Latest / Elon Musk Thinking / Latest Interview of Elon Musk With Ben Shapiro!

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Latest Interview of Elon Musk With Ben Shapiro! · Elon Musk Thinking

0:01
Deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans. It's good,
0:11
it's good to have them. It's good to have the memorial, as
0:14
as the plaque says, so that never happens again. No, I mean,
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I'm a student of history, so I'd seen the pictures, I'd seen
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the videos, but it's not quite it's it hits you much more in the
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heart when you see it in person. I'm still absorbing, frankly, the
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magnitude of the tragedy that I witnessed. With place where the tragedy occurred,
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well, I think it'll take a few days to sink in frankly, And
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as was mentioned, if if they had been social media, I think you
0:59
wouldn't impossible to hide if there's been freedom of speech as well, you know,
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so you know, one of the one of the first things the Nazis
1:10
did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means
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of conveying information. So it's worth noting in the United States, the first
1:21
Amendment in the United States was freedom of speech. Because the people that that
1:27
came to the United States from other countries it did not have freedom of speech.
1:34
That if they had said something they could be imprisoned or killed. And
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that's why the first correction to the Constitution was the ability to say what you
1:45
want to say and not be thrown in prison or killed. Yeah. Elon
1:52
is obviously the CEO of Acts, which is the largest news service on the
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Internet and the place where a huge number of people, including me, get
2:00
the news. You know, you've been committed since you took over to a
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much broader perception of free speech on the outlet, and that's led to a
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lot of criticisms about suggestions of rising anti Semitism on the outlet as well.
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I can say for my own part that the broadening of speech on Twitter,
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I think has been an on x has been an excellent thing. One of
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the things that I was able to do, for example, in the aftermath
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of October seventh, was actually put out full footage and pictures of what exactly
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was happening, so you see what really happens, so people think the true
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horror, the true horror is is is something people need to be able to
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see if they want to see it. And the community notes feature has allowed
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for people to even when when things that are false are put up that used
2:45
to maybe pass in real time. Now you can correct all that. How
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do you balance the necessity for free speech with all these critiques about you know,
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what is hate speech, what is anti semitism, and how do you
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balance that? Well, the general bias of the platform is in favor of
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free speech, and I think at the end of the day, free speech
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wins in that if somebody says something that's false, uh, especially on our
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platform, you can then reply to it with the correction and then I'm a
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huge plan of community notes. I've put We've put maximum resources and attention behind
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community notes. So if somebody tries to push a falsehood like Holocaust denial or
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something like that, they can immediately be corrected and and and you can't get
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rid of the tag. It's like stuck on you. You know you,
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you know. So I think it's and the overarching goal for the X platform
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is to be the best source of truth in the world. So now now
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you know what one can. It's it's difficult to get to perfect truth,
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and sometimes people have different interpretations of truth, but one can can always aspire
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to be as accurate as possible and to minimize the error between what is being
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said and reality. So relentless pursuit of the truth is a goal with with
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with X and allowing people to say what they want to say, even if
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it's controversial, provided it provided that it does not break the law. I
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think that's the right thing to do. And setting the new standard for the
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town square, as they say, has allowed for more speech and more availability
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of information than ever before, certainly on the platform you recently didn't just go
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here, obviously after October seventh, you went to Israel and you saw the
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wages of horrific anti Semitism in the various cubutim, and I saw all the
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videos, saw a lot of video. Yeah, yeah, it was shocking
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to see. I think maybe the most shocking thing was to see the delight
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in killing innocent people, like the delight in killing kids and defenseless women and
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men, and there was no remorse quite the opposite. I mean, that
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requires a level of indoctrination that is extremely intense. So I think that to
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solve that you have to address the source of the indoctrination. There's no one,
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no one should ever be glad about killing some child. I know a
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number of enormous umber of Jews, myself included a very move that you continue
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to wear the necklace in remembrance of the hostages. So I want to thank
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you for that, obviously, because raising the profile of the fact there's still
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dozens of men, women and children. I checked before I came, so
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many hostages. I hope they're alive. I hope think I'm back. So
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let's talk about, you know, the the uptick and anti Semitism more broadly.
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One of the things that's been hard to watch as a Jew, but
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also just as an American and a Westerner has been the radical upsurge in anti
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Semitic activity, just generally anti Semitic sentiment appallingly after October seven. It's been
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astonishing. Actually, yes, I must admit to being somewhat frankly naive about
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this. In the circles that I move, I see almost no anti anti
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Semitism. And you know, there's this old joke I've got like this one
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Jewish friend. No, I have like two thirds of my friends are Jewish,
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twice as many Jewish friends as no Jewish friends. I'm like Jewish by
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association, I'm aspirationally Jewish. So so I don't you know, I was
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like, what are people talking about with this anti semitisms. I never hear
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it at dinner conversations. It's like an absurdity, you know, at least
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in my friend circles. But when you know, looking at the the pro
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Hamas rallies in vast numbers that took place in almost every major city in the
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West, blew my mind and on, including on the elite college campuses that
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are supposed to be you know, if you're an elite college campus, you're
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supposed to be enlightened, you're supposed to be fostering hate, and yet you
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had these pro must demonstrations that Harvard, you know, Yale, including I
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went to UPenn at Penn and I was like, this is unbelievable. I
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mean, there's a poll recently from Harvard Harris showing that some sixty seven percent
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people aged eighteen to twenty four said that the Jews were an oppressor class,
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which you know, in America, Jews represent approximately seven million Jews in the
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United States out of three hundred and thirty million Americans, tiny percentage of the
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population. But that ideology that the Jews are in oppressor class matches up very
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nicely and very closely with what is a conspiracy theory. At root, anti
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Semitism is a conspiracy theory, and it's a conspiracy theory about power. And
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if you read Nazi literature, the Nazis literally promoted the idea that Jews were
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of course, this small case of people who were running all of the major
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industries, who were standing behind all world power. Is Hitler's suggestion is that
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those world jewelry that stood behind Germany's loss in World War One, and then
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the Allies unwillingness to make a deal with Germany prior to World War Two,
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And that theory of power and group identity is really ugly, and we see
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echoes of it today. I mean the diversity, equin and inclusion ideology that
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basically suggests that all of society is a vast pyramid of group identity, and
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that at the very top are the people who are successful, and that those
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people are exploiting everybody else, and we can tell who's successful by their group
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identity, not by their level of success, by their group identity. That
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matches up incredibly. It sinks up almost a vanda anti Semitism. Absolutely.
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The diversity actually inclusion mean should always always be wary of any name that sounds
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like it could come out of a George Orwell book. That's never a good
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sign. And because it sounds like sure, diversity, equity, inclusion,
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these will sound like nice words, but but what what it really means is
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discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and sexual orientation and and and
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it's against merit and and thus I think is fundamentally anti semitic. So yeah,
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you know, the I think the whole all of the all of the
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riots that were in the major cities and college campuses I think was a shocking
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wake up call to I think any any any sort of civilization, well civil
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minded person. Really, it's quite a shock. Now the crossover between some
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of these rallies on college campuses in favor of Kamas, I mean, they
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unite the weirdest coalitions maybe in human history. You'll see LGBTQ flags in favor
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of Kamas, where of course, if an LGBTQ person were to be actually
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in the Godly Strip, they would no longer be in the Gaza Strip.
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They would be dead. Yes, exactly, that coalition is that's like seriously
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out of touch. Yeah, but it isn't. But it only isn't out
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of touch in the sense that there is a coalitional idea here that basically power
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structures must be torn down at all costs. And if that means allying with
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people who hate me, then I'll ally with people who hate me. And
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the fact that that's grown in fervor since October seventh really is, you know,
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as I said to me on on a personal level, quite shocking.
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What do you make of the future of a West if if the West continues
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to embrace that idea, well, I think we really need to stop this
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principle that the the weaker normal normally weaker party is always right. This is
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simply not true. If you aren't quotes oppressed or or the weaker party,
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it doesn't mean you're right because if some of those you know, we weaker
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groups want to annihilate you, that does not make them good. We just
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we have to get rid of the rule that that if you're weaker, you're
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automatically good. That's that's obviously makes no sense, you know, you know,
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it often makes sense where it's like, Okay, you don't want to
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beat up when someone smaller and weaker than you, But if that if that's
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smaller group wants to kill you, that they're they're bad. Okay, I
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mean, I'm a big believer in moral absolutism, not moral relativism. There's
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good and bad in the absolute, and you judge any group or individual against
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absolute moral standards, not whether they're the so called oppressed or oppressor, just
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on absolute moral terms. Are they doing good things? Do they want to
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motor inocent people? That's bad? It doesn't matter who they are, you
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would think, But the pseudo sophisticates on college campus seem to think differently.
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And so I wanted to get your take on why you think this is so
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prevalent on college campus. What do you think the future of the universities in
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the United States looks like? Given the fact that entire universities appear to have
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been corrupted by moral relativism and this sort of perverse ideology. Do you think
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that a wave of changes coming to the universities. Do you think that there
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is going to be direct hiring out of high school? What is the solution
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for universities in the United States as well as abroad. I think we need
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to return to what what where things were or mostly were, which is a
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focus on unmerit and and it doesn't matter whether you're a man. Woman.
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Uh, you know what race you are, what beliefs you have? What
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matters is you know, how good are you at your job or what are
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your skills? You know, you know, you could be a three legged
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green martian. You know, where's a kimono and drinks the X milk?
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Who cares? It doesn't matter. You know what matters is like how good
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is your work? That's it. That that that's that's the that's the least
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sort of racist access you can be. It's just care about the work that
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somebody does and not anything else. That that's what that's what the folks needs
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to be to return to. Yeah. Yeah. It seems as though you
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mentioned earlier the sort of problems of attacks on the meritocracy, and one of
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the claims is that there's no real meritocracy, there's a pseudo meritocracy, that
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basically all these institutions are run for the benefit of those who run the institutions.
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And it feels like there is some truth to the idea that institutions have
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lost credibility with the people, particularly in the West, and in the backlash
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to that, I think that there's now, you know, sort of an
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idea that if we do away with all institutions and all limits on moral behavior
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than that that somehow is better. But there needs to be a recapturing of
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the institutions, or at least a rebuilding in place of those institutions new things.
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And that's something obviously that you're very focused on, not only with expert
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your other companies, is building new things, innovation, try and create our
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way out of the problems that we've created for ourselves. Yeah, I think
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generally with people should always be worried that they may have either consciously or press
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mostly subconsciously internalize the notion of a zero sum game or a fixed pie.
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And if you're internalized that that there's that everything zero sum, meaning like in
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order for me to get ahead, someone else has to not get ahead,
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or for me to have stuff, someone else must not have stuff. If
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you have that axiomatic flow, then then then that's what it needs to be
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done to fix that axiomatic flow, because it is false. There's it's not
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a zero sum game. We can absolutely grow and have grown, and the
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evidence is overwhelming that we have grown the output of goods and services. We
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have many things today that we did not have in the past. We are
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far more prosperous all of humanity. It's far more prosperous today than it was
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at the times in the past. I mean, it wasn't that long ago
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where you know, we would count a good year as one where well,
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the Buponic plague wasn't that bad, only killed ten percent you know, we
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uh, not that many people stopped through the winner. We only lost you
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know, five percent of our population due to raids from other tribes. You
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know. Basically, life used to be very rough in the old days,
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and it's if they could see us now, they'd be like, what are
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you guys complaining about? This is amazing, you know, not having to
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worry about food, food for I mean we were we were food constrained for
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you know, probably the last one hundred thousand years until recently. So you
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know, really the present day future is amazing compared to the past. And
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anyone who doesn't think it's amazing, it's not a good student of history.
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So I think we live in the most interesting of times and probably the best
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of times. One of the things that I would hope that that and I
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think you're part of this, is a coalition of meritocrats standing up for the
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meritocracy is going to be deeply necessary in a future where trust has been fragmented
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with so many institutions. We're going to have to stand up and loudly say
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that merit still exists, and that merit is individually based, not not based
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on innate characteristics of some sort. So you mentioned earlier you know that you're
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aspirationally Jewish, that you surround yourself with that, that you're surrounded by so
17:30
many Jews. So are you part of the Jewish conspiracy? What exactly is
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the maybe that'll please the haters online? Yeah? No, I mean I
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just so. Yeah. I grew up around a lot of Newish people.
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I went to Hebrew preschool Racial Spiro in South Africa. My name is very
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Jewish. Oh, I will tell you that for the past ten years,
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as people have assumed in my community that your Jewish until I informed them otherwise.
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Yeah, Elon is a prett Jewish name. He's super Jewish. Yeah.
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And then I went to Israel when I was thirteen, you know,
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I mean, you know, visited Masoda. I'm certainly checking the boxes on
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a lot of things. And like I said, most of micros of Jewish
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just worked out that way. So sometimes I yeah, I guess maybe I
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forget that. Maybe am I Jewish? I'm Jewish as racially Jewish. So
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you know, when when you hear critiques about acts right about the amount of
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anti Semitism on X, what are the metrics that you're seeing from the inside
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about the amounts of anti Semitism or quote unquote hate speech because it's always a
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vaguely defined term hate speech on your platform. Yeah, I mean the outside
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orders that we had done, at least the ones that we've had done,
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show that there was the least amount of anti semitism on X if you look,
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if you look at all the other social it's never going to be zero
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if you've got six hundred million people on a platform, expecting it to be
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anything to be zero is extremely unlikely because you've got six hundred million people on
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a platform. But when they compare us to Instagram, TikTok's actually got a
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lot of anti said, is pretty terrifying. People will not checked out TikTok.
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I mean, the algorithm is absolutely pushing into a programmance material. Yes,
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it is, so I believe it's we have TikTok has like five times
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the amount of anti semitism per post than we do. So it's not like
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I said, it's not gonna be zero, but to the best of our
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knowledge, it is has the least amount of anti semitism of any platform.
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Legacy media has spent an awful lot of ink on you. There's been a
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lot of attempts to paint you as anti semitic, or paint X as anti
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semitic. Where do you think that's coming from? Well, why why does
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the legacy media seem to have you, particularly in the last year and a
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half in the crosshairs so much. Well, I mean, the reality is
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that X is competition for the legacy media. So your X is is where
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people go to get the most current news and learn about the world. So,
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you know, the legacy media is our direct competitors. So they're really
20:33
going to find trying every angle to try to cancel X. I mean,
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that's I mean, if you want to know why things happening, look at
20:41
the incentives. You know. So, and legacy media has had a tough
20:47
time with respect to usage. The numbers I saw was that the sort of
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traditional print cable television viewership went down something like twenty last year. On the
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other hand, X point up roughly that's same, roughly twenty thirty percent.
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So it's a direct competition for people's attention. So if there's some attactic and
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levy against me, they won't. It seems as though one of the other
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matters is not just direct competition between the media and X, but also that
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the legacy media, for most of my life up until the past, you
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know, fifteen years, performed what they saw as a gatekeeping function. They
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were the ones who got to define the narrative. They were the ones who
21:30
got to determine what was appropriate news and what was inappropriate news. And then
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even after social media arose in the early days, there was this sort of
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the sort of things that you articulate were actually articulated by virtually all the social
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media heads. Mark Zuckerberg used to say the kinds of things that you say.
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Jack Dorsey used to say the kinds of things that you said. And
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then there seemed to be an institutional takeover by a lot of legacy media types
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in terms of the kinds of rules and restrictions that were placed on what you
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could and could not say on these platforms. Who would get banned, who
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would not get banned, advertisers weaponized against particular particular outlets if those outlets didn't
22:04
follow the dictats that they were put forward by by these types. And it
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seems like since you took over, one of the biggest objection of all is
22:11
that they're not performing the eight keeping function anymore someone else's. Well, yes,
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I mean I don't think that there should be a gate keeping function by
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a small number of individuals. I mean, really, if you say,
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like for newspapers in America, there are about five editors that decide what what
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gets put on the front page or what what to focus on or what not
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to focus on, and most of the other the most of the other papers
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just copy them essentially. So but is that really what we want. We
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aren't just a handful of people deciding what what they think is important or or
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should it be that the people decide what's important? And I think it should
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be sort of an organic thing where the people decide what's important and what to
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focus on, not just a handful of editors. And yeah, they don't
23:04
like the fact that this power has been taken away from them, but I
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think it should be. I don't go back to something that you said a
23:11
little bit earlier talking about the idea that on a moral level, you know,
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there's nothing that suggests that that simple weakness is itself virtue. That a
23:19
weak person can be virtuous but doesn't necessarily mean that they are. A powerful
23:22
person can be, you know, the victimizer, but doesn't necessarily mean that
23:26
they are. That logic carried forward, particularly to what's going on in Israel
23:30
right now, has been, in my opinion, entirely pernicious and wrong.
23:33
There's this idea that because Israel is a powerful, militarily sophisticated country that is
23:40
doing its best to limitsvillian casualties in one of the most population dense areas of
23:44
the world, in which you have terrorists or honeycombed throughout every aspect of society,
23:48
building literally hundreds of miles of tunnels, the entire London subway system worth
23:52
of tunnels underneath the ground, that somehow, you know, Israel targeting those
23:57
systems and killing a lot of people. Because when you kill terrorists, unfortunately
24:02
they're embedded among civilians. It's terrible and it's horrifying. With every one of
24:04
those deaths is on terroristcript that in beds itself with civilians. There's been this
24:07
this, this logic has been mapped onto that conflict that smaller and weaker means
24:15
morally virtuous because victimized. Yeah, it really has come completely full circle from
24:23
or hider needy degrees from what has historically been the case. So through most
24:29
of history, the operating principle has been might makes right. So yeah,
24:37
for really, up until bottom times, might makes right was the if you
24:45
were stronger, you were right. Now we've sort of flipped it to know
24:51
if you're weaker, you're right. But neither is true. There is there
24:55
is a rightness independent of strength or weakness. Just because somebody is strong,
25:02
it doesn't mean they're right, and doesn't because somebody is weak doesn't mean they're
25:04
right. You have to look at morals in the absolute. So on a
25:08
broader level, elan Or you talk a lot about your hope for humanity and
25:14
say that you're somebody who really loves humanity, which is why you talk about
25:17
expanding humanities, reach out to the stars. When you go to a place
25:21
like Auschwitz, or when you walk the villages like he boots very after October
25:26
seventh, does that change your opinion of humanity or does it reinforce what you
25:30
think humanity can be on both the positive side and on the negative side.
25:36
I think it is actually human nature to love humanity unless you're indoctrinated otherwise.
25:45
So I think the actual default for most people is to love humanity and you
25:51
love being around their fellow humans. You can take for example, like what's
25:56
one of the worst punishments in prison is solidary confinement, and all softwary confinement
26:02
means is that you don't get to hang out with the other prisoners, which
26:06
which might not be the best group of people to hang out with, but
26:11
even that is considered a terrible punishment to not be able to hang out with
26:15
other prisoners. So, in truth, I think in our nature we all
26:18
love humanity unless we are indoctrinated otherwise, and so we have to stop that
26:25
indoctrination. So how do you think that people ought to pursue that, Because
26:30
obviously we have seen indoctrination at a wide variety of levels, ranging from soft
26:34
indoctrination in various schools in the West, very very hard indoctrination that you see
26:38
and for example the Gaza Strip where kids are literally unfortunately at very young ages,
26:44
they have graduation ceremonies that we've seen tapes of where they're re enacting kidnapping
26:48
of Israeli soldiers or killing of Israeli soldiers for example. That fundamentally has to
26:51
be addressed or they will not be peace. The education of kids and Gaza,
27:00
the indoctrination of hate into kids in Gaza has to has to stop.
27:04
So it's you know, when I was in Israel, I was like that
27:07
was my top recommendation is that you've got to make sure you know, I
27:14
understand the need for this to to inbate Gaza. And unfortunately, some innocent
27:18
people will die, there's no way around it. But the most important thing
27:23
is to ensure that afterwards that the indoctrination where kids are taught from as soon
27:32
as they can understand language that their goal is to kill Israelis. And and
27:38
if you're told that from when you're a toddler, well you're going to believe
27:42
it. And that needs to stop. Yeah, on a technological side,
27:47
what do you think can be done there, because actually this is one of
27:49
the areas where you know, the Gaza strip has been famous for its Internet
27:52
access. You know, they're they're there. There are a lot of places
27:56
around the world where the government puts an extraordinarily heavy hand on the flow of
28:00
information. You're mentioning that the Nazis first thing they did was take over the
28:03
entire press mechanism inside Germany and then inside the occupied areas of Europe. But
28:07
that obviously happens all over the world right now. And one of the things
28:11
you do Starlink for is to try and open up some of those avenues of
28:14
information. But what what what what can you do? What what? What
28:18
it's worth? Also, the Nazis engaged in extreme censorship within Germany for antithing
28:26
anything that was pro Summitic. I'm not sure how. I don't know how
28:30
many people are aware of that, but you were that they censored any Prosemitic,
28:36
anyone who tried to defend the Jews in Germany, any anything prosemitic was
28:40
was censored. So yeah, I think freedom of speech and rigorous pursuit of
28:51
the truth is the way, is one way to get her to defeat hatred.
28:56
You know, when when I look at the un way, well,
29:00
when I look at the United States, one of the things that it seems
29:02
to be breaking down, and when any the first element, historically maybe the
29:07
last element of a society in a state of mental decline is a vast outbreak
29:10
of anti Semitism. This is what was happening, and not not the German
29:12
but historically countries that are in a state of decline tend to have wild outbreaks
29:18
of anti Semitism. And it seems to me that one of the key things
29:22
that can reverse that process is the rebuilding of local institutions. And as local
29:27
institutions break down, you see sort of this fragmentation of the population at large.
29:36
How do you merge the need for technological development with the building of those
29:40
local institutions, families, churches, schools, now the kinds of things that
29:44
societies are built upon. Yeah, actually, I should say there were really
29:49
three things that were my strong recommendation visiting Israel. One is, obviously one
29:53
has to get rid of Hamas fighters who where reform is impossible, their only
30:00
goal is to kill Israelis. They're got to be either killed or imprisoned,
30:06
because otherwise they will simply kill more Israelis. Then the second thing is you've
30:11
got to change the indoctrination in the schools so that kids are not taught to
30:17
hate from the moment they are two years old. And then the third thing
30:22
is, which is a very hard thing to do in this situation, is
30:27
conspicuous acts of kindness to the people in Gaza. Conspicuous acts of kindness to
30:33
the people in Gaza. It's just that much harder to hate someone if you
30:41
do nice things for them, even if they bite, they try to bite
30:42
your hand when you do it, keep doing it. And you look at
30:48
the Marshall Plan after, you know, look at world look at the difference
30:51
between World War One and World War Two. Where after World War One,
30:56
Germany got an unfair share of the blame. It led to immense betterness.
31:00
It's what allowed Hiplert to rise to power, was the embittered German soldiers from
31:08
World War One. And but then you look in contrast to what happened after
31:17
World War Two. You had the Marshall Plan, so you had, you
31:22
know, you had the United States coming in and actually funding the rebuilding of
31:29
Germany and the rebuilding of Japan. How often does that happen in history?
31:37
But look at the results, no war with Germany, peace with Japan and
31:41
Germany for now soon it will be almost a century. So when you look
31:51
at the state of the West right now, yeah, somebody maybe it's all
31:53
the doom scrolling. But when you when you look at the state of the
31:56
West right now, you're very optimistic. It sounds like, you know,
32:00
I find it hard to be optimistic in this moment. It's been a very
32:04
ugly couple of years, you know, from Ukraine to the current conflict in
32:07
Israel Kamas, to domestic politics in the United States and where else. It
32:12
seems like there's a lot of polarization, a lot of fragmentation. What do
32:15
you think is the future of the West. Can we come together around any
32:19
sense of shared common values, especially given the fact that everybody is kind of
32:23
drinking from the fire hose of information. One of the downsides about the upside
32:27
of information is the availability. The downside is you know, choice paralysis and
32:30
overload. I mean, you can definitely get information overload, associate information coming
32:37
at you these days because you can get all the world's information in real time,
32:42
and it's impossible for a one human to digest all that, you know,
32:53
I think, I think there are some things that we can agree on,
32:58
well, most people would agree on, are cool and inspiring, like
33:04
humanity, going to the moon. You know, if you ask, probably
33:07
kids almost anywhere in the world. What's the coolest thing humans have ever done?
33:15
I think a lot of kids would say, we went to the moon,
33:20
you know, And so I think we want to continue that spurt of
33:25
exploration, you know, speaking of kind of growing the pie. And it
33:31
is that we want to, I think, have a dream that we can
33:37
be a space bearing civilization, a multi planet species, a multi stellar species,
33:44
and go out there among the stars and discover the nature of the universe,
33:52
that we can collectively seek greater enlightenment to better understand this incredible universe we
34:01
live in. I find that break compelling. I think I think most people
34:08
would find that very compelling. I think embedded in that it's also, as
34:13
you say, that core value of meritocracy. Because it's one thing to say
34:16
man can go to the moon. It's another thing to say I can be
34:19
part of man going to the moon. And a meritocracy suggests that you can
34:22
be part of that. It's not just that human beings are capable of doing
34:25
the thing, it's that you can be a part of that thing if you
34:28
work hard enough, if you innovate enough, if you try hard enough.
34:30
And so societies that seem to have given up on that also seem to have
34:34
given up on going to the moon. Societies that are so reflective about their
34:37
own supposed flaws. The United States has this problem right now that they are
34:42
unwilling to simply say freedom is pretty phenomenal and meritocracy is the greatest thing that's
34:50
ever been invented, and we should hold on to that, and that's what's
34:52
going to allow against them that stops us from going to the Moon, or
34:54
to Mars, or to anywhere else. Yeah, I mean, and there's
34:59
many wonderful interesting things that are happening besides space exploration. Obviously, as time
35:05
goes by, we improve our ability to cure cancer, to cure many diseases.
35:10
There's increased access to information. And people talk a lot about inequality,
35:15
but what about the equality of access to information? That's incredible. You know,
35:22
right now, if you've got, you know, a very cheap electronic
35:27
device at an in an internet cafe, you can access all of the lectures
35:31
of MIT for free. You can access almost any book, you can learn
35:37
anything. This is an equality of access to information that was unthinkable even twenty
35:45
thirty years ago. You can teach yourself how to do anything for free.
35:52
That's amazing. Maybe there's like too muchocus on the things that are unequal,
36:01
but we should we forget about the things that are equal and that have improved
36:07
inequality so much like access to information. You know, that's one of the
36:14
things that we're trying to help out with Starlink is provide access internet internet access
36:21
to people who don't have internet access or where it's too expensive for them to
36:24
afford. Because once you have internet access, you can learn anything and you
36:30
can sell your your your products and services. So I think that's that's pretty
36:38
amazing. I mean, you know, that's sort of like if we're going
36:43
to count our flaws, we should also count our blessings. Yeah. One
36:50
of the things that I think is amazing about what you've been doing on is
36:52
that it's not just you know, the the business side of you that's important.
36:58
Obviously, you become this unbelievably you know, large figure looming in the
37:02
public imagination, and that means that when you tweet, it has you know,
37:06
impacts that is that is very large. How do you decide when to
37:09
tweet? Sometimes to memory, sometimes it's sometimes it's joking. Sometimes it's these
37:15
long thought out posts. How do you decide when did she how do you
37:17
inform yourself on on the topics that you're tweeting about? Well, I did.
37:27
I do put post a lot on the x platform, you know,
37:31
sometimes one hundred times a day, so and once in a while I'll do
37:36
something dumb, for sure, But I I really, you know, I
37:43
try to say things that I think are interesting or funny. I mean,
37:50
there must be some reason why one hundred and sixty nine million people follow me.
37:54
I guess, I don't know. I must be keeping them amused and
37:59
so amuse entertain you know, have opinions on something. Sometimes they're wrong,
38:07
sometimes they're right, and you know, for things like community Notes, it
38:15
applies to me as well as it applies to anyone else. So if I
38:17
say something that's incorrect or you know, not full context, then community notes
38:23
will correct me very quickly. So but it's only me doing these posts.
38:31
Ever, I don't have a team or anything. So in fact, I
38:36
generally would recommend for leaders of the world to just literally post your own stuff
38:44
and once in a while you make a mistake, don't worry about it,
38:50
so nobody bats a thousand So obviously we're visited today. You know. The
38:58
big takeaway always is ever again. I think that the question that a lot
39:02
of Jews worldwide asked after October seventh, and after that wild up surge of
39:06
anti Semitism which we've seen the Jew hatred that continues now, is whether never
39:10
again really for a lot of people met never again between the years nineteen thirty
39:15
nine and nineteen forty five, or whether it actually means never again like right
39:19
now, as in, if there's a genocidal group that wish just to kill
39:22
lots of Jews, is that something that you wish to stand up against right
39:24
now? And when you look out at the world, in the state of
39:28
the world, you know the video that EJ put up a moment ago suggesting
39:31
that the Holocaust would have been somewhat mitigated, or people may have had more
39:37
information or been able to certainly been able to escape earlier. I mean,
39:43
one of the things that's astonishing, obviously about the history of the Holocaust is
39:46
how many Jews because they were only getting partial information, it was slow,
39:51
and it was gradual, and by the time they wanted to get out,
39:52
it was just too late for them to get out. What are your hopes
39:57
that never again is a real thing? I mean, I certainly hope there's
40:04
not another hologhost. How realistically is it? I think I think it's unlikely,
40:07
Frankly, so at least if you say, like I mean, I
40:13
could be naive, But I think the probability of a Holocaust in the West
40:15
is extremely tiny, you know. I think if you look at say that
40:21
the you know, the Nazis, I think he had like a got like
40:24
a third of the vote or something like that when he was first semi he
40:28
was sort of sort of semi elected and then did basically a coup. And
40:36
but but think of all the people that fought to destroy Nazism. That the
40:40
millions and millions of people that fought and died to destroy Nazism. That's the
40:46
vast majority of the West opposed, even in those days, opposed Nazism and
40:52
fort and died. And my grandfather was in World War Two for almost six
40:58
years. All his friends got killed. He was the only one of his
41:01
friends to survive, and he was severely traumatized, like he really just couldn't
41:07
even talk afterwards. Most of that time was in East Africa, North Africa,
41:15
Italy. The only reason he's even alive, frankly, is because towards
41:19
the end of the war, they gave like an aptitude test because he was
41:24
just a corporal. He didn't graduate high school so it wasn't eligible for officer
41:28
school, and they plucked him out, probably right before he died, and
41:31
sent him to work for British intelligence in London, which is where he met
41:36
my grandmother. You know. So he was one of the people fighting to
41:38
stop the Nazis and many along with millions of others. You know. So
41:45
let's not forget that the vast majority of the west Ford and died to stop
41:52
Nazism. So I had the chance to briefly meet your three year old today
41:58
is a fun, adorable I have three year old of my own, so
42:00
I can there are all very similar. But you know what, as you're
42:07
you have some kids who are much older. You have you know, kids
42:08
who are who are younger. Obviously when it comes to teaching them about things
42:12
like the Holocaust and anti Semitism, how do you address those topics. Well,
42:19
my kids are pretty well read, so they they read a lot of
42:22
history that they're not ignorant on the subject. I mean maybe the three year
42:28
old is sure, I would hope, yes, you can't read, So
42:35
my kids are very well read so red, but I you know that I've
42:40
had some sort of disturbing conversations with sort of some say nephews or some some
42:49
family members not not my kids, but kids of family members where I was
42:57
actually shocked to see anti semitism or or at least Yeah. One disturbing conversation
43:05
was you know, saying that the you know that we deserve to have the
43:12
trade towers destroyed because of our terrible foreign policy. I was like, this
43:16
is what they're teaching you in elite New York high schools. This is messed
43:21
up. Well, Elon, I think I personally Jews all over the world.
43:28
A lot of people in this room want to thank you for not only
43:30
visiting Auschwitz, but also for visiting Israel after October seventh, and for the
43:34
strong world voice you've been on behalf of the fight against anti Semitism. It's
43:37
great to spend time with you. Thank you so much, thank you,
43:40
thank you for having me