Elon Musk says AI and robots are the only way to fix US debt
"We're not gonna solve it by trying to save our way there," he added.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Follow us
- Elon Musk says AI and robots are needed to solve the US national debt.
- He says government spending cuts cannot fix the deficit from within the government.
- DOGE’s claimed savings faced scrutiny, and a US audit found some estimates unsupported.
- The federal deficit still neared $2 trillion as the national debt crossed $40 trillion.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk believes that the US national debt cannot be solved without AI and robots, according to remarks he made during Walter Isaacson’s new podcast, The Builders.
Musk told Isaacson on his new podcast series, premiering Tuesday, that America's debt problem is too big to address through conventional government spending cuts, arguing that the DOGE experiment has proved there's "no way we were gonna solve the deficit from within the government."
"The only way we're going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots," Musk told Isaacson, according to Axios. "We're not gonna solve it by trying to save our way there."
Musk spent around four months working in Trump's White House, leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a US government cost-cutting initiative launched in January 2025. Its temporary organization formally ended in July 2026.
Musk pledged to cut trillions of dollars, and DOGE published regular estimated savings on its site.
However, independent analysts questioned the accuracy of those values, and the US Government Accountability Office published an audit in August 2026, finding that some of DOGE's savings estimates were incorrect or not substantiated.
The organization was also involved in defunding programmes, slashing federal regulations, and mass layoffs, but the US federal budget deficit nonetheless increased, reaching nearly $2 trillion in the 2026 fiscal year.
Musk also told Isaacson that no one in power really wants to cut spending.
"Maybe if the president made that his primary goal, we could do that. If you try to solve the deficit and stop wasteful spending, you make a lot of enemies. President Trump likes to be liked. He doesn't like people calling him, being upset about ... some funding being stopped."Elon Musk for Walter Isaacson’s new podcast, The Builders.
Musk added that he "kinda got carried away” with DOGE and that he should have “gone back and focused on AI a little sooner”.
The tech mogul already made similar comments in November 2025, arguing that AI and robotics were "pretty much the only thing" that could solve the US debt crisis.
The debt went from more than $38 trillion at the time to crossing $40 trillion in August 2026.
In August, he wrote on X that "AI+robots will solve the debt problem”.
