Elon Musk: “Government Is Basically Unfixable” 

The venture capitalist “besties” of the All-In Podcast gathered in Los Angeles earlier this week for their latest summit, where Elon Musk joined via video link to discuss hot topics ranging from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and humanoid robots to Starlink, declining birth rates, and the broader demise of the West.

All-In Podcast hosts welcomed Elon Musk via the video link, where Jason Calacanis wasted no time, opening with: “So, no more Washington, D.C. – you’re back at work. Any lessons from your time in D.C.?”

“The government is basically unfixable,” Musk said while reflecting on the lessons he learned from heading up DOGE for several months, adding, “It was a hell of a side quest.”  

In fact, much of DOGE has been wound down. Musk’s small strike teams across federal agencies failed to uncover the promised $2 trillion in fraud and waste; so far, that figure stands around $206 billion. In reality, DOGE was likely more about neutering the Democratic Party’s decades of corruption, cutting off funding lines such as gutting USAID and rolling the shell of it into the State Department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s control. 

Back to Musk. He told the hosts of All-In, “If you look at our national debt, which is insanely high. The interest payments exceed the defense department  – I guess sorry war department -  budget and they keep rising. If AI and robots don’t solve our national debt, we’re toast.“ 

ELON MUSK: “I haven’t been to DC since May. The government is basically unfixable. I applaud David (Sacks’) noble efforts…but at the end of the day if you look at our national debt…if AI and robots don’t solve our national debt, we’re toast.” pic.twitter.com/XKSes4fBfq

— Autism Capital (@AutismCapital) September 10, 2025

Besides DOGE, Musk spoke about humanoid robots, new Tesla chipsets, full self-driving, SpaceX, xAI, Grok, and the West. 

Here’s the breakdown of the full 45-minute-long conversation:

• (0:00) Introducing Elon Musk, and reflecting on his DOGE experience

• (2:47) Optimus: Progress and potential, the “hands problem”

• (12:20) Tesla: AI5 chips, impact on FSD

• (16:50) SpaceX: Vision for Starlink-enabled smartphones, $17B spectrum deal, Starship update

• (26:16) xAI: Next-gen Grok models, Colossus 2, scaling laws, “Grokipedia”

• (31:29) Evolving alongside AI, implosion of the West, the religion vacuum

• (37:36) Understanding the universe, going to the Moon, what happens on Mars?

Watch the full length here:

Questions still swirl about Musk’s relationship with President Trump following the fallout earlier this year.

A Rose Garden party last week drew some of the biggest names in tech, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, yet Musk was noticeably absent from the invitation list.

Late last week, Tesla’s board offered Musk an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package. There was talk that Tesla had asked Musk to scale back his political involvement. Fast forward to this week, and Musk appears highly engaged in politics on X. He has an obsession with reshaping the political landscape away from the nation-killing “woke virus” to more fundamental principles to “save the West” (such as meritocracy).