2nd try - transcript - Zanny Minton Beddoes interviews Elon Musk

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Interview Notes: In this exclusive full-length interview with The 
Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded at Tesla’s 
Texas Gigafactory, Elon Musk sits down for his first extended 
conversation since SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO. The wide-ranging discussion 
explores the timeline for AI surpassing human intelligence, China’s 
rapid advances in technology, the future of work in an age of abundance, 
Starlink’s role in Ukraine, and Musk’s reflections on getting “a little 
too involved” in politics. Throughout, Musk offers his 
characteristically bold predictions about the years ahead while 
addressing questions about concentrated power, Europe’s challenges, and 
what people most often get wrong about him.

Read the full transcript of Elon Musk’s interview below (recorded on 
July 20, 2026):

Kaia Gerber & Graham Campbell's first impressions

Introduction
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Elon Musk, thank you so much for joining me on The 
Insider. Thank you for having us here at Tesla Giga. It is really hard 
to introduce you without using superlatives. I mean, you are doing, I 
think, more to build the future than literally anybody alive right now.

Elon Musk: I’m doing a lot of building in general.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re doing a lot of building.

Elon Musk: Instinctive builder, I suppose. I just like building things.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You are, but you’re building—

Elon Musk: I mean, run around building things all day long.

The World in 10 Years: A Vision of Abundance
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You run around building a lot of things. You 
pioneered electric vehicles. You revolutionized space travel. You’ve got 
a cutting-edge AI model now, humanoid robots. Can we start this 
conversation by you putting all of this together? Yeah. Tell me what the 
world’s going to be like in, let’s say, 10 years if you succeed.

Elon Musk: 10 years. So we’re talking 2036.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah. Hopefully we’ll both be around.


Elon Musk: Hopefully.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes, we can.

Elon Musk: We can probably— most likely we will be. It’s hard to imagine 
the future where there’s not an overwhelming amount of artificial 
intelligence, meaning like in 10 years, I would expect artificial 
intelligence to be far greater than the sum of human intelligence, like 
far greater. In fact, I think AI may exceed the sum of human 
intelligence in about, in around 5 years.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: In 5 years?

Elon Musk: Roughly 5 years is my guess. So there really won’t be 
anything that AI can’t do better than humans, apart from being human, 
perhaps.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: At a more prosaic level, what will life be like?

Elon Musk: The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance where 
anyone can have anything they can think of. This may sound preposterous, 
but well, here we are in 2026. Let’s see where we stand in 2036. Now, of 
course, there are things that could derail this, like a massive global 
thermonuclear war or something like that. But assuming that there’s not 
World War III, I think we’re headed for an age of amazing abundance. So 
this is, I guess, a message of optimism and excitement about the future.

How Will the Companies Make Money?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So we’ll talk about the abundance in a second, but 
just on a very prosaic matter, how are your companies going to be making 
money? Because when you— in the SpaceX IPO prospectus, it looked as 
though the overwhelming amount of the revenue would be coming from AI, 
from Grok really. It won’t be transporting things to space as SpaceX is 
now doing. What will your companies be doing in 10 years? And how will 
they make money?

Elon Musk: Well, you can really think of the economy as digital and 
physical intelligence. So what we have right now advancing very rapidly 
is digital intelligence, obviously, with AI that seems, almost with 
every passing week, there are more AI breakthroughs, it can do something 
amazing that it couldn’t do before. But it’s still somewhat confined to 
the digital realm. It doesn’t have end effectors. You need the end 
effectors in the form of humanoid robotics. You need basically lots of 
bots, in a nutshell. You need lots of bots.

And then you can go from intelligence manifesting itself only digitally 
to shaping atoms. And you say, what is an economy? An economy is the 
production of goods and provision of services. And if you have vast 
numbers of robots with vast amounts of digital intelligence, you have a 
sort of a quasi-infinite economy. So the future is going to be very, 
very different from the past. There’s no analogy or metaphor that I 
think illustrates the magnitude of change that we’re going to experience 
here.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I understand that, and I’m also trying to kind of 
figure out what that world will look like, but in some way you have—

Elon Musk: It’s going to be pretty incredible.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, well, we’ll also do— there are some risks too.

Elon Musk: We’ll come to those.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But just on how then you make money, because in 
the end people are buying your shares because they expect you to make money.

Elon Musk: I’ll make another prediction. Money won’t matter in 2036.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m not sure that the people who bought your 
shares think that money won’t matter in 2036.

Elon Musk: Well, what do you want money for? You want money for goods 
and services, right? You want money for obviously food, housing, 
transport, entertainment. Well, if that is so abundant that the robots 
and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could 
possibly consume, what do you need money for in that case?


Zanny Minton Beddoes: But you’re creating these robots.

Elon Musk: I guess every now and then you’ll need money, sure.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you selling these robots? Are you selling 
humanoid robots? Or are you producing goods and services with the 
humanoid robots that you control?

I give you the Levi’s straps.
Elon Musk: It would be an exercise in vanity for me to think that I 
would be controlling a super genius AI that is vastly smarter than me. I 
think what we can and should try to do is to make sure that the AI has 
good values, that it cares about humanity, and that it wants us to be 
happy and prosper. I think it probably will be. What my biological 
neural net tells me is that the most important thing for AI safety is to 
be maximally truth-seeking and curious. If that’s the case, I think it 
will foster humanity.

Will Humans Still Be in Control?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So let’s unpack that. You’re sure that humans will 
no longer be in control in 10 years’ time?

Elon Musk: I think it is unlikely. In the same way that if the 
difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than 
the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it’s hard to 
imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m really excited by this.

Elon Musk: And we are essentially an evolved form of chimpanzee. So it 
wasn’t that long ago that we were swinging through the trees eating 
bananas in the jungle. And we still eat bananas, by the way. We do. And 
there’s still bananas today.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Sometimes swing through trees as well.

Elon Musk: Yes, sometimes swing through trees. It’s kind of fun. It’s 
sort of reminiscent of the past. For old time’s sake, swing through the 
trees once in a while. Probably there should be more swinging through 
trees. I bet it’s way more fun than people think.

 From Fear to Acceptance: Elon’s Changing Views on AI Risk
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m with you on that. I’m definitely with you on 
swinging through trees. I love swinging through trees. But I’m really 
struck listening to you say this now because I’ve been listening to a 
bunch of things that you’ve said over the years. And 10 years ago, you 
were on a podcast. I think it was with Neil deGrasse Tyson. And you said 
that the thing that terrified you most was rapid recursive 
self-improvement in AIs.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And that you said, and it really struck with me, 
you said that we will just be the pet Labradors at the best. Well, now 
you see—

Elon Musk: Labradors are pretty happy creatures.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s my experience. But in 2023, you asked for a 
slowdown in AI because you were worried about it.

Elon Musk: Well, I signed on to, as one of many, like 500 people. I was 
just one of many signatories on that thing.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I think even last year you said, I think, 
where was it, Ted Cruz’s podcast, you said there was a 10 to 20% chance 
of killer robots wiping out humanity.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you sounded worried then. Now you seem very 
relaxed about it. Have you changed your view?

Elon Musk: I still think there’s risk associated with AI and robots. 
It’s not zero. I guess I’ve come to my sort of philosophical conclusion 
is to look on the bright side. I can’t see any way to really stop this 
incredible momentum of AI and robots. And at times I sort of think, 
well, perhaps even if there was a stop button, we probably shouldn’t 
press it because the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s what I thought, actually. It struck me that 
now you seem to have decided it’s inevitable. Let’s hope for the best 
and go for the ride.

Elon Musk: Yes, pretty much. Let’s enjoy the ride, is I think my 
philosophy at this point. Because honestly, there seems to be just an 
inexorable progress here in AI and in robots that even if I wanted to 
stop it, I couldn’t.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think there’s still a 10 to 20% chance that 
killer robots mean the end of humanity? That’s a high P-doom, as they say.


Elon Musk: Well, in the long run, we’re all dead, of course. So 
according to the standard model of physics, the end of the universe is a 
long, boring, sort of thin gray soup of gradual cooling. Meaning that’s 
sort of the heat death of the universe, it’s called. So now, if the heat 
death of the universe is in fact the outcome for our reality, then it 
really is all about the journey, because the destination is terrible.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: 10 years is not very— yeah, I get that, but that 
could be a long way. A very long way.

Elon Musk: Very, very long way.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: If it’s 10 to 20% in 10 years, would you go into 
one of your rockets if you thought there was a 10 to 20% chance of it 
blowing up and killing you?

Elon Musk: Yes, but let’s say there’s— you can’t do anything about it. I 
guess the only thing we can try to do is minimize the probability of the 
bad outcome. But trying to stop the intelligence in robots— I mean, for 
the longest time, I declined to participate in AI, or created OpenAI as 
essentially a counterweight to Google because at the time they had more 
or less a monopoly on AI. And then Anthropic spun out of OpenAI. And if 
anything, it seems like my actions have really accelerated AI. I wasn’t 
really aiming to accelerate AI, but in creating OpenAI and then having 
Anthropic spin out of that, and now currently Anthropic’s the leader in 
AI, these actions have actually resulted in knock-on effects that 
accelerated AI, which wasn’t really my intention. So it just seems like 
all roads lead to acceleration of AI. So then I’m like, okay, well, you 
can just sort of be sad about it or join the club, I suppose.


Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you’ve certainly joined the club. Yeah, 
you’ve definitely joined the club.

Elon Musk: If you can’t beat them, join them, you know.

Minimizing AI Risks: The Case for Industry Cooperation
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you’ve clearly done that and very 
successfully. But what about trying to minimize the risks? A number of 
the other leaders of model makers have been pushing for different ways 
to try and minimize the risks. Just last week, Demis Hassabis came out 
with a proposal for a private-public regulator. I think you said it was 
a good starting point for discussions, I think. Do you think you guys 
should be working more actively to get something in place to control the 
risks, or do you think that’s impossible too?


Elon Musk: My recommendation to Demis, because I talked to him for a few 
hours before he published his piece, was that the most immediate thing 
that we could do is to have the leading AI companies at least just meet 
or have some sort of call once every few weeks and just discuss any 
safety and security issues. And that before a breakthrough, sort of a 
new frontier model is released, something that is far more intelligent 
than anything that already exists, that there’s an opportunity for the 
various competing AI companies to test that model for any harmful 
effects and to be able to recommend pausing to address some of these 
security issues. I think that’s sort of the easy, quick thing that we 
can do. And it can evolve to more than that over time. But I think that 
would be a smart move.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why haven’t you done that yet? I mean, there’s 
like 5 of you, right? I mean, everyone knows the first name, Dario, 
Demis, Sam. I mean, you don’t all like each other very much.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

AI Safety, China, and Industry Cooperation

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But you’re not all— I mean, you’re also all 
competing, right? You all want to be first.

Elon Musk: Yes. But that’s where I think the competitors can keep each 
other honest. If someone in the government doesn’t have a deep technical 
understanding and isn’t driving the frontier of AI, it’s quite difficult 
for them to know whether something should be released or not. However, 
the competitors, I think, if given sort of a week or two to review a new 
model, can highlight issues and have an incentive to keep— all the 
competitors have an incentive to keep the others honest.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you have enough trust between you to do that? I 
mean, you don’t much like each other. Wouldn’t Sam Altman just think 
you’re going to nick all his ideas if you did that?

Elon Musk: Well, if we’re just talking about a week, honestly, I think 
as little as a week is all that would be needed for private testing. 
It’s not to hand over the AI. It’s just to test it.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Have you proposed this?

Elon Musk: Yeah, just to test it via an API or something. I think that 
would probably be a good thing to do.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Have you proposed it? I mean, you could presumably 
organize that.

Elon Musk: That’s what I suggested to Demis. And I guess I’ll talk to 
Dario about it too. There’s also, of course, some very competent Chinese 
AI companies. There are several that are very good. The new Kimi model.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Kimi K3, yeah, the one that came out last week — 
it’s almost as good as Grok, right? So it’s—

Elon Musk: Well, I think realistically Grok is still clearly the 
smartest model. I think anyone realistically would say that that’s still 
the case. But the Kimi model is getting quite close to Grok. Now, 
Anthropic had Opus from which Grok is derived. I think they had that 
ready in February. So they’ve got — they call it, I’m not sure what they 
call it, but Opus 2 or Grok 6 or something, something much better than 
what they had in February. They almost certainly have — not almost 
certainly, they certainly have right now. And I think they could release 
it at any time.

China’s AI Ambitions and the Geopolitical Stakes
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Just before we get on to releasing, how do you 
think about the Chinese models and the geopolitics of it? Are you 
worried about the Chinese catching up and getting ahead?

Elon Musk: Given that the Chinese AI companies are doing as well as they 
are with a relatively small amount of compute, it seems as though if 
they had a lot of compute, there’s a good chance that they would be the 
leaders. And at some point, they probably will have a lot of compute.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: So they will, ergo, they will be the leaders.


Elon Musk: There’s a good chance that they are the leaders at some 
point. You can think of it like this — the constraints on AI are 
essentially electricity and AI chips. And then for physical AI, the 
robots. China’s also got some very good robot companies. In fact, they 
have these robot sporting events. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of them.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes, I have. I saw them last time I was in 
Beijing. I saw the robots.

Elon Musk: Well, and then they have the sort of boxing match or fighting 
match with the robots, which is quite entertaining. I saw some video of 
a robot that got its head knocked off and kept fighting even with its 
head knocked off. It looked pretty funny.

But China is very strong on robots, very strong on digital AI. And if 
you look at electricity production — AI is a function of whatever the 
limiting factor is, whether it’s chips or electricity. China has far 
more electricity than the United States. In fact, China has more 
electricity than the United States, Europe, and India combined already, 
and is heading to — my guess is China gets to 4 times the electricity 
production of the US, which is roughly proportionate to the population.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: What should the US government do about this? I 
mean, presumably it is a little alarming if you have an authoritarian 
regime far ahead in the most powerful technology. And clearly what the 
US government’s been trying to do is, with the export controls and so 
forth, keep China back. Do you think they should ban the use of Kimi K3, 
for example?


Elon Musk: Well, the US government can’t — they can pass some law that 
prevents US companies from using Chinese models, but they can’t stop the 
rest of the world from using them. So it’s not like the US government 
has authority over China or the rest of the world.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think they should stop US companies from 
using them? There’s talk of that right now, right?

Elon Musk: I don’t think that helps. That won’t stop China from being 
the leader in AI. Really, for digital intelligence, it comes down to how 
much AI compute do you have — how many chips do you have and how much 
power do you have, how much electricity do you have. The constraint 
right now, I think, is actually slightly more on power and cooling than 
it is on AI chips, because the power demands of the AI chips are very, 
very high. We’ll talk about water demands, but really the water usage of 
AI is negligible, almost nothing. But the electrical demand is very high.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s why you’re thinking of orbital data 
centers, presumably.

Elon Musk: Yes, the constraint for any AI chips not being turned on 
outside of China is electricity, power and cooling, and the electrical 
equipment and everything. The rate at which AI chips are being made 
exceeds the rate at which new electricity is coming online.


Zanny Minton Beddoes: In China?

Elon Musk: Outside of China.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Outside China, I see.

Elon Musk: Yeah. And since the US has banned the export of the latest AI 
chips to China, China is somewhat chip-starved.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But they are becoming much more efficient at using 
the chips that they have. And one of the striking things of Kimi K3, 
right, is how efficiently they—


Elon Musk: And China is also, I think, closer than most people realize 
to solving the lithography problem, which would enable them to make AI 
chips at very large volumes. So the current constraint is electricity 
outside of China. In China, the constraint is chips. Once we address the 
power constraint with AI data centers in space, then the constraint will 
once again be chips outside of China.

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A Framework for Global AI Governance
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That suggests to me that you need China and the 
US, if you’re going to have some overall safety constraints, to work 
together. I mean, you suggested the 5 model makers here working together?

Elon Musk: Probably it should include the Chinese companies that are 
doing frontier AI models too.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And do you think governments need to be involved?

Elon Musk: My recommendation would be that if some of the leading 
companies in AI say that a new model is very dangerous, then they should 
inform the government. And if a new model is very dangerous and the 
company producing that model is not taking steps to address the danger, 
then they should alert the government to take action to limit the 
release of that model. And that could be action by the Chinese 
government or action by the US government. It’s really just the US 
government and the Chinese government that have the power to take action 
here.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I guess people would be worried about relying 
on a group of model builders to decide whether to do this. I mean, if 
you look at what the US government has done with Opus, they stepped in 
because they were worried about the cybersecurity risks, and they 
stepped in using the threat of export controls to prevent the widespread 
release of this model. I find it hard to see how governments will not 
want to keep that power — that they ultimately decide whether a model 
gets released.

Elon Musk: Well, I think they should have that power, but it wasn’t as 
though someone in the government figured out that Opus had some scary 
cybersecurity risks. It was Amazon. Amazon highlighted this and Amazon 
called the White House.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you’d have a system where the model makers 
would check each other’s work. If there was something that worried them, 
you’d tell the government. The government would then think, okay—

Elon Musk: If there was something worrisome and that company was not 
doing anything to address that risk, then that would be the moment for 
government to step in and take action, which is literally what just 
occurred with Amazon.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: How soon does all this have to happen?

Elon Musk: I think it’d be good to do that immediately, really. Yeah.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s what people keep telling me. We have to get 
some kind of system in place in the next 6 months because of the pace at 
which the models are improving.

Elon Musk: Yeah. 6 months is a long time.


Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you think shorter than that?

Elon Musk: Well, there are so many AI breakthrough announcements, 
sometimes multiple per day. I mean, how many were there last week?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: A lot.

Elon Musk: I lost track.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, a lot. So you basically need to get together 
and get this set up kind of now, it sounds like you’re telling me.


Elon Musk: Yeah, I would recommend that we at least have some sort of 
informal weekly or biweekly call, and that there’s maybe a week or 2 
weeks of early access by competitors. This is why I think the incentives 
work — competing companies are likely to understand if something is a 
security risk, and they’re not going to be shy about highlighting that 
their competitors’ models should be delayed in release. I think the 
incentive structure does work quite well there.

This is sort of how it works with the Motion Picture Association. It’s 
an industry group that decides how movies should be rated, whether 
they’re appropriate for young children or not. And that seems to have 
worked quite well. And then you really just have to ask the government 
to intervene if a company is doing something very dangerous and refuses 
to take action to reduce the danger.

Personal Rivalries and the Greater Good
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think — this is a tricky one, but you guys 
don’t much like each other and you don’t much trust each other. You’re 
insulting each other on social media constantly. Do you think you could 
do that with people that you dislike, where there seems to be such 
personal vitriol between some of these leaders?

Elon Musk: Yes. Well, I’m not a fan of Sam Altman because—

If you started a nonprofit that was meant to be an open source AI 
company, owned by the world, and it somehow got turned into an $800 
billion for-profit company with closed source, I think you’d be like, 
“Well, wait a second, that’s the exact opposite of what I donated the 
money for.” That’s my issue. I think it’s a legitimate one.

And then Dario, I think, is also not a fan of Sam Altman because he felt 
— in fact, the reason the Anthropic team left OpenAI is because they 
didn’t trust Sam Altman. Otherwise Anthropic wouldn’t exist. They would 
still be at OpenAI.

I think Dario is a very principled person. He cares about things a lot. 
He cares about the future of the world. And I think everyone I’ve met at 
Anthropic so far — no one set off my evil detector. They always seem 
like they’re well-intentioned. The road to hell is, I think, mostly 
paved with bad intentions. There are a few well-intentioned paving 
stones in there, so we don’t want to be complacent. But at the end of 
the day, if we have to talk, we’ll talk. Set aside our personal 
differences for the good of the world.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, that’s a very good thing for the rest of us 
to hear.


Elon Musk: Yeah.

AI, Jobs, and the Future of Work
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Can we turn to one other risk that people worry 
about, particularly, I think, ordinary Americans, where AI has become 
incredibly unpopular? 75% of people are worried about it. And I think 
they worry about their jobs. And if you look at— Dario has said 
famously, what, 50% of entry-level jobs, entry-level white-collar jobs 
will be gone within a few years. You’re building humanoid robots.

Elon Musk: Yes. He also said, I mean, Dario did dig his own grave here 
regarding Mythos because he said, you know, “Mythos is like super scary, 
terrifying, and also, by the way, we’re going to release it.” And then 
it’s like, what do you mean? So I think he will probably in the future 
choose his words differently. Because obviously if you make— if you 
terrify everyone and then say, “Oh, we’re releasing this terrifying 
thing,” people will obviously be alarmed about that. You’ve literally 
told them to be scared, and then you release the scary thing, and so 
they will be scared. That is natural.


Zanny Minton Beddoes: So I certainly don’t want you to alarm people, but 
I do think there is a really important debate about how quickly and to 
what degree AIs displace people from jobs. Because it is, as you say, if 
in 10 years there’s more intelligence, artificial intelligence, than any 
human intelligence.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And if you are— and I think you’re ahead of 
everyone, at least in this country, on powering humanoid robots. That’s 
also going to be kind of factory work. So are you closer to Dario, let’s 
say, in your sense of the pace at which jobs are going to be displaced?

Elon Musk: I do think it’s going to be a bumpy road because AI will be 
able to do any job better than any person can do that job. And that will 
be true very quickly of jobs that are digital or really anything that 
involves a person at a computer or on a phone. AI could do all of that. 
We’ll be able to do all of that very soon.

For software engineering, we already have a situation where AI is better 
than at least 90% of humans at writing software— 90% of professional 
software engineers at writing software. And it really is getting to the 
point where it’ll be better than 99%. And then it’ll get to the point 
where there’s just no way to compete. It’ll get to what I call Stockfish 
level.

Stockfish is the chess program that is so good at chess that it will 
easily beat Magnus Carlsen or anyone at chess, even running on a small 
computer. I suspect that you could probably run Stockfish on your phone 
and beat Magnus Carlsen. That’s how good it is at chess. And that’s how 
good AI will be at writing software.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And beyond software? Beyond—

Elon Musk: And that applies to everything.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Everything?

Elon Musk: Everything, everything.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But what about physical jobs, for assembly jobs? 
You will also need the capability in humanoid robots, which so far isn’t 
there yet, is it?

Elon Musk: Right. So that’s why I said digital AI and then physically 
manifested AI in the form of robots, where the robot is more or less an 
end effector. It would have some amount of local intelligence, but be 
managed by a large AI model.

And I’ve said many times, I think work is going to be optional. A good 
comparison would be gardening. You don’t have to garden, you don’t have 
to grow vegetables in your garden. You can go to the store and there are 
going to be pristine vegetables, or you could grow vegetables in your 
garden and they will actually be less perfect. Your tomatoes are not 
going to be as plump and juicy as the ones at the store. They’ll look a 
little artisanal. But if you go to a friend’s house and they make dinner 
with vegetables from their garden, it’s a nice touch. So that’s what 
work is going to be like.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I get that. I mean, in that world, I would be 
hopeless because I can’t garden to save my life. But I get the idea. 
People still like playing chess with each other, even though every 
computer is better. But let’s just think about the politics of this.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

The Politics of Displacement and Universal Income
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Because it sounds— you’re describing a world where 
within 10 years, pretty much every job can be done better by 
intelligence. And yes, you’re seeing huge returns to this intelligence 
to people like you. You’re the wealthiest man in the world. What about 
people who lose their jobs, who are displaced, who may go off and 
garden— how are they going to live? And what kind of— it sounds to me 
like a universal high income. But how are you going to get there? Let’s 
talk about the politics of this, because right now, if we look at the 
political pressures in most countries, people are very, very worried 
about this, very against it. It seems to me that there’s a risk that we 
are heading more for revolution than for an easy route to this nirvana 
you’re pointing at.

Elon Musk: It will be a bumpy road. I’m not suggesting that everything 
will be smooth sailing here. There are many jobs that used to exist that 
don’t exist because of computers. The word “computer” used to refer to a 
person doing computations. That used to be a job description of a 
person. And you can see pictures online of buildings— entire skyscrapers 
just filled with people doing calculations to do things like calculate 
the interest on your bank balance. This is how things were done for a 
long time, until computers came around. And even in the beginning, 
computers were very expensive and hard to use.

The thing that’s different here is that the pace of change is radically 
accelerated. But still, some people were upset that their job of 
calculating bank interest would no longer be available. But now I think 
you’d be hard pressed to find people who want to do that job.


I have a suggestion for science fiction books people might want to read 
to get a sense of what the future will be like. The best envisioning of 
an AI future that I’ve read are the books by Iain Banks, the Culture books.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m just reading Accession. Thanks to you, I’ve 
started reading these. But I actually don’t find that future a terribly 
appealing one because I don’t think humans have agency in that future.

Elon Musk: They have agency, minimal, compared to the Mind, small way.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But the irony— I mean, Iain Banks, as you know, 
was a socialist. Iain Banks had a very different political philosophy.

Elon Musk: I’m not sure I would entirely agree with that.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let’s agree that that could be where we end up. 
I’m concerned about the road, and we live in democracies and people are 
very worried about this. So I guess two questions. Firstly, do you have 
to have massive redistribution from people like you to the people who 
are losing their jobs? Do you need to pay more tax? Do you need much 
higher taxes on capital so that you fund some kind of universal income? 
Otherwise, what do people live off?

Elon Musk: I think that the Treasury should just simply issue people checks.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, yeah, but where’s the revenue coming from? I 
mean, I’m enough of an economist— if you just issue checks, you’re going 
to have inflation.

Elon Musk: A lot of what we’re trying to think about is things that were 
relevant in the past. They will not be relevant in the future. Inflation 
is simply the ratio of money to goods and services. So if the goods and 
services output increases dramatically— if it increases 1,000%— you can 
literally print, or in these days, change the database. It’s not really 
print money. You create money in the database. Provided the creation of 
that money is less than the rate at which goods and services increase, 
you will actually have deflation.

So I’ll make a prediction: deflation will be the issue, not inflation. 
Because as the output of goods and services increases, if the output of 
goods and services increases faster than the money supply, you will have 
deflation.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m perfectly willing to believe that. You may 
well be right. But I’m really hung up on how we get from the current 
polarized, angry, fearful policy we have now to this nirvana. You can 
paint a picture where people are so scared by this that they essentially 
try to stop it. Maybe they can’t, but you get nationalized. There’s a 
kind of far-left government. There’s exorbitant tax increases. The 
economy crumbles because people are so worried about a future which does 
sound quite scary as you describe it. So how do you handle the politics now?

Elon Musk: It’s exhilarating and terrifying.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But if you were in the— yeah, exactly.

Elon Musk: Honestly, if you ask me on any given day— in fact, even 
intraday— I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI. So I want 
to be clear, I’m not trying to be some Candide here, some Panglossian 
view of the world where everything’s going to be great. No risk. I’m 
saying there is some risk.

What Governments and Companies Should Do
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think we agree on that. I guess I’m trying to be 
more sort of small bore and practical and think about what can be done 
now to limit those risks. And you gave a very strong argument for what 
you and your fellow model makers could do. What should governments do?

Elon Musk: I think it probably would be good for us to coordinate and 
just highlight issues that we see in each other’s models to mitigate 
downside risk.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: What should the government— should you be paying 
more tax to fund more transfer programs?

Elon Musk: Well, first of all, I do pay a lot of tax. In fact, I set a 
record for the most amount of taxes ever paid by a human.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s also because you’re the world’s richest man.

Elon Musk: Well, even before that. My guess is that I will pay many 
trillions in tax. And I’m fine with that. That’s just the way it’s going 
to be. But I don’t think in a future where money is relevant, I think 
taxation also becomes somewhat irrelevant.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And what about giving people a sense that they 
have a share in the upside?

Elon Musk: Sure.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Giving people shares in SpaceX and Tesla. Do you 
think that’s— and there’s a lot of talk about this right now.

Elon Musk: Well, one of the reasons I took SpaceX public is so that the 
public could participate— they could own a piece of SpaceX. Whereas as a 
private company, we’re very limited in the number of shareholders we’re 
allowed to have before going public. So as a public company, we can have 
millions of shareholders. As a private company, we’re limited to just a 
few thousand shareholders.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: So do you think there should be distribution of 
shares? Like, the Alaska Wealth Fund— could you imagine a world, and 
some people talk about the Trump accounts being a kind of vehicle for 
this, that a share of your equity goes to ordinary Americans?

Elon Musk: Right. Well, in the taxes that I pay— for my stock options, I 
pay 40% income tax on a national basis. And then because I spend about 
30% of my time in California, thereabouts, I pay another roughly a third 
of the California state taxes, which are now around 15%. So I pay about 
45% in taxes, just so people know this. Roughly half. Then when I die, 
there’ll be another roughly 45%— roughly half— that will be taxed. So at 
the end of the day, I’ll probably have a quarter of whatever I have.

But I think the only thing it gives me is that for some period of time, 
I would have control over the direction of the companies. That’s pretty 
much all it gets me. Until the AI is so smart that it’s in charge. And 
at that point, controlling companies won’t really matter.

Power, Control, and Geopolitical Influence
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, let’s talk about that, because I think one 
of the other things that worries people about the direction we’re 
heading in, and I’m going to caricature it, but people think that the 
direction of the world is being shaped by a very small number of 
incredibly powerful people. And you are right at the top of that list.

Elon Musk: What else is— but is this different from the past?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I agree with you. I think it was like that. When 
wasn’t that the case?

Elon Musk: It was ever thus.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But it is a, as you’ve described very vividly, 
it’s an incredibly rapid change. And so let’s start with control of your 
company, which you definitely have now. After the IPO, you basically, 
you have 80% odd of voting shares. And as I understand it, you can only 
be removed by a vote of shares which you yourself control. So tell me if 
I’m wrong, but I think you can go crazy.

Elon Musk: Yeah, well, there’s a few companies in that bucket, by the 
way. The AI companies, like Google’s in that bucket, Alphabet, is 
controlled by Larry and Sergey.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I think yours is more extreme. The inability to—

Elon Musk: No, but it’s the same level of— they have voting control of 
that company. Mark Zuckerberg has control of Meta. And, you know, Mark 
is trying very hard on the AI front. And I think probably will also have 
a leading AI. He’s made— I think he released one last week. So I think 
he’ll be one of the— you know, Meta will be one of the AI companies.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But is it sensible for one person to have so much 
control over a company?

Long-Term Vision vs. Short-Term Pressures
Elon Musk: Well, I really just need to make sure that I can focus on 
long-term. By long-term, I just mean in the 5 to 10 years. So one of the 
challenges with being a public company is that it is— there’s the 
pressure to have great results every single quarter, and to not really 
invest in things that may only pay off in 5 to 10 years.

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In the case of SpaceX, I need— I want to extend consciousness beyond 
Earth and have a growing civilization on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere 
in the solar system. The return, I think ultimately this would have a 
very high return on investment, but in the short term, we’ll be spending 
all this money on a moon base or a Mars base. And then people are like— 
I’m going to get all this pressure, like, “Well, you missed your 
earnings this quarter because you spent too much on Mars.” I’m like, 
yes. By the way, that was in the S-1 prospectus and it’s literally 
listed as a thing we will do. So we did.

But they still get grumpy about these things, because they’re like, 
“Well, you said your gross margin would be this and it’s actually 
slightly worse.” And now we’re going to punish you, and the short 
sellers all descend upon you and you get a lot of pressure.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re going to get a lot of that.

Elon Musk: Yeah. So I just need some way to say, “Listen guys, we’re 
going to focus on 5 to 10 year or longer time horizon investments. This 
will depress our short-term earnings.” But if you take a long-term view— 
and there are investors, we have many investors that do take a long-term 
view. In fact, I’m a big fan of the retail investors. I find our retail 
investors on balance are very insightful and have very long-term views.

But if you ask what’s the incentive structure for portfolio managers, 
it’s sort of understandable why they put so much pressure on quarterly 
earnings, because their compensation and whether they get promoted or 
not is dependent on how their portfolio does. And they only have a few 
years to make these decisions, and then they’re evaluated based on those 
decisions over the course of sometimes only a year or less. And so since 
they’re under pressure to have immediate returns, they then put 
companies under pressure to have immediate returns. So once you 
understand the incentive structure, the behavior naturally follows.

Key Man Risk and the Apple Analogy
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What about, though, key man risk? I mean, what 
happens? Heaven forbid, but what happens if you get run over by the 
proverbial bus tomorrow? You have total control over these companies. Do 
you have a plan for how they would progress without you?

Elon Musk: I think they would actually do very well for several years. 
There’s a clear roadmap— or space map, I should say— for SpaceX. And 
there’s a roadmap actually for Tesla, literally. So if you look at Apple 
after Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs had a strategic vision and a bunch of 
products that he had ideas for, and Apple has done very well. But when 
you don’t have a creative genius like Steve Jobs, what Apple’s missing 
are the incredible breakthrough products. So they make amazing phones, 
great computers, but Apple hasn’t come up with a Steve Jobs-level 
breakthrough product.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: So by analogy, that’s what you bring to all of 
your companies. You mentioned Mars. You know, most people think of you 
as the man who wants to create a colony on Mars so we have a 
multi-planetary civilization.

Elon Musk: I’ve been saying that for such a long time.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You have, but now you seem more focused on AI and 
what AI will do in the next 10 years. And you sound much more excited 
about using the Moon as a base from which to pop out orbital AI 
satellites. Have you shifted your attention away from Mars, or are you 
as interested in colonizing Mars as you ever were?

Consciousness, the Future, and Star Wars
Elon Musk: I’m interested in the set of actions that propagate 
consciousness into the future to the maximum degree possible, so that 
the future light cone of consciousness is as big as we could make it. 
There’s an exciting future where we’re a spacefaring civilization out 
there among the stars, and the great things that are envisioned in the 
non-dystopian sci-fi books and movies become real one day. I sort of 
want the Star Trek, Star Wars future. Star Wars was the first movie I 
ever saw in a theater, by the way.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Really?

Elon Musk: Maybe it had a profound effect on me. I remember— I was 6 
years old, and it blew my mind, honestly. I was like, “This is the 
greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Has your life been about making that happen?

Elon Musk: Yeah, I mean— I didn’t think it would be when I was young. 
But my life feels somewhat surreal. I can’t believe these things are 
actually happening. I think the world makes me believe in simulation 
theory, where it’s like, the things I’m doing are so preposterous that 
it’s hard to believe they’re real. I mean, we’ve got Starship, which is 
the largest, most powerful flying object ever made. And we intend to 
launch that more than once per hour.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I know, I read that. And people can quibble about 
how quickly it happens, but I think based on your track record, we 
should assume it will happen at some point.

Elon Musk: It will happen.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I’m just struck that when I— I am as blown away by 
this world as you are, and I watch it from a much more naive level, but 
for me, the whole evolution of AI and the capabilities of these models 
is in and of itself so mind-blowing.

Elon Musk: It’s pretty much happening as I thought it would.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Is it?

Elon Musk: Yeah.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Oh, that’s interesting.

Elon Musk: And not just me, many people predicted this. Ray Kurzweil’s 
predictions have been remarkably accurate.

Starlink, Geopolitical Power, and the War in Ukraine
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, the singularity approaching. Let’s go back 
more immediately to the here and now. We’ve talked about concentration 
of control in your companies. You’ve made a very good case for why you 
should have it. You also have, through Starlink, incredible geopolitical 
power. I mean, I’m one of your customers. Excellent product. But without 
them, the Ukrainians would have been in serious, serious trouble. And 
when you—

Elon Musk: Yes, the Ukrainian government has publicly thanked Starlink 
many times for being instrumental in defending Ukraine.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And you recently decided to prevent the Russians 
in the occupied territories from having access to Starlink.

Elon Musk: Well, no, we were never at any point selling Starlink to 
Russians.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But they were grabbing it, right? They were using 
it. You’ve now stopped them from doing that.

Elon Musk: Well, they essentially got Starlink units that they ordered 
through Ukraine and then smuggled them into Eastern Ukraine where the 
Russians are, and were then using them in some cases for attacks. Now, 
in order to address this, we worked with the Ukrainian government to 
create a whitelist of approved Starlink terminals. Now, this has some 
downsides because a whole bunch of people who were just innocent users 
of Starlink and just trying to access the internet for work or for 
education now don’t have Starlink.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: These are geopolitical decisions of consequence. 
How do you feel about having that power? You could determine the outcome 
of wars. How does that feel? And is it right that you should have that 
power?

Elon Musk: Well, I’m not sure we’re determining the ultimate outcome of 
the war in Ukraine. I do hope that there’s some sort of peace agreement 
reached soon, because for 2 or 3 years now, the border has barely moved, 
and every day there are lots of people dying at the front line. I think 
there’s a lot of wishful thinking here of people saying, “Well, Russia 
should completely withdraw,” etc., but this is not realistic.

I really think there needs to be a peace that is pragmatic about this. 
What I think would be terrible is if there’s another 3 years of people 
dying senselessly at the front lines. You have to say, “How do you 
explain to the children of the men that are dying at the front lines?” 
On the Russian side too, by the way, they’re being conscripted and sent 
there.

I am quite offended by fancy diplomats who have 7-course dinners in 
luxurious places while people are dying at the front lines, and who 
pontificate about how Russia should withdraw, but they’re not going to. 
Russia’s not going to withdraw. So there really needs to be an accepted 
peace along those lines.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And do you think it’s your responsibility to play 
a role in tipping the scales towards what you see as the right way to peace?

Elon Musk: I’ve been advocating peace for a long time. I posted a few 
years ago that there really needs to be some concession here to Russia. 
This is not me being pro-Russia, I’m just being pragmatic, or people 
will die for years with nothing achieved. And that is exactly what happened.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I don’t know, I mean, the Ukrainians are doing 
pretty well right now with their incredible drone capacity hitting 
inside Russia. And the general consensus is that the balance of the war 
is shifting. But my point is not so much about what’s right—

Elon Musk: Ukraine is not going to retake those territories. It is not 
going to happen.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: My interest is really on whether you think, given 
that you have through Starlink an incredible power, whether it’s 
appropriate that you should wield it. That’s quite rare that an 
individual actor has such power by turning on and off a capability to 
shape conflict.

Elon Musk: Well, is there something you think I should do differently?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I mean, I think you were right to support Ukraine. 
I think that, as it won’t surprise you, I think that the Russian 
aggression was, for many, many reasons, an appalling aggression. And I 
think that that was an important thing that you did.

Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, I did a very deep dive into the background of 
that conflict to understand exactly what was going on. And I’m reminded 
of the old adage that there are no angels in war.

DOGE, Domestic Politics, and the Role of Government
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It’s a similar tone, I think, about domestic 
politics where you’ve played a big role domestically, politically here. 
You spent a lot of money on Donald Trump’s reelection. After the 
election, you got very actively involved, through Doge, you tried to cut 
a lot of spending, reshape the government. How do you feel that it 
wasn’t hugely successful in the sense that there wasn’t nearly as much 
spending cut as you tried? As you look back on that, do you regret 
getting so involved in politics? Do you think it was a good thing to do?

Elon Musk: I think I got a little too involved in politics, got carried 
away, frankly. The goal with the Doge stuff was to try to do something 
about the deficit, which is massive, where the interest payments exceed 
the amount of money spent on the Department of War. Basically, if you 
add up all the money spent on what is now the Department of War and 
intelligence in the US, that is smaller than the interest payments on 
the debt.

So I thought, well, we need to take a close look at spending and make 
sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not 
wasted or spent on fraudulent activities. And I got a lot of flak for 
this, obviously.

But people don’t understand just how simple it was for the Doge team to 
approve payments. We literally just asked to have the contact 
information of the recipient, or some evidence that money was going to 
its intended purpose. But over and over, we were told, oh, we need to 
wire money for some sort of important cause in Africa. And we’re like, 
okay, but the wiring instructions are to Deloitte Touche in Washington, 
D.C., not to Africa. So we would like to send the money to Africa. Can 
you please connect us with the recipients so we can send them the money 
directly? And then we get silence.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: We don’t need to relitigate DOGE. I have no doubt 
that there’s a lot of waste in the US government.

Elon Musk: I think probably much worse than anyone could possibly imagine.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I think it is a fair criticism that the way 
you shut down a whole bunch of programs probably, in fact, certainly 
caused unnecessary suffering. I mean, no— you don’t buy that at all?

Elon Musk: It caused a lot of complaining.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You don’t buy the idea that anybody— to put it 
really crudely and simply— any kid in Africa died because of the 
suddenness with which—

Elon Musk: Zero.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I just don’t think that’s right. I mean, I’ve had 
people reporting in Africa who—

Elon Musk: How many NGOs are there that could step in? Bear in mind, it 
happened quickly. And there are literally tens of thousands of NGOs.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Not everyone functions as fast as you do. If 
funding is cut off for antiretrovirals overnight and it just stops, then 
people will die when they don’t have access to them. And it just—

Elon Musk: No, only if they cannot get funding for that. But the Gates 
Foundation has $50 billion. What about them? What about any one of a 
number of organizations? What about MacKenzie Bezos? She gave away $50 
billion. What about that?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let’s be practical. In many of these countries, 
USAID was the biggest funder. But I don’t want to have a conversation 
about this.

Elon Musk: USAID was a political organization.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: It may also have been that, but it was the biggest 
funder of healthcare systems. It was a very strong funder of regime 
change. And there may well be benefits from having changed—

Elon Musk: Also, USAID funding was not stopped. It was moved to the 
State Department.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: It was stopped. There were huge numbers of things 
shut down in Africa that were—

Elon Musk: No, there were claims of this. These claims are false. 
They’re nonsense and absolute nonsense. When funding is stopped for 
fraudulent organizations, do you think they’re going to say, “Please 
keep funding the fraud”? Or do you think they’re going to come up with a 
sad story that sounds sympathetic in order to get the funding restored? 
Obviously, it will be the latter. And that’s exactly what they did. But 
zero died because of that.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s what I would take issue with. I actually 
have a lot of sympathy for the change of the aid regime that the US 
under the Trump administration has precipitated. However, I think the 
pace and the suddenness with which it happened will almost certainly 
have caused unnecessary suffering and deaths. And I think both of those 
can be true.

Elon Musk: No, I think that’s totally false.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay, well, let’s—

Elon Musk: And obviously false because the amount of funding we’re 
talking about is far less than what can be supported via foundations 
like the Gates Foundation or MacKenzie Bezos’s foundation. She’s given 
away tens of billions of dollars. The Gates Foundation has tens of 
billions of dollars. They are capable of acting very quickly. And if 
they didn’t, I would say they’re equally responsible.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I see.

Elon Musk: Okay. Obviously.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: All right. Fair point.

Elon Musk: Zero people died because of drugs.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I hear you loud and clear. Zero. I hear you loud 
and clear.

Elon Musk: Obviously.

Stepping Back from DOGE and Views on the Trump Administration
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Domestically, you stepped away from DOGE. It was 
hard to do what you were trying to do, as you’ve just explained. But 
this administration has gone in directions that I suspect you were not 
expecting two and a half years ago.

Elon Musk: The war on Iran. I’m not going to agree with everything any 
administration does.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you disappointed by this administration?

Elon Musk: No, I think this administration, on balance, is excellent. No 
administration is perfect, but it’s vastly better than the alternative.

Europe, Immigration, and Free Speech
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Can we talk about Europe, a place that you are 
very, very focused on?

Elon Musk: I’m not that focused on Europe.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think judging by your posts, you’re pretty 
concerned about Europe. You support—

Elon Musk: I mean, once in a while I post something.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: It’s reasonably frequently, it’s not once in a 
while. But I’m genuinely interested in this as someone who lives in 
Europe, lives in London. You paint a picture— well, first of all, you 
support not just the populist right but the far right, in fact very 
fringe parties in some countries.

Elon Musk: No, I support the normal people. What do you call the far 
right falsely?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You think that is the normal person? Okay.

Elon Musk: Yes. Literally, you could go back 10 or 15 years, and these 
policies were completely normal. In fact, one of the things I think is 
funny is to take a speech from Obama and Hillary and then go to someone 
who is on what I call the lunatic left, and say, “What do you think of 
the speech by Trump?” And they’ll say, “Oh wow, he’s the worst person 
ever.” And then you say, “Actually, that was a speech by Obama,” or 
“Actually, that was a speech by Hillary.”

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I agree that the center of gravity in this country 
has shifted, certainly in the Democratic Party shifted to the left, but 
that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people like Rupert Low.

Elon Musk: It’s actually just normal people. It’s just normal people. 
And here are the principles — tell me which of these sound terrible: 
that we should have secure borders, that we should have safe cities, 
that we should have sensible spending. Which of those three are 
far-right fringe? And I would like to admonish you and the media for the 
absurd characterization of the far right. It is false and misleading and 
nonsense. Please keep this part in.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: We’ll keep all of this in. But let me—

Elon Musk: Don’t cut this part.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let me push back on that. Because it is nonsense. 
Elon, you have close to 250 million followers on X. You say things like 
— and I’m quoting you — “Civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a 
question.”

Elon Musk: Yes.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: When were you last in the UK?

Elon Musk: A few years ago.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Exactly. I live there. I’m there the whole time. 
That is nonsense.

Elon Musk: You live a cloistered existence.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, I don’t, actually. And the numbers also 
disprove what you say. All the numbers about crime — London is a much 
safer city than any city in the United States. Violent crime in the UK 
is not where you think it is. In fact, it’s coming down. You have 
painted, and because you have so many followers, so many Americans 
believe it, a kind of view that Europe and the UK are overrun with 
terrifying Muslim immigrants. There’s rape on every corner. There’s a 
sort of civilizational destruction.

Elon Musk: I haven’t said any of those things.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you said civil war in Britain is inevitable.

Elon Musk: And yes, if current trends continue, it is.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Why?

Elon Musk: Well, if you have a large and growing, rapidly growing, group 
of people whose beliefs are antithetical to Western beliefs, at some 
point there will be a reckoning. They will try to implement their views, 
and those who oppose it will oppose it, and that’s what you call civil 
war. And obviously this is the trend. And you absolutely do live in a 
cloistered existence. And if you’d like, we can go on a tour of Britain.

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Zanny Minton Beddoes: Sure, I’m very happy to come on a tour of Britain. 
You come see my country that I live in all the time and that you haven’t 
been to in a few years.

Elon Musk: I’ve been there literally 100 times.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But when was the last time?

Elon Musk: A few years ago.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You know why this exercises me? Because you have 
really shaped opinion about the UK. So many Americans I come across will 
say — and I just had one the other day — “Oh, London’s such a dangerous 
place. How can you live there? There are grooming gangs everywhere. 
There’s violence everywhere.” This is a picture that people get from 
things that you post or that are posted on X.

For example, your posting for 48 hours of Citizen Vigilante, that film 
which paints a dystopian— I’ve watched it. I watched it yesterday. It’s 
not a very good movie, but it also paints a dystopian picture of Europe, 
and it glorifies vigilante violence. It glorifies the murdering of a 
Muslim immigrant family. I honestly think that it is irresponsible for 
you to put that up on X.

Elon Musk: I think it’s a movie and it’s worth watching.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re clearly suggesting Europe is a dystopian 
place and you—

Elon Musk: Yes. I mean, why aren’t you doing more to fight censorship in 
Europe? I seem to be doing nothing to fight censorship in Europe.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s not true.

Elon Musk: There are people in prison in the UK for social media posts. 
Do you think that’s appropriate?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: No. And we’ve written editorials against it.

Elon Musk: Okay, great.

Europe, Immigration, and Media Trust
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Then that’s the sort of thing that I think is bad. 
And I think if you— And I agree with you, but I don’t think you have to 
glorify vigilante violence and kind of post the things that you are 
doing and paint an entirely inaccurate picture of Europe.

Elon Musk: I don’t think it is.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: We should do a tour of the UK.

Elon Musk: Yes. And one of Brussels too.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Because the UK has actually been very good at 
integrating immigrants. The UK is very effective at doing that. There 
are problems. I’m the first to admit that there are problems.

Elon Musk: Yes, there are major problems.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: There are problems, but it is not— it really is 
not what you are describing to or suggesting to your 240 million followers.

Elon Musk: I think it is.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: And I think there’s a problem.

Elon Musk: No, I think I’m spot on.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, we’ll have to—

Elon Musk: And that’s why you have freedom of speech, or at least—

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, freedom of speech allows people to say 
things that are wrong, but your point is not that. You’re not just 
saying I have every right to say what I want. You’re saying you know, I 
am right about Europe, and I really don’t think you are.

Elon Musk: I think I am.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think you will find that most people in Europe, 
or many people in Europe, don’t think you’re right about it. But let’s 
come to that because the media keeps ignoring what’s—

Elon Musk: —ignoring reality.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I don’t think that’s true either. I really—

Elon Musk: —and they’re programmed by the TV and conventional media.

Why Focus on Europe’s Problems?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why are you— this is, I guess, even to me sort 
of the bigger picture question— why do you focus on this? Why are you 
interested in it? Because on the one hand, we started this conversation 
and you described to me this extraordinarily transformative, amazing, 
sort of civilizational-changing stuff that’s happening in the next 10 
years. And yet you’re also an ongoing participant in the worst kind of 
tribalism, the cesspit of social media. How does that fit? They’re two 
very different views of the world.

Elon Musk: Yeah, I don’t think they’re inconsistent.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why do you do the latter one, the tribalism? I 
mean, people say that you’re a racist. People say that there are all 
kinds of things said about you which I’m sure you would disagree with. 
But I just don’t understand what is the motivation for doing that. Are 
you fomenting—

Elon Musk: My partner is half Indian, and I have 4 children with her. 
One of them was named after a famous Indian physicist. So I would say 
I’m not racist. And also, if you look at the people that are employed at 
my companies, we have senior executives of all races. I don’t think 
there’s any racism there.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you anti-Muslim?

Elon Musk: I am against having— if people are coming to a country with 
antithetical views, I am against that. I’m against rape and murder. I’m 
against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we’ve 
come to accept in the West. And I think it’s a crying shame that the 
sort of traditional media like you don’t recognize this.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: First of all, I think that you hugely exaggerate 
the challenges that Europe faces. Secondly, in areas I completely agree 
with you. I think that the constraints on freedom of speech in the UK in 
certain areas are problematic. What worries me is that the people you 
are supporting are really quite vile people in some areas. Like some 
members of the AfD, Alice Weidel, whom I’ve met, is a perfectly 
thoughtful person. But in her party are some real neo-Nazis, some 
really, really awful people. And your blanket support of this kind of 
party with 240 million followers means that you have a power in Europe 
that I think perhaps you don’t realize the scale of impact you have.

Elon Musk: I hope I am having a bigger impact.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why? Why should you? Why should you be able to 
shape European politics? You don’t even live there.

Elon Musk: I think of it as the West collectively.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But do you see why this makes people think that 
this man who has all this power— he’s the world’s richest man— he thinks 
he has a right to influence our politics? That’s why, you know, we 
started this conversation saying superlatives. It’s why people loathe 
you. I mean, some people do loathe you.

Elon Musk: Yes, some people do.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But do you understand why? Do you think what 
you’re doing is helpful for Western democracy?

Elon Musk: Maybe some people do loathe me.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I—

Elon Musk: And that’s probably true— I don’t care. But the fact that, as 
you pointed out, a quarter billion people follow me is that I think a 
lot more people actually like me than don’t. And I think a lot more 
people hate you and the media more than you realize. Do you realize the 
media is despised? Do you realize that the view of journalists is— a 
favorable view of journalists is like 15%.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I do know that in the United States.

Elon Musk: So the shoe is on the other foot. They hate you. They hate 
you far more than they hate me.

Trust in Media and Journalism
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think there is certainly a loss of trust in 
journalism. I think in part there have been mistakes by journalists and 
journalism. I totally acknowledge that. But I also think that the kind 
of polarized environment, particularly on social media, fostered by the 
kinds of things you are pushing on X, actually helps this, makes it worse.

Elon Musk: I don’t think so. I think you’re the problem, the media. And 
speaking of loathing, you’re loathed far more than I am, and you don’t 
seem to even realize that.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think very few people know who I am relative to 
you, so I don’t think I play in the same game.

Elon Musk: The media collectively— you’re hated. Do you even know that? 
You probably don’t.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I like to think that I’m aware of my own personal 
shortcomings and The Economist’s shortcomings and our worldview 
shortcomings. But what we stand for, as you know, is liberal values, 
traditional classical liberal values, where we worry about 
concentrations of power and we believe in the individual and the dignity 
of the individual, and individual freedom. I firmly believe that. And I 
have long thought that you were a classical liberal. Classical liberal, 
J.S. Mill, limited government, individual freedom.

Elon Musk: Yeah, I agree with that.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But when I read what you post on your feed, I 
sometimes wonder whether you really do believe in that.

Elon Musk: I literally said, look, I believe in safe cities, secure 
borders, and sensible spending with respect to government. That doesn’t 
make me right-wing at all, in the least.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Does the US or do European countries score better 
on those?

Elon Musk: The US is better.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: No. Safe cities— much more dangerous in the US 
than the UK. Sensible spending— bigger deficit here, out of control. You 
managed— you’ve failed to reduce it. Secure borders— now under the Trump 
administration, I agree with you. Before, not. But on 2 out of 3, 
unequivocally Europe is in a better place. Yet you seem to paint a 
picture of Europe being a hellhole.

Elon Musk: I don’t think Europe’s a hellhole.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: OK, we can agree on something.

Elon Musk: When did I ever say that?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, the picture you paint of Europe on X is not—

Elon Musk: No, you’re just making up things.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, I’m not.

Elon Musk: You just literally make it up.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: No, I’m not. You say civil war in Britain is 
inevitable, and then you basically proselytize for this citizen 
vigilante film, which really does paint Europe as a hellhole. It just 
starts with ominous music and it says, “Europe.”

Elon Musk: Well, there was out-of-control rape and murder.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: It’s more dangerous in this country than it is in 
Europe.

Elon Musk: Where there is danger in this country is because we fail to 
incarcerate repeat violent offenders. That’s the classic sort of Soros 
DA or judges that fail to incarcerate repeat violent offenders. And if 
somebody gets arrested 50 times, literally, for violent crimes, 
eventually they’re going to kill somebody. So you either incarcerate 
them or people will die.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think the prevalence of guns has quite a lot to 
do with it too. I mean, this is a much more dangerous country. Murder 
rates are much higher, in large part because there are so many guns.

Elon Musk: Well, let me give you an interesting number. There are more 
people that die in Europe from heat deaths than people that die from gun 
deaths in America. Why aren’t you writing an article about air conditioning?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: We’ve done several on air conditioning, and we had 
on our cover last week a whole long piece about why—

Elon Musk: Pro-air conditioning?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, we’re very pro-air conditioning.

Elon Musk: Okay, good. Well, good.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Very pro. You should read us. Absolutely.

Elon Musk: Credit where it’s due.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think you have a view of The Economist that is 
not entirely accurate. So I will— you come look at England, start 
reading The Economist, and I will stand corrected on my criticism of you 
in this area.

Elon Musk: There are many parts of Britain and Europe which are not 
safe. You can’t just walk around.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But there are far more in this country. Far more.

Elon Musk: No, I don’t think so.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: All right, let’s go and get my fact-checkers to 
check that.

Elon Musk: Yeah, I don’t think that’s true.

Musk’s Influence on European Politics
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let’s move on from this because I think I’ve got a 
sense of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Elon Musk: The point is not— the question is not, is America perfect? 
The question is, does Europe have a serious and growing problem?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: That’s where we started this.

Elon Musk: Europe has a serious and growing problem. I’m not going to 
say that the United States has no problems. Of course it does. But we 
should all try to address these issues.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: We can agree on that. We should all try to address 
the problems. My point was simply that I think you exaggerate the scale 
of Europe’s problem and that—

Elon Musk: I think people are asleep at the switch and do not realize 
the magnitude of the issue.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I also think that your interventions, however 
well-intentioned they may be, risk making Europe’s problem a lot worse.

Elon Musk: How?

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Because you are putting your support behind people 
who are proto-authoritarians, who are not trying simply to make sure 
there is better integration of Muslims or to secure the borders, but who 
have very clear fascist tendencies. And you will cause huge divisions 
within Europe.

Elon Musk: I think what you’re saying is total fiction. And really, I’m 
simply saying that Europe has to have secure borders.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: On that, we agree.

Elon Musk: And should not let in vast numbers of people with views that 
are antithetical to the accepted views in Europe and where there will 
not be some level of safe cultural integration. This is simply common sense.

Immigration, Political Views, and the Future
Zanny Minton Beddoes: If all you are saying is Europe should have secure 
borders, I completely agree with you. Then I have misunderstood what 
your interventions have been on social media, because that is not what 
the view I have — not what I would conclude having seen what the people 
you are supporting and the things you’re doing. But if that’s your goal, 
I share your goal that Europe should have secure borders. Yes. I think 
that’s perfectly agreeable. That gets me to a question.

Elon Musk: And let me explain what the fundamental forcing function here 
is for why the borders are not secure, which is when you have a welfare 
state that provides substantial benefits to anyone who comes there, you 
create a very powerful economic forcing function for anyone who is below 
that standard of living to come to Europe. It is an obvious powerful 
driving force. And people will come there if their standard of living 
is, from what they get in Europe, is above where they are elsewhere in 
the world. It’s very basic.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I completely agree with that. Yes, it’s a very 
basic incentive structure, economic conditions, economic influences 
determine a lot of migration. I think asylum is a separate issue, but I 
think you’re absolutely right. There are pressures for migration. 
However, there are other things that you haven’t focused on, which is 
migration brings a lot of benefits, and it also particularly does so in 
a continent like Europe, which is a rapidly aging continent.

So we can agree that completely uncontrolled borders are a bad idea. But 
I think Europe benefits from having immigration, controlled immigration. 
It brings —

Elon Musk: I’m in favor of immigration. Obviously, I’d be hypocritical 
if I wasn’t since I’m an immigrant to the United States. I’m in favor of 
immigration if the person immigrating is going to be a productive member 
of society, if they’re going to be honest, and if they’re not going to 
mistreat people in that country they’re going to.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: I can agree on all of those.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I think that Europe does better on that than 
you give it credit for. That’s, I think, where we disagree. But let’s 
move on. Tell me, what do you think people get most wrong about you?

Elon Musk: Well, you’ve just got a whole bunch of things wrong about me. 
Pretty much everything in the last — just rewind the last 20 minutes, 
it’s all wrong.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: So I got — we got — I got wrong your —

Elon Musk: Let’s not be repetitive here.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay, so that political side of you, people get 
most wrong.

On Being Labeled “Far Right”
Elon Musk: Yeah, my political views are very centrist. They’re not far 
right. And frankly, calling it far right, I think, is an insult to 
history, an insult to many peoples, and it is an outrageous falsehood. 
It’s completely absurd. I literally have stated my position, which is 
that — and I’ve been very clear about this — which is that there need to 
be secure borders. That if there’s an influx of immigrants, then they 
need to be people who will agree with Western ideals, with Western values.

And if they don’t, and if there’s a long-term growth of people who do 
not, or in some cases are adamantly opposed to Western values, you are 
setting yourself up for civil war. This is obvious. A child can see 
this. But this is not a right-wing view. I’m simply stating reality.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, I think we can both agree that evidence will 
be able to decide which of us is more or less right, and we will find 
evidence for both of our views in different parts of Europe. The 
question is what the overall —

Elon Musk: I’m very good at predicting the future. I’m not perfect, but 
I’m very good at predicting the future. My batting average is very high 
for a human. But this does have somewhat of a Cassandra effect where 
people don’t believe that what I’m saying is likely to be true because I 
can see into the future with a higher probability of success than most 
people — not perfectly, but with a higher probability.

And including things that people believe to be in some cases 
counterintuitive. Again, I’m not saying I’m always right. I certainly am 
not. But my batting average is very good. But this does have, like I 
said, a Cassandra effect where people don’t realize that what I’m saying 
will come to pass, maybe not exactly in the timing that I thought, but 
it will come to pass.

And yeah, history will write the verdict. But I think you will see that 
very little of what I have said is inaccurate. And a supermajority of 
what I’ve said is very accurate and will come to pass unless there’s 
some change in direction.

AI vs. Political Predictions
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you have a higher confidence level in your 
expectations of the future for AI, the first part of our conversation, 
or the latter part, the political part?

Elon Musk: AI is digital superintelligence. It’s called the singularity, 
like a black hole, because you don’t know what’s going to happen after 
that. It sort of sucks in everything. So I think really in terms of the 
really big macro effects here, AI and robots will really dominate 
everything, on a timescale that is less than 10 years.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Which probably renders this other stuff that we’ve 
been talking about less important and less relevant.

Elon Musk: The AI robotics revolution will happen sooner than civil war 
in Britain. I would say civil war in Britain is probably 20 years away. 
And the AI robot singularity is 10 years away.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, hopefully these benign, all-powerful AIs 
will prevent such outcomes.

Elon Musk: They probably will.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Elon, I don’t agree with everything you say, but 
it’s always absolutely fascinating to talk to you. Thank you very much 
indeed.

Elon Musk: You’re welcome. I’m not boring.

Zanny Minton Beddoes: You’re definitely not boring.

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