Elon Musk needs little introduction. His acumen has transformed the business of electric vehicles and getting to space, and he has more recently been at the right hand of US President Donald Trump. Whether at campaign rallies, on foreign trips, in the Oval Office or cutting federal government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency, Musk’s influence is everywhere.

But the entrepreneur’s iconoclasm has also made him a magnet for controversy. Tesla has experienced a pronounced backlash — you might have seen the stickers: “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy” — and Bill Gates recently accused Musk of being responsible for killing children by pushing massive cuts to US foreign aid. To get Musk’s reactions to as many of these points as possible, we sat down (virtually) at the Qatar Economic Forum on May 20. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Hello everyone and Elon Musk. Welcome to the Qatar Economic Forum. How are you?

Thank you for having me. I’m fine. How are you?

Very well, thank you, and very pleased to have you with us. You know, among those here in the audience in Doha are people who have backed you financially over the years since you last spoke here in 2022. A lot has changed in your life. You are not only running multiple companies — you were doing that then — but now you also have a role in government 1. So first of all, I hope you won’t mind if from time to time I have to move you from one topic to another because we have a lot to cover in the time we have.

1Musk is a designated “special government employee” (SGE)–a label that allows him to work at a paid or unpaid government job for 130 days each year. His status as an SGE is expected to run out on May 31.

Well, let’s start then with the fact that you now have this combination of being a CEO and having a role as a government advisor. Tell me about your week. How does it work? What’s the split of your time?

Well, I travel a lot. So I was in Silicon Valley yesterday morning. I was in LA yesterday evening. I’m in Austin right now. I’ll be in DC tomorrow. I’ll be there after having dinner with the president tomorrow night, I believe. And then a whole bunch of cabinet secretary meetings and then back to Silicon Valley on Thursday night.

But I mean the balance of your time, is it—

Well, clearly it’s a lot, but is it still the case, as you said a while ago, that it’s about one to two days a week on your government work 2?

2 During a Tesla earnings call in April, Musk said he would spend “a day or two a week on government matters” but would also continue working with the US government for “the remainder of the president’s term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.”

And what does that mean for your corporate life? Because if we start with Tesla, the company has suffered, in recent months, what you’ve called blowback. So what is your plan for turning around the declining sales picture and by what stage do you think you’re going to be able to turn it around?

Oh, it’s already turned around.

Give me some evidence for that. I’ve just been looking at the sales figures for Europe in April, which show very significant declines in the big markets 3.

3 One example of this decline: Just 512 new Teslas were registered in the UK in April, down 62% from a year earlier. Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden each had even larger year-over-year declines.

Europe is our weakest market. We’re strong everywhere else. So now our sales are doing well at this point. We don’t anticipate any meaningful sales shortfall and obviously the stock market recognizes that, since we’re now back over a trillion dollars in market cap. So clearly the market is aware of the situation. So it’s already turned around.

But sales are still down compared to this time last year.

Yes, but that’s true of all manufacturers. There’s no exceptions 4.

4 The picture is more complex than this. European car sales began to grow in March after a weak start to the year, with EV sales in the region surging 24%. But the growth in EV sales didn’t extend to Tesla, which saw new registrations fall 28% in Europe in March. During an earnings call in May, Musk said first quarters are “usually the worst quarter of the year because people don’t want to go buy a car in the middle of winter during a blizzard.”

Does that mean that you are not going to be able—

The European market is quite weak

Okay, but you would acknowledge, wouldn’t you, that what you are facing — let’s just take it as Europe — what you are facing is a significant problem. Tesla was an incredibly aspirational brand, people identified with it, saw it as being at the forefront of the climate crisis. And now people are driving around with stickers in their cars saying, “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.”

And that there are also people who are buying it because Elon’s crazy or however they may view it. So yes, we’ve lost some sales paths on the left, but we’ve gained them on the right. The sales numbers at this point are strong and we see no problem with demand.

And I mean, you, can just look at the stock price. If you want the best inside information, the stock market analysts have that. And the stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if it was not, if things weren’t in good shape. They’re fine. Don’t worry about it.

Okay, I was citing sales figures rather than share price. Well, tell me then, how committed you are to Tesla. Do you see yourself and are you committed to still being the chief executive of Tesla in five years’time?

No doubt about that at all.

I can’t be CEO if I’m dead. So there’s a slight amount of—

Does that mean that the value of your pay doesn’t have any bearing on your decision?

Well that’s not really a subject for discussion in this forum. I think obviously there should be compensation for — if something incredible is done, that compensation should match that, something incredible was done. But I’m confident that whatever some activist posing as a judge in Delaware happens to do will not affect the future compensation 5.

5 There’s no shortage of reporting about Judge Kathleen McCormick’s decision, for which she gave multiple reasons in a second ruling last December. Delaware is the most popular state for US corporations due to a well-developed set of corporate-governance laws and 125 years of case law, but after his legal setbacks there, Musk moved SpaceX’s incorporation to Texas.

This is the judge who twice struck down the $56 billion pay package that was awarded to you?

Not a judge. Not a judge. The activist who is cosplaying a judge in a Halloween costume.

Okay, that’s your characterization. On the current value of stock options, I think the value of that pay package stands at about $100 billion. Are you saying you are relaxed about the value of your future pay package? Your decision to be committed to Tesla for the next five years, as long as you are still with us on this planet, is completely independent of pay?

It’s not independent? So pay is a relevant factor then to your commitment to Tesla.

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 my alleged 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 6.

6 Musk often speaks of Tesla’s Optimus robots, including in Saudi Arabia last week, where he said one had danced for President Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince. He has big plans for these, imagining them in roles from getting groceries and serving drinks to being a friend to their owners. It’s a major ambition, but when the robots have been publicly displayed, there has sometimes been a level of human control that wasn’t fully transparent at the time.

I can’t be sitting there and wondering about getting tossed out for political reasons by activists. That would be unacceptable. That’s all that matters.

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

And did it make you regret any of it or think twice about your political endeavors?

I did what needed to be done. The violent antibody reaction — I’m not someone who’s ever committed violence. And yet, massive violence was committed against my companies 7. 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 poor, 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. And more will.

You’re referring to the attacks on Tesla showrooms, but I think—

Well, it’s— [going] into showrooms and burning down cars is unacceptable.

Those people will go to prison and the people that funded them and organized them will also go to prison. Don’t worry.

But wouldn’t you acknowledge that some of the people who turned against Tesla in Europe were upset at your politics and very few of them would’ve been violent in any way; they just objected to what they saw you say or do politically.

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.

Elon Musk on Tesla, Starlink, Protests, Politics, AI

Okay. Let’s talk about your other companies in 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?

[Laughs] You certainly ask interesting questions that are impossible to answer. So no, SpaceX is, it’s a 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. Of the mass launches 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 the world combined, or 20 times as much as China… and China is doing actually a very impressive job.

The reason for this is that we’re putting into orbit the largest satellite constellation the world has ever seen 8 by far. So I think at this point maybe approaching 80% of all active satellites in orbit are SpaceX. And they’re providing 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 and help them is giving them an internet connection.

8 This world of satellite constellations is immense, and growing — Starlink alone accounts for more than 6,000 of them. It’s worth taking in its scale. Have a look at this explanation and the chart showing the big players in this new frontier.

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 of the internet and the ability to engage in commerce, 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 with Starlink and getting it approved in their country. I think it’s doing a lot of good in 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 weapons programs, but we have thus far declined.

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

It’s possible that Starlink may go public at some point in the future 9.

9 SpaceX executives have hinted over the years at the possibility of a Starlink IPO. Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s chief operating officer, first floated the idea of a spinoff for Starlink in 2020. But Musk has said in the past that it doesn’t make sense to take the initiative public until its revenue flow is more predictable.

What would be the timeframe?

I’m in no rush to go public. Going public is I guess a way to, you know, 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 — the extreme irony — that even if the class they purport to represent were to vote that they don’t want the lawsuit, the lawsuit will still continue. So how can it be a class action representing a class if the class were against it? And that’s the bizarre situation we’ve got in the US. It’s in dire need of reform. And as anyone who’s run a public company has experienced this, it’s an absurd situation that needs to change.

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?

Well, it would need a law to be passed. But the trouble being that you need 60 Senate votes and the Democrats will vote against it. The plaintiffs’ 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 least on the state level, made it 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. Three percent, okay. This will really help with frivolous lawsuits.

Okay. Let’s talk about AI, which is in so many of your businesses and in all our worlds 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 obviously got into 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 the same place at the same time—

I was with the president, Sam was in the neighborhood.

Okay. So does that mean you are pushing ahead with the lawsuit against OpenAI 10?

10 There’s a long history to this! Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI and is among those objecting to it changing into a for-profit business. Open AI has partly gone back on those plans, but it’s also countersuing. And we now know there was no rapprochement behind the scenes in Saudi Arabia.

Yes but — so look, I came up with the name OpenAI as open source, and as a nonprofit. And I funded OpenAI for the first roughly $50 million. And it was intended to be a nonprofit open-source company. And now 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 nonprofit 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.

They’ve made some changes to their corporate structure though, haven’t they? Since then, in recognition of what you’ve said.

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

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’re determined to see them in court?

Okay, well that’s certainly going 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, something along the lines of the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Aviation Administration. Now you are clearly in a zone where you are more on the cutting-regulation side than wanting new regulators. So has your view changed on the need for an AI regulator?

Well, it’s not that I don’t think there should be regulators 11. You can 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 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.

11 So the background. Musk’s words at the Qatar Economic Forum in 2022were, “I think there ought to be an AI regulatory agency that oversees artificial intelligence for the public good. And I think that for anything where there is a risk to the public, whether that’s, say, the Food and Drug Administration or Federal Aviation Administration or the [Federal] Communications Commission, whether it’s a public risk or a public good at stake, it’s good to have a sort of government referee and a regulatory body. And I think we should have that for AI, and we don’t currently.” Hence my question.

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 unnecessary laws and regulations 12. 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’ll get this steady pile of more and more laws and regulations over time until everything is illegal.

12 Musk is not the first to claim that regulations build up in the absence of war. In his 1982 book The Rise and Decline of Nations, political economist Mancur Olson made a similar case, arguing that Japan and Germany were growing faster than the US and the UK because World War II had the side effect of sweeping away interest groups that lobbied for carve-outs and favorable regulations. In Trump’s first term, he attempted to implement a “two-for-one” policy, whereby federal agencies needed to identify two rules they’d consider rescinding for every new “significant” rule. This time around, Trump signed  an executive order in January requiring 10 rules repealed for every new one.

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, the premise being that they’ll 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’s illegal [not] to hire asylum seekers and it is also illegal to hire asylum seekers. And Biden’s Department of Justice chose to prosecute us despite both paths being illegal. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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?

What? No, 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 could not kick a ball in any 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 overregulated. But the new fields, like artificial intelligence, are under-regulated. In fact, there is no regulator at all.

So there should be? Do you still think that?

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 or industrial arena to ensure that public safety is taken care of. 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’s not going to be as good.

Okay, so let’s then talk about your new world, your role advising the 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 13?

13 It’s worth reading this January piece from Bloomberg on the subject, which includes the view from Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University of St. Louis who studies government ethics. She thinks this is akin to Musk having the “keys to the candy store” because of access to government data that could include trade secrets and enforcement actions against his own companies and competitors: “If I were a competitor to Musk in any industry, I’d be really worried about him having this kind of head start,” Clark says. But Musk is emphasizing transparency and the lack of accusations of conflict thus far.

I don’t think so, actually. There have been many advisors throughout history in the US government and others who have had economic interests. I’m simply an advisor, I don’t have a formal power. And that’s it. A 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 was somehow not 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 there’s not a conflict of interest.

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 you are the driving force behind it — have an insight into those companies’ affairs and those companies’ relationships with the federal government.

No. All we do is we review the organization to see if the organization has departments that are no longer relevant. And then, 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 a function of DOGE is posted to the DOGE website, doge.gov or at the DOGE handle on the X platform. So it’s complete transparency. And I’ve not seen any case where, to the best of my knowledge, there’s even been an accusation of conflict. Because it is completely and utterly transparent.

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 frontline in Ukraine. It has also had more contracts coming its way, and there is some evidence that [countries] 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?

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 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 14.

14 The Bloomberg story from South Africa that I mentioned in the question provides background context on the country’s Black economic empowerment laws. It also includes recent official statistics showing that today, White South Africans earn on average five times what Black citizens do.

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 basically give strong preference to if you’re a 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.

Well, it looks like that—

Does that seem right to you?

It looks like that’s about to change.

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

Well, those rules were designed to—

Does that seem right to you, yes or no?

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.

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

I asked you a question, yes or no?

[It’s] not for me to answer. I have got a question for you about your government work though, in the amount of savings.

Why do you like racist laws?

This is not for me to answer. Come on. Now, you wouldn’t be trying to dodge a question?

No, you have to answer the question. You answer mine.

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—

I can’t believe it. That’s not good.

I want to ask you about the total amount—

Why do you like racist laws?

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 change. What happened to the $2 trillion?

Do you expect it to happen immediately?

Well, is it going to happen? Because DOGE is supposed to run until July 2026.

I mean, your question is absurd in its fundamental premise. Are you assuming that in one day, you know, within a few months, an instant $2 trillion is saved?

No, I’m not at all. I’m just asking, is that still your aim then? Is it still your aim to get to $2 trillion?

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

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

The ability of DOGE to operate is a function of whether the government, and this includes Congress, is willing to take our advice. We’re 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. The 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, we’ve – the DOGE team, to their credit, has made incredible progress.

You’ve talked about $4 billion a day being saved, but that—

And 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 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 read.

I mean, I feel you’re somewhat trapped in the NPC dialogue tree 15 of a traditional journalist. So it is difficult when I’m conversing with someone who’s trapped in the NPC tree of a conventional journalist because it’s like talking to a computer.

15 This is a first for me in a conversation of this kind! The term NPC stands for “non-player character” and means those in a video game who are not controlled by the players and therefore engage in repetitive behavior rather than original thought. In journalism however, we tend to ask the same question or a version of the same question again when there’s no answer the first time.

So 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 of 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’re doing very well. We cannot take action beyond that because we’re not some sort of imperial dictator of the government. There are three branches of the government that are to some degree opposed to that level of cost savings.

But nonetheless, let’s not criticize whether there’s $2 trillion and instead look at the fact that $160 billion has been saved and more will be saved too.

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.

I can see that you are proud of that work.

I do want to ask you about USAID and the comments that Bill Gates made the other day, which, and I know that you called him—

I know you’ve said that already.

I’m sorry, who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he frequented Jeffrey Epstein?

Okay, well he said he regrets those and he’s spent—

Exactly. I wouldn’t trust that guy with my kids—

He’s 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?

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. 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 they said, “Oh, well this is going to help children” or it’s going to help some disease eradication or something like that, and then 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. They don’t even try to come up with a show orphan. 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 let me put this as a response because what we find is an enormous amount of fraud and graft.

Okay. Let me, let me put this example to you—

Very little of it actually gets to the kids, if anything at all 16.

16 This is a common misconception. While a January report from USAID noted that 12.1% of its money went directly to local organizations in foreign countries last year, most of the remaining money is distributed through organizations and companies that operate internationally. In March, USAID itself catalogued the effect of the recent cuts in a memo. And a top development think tank estimated lives saved from all US international aid — not just USAID — to be in the millions.

Okay. Let me put this example to you because you grew up in South Africa so you’ll know the impact of HIV/AIDS. And this is why I asked about the data. The US led on international efforts to combat HIV/AIDS treatment and 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 UNAIDS 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’s figures are not wrong. Millions of lives could be lost 17.

17 This was my longest question, but there’s a reason for it: accuracy and attribution. You can see my source here. UNAIDS — a key delivery partner for the US in its HIV-response work — makes clear that only some of the work of PEPFAR is covered by the Emergency Humanitarian Waiver issued at the end of January.

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?

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.

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

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 18, 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.

18 This piece, which Bloomberg published in April, shows how much uncertainty there is about services that were covered by PEPFAR, and about the future rollout of this drug. Lenacapavir comes from a California-based pharmaceutical company, and could therefore also bring revenues back to the US.

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

So finally, your political influence. I wondered whether you have decided yet how much you are going to spend on the upcoming midterms? You spent a lot more money on the last US election than you envisaged when you were speaking here three years ago 19. Are you going to continue to spend at that kind of level on future elections?

19 At QEF in 2022, Musk said he had not decided on an exact amount, but estimated it would be “$20 million to $25 million.” He ultimately donated about a quarter of a billion dollars to various political groups in the 2024 cycle, mostly supporting Donald Trump.

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

I think I’ve done enough.

Is it because of blowback?

Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I’ll do it. I don’t currently see a reason.

Okay. And what about political influence beyond the US? How often do you speak to President Putin?

I don’t speak to President Putin.

You’ve never spoken to President Putin?

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

Why do you think I speak to President Putin? Oh, you must, oh, I get it. You believe the legacy media.

Because I’ve heard you speak, actually. 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 reported conversations.

Oh yeah The Wall Street Journal is—

If you are saying they haven’t happened other than once, I’ll take that as read.

Is there a worse publication on the face of the earth than The Wall Street Journal? I wouldn’t use that to line my cage for parrot droppings. That newspaper is the worst newspaper in the world. 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 tripe that you’ve read in those papers

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, and for which we’re all grateful.

Okay. We are out of time.

You mentioned me challenging [Putin]. I did so on the X platform. I challenged Vladimir Putin—

But I didn’t talk to him. That was a post on the X platform.

Great. 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, and you’ve said—

—you haven’t, other than a video call.

Typical legacy media lies.

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-stake 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?

Well, every year has been somewhat pivotal, and this one’s no different. So I mean, 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 would be the first fully reusable orbital rocket ever in history, which would be a profound breakthrough, the essential breakthrough necessary to make life multiplanetary — and ultimately it’ll become a space-faring civilization.

We’ve got Neuralink, which has now helped five 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 a Blindsight implant, which is the end of this year, early next. In fact, that first patient might be in the UAE since we have a relationship with the UAE and the Cleveland Clinic there.

I think what’s running on the AI front, we are close to what you might call AGI, or digital superintelligence. I think we are seeing an explosion in digital superintelligence here. And then we’ve got 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. I’m a technologist first and foremost.

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

Bloomberg