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Home » Transcript: Elon Musk on DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones – on All-In Podcast

Transcript: Elon Musk on DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones – on All-In Podcast

Read the full transcript of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s interview on All-In Podcast on “DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones, Evolving with AI, Why the West is Imploding”, September 10, 2025.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on All-In Podcast: DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones, and AI Evolution

INTERVIEWER: All right. Where are you?

ELON MUSK: Palo Alto.

INTERVIEWER: You’re in Palo Alto and not Washington.

ELON MUSK: I’m at Tesla Global Engineering headquarters in Palo Alto.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. So no more Washington DC. You’re back at work, you’re focused.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, yeah, I haven’t been to D.C. since May.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

ELON MUSK: That was a hell of a side quest.

Lessons from Washington D.C.

INTERVIEWER: Any lessons from your time in Washington D.C.?

ELON MUSK: The government is basically unfixable. I applaud David’s noble efforts. It’s good to have talented people in the administration. But at the end of the day, if you look at our national debt, which is insanely high, the interest payments exceed the Defense Department, I guess. Sorry, War Department budget, and they keep rising.

So if AI and robots don’t solve our national debt, we’re toast, which is a great segue.

Optimus: The Greatest Product in Human History

INTERVIEWER: Optimus is, I think, going to be the greatest product in the history of humanity. What’s the progress like? And how much of your cycles are going specifically to Optimus? What’s the timeline? I think you’re on version three, maybe four. Tell us everything.

ELON MUSK: Well, yeah, everything would take a long time. We’ve got time. We’re finalizing the design of Optimus version 3. And that really is going to be a very remarkable robot.

It will have essentially the manual dexterity of a human, submitting a very complex hand, an AI mind that can navigate and comprehend reality, and it will be made in very high volume. Those are the three things that are missing.