Transcript of Elon Musk Remarks at the Qatar Economic Forum

So pay is a relevant factor then to your commitment to Tesla?

ELON MUSK: Sufficient voting control such that I cannot be ousted by activist investors is what matters to me. And I’ve said this publicly many times, but let’s not have this whole thing be a discussion of mileage pay. It’s not a money thing. It’s a reasonable control thing over the future of the company. Especially if we’re building millions, potentially billions of humanoid robots. I can’t be sitting there and want to get tossed out by political reasons, by activists. That would be unacceptable. That’s all that matters now. Let’s move on.

Political Backlash and Tesla

INTERVIEWER: Okay, well, just one question. Well, one question before we move on to other companies, which is that I wonder if some of what you’ve has happened to Tesla in the last few months, did you take it personally?

ELON MUSK: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And did it make you regret any of or think twice about your political endeavors? Because it is.

ELON MUSK: I did what needed to be done. The violent antibody reaction. And I’m not someone who’s ever committed violence. And yet massive violence was committed against my companies. Massive violence was threatened against me. Who are these people? Why would they do that? How wrong can they be? They’re on the wrong side of history. And that’s an evil thing to do, to go and damage some co. Innocent person’s car to threaten to kill me. What’s wrong with these people? I’ve not harmed anyone. So something needs to be done about them and a number of them are going to prison and they deserve it.

INTERVIEWER: You’re referring to the attacks on Tesla showrooms, but I think, yeah, bullets into.

ELON MUSK: Showrooms and burning down cars is unacceptable. Yeah, those people will go to prison. And the people that funded them and organized them will also go to prison. Don’t worry.

INTERVIEWER: But wouldn’t you come and free. You wouldn’t, wouldn’t you? But wouldn’t. Wouldn’t you acknowledge that some of the people who turned against Tesla in Europe were. Were upset at your politics and very few of them would have been violent in any way. They just objected to what they saw you say or do politically.

ELON MUSK: Well, it’s certainly fine to object to political things, but it’s not fine to resort to violence. And hanging someone in effigy and death threats, that’s obviously not okay. You know, that’s absurd. That is in no way justifiable at all, in any way, shape or form. And some of the legacy media nonetheless have sought to justify it, which is unconscionable. Shame on them.

SpaceX and Future Plans

INTERVIEWER: Let’s talk about your other companies then. And other business areas. SpaceX. I saw that you said in a speech at the West Point Military Academy recently that the future of warfare is AI and drones. And obviously defense is an increasingly booming sector with the state of the world at the moment. Do you see SpaceX moving into weaponized drones?

ELON MUSK: You certainly ask interesting questions that answer. So SpaceX is, it’s the space launch leader. So SpaceX doesn’t do drones. SpaceX builds rockets, satellites and Internet terminals. So SpaceX has a very dominant position in space launch. So of the mass launch to orbit this year, SpaceX will probably do 90%. China will do half of the remaining amount, so 5%. And the rest of the world, including the rest of the US will do about 5%. So SpaceX will do about 10 times as much as the rest of world combined, or 20 times as much as China, which is, and China is doing actually a very impressive job.

The reason for this is that we are putting into orbit the largest satellite constellation the world has ever seen by far. So I think at this point about approaching 80% of all active satellites in orbit are SpaceX and they’re providing global, high bandwidth, global connectivity throughout the world. In fact, this connection is on a SpaceX connection.

So I think this is a very good thing because it means that we can provide low cost, high bandwidth Internet to parts of the world that don’t have it or where it’s very expensive. And I think the single biggest thing you can do to lift people out of poverty is, and help them is giving them an Internet connection. Because once you have the Internet connection, you can learn anything for free on the Internet. And you can also sell your goods and services to the global market. And once you have knowledge by the Internet and the ability to engage in commerce, that this is going to greatly improve quality of life for people throughout the world. And it has.

And I’d just like to thank anyone in the audience who may have been helpful in, you know, with Starlink and getting it approved in their country. And I think it’s doing a lot of good on the countries that have approved it, which is, I think at this point, 130 countries are very happy with it. I don’t currently anticipate SpaceX getting into the weapons business. That’s certainly not an aspiration. We’re frequently asked to do, to do weapons programs, but we have thus far declined.

Potential Starlink IPO

INTERVIEWER: Do you envisage SpaceX or indeed Starlink as a separate entity, publicly listing in the near future or at all?

ELON MUSK: It’s possible that Starlink may go public at some point in the future.

INTERVIEWER: And what would be the time frame? What kind of time frame you consider.

ELON MUSK: I’m in no rush. I’m in no rush to go public. The, you know, public is, I guess, a way to potentially make more money, but at the expense of a lot of public company overhead and inevitably a whole bunch of lawsuits, which are very annoying.

So really something needs to be done about the shareholder derivative lawsuits in the US because it allows plaintiffs law firms who don’t represent the shareholders to pretend that they represent the shareholders by getting a puppet plaintiff with a few shares to initiate a massive lawsuit against the company. And the irony being that, extreme irony, that even if the class they purport to represent were to vote that they don’t want the lawsuit, the lawsuit would still continue. So how can it be a class action representing a class if the class vote against it? And that’s the bizarre situation we’ve got in the US that needs, it’s a dire need of reform, as anyone who’s running a public company experienced this. It’s an absurd situation that needs to change.

INTERVIEWER: Well, do you think Donald Trump might change it? You’ve certainly got his ear. I imagine that you’ve put this to him. Is this something you’re trying to change before any starlink ipo?

ELON MUSK: Well, it would need a law to be passed, the trouble being that you need 60 Senate votes and the Democrats will vote against it. The plaintiff’s bar is, I believe, the second largest contributor to the Democratic Party. That’s the issue. At the state level. This can be solved. And, I should say Texas recently passed a law which at this, at least the state level made, made the election lawsuits much more reasonable because you have to get at least one in 33 shareholders to agree that they are part of a class of shareholders. 3%. This is, this will be really help with frivolous lawsuits.

AI and Regulation

INTERVIEWER: Okay, let’s talk about AI, which is in so many of your businesses and in all our world in different ways. It’s one of the big changes, the development of generative AI. Since you last spoke to this forum three years ago, you’re in this space, of course, with grok, which almost everyone will know. You co-founded OpenAI and then left. And you’ve obviously got a legal battle with OpenAI and Sam Altman. I wonder if you could say something about the status of that, because you were together in Saudi Arabia with the president last week with Sam Altman in.

ELON MUSK: The same place at the same time, in the neighborhood.

INTERVIEWER: Does that mean you are pushing ahead with the lawsuit against OpenAI?

ELON MUSK: Yes. So I came up with the name OpenAI as an open source and as a nonprofit. And I funded AI OpenAI for the first roughly $50 million. And it was intended to be a nonprofit open source company. And now is they’re trying to change that for their own financial benefit into a for profit company that is closed source. So this would be like, let’s say you funded a non profit to help preserve the Amazon rainforest, but instead of doing that, they became a lumber company, chopped down the forest and sold the wood. You’d be like, wait a second, that’s not what I funded. That’s OpenAI.

INTERVIEWER: They’ve made some changes to their corporate structure though, haven’t they, since in recognition of what you’ve said and.

ELON MUSK: No, that’s just what they told the media.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. They have partly walked back their plan to restructure the business. I guess that’s made no difference to how you feel about it. So you determined to see them in court?

ELON MUSK: Of course.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, well, that’s certainly going to be one to watch. I also wanted to ask you about AI and regulation because when you were here last talking to John Micklethwait, you had some pretty strong words about the risk that AI poses. And you said that you really felt what the US was missing was a federal AI regulator that, you know, something along the lines of the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Aviation Administration. Now you’re clearly now in a zone where you’re more on the cutting regulation side than wanting new regulators. So has your view changed on the need for an AI regulator?

ELON MUSK: Well, it’s not that I don’t think there should be regulators. You think of regulators like referees on the field. In sports there should be some number of referees, but you shouldn’t have so many referees that you can’t kick the ball without hitting one. So in many, in most fields in the US the regulatory burden has grown over time to the point where it’s like having more referees than players on the field. And this is a natural consequence of an extended period of prosperity.

It’s very important to appreciate this. This has happened throughout history. When you have an extended period of prosperity with no existential war, there’s no cleansing function for the unnecessary laws and regulations. So what happens is that every year more laws and more regulations are passed because, you know, legislators are going to legislate, regulators are going to regulate, and you will get the steady pile of more and more laws and regulations over time until everything is illegal.

And let me give you an example of a truly absurd situation. Under the Biden administration, SpaceX was sued for not hiring asylum seekers in the US. Now the problem is it’s actually illegal for SpaceX under ITAR International Traffic and Arms regulations to hire anyone who is not a permanent resident of the United States, because the premise being that they will take advanced rocket technology and return to their home country if they’re not a permanent resident. So we’re simultaneously in a situation where it is illegal to hire asylum seekers and is also illegal to hire asylum seekers. And the Biden’s Department of Justice chose to prosecute us despite both paths being illegal. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

INTERVIEWER: But my question was specifically about a regulator for AI, which you said three years ago was needed. And you said we need to be proactive on the regulation of AI rather than reactive. Have you changed your mind on that?

ELON MUSK: No, of course not. Of course not. What I’m saying is that there should be some referees on the field, a few referees, but you shouldn’t have a field jam packed with referees such that you cannot kick a ball direction without hitting one. So the fields that have been around for a long time, such as automotive, aerospace, you know, the sort of food and drug industries, are over regulated. But the new fields, like artificial intelligence, are under regulated. In fact, there is no regulator at all.

INTERVIEWER: So there should be. You still think that?

ELON MUSK: Yes, I’m simply saying, which I think is just basic common sense, that you want to have at least a few referees in the field. You don’t want to have an army of referees, but you want to have a few referees on any given field, in any given sport, or even any given arena, industrial arena, to ensure that public safety is taken care of. But you don’t want to have. So there’s a proper number of referees. Like I said, it’s actually very easy to visualize this when compared to sports. If the whole field is packed with referees, that would look absurd. But if there were no referees at all, your game is not going to be as good.

Government Advisory Role and Potential Conflicts

INTERVIEWER: Okay, so let’s then talk about your new world, your role advising government. You are in this unique and unprecedented position of having billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government yourself, mostly through SpaceX, and also now an insider’s knowledge of it because of DOGE. Can you see that there is a conflict of interest, or a potential conflict of interest in broad terms, just through that very fact.

ELON MUSK: I don’t think so. Actually, there have been many advisers throughout history and the U.S. government and others who have had economic interests. And I am simply an advisor. I don’t have formal power and that’s it. President can choose to accept my advice or not. And that’s how it goes. If there’s a single contract that any of my companies have received that people think is somehow not was awarded improperly, it would immediately be front page news to say the least. And if I didn’t mention it, certainly my competitors would. So if you’re not seeing that, then clearly it’s not a conflict of interest.

INTERVIEWER: There’s another way though to look at it that for example, you have many competitors, whether it’s companies like Boeing or companies who would like to do more of the kind of work you do for NASA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab. And because DOGE is in every federal government department, you or people who work for DOGE and, and you are the driving force behind it, have an insight into those companies affairs and those companies relationships with the federal government.

ELON MUSK: All we do is we review the organization to see if the organization has departments that are no longer relevant and are the contracts that are being awarded good value for money? In fact, frankly, the bar is not particularly high. Is there any value for money in a contract? And if there isn’t, then we make recommendations to the Secretary. The Secretary can then choose to take those actions or not take those actions and that’s it.

And then any action that is as a function of DOGE is posted to the DOGE website and to the doge.gov@doge handle on the X platform. So it’s complete transparency. And I have not seen any case where to the best of my knowledge has even been an accusation of conflict because it is completely and utterly transparent. That’s it.

INTERVIEWER: And what about the international dimension? Now let’s think about Starlink. Starlink is obviously a very, very good Internet service. It’s sought after all over the world. It’s critical to the front line in Ukraine. It has also had more contracts coming its way and there is some evidence that companies are allowing access to it because they want to be close to the Trump administration and send the right signal. So Bloomberg broke news today that the South African government is working around the rules on black ownership in order to allow Starlink in. And that is being done on the eve of the visit that President Ramaphosa is going to make to the White House. Do you recognize that as a conflict of interest?

ELON MUSK: No, of course not. First of all, you should be questioning why are there racist laws in South Africa? That’s the first problem. That’s what you should be attacking. It’s improper for there to be racist laws in South Africa. The whole idea with what Nelson Mandela, who was a great man, proposed, was that all races should be on an equal footing in South Africa. That’s the right thing to do. Not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws, which is utterly wrong and improper.

So that’s the deal, that all races should be treated equally and there should be no preference given to one or the other. Whereas there are now 140 laws in South Africa that give. That basically give strong preference to, if you’re black, South African and not otherwise. And so now I’m in this absurd situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a license to operate in starlink because I’m not black.

INTERVIEWER: Well, it looks like that’s about. Looks like that’s about to change.

ELON MUSK: I just asked you a question. Please answer. Does that seem right to you?

INTERVIEWER: Well, those rules were designed to bring. Those rules were designed to bring about an era of more economic equality in South Africa. And it looks like the government has found a way around those rules for you.

ELON MUSK: Ask you a question.

INTERVIEWER: This is your interview. Everyone wants to hear from you.

ELON MUSK: Yes or no?

INTERVIEWER: Not for me. Not for me to answer. I have got a question for you about your government work, though, and the amount of savings.

ELON MUSK: I do like racist laws.

INTERVIEWER: This is not for me to answer. Come on, now. You wouldn’t be trying to dodge a question.

ELON MUSK: You have to ask a question. I’m not my question. No, you answer mine.

INTERVIEWER: I think if you. I’m sure you can have that conversation directly with the South African government if you want to. I want to ask you about the total.

ELON MUSK: I can’t believe it. That’s not good.

DOGE and Government Savings

INTERVIEWER: I want to ask you about the total amount. I want to ask you about the total amount that you’re planning to save through DOGE’s work. Before the election, you said it was going to be at least 2 trillion. The number currently on doge.gov is $170 billion. That’s a big, big change. What happened to the 2 trillion?

ELON MUSK: Or do you expect it to happen immediately?

INTERVIEWER: Well, is it going to happen because DOGE is supposed to run till next July?

ELON MUSK: I mean, your question is absurd in this fundamental premise. Are you assuming that on day, you know, within a few months, there’s an instant 2 trillion saved?

INTERVIEWER: No, I’m not at all. I’m just asking, is that still your aim then? Is it still your aim to get.

ELON MUSK: Have we not made good progress given the amount of time?

INTERVIEWER: That’s exactly what I’m asking. So is it still your aim to go from 170 billion to 2 trillion?

ELON MUSK: The ability of DOGE to operate is a function of whether the government, and this includes the Congress, is willing to take our advice. We are not the dictators of the government. We are the advisors. And so we can advise. And the progress we’ve made thus far, I think, is incredible. DOGE team has done incredible work, but the magnitude of the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress and from the executive branch of the government in general. So we’re not the dictators, we are the advisors. But thus far, for advisors with DOGE team to their credit has made incredible progress.

INTERVIEWER: You’ve talked about $4 billion a day being saved, but that won’t get. Which is. I think everyone can agree that combating waste and inefficiency in government is a very good thing, but if you add that up, it’s not going to get to 2 trillion over the lifetime of DOGE. The 4 billion. The 4 billion a day, if DOGE is going to run till next July, is not going to get you to $2 trillion. But you still say it’s your aim, so we’ll take that as Red.

DOGE Advisory Group and Government Efficiency

ELON MUSK: There’s this. There’s what, Doge? I mean, I feel you’re somewhat trapped in the NPC dialogue tree of a traditional journalist. So it’s difficult when I’m conversing with someone who’s trapped in a dialogue tree of a conventional journalist, because it’s like talking to a computer.

DOGE is an advisory group. We are doing the best we can as an advisory group. The progress made thus far as an advisory group is excellent. I don’t think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups with the government. Now, we do not make the laws, nor do we control the judiciary, nor do we control the executive branch. We are simply advisors in that context. We are doing very well beyond that. We can’t take action beyond that because we are not some sort of imperial dictator of the government. There are three branches of government that are to some degree opposed to that level of cost savings. Let’s not criticize whether there’s 4 trillion and instead look at the fact that 160 billion has been saved and more will be saved too.

INTERVIEWER: And as I said, I think everyone can agree that cutting waste and indeed fraud in any government and being responsible with taxpayers’ money is a very good thing. So I can see that you’re proud of that work. I do want to ask you about USAID and the comments that Bill Gates made the other day, which I know that you called him. I know you’ve said that already. I wanted.

On Bill Gates and USAID Funding

ELON MUSK: Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he was associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well, he’s said he regrets those. And he spent a lot of his own money on philanthropy around the world over the years. My question to you is, have you looked at the data to check if he might be right, that the cuts to USAID might cost millions of lives?

ELON MUSK: Yes. I’d like him to show us any evidence whatsoever that that is true. It’s false, what we found with USAID cuts. And by the way, they haven’t all been cut. The parts of USAID that we found to be even slightly useful were transferred to the State Department. So they’ve not been deleted, they’ve simply been transferred to the State Department.

But many, many times over with USAID and other organizations when we’ve, when they said, oh, well, this is going to help, you know, children or it’s going to help some disease eradication or something like that. And then when we ask for any evidence whatsoever, I say, well, please connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about their issue. We get nothing. We don’t even try to prevent show. We should come up with a show orphan, meaning like, it’s sort of like, well, can we at least see a few kids? Like, where are they? If they’re in trouble, we’d like to talk to them and talk to their caregivers. And then we get nothing as a response because it’s what we find is an enormous amount of fraud and graft.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, let me put this example.

ELON MUSK: Very little of it actually gets to the kids, if anything at all.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, let me put this example to you because you grew up in South Africa, so you’ll know the impact of HIV AIDS. Well, and this is why I asked about the data. The US led on international efforts to combat HIV AIDS treatment prevention. And there’s an initiative called PEPFAR, which is credited with saving 26 million lives in the last 20 years. It was part of the foreign aid freeze. Then there was a limited waiver. Its services are disrupted and UN AIDS says if permanently discontinued, there will be another 4 million AIDS related deaths by 2029. So if you look at that example, which is backed up by data in 2023, 630,000 people died of AIDS related illnesses, then perhaps Bill Gates figures are not wrong. Millions of lives could be lost.

ELON MUSK: First of all, the program, the AIDS medication program is continuing. So your fundamental premise is wrong. It is continuing. Now, do you have another example?

INTERVIEWER: Not in its entirety, Elon. Not in its entirety. There’s a limited waiver, and UNAIDS have said that not all of the services that were previously funded by USAID are continuing. So that’s why I put that example to you.

ELON MUSK: Okay, well, which ones aren’t being funded? I’ll fix it right now.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, well, actually, they’re all on the UNAIDS website, so you’ll be able to see them. But mostly they are to do with prevention and for example, the rollout of a drug called Lenacapavir, which was hailed as one of the biggest breakthroughs against AIDS for many years, which came out last year. So I’m sure UNAIDS would be delighted if you’re able to look at that again.

ELON MUSK: Yes, but if, in fact this is true, which I doubt it is, then we’ll fix it.

Political Influence and Future Spending

INTERVIEWER: Okay, fine. So, finally, political. Your political influence. I wondered whether you have decided yet how much you’re going to spend on the upcoming midterms. You spent a lot more money on the last U.S. election than you envisaged when you were speaking here three years ago. Are you going to continue to spend at that kind of level on future elections?

ELON MUSK: I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.

INTERVIEWER: And why is that?

ELON MUSK: I think I’ve done enough.

INTERVIEWER: Is it because of blowback?

ELON MUSK: Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.

INTERVIEWER: What about political influence beyond the U.S. how often do you speak to President Putin?

ELON MUSK: I don’t speak to President Putin.

INTERVIEWER: You’ve never spoken to President Putin?

ELON MUSK: I was on a video call with him once about five years ago.

INTERVIEWER: That’s the only time? I’ve heard you speak about it. For example, in your West Point speech, you said, oh, I challenged President Putin to, was it an arm wrestle? And I know the Wall Street Journal has reported your reported conversations. If you’re saying they haven’t happened other than once, I’ll take that as red.

ELON MUSK: Is there a worse publication on the face of the earth than the Wall Street Journal? I wouldn’t use that to line up my cage for paragraphings. That newspaper is the worst newspaper in the world. And if there’s one newspaper that should be pro capitalist, it’s the one with Wall Street in the name. But it isn’t. So I have the very lowest opinion of the Wall Street Journal. Absolute nonsense. And you clearly believe the triumph that you’ve read in those papers.

INTERVIEWER: I read very widely. And I’m putting these questions to you so that you have an opportunity to respond to them, which you are. And for which we’re all grateful to hear your responses. Okay, we are out of time.

ELON MUSK: You mentioned me challenging. I did so on the X platform. I challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat. I didn’t talk to him. That was a post on the X platform.

INTERVIEWER: That’s why I asked you. And you’ve clarified and explained. Thank you. That’s why I was asking whether you have had reported conversations and you said you haven’t other than a video call. Okay.

ELON MUSK: Legacy media lies.

Looking Ahead: Technological Breakthroughs

INTERVIEWER: Okay, listen, I actually thought I might give Grok the last word because when I asked Grok what your hardest challenge is, it said the strain of managing multiple high stakes ventures amid financial, regulatory and public relations crises. And I wondered whether you recognize that characterization and whether you do think that this is a pivotal year in your life.

ELON MUSK: Well, every year has been somewhat pivotal and this one’s no different. So in terms of interesting things that probably are accomplished this year. Getting Starship to be fully reusable so that we catch both the booster and the ship which will be the first fully reusable orbital rocket ever in history, which would be a profound breakthrough as the essential breakthrough necessarily to make life multi-planetary and ultimately become a space faring civilization.

We’ve got Neuralink which is now helping patients restore capability using the telepathy implant where they’re able to control a computer simply by thinking. We’ll be doing our first patient to restore sight with our blindsight implant which is either end of this year or early next. In fact that first patient might be in UAE since we have a relationship with UAE and the Cleveland Clinic there.

I think on the AI front, we are close to what you might call AGI or digital superintelligence. I think we’ll see. We are seeing an explosion in digital superintelligence here. And then at Tesla, we’ll be launching unsupervised autonomy, basically self-driving cars with no one in them in Austin next month. So it’s a big year for sure. Many other things in the works too.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

ELON MUSK: I’m a technologist, first and foremost.

INTERVIEWER: Elon Musk, thank you very much for joining us here at Qatar Economic Forum. Thank you.

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