In a February 5 interview, billionaire Elon Musk doubled down both on his belief in technology and debt hawkishness as he warned that the U.S. will ‘1,000% go bankrupt’ due to the immense national burden:
“We are 1000% going to go bankrupt as a country, and fail as a country, without AI and robots. Nothing else will solve the national debt. We just need enough time to build the AI and robots to not go bankrupt before then,” Elon Musk said in the Dwarkesh Podcast.
Specifically, when discussing the creation and role of the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) – the controversial service that ran amok in the federal government in the early months of President Trump’s second term – Musk zeroed in on the mounting interest payments.
I was actually pretty worried about… In the absence of AI and robotics, we’re actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy. The interest payments to national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. So we have over a trillion dollars just in interest payments.
Elon Musk reveals why he helped found D.O.G.E.
The South African-Canadian-American billionaire explicitly stated his primary goal was to slow down accumulation so the U.S. has a chance to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced robotics – technologies he believes could save the country.
The stance on technology as a savior is consistent with Elon Musk’s previous estimates that advanced robots are a $10 trillion business and that AI is variously forecasted to generate between $1.8 trillion and $15 trillion by 2030.
The actual relationship between such advancements and the solving of the national debt is, however, less obvious.
How AI and robotics could save the U.S. from its debt
Much of the rationale for why running a deficit economy is sensible comes from the idea that, as long as annual growth outpaces the annual burden, a country will avoid the potential pitfalls of such a practice.
Under the circumstances, it appears obvious that technology-driven GDP growth could stabilize the situation. However, a significant portion of AI’s and robotics’ value propositions is mass automation – an outcome that could lead to an unprecedented employment crisis.
Previously, Musk opined that a ‘universal high income’ – an ill-defined variant of presumably high-paying universal basic income (UBI) – could solve the issue. So far, UBI pilot tests have yielded positive results in terms of recipients’ mental and physical well-being, without breaking the economic basics, thus making ‘free money’ a promising avenue.
Despite this, substantial opposition remains. Right-wing voices have been repeatedly posing the question of how a nation might pay for UBI while begrudging the notion of regular people receiving payments akin to bread doles of old.
Left-wing voices have been concerned that a universal basic income would help further disempower working-class people, as they would grow entirely dependent on governments and megacorporations.
Why AI and Robotics might come too late to prevent U.S. bankruptcy
Elsewhere, the totality of Musk’s hopes might be in jeopardy. Though D.O.G.E. set out with the goal of cutting some $2 trillion in government spending and reducing the rate of debt-taking, results have been less than stellar.
Reports from December 2025, for example, indicate that the billionaire’s disruptive agency might have saved only between $61 billion and $214 billion, while the U.S. national debt rose from $36.1 trillion at Trump’s inauguration, based on news reports from the day, to $38.7 trillion at press time on February 6, per the data retrieved from the ‘US Debt Clock’ website.
Simultaneously, recent big tech earnings reports have shown that, while the AI boom is still ongoing, growth has slowed down, and operating margins are diminishing.
Such developments, paired with suspicious and concerning reports on the relationships between some of AI’s most prominent companies, hint that, if Elon Musk is correct, neither artificial intelligence nor robotics will arrive in time to save the U.S.
Featured image via Shutterstock
