SPEAKER_01: Okay, wait.

David Sacks: I'll just read off all of your companies, Elon. I know them, but I'm just going to read them to make sure I don't miss one because there's so many now. Founder, CEO, Chief Engineer of SpaceX, CEO, Product Architect, and Chairman of Tesla, Owner, Chairman, CTO of X, X.com, Founder of Boring Company, Co-Founder of Neuralink and OpenAI, and President of the Musk Foundation. Did I get everything?

SPEAKER_10: Rain Man, David Sack.

SPEAKER_14: Where are you?

SPEAKER_18: Rain Man, it is coming.

SPEAKER_16: It's kind of absurd. Where are you, at Starbase?

SPEAKER_19: I'm in flight, currently. So this is a Starlink and flight connection.

SPEAKER_20: Are you kidding me? Oh, yeah, that works pretty well, huh? I think there's only one. Wait, I think it's one of one.

SPEAKER_19: Test of how Starlink works in an airplane at altitude.

SPEAKER_30: There's only one of those in existence, right? It's on your plane, that's it, 101?

SPEAKER_31: There are a number of airliners that have Starlink, and there will be a lot more in the future. The Starlink connection,

SPEAKER_34: assuming it's working properly, is you won't even be able to tell you're on the ground or in the air. Because unlike the geosynchronous satellites, the latency is, you know, really can be less than 20 milliseconds.

SPEAKER_31: So, it's, in fact, for a lot of, I think for some people, the sonic connection on the plane will be better than their connection at their house.

SPEAKER_36: That would be pretty great. How is the Starship doing? It was incredible to see the first launch, but I understand you're closing in on the second. I know you've been working really hard on that, and the team's working hard on it.

SPEAKER_38: When do you think you're going to get the next one up, and what are the chances it makes it to orbit?

SPEAKER_41: Well, we have the second one stacked at Starbase, so it's ready to go.

SPEAKER_43: And we just finished that up in the last week. We believe we've completed the remaining items requested by the FAA,

SPEAKER_44: so we should get our license hopefully soon. But really, the only thing holding back the second planet of Starship at this point is the record for approval.

SPEAKER_36: Wow. What's your expectation, or your hope, in terms of the probability that it gets to orbit?

SPEAKER_41: It's just a question of timing. How long it just takes to get the approval of paperwork and whatnot.

SPEAKER_43: So that's really up to the FAA at this point.

SPEAKER_38: Yeah. But what about making it to orbit? Do you think you got a shot this time?

SPEAKER_41: We are doing a new staging technique called hot staging, where you light the upstage engines or the ship engines while the boost stage is still firing. And this is the most efficient way to do stage separation of a rocket going orbit. But we did not try that on the last mission, and we're trying it on this mission.

SPEAKER_43: We think it will be overall better. But I think we'll have a, I hope, well over 50% chance of getting to stage separation.

SPEAKER_41: And maybe a close to 50% chance of getting to orbit if the hot staging, the new separation method, is it works.

SPEAKER_43: So I'd say maybe it's like a, you know, above, I'd say probably above 50% chance of getting to orbit this time, whereas previously I said below 50%.

SPEAKER_58: Is this, in terms of complexity, how complex is this of a problem compared to the other problems you've worked on in your career?

SPEAKER_61: Well, I mean, making a rocket that is more than twice the size of a Saturn V, you know, it's a, in fact,

SPEAKER_41: with an extra rub of the rocket, it'll have roughly three times the thrust of a Saturn V moon rocket. Um, wherever it's designed to be fully or rapidly reusable, whereas the, you know, the Saturn V was completely expandable. And with Falcon 9, we, we still expand the outdoor stage.

SPEAKER_43: Uh, but we, we break back the blue stage, as people have probably seen in the, the rocket landing videos. And we are also able to recover the variant, um, with, with Falcon 9, but it, these things do land quickly out to sea. So it takes a while to bring them back to board and get ready to play the game. The, the, the thing that, you know, so, so there's a scale of Starship, but then also the fact that it is designed for full and rapid reusability.

SPEAKER_34: So both the booster and the ship come back to the launch site, they get caught by these giant wreckers alarms, which we've seen in Congress versus, uh, Godzilla.

SPEAKER_64: Uh, it's basically that, uh, catches this giant rocket out of, you know, red air and puts it back on the launch stand and gets ready for launch. So it will be capable of, you know, basically aircraft level flight rates.

SPEAKER_65: Um, but, but it's much bigger than say a 747 or a 380. Um,

Chamath Palihapitiya: Elon, can we, um, talk about the events of, was it last weekend, the whole Ukraine Starlink thing?

David Friedberg: Can you give us like a, the tick tock of like what's going on and like how you're being forced to decide? Uh, but like, what, what is it like in that decision room, if there was one or wherever you were, where you're trying to figure out, am I keeping this on? Do I turn it off? What is going on? People must've been bombarding you. Whatever you can share about what that was like, how you made the decision.

SPEAKER_76: Um, yeah, I, I, so, uh, I was actually mistaken, uh, a little bit in, in understanding the situation.

SPEAKER_41: Um, you know, obviously we, we, SpaceX have provided, uh, Starlink connectivity for, you know, to Ukraine, um, really since the beginning of the war. Uh, we're really, within a few days of the war starting. Um, and as the Ukrainian, uh, government said, the, uh, Starlink was instrumental in the defense of Ukraine. So, you know, they've said that really many times, although the media forgets to mention that.

SPEAKER_78: Um, so, and in fact, they've said it on Twitter, uh, you know, X, fully known as Twitter.

SPEAKER_80: It's going to take a while to get that right, yeah.

SPEAKER_82: It'll take a little time.

SPEAKER_43: Hey, hey, um, so, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to take my word for it, you just read what, what they posted. Um, you know, uh, so, uh, Starlink has been incredibly helpful to the Great World War effort. Um, we figured it out of pocket, uh, very significantly, uh, to help them.

SPEAKER_86: Um, and, um, at the time this happened, the, uh, region around, uh, uh, Crimea, um, was actually turned off. Now, the reason it was turned off was, actually, originally, was because the United States had sanctions against Russia. Um, and we're not allowed to actually, and, uh, that includes Crimea in the sanctions. And we're not allowed to actually turn on, uh, connectivity to sanction the country without explicit government approval.

SPEAKER_87: Um, which we did not have from the U.S. government.

SPEAKER_34: So, um, so, so basically the, uh, uh, look at, you know, Ukraine didn't, didn't give us any, any advance warning or heads up or anything.

SPEAKER_41: Um, we just got the, the sort of, uh, urgent calls from the Ukrainian government saying that we needed to turn on Crimea. It's like in the middle of the night, basically.

SPEAKER_78: We were like, what are you talking about, you know? You lost? What's it for?

SPEAKER_43: Um, you know, and, uh, you know, we, we, we, we, we basically, um, figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor type attack on, um, this festival.

SPEAKER_44: So they're really asking us for, to, to really, for actively take part in a major act of war, um, and, um, you know, while we certainly have huge support for the Ukrainian government, um, the Ukrainian government is not in charge of U.S., uh, people or companies.

SPEAKER_86: Uh, that's not how it works.

SPEAKER_96: And, and Elon, if, if I could just, yeah.

SPEAKER_76: But, but I, but I, I should say that, you know, well, although I'm not, uh, President Biden's biggest fan, if, if I had received a presidential directive to turn it on, I would have done so.

SPEAKER_86: Because I do regard the president as the chief executive officer of the country, whether I want that to be the, the, the, the president or not, I still respect the office.

SPEAKER_76: And so, if, if, you know, if, if we've gotten, if I've gotten a request from the president type of thing, from the American president, to be clear.

SPEAKER_99: Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_76: Then I, I would have turned it on, you know, so, but those such requests came through.

SPEAKER_104: That, that's a really, that's a really interesting point.

David Sacks: And, um, you're, I mean, the, the, the, what Chamath is referring to is you're now being attacked. I saw there was, uh, you know, there was Jake Tapper, uh, the other day on CNN interviewing our secretary of state was just, he was all lathered up, basically attacking you for this. Uh, David, David, David.

SPEAKER_111: I mean, to his credit, uh, Secretary Blinken was actually quite supportive.

SPEAKER_43: Yeah. Despite the absurd, uh, you know, accusations and the questions of the Jake Tapper on CNN. Yeah.

SPEAKER_114: Yeah. He didn't take the bait to his credit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_115: Um, he didn't take the bait to his credit. Yeah. He didn't take the bait to his credit. Uh, for not, um, you know, taking the bait at all. Yeah.

David Sacks: Well, I, to me, this is an example of no good deed goes unpunished because if you had never given. I hope so.

SPEAKER_117: I hope some good deeds that go unpunished.

SPEAKER_118: I mean, if you, if you had never given Starlink.

SPEAKER_119: I think she was smart to that, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_118: But yeah, I mean, my point is just, if, if you had never given Starlink to the Ukrainian government for free, voluntarily, you just volunteered it, then no one would be attacking you right now. For not turning it on so they could do their attack on Crimea. Um, also, one other thing I'll note is that your reason for not turning it on, which is, you don't be part of what could be a major escalation. Yes. Was exactly, was exactly the reason the Biden administration did not give ATAKIM's, ATAKIM missiles, to Ukraine at that point in the war. Now, they may be changing their minds, but they were very worried about an attack the administration was. An attack on Crimea, triggering some huge escalation of this war. So, not only did you not receive a directive from President Biden, your thinking was very much in line with theirs at the time. Right. And yet, and you're being attacked for that now.

David Friedberg: There, there's something you mentioned, which is that you did this at a lot of economic costs to SpaceX. That's right. Can you just talk, can you just talk about that for a second? Because I'm not sure people understand who's paying for what right now and who hasn't been paid and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

SPEAKER_127: There's, well, as you said, like a lot of people contributed to the effort.

SPEAKER_86: Starlink is the fundamental communication backbone of the Ukrainian government and essential services, like first responders and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_44: And, you know, it's, it's used, we hope peacefully, relatively peacefully on the war front. It is the only thing that works on the war front. Everything else has been jammed by the Russians.

SPEAKER_130: So, it's the only thing that works. Not, not one of the things.

SPEAKER_131: You know, but, but I think you have to sort of think of, say, the, you know, the, you know, taking the actual example of Pearl Harbor and say like, well, how did that work out for Japan? It didn't work out well at all.

SPEAKER_133: Right. Because it was a, a tactical victory, a strategic defeat.

SPEAKER_131: It enraged the American public, who sort of naturally wanted vengeance for, for the sack, you know, the sack.

SPEAKER_133: And I think that, that, you know, while I don't think it's on the same scale, that there was certainly that potential of sort of a, many Pearl Harbor, the, with the results of getting a mass escalation of, uh, hostilities.

SPEAKER_134: Um, but not, this, this would, this would not, this would not defeat Russia. It would enrage Russia.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Do you donate, do you donate the network? Or do they pay you for it? Sorry?

SPEAKER_137: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I'm actually not sure what the final accounting is at this point.

SPEAKER_86: But, uh, I, I think, at one point, at one point, uh, you calculated on our sort of cost of sporting things that are roughly a hundred million dollars. Now, the hundred million dollars does not count, um, the massive risk to the entire Starlink constellation.

SPEAKER_131: Uh, because, uh, Russia would like to have the entire thing deleted. Um, so, uh, you know, nobody's compensating us for that.

SPEAKER_44: Um, and, uh, so if we were to get, say, uh, our control center were, uh, take down a cyber attack,

SPEAKER_86: they, you know, command all the satellites to the orbit. Um, and destroy the entire system. Uh, or use anti-satellite weapons. Um, so, you know, these are, this is a pretty significant risk. Um, for which we have not received any compensation.

SPEAKER_47: And obviously, would be catastrophic to the entire Starlink system, which is, you know, approaching 10 billion dollars.

SPEAKER_141: Elon, do you think the current government administration...

SPEAKER_130: One saying, hey, 10 million dollars. And then, uh, actually, I say, one of the, uh, broad and interesting things was, as you, as you've seen this,

SPEAKER_86: there's a very large amount of money that's been appropriated for, uh, Ukraine. You know, I'm not sure what the total is at this point. But, it must be 100, close to 100 billion, or somewhere between 80 and 100 billion.

SPEAKER_131: Um, you know, now, all of the, you know, other sort of providers, U.S. providers of support to Ukraine are being paid. So, then, why should SpaceX be excluded? That doesn't make sense. We're, we're, we're doing one of the most valuable things. And yet, we aren't getting the least money in the system, sir. Um, but, you know, despite that, we're still happy to keep, keep it going. And, um...

SPEAKER_141: Elon, does the Biden administration have it out for you? And why?

SPEAKER_147: Uh, why did we give you that idea?

SPEAKER_141: Yeah.

SPEAKER_148: But, let me ask, you own and control...

SPEAKER_111: I mean, I don't know if the whole administration has it out for me, but... Right.

SPEAKER_43: I think there's probably aspects of the administration that are not, uh... Or, you know, aspects of, you know, interests aligned with, uh, with President Biden, who probably do not, um, wish good things for me. Um... If...

SPEAKER_41: I don't know, you know, really what their issue is, but... There, there, there does seem to be, um, a significant increase in the weaponization of government. Um, and, um...

SPEAKER_86: Um, I, I'd say really sort of misuse of prosecutorial discretion in many, many areas where...

SPEAKER_43: And I, and I think this is, this is really a dangerous thing for, um, you know, for, I don't know...

SPEAKER_34: For, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for there to be partisan politics with, with, with, with government agencies. It's, it's, it's just really...

SPEAKER_86: And then I think from, you know, for, for, from, say... Uh, uh, uh... You know, like, the Democratic Party standpoint or, or say, the Biden administration standpoint, that, uh, I think this is, this is... The, the, the danger here is that if there's a significant, um, misuse of prosecutorial discretion,

SPEAKER_133: Let's say, you see... One says, okay, everyone's equal under the law. Yes, but who are you, who are you choosing to pursue?

SPEAKER_86: And if you're pursuing what appeared to independent voters to be trivial cases, while ignoring

SPEAKER_43: serious crimes, it's hard to imagine that a lot of independent voters, that's going to win over thoughtful independent voters.

SPEAKER_159: Did things change when you bought Twitter? X?

SPEAKER_130: Yeah, I think they did change somewhat.

SPEAKER_86: You know, our goal with a sort of, you know, the X platform is really to be a level playing field, a public sphere that is supportive of, you know, most of the country. Let's say that the middle 80% or something like that. Now, that's not been the case really for all social media, but all social media have been really very left-leaning, small left-leaning, and really Twitter was small left-leaning. You know, the suspensions of Republican candidates or interests or voices was really at least ten times the rate of suppression of left-leaning voices on, you know, all Twitter.

SPEAKER_43: So, you know, what we're trying to do is move it to the middle, which from the standpoint

SPEAKER_131: of, say, the left appears, it is moving to the right, everything's relative, if you're standing on the left. But it's not, it's simply moving to the middle, that's all, in an attempt to actually represent the whole country, um, and, and not just, um, you know, half the country or even maybe less than half the country. So, that's it really. So, I think there's, like, there's really nothing to be alarmed about here. And, you know, it's just that it's intended to be a town square, inclusive of the whole

SPEAKER_167: country and also, you know, and, and the world. That's all.

SPEAKER_36: It's been, um, I guess you took over, um, ex-Twitter on Halloween weekend, if I remember correctly, uh, when you got to the building and you got the keys, um, and David and I were lucky to be there with you when you got the keys and we got to, um, check things out. Um, this is ten months into the turnaround, uh, and it wasn't a high-functioning organization, I think, when you took it over. Where is the company at now and are you pleased with, I guess, the progress? Because it looks like new features are getting launched, the product velocity is great, uh, obviously advertising's been challenging, but it feels like there's some green shoots.

SPEAKER_58: So, so, how do you feel about the purchase now?

SPEAKER_86: Yeah, well, I, I should say we've recently seen a significant, uh, increase in advertising, which is great. Um, so that's, uh, you know, if that trend continues, um, I think the company will be in, in very good

SPEAKER_130: financial shape on the advertising front, um, so that, in terms of positive developments that, that seems to be one of them. Um, and, um, sort of from a feature standpoint, I think that those who are looking, using the

SPEAKER_44: system, I think we've, I think we might have delivered, a little bit more new features, you know, in the last, I don't know, year than the last, you know, all Twitter did in five years.

SPEAKER_41: Um, you know, this, this really, the, the future, the future development pace is very rapid. Um, and this has been done with really about 15% of the original company.

SPEAKER_44: Um, maybe a little more, 15 to 20%. Um, so it's, it's really, you know, efficient.

SPEAKER_65: Uh, you know, at the end of the day, you have to say, you know, how complicated is a system, uh, like the ex Twitter platform, um, you know, how different is it from a group chat,

SPEAKER_131: frankly? It's like a group chat at scale.

SPEAKER_174: Um, so, we, I don't think you need an army to maintain a group chat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_36: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not the self-driving platform and it had maybe 10 times as many people working on it as the self-driving platform at Tesla, which seems crazy. Right.

SPEAKER_185: The entire self-driving AI software team is 200 people.

SPEAKER_134: And, uh, what they're doing is much more complex than Twitter. Yeah. Or, you know, much better.

SPEAKER_187: Yeah.

SPEAKER_41: So, um, you know, there's other things that obviously need to be done, like, uh, advertising sales, um, you know, network operations and, um, How?

SPEAKER_194: Can you talk to us about that?

SPEAKER_131: No, no, it's really not. It's not a, it's not a huge, I don't, like I said, don't even know me for, for, for, for,

SPEAKER_86: what we're doing here. And I think, you know, the people that, that are, um, still at the company are obviously

SPEAKER_65: being very productive in, uh, creating and delivering new features.

SPEAKER_44: Um, and, um, you know, we, we keep seeing, sort of, record, record usage.

SPEAKER_34: And, uh, the, the, the, you know, the most of a rigorous number is really the user seconds as reported by the mobile device, especially iOS. The, you know, the iOS, uh, uh, what iOS reports as the screen time is the, is the least

SPEAKER_44: gainful metric.

SPEAKER_86: Um, and, and those numbers are extremely, are, are very good. Um, so, you know, I think, of course, it's the optimistic about where things added. And I, I, I feel like the company's turned, just, you know, just recently turned, turned a corner.

SPEAKER_64: Um, and, you know, it's, well, um, at least moderate prosperity and, and hopefully significant.

David Friedberg: Tell us about, um, the success of sharing revenue. Why did you do it?

SPEAKER_75: And then just the, the vision you have for just the creator economy and what you want that to evolve into and build into.

SPEAKER_171: Um, yeah, I mean, it sounds the reason that if, if you're a creator and, you know, you

SPEAKER_131: need to, um, you need to make a living for what you're doing.

SPEAKER_44: Um, so there's gotta be, um, you know, fair compensation, competitive compensation for a creator, whether they're doing, you know, writing, or pictures, video, whatever the case may be. Um, and, uh, so we're, and we're not, so we're not really invent, you know, inventing anything new here. We're just, you know, as YouTube does with creators, they will do rev share, um, with advertising. And so we're doing rev share with advertising. Um, we're also, you know, obviously they have enabled direct subscription to, uh, accounts where whatever that somebody, you know, you could be doing audio, video, long form text, anything, and you could subscribe to someone. And, um, that's, you know, obviously that's the way for a subscriber to make a living as

SPEAKER_34: well, you know, or for a creator to make a living. So the intent is for the X platform to be the best home for creators, uh, where if you've

SPEAKER_44: got interesting content, then you, you want to put it on our platform.

SPEAKER_86: And, um, you know, there's a lot of questions about, like, sort of the algorithm and whatnot. I, I, I should mention, like, the, the algorithm is, uh, I think almost all of it is open sourced, and, and we will, uh, I think quite soon have the entire thing open sourced. Uh, the only reason I, it really hasn't been done entirely open sourced yet is because we're somewhat embarrassed with the code and need to just clean it up before, uh, putting something extremely embarrassing out there. But the point is that, like, we, we, we want, uh, transparency builds trust. And if you've got, um, uh, if you, if you, if you can recreate the results, um, on the X platform of, of how viral a post is gonna be independently using the, uh, you know, the, the public algorithm, you know, the open source algorithm, um, that, that's really where we want to get to.

SPEAKER_131: Um, so you, you kind of, you kind of know what to expect, um, and, and why something happened. Um, no, no, I should say that the, we are, we are trying to optimize for, uh, user time, um, on the platform. What this naturally means is that, um, posting content that someone looks at longer is gonna get higher priority

SPEAKER_174: than content that is short. Uh, just because the system is trying to maximize, uh, it's, uh, it's aspiring to maximize, uh,

SPEAKER_43: you, uh, unregretted user minutes is what I call it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_86: So, like, basically, how do we, um, if, if, if, if we're succeeding, you wanna spend more time on the platform and you wanna, and, and, and after having spent that time, you don't wanna regret it.

SPEAKER_44: Um, I mean, speaking of TikTok, um, you, you know, there's, I've had a lot of people tell me they spend a lot of time on TikTok and they regret it. Um, we don't wanna be, we want it to be that you spend a lot of time on the X platform

SPEAKER_131: and you learned a lot, uh, you, you're entertained, and you don't regret it. So, when you're optimizing for, you know, user minutes, and, like I said, aspirationally

SPEAKER_133: unregretted user minutes, uh, uh, the, if you, the more content that you post on the system, the more reach that, uh, thing will get, because the system is saying, oh, there's,

SPEAKER_44: the user is spending more time on the platform because they're, they're, you know, seeing, say, your podcast or, uh, reading, um, a long-form article or watching some video, um, but that's gonna get a lot more time than, say, if you, if you link to a video elsewhere or you link to an article elsewhere, that, that, that's just, that, that, that, that, that means you'll see people be on that post for a very short period of time. And so, the, the system will be like, okay, that did not increase, uh, user time. So, it, it will, it won't be excluded, it will, it will get less attention than actually posting content natively on the system.

David Friedberg: Do you wanna talk, um, about, uh, the ADL and you, uh, sort of where, what the status of that is, whether you're pursuing a lawsuit or not or where that stands?

SPEAKER_203: Um, I think we'll have to see about that.

SPEAKER_86: I mean, um, yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is that, uh, ADL did initiate a boycott.

SPEAKER_131: They don't call it a boycott, they call it a pause. But, you know, a pause app is never ending. It's a boycott. Yeah. Um, so, and, and, and we just, we saw a massive drop in, uh, U.S. advertising. We saw basically no change in, in advertising in Asia.

SPEAKER_86: But domestically, ADL is strong. We saw, uh, 60% drop in advertising. So, you know, that's, uh, pretty intense. Um, and, um, and this is despite, you know, showing repeated, uh, analysis of the system,

SPEAKER_131: including third-party analysis of the system, which actually showed that, uh, the number of, uh, views of hateful content, uh, declined. So, you know, the third parties who have all the data analyzed and said, actually, there's less hate speech. Um, the, the, the issue, I think, with, with the ADL is not a question of hate speech. It's not a question of any social acceptance, obviously. Uh, it's that the ADL, um, and a lot of other organizations have become activist organizations, um, which are acting far beyond their, uh, stated mandates or their original mandates.

SPEAKER_86: And, and I think far beyond what donors to those organizations think they are doing. Um, you know, uh, what, one of the things that the ADL was extremely opposed to, and, in fact, was instrumental in, in happening, was that the ADL was instrumental in getting, um, Donald Trump the pathway. Um, and then when we, we, we, we, you know, we restored the account, um,

SPEAKER_44: um, that, that they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account on,

SPEAKER_86: you know, Twitter and Alex, uh, that, that, that constituted hateful speech. I mean, he hasn't even said anything, you know.

SPEAKER_218: Um, he hasn't at least say something or post something for there to be incremental, hateful, hateful content. This is absurd. Um, and what's this got to do with anti-Semitism? I, you know, you know, Donald Trump's son-in-law is Jewish, he's, he's, he's pretty sure he's not anti-Semitic. Okay. Um, you know, he's at the wedding. So, um, this, this, so, so, so, so, so, the problem is that a lot of these, um, organizations,

SPEAKER_86: like I said, they've really been captured by the woke agenda, and they're, they're pushing, um, you know, series of beliefs and values that I think are often, uh, contrary to their, what, what they've done is believe. Hey, you know. And that's, uh, that's what we have in this situation.

David Sacks: Well, I'll, yeah. I'll, I'll note that the, the two positions that you've taken that have brought the most heat on you, number one, defending free speech, number two, advocating peace.

SPEAKER_229: And, and, and, yeah, how dare you?

SPEAKER_231: How dare you? How dare you? And there's, there's an article.

SPEAKER_232: We're, like, in the opposite world or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_118: We're living in an upside-down world. There's, there's an article in today's New Yorker calling you a super villain, because you're advocating peace and protecting the First Amendment. I mean, it's, like, completely upside down.

SPEAKER_234: Do you want people to eat their vegetables?

SPEAKER_237: Well, you know, at, at, at this point, you literally cannot tell actual press from parody. No.

SPEAKER_238: It's, it's, like, if that was, uh, Babylon Bee or Onion. No, literally.

SPEAKER_240: You're, you're doing a, you're doing a.

SPEAKER_218: And, and, and change the banner to, you know, Babylon Bee or whatever, Onion or something like that. Have some parody thing. Right. And be, like, oh, oh, that's a good joke. You know.

SPEAKER_250: So.

SPEAKER_218: Yeah. Superfellings normally advocate for peace.

SPEAKER_250: That's, you know, of course. We want to get rid of all the nuclear weapons.

SPEAKER_252: Hey, um. Hold on. Hold on.

SPEAKER_253: Hold on. Okay. That's, uh, what?

SPEAKER_255: The funniest, the funniest skit that didn't make it on SNL that we were workshopping was probably We wanted to do, like, this woke James Bond and. Elon will tell you some of the jokes. It was pretty hilarious. But then we were just talking about a story that broke in The Guardian about the new James Bond novel and short story is too woke. And it's literally the parody we did two years ago. Uh.

SPEAKER_263: Elon, speaking of peace, we had, we had, uh, Graham Allison.

SPEAKER_264: We're turning into reality and also, like, the, you know, the, uh, you know, conspiracy theories

SPEAKER_250: that haven't come true list is, you know, quite short. Um.

SPEAKER_267: The theories that didn't turn out to be true is quite short. Um, and we really need more conspiracies generated because we're running out of... To find the truth.

SPEAKER_273: Um, okay.

SPEAKER_137: The theory that they've been checked off is accurate. Um, so, uh, I don't know who's the, you know, responsible for these conspiracy theories,

SPEAKER_134: but, you know, we just need some more material. Paging Alex Jones.

SPEAKER_141: Yeah. Elon, we had Graham Allison here today. I know you talked about his book. We had Ray Dalio here. We had Ro Khanna. Um, and we talked a lot about China, the U.S. relationship with China. You are, you have several businesses that have deep supplier and customer relationships in China. Given what's going on, and clearly the tenor has changed. The, the mood has changed with respect to U.S. policy towards China. What it's like in D.C., what it's like in Silicon Valley, and how everyone talks about the relationship with China today. It's pretty crazy how quick things have changed. Um, as a business leader with all these business relationships with China, how do you make decisions and, and how things are changing, and how do you think about where this is headed? Sure.

SPEAKER_130: Well, I mean, let's just clarify here, um, you know, SpaceX has no, uh, SpaceX and Starlink have no business in China whatsoever. They're not, they're not allowed, you know, SpaceX doesn't launch, uh, China satellites, and Starlink is, uh, abandoned in China. So, to be clear, SpaceX, Starlink, zero business in China.

SPEAKER_131: Um, uh, in the case of, of Tesla, uh, one of our, well, about four vehicle factories,

SPEAKER_130: uh, one is in, uh, China. So, um, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a significant, uh, car market,

SPEAKER_86: uh, but it is, uh, you know, so, what I'm trying to say is, like, if I follow the bulk of, of my business interests, if, if I, I would purely book, which I aspire not to be, um, or outside of China, let's just be clear about that.

SPEAKER_131: Um, then, with respect to, now, as I said, I, I think I understand China well. I've been there many times.

SPEAKER_86: I've met with, uh, senior leadership, um, uh, at many levels of China for, for many years. And so, I, I think I've got a pretty good understanding of, um,

SPEAKER_76: at least as an outsider of China. So, and, and Tesla has been very successful domestically in China.

SPEAKER_130: Um, so, um, you know, the, the fundamental thing here is, is really Taiwan.

SPEAKER_44: Um, the, uh, China has, well, really since, uh, for like half a century or so, uh, maybe longer at this point, or just longer at this point, that their, their, their policy has been to, to, um, sort of reunite Taiwan with China. Uh, from this standpoint, you know, it may be just analogous to, like, Hawaii, or something like that. Like, an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China.

SPEAKER_133: Um, mostly because, uh, the, the US, uh, stopped, uh, has been, the US Soviet fleet has stopped, uh, any, any sort of, um, reunification at the force.

SPEAKER_86: Um, so, and, now, really, things getting to the point, um, increasingly, year over year, uh, where China's military strength is increasing, and ours is more or less, uh, static. And strategically, you know, you can imagine trying to defend Taiwan. It's not, not easy, uh, because it's, it's very close to the coast of China. Um, so, there will come a point if, you know, probably, not, not too distant future, where China's military strength in that region parts, uh, exceeds US military strength in that region.

SPEAKER_65: And, if one is to take, uh, China's policy literally, and probably one should, um,

SPEAKER_44: then there will be some forceful, uh, uh, force will be used for, you know, uh, to incorporate Taiwan into China. This is what they've said, um, that if, if there's not a diplomatic solution, there will be a solution by force.

SPEAKER_287: Let me, um, if I can.

SPEAKER_44: And so, really, what's going on here, and you see, you know, this in, in many areas,

SPEAKER_65: and I think this tempo is going to increase, is that, you know, both China and the US are preparing for a potential showdown, uh, you know, in the South China Sea.

SPEAKER_44: So, um, that's why you're seeing, we're increasing restrictions on export of US technology to China, uh,

SPEAKER_133: such as the, the, the NVIDIA's, you know, the NVIDIA H-100 is being banned. You'd not ship them to China. Um, and I think there'll be more and more, you, you, you, you also know,

SPEAKER_86: it's not a lot of ship, uh, advanced ship-making equipment to China. Um, so, and I suspect, you know, you know, China's going to respond with some reciprocal sanctions. Um, and you'll, I think you'll see this kind of a tip for tap, uh, reciprocal sanctions, uh, increasing in the next, next few years. So, I think quite a very, uh, hot temperature. Um, and then we'll see this.

SPEAKER_43: Is there going to be a diplomatic solution to, uh, re, your reunification or a non-duplomatic solution?

SPEAKER_290: You, uh, you...

SPEAKER_291: But it has made it clear that there will, one way or another, be a solution from this standpoint.

David Friedberg: You mentioned, uh, NVIDIA. So, let me just talk about AI and bring it back to that for a second. Can you tell us, um, your regrets but also the positives of the experience you had with OpenAI and then what your goals are with, uh, XAI?

SPEAKER_225: Well, the AI discussion is certainly a long one, or could be a long one.

SPEAKER_131: Um, digital superintelligence might be the most significant technology that humanity ever creates.

SPEAKER_130: Um, and, and it has the potential to be more dangerous than, um, nuclear weapons.

SPEAKER_87: So, um, you know, in the case of OpenAI, it was to have there not be a unipolar world where, um, Google,

SPEAKER_86: with its subsidiary deep mine, uh, you know, would control an overwhelming amount of AI talent and

SPEAKER_44: compute and resources, um, which then is somewhat dependent on, basically, how, how Larry Page, uh, and, and Sergey Brin, um, and Eric Schmidt, how many things should go,

SPEAKER_133: because they, they, between three of them, two out of three have control over Alphabet, because they've got super voting rights. And, um, you know, I was quite concerned with some of the conversations I had with Larry Page, uh, where, um, you know, you called me a specious for being pro-humanity.

SPEAKER_41: And, um, so I'm like, what side are you on, Larry? You know? Uh, not ours, let's see.

SPEAKER_87: And, uh, so, you know, I felt, like, uncomfortable, um, having the entire future of digital superintelligence be in the hands of someone who called me a specious for being pro-humanity.

SPEAKER_41: Um, you know, how can it not be? Uh, so, that's, OpenAI was originally created as an open source non-profit, and now, it's a closed, it appears to be, it should be renamed closed for Max Non-Profit AI.

SPEAKER_64: Um, it is, it is closed, um, and they are aiming to, I think, make, try to make a hundred billion dollars, I think according to Sam Hoffman, uh, get a hundred billion dollars from somewhere

SPEAKER_41: for some vast amount of compute, uh, to create digital god. Um, apparently all of the ways are stored in a comma-separated value file, by the way,

SPEAKER_310: so our digital god will be a CSV file.

SPEAKER_312: How do we import it? File, import, god.

SPEAKER_65: Yeah, um, so, so, anyway, so, so now, uh, OpenAI is, it's also very closely aligned with Microsoft. You know, Microsoft is really, um, the OpenAI servers are running on, in Azure and Microsoft data centers. You know, so really what you have is, I think, at the end of the day, Microsoft having more control than OpenAI. Uh, they have access to all the source code.

SPEAKER_133: They have access to all the weights of the, um, you know, GP4 and future versions. So they have all rights to this, to, to, to think.

SPEAKER_65: It's not, um, at any point, really, they can cut off OpenAI. I don't think OpenAI quite realizes that the dependence on, on Microsoft. And even if Microsoft does break some contract, they'll just be tied up in litigation for, you know, for years. Um, so really you've got a contest between, kind of, like, Google and Microsoft. Google, as I mentioned, are concerned about, you know, uh, sorry, not caring enough about AI safety. And, um, good reason. And then Microsoft just is, is, I think, you know, a, a profit-seeking organization.

SPEAKER_86: Um, and I, I, you know, I think such is great.

SPEAKER_174: But, um, I, I can't say, like, you know, that it would be difficult to say that, that Microsoft has a, has an amazing track record in moral decision-making.

SPEAKER_318: Um. Diplomatic.

SPEAKER_86: Anyway, so, so, so I was like, okay, look, let's just, so it's, I think let's try to create a third company that is competitive.

SPEAKER_65: I, I, I do, I do think Tesla's underrated from an AI standpoint, in terms of real-world AI, Tesla has the best real-world AI. Same. So, uh, you know, hopefully between, uh, XAI and, uh, Tesla is kind of a third contender for visual super-

David Friedberg: Well, would you, look, you've done, you open source your patents at Tesla. Yeah. You are very pro open source, you're source-coded X.

SPEAKER_75: Would you ever considering releasing Dojo and FSD more as a platform substrate for everybody else, or that's sort of off the table right now?

SPEAKER_44: Well, I don't know that, uh, you know, in the case of, say, Dojo, or our, or inference hardware that's in the car, our inference computer, which is actually a lot more computer than Dojo, by the way.

SPEAKER_41: Um, you know, we, we, we've got, I don't know, somewhere in the order of a full million cars that have, um, high-speed AI inference computers in them. Um, you know, like open sourcing chip designs doesn't mean you, you suddenly get that thing. Yeah. Uh, and so, um, you can open source the software, but I think chip designs, it's, they'll, they'll need ones that can actually use those chips or really, uh, yeah,

SPEAKER_65: it would be some, someone that's willing to spend many billions of dollars on, um, on a computer development. So, anyway, I think, I think in the case of, uh, you know, Dojo is interesting, Optimus is really interesting.

SPEAKER_64: Um, you know, I think just, in general, Tesla is, uh, one of the world's leading AI companies, uh, and in some respects, the leading AI company when it comes to real, real-world AI, understanding the real world and actually reacting to that with self-driving. Um, and so, and I think that will become part of the, the solution for AGI or general super intelligence.

SPEAKER_65: So, um, uh, in the case of Tesla, I think we've got a, sort of a good governance structure and that there's no super voting rights or anything like that.

SPEAKER_44: So, if I'm, you know, go crazy, the shareholders of Tesla can vote me out. Um, you know, I have a, and I prefer to be, you know, I think moderately influential but not enough to stay in even if I'm doing crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_65: So, I think that's actually good. Um.

SPEAKER_337: Great. Um, I'm told we have to wrap up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_339: Oh, okay. Uh, just on FSD, before we wrap, I'll let you go.

SPEAKER_36: Um, we were talking earlier this year and you said, uh, hey, maybe ChatGPT 4.0-like moment for self-driving was coming. And, uh, I've, I've been playing with the beta and, um, yeah, how, how close does it feel to you? Because it, it, some of the rides it's been doing for me are pretty darn impressive. The latest beta is pretty incredible. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty neat. I, you know, I used to love it on the highways and on the streets. I'd be like, okay, but now I'm using it increasingly on the streets. So, where do you, how do you feel about it right now? And I, I guess you made a lot of predictions on it over the years. Um, but it, it does feel like it's getting pretty close.

SPEAKER_44: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's very close to, uh, you know, being in a situation where even if there's no human oversight or intervention,

SPEAKER_41: that the probability of, uh, a safe journey is, is higher with FSD and no supervision, like, even if you're asleep in the car, than if the person's driving. Um, we were very close to that.

SPEAKER_64: You know, those that have the, uh, FSD beta, which really anyone could get at this point.

SPEAKER_41: Um, so what, what, what, the, the, why the, the miles we see driving onto the FSD beta currently are, uh, much safer than the miles that are driven without it. Hmm. So, um, that's, uh, you know, that's, that's already a very good milestone.

SPEAKER_64: Um, but, you know, the, you, you can just see that it's getting better. But, like, um, if you see, if you compare the, uh, you know, FSD beta today versus six months ago versus not, you know, a year ago versus 18 months ago, it's really, the improvement is dramatic.

SPEAKER_44: Um, and, um, you know, we've got the final piece of the puzzle, which is to have the control part of the car, uh, transition from about 300,000 lines of C++ code to, uh, also neural network. So, uh, you know, the whole system will be neural network. Um, photons into controls out.

SPEAKER_57: And, and, and that, that, that, that's kind of the final piece of the puzzle for full-stop driving being significantly better than human.

SPEAKER_339: Wow. Awesome. Uh, thanks for taking the time, buddy. Uh, fly safe, and I'll see you shortly. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_350: Thanks, bud. We'll be here.

SPEAKER_08: Brain man, David.

SPEAKER_354: Love you, Wesley.

SPEAKER_362: Queen of.

SPEAKER_365: You're a bee. What? We need to get merch. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it.