Elon Musk is doubling down on the cuts introduced by his Department of Government Efficiency.SAUL LOEB / AFP
Elon Musk appeared in a new episode of «The Joe Rogan Experience» on Friday.
In the three-hour interview, Musk touched on a number of hot topics, including DOGE and AI.
Here are five key points from the show.
Elon Musk appeared in a new episode of «The Joe Rogan Experience» on Friday.
Musk and host Joe Rogan, both well-known supporters of President Donald Trump, held a wide-ranging interview that covered many of the year’s hottest topics, including DOGE, AI, and Musk’s alleged Nazi salute.
While it’s not the Tesla CEO’s first time on the show, a lot has changed since his last appearance in November, which came just ahead of the US election.
Here’s a closer look at five of the key moments from the episode.
Rogan and Musk understandably spent a large portion of the interview discussing the Department of Government Efficiency.
The Musk-headed agency has made headline after headline in recent weeks as it continues to blitz the US government in its bid to cut spending.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) — the government agency responsible for foreign aid — came in for particular criticism, with Musk questioning the effectiveness of its work.
He said that while the agency did some good, «90, 95%» of its work was not.
«It could be the kind of thing where you sort of fund Ebola prevention, but it turns out that actually, you’re funding a lab that develops new Ebola,» he said, adding: «They claim it’s Ebola prevention, but it’s actually Ebola creation.»
He told Rogan that DOGE had continued to fund things that «appear to be legitimate» but that the government should not be sending taxpayer money to «dubious enterprises overseas.»
The SpaceX CEO also touched on changes to the Treasury Department’s payment systems.
DOGE has sought to implement new reporting requirements for outgoing government payments and make payment categorization codes mandatory.
«There needs to be an explanation,» he told Rogan. «We’re not judging the quality of the explanation, but there should be some explanation for what this payment is for above nothing. That’s a radical change to the system that is being implemented now.»
«My guess is that probably saves $100 billion a year,» he added.
Musk also dished out heavy criticism of Social Security, the retirement and disability benefits program, calling it «the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.»
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«Basically, people are living way longer than expected, and there are fewer babies being born, so you have more people who are retired and that live for a long time and get retirement payments,» Musk said.
«Have you ever looked at the debt clock?» he continued. «There’s our present-day debt, but then there’s our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what what people think it is because of the future obligations.»
A report by the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees last year found that the program would only be able to pay out full benefits for around the next 11 years.
«However bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it’ll be much worse in the future,» Musk added.
The billionaire has long warned of risks associated with falling birth rates, saying in 2022 that it was the «biggest danger civilization faces by far.»
The interview also addressed the widespread backlash Musk received following accusations that he made a Nazi salute last month.
While speaking to the crowd at Trump’s inauguration celebration in January, Musk made a gesture that caused many to question whether he had intended to make a fascist salute.
«Hopefully, people realize I’m not a Nazi,» Musk said, adding: «Now I can never point at things diagonally.»
He also called legacy media’s portrayal of the incident «coordinated propaganda.»
Another topic tabled by Rogan was, perhaps inevitably, artificial intelligence.
The pair kicked things off by discussing OpenAI — the firm Musk cofounded in 2015 and that has been at the heart of his long-running feud with CEO Sam Altman — with Musk again criticizing the company’s efforts to become a for-profit business.
Musk later said he thought AI could have a role in government, although he didn’t expand on what functions it could perform.
However, Musk added that he would be concerned about whether such AI would become a «super oppressive woke Nanny AI that is omnipotent.»
«That would be a miserable outcome,» he said.
Striking an arguably more positive note, the billionaire also told Rogan that he thought there was «only a 20% chance of annihilation» with AI.
«The probability of a good outcome is like 80%,» he said, adding that he still thought AI would be smarter than humans and that the technology would pose an existential risk.
Earlier this month, Musk’s AI startup xAI released its Grok 3 chatbot, which he has touted as the «smartest AI on Earth.»
Three xAI employees recently told Business Insider that the firm planned to hire thousands of people this year to help train Grok.
Elsewhere in the interview, Rogan asked Musk whether he believed there were any secret programs involving defense contractors aimed at developing «advanced propulsion systems» for drones.
Musk said he did not believe that top defense companies like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing had developed such systems, claiming that he had the «equivalent of an all-access pass from a security clearance standpoint» and that he didn’t think they were hiding developments from him.
«SpaceX is has the most advanced rocket technology in the world. I think I’d know,» he said. «To the best of my knowledge, there’s not some super advanced propulsion technology.»
