"The Bankruptcy Of The United States" - Musk WARNS Only AI & Robots Can Save America

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Elam said America will 1,000% go bankrupt due to debt and here's what he claims can save the country. Is this it Rob?

[00:00:08]>> Yes, sir.

[00:00:08]>> Go for it.

[00:00:09]>> I think I think that's right.

[00:00:11]>> What was the point of the Doge cuts if the economy is going to grow so much?

[00:00:16]>> Well, I think like waste and fraud are not good things to have, you know. Um, I I I was actually pretty worried about I I I guess I mean I I think in the absence of AI and robotics, we're actually totally screwed. Uh because the national debt is piling up like crazy. Um you know, our interest payments, the interest payments, the national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. So over a trillion dollars just in interest payments. Um, you know, that was like I was like, okay, pretty concerned about that. Maybe if I spend some time, we can slow down the bankruptcy of the United States. Um, and give us enough time for the AI and robots to, you know, help solve the national debt. Not help solve, it's the only thing that could solve the national debt. Like, we are 1,000% going to go bankrupt as a country and fail as a country without AI and robots. Nothing else will solve the national debt. Um and and so so we we'd like to well we just need we we need enough time to get build the AI and robots uh to and not go bankrupt before then >> we got 39 trillion auto national debt.

[00:01:31]He's saying that Jeff do you agree with him?

[00:01:33]>> Yeah I look historically what we did after World War II um we got out of that debt mess by allowing a little bit of fiscal sanity from Truman and Eisenhower. um it wasn't aggressive, it wasn't austerity, it was just hey, let's not spend like we were during the 30s and 40s and you allowed the economy to grow. So what Musk is saying is like the the economy that he sees building from AI and robots will be enough economic growth and economic potential that if we pair that with a little bit of fiscal sanity, we'll solve the debt problem the same way that we did in the 1950s and 1960s before it all went to hell again afterwards. So that's that's the only way to do this. That's the only legitimate way to do this is to grow our way out of the deficit problem. But the first part of that is you have to have a little bit of fiscal sanity and you have to have the political will to have fiscal sanity. And in many ways that's the hard part. I I'll put more of an emphasis on the fiscal sanity part. Um Ukraite that growth is the thing that solves all wounds. AI is one potential source of growth. Not as fast as my Silicon Valley people trying to get your money on their IPO will tell you. Uh but it is is one. you know, growth comes from new inventions like AI. But um there's the statements that this is the only thing AI is the only thing that will save us, I think, are wrong. Yeah.

[00:02:46]>> Because of the size of the dumpster fires. So the the main problem is spending and there's about a trillion dollars going down various rat holes.

[00:02:54]Not not so much fraud because it's perfectly legal fraud. We we're just talking about farm subsidies. Speaking of rat hole, um, but the, you know, the big one is social security, healthcare.

[00:03:05]Uh, you know, our government prints checks and sends it to voters more than it feels like taxing them. Our tax system is completely dysfunctional. So, it it is designed to raise as little money at possible as the highest possible marginal rates. It needs the opposite. So, you know, a 1986 style tax reform or heaven forbid put in a consumption tax instead of the income tax. All straightforward. money would roll in and let's fix the dumpster fires of our growth, not just uh hope for AI.

[00:03:31]Let me introduce you to the California highspeed train example. You know, you can't >> Can you do that? I mean, it doesn't exist, right?

[00:03:38]>> You can't exactly you cannot build anything in the US anymore, which you know, actually I'm I'm progressive Democrats have figured out I can't hook up my windmills to the power grid. It takes 15 years to get the permits. Maybe something's wrong here, but there are so many uh just things in the way, permits in the way of getting anything done in the US that I think fixing those dumpster fires of growth, getting back to a little bit of free markets, uh spending sanity, reform the tax code, those are all perfectly possible of a faintly uh uh faintly um competent government. And then yes, AI largely of get out of the way. The last thing we need is an AI policy to guide the growth of AI. that'll kill it the way the Europeans did.

[00:04:18]>> Yeah. The way it's set up right now, it almost feels like uh somebody who has terrible spending habits, like that's in debt with their credit cards and everything, if they were to win the lottery with like, you know, the blessing of a a massive economic boom, we would handle it terribly right now because we don't have the foundation or the infrastructure to, you know, manage the economy properly. If like, you know, the the spending habits of Congress today were applied to an economy where AI and robotics bring us to the stratosphere in terms of economic growth, we would still find a way to ruin it because of the habits that we have in place.

[00:04:44]>> Yes. They would just spend it. Yep.

[00:04:46]Yeah. So, we need to get that square, which it sucks cuz I, you know, the way that Elon Musk responded to the Doge situation makes me think that like it's that's the biggest most powerful money pot in the history of the world. This this deficit like something that happens every year that something scared the hell out of money, try to tap into that and stop it. So, he backed right away from that and now he's just kind of taking a different approach, >> right? And it's a power center, right?

[00:05:07]>> Yeah. The bigger the government get, the more more money it has, the more political influence it has just by its very nature. Right. All that social security money, military, healthare, >> the learing center up in Minnesota.

[00:05:17]Where does that come from?

[00:05:18]>> But let me ask you this. While he's talking here, he's he's saying things.

[00:05:21]He's also continued saying that, you know, saving for retirement is irrelevant because AI is going to create a world of abundance. It will not matter when he's talking about retirement. Rob, is this the clip?

[00:05:32]>> Yes, sir.

[00:05:32]>> I wonder where you guys are at with this. Go for it. UBI. In other words, um, one of the questions is if in fact this future we hit massive productivity >> and massive profitability because we're dividing by zero. The cost of labor has gone to nothing. The cost of intelligence has gone to nothing and we're still producing products and services faster and faster. So, there's more profitability. Someone needs to be buying it and someone needs to be able to have the capital to buy it. Um, I mean, this is an important question to get to get thought through.

[00:06:03]Yeah. Um, well, one like side recommendation I have is like don't worry about like squirreling money away for uh retirement in like 10 or 20 years. It won't matter.

[00:06:15]>> Okay.

[00:06:15]>> Either either we're not going to be here or >> it it just uh like it's it's you won't need to save for retirement. If if any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant.

[00:06:28]>> The services will be there to support you. You'll have the home. You'll have the healthcare. You'll have the entertainment.

[00:06:36]>> The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline.

[00:06:43]>> Pause it right there.

[00:06:44]>> Do you agree?

[00:06:45]>> No.

[00:06:46]>> No. No.

[00:06:47]>> I mean, first of all, you know, >> is that a reckless comment to make?

[00:06:51]>> Yes. for and but yeah, >> what we're really talking about here, okay, let's assume that he's correct and then we have these labors saving robots and it's software and everything else, but how do you distribute all of the all of the goods that are made and all the services that are provided? You can't just eliminate the economy. You just say, "Hey, we're just everybody's going to have something for free. Um there's still a distribution mechanism and I I mean there's still arguments to be made about whether or not that's actually achievable to begin with. Is there enough resources to be available to I mean, they're talking about having more robots walking around than humans. Um, how do we get to that point to begin with? Is that something that's going to happen in 10 or 20 years? Um, I highly doubt it. I think that there is a positive outcome here that the human robot partnership will make people more productive, but people stay at the center of the economy. They stay at the center of everything.

[00:07:37]>> Yes, that was one of the more economically incoherent things. Can you Michael? One of the more economically incoherent things I've ever heard. These guys are brilliant about starting companies and AI but not about adding together. And it's there's the the fancy word is cognitive dissonance for uh completely incompatible thoughts that live at the same time. So at the same time, don't worry about saving for retirement because we'll all be so bountiful. But the US government is 100% going to go bankrupt. But we need that bankrupt government has to give universal basic income to everybody because we're all going to lose our jobs to the to the I mean it just does not make any sense whatsoever. What's going to happen? We have seen this hundreds of times before from the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, the the locomotive, the steamship, the tractor. Tractor, it's 1900. 70% of Americans work on the farm. The tractor's invented. Oh, no. We need universal basic income because they're all going to be out of a job. Well, it turned out not to. You got it exactly right. This will raise human productivity.

[00:08:36]>> Human >> and this will open this AI is special because it's going to open new possibilities. It's not we have the old production line and we have now a machine that gets rid of three of you go out and live in the streets. No, this opens new possibilities, new businesses uh that you you can radically reduce the scale of a business to get started. It the things that humans do are going to become worth much much more and that's why humans will have the bucket to buy the stuff.

[00:09:03]>> AI does not eliminate workers. It eliminates hours.

[00:09:06]>> It eliminates tasks and burdensome >> right? So you spend less time doing the same amount of stuff. I want the AI who can answer my email, right, and and fill out my expense reports and I will have three quarters.

[00:09:17]>> The fact that you guys are agreeing, >> it is scary because you guys you guys are not talking about your blind spots.

[00:09:24]>> But it will be slower. This will not come in one or two.

[00:09:27]>> Yeah, Brandon. Yeah. But I mean each each time the song happens though, there's things that we never even thought of that we we end up doing with the economy, you know, like jobs and tasks that we couldn't think of before because we didn't have the time to do it before.

[00:09:37]>> Exactly. But anytime you know you are relying on somebody else or relying on the government especially, you're getting yourself into a trap. Like I mean the the sad thing is that there are going to be people who listen to them here who assume they're going to be taken care of by the system or by the government. Horrible situation to be in.

[00:09:53]I mean even let's say >> you're saying there's retirees out there right now liquidating their stock portfolios and just going on vacation.

[00:09:58]>> I think it's more his age.

[00:09:59]>> Yeah. I think it's guys in their 20s and 30s. Yeah.

[00:10:03]>> Be reckless.

[00:10:04]>> 100%. There are people that will run with this. I'll totally, you know, take >> You know why? You know why though?

[00:10:08]Because there there's a there's a big group of people that want to uh uh have a savior.

[00:10:16]>> Mhm.

[00:10:16]>> And and when I mean savior, I'm talking different than faith. I'm talking savior to say they're going to save us.

[00:10:22]>> Yeah.

[00:10:22]>> They're going to take care of us financially. They're going to do this.

[00:10:25]Listen, you know, the old saying, pray like it's up to God, you know, but work like it's up to you. And to me, if you're sitting here saying you can pray like it's up to Elon and all the, you know, trillionaires and billionaires that are going to take care of you, but you better work like it's up to you cuz it's going to come down. The the onus is going to be on you. You got to pull your I think it's a little bit reckless to make a comment like this. Uh because you are you are followed by hundreds of millions of people. Some could say you're followed by billions. Maybe some people don't follow you, but billions know who you are. For you to make a comment like that, it's a little bit scary. I will say the other side as well on what you guys are talking about is yes the tractor I went and we we did an exercise together we looked at the numbers of what tractors did and how scary it was 40 million workers that we had and all of a sudden boom like oh my god >> and not even 40 million it was 40% of workers I think were in manufacturing you know >> but the difference is you know the zero to million chart that we see you know the zero to million like hey it took Facebook this long to get to a million hey it took Google this long hey it took chat GBT how long to get to a million if you Think about inventions that disrupted our lives and it was overnight. Open AI chatbt was overnight.

[00:11:34]>> I was like, "Hey, can you write a rap song by Trump, but you know, write a rap song in Tupac's voice, but as if Trump is saying it with the words that he would use, boom, that video went viral instantly. Within seconds, you got something." So, I think Open AI made things and and you know the whole atrophy conversation. You know how I tore my ACL and everybody's telling me every doctor I meet with atrophy.

[00:11:58]Atrophy atrophy. Atrophy. Your quad strength is going to go away very quickly. But quad strength is one thing.

[00:12:04]I can rehab it and I'm prehabbing it right now to get it addressed. The atrophy of the brain of kids no longer need. Like right now I'm giving an assignment to one of my nephews. One of my nephews as if I have a hundred. I have one nephew. Giving an assignment to to my nephew. And the way I'm doing it is I know you can go to Chad GBT and ask for a summary of a book, but I know the three stories of the book because I've read the entire book and I'm going to say what happened to such and such in the story because I want him to read it.

[00:12:31]I don't want him to have atrophy because he's relying on open AI. So then the question becomes which we don't know we all are you know senior fellow Hoover professor Chicago booth I mean you know the heavy weight he's taught what who have been your students over the years.

[00:12:46]I bet you've had some students that have been very successful in their lives that are probably famous people. Successful guy when it comes on to money and you know, hey, you got your stuff that you've done with, you know, schooling and and and what you're doing now. But we don't know what life is going to be like when all of a sudden we're going to the mall, we see a thousand robots.

[00:13:01]>> We don't know what work is going we the part of unknown. This is why I'm part of the Andy Grove community where he wrote a book called Only the Paranoid Survive.

[00:13:09]I think if you're cocky, arrogant, confident about anything right now, you will be destroyed. I think if you think you know it all right now because of whatever thinking in the past got you don't get me wrong have your values principles all those evergreen principles but if you get too cocky right now there's a percentage of things that could happen next decade or two that we know nothing about it and you as a family the leader of the family that's watching this content a lot of our people that follow the content they're business owners they're executives they're people that are performers or else you couldn't listen you couldn't tolerate listen to us for too long right so no look at these I don't want to tell so you're somebody you're performing you're winning and you're it is on us to make sure we take the lead. If we sit there, we're like, "Oh my god, Elon Musk just told us this. This is great, babe.

[00:13:49]Let's go to Vegas and double up the money and gamble." I think there's a little bit of risk that we're facing.

[00:13:54]>> I wouldn't worry about young people taking retirement advice from Elon Musk's tweets too seriously. Uh where I'm in Palo Alto, most young people are still, if they're not saving for retirement, it's because they think the climate apocalypse America >> is not Palo Alto.

[00:14:06]>> And well, you're living on an island.

[00:14:09]Oh, young people who who've had the unfortunate experience of a fancy universities tend to believe that way.

[00:14:14]But more seriously, um, uh, you know, what's going to what's going to matter is people who know how to use AI. So, I actually think the young are going to be fine because they're the ones who know how to use AI to cheat on tests. They're going to know how to use AI in the workplace. And and think historically, everything that's come, people have always said, "Oh, it's going to be the calculator will come. They'll know they won't know any math. The automobile will come. It's going to destroy the morality of young America." It always worked out fine. If you worry about jobs though, which I do, there are going to be people people who lose their jobs. There are going to be people who are left behind.

[00:14:44]But what we absolutely don't want to do is regulate AI or give them checks so long as they don't earn new skills and get a new job. That's the way Europe does it. You know, if you worry about jobs, worry about our education system.

[00:14:55]You worry about people who aren't able to read, worry about people who aren't taught to read in schools, who are graduated from schools thanks to the teachers union with a third grade reading level ability. That's where lack of reading comes from. Not because they're spending too much time scrolling AI enabled Twitter.

[00:15:10]>> For those of you guys that are small business owners or your executives, you got big plans for 2026. We host an event once a year. It's a super ball of our events. And it went from a small event that we had to now, you know, expecting 12,000 people this year. It's a phenomenal event to go to. Here's why.

[00:15:28]Rob, go and play the clip. 23 years old.

[00:15:31]I've gone to four to 10 business conferences every year. It doesn't matter if it's a family conference, generational wealth conference, you know, investment conference, where to invest your money or raising your family, or even a revival church conference. I wanted to put a business conference together where we can talk money, business, family, faith, politics, and nobody walks on egg shows.

[00:15:51]And that's exactly what we did with the vault conference. The first one we hosted, 440 people showed up. I had no idea how many people were going to show up. Now, for the first time, we're coming to the MGM Grand Arena. The lion's right behind me, Leo the Lion.

[00:16:03]We're expecting 12,000 people August 31st till September 3rd to cover this manual, 296 pages. If you've never attended the Vault Conference, do yourself a favor. Bring your wife, bring your husband, bring your kids, bring your peers, bring your clients and business owners. I cannot wait to see you here at Las Vegas MGM Grand Arena for the first time at the ball conference. We'll see you here.

[00:16:25]>> We have people that came for the first time and they've never missed it. And now they bring 50. We had one company that brought 150 employees of theirs last year to the vault conference. If you're somebody that wants and we're about to make the announcement with speakers as well here pretty soon. Click on a QR code. Go on the link below. Or Rob, what's the website by the way?

[00:16:42]Thevaultconference.com.

[00:16:43]>> Yes.

[00:16:44]>> At thevaultconference.com. If you can go to my screen disappear, Jake, if you can go to thevaultconference.com, get yourself a ticket, your spouse, your business partners, your sales guys, and let's spend four days together in Las Vegas August 31st through the 3rd of September. If you enjoy this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here. And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.