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Elon Musk recently sat down with Texas Senator Ted Cruz for an exclusive one-on-one interview at the White House on the Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast to discuss the first 50 days of President Donald Trump's second term in office. The two chatted about several key issues, including government waste, artificial intelligence, and space travel.
When Cruz asked Musk about his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk said he was shocked by the amount of waste he found within the federal government.
While Cruz brought up several wasteful programs that have been targeted by DOGE, such as funding an Iraqi version of Sesame Street and providing money to an LGBTQ+ rights organization in Guatemala, Musk also noted more mundane forms of wasteful spending.
"So in every government department, I say every because we've not yet found a single exception. There are far too many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department," Musk explained.
He then noted that DOGE "found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions where there were zero logins."
"The government's paying for thousands of licenses of software or media subscriptions and no one had ever logged in even once," Musk noted.
In addition to the software licenses, Musk also explained how there is an abundance of high-limit credit cards registered to agencies across the federal government.
"We found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans. And I still don't have a good explanation for why this is the case. And these are ten thousand dollar limit cards. So it's a lot of money."
Musk said that DOGE is trying to root out waste and fraud, noting that about 80% of the cuts are from wasteful spending and that the other 20% could be the result of fraud. He explained that finding the difference can be challenging.
"But you do have these sorts of gray areas. For example, example be so we saw a lot of payments going out of treasury that had no payment code and no explanation for the payment, and then we're trying to figure out what that payment is, and we'd see that, Okay, that contract was supposed to be shut off, but someone forgot to shut off that that contract and so the company kept getting money. Wow, Now, is that waste or fraud? Both, both?"
The two also discussed artificial intelligence, with Musk predicting it will be able to "do anything better than a human can cognitively" within ten years.
"I think in ten years, based on the current rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the smartest human."
To hear more on Musk's thoughts about AI, space exploration, and how he went from a beloved celebrity and businessman to a pariah, listen to the first part of the interview below:
