Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath conducted a surprise interview with world's richest man Elon Musk on his popular WTF Podcast, about “work, consciousness, family, money, AI and how the future might unfold”.
Posted on 30 November on Nikhil Kamath's official YouTube channel titled ‘Elon Musk: A Different Conversation w/ Nikhil Kamath’, the video has exceeded 2,950,773 views, over 1,32,000 likes and almost 11,200 comments.
Among other things, Elon Musk discussed philosophy, investing, how he feels about restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI), technology and business. Kamath also probed him about his stint with the Donald Trump administration, particularly as chief of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
‘Tried to advise Donald Trump against tariffs’
Speaking to Nikhil Kamath on his opposition to tariffs, Elon Musk said that he unsuccessfully tried to steer United States President Donald Trump away from the measure. He explained his reasons, “Generally free trade is better, more efficient. Tariffs tend to create distortions in markets.”
“The President (Donald Trump) has made it clear he loves tariffs. You know, I've tried to dissuade him from this point of view, but unsuccessfully,” he added.
‘Best to avoid politics’, says Elon Musk
Nikhil Kamath also asked Elon Musk about the “relationship between business and politics”, citing a story related to genius painter-sculptor Michaelangelo, who when he was sculpting David, a politician tells him the nose is too big. And so, the artist pretended to do as told but didn't change anything — and the politician walked away satisfied.
The billionaire seemed less than pleased with politics after a direct stint in the government, stating, “Not everything needs politics. -Yeah. I think, once you get to a certain scale, politics finds you. I've generally found that when I get involved in politics, it ends up badly. So then I'm like, you know, “Probably shouldn't do that. I should do less of that”, is my conclusion.”
When asked if this was true for all businessman, Musk agreed, “Yeah, probably. I mean, politics is a blood sport, you know? It's like you enter politics, they're going go for the jugular. So best to avoid politics where possible.”
What were Elon Musk's learnings from DOGE?
When asked about what DOGE taught him, Elon Musk called it a “very interesting side quest”, where he “got to see like a lot of inner workings of the government”.
He also defended the work done by DOGE, adding, “There's been quite a few efficiencies. Some of them are very basic, like just adding in requirements for federal payments, that any given payment must have an assigned congressional payment code and a comment field with something in it. My guess is it probably saves $100 billion or even $200 billion a year.”
“A bunch of things that DOGE did were just very common-sense things that would be normal for any organisation that cared about financial responsibility. That's most of what was done. But it turns out, when you stop fraudulent and wasteful payments, the fraudsters don't confess to this. They actually start yelling all sorts of nonsense that, “You're stopping essential payments to needy people”. But actually, you're not,” he added.
WATCH: Elon Musk: A Different Conversation w/ Nikhil Kamath
