Elon Musk said artificial intelligence and robots — not government spending cuts — are the only way to fix the US national debt problem.
Speaking on a newly released episode of author Walter Isaacson’s “The Builders” podcast, Musk said his 130-day stint as a special government employee in the second Trump administration led him to that view.
Musk, the world’s richest person, served as the de facto leader of the White House DOGE office from January to May 2025, where he sought to slash federal spending.
“I came to the conclusion that the only way we’re going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots. We’re not going to solve it by trying to save our way there,” Musk told Isaacson, calling the latter “impossible.”
The US national debt load hit a record $40 trillion in August and has continued to climb, according to Treasury data.
“Maybe if the president made that his, you know, primary goal, we could do that, but the problem is if you try to solve the deficit and stop wasteful spending, you make a lot of enemies in that situation,” Musk said.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said political leaders in Washington are mostly unwilling to rein in federal spending enough to significantly shrink the deficit.
“The appetite is not there, and it’s not just at the presidency. The appetite is not there at the presidency, the House, the Senate, or the judiciary,” Musk said.
He added, “Basically, no one in authority in the government whatsoever, really, with maybe a few rare exceptions of like the Rand Pauls of the world type of thing, actually wants to reduce spending — no, they don’t.”
Musk estimated that “digital superintelligence” could boost the global output of goods and services by 20% to 30% — an increase he estimated could add roughly $30 trillion a year to the world economy.
“If you have robots and you get to space and can do a mass driver on the moon, then you can get to, I think, potentially a million times the size of the Earth economy,” he said.
This could ultimately make money “irrelevant,” Musk said.
“There will still be currency, but I think currency will be measured in fundamental physics metrics like wattage and tonnage, mass and energy,” he said, predicting, “Conventional currency will not matter.”
During the interview, Musk also reflected on his chainsaw-wielding time with the Department of Government Efficiency, admitting he got “carried away.”
“I think I should have been more in the background and probably only had it last for a month or two, because at that point you’ve sort of seen most of what there is to see,” Musk told Isaacson.
Musk said he should have left and “focused on AI a little sooner than I did.”
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