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Elon Musk Weekly News Update: Starship Flight 6 & FSD 13.5 (Feb 8, 2026) · Elon Musk Podcast

0:00
Something interesting is happening in corporate
0:02
boardrooms right now, and it's not showing up in the consumer
0:05
tech headlines. The battle for AI dominance
0:08
isn't being fought on Twitter or in App Store rankings anymore.
0:11
It's being fought in procurement meetings, security audits, and
0:15
enterprise contracts for 10s of millions of dollars in
0:19
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, making serious inroads
0:23
against open AI in places that matter most.
0:26
The big companies, The Fortune 500 companies.
0:29
I want to talk about why the shift is happening, what it
0:31
tells us about why AI is actually headed, and why the
0:35
enterprise market might determine who wins the entire AI
0:38
race. Which one writes better emails?
0:41
Which one helps you code faster? Which one your teenager uses for
0:45
homework? Now stuff matters, but it's not
0:47
where the real money is. Enterprise AI is a completely
0:50
different game. We're talking about companies
0:53
deploying AI across thousands of employees, integrating it into
0:56
core business operations, handling sensitive customer
0:59
data, and needing to explain their AI decisions to
1:02
regulators. The requirements are stricter,
1:05
the contracts are longer, and the switching costs are
1:09
enormous. Open AI got there first.
1:12
They launched ChatGPT Enterprise in 2023 and built an impressive
1:17
roster of corporate clients. They had the brand recognition,
1:20
the first mover advantage, and frankly, the hype machine
1:23
working in their favor for a while.
1:26
AI and open AI were basically the same things in a lot of
1:30
boardrooms. Anthropic has been quietly
1:34
eating into that lead, and they're doing it by being
1:37
boring. And I mean that as a compliment.
1:41
Think about what a chief information officer actually
1:43
cares about when deploying AI across an organization.
1:47
They're not impressed by viral demos or creative writing
1:50
samples. They want to know, will this
1:54
thing make stuff up? Will it hallucinate?
1:57
Can we audit what it does? Let handle our proprietary data
2:01
safely? What happens when something goes
2:04
awry? Anthropic Bill clawed around
2:07
those concerns from the beginning.
2:10
Their constitutional AI approach, the emphasis on
2:13
honesty and harmless outputs, the attention to reliability
2:17
over raw capability. These aren't exciting features.
2:21
A demo at a tech conference. They're exactly what risk averse
2:25
enterprises want to hear. Now I want to hear from you.
2:29
I've been digging through the analytics of the show and I
2:32
noticed 39% of you are following the channel.
2:35
And for you, thank you so much. The other 61% of you, you've
2:40
been listening, you've been watching, but you haven't hit
2:42
the follow or subscribe button yet.
2:44
There's another factor here that doesn't get enough attention.
2:47
It's called the trust deficit. Open AI has had a rough couple
2:52
of years on the governance front.
2:53
Sam Altman firing and unfiring in 2023 spooked a lot of
2:59
enterprise customers. Then you had ongoing questions
3:02
about their transition from nonprofit to for profit
3:05
structure, leadership changes, and debates about their safety
3:08
commitments. None of that necessarily effects
3:11
how well GPT 4 or GPT 5 works. But enterprises care about
3:15
stability. They're signing multi year multi
3:19
hundreds of $1,000,000 contracts.
3:22
They need to believe their AI vendor will still exist and
3:24
still operate the same way in around 3 years from now.
3:28
And Tropic by contrast has maintained a pretty consistent
3:32
story. Same leadership, they are safety
3:36
focused, same research direction.
3:39
For a procurement team trying to justify a major vendor decision
3:43
and to spend millions of dollars, that consistency really
3:47
does matter. No, I don't want to overstate
3:50
this. Open AI is still the market
3:52
leader in enterprise AI by most measures.
3:55
They have more customers, more revenue, and more name
3:58
recognition. But market share shifting and
4:00
the direction of that shift tells you something important
4:03
about what corporations actually value when the hype settles
4:06
down. Here's the key part.
4:08
Enterprise adoption is a leading indicator for the whole AI
4:12
industry. Consumer products come and go.
4:15
Remember when everyone was excited about character based AI
4:19
chat bots or AI generated art tools?
4:22
You know some of them are still around.
4:23
But the hype cycles move pretty fast.
4:25
Enterprise deployments stay in a lot longer.
4:28
They're stickier. And when a bank or healthcare
4:31
system or an automaker builds AI into their core workflows,
4:35
they're making a bet that lasts years, not just months of hype.
4:41
So the companies that win enterprise contracts today are
4:43
positioning themselves to be dominant for the next decade.
4:46
They're getting access to proprietary data that makes
4:49
their models better. They're building relationships
4:52
with decision makers who will influence the next round of
4:54
purchases. They're generating the kind of
4:56
steady revenue. This is why Anthropic has been
4:59
so focused on enterprise. Even though their consumer
5:02
product arguably gets less attention than ChatGPT, they
5:06
understand that winning corporate boardrooms might
5:08
matter more than winning a Twitter argument.
5:13
And there's also a regulatory angle worth mentioning.
5:16
Governments around the world are getting more serious about AI
5:18
oversight. The E US AI Act is now in
5:22
effect. the US has executive orders and proposed legislation.
5:26
Other countries are developing their own frameworks around AI.
5:30
Enterprises operating in regulatory industries need to
5:34
demonstrate that their AI systems meet certain standards.
5:37
They need audit trails. They need explain ability.
5:41
They need to show that they've done due diligence on safety and
5:44
bias in a company that build its entire AI system around those
5:48
principles from day one has a huge advantage over a company
5:52
that's retrofitting safety features onto a system designed
5:55
primarily for capability. It's not a knock on open AI's
5:59
engineering. It's recognition that design
6:02
choices made early tend to persist, and you got to start
6:07
from the right perspective. So what does this all mean going
6:11
forward? I think we're entering a phase
6:14
where AI competition looks less like a Sprint and more like a
6:18
long term marathon. No more flashy demos, but the
6:23
real action in deployment, in integration, in the boring work
6:27
of making AI reliable enough that a risk averse corporation
6:31
will actually bet on it and spend those hundreds of millions
6:34
of dollars. Enthropic isn't going to out
6:37
spend open AI on compute or out market them on brand awareness,
6:41
but they might out trust them. And in enterprise that's worth
6:45
more than just hype. In the next few years will tell
6:48
us whether this strategy works. I'm a huge proponent of Claude.
6:53
Claude code has saved the day so many times for me.
6:56
I think it's amazing. And enterprise contracts take
6:59
time to materialize. And financial results.
7:02
It takes time to get that money. But if you want to understand
7:05
who's actually winning, stop looking at App Store rankings
7:08
and start looking at which companies are getting invited to
7:11
procurement meetings at major corporations.
7:15
That's where the future is being decided.
7:17
One really boring contract at a time. 50,000 people lost their
7:23
jobs last year because of AI. At least that's what their
7:27
employers told them. But here's the thing, A new
7:30
report suggests many of those companies don't actually have AI
7:33
systems ready to do those jobs. So what's really going on?
7:37
Are we witnessing the biggest workforce transformation in a
7:41
generation? Or are some companies just using
7:43
AI as a convenient excuse for cuts they're going to make
7:46
anyway? Today, I'm going to walk through
7:49
what the data actually says, why Google just sent video game
7:53
stocks into a tailspin, and what one of the most respected minds
7:57
and AI thinks you should be doing right now about all of
8:01
this. So let's start with the idea of
8:04
AI washing. The New York Times ran a piece
8:07
this week examining A troubling pattern.
8:10
Company after company has been announcing layoffs and pointing
8:13
to AI as the culprit. Amazon did it.
8:16
Pinterest did it. The message to investors and the
8:19
public is the same. We're getting more efficient for
8:23
modernizing. AI is handling what humans used
8:26
to do. Sounds reasonable enough.
8:29
Except Forrester report published in January found
8:32
something curious. Many of the companies blaming AI
8:35
for layoffs don't actually have mature, vetted AI applications
8:40
ready to fill any of those roles.
8:44
They're firing people and saying AI will do the work, but they
8:47
don't have the AI agents to do that work.
8:52
Molly Kinder is a senior research fellow at the Brooking
8:55
Institute. She put it bluntly.
8:57
Saying layoffs were caused by AI is a very investor friendly
9:01
message. The alternative would mean
9:03
admitting, as she put it, the business is failing.
9:07
And nobody wants to tell Wall Street that.
9:09
We've seen this playbook before. Remember the pandemic hiring
9:13
spree? Tech companies went on a binge.
9:16
They hired like the good times would never end.
9:19
Then the good times ended. Now they need to clean up that
9:22
mess. But they need a story that makes
9:24
them look strategic rather than short sighted.
9:28
Enter AI and think about it from an executive's perspective.
9:32
You can stand up in front of the shareholders and say we over
9:36
hired by 30% during a period of irrational exuberance and now
9:40
we're correcting that mistake. Or you can say we're investing
9:45
in the future. AI is transforming our
9:47
operations and we're restructuring to stay
9:50
competitive. Which one gets you a raise or
9:54
which one doesn't scare investors?
9:57
No, this isn't to say AI isn't changing work, though it
10:00
absolutely is. But the gap between the hype and
10:03
the reality is wider than most people realize.
10:06
Some of these layoffs are genuine AI driven efficiency
10:09
gains, some are just regular old cost cutting firings with a
10:14
trendy label. Now I've been digging into the
10:17
analytics of the show and noticed that 39% of you are
10:21
following this channel. I love you, thank you, I'm
10:24
forever grateful for you. And the other 61% of you have
10:28
listened to a few episodes, just haven't hit the follow or
10:31
subscribe button. And I appreciate you for doing
10:33
that. But I've been an independent
10:35
journalist covering AI, Space Flight, Elon Musk, and tech for
10:39
the last six or seven years. I'm going to continue on for the
10:41
next 10. And all I ask from you is one
10:43
second of your time, hit the follow or subscribe button on
10:46
whatever platform you're listing on right now.
10:49
I'm extremely grateful and blessed to have you right here,
10:52
right now and in this community. So thank you for doing that.
10:56
Now, this is where it gets complicated.
10:58
Because while some companies appear to be AI washing their
11:01
layoffs, other companies are creating AI that's genuinely
11:05
rattling markets. This week, Google launched a new
11:09
AI model, and the reaction was immediate.
11:12
Video game stocks dropped immediately.
11:15
The market looked at what Google built and said this could
11:19
destroy us. I find the timing fascinating
11:22
too. In one corner you have companies
11:24
claiming AI is so powerful that it's replacing workers, but they
11:28
don't actually have the AI. The other corner, Google
11:31
releases something and investors start panic selling gaming
11:36
stocks because they believe AI is about to eat that industry
11:40
alive. Both of those things are
11:42
happening at once. The hype and the reality, the
11:44
excuse making and the genuine disruption all tangled together.
11:48
And this is what's making covering AI so tricky right now.
11:52
You can't say it's all fake because some of it is very real.
11:55
Can't say it's all transformative, but it's just
11:57
marketing. The honest answer is messier.
12:01
AI is changing some jobs faster than others.
12:04
Some companies are genuinely adapting, some are just using
12:07
the moment to make cuts and fire people.
12:09
They wanted to make those firings anyway.
12:12
They just use AI as an excuse. And the market is trying to
12:15
price in a future nobody can actually predict.
12:18
So what do you do about it? If you're someone trying to
12:21
figure out whether your job is safe or whether you should be
12:23
worried, or what skills matter, how do you separate signal from
12:26
noise demise? Hazabis has a view on this CEO
12:31
of Google DeepMind, which means he's one of the most credible
12:35
voices in AI on Earth. His team built alpha fold,
12:40
working on systems that win Nobel Prizes.
12:44
This week, he offered some advice to college students.
12:46
He told undergrads to get, in his words, unbelievably
12:50
proficient with AI tools. He said this is a better bet
12:55
than traditional internships. It's a huge statement.
12:58
Strong internships have been the gold standard for building a
13:02
career. Go to work somewhere, you learn
13:04
the ropes, you make connections, you make a little bit of money.
13:08
The value you can create by deeply understanding these tools
13:11
could outweigh the credential of having done a summer and some
13:14
company. Regardless of where you land on
13:17
the AI washing debate, whether companies are being honest about
13:20
a is impact or using it as a cover, the underlying technology
13:24
is advancing. And the people who understand
13:27
it, who can actually use it, who know its strengths and
13:30
limitations, they're going to have options.
13:33
It's a bit like the early days of the Internet.
13:35
A lot of companies talked a big game about being digital.
13:37
Many of them had no idea what they were actually doing.
13:40
But the people who actually learned to build websites, who
13:43
understood how the technology worked, they just did fine.
13:46
Whether the hype was real or not.
13:47
Just keep coding, keep building. AI is both overhyped and under
13:53
hyped at same time. Some layoffs are real AI driven
13:56
change, some are convenient excuses for managers not to get
13:59
in trouble. Google is building things that
14:01
genuinely destroy markets, and the smartest advice for anyone
14:06
watching all this unfold is probably the simplest.
14:08
Just learn the tools, get good at them.
14:10
Don't wait for someone to tell you whether your job is saved.
14:13
The disruption is uneven, sometimes exaggerated, but it's
14:17
not fake. And the people who treat it as
14:20
both real and overstated, who stay curious without getting
14:23
swept up, they're going to navigate this one the best.
14:27
SO good luck out there. Learn all the tools that you
14:31
can. Elon Musk is upset about a
14:34
casting choice. Specifically, he's upset that
14:36
Christopher Nolan cast Lupita and Yango as Helen of Troy is
14:40
upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey.
14:43
And according to Elon Musk, this means Nolan has lost his
14:46
integrity. Now here's the thing though.
14:48
Helen of Troy in Greek mythology was born from an egg.
14:52
Her mother was seduced by Zeus, who had transformed himself into
14:56
a swan, and the woman then laid an egg and Helen hatch from it.
15:02
So when we're talking about where accuracy breaks down in
15:04
this story, have some thoughts about where that line actually
15:08
sits? This whole thing exploded this
15:10
week after Musk amplified a post on X arguing that Helen was
15:14
traditionally depicted as fair skinned and blonde.
15:17
And look, I get that app taptation spark debate.
15:20
They always have. There's a bigger question
15:22
underneath all of this. What does integrity actually
15:25
mean? When you're adapting mythology,
15:27
you know what we're going to be digging into is the absurd
15:31
origin story of Helen. Talk about when Nolan is
15:34
actually building with this film, and ask whether visual
15:37
tradition or thematic truth is what really matters here.
15:41
So let's start with the mythology, because honestly,
15:44
it's too good to not start with that.
15:47
The story of Helen's birth is one of the stranger tales in
15:51
Greek mythology. In Zeus, the king of all the
15:55
gods had a thing for mortal women.
15:57
This is well documented, but he also had a habit of turning
16:00
himself into animals to pursue them.
16:03
In this case, he became a swan. He seduced or, depending on the
16:06
version, assaulted a woman named Lita.
16:10
She was the queen of Sparta, and after this encounter with the
16:14
divine bird, Lita laid an egg. Now Helen of Troy hatch from
16:18
that egg. That's the canonical origin
16:21
story. The most beautiful woman in the
16:24
world, the face that launched 1000 ships, came out of an egg
16:27
after her mother had an encounter with a swan.
16:30
So when someone tells me that casting Lupita Nyong'o breaks
16:34
the realism of the story, you have to ask which part of it was
16:37
realistic to begin with. The swan, the egg, the hatching.
16:41
So here's what happened. This week, a user on X posted
16:44
criticism of the casting, arguing that Helen has
16:47
traditionally been depicted as fair skinned and blonde and that
16:50
changing that makes the premise incoherent.
16:55
The post called it an insult to the author.
16:58
Musk, who owns X and has an audience larger than most
17:01
countries, amplified that signal and that post and added his own
17:05
verdict. He said Chris Nolan has lost his
17:08
integrity and suddenly a casting rumor became a full blown
17:12
culture war debate. The pushback was immediate, and
17:16
honestly, it was pretty funny. People pointed out that there's
17:19
no historical evidence that Helen of Troy ever even existed.
17:23
She's a mythological figure. Others went straight to the egg
17:26
thing. One users put it pretty bluntly.
17:30
If you're find with an immortal God turning into a bird,
17:32
sleeping with a human, and producing an egg that hatches
17:35
into the most beautiful woman in the world, then the Peta's skin
17:39
tone probably isn't where realism breaks down.
17:42
Now that was a lot of the responses.
17:45
Everyone's exhausted with this. Nobody.
17:47
Like who cares if you're a good actor?
17:49
You're a good actor. And that's what people thought
17:52
on X. They took Elon to task for this
17:55
one. And I want to ask you a
17:58
question. I know 39% of you are
18:01
subscribers to the show and 61% of you are not yet, but you've
18:05
been listening to the show or have listened to the show in the
18:07
past, just haven't hit the follow or subscribe button.
18:11
And I've given you about 7 years of my life with this project and
18:15
I'm going to continue for the next 10.
18:17
And all I ask from you is just one second of your time to hit
18:20
the subscribe or follow button on whatever platform you're on
18:22
right now. Thank you so much.
18:24
I'm extremely grateful and eternally blessed to have you in
18:27
this community. So let's get back to this wild
18:31
stuff that's going on with Elon. What does integrity actually
18:34
mean in Elon Musk's criticism? He never defined it.
18:37
And I think that's worth sitting with for a second, because
18:40
integrity is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence,
18:44
and it could mean several different things.
18:46
For some people, integrity means visual continuity.
18:49
Helen has been portrayed a certain way in Western art, in
18:51
cinema for centuries, painting, sculptures, films.
18:55
There's an established look and changing that feels to some
18:57
viewers like bending the story to fit modern politics.
19:01
I understand that perspective. Integrity is about honoring the
19:04
spirit of the myth rather than its most familiar imagery.
19:07
The Odyssey isn't really about what Helen looks like.
19:10
It's about beauty as a destructive force.
19:13
It's about desire and consequence.
19:14
It's about what happens after the war, when Odysseus is trying
19:18
to get home and the gods keep throwing obstacles in his way.
19:22
Those are the themes. Hair color, skin color, They
19:25
don't care. And here's the other thing.
19:27
Christopher Nolan has never been a strict literalist.
19:30
His films routinely reshape history, reinterpret genres, and
19:33
twist reality in service of the story.
19:37
Oppenheimer compressed and rearranged timelines for
19:40
emotional impact. It's a movie.
19:42
The Dark Knight turned a comic book character into a meditation
19:46
on chaos and order. Inception and Tenet bend physics
19:50
and time in ways that require multiple viewings to actually
19:54
understand what's going on. Expecting his odyssey to
19:57
function like a museum exhibit was probably unrealistic from
20:01
the start. So let's talk about what Nolan
20:03
is actually building here, because this film is shaping up
20:05
to be one of the most ambitious projects ever.
20:08
The Odyssey reportedly carries a $250 million budget that makes
20:14
it his most expensive film ever. It's also the first feature shot
20:18
entirely with IMAX cameras, including newly developed
20:21
lightweight inquired models that allowed for more flexibility on
20:25
set. Production reportedly burned
20:27
through more than 2,000,000 feet of IMAX 70 mil film.
20:32
That's very Nolan the man. He loves the film.
20:35
Physical, tangible, deteriorating film.
20:37
He loves it 70 mil, but 2,000,000 feet?
20:40
This cast is super stacked. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, Anne
20:45
Hathaway's Penelope, Tom Holland, Robert Patterson,
20:48
Zendaya, Charlize Theron. They're all in it.
20:52
And there's one surprise catch. Travis Scott is making his
20:55
acting debut as a Bard. That's interesting, right?
20:59
Bards? Where the Storytellers of the
21:00
Ancient World suggests that Nolan thinking about how stories
21:04
get told and retold across time. The film is set to release on
21:09
July 17th, 2026. And whatever you think about the
21:11
casting debate, this is clearly going to be an event.
21:14
Nolan doesn't make small films, it's going to be huge.
21:17
He makes movies that demand to be seen on the biggest screen
21:21
imaginable. Shooting entirely an IMAX 70 mil
21:25
means this one will be built for that experience in a way
21:28
nothing's been seen before. So where does this leave us with
21:32
this whole controversy? And I've been thinking about it
21:35
for a while, and I keep coming back to this tension.
21:38
There's visual tradition on one side, how something has been
21:42
depicted for decades and centuries, and there's thematic
21:46
integrity on the other, what a story is actually about.
21:49
At its core, Helen of Troy has been painted and sculpted and
21:53
filmed thousands of times. Most of those depictions that we
21:58
know of is shown her with pale skin and light hair.
22:01
That's the tradition, the visual tradition.
22:03
But the myth itself doesn't require that.
22:07
The myth is about beauty so powerful it caused a war.
22:11
It's about the destruction that follows desire.
22:13
It's about consequence. Note that depends on any
22:16
particular appearance. Nolan isn't making a documentary
22:20
here, he's making a film. It can be abstract.
22:24
He can do whatever he wants. He's adapting A myth, a story
22:27
that has been told and retold for thousands of years in
22:31
countless of forms. Even him will be bringing
22:35
something new like they did. That's how the mythology
22:38
actually works and never is static.
22:41
It keeps evolving over time. Things change.
22:43
The stories go from one person to the next and that has changed
22:47
it. Now, whether the PITA is the
22:50
right choice for Helen is something we'll find out in July
22:54
when the film comes out. But the idea that are casting on
22:56
its own means Nolan lost his integrity.
22:59
I don't think that holds up, Elon.
23:01
The source material includes swan gods and magic eggs.
23:04
A 10 year war over a kidnapped queen.
23:07
The story's always been stranger than fiction and one person
23:11
cannot change that story. The federal judge just told Elon
23:14
Musk he cannot dodge a deposition over his role in
23:17
gutting USAID. U.S.
23:19
District Judge rejected Musk's legal team's attempt to invoke
23:23
the apex doctrine, a shield that protects high-ranking government
23:26
officials from being forced to testify.
23:28
Underoath Musk left his government role back in May of
23:32
2025 and the judge pointed out that the defendants themselves
23:35
acknowledged he is no longer in government service.
23:38
And the lawsuit was filed by anonymous current and former
23:41
USAID employees who watched her agency shrink from 10,000 people
23:46
to 300 under Doge's direction. So what happens when the world's
23:50
richest man has to answer questions on a roath about
23:54
decisions he allegedly made without any formal legal
23:58
authority? Now the judge has ordered
24:00
depositions for two other figures tied to the USA shut
24:04
down, former acting USA deputy administrator Peter Morocco and
24:08
former DOGE team lead Jeremy Lewin.
24:11
We'll walk through the legal reasoning behind the judge's
24:14
eight page ruling, the constitutional questions at the
24:17
center of this case, the apex doctrine and why it failed here,
24:21
and how this deposition could reshape accountability for
24:24
unofficial government advisers. Elon Musk now faces sworn
24:27
testimony about decisions he made during his time running
24:31
DOGE operations at USAID. The judge ruled landed Tuesday
24:36
and shut the door on every legal argument Musk's attorneys put
24:39
forward to avoid it. The case is building towards
24:42
something larger than one deposition because it tests
24:44
whether people who exercise real government power informal roles
24:48
can avoid the same accountability as Senate
24:50
confirmed officials now. The core legal mechanism Musk's
24:55
team tried to use is called the apex doctrine.
24:58
It exists to protect top executives and senior government
25:01
officials from being pulled into depositions that could disrupt
25:04
their duties or subject them to harassment through litigation.
25:08
Now courts have used it to shield cabinet secretaries,
25:11
agency heads, and CE OS from the burden of constant litigation
25:15
exposure. And Musk's lawyers argued he
25:18
qualified for that same protection based on his role as
25:22
a senior advisor to the president.
25:24
The judge just agreed on multiple fronts.
25:26
In his eight page order, he wrote that it was at best
25:30
unclear whether Musk, Rocco or Lewin qualified as high-ranking
25:35
officials at all. That's USA.
25:36
It is not a cabinet level agency and several of these individuals
25:40
held acting or informal positions during the relevant
25:44
period. The ruling, filed under Federal
25:46
Rule of Civil Procedure 26-C1, denied the defendant's motion
25:51
for a protective order outright. The judge went further.
25:55
He noted that the 4th Circuit, which covers Maryland where this
25:59
case is proceeding, has not formally adopted the apex
26:02
doctrine in the 1st place. That weakened the legal
26:05
foundation of Musk's argument before the court even reached
26:08
the merits. Now, even in circuits where the
26:10
doctrine has more traction course typically require the
26:13
party invoked it to demonstrate that the official has no unique
26:17
first hand knowledge or that the same information can be obtained
26:20
through other means. Now, neither condition was met
26:23
here. The judge also emphasized a
26:25
simple fact that cut against the defense, Musk is no longer in
26:29
the government. The entire premise of the apex
26:32
doctrine rests on protecting a sitting officials time and
26:35
ability to perform duties a sitting official.
26:39
And when the official has already left, that rationale
26:42
collapses. Musk stepped away from his
26:44
formal Doge role in May of 2025. Now the plaintiffs in this case
26:49
are anonymous current and former USAID employees.
26:51
Their lawsuit alleges appointments clause and
26:54
separation of powers violations. The argument is that Musk and
26:57
his Doge buddies exercise the kind of authority that the
27:00
Constitution reserves for officials who go through Senate
27:04
confirmation. They made decisions to shut down
27:06
USAID headquarters. Take down the agency's website.
27:09
They fired 9700 people. Now, to put the scale of that
27:16
reduction in context, USAID managed roughly $43 billion in
27:20
appropriations in fiscal year 2023 and provided disaster
27:24
relief and economic development support across approximately 130
27:28
countries. It was the largest humanitarian
27:31
aid organization in the world, and a study published in July
27:35
estimated that US aid programs prevented 91,000,000 deaths over
27:39
the past 2 decades. 20 years, 91,000,000 deaths, including 30
27:43
million children. So Elon Musk and DOGE just cut
27:49
the funding for something that saved almost 100 million people.
27:58
Think about that for a second. Same study warned that
28:00
dismantling the agency can contribute to as many as
28:03
14,000,000 additional deaths by 20-30, with roughly a third of
28:08
those being children under five years old.
28:13
The other 61% of you have listened to an episode or two,
28:16
but you haven't hit the follow or subscribe button yet.
28:18
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28:21
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I cover Elon Musk tech spaceflight and I'm going to
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28:32
So thank you for doing that and joining this amazing community.
28:35
Now the judge went into a critical gap in the defense's
28:38
case. The defendants never identified
28:40
any lower ranking officials who were present when the key
28:43
decisions about USA were made. Most apex doctrine disputes the
28:48
defense can point to deputies, assistants or mid level managers
28:52
who attended the same meetings and can testify in place of the
28:55
senior officials. That option did not exist here.
28:58
The court found that plaintiffs had shown these three witnesses
29:02
likely possessed first hand knowledge essential to the case
29:05
that the information cannot be obtained from other sources.
29:09
The judge wrote directly that there is no alternative to
29:12
deposing Musk, Morocco and Lewin.
29:15
Other defendants in this case extend beyond Musk and his Doge
29:18
associates. Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
29:21
State Department official Kenneth Jackson and DOGE
29:24
administrator Amy Gleason are also named during US AIDS
29:29
dismantlement, multiple departments, multiple officials
29:32
enacting or informal capacities, and no clear paper trails
29:36
showing who authorized what. The court previously noted that
29:39
defendants had not produced documentary evidence identifying
29:43
which officials authorized the shutdown of US AIDS headquarters
29:46
and its website. They also failed to provide
29:50
lower ranking officials who could testify in their place,
29:53
leaving deposition requests unanswered.
29:56
That absence of both documentation and alternative
29:59
witnesses is exactly why the judge concluded the sworn
30:03
testimony is the only path forward for discovery.
30:07
This ruling fits into a broader pattern, of course, wrestling
30:10
with Doge's legal footprint over the past year.
30:13
Back in early 2025, the White House filed a court declaration
30:16
stating that Musk was a special government employee serving as a
30:20
senior advisor to the president, with no actual or formal
30:24
authority to make government decisions himself.
30:27
The Musk effectively made decisions to dismantle USAID
30:31
without formal authority or official approval.
30:34
Other courts have addressed Doge's access to Agency systems
30:38
with mixed results based on standing grounds.
30:42
And in January 2026, the DOJ revealed that DOGE employees may
30:46
have been properly accessed Social Security information and
30:50
shared agency data on 3rd party servers.
30:53
There'll be two DOGE employees in contact with a political
30:57
advocacy group seeking to analyze state voter rolls.
31:00
That contradiction between official claims of limited
31:03
authority and evidence of expansive action is at the heart
31:08
of the constitutional questions in this case.
31:10
And if Musk had no authority, then who authorized those
31:13
actions? If he did have authority, was it
31:16
lawful without Senate confirmation?
31:19
Now the deposition is designed to answer those questions.
31:22
Underoath. There's no date yet.
31:24
It hasn't been set for these depositions.
31:27
It remains unclear whether Musk, Morocco or Lauren will file
31:30
further motions to delay or appeal the ruling.
31:33
And the judge did leave one open door.
31:36
Any concerns about intruding on presidential functions could be
31:40
addressed through subject matter limits on the questioning,
31:44
rather than blocking the depositions entirely.
31:47
Who made the decisions to dismantle USAID?
31:50
What legal authority they actually had in the precise
31:54
timeline of events that led to the agency's shutdown.
31:57
And the court previously said those issues required additional
32:01
factual development beyond what the public record and existing
32:04
documents could provide. So what if I told you that by
32:09
the end of this week, Elon Musk might announce the largest
32:12
corporate merger in the history of all humankind?
32:17
He'd combined SpaceX, XAI, possibly Tesla into a single
32:22
entity worth 1 1/2 trillion dollars.
32:26
And according to Bloomberg, those talks are happening as we
32:30
speak. SpaceX and XAI are in what
32:33
sources describe as advance talks on a deal that could
32:36
fundamentally reshape everything we know.
32:39
And this might just be the opening move.
32:42
So here's what we know what's going on.
32:47
I'm going to walk you through what we actually know about this
32:50
deal. Why some people think it's the
32:52
birth of a new Berkshire Hathaway.
32:54
My others are comparing Musk to Howard Hughes.
32:57
There's also a wild theory about space based data centers.
33:01
Sounds insane until you realize Musk is actually into this, and
33:05
we'll go right into that after this very short break.
33:09
Now, let's talk about the numbers first, because the
33:11
financials that just leaked are insane.
33:14
SpaceX brought in roughly $8 billion in profit last year on
33:18
somewhere between 15 and 16 billion in revenue.
33:22
That's private company. In the rocket business, that's
33:25
very unheard of. Those figures came out Friday
33:28
via Reuters, and they help explain why SpaceX is reportedly
33:32
considering raising as much as $50 billion in an IPO that could
33:36
value the company at 1 1/2 trillion dollars.
33:40
Now, to put that into perspective, that makes SpaceX
33:42
worth more than most countries entire stock markets.
33:47
The majority of that revenue comes from Starlink.
33:49
That's the satellite Internet constellation that now has 9
33:53
million subscribers. It's a business that didn't
33:55
exist five years ago. SpaceX also makes money
33:58
launching payloads for governments, NASA, and other
34:00
companies. But Starlink is the cash cow
34:03
driving everything else right now.
34:05
Now, this is where it gets very interesting.
34:08
The merger talks aren't just about SpaceX and XAI.
34:13
There's rumors and rumbles suggesting Tesla could also be
34:17
folded into this structure. Tesla has already invested 2
34:21
billion in XAI and when this speculation started circulating
34:25
late last week, Tesla stocks surged over 3% in a single day.
34:30
I just rumors and the investors are very happy if this happens,
34:35
right? Bloomberg laid it out pretty
34:38
directly. Musk's many obsessions are
34:41
converging. The idea would be to launch
34:44
solar powered data Centers for AI into space.
34:48
You need rockets to get there. SpaceX, Starship you need solar
34:52
panels and energy storage. Tesla you need the EI systems to
34:57
run in those data centers. X AI.
35:00
If you wanted to build orbital computing infrastructure, you
35:02
would need all three companies working together.
35:05
And Musk happens to own all of those.
35:08
Now. Is that the real plan?
35:09
I genuinely don't know. It sounds like something out of
35:12
a Neil Stephenson model. I genuinely do not know, but
35:16
it's also exactly the kind of thing Musk would attempt.
35:20
The man landed rocket boosters on drone ships when everyone
35:24
else said it was impossible. Starship is going to fly to
35:27
orbit soon. He built an EV car company when
35:31
even legacy automakers said the batteries weren't even ready to
35:33
go. And so betting against Musk
35:36
technical ambitions has historically been a losing
35:39
proposition. And I've been an independent
35:42
journalist coming Elon Musk Space Flight AI in tech for the
35:45
last six or seven years. And all I ask from you is one
35:48
second of your time to hit the follow or subscribe button on
35:51
the platform you're watching or listening on right now.
35:54
I'm extremely grateful and blessed to have you in this
35:56
community. So thank you for hitting that
35:58
button. OK, back to the story.
36:00
Let's talk about the bowl case because it's genuinely wild.
36:05
One analyst called this move a master class in leverage.
36:09
The merger achieves 3 things simultaneously.
36:12
First, it gives XAI a clean path to public markets without
36:16
attempting A risky standalone IPO.
36:18
AI companies are notoriously difficult to value right now,
36:21
and going public attached to Spacex's proven revenue base is
36:25
much safer. Second, it potentially converts
36:27
stagnant Twitter equity into high growth exposure.
36:31
More on Twitter in a minute. Third, it creates the stack
36:35
intelligence through XAI distribution through Starlink
36:39
infrastructure through SpaceX, all on one cap table.
36:44
Now, the Berkshire Hathaway comparison keeps coming up, and
36:47
I understand why. Warren Buffett built his empire
36:49
by acquiring diverse businesses that generated steady cash
36:52
flows. The idea is that Musk could it
36:55
do something similar, but with his own technology companies
36:58
positioned to define the next century.
37:00
Vertical integration across rockets, AI satellites, and
37:04
possibly Tesla EVs too. It's kind of crazy.
37:08
But here's the bear case, and it deserves serious consideration.
37:13
You can compare Musk to Buffett, but also to Howard Hughes.
37:17
In a way, that's what a Bloomberg columnist did
37:20
reference. Hughes was a brilliant aerospace
37:22
pioneer who built incredible machines, who was also erratic,
37:26
ultimately became a recluse, and his business empire fragmented
37:30
after he died. Now they argue that Musk's
37:33
motivations for combining these companies might be pretty
37:35
pedestrian. Control, financing, subsidies,
37:39
more money. Not grand vision, just practical
37:41
corporate maneuvering dressed up in some crazy science fiction
37:45
language that he talks about. The industrial logic is pretty
37:50
questionable. If you're skeptical, I'd like to
37:53
think not on any team, but to look at the whole process here
37:59
are arrows. Are space based data centers
38:04
actually the plan? Or is that just a story to
38:07
justify this deal? Musk has a history of announcing
38:10
spectacular visions that arrive years, maybe decades late.
38:15
They're modified, possibly not at all.
38:17
Full self driving, that's always two years away.
38:20
Just think about that. Maybe the space data center
38:23
concept is real. Maybe it's justification after
38:26
the fact for a financial engineering exercise, but maybe
38:29
that's going to be two years away every year.
38:32
I don't know. We're going to have to see.
38:34
Combining these companies would concentrate an extraordinary
38:37
amount of power in one person's hands.
38:39
Rockets that launch national security payloads, satellite
38:42
Internet serving 9 million people that he could turn off
38:45
any time he wants to, an AI company training large language
38:48
models and more. A potential Tesla, one of the
38:52
most valuable automakers and robotics companies.
38:56
That's a lot of leverage for any person to hold.
39:00
Now let me tell you about this other interesting angle, the
39:04
Twitter redemption arc. When Musk bought Twitter for $44
39:09
billion in 2022, everyone, including me, thought it was
39:14
stupid. A disaster, right?
39:16
The acquisition looked impulsive.
39:18
The debt load was huge. Most advertisers just left the
39:22
platform. People that worked there took
39:25
off and went to other Fang companies.
39:28
For years, the conventional wisdom was that Twitter
39:30
represented Musk's biggest mistake.
39:34
But what if that's all wrong? If X equity gets rolled into
39:37
this combined SpaceX and XAI structure, suddenly it's
39:42
different. Think about what you'd control
39:45
with this combined entity. Communication through X
39:49
intelligence through X AI, distribution of that information
39:55
through Starlink's global satellite network, and the
39:58
infrastructure to launch that communication network with
40:03
SpaceX. Vertical integrated stack for
40:08
the future. That's what Musk is doing.
40:11
I don't know though. I'm not saying this was Musk's
40:13
plan all along. I don't even know if Musk knew
40:15
this was the plan all along. But intent also doesn't matter
40:18
at this point. The pieces are on the board and
40:21
he's in a position to combine them all to make this mega Corp.
40:25
So where does this leave us all? The deal could be announced this
40:28
week. That also might fall apart.
40:30
They might not be a deal at all. Mergers of this scale are
40:34
incredibly complex. This could take a decade for
40:37
shareholders to satisfy, regulators to navigate, and also
40:42
nothing is guaranteed. But here's what I keep coming
40:45
back to. Whether you think this is
40:47
visionary or crazy recklessness, whether you see Buffet or
40:51
Hughes, Musk is now in a position to attempt something no
40:54
one else could even contemplate. A unified company, Rockets,
40:59
satellites, AI, and possibly robotics and EVs with Tesla
41:04
worth over a trillion dollars. So that's him.
41:09
He controls everything. Now, the question isn't whether
41:11
he's crazy, it's whether he's crazy enough to do this.
41:15
And he might tell us all sometime this week, so stay
41:19
tuned.