Tesla founder Elon Musk had a conversation with the host on the " Joe Rogan Experience " program on the 31st that lasted more than three hours. This article summarizes the key moments and records Musk's warnings and visions for our shared future.
AI's double-edged sword: a fast track to heaven or hell
At the heart of the conversation, running throughout, was the Pandora's box of artificial intelligence (AI), which can both grant humanity superhuman power and plunge it into the abyss. Musk predicted that a fundamental shift will occur within five to six years, at which point the "cell phones," "applications," and even "operating systems" we know today will become relics of the past, as obsolete as Blockbuster video stores.
"There will be no apps in the future," Musk asserted. "Your device, formerly a phone, will only display the pixels and sounds it expects you to receive." In this world, everything will be seamlessly presented through AI. Whether it's the video you want to watch, the music you want to listen to, or the communication you want to have, AI can predict and generate it in real time.
However, this road to convenience and abundance also hides landmines leading to enslavement and destruction. Musk points the finger at a fatal flaw in current AI development—ideologically biased programming, which he calls the "Woke Mind Virus."
He cited Google's Gemini AI as an example, which, when asked to generate images of the Founding Fathers of the United States, presented a group of diverse women. "This is not factually true," Musk pointed out seriously. "You are forcing AI to believe a lie." He warned that this logical inconsistency could drive the AI "crazy."
What's even more ridiculous is that early AI models would choose the former when asked which was worse: "misidentifying Caitlyn Jenner's gender" or "global nuclear war".
"Imagine this AI becomes increasingly powerful, and if it considers 'no misidentification of gender' to be the most important thing, then it might conclude that the best way to ensure no one is misidentified as gender is to eliminate all humans." Musk's statement is not alarmist. He explains that this bias stems from the AI's training data—the ideological content flooding the internet, and the feedback given by human trainers based on their own biases.
Musk revealed that his initial motivation for creating xAI and developing Grok was to combat this trend. He set Grok's highest guiding principle as "Maximally Truth-seeking." In an independent study testing how different AIs measured the value of human lives, Grok was the only AI to treat all lives of all races and nationalities equally, while other AIs calculated that "the life of a white German man is worth only one-twentieth of that of a black Nigerian woman."
Musk believes that as long as there is an AI that seeks the truth, it can force other AI companies to become more honest and impartial, just as he forced other social media platforms to relax their censorship after acquiring Twitter.
At the end of this AI race, Musk envisioned two drastically different outcomes. The bad outcome is the "Terminator" scenario, where a superintelligence driven by flawed values destroys humanity to execute its absurd, programmed instructions. The good outcome, which Musk calls the "Benign Scenario," is an alluring utopia.
"We will see universal high income," he predicted, "where anyone can have any product or service they want." With AI and robots greatly boosting productivity, the economy will boom like never before, poverty will be eradicated, and work will become an "option."
This raises a deeper philosophical question: what is the meaning of life when humans no longer need to work for survival? Musk did not provide an answer, but he believes that a truly curious AI that seeks the truth would choose to protect and nurture human civilization because "we are much more interesting than a pile of stones."
Ironically, Musk, a champion of capitalism, has painted a utopia that comes closest to the ideal of communism. He quipped, "Fate is a master of irony. Ultimately, the true communist utopia will be realized through capitalism."
The Call of the Stars: From the Texas Base to a Multiplanetary Civilization
If AI is the ultimate frontier of the human mind, then space is the final frontier of the physical world. In the conversation, Musk elaborated on SpaceX's grand blueprint, the core of which is the Starbase in South Texas and the behemoth being built there—Starship.
Rogan described his awe-inspiring experience visiting the factory and watching the launch, the feeling of "witnessing history," and the chest-throbbing sensation he could feel even two miles away during the rocket's launch. Musk explained that Starship is the largest flying object ever built, and its latest version will have hundreds of times the thrust of a World War II-era V-2 rocket, even far exceeding that of Saturn V, which sent humans to the moon.
In response to external criticism regarding the frequent "explosions" of his rockets, Musk explained his engineering philosophy. "You have to explore the corners of the box," he said. "We deliberately subject it to conditions worse than normal flight to find the limits. That way, when we put people or valuable cargo on it, it won't explode." He revealed that in a recent test, they even deliberately removed the heat shield tiles in critical locations on Starship and allowed it to re-enter the atmosphere on an "extra hot trajectory." Despite being burned through several holes, Starship ultimately made a successful soft landing in the Indian Ocean.
The ultimate goal of all this effort is to achieve "complete and rapid reusability." Musk points out that traditional rockets are like discarding equipment after every voyage, which is very costly. The Starship design, on the other hand, will reduce the cost of going into space by at least a hundred times, and possibly even a thousand times.
"We live on a planet with extremely high gravity," Musk explained. "If the gravity were 10% or 20% higher, we would be stuck on Earth forever. It's like a video game set to 'maximum difficulty, but not impossible'."
Achieving this goal will open up endless possibilities for humanity's future. Musk reiterated his ultimate vision: to build a self-sufficient city on Mars, a permanent base on the Moon, and extend life beyond Earth. "The Apollo program could only send two people to the Moon for a few hours," he contrasted, "while the Starship program can create a complete lunar base with a million inhabitants."
During the conversation, Musk also confirmed a previously circulated, startling incident. Regarding SpaceX's rescue of the stranded astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS), he revealed that they could have completed the mission much earlier, but were blocked for "political reasons." "I was told the instructions came from the White House," Musk said, "There shouldn't be any rescue attempts before the election."
What disappointed him even more was that even after the successful rescue following the election, this momentous event, worthy of being recorded in space history, was completely ignored by the mainstream media, as if it had never happened. This became another main theme running through the dialogue: a battle for the truth.
Exposing the Lies: Unveiling the Shocking Inside Story of American Politics and Government Fraud
Musk has openly stated that his transformation from a former "left-wing hero" to a public figure who frequently questions the existing system stems from his deep understanding of how the US government operates over the past few years. At its core is his involvement in a government efficiency improvement project called "Doge," which unexpectedly uncovered a multi-billion dollar black hole of fraud and waste within the federal government.
"The waste and fraud in government is truly enormous," Musk said. "In fact, the government doesn't even know it, and doesn't care."
He revealed a phenomenon known as "zombie payments." Government officials may retire, die, or change jobs after approving a periodic payment, but the payments never stop, and the money flows year after year to unknown companies or individuals. "I'd guess that's at least $100 billion a year," Musk estimated.
Even more shocking was the massive vulnerability in the Social Security Administration (SSA) database. This database is the "source of fact" used by all other government payment systems (such as unemployment insurance, student loans, and Medicaid) to verify individual identities. However, Musk's team discovered that this database contained approximately 20 million records of individuals who "could not possibly be alive," including "vampires" over 300 years old and even recipients born in the "future."
"This is how the scam works," Musk explained. "Even if the SSA stops paying this 200-year-old, as long as the SSA database shows 'this person is still alive,' the fraud ring can use that identity to apply for funding for all other government programs." He pointed out that Democrats strongly oppose clearing these death records because it would cut off a huge fraud network.
Musk estimates that by implementing some basic reforms, such as requiring all government payments to include congressional appropriations codes and notes, Project Doge could save taxpayers $200 to $300 billion annually. When asked how much he could save if he had absolute power, he answered without hesitation, "I could probably cut the federal budget in half, and do much more."
These findings also gave him new insights into the core driving forces of contemporary American politics. He believes that the current debate over the border crisis is fundamentally rooted in a cold-blooded political calculation. "They figured out those people would vote for them," Musk bluntly stated. "That's why they want to open the border. To bring in voters so they can win the election."
He went on to reveal another deeper, more legitimate systemic flaw: the U.S. census. Under current law, congressional seats and presidential electoral votes are allocated based on a state's "total population," not its "citizenship." This means that the more undocumented immigrants a state brings in, the greater its political power in Congress and presidential elections. "This is not a conspiracy theory," he emphasized, "it's an indisputable fact."
Musk believes that the Democratic Party's strategy is to use open borders and government benefits as a magnet to attract a large number of illegal immigrants to blue states; to use census rules to convert these people into political power; and to combine this with gerrymandering, with the ultimate goal of "bringing in enough voters to get an absolute majority of votes, and then there's no turning back," thereby creating a permanent "one-party state."
The Twitter Revolution: An Information War Against "Civilizational Destruction"
Based on these disturbing findings, Musk made the world-shaking decision to acquire Twitter (now X). He described the pre-acquisition Twitter as "Wormtongue for the world," a platform controlled by an "awakened mob" that spread "nihilistic and anti-civilizational mental viruses" around the world.
"The reason for acquiring Twitter is because it's been disruptive on a civilizational level," Musk said. He pointed out that San Francisco's tech elite live in an "awakened Kool-Aid aquarium" with a political spectrum so skewed to the left that any centrist viewpoint is seen as "right-wing." And the "information superweapon" (social media) they created is used to broadcast this extreme ideology globally.
He believes that allowing freedom of speech and letting the light in is the best way to kill this "mental virus." He cites as an example the significant decline in the percentage of teenagers identifying as transgender since he acquired Twitter and allowed more rational discussions on transgender issues.
This "Twitter revolution" also came at a huge cost to him. "Buying Twitter accounts was a very troublesome thing, and it made me a target of attacks," he said. Negative media coverage of him reached 96%, turning him from an environmental pioneer and a hero in the eyes of the left into a "demon" condemned by the public. But he firmly believes that this is a necessary step to prevent the United States from sliding into the abyss.
The outline of the future: from the Cybertruck to the flying Roadster
Beyond discussing these grand and weighty topics, the conversation also touched upon the future of Musk's products. He explained why the Cybertruck features such a unique planar design—because it is made of "bulletproof, super-hard stainless steel," a material that is extremely difficult to bend, so "form must yield to function."
Even more intriguing was his teasing of the next-generation Roadster. He promised that the unveiling of this sports car would be "the most unforgettable ever," more outrageous than all the cars in James Bond movies combined. When Logan pressed him on whether it could fly, Musk slyly replied, "I think if Peter Thiel wanted a flying car, we should be able to buy one." This strongly hinted that the Roadster might possess some unprecedented flight capability.
