Elon Musk joined The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit virtually on Monday for an interview with columnist Joanna Stern. Here is the transcript of that Dec. 6 exchange with the chief executive of Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
Here’s the transcript of the conversation between Musk and Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal…….
Joanna Stern
And where are you right now?
I’m at the Tesla Giga Texas factory that we’re about to complete. So, yeah. What you see behind me is the factory, basically. We have the office space and the factory kind of together. So I think this is kind of important, that we don’t have ivory tower management or engineering and that the management and engineering is as close to the factory as possible. So, yeah. So you can see what’s going on in the factory and stay grounded.
Joanna Stern
All right. Well, I’m in the ivory tower here in front of a lot of CEOs and a live audience here in Washington, D.C. And we are also joined by lots of people all over the internet. We are streaming this to WSJ.com, Twitter and YouTube. So we have a very brief amount of time. Only 30 minutes.
But I’m very excited to talk about a wide range of things. I want to start with talking about our world, the world we currently live in. Then I want to move to the future of the world. And then talk a little bit about your world.
And so we’ll start right here in Washington, D.C., where everyone is talking about the infrastructure plan and the bill. And I wanted to ask you, you know, say tomorrow you get a phone call from Joe Biden and he says…
Elon Musk
I think that’s unlikely, but sure.
Joanna Stern
Okay. You know, he just gives you a call. And he says, “You know, I haven’t been talking a lot about Tesla lately, but, you know, what do you need from this bill? What are your needs?” What do you answer him?
Elon Musk
Well, to be totally frank, no one at Tesla’s actually brought up whether they care about this bill or not. I think if this bill happened or didn’t happen, we don’t think about it at all, really.
Joanna Stern
Okay.
Elon Musk
It might be better, honestly, if the bill doesn’t pass. Because we’ve spent so much money, you know. It’s like the federal budget deficit is insane. You know, it’s like $3 trillion federal expenditures, or $7 trillion. Federal revenue is $4 trillion. If this was a company, it’d be a $3 trillion loss.
So I don’t know if we should be adding to that loss. That seems pretty crazy. Something’s got to give. You can’t just spend $3 trillion more than you earn every year and don’t expect something bad to happen. I think, you know, this is not good.
Joanna Stern
Well, Mitch McConnell is actually saying…
Elon Musk
And in fact, if I may elaborate on that, the deficit is more than $3 trillion when you look at the future obligations. So it’s $7 trillion of current expenditures, but it’s much more than that if you look at future obligations for social security, Medicare and so forth. So we’re running this incredible deficit. Something’s got to give. This can’t keep going.
Joanna Stern
Well, Mitch McConnell said something similar. Not as extreme as you. But OK, so let’s say his follow up question is, “Okay Elon, you don’t think we need to spend anything on the infrastructure?” If he says to you, “What is the biggest improvement we can make to the U.S. infrastructure, what do you say?”
Elon Musk
I think we generally could have better airports, better highways. Especially in cities that are congested, we’ve got to do something to deal with extreme traffic, which, I think, is some combination of double-deckering freeways and building tunnels.
I’m not a big believer in flying cars. They’re basically helicopters with wheels. And people don’t want the skies to be swarming with helicopters. So it’s tunnels and double-deckering freeways. We don’t have a traffic problem in suburbs, we have a traffic problem on freeways because they’re just too small and did not anticipate the size of the urban environments that we currently experience. So, yeah. But I don’t see a strong effort in this direction.
Joanna Stern
Well, I want to come back to autonomous vehicles, but wanted to just stay a little bit more on the role of government. You said at this conference, actually, a year ago, that you think the government should really just be hands off when it comes to innovation. Though with this bill, there is a lot of support for EVs and it could be the biggest change that we’ve seen throughout the country in terms of the infrastructure of EVs. And it helps Tesla. What do you think the role of government should be?
Elon Musk
I think the role of government should be that of, like, a referee. But not a player on the field. So generally, government should just try to get out of the way and not impede progress. I think there’s a general problem, not just in the U.S., but in most countries, where the rules and regulations keep increasing every year.
Rules and regulations are immortal. They don’t die. Occasionally you see a law with a sunset provision, but really, otherwise, the vast majority of rules and regulations live forever. And so if more rules and regulations are applied every year and it just keeps growing and growing, eventually it just takes longer and longer and it’s harder to do things.
And there’s not really an effective garbage collection system for removing rules and regulations. And so gradually this hardens the arteries of civilization, where you’re able to do less and less over time. So I think governments should be really trying hard to get rid of rules and regulations that perhaps had some merit at some point but don’t have merit currently. But there’s very little effort in this direction. This is a big problem.
Elon Musk Says Regulations Shouldn’t Be Immortal
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said in an interview at the WSJ CEO Council summit that government should take a more hands-off approach to innovation, adding that rules and regulations are becoming a growing problem that “hardens the arteries of civilization.”
Joanna Stern
And I also want to come back to later, I know that you do have some other stance on AI and the rules and regulations we should have on that. But right now you’re sitting in a Tesla factory, how are you spending your time these days? Between the split between Space X and Tesla?
Elon Musk
Yeah, it’s about even between Space X and Tesla. It depends on what is the crisis of the moment. So some weeks will be more Tesla, more Space X. But I work a lot. I work seven days a week and put in some pretty crazy hours. But it really depends on where I’m needed most.
I basically just triage the tasks and try to do things that are most useful or where I’m most needed. It varies from one week to the next.
But just going back to that infrastructure bill for a second, because sometimes the criticism of Tesla is like, “Hey, Tesla gets all these subsidies.” But it’s worth noting that for the vehicle purchase tax credit, the $7,500, Tesla stopped getting that, like, two years ago. Whereas everyone else, I think, except for GM, still gets the $7,500 tax credit. So all of our sales this year and I think last year had nothing to do with the tax credit because we were no longer eligible because we had made so many electric cars.
Tesla has made roughly two-thirds of all the electric cars in the United States. I’m not sure most people are aware of that. So, yeah. So Tesla’s made basically twice as many electric vehicles as the rest of [the] industry combined. And we don’t need the $7,500 tax credit. I would say honestly, I would just can this whole bill. Don’t pass it. That’s my recommendation.
Joanna Stern
What about the support though for the charging network? I mean, there are parts of this bill…
Elon Musk
Unnecessary.
Joanna Stern
No?
Elon Musk
No. I mean, do we need support for gas stations? We don’t. So there’s no need for support for a charging network. I would delete it. Delete.
Joanna Stern
Okay. All right.
Elon Musk
I’m literally saying get rid of all subsidies.
Joanna Stern
And…
Elon Musk
But also for oil and gas.
Joanna Stern
If you think about how this affects your competitors, does that impact some of your view on this?
Elon Musk
I mean, maybe they need it. I don’t know. But I think just generally I’m in favor of deleting subsidies. I mean, when we started Tesla, there were no EV subsidies at all. And gasoline was super cheap. We did not anticipate any subsidies. That came later. And the $7,500 tax credit came as a result, not of Tesla activity, but of General Motors lobbying for it. So I would just say just delete [th]em all.
Joanna Stern
All right. But there are some other good things in this bill that some would argue. I mean, a lot of money earmarked for R&D. Would you want to put that towards something
Elon Musk Opposes Infrastructure Spending
The Tesla CEO railed against a Biden Administration spending bill, including subsidies aimed at supporting the adoption of electric vehicles.
Joanna Stern
Okay. All right. We’re going to move on from the bill, because I think we get what you’re saying…
Elon Musk
Seriously, we shouldn’t…
Joanna Stern
…on it…
Elon Musk
Pass it. In general, if we don’t cut government spending, something really bad’s going to happen. This is crazy. Our spending is so far in excess of revenue, it’s insane. Like, you could zero out all billionaires in the country.
There’s all this anti-billionaire B.S. Well, if you zeroed out all the billionaires, you still wouldn’t solve the deficit.
Joanna Stern
All right, I’ll ask you another question around the billionaire B.S. Say tomorrow you get the phone call from President Biden. Next day, actually, we elect you to Congress. Somehow this happens. You’re now working on tax bills. You’re working on tax policy. How do you tax someone like you? How do you tax billionaires?
Elon Musk
First of all, I pay a lot of tax. I mean, my marginal tax rate is, like, 53%. So that’s not trivial. And then obviously there’s asset-based taxes. The sales tax and everything else. There’s also the estate tax. And generally, I think the estate tax is a good tax.
Like, if you think of assets beyond a certain level that are far beyond, let’s say, somebody’s ability to consume, then at a certain point, really what you’re doing is capital allocation. So it’s not money for personal expenditures, what you’re doing is capital allocation.
And it does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government. I mean, you could think of the government essentially as a corporation. The government is simply the biggest corporation with the monopoly on violence. And where you have no recourse. So how much money do you want to…
Joanna Stern
Can you explain that last part?
Elon Musk
…give that entity?
Joanna Stern
Could you explain the last part, quickly? And then I want to move on to some product stuff.
Elon Musk
Sure. And I can talk for a bit longer, if you’d like, than the half an hour. If you’re worried about getting through other questions. But…
Joanna Stern
I hear we have nobody else joining us at this conference.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, government is a corporation in the limit. So it is the most corporate thing. It is maximum corporation. But it’s also a monopoly. And also it’s the only one that’s allowed legally to do violence. So why would you want to give a corporation with no competition, that can’t even really go bankrupt, more money?
Now, it’s not necessary that I think the government shouldn’t exist, or that there are not good things that the government can do, or things that are necessary for the government to do. You know, for example, science programs where we send a probe to Mars.
So I’m not somebody who’s sort of an extreme libertarian and thinks the government should not do anything, I just think we should minimize what the government does. Because the government’s efficiency at spending is just going to be lower than a competitive commercial company. By a lot.
If you look at, say, East Germany versus West Germany, or North Korea versus South Korea, and you look at the GDP per capita of East and West Germany or North and South Korea, the difference is gigantic. And that’s just the difference between East and West Germany.
It’s like a random line was drawn, basically, depending on where the Red Army was and where the Allied troops were. And East Germany’s productivity was at least five times worse than West Germany’s. And it’s not like West Germany was, like, some bastion of capitalism. They were quite socialist, really. So there may be as much as an order of magnitude difference between the efficiency of a competitive private company versus the government.
Joanna Stern
I’m going to shift away from government, come back to your world. Just thinking about, sort of, how you juggle Tesla and Space X. And you’ve said along the way that the workload at Tesla is quite a lot. And I know now you could regain the chairman position. Have you thought about that? Have you thought about your, sort of, your title and your position there right now?
Elon Musk
I mean, it’s interesting, these titles. You know that there’s actually only three titles that actually mean anything for a corporation? It’s president, secretary, and treasurer. And technically they can be the same person. And all these other titles are just basically made up. So CEO is a made up title, CFO is a made up title. General Counsel, a made up title. [Titles] Don’t mean anything.
Joanna Stern
That’s amazing. I think a room of CEOs are… how we feel about that? Yep?
Elon Musk
It was obviously just somebody’s marketing experiment.
Joanna Stern
So I guess I’ll be more direct. Are you considering stepping down as CEO? Would you transfer, be chairman, and think about being chief product officer? Since CEO title doesn’t matter anyway…
Elon Musk
Well, I mean, technically I changed my title to Technoking. And by the way, this is a formal SEC filing. I’m legally, or whatever, Technoking. I just did that as kind of like a joke, just to show that these titles don’t mean a lot. You can see what is actually legally necessary if you fill out the form for creating a C-Corp. And then you’ll see it’s president, treasurer and secretary. And you need a director too. But that’s basically it. And then all these other, you know, chief whatever officer are basically just made up.
Elon Musk Calls CEO a ‘Made-Up Title’The Tesla chief executive tells WSJ’s Joanna Stern that many corporate titles “don’t mean anything,” at the WSJ CEO Council summit. Photo: Ralph Alswang for the Wall Street Journal
Joanna Stern
Is the Tesla Bot in the running for any of these titles?
Elon Musk
Not yet. Maybe in the future.
Joanna Stern
But speaking of the Tesla Bot, I know you’ve talked about the importance of creating this bot for the future of AI. Tell me a little bit about where you’re at with this project and what we can expect in the next coming months?
Elon Musk
Well, with the Tesla autopilot or full self-driving, we’re effectively, I think, creating the most advanced, practical AI for navigating the real world. And you can almost think of Tesla as, like, the world’s biggest robot company. Or a semi-sentient robot company. The car is kind of a robot on four wheels. And so then we could probably take that same technology and put it in a humanoid robot and have that robot be useful. So essentially to have the humanoid part, we need to develop some custom actuators and sensors and then essentially use the Tesla full self driving or autopilot or, just generally speaking, real-world navigation AI in the humanoid robot.
And I think this could be quite profound. I don’t know exactly when we will get this right, but we will get it right.
Joanna Stern
And you’ve said also that it will solve some labor issues. I mean, what are some things that you envision this bot doing?
Elon Musk
Well, it has the potential to be a generalized substitute for human labor over time. And the foundation of the economy is labor. I mean, capital equipment is essentially distilled labor. I asked a friend of mine actually to say, you know, just, “What should we optimize for?”
And what he said was gross profit per employee. Fully considered. So you’ve got to include the supply chain in that. The fundamental constraint is labor. There are not enough people. I can’t emphasize this enough. There are not enough people. And I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate. And yet so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers. If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words.
Joanna Stern
Is this why you have so many children?
Elon Musk
I’m trying to set a good example. Yeah. You know, gotta practice what I preach.
Joanna Stern
I won’t ask you to predict how many more children you’re going to have tonight, but I want to move on to some future talk. That’s part of where I’m going with this Tesla Bot. I’m not as good at Twitter as you are, but people on Twitter are asking me what’s going to happen on 12/9. Can you tell me what’s going to happen on 12/9?
Elon Musk
Nothing, as far as I know. I don’t know where this came from. I think this is just one of those memes that, I don’t know. It came out of nowhere. But as far as I know, nothing. But maybe something will happen that I’m not aware of.
Joanna Stern
All right. So I want to ask now a little bit farther out in the future, into 2022. And we can’t get to all your future projects, but I thought a fun way to do this might be I’m going to name some of the projects, I’m going to give you 60 seconds, and you tell me what your plan is in 2022 to move that project along and what we can expect from it.
Elon Musk
Okay…
Joanna Stern
But 60 seconds. You only get 60 seconds.
Elon Musk
Okay.
Joanna Stern
You going to do it? All right, here we…
Elon Musk
Sure…
Joanna Stern
…go. So the first one is… hold on. I think I know how to work this Apple Watch. Sixty seconds and Cybertruck.
Elon Musk
Cybertruck. Cyber truck’s going to be an incredible product. I think it may be our best product ever. I think it probably will be. It has a lot of new technology, so it’s a hard car to make. But it will be awesome. And I think I’ve said before, but, you know, we’re aiming for volume production in 2023. And I will provide a more detailed product update at the Tesla earnings call early next year. So I wish it could be sooner, but that’s most likely when it happens. It’ll be something really special, just one of those rare products that happens once in a while that’s really special.
Joanna Stern
Okay. That was about 60 seconds. I don’t know what’s going on with my watch, but now we’re onto Neuralink.
Elon Musk
Okay. Okay, so…
Joanna Stern
Yeah, so the big question is in 2022, how are you pushing that project along? What happens?
Elon Musk
So Neuralink. Neuralink’s working well in monkeys. And we’re obviously doing just a lot of testing. And just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable and that the Neuralink device can be removed safely. People may have seen the demo that we published earlier this year: the video of a monkey playing the videogame Pong telepathically using the Neuralink in its brain.
And it’s completely wireless. Charges inductively. But basically, the monkey looks completely normal. And yet it’s playing a videogame telepathically. Which is, I think, quite profound. We hope to have this in our first humans, which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries.
Like tetraplegics, quadriplegics, next year, pending FDA approval. And I should say, our standards for implanting the device are substantially higher than what the FDA requires. Just as our standards for safety with Tesla are much higher than what the U.S. government requires. And I’ve taken a little bit more than 60 seconds.
Elon Musk Hopes Neuralink Will Help Paralyzed Walk Again
Tesla’s Elon Musk told the WSJ CEO Council Summit that he hopes to have the implantable technology in humans by 2022. Photo: Ralph Alswang for the Wall Street Journal
Joanna Stern
Yes. I’m about to cut you off.
Elon Musk
Because I think there’s something that’s, I think, pretty cool. And I do want to say I’m, emphasis on, cautiously optimistic about this. I think we have a chance, with Neuralink, of being able to restore full body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury. Meaning I think we have a chance, I emphasize, a chance, of being able to allow someone who cannot walk or use their arms to be able to walk again. Naturally.
Joanna Stern
Okay. I’m not going to cut that. I can’t really cut you off when you’re talking about that. So…
Elon Musk
It’s a super big deal. And I don’t want to raise hopes unreasonably, but I’m increasingly convinced that this can be done.
Joanna Stern
All right. So the last one is Starship.
Elon Musk
Sure.
Joanna Stern
Because there’s a lot happening in 2022 on Starship, right?
Elon Musk
Yes. Man. Starship is a hard, hard, hard, hard project. This is the biggest rocket ever made. It will have a thrust and mass double that of a Saturn V, which is the largest rocket to reach orbit, and is intended to be fully and rapidly reusable.
If we are successful with this, which I think we will be, I don’t know if we will be there in 2022. I hope so. This is a profound revolution in access to orbit. There has never been a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle. This is the holy grail of space technology.
It is the fundamental breakthrough that is necessary for humanity to become a space civilization. This absorbs more of my mental energy than probably any other single thing. But it is so preposterously difficult that there are times where I wonder whether we can actually do this.
Joanna Stern
And if you had to summarize very quickly, what is so hard about it for just a normal person to understand? What is so hard about it?
Elon Musk
Well, this’ll take a lot more than 60 seconds, but…
Joanna Stern
But now I’m so interested.
Elon Musk
Okay. Well…
Joanna Stern
Oh, no…
Elon Musk
Okay, so. Okay. I am overdue for doing a Starship update. So we live in a planet where the gravity is actually very strong. We actually live on the densest planet in the solar system. Our atmosphere is very thick. And what this comes down to is, you know, a typical orbital rocket might be able to put about 2% of its liftoff mass into orbit. And then this is with smart people trying hard. Maybe 2, 2.5%. And no rocket, to the best of my knowledge, has ever gotten above 4% of its liftoff mass to orbit. So in order to make a rocket fully reusable, you’ve got to basically create a rocket that can do about 4%, if not more than 4%, of its liftoff mass to orbit. Which hasn’t happened before.
So that means you have to have basically A+s across the board. Incredibly efficient engines, incredibly efficient structure. You do need scale, because there are some efficiencies of scale. That’s part of why Starship is so gigantic.
Because, for example, the brain of the rocket really weighs about the same if it’s a small rocket or a big rocket. So with the big rocket, you get to have the avionics be, basically, we round down to 0%. Or be inconsequential in the mass of the vehicle. Then you need to make an incredibly light heat shield. And there are so many things that need to be done to have both the booster and the upper stage, or shuttle, be reusable. Insanely difficult. Many super smart people have tried to do this before and no one has succeeded.
And most of the time they’ve just given up part way through. But if full and rapid reusability can be achieved, it reduces the cost of access to orbit by a factor of a hundred or more. So…
Joanna Stern
So more of us…
Elon Musk
…it’s just like…
Joanna Stern
…could go. Eventually…
Elon Musk
Yeah, it’s like an aircraft. Imagine if an aircraft, or a car, or any form of transport was not reusable. Imagine if you had to buy a new plane every time you flew. That would make air flight insanely experience. Or a car, if you had to get a new car every time you drove somewhere, that would be unbelievably expensive, as opposed to simply refueling it.
So we’ve got to get rockets to the point where we simply refuel the rocket and we don’t throw it away. And with Falcon 9, we’ve managed to make the booster reusable and the fairing nose cone reusable.
But with Starship, we’re hoping to make the whole thing reusable. This is profound. Like I said, it’s the difference between humanity being a single planet species and a multi-planet species. It’s really that big of a deal.
Joanna Stern
All right. Well, Elon, they’re running the clock down on me, so I want to ask you one last question and then we’ll try to go to at least one or two audience questions. I wanted to ask you a little bit about humor. You’re a pretty funny guy. You show it on Twitter a lot. You’ve hosted SNL. And I’m wondering how that plays into your management style. Would your co-workers say you’re funny? Is this something you’re, sort of, bringing to the office now? Has it helped with managing your teams?
Elon Musk
I mean, I think I’m funny. I find my jokes funny. I don’t know. I guess, yeah. I do crack a lot of jokes. They don’t all land, but I am aspirationally funny. So, yeah. We try to have a good sense of humor at the office too. Yeah.
Joanna Stern
You know, I also wanted to ask that lately on Twitter, you’ve been poking fun at people for their age quite a bit. And I wanted to have a sense of, do you not plan to age? And how are you combating aging? Is there some secret technology we don’t know about that you’ve got?
Elon Musk
I am not aware of any secret technology to combat aging. And I don’t know that we should really try to live for a super long time. I think it is important for us to die because most of the time, people don’t change their mind, they just die.
And so if we live forever, then we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed. But I’m not poking fun at aging, I’m just saying, if we’ve got people in very important positions that have to make decisions that are critical to the security of the country, then they need to have sufficient presence of mind and cognitive ability to make those decisions well. Because the whole country’s depending on them.
Joanna Stern
Well, I thought you might say psychedelics were your way of not aging, but I would like to just go if anyone’s got one or two questions for this guy…
Elon Musk
I don’t think bumping acid makes you age less. So. I think drugs fully make you age more, not less. But…
Joanna Stern
All right. Any? Okay. Well, Elon, thank you so much for being with us here tonight. Oh, there is a question. Sorry. I did not see any hands up.
Audience Member
Thank you. Bal Das, from BGD Holdings. First, let me thank you for what you’re doing in terms of your breakthrough for humanity. But I am curious about your views on China. And the United States. Just on a free-flowing basis, if you want to share a few thoughts.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, I think we’re at an interesting point in history where the United States has been the world’s largest economy for as long as anyone can remember. And I think the U.S. became the largest economy, I don’t know, probably 120, 130 years ago. And there’s nobody really anymore who can remember a time when the United States was not the world’s biggest economy. Now, we’re heading towards the situation where China’s going to probably have an economy two to three times the size of the United States.
And so that’s just a different world. I do think there are a lot of people in the government in China who kind of grew up with China being a small economy. And maybe who feel like China was pushed around a lot. But they haven’t fully appreciated the fact that China is really going to be the big kid on the block.
And so if you’re going to be the big kid on the block, you can really be pretty chill about things. Other countries are not really a threat to you, if you’re by far the biggest kid on the block. So I would say that’s kind of an important mind-set change hopefully that China goes through.
Is just, you know, to think, how would you want the biggest kid on the block to behave? And if you are going to be the biggest kid on the block, then wouldn’t you want to behave like you would have wanted the biggest kid on the block to behave? I think that’s pretty important. Overall, I think Tesla has a good relationship with China. And I don’t mean to endorse everything that China does any more than I would, say, endorse everything the United States does. Or any country. But overall, I think we are headed to an interesting and different world. And I hope that we can remember that we’re all human beings and let’s just try to have as positive a relationship as possible and work towards mutual prosperity of humanity as a whole.
Joanna Stern
Well, Elon, thank you so much for being here tonight. Or where you are. And thank you, everybody. And we hope to see you next year.
