon 9 and competitors and 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.
17:30Elon MuskSo 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 in the fairing.
17:45Elon MuskBut 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, that's which is quite big.
17:57Elon MuskLike SpaceX over the last year or so has delivered about, I think roughly 2/3 of all payload to orbit of Earth. And most of the remaining third is China.
18:11Elon MuskAnd then everyone else is kind of, they're in the miscellaneous. So, so anyway, so but we still have a. It's still $15 million because of the. Mostly because of what's the cost differential
18:26Kara Swisherbetween that and what you're aiming for.
18:29Audience MemberYeah.
18:29Elon MuskSo basically Falcon 9 is effectively about half to a third of the cost of alternatives because of the reuse of the boost age. With Starship, we should be able to get to the point where it's maybe 1% the cost of an expandable system.
18:55Kara SwisherSo that would just be a million bucks, right?
18:57Elon MuskOr yeah, the marginal cost of launch we think can be. It could be potentially under a million dollars. So is anybody for over 100 tons to orbit?
19:11Kara Swisher100. More than 15. You said 15.
19:13Elon MuskYes, 100. 100 tons likely. And with refinement of the design, probably 150 tons. So essentially it's, it would be, you know, 10 times the payload of Falcon 9 for 15 times lower cost when seen happening 100 fold better.
19:34Elon MuskYou 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.
19:52Elon MuskAnd so it's really very, very profound development and that's what I'm spending most of my time on is driving the development of starship.
20:02Kara SwisherStarship. So you can go to Mars or you want civilization on Mars.
20:07Elon MuskCivilization on Mars.
20:09Kara SwisherSo what's first, the moon base or moon base first? Correct.
20:13Elon MuskI mean the moon is close, so we might as well.
20:15Kara SwisherOkay, yeah, you might as well.
20:17Elon MuskIt's practically right there, you know.
20:19Kara SwisherExcuse me, you, you got a contract with the Defense Department to do a
20:24Elon Musklunar lander from NASA.
20:27Kara SwisherFrom NASA. Which is being disputed by Jeff Bezos.
20:31Elon MuskYes.
20:31Kara SwisherHow do you feel about that?
20:35Elon MuskWell, I think I've expressed my thoughts on that front. You know, I think he should put more of his energy into getting to orbit than lawsuits. You cannot sue your way to the moon.
20:54Elon MuskOkay. No matter how good your lawyers are.
20:59Kara SwisherYeah. So why isn't he doing that?
21:02Elon MuskI don't know.
21:03Kara SwisherI also like to make fun of his rocket. We all make fun of each other's rockets.
21:08Elon MuskI mean, I think it does have. I mean it could be a different shape potentially, you know.
21:24Kara SwisherCould you explain from a technological point of view why it's that shape?
21:28Elon MuskWell, if you are only going to doing suborbital, then your rocket can be sort of shorter. Yes.
21:42Kara SwisherSo have you called and said cut this shit? Kept figure what I mean?
21:48Elon MuskI haven't, I have encouraged him to emphasize getting to orbit. Yeah.
21:54Kara SwisherYou talk to him?
21:56Elon MuskNot verbally.
21:57Kara SwisherVerbally. What is it mime held or not?
22:00Elon MuskJust, you know, tweet at him. Tweet at him? Exactly. Subtweet if you want.
22:05Kara SwisherSo what? Subtweet? You do subtweet. So what? So what are you going to do with the lunar lander and how do you get the moon base there?
22:13Elon MuskYeah, so Starship is designed essentially as a general purpose transport system to anywhere in the solar system because it is a propulsive lander. And with a propulsive lander you can land anywhere that's got a solid surface.
22:34Elon MuskSo. 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.
22:51Elon MuskBasically, it can go very far from Earth orbit because you can refill propellant.
22:57Kara SwisherThe moon base is important because.
23:02Elon MuskWell, I think the moon base. I mean, certainly there's, like, a lot we could learn scientifically if we had a proper laboratory on the moon 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.
23:16Elon MuskYeah, we have a science station in Antarctica, and we're still learning a lot from, you know, our activities in Antarctica, and I think we could learn even more on the Moon.
23:27Elon MuskSo there's a lot of. Lot of value, I think, to having a. I think it'd be just freaking cool. I mean, come on, it's like we're going to, you know, humanity.
23:34Elon MuskLet's. You got to represent here for humanity. Let's have a base on the moon. I think everyone would be like, hell, yeah, we got a base on the moon.
23:42Elon MuskThat's cool.
23:42Kara SwisherYeah.
23:43Elon MuskYou know, for tourism.
23:46Kara SwisherWhat do you think?
23:47Elon MuskScience? 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.
24:00Elon MuskAnd 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, you know, when they do so.
24:16Elon MuskAnd I think, to some degree, vicariously, we all go with them. You know, when 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.
24:32Elon MuskHumanity went with them. Like, if you asked Peter DePaul of People on Earth and said to me, what do you think is humanity's greatest achievement maybe ever? It's like landing on the moon.
24:46Elon MuskAnd that's inspiring, I think, to kids everywhere.
24:51Kara SwisherSo you just sent up four civilians. Is that space tourism you're doing? 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.
25:03Kara SwisherYeah.
25:03Elon MuskI mean, I think it's got a bit more gravitas than, you know, metaphorically, figuratively, and literally more gravitas than simply tourism. It's not like going to Disneyland, you know, it's like.
25:20Elon MuskIt's more profound than that. So sometimes people use tourism in sort of a negative way. But I think especially with the inspiration flight, I think they really. I mean, they.
25:34Elon MuskYou know, they filmed the whole thing in real time. You know, they shared their experiences with the world. It was a really cool group of people. I recommend watching the Netflix show Countdown.
25:47Kara SwisherMark Penioff talked about it.
25:49Elon MuskIt'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, it's actually super,
26:03Kara Swisheryou know, like this is for science and for saving humanity, presumably.
26:09Elon MuskYeah, 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.
26:27Elon MuskThink of like cell phones. And the early cell phones were really expensive and sucked, you know, frankly, like, you know, you think of like Wall street one where you know, he's walking down the beach with the shoebox size cell phone on it, you know, talking to.
26:43Elon MuskAnd so it was like 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.
26:56Kara SwisherSo thank billionaires for going into space.
26:59Elon MuskI 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 there is a nest. 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.
27:18Elon MuskIt'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. But you have to have many design iterations and you've got to scale up the production and get economies of scale.
27:35Elon MuskLike 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, it's basically, you know, it's an expensive toy sports car for rich people.
27:48Elon MuskWe're like, yes, it is, but there's no way we could build an affordable electric car as opposite car. And it, you know, we just didn't have the capital, we didn't have the experience.
28:00Elon MuskAnd we needed to go through several technology iterations in order to get to something like the Model 3.
28:06Kara SwisherRight.
28:08Elon MuskAnd I actually wrote a blog about this because I knew people would be like, why are you making sports cars, rich people? As though we thought there was somehow a shortage of sports cars for rich people.
28:19Elon MuskObviously not, but you just got to, you got to figure out the technology. You got to go through multiple design, like how do you make something mass market and affordable?
28:29Elon MuskMany, many design iterations, many, 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.
28:38Elon MuskAnd 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.
28:49Kara SwisherThe idea to Mars will be affordable someday.
28:51Elon MuskYes, absolutely. It has to be. In order for it, in order for Mars to be a self sustaining civilization, it has to be affordable. Can you say that enough people need to go, you know, why do you
29:02Kara Swisherwant people to go when you keep saying that? Because you're worried about this planet? Are you just betting the odds are we'll either blow it up or it'll, it'll be the day after tomorrow moving?
29:12Elon MuskNo, 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 ante Nessian squabbles and say, let's look at the big picture here.
29:30Elon MuskWhat 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.
29:46Elon MuskAnd 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, and 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.
30:21Kara SwisherSo 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 some of these astronomers get mad at you or with the rockets, you have these big defense contracts that you're doing, correct?
30:37Kara SwisherFirst time someone's broken into the area. How do you meet those criticisms? This is just small potatoes.
30:45Elon MuskWell, 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.
31:00Elon MuskAnd we've, 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.
31:19Elon MuskSo 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.
31:33Elon MuskAnd we're also looking at launching some new telescopes using Starship, because Starship's a much bigger vehicle. We can launch satellites that have 10 times the resolution of the Hubble, which would be great for science.
31:49Elon MuskAnd in fact, there's an exciting program working with Sol Parameter at Berkeley on a big new space satellite, a space telescope, I should say. And I think we'll do more of those.
32:06Elon MuskSo 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.
32:17Kara SwisherYou still want to. You said to me last a couple times ago, we talked, you want to die on Mars? You still want to die on Mars? Well, just not on landing, right?
32:26Elon MuskYes. It's not an impact, right?
32:29Kara SwisherWell, that would be spectacular.
32:31Elon MuskYes, but you wouldn't get to enjoy it much. You know, just a second or so
32:35Kara Swishernarrative for the rest.
32:37Elon MuskYeah, 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 and like, it'd be cool to like be born on Earth and die on Mars.
32:48Elon MuskI'm not like trying to meet a beeline to Mars and just, you know, died or something. It's just that, yeah, I got to pick one. You're going to die somewhere and throw it Mars.
33:03Kara SwisherI think I've interviewed a lot of astro. I guess their biologists, they're worried about, essentially they said you have to be under the Earth couple hundred feet. No, no, no, you get short.
33:14Elon MuskDefinitely not cupped with knots. A couple hundred.
33:17Kara SwisherYeah.
33:17Elon MuskYou know what 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 make maybe have like, I don't know, 3ft of dirt ish on the roof or just kind of a thick roof, maybe.
33:38Elon MuskFine, so.
33:40Kara SwisherSo you're not worried about becoming shorter and stupider by moving to Mars?
33:45Elon MuskNo, I think we might become taller actually on Mars. A little bit taller.
33:49Audience MemberYeah.
33:49Elon MuskBecause the gravity is roughly 40% that of Earth.
33:51Kara SwisherOkay, that would be good for me.
33:53Elon MuskWhen you think about, I do think there's like an important thing. If you think of the various great filters, people are familiar with the sort of great filter of thought.
34:04Elon MuskOne of the filters is do we become a space, a multi planet species or not? So that is at least one of the great cultures. And I think it would be great to pass that and have be a multi planet species where the critical threshold
34:24Audience Memberis
34:26Elon Muskon for a Mars city. If the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, whether that is civilization on Earth, it could be a mundane reason or it could be World War Three.
34:39Elon MuskBut does Mars prosper or die out? And if Mars is missing anything at all, like the civilizational equivalent of vitamin C, then it will eventually die out. So you need to get to the point where Mars city is self sustaining.
34:56Elon MuskEven if the ships from Earth stopped coming, then you have passed the great filter, or at least that particular great filter. I think we should endeavor to pass that great culture as soon as possible.
35:08Kara SwisherWhen you said pretty soon last time we talked.
35:13Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I think we should really try hard to make it happen this century. Before the end of the century.
35:19Kara SwisherYou'll be pretty old.
35:21Elon MuskI'll probably be dead.
35:22Kara SwisherYeah. Not on Mars.
35:25Elon MuskWell, I mean, I'll, you know, pop over there when I'm old or something.
35:28Kara SwisherOkay, so one of the things you're doing is a lot of government deals. You're doing this lunar lander, he did the rocket one. You're getting billions from $2.9 billion, is that right?
35:40Elon MuskWell, right now we're not getting anything because we're being sued, Right?
35:44Kara SwisherThat's right. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah, but you're getting a lot of money.
35:48Elon MuskHopefully we'll get it right.
35:49Kara SwisherRight when it's over.
35:51Elon MuskYeah.
35:51Kara SwisherAny fixes?
35:52Elon MuskI mean most of our launches are commercial, to be clear.
35:55Kara SwisherYes, I understand that you're doing a lot of government work.
35:58Elon MuskSure.
35:59Kara SwisherWhat is that like working with the government? Is that important to your business?
36:03Elon MuskYeah, I mean it's an important part of, it's an important part of the business. I mean, just bear in mind if, like, if you're in any industry, like let's say you were a pencil manufacturer, okay.
36:13Elon MuskAbout 40% of your pencils are going to go to the government. The government's about 40% of the economy. You know, if you're a shoe manufacturer, you have about 40% of your business is going to be with the government.
36:24Elon MuskSo you know, 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.
36:35Elon MuskThat is proportionate to the GDP of the government.
36:39Kara SwisherSo 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.
36:54Kara SwisherHow do you look at that trade off?
36:57Elon MuskWell, 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 they did themselves no good service by doing that.
37:14Elon MuskFirst of all, with respect to the government contracts that, that SpaceX wins, 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 have the best price, we have a better service at a lower price.
37:29Elon MuskThey weren't just handed to us.
37:30Kara SwisherI 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 this back slappy. I think it's a great thing.
37:40Kara SwisherThat is great.
37:41Elon MuskAbsolutely. I mean in the, for the lunar lander, just taking that as one example, our bid was half the price of the Blue Origin Lockheed bed. Half. So for a vehicle that does basically 10 times more or 8 times more, perhaps our price was half.
38:03Elon MuskAnd 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, that's a good thing.
38:13Elon MuskWith respect to my personal taxes, the I don't actually draw a salary or anything. My cash compensation is basically zero, which
38:24Kara Swisheris a good thing because income is a problem for most people because they pay taxes on income. That was the whole point of the story, I think.
38:32Elon MuskYeah, yeah. So I do have stock options that best. And so in the years that the. But, but I don't. I basically with Tesla and SpaceX I just have not really bothered to sort of take money off the table, which is a common.
38:49Elon MuskMost people do, they sell some of their stock and they take money off the table. And for me I just like said I, you know, my money will be the sort of it was, it was the first in and it'll be the last out.
39:01Elon MuskAnd 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.
39:10Elon MuskBut I never tried to take money off the table and now this is trying to be turned around and made into a bad thing and this is messed up.
39:20Elon MuskSo 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.
39:35Elon MuskAnd it's going to go up next year. It's like 57% or something.
39:39Kara SwisherAnd you sell.
39:40Elon MuskYes, 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.
39:55Elon MuskAnd my top marginal tax rate is 53%.
39:59Kara SwisherSo you eventually will pay a lot of taxes.
40:01Elon MuskMassive. Yeah. I mean, basically majority of what I sell will be tax.
40:06Kara SwisherI don't think it was alleging legality. It's that wealthy people had to borrow against their sock.
40:14Elon MuskYes, they were. They were saying that, like, 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.
40:26Elon MuskAnd borrowing against stock is all. 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 is.
40:36Elon MuskWhich happens basically every time there's a recession. Stocks don't always go up, they go down.
40:42Kara SwisherYour seems to.
40:44Elon MuskMost stocks have gone up, including some questionable stocks, frankly.
40:49Kara SwisherAre you talking about yourself? I'm sorry, I think. Are you surprised by how much it's gone up? And
40:57Elon MuskI mean, I have literally gone on record and said I think our stock price is too high, in my opinion. And this did nothing to stop the rise of the stock price.
41:06Elon MuskSo what am I supposed to do? You know,
41:13Elon MuskI'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 tried to make it sound like basically it was a big increase in the value of the Tesla stock and then they added up.
41:27Elon MuskThey just very selectively poked at 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.
41:38Audience MemberYes.
41:39Elon MuskAnd 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.
41:49Elon MuskAnd the reason for that was because I'd overpaid taxes the year before. And I forgot to mention that.
41:56Kara SwisherYou didn't call them back.
41:58Elon MuskI gotta call them back. You have no interest in the truth.
42:01Kara SwisherOh, okay. All right, 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 on Twitter?
42:11Kara SwisherI am a Twitter addict. I say the wrong things all the time. What is someone explained to me very close to you saying, it's your release valve. This is where you feel better?
42:23Elon MuskYeah. I think I said some people. Some people use their hair to express themselves. I use Twitter.
42:30Kara SwisherDo you regret any of it or not? You are kind of prominent. Yeah.
42:34Elon MuskI mean, sure.
42:36Kara SwisherWalk us through when you decide to do it. Tweet, you go, no, no, no.
42:40Elon MuskWell, I think about it for hours.
42:42Kara SwisherDo you?
42:42Elon MuskAnd I consult with my strategy team.
42:47Kara SwisherYou just literally go, yeah, yeah.
42:51Elon MuskOr maybe I'm wasted enough. Gone. Let me shoot myself in the put. Bam. Now let me shoot myself in the foot. Bam.
43:00Kara SwisherYeah.
43:01Elon MuskThat describes some of my tweets.
43:03Kara SwisherYeah. Are you worried about any SEC involvement in your tweets going forward?
43:11Elon MuskWhat does that stand for again? I mean, I know the middle word is Elon's, but I can't remember the other two words.
43:20Kara SwisherYou need to answer me. Are you worried they're going to say Elon? Stop fucking tweeting.
43:28Elon MuskYou're talking about the Short Seller Enrichment Commission.
43:30Kara SwisherYeah,
43:32Elon Muskthat's the new name, is it?
43:34Kara SwisherYeah. Recent tweet you did about. He did one great tweet about time, saying, time is the currency, which I thought was beautiful.
43:46Elon MuskTime is the ultimate currency. Yes. No matter what resources you have, you can't wind back the clock.
43:53Kara SwisherIt's true.
43:54Elon MuskYeah.
43:54Kara SwisherHow rich you are.
43:55Elon MuskYeah.
43:57Kara SwisherBut then you did the Biden tweet. Can you explain that one?
44:01Elon MuskOh, one. Well, yeah. I mean, so, you know, like, Biden held this EV summit, didn't invite Tesla, invited gm, Ford, Chrysler and UAW summit on the White House, didn't mention Tesla once, and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution.
44:33Kara SwisherSo you were pissed.
44:34Elon MuskDoes this sound maybe a little biased or something? So. And, you know, just. It's not the friendliest administration. Well, I don't know. Seems to be controlled by the unions from so far, like.
44:52Elon MuskNo.
44:53Kara SwisherSo are you waiting to get Trump back?
44:56Elon MuskUh, no.
44:59Kara SwisherWould you like to be president besides yourself?
45:02Elon MuskI would not want to be president at all. Sounds like no fun. Big president.
45:11Kara SwisherWhat do you think is going to bring our country together, if at all? Moving to Mars? What?
45:17Elon MuskWell, I think if there was some moderate, you know, sort of. Sort of centrist president, then I think that would help, you know, that I think everyone just wants.
45:31Elon MuskI think most people. Most people want a president who is just a very competent, you know, executive. You know, not too far left, not too far right. And everyone would be like, I think most people would prefer that, you know, some.
45:52Elon MuskWhen it comes out, the election, you've got two choices. You're like, you know, maybe you don't love either choice, but you've got to pick one.
46:00Kara SwisherDo you think it'll happen?
46:02Elon MuskDo I think there will be What?
46:05Kara SwisherCentrist?
46:06Elon MuskI hope so. I hope so. That'd be nice.
46:09Kara SwisherAbout democracy,
46:14Elon MuskI'm not super worried about democracy. Are you worried about democracy?
46:21Kara SwisherOh, smidge.
46:23Elon MuskWhat concerns you?
46:26Kara SwisherA lot of the dialogue is getting a little. I study propaganda.
46:30Elon MuskOh, yeah.
46:31Kara SwisherIt's worrisome the fact that it can't happen here. It certainly can. I'm a Philip Roth kind of person, so. Yeah. But we're both having a lot of children, so we must believe in the future.
46:46Elon MuskYes. Children.
46:47Kara SwisherWe have 10 children between us. Correct. I believe, yes, you're slightly ahead, but you've got a rocket.
46:54Elon MuskAnyway, 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.
47:05Elon MuskAnd that the possibly the single greatest risk to human civilization is the rapidly diminishing growth rate. And the facts are out there for anyone to look at. But a lot of people are still stuck with, you know, Pearl Paul Elix book, Population Bomb.
47:23Elon MuskAnd it's like, that was a long time ago, that is not the case today. And there's a. There was a massive notch in demographics last year because the growth rate plummeted and also this year, so more children.
47:37Elon MuskSo I mean, if, you know, no babies, no humanity, you gotta come from somewhere.
47:44Kara SwisherOkay, we're gonna end on that. We get questions from audience because there's a lot of great questions.
47:48Audience MemberHey, Alana, I'm Ronan Levy from Field Trip. 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?
48:06Audience MemberAnd specifically you've talked about the subject of DMT and human. Curious to know what role you think psychedelics may have in addressing some of the more destructive tendencies of humanity.
48:17Kara SwisherWe're going to talk about this tomorrow.
48:19Elon MuskOkay. I think generally people should be open to psychedelics. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, clearly it's. I mean, you know, yeah, a lot of people making laws are kind of from a different era.
48:42Elon MuskSo I think, as you know, as a new generation gets into political power, I think we'll see greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics.
48:54Audience MemberDoes humanity's tendencies right now concern you? Like about. Before we Go to Mars.
49:01Elon MuskI mean, humanity senses. I mean, we are at a very peaceful moment in history. So, you know, you've got to separate the sort of news headlines from the reality.
49:13Elon MuskI think like Steven Pinker Hobbit has really pointed this out, like we're actually at the lowest violence per capita in history, in human history. It may not seem like that, but objectively, those are the statistics.
49:28Elon MuskThat's not to say there's no violence or there aren't things to be improved, but it's, you know, actually quite good.
49:38Elon MuskBut 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 this small candle of consciousness in the void that is humanity continues.
50:01Elon MuskAnd there's not. The candle does not go out.
50:05Kara SwisherOkay, next. Javier.
50:08Audience MemberHello, my name is Lena. I'm a student at the University of Chicago and I also have a podcast called kind of sort of Brown. So my question centers a bit, little bit, what you talked about concerning that, you know, you're building this world for not enough people yet, but the people that now are here.
50:28Audience MemberBut concerning young people, how do you actually build infrastructure to make sure that you're not just building resources for people to be in Mars, but actually putting them in positions of power politically or educating people who don't have access to learn about space technology, et cetera?
50:47Audience MemberHow do you actually teach young people and bring them. And do you feel like that's your role or is it your role to just build the spaceship to Mars?
50:58Elon MuskWell, our primary goal is to create the technology necessary to get people to Mars, in the absence of which it's somewhat academic. So we don't want to get too distracted from our primary mission of we got to make it at least possible to go to Mars, and we want to do so as soon as possible and make access to Mars as widely available as possible, as affordable as possible, so that if somebody wants to go, they can.
51:33Elon MuskSo that's our primary mission. I mean, there are many good causes in the world, but we got to be careful that we do not try to take on too many.
51:45Elon MuskI mean, there are many noble missions, but we have to pick our battles and say, okay, let's just make sure we get this done, because nobody else is doing it.
51:55Elon MuskAnd I mean, if SpaceX doesn't do it, I'm not sure how it will happen. I think this is, at least right now, SpaceX is the only hope. So we've got to get this Done.
52:10Elon MuskAnd it's far from done. I mean, we got a long way to go. Starlink in terms of providing Internet connectivity to people that really don't have it or it's very expensive, I think will be helpful in empowering a lot of people who are disempowered today.
52:30Elon MuskSo I think that's a good thing too.
52:33Kara SwisherGreat, thanks.
52:35Audience MemberHi, Techno king. How do you respond to allegations, you call them technoking?
52:41Elon MuskYeah, okay, that is my formal title. I filed that with the Eskimo.
52:44Audience MemberGot to be respectful. Kara. How do you respond to allegations that you're a living cyber genetic organism sent from the future to save us? And secondly,
52:56Elon MuskI can either confirm nor deny that.
52:59Audience MemberHe's good. He's good. And secondly, what do you think the probability is that general purpose blockchains that have great utility will eclipse the value of like a fish finished product in Bitcoin?
53:13Elon MuskI 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. And just, you know, sunlight being a great disinfectant and the more, the less things occur in the dark, the better.
53:31Elon MuskAnd you know, it's sort of a cryptic. Basically blockchains. It's a cryptographic ledger, an open, you know, so I think that there's probably a lot of things, good things that could be done with that.
53:47Kara SwisherThe first question
53:50Elon MuskI said I could neither confirm nor deny him.
53:52Kara SwisherOkay, right here.
53:54Audience MemberHey, Elon.
53:55Elon MuskAlex Heath with the Verge. The question's on the self driving beta. You guys are rolling out. Curious why you're encouraging people to not share videos, making them sign NDAs.
54:06Elon MuskJust be curious. 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.
54:22Elon MuskI mean, I'm not sure if there's. Yeah, I don't know why there's an NDA. We probably don't need it. People just are ignoring it anyway, so I'm sure it matters.
54:35Kara SwisherAll right, I'm going to ignore this. I'm going to keep getting questions as you do.
54:40Elon MuskHi.
54:40Audience MemberHi.
54:41Elon MuskYousef from bcg, could you talk a little bit about AI and robotics? And you've expressed concerns in the past, but not building some as well. What do you see as the issues that we do have to solve on that front?
54:57Elon MuskWell, 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.
55:12Elon MuskAnd just generally any kind of regulatory agency done by the government will usually takes years to put in place. So, you know, after the population collapse issue, I think AI safety is probably the second biggest threat to the future of civilization.
55:37Elon MuskAnd yeah, like I said, I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I mean, Tesla is arguably the world's biggest robot maker because like we have basically semi autonomous cars that will ultimately be fully autonomous and we are building a humanoid robot that will be basically like, like, like the car but with legs.
56:04Elon MuskSo, and I, I kind of held off on doing that for a while because, you know, I, I, I certainly don't want to hasten the AI apocalypse. But clearly with look at Boston Dynamics and like those humanoid robots are going to happen.
56:20Elon MuskSo they're either 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.
56:36Audience MemberWhat?
56:36Elon MuskWhat would you do?
56:37Kara SwisherNo, we can't do more. Sorry, you got to quit first.
56:40Elon MuskThanks for making the first car I ever loved.
56:44Audience MemberMy wife insisted I asked this question if I got here.
56:46Elon MuskWe also have way too many children. No, that's probably great.
56:50Audience MemberIf there's any chance that you could
56:52Elon Muskput a roof rack on the X, that's what she's looking for. We need a roof rack on the X.
56:59Audience MemberIf you could figure that out, that's
57:00Elon Muskalmost more important than going to Mars. We have not figured that out. I mean, it's tricky because we have the fancy doors. They're awesome. The doors are awesome. But if you have a roof rack, how do you stop the doors from smashing on?
57:13Kara SwisherI heard you were smart.
57:14Elon MuskYeah, thank you. The Model Y has a roof rack though.
57:18Audience MemberIt's not big enough for all the kids. Really.
57:20Elon MuskIt's se, it's seat seven. Not, not normal kids.
57:24Audience MemberOkay.
57:25Kara SwisherOkay. What do you have separate cars for your children?
57:29Audience MemberElon, thanks.
57:30Elon MuskIt does have a tow hitch. You can tow your stuff.
57:34Kara SwisherLast two questions.
57:36Audience MemberElon, thanks for the plaid. It's a great car. As we're all, you know, waiting for full self.
57:42Elon MuskThat's awesome. Really, it's awesome.
57:45Audience MemberWe might have to argue a bit about yoke, but we're getting accustomed to it's great car.
57:49Elon MuskYou know, it's like something different and it's different and people sometimes don't like the different thing.
57:55Audience MemberBut how much did you push? Was it, your kids love the yoke, so that works for them. Anyway, really, really quick look, we're living in this in between time between.
58:04Audience MemberWe drive our cars ourselves and the cars drive themselves. They're semi autonomous. For those of us in the industry, those of us who understand something about technology, about machine learning, I actually like it.
58:15Audience MemberIt's pretty easy. It fixes my mistakes, I fix its mistakes. A lot in the press though about and Google's position certainly is this is like the worst place to be, right?
58:25Audience MemberBecause people are going to get checked out and the cars are going to drive themselves into. What do you think about the ML human hybrids that we're kind of, you know, embracing right now?
58:34Audience MemberHow long are we going to have these crossover periods? I know you believe FSD is around the corner. Do you think this is really a problem? Are we going to teach people to deal with ML?
58:44Elon MuskWell, I mean the transition period to new technology is always a little bumpy.
58:51Audience MemberFair enough.
58:52Elon MuskAnd, but I think we published the, the safety stats like basically miles driven on autopilot and miles driven manually and this, I mean it's an order of magnitude different.
59:09Elon MuskSo like people say, oh well, you're playing with the statistics. I'm like, listen, we're just saying miles driven autopilot, miles not driven automotive. There's a factor of 10 difference.
59:21Elon MuskSo I mean even if we were like, we're not fiddling with statistics. That's just, this is not subtle is what I'm saying. It's not subtle. The truth is that people are actually not great at driving these two ton death machines, you know, and people get tired and they get drunk and they get distracted and they text and they do all sorts of things they shouldn't do and then the cars, they, you know, crash basically.
59:49Elon MuskAnd now, now when we were embarking on the autonomy front, someone told me, I think that's quite true. Which is even if you, for argument's sake, reduce fatalities by 90% with autonomy, the 10% that do die with autonomy are still going to sue you.
1:00:15Elon MuskThe 90% that are living don't even know that that's the reason they're alive. Nonetheless, I've had many conversations with the Tesla autopilot full self driving team who are just an outstanding group of people and saying like, listen guys, it is better to pursue the reality of doing the right thing matters more than the perception of doing the right thing.
1:00:43Elon MuskAnd as long as we are confident that we are doing the right thing, even if we are criticized and sued and all that, we should not always do the right thing and not care about the perception of the right thing.
1:00:56Kara SwisherOkay, last question. Sorry.
1:00:57Audience MemberRick Cutter with Cloud for utilities. Thank you so much for the guard 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.
1:01:13Audience MemberThere'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 down the road?
1:01:24Elon MuskYeah, I think that's a, that's a very good question. The full answer 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.
1:01:47Elon MuskAnd 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.
1:02:10Elon MuskYou 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.
1:02:24Elon MuskAnd this is why I think it's actually very important that a necessary part of the solution is local power generation on. On rooms, on the houses of homes. Very important.
1:02:41Elon MuskAnd 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 provide continuous power.
1:02:59Elon MuskAnd 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.
1:03:13Elon MuskI'm also kind of a pro nuclear. Nuclear. Nuclear. Pro nuclear. And 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.
1:03:35Elon MuskAnd. But they did, they did this in Germany, for example. I think that was. And then had to create a whole bunch of coal power plants. And I don't think that was the right decision, frankly.
1:03:50Elon MuskSo. Yeah, anyway. So 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
1:04:02Kara Swisherwind paired with batteries, which will be our next conversation.
1:04:06Elon MuskOkay.
1:04:07Kara SwisherTesla. Boring.
1:04:08Elon MuskSolar sounds good.
1:04:10Kara SwisherOkay. Can I ask you one more question? One time we talked a couple years ago. Code. You said we were in a simulation. This past couple of years has seemed truly fucked up.
1:04:19Kara SwisherYeah, it feels like a bunch of teenagers from the future are just really smoking a lot of dope and fucking with us. Are we in a simulation?
1:04:31Elon MuskI mean, my heart says no, and my brain says yes.
1:04:38Kara SwisherElon Musk.