Elon Musk said the United States cannot tackle its record federal debt through conventional austerity alone and that a large‑scale rollout of artificial intelligence and robotics is the only viable escape hatch, Business Insider reports. Speaking on Walter Isaacson’s podcast The Builders, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, who once chaired the Department of Government Efficiency, argued that political resistance makes the kind of sharp spending cuts needed to shrink the deficit unrealistic.
According to Musk, US elites are not prepared to undertake radical federal budget cuts that would be necessary to materially reduce the deficit. “Maybe if the president made that his, you know, primary goal, we could do that, but the problem is if you try to solve the deficit and stop wasteful spending, you make a lot of enemies in that situation,” the entrepreneur said. He urged policymakers to pursue a productivity surge instead: the spread of digital superintelligence could lift global economic output by 20-30%, adding as much as 30 trillion a year to world GDP. A combination of advanced androids and expanded space activity could multiply humanity’s aggregate wealth, he added.
Musk’s remarks came against the backdrop of a continued, rapid expansion of Washington’s debt obligations. According to official US Treasury data, sovereign debt crossed the historic $40 trillion threshold in August. In the two months since that milestone was passed, US public debt has risen by almost another $400 billion, or roughly 1%, with the bulk of the increase occurring in the first half of October. With politicians reluctant to embrace unpopular fiscal consolidation, Musk believes that technological transformation is the only way to avert a systemic fiscal breakdown.
