Elon Musk: America is ‘1,000% going to go bankrupt’ and ‘fail as a country’ — but he says 1 powerful force can save us
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued a dire warning for Americans.
In an appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast, Musk said America is barreling toward bankruptcy as its national debt continues to climb.
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“We are 1,000% going to go bankrupt as a country and fail as a country, without AI and robots,” he said (1). “Nothing else will solve the national debt.”
According to the Treasury Department, U.S. national debt now stands at roughly $40.17 trillion — and it continues to grow as federal spending outpaces revenue (2). Through the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, the federal deficit has climbed to around $1.37 trillion (3).
Without a productivity breakthrough from artificial intelligence and robotics, Musk argues that the country is “actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy.” That’s a bleak picture.
He also warned that the cost of servicing that debt alone is becoming a heavy burden.
“The interest payments on national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. So we have over a trillion dollars just in interest payments,” he said.
How the Iran war has rapidly increased the national debt
And those costs could rise further. By mid-year, the U.S. spent about $37.5 billion on the war in Iran so far, according to the Pentagon (4). And that cost could go much higher.
Back in April, public policy expert Linda Bilmes estimated the war will cost Americans upwards of $1 trillion (5).
“The result is that the interest costs alone will add billions of dollars to the total cost of this war,” Bilmes noted in an interview with the Harvard Kennedy School. “And unlike the upfront costs, these are costs we are explicitly passing on to the next generation.”
These costs could climb as high as $1.5 trillion, given President Donald Trump’s proposed 2027 defense budget. That’s the largest year-over-year jump in military spending since the end of World War II (6).
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the plan could add about $5 trillion to defense spending through 2035. Once interest costs are factored in, that figure could push the national debt up by roughly $5.8 trillion (7).
