Elon Musk says his time running DOGE showed him that the U.S. government cannot fix its deficit from the inside. Only artificial intelligence and robots can, he told biographer Walter Isaacson.
Musk made the comments on Isaacson’s new podcast, The Builders, Axios reported Friday in an exclusive. The show premieres Tuesday.
“The only way we’re going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots,” Musk said. “We’re not gonna solve it by trying to save our way there.”
Musk said almost nobody in power truly wants to cut spending. He named the White House, both chambers of Congress and the courts, with a few exceptions such as Senator Rand Paul. Cuts could happen, he said, if President Donald Trump made them his main goal. But cutting waste makes enemies, and Musk argued that the president doesn’t want that fight.
“President Trump likes to be liked,” Musk said.
Musk also acknowledged mistakes of his own. He said he got carried away with DOGE and stayed away from his companies for too long. He said he should have stayed in the background for a month or two, rather than the four months he formally spent in the White House.
“I should have gone back and focused on AI a little sooner than I did,” he said.
Asked about his chainsaw stunt at the CPAC conference in February 2025, Musk gave a short answer. He called it “a weird weekend.”
The debt argument is not new for Musk. Last December, he said AI and robotics would be the only things that could solve the debt.
The podcast comes from Kaleidoscope and iHeartPodcasts. Its guests include Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Fei-Fei Li, and Anthropic’s Dario and Daniela Amodei.
Isaacson, who wrote a biography of Musk, described him as an “amazing engineer.” He also said Musk is “too prone to darkness and conspiracies” when it comes to politics and people, according to Axios.
DOGE’s influence has also spread into the tech industry. Former staffers have launched startups, including Special, a waste-cutting firm, and Cathedral, a defense cyber startup.
Cet article a été rédigé avec l'assistance de l'IA.
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