Elon Musk speaking at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in April 2022. Credit: Trevor Cokley / US Air Force Academy Elon Musk says his time running DOGE showed the US government cannot fix its deficit from the inside. Only AI and robots can, he told biographer Walter Isaacson. Musk made the comments on Isaacson’s new podcast, The Builders, Axios reported in an exclusive on Friday.
The show premieres on Tuesday. “The only way we’re going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots,” Musk said. “We’re not gonna solve it by trying to save our way there.” ‘No one in authority’ Musk said almost nobody in power truly wants to cut spending. That includes the White House, both chambers of Congress and the courts, he said, with a few exceptions such as Senator Rand Paul. He said cuts could happen if President Donald Trump made them his main goal. But stopping waste makes enemies, he added. “President Trump likes to be liked,” Musk said.
Regrets Musk admitted he got carried away with DOGE and was away from his companies for too long. He said he should have stayed in the background for a month or two, rather than the four months he formally spent in the White House. “I should have gone back and focused on AI a little sooner than I did,” he said. Asked about his chainsaw stunt at the CPAC conference in February 2025, he said only that it was “a weird weekend”. Musk has made the AI debt argument before.
Last December he said AI and robotics would be the only things that could solve the debt. The series The show comes from Kaleidoscope and iHeartPodcasts. Guests include Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Fei-Fei Li, and Anthropic’s Dario and Daniela Amodei. Isaacson called Musk an “amazing engineer” but said he is “too prone to darkness and conspiracies” on politics and people, Axios reported.
DOGE’s legacy lives on in Silicon Valley. Former staffers have launched startups such as waste-cutting firm Special and defence cyber startup Cathedral. Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
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