WGS 2025: Elon Musk asks US to ‘delete all agencies, mind its own business’

Dubai: Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Thursday, tech visionary Elon Musk asked the US administration to “delete entire agencies” and said that America must “mind its own business” instead of pushing for foreign regime changes.

Musk, who was appointed by US President Donald Trump to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), discussed improving US government efficiencies and the potentials of humanoid robots, generative AI and deep intelligence.

During his plenary session with Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, and Vice Chair of World Governments Summit, Musk said new version of xAI’s Grok will outperform all other chatbots in two weeks and predicted that humanoids like the ones being made by Tesla could even make money meaningless in future.

White House’s tech support

Wearing a black T-shirt that read: “Tech Support,” Musk joked that he was the “White House’s tech support.”

During the conversation, he said a significant part of the problem in the US is improving the technology that the government operates on.

“The US government relies on thousands of computers, many of them outdated, running very old software, and these systems do not communicate with each other. This is why tech support is a persistent issue,” he said.

Musk also offered insights into his role in DOGE, and called for deleting all agencies from the United States’ federal government as part of his push under President Donald Trump to radically cut spending and restructure its priorities.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind ... If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back,” he said.

Mind own business

Another powerful statement came when Musk said America should mind its own business, rather than push for regime change all over the place.

Trump has recently enraged the Arab world by saying the US would take over the Gaza Strip, resettle its Palestinian inhabitants and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

However, Musk claimed that what the new Trump administration is doing to benefit the average American will also be helpful to other countries and “with the new administration there is less interest in interfering with the affairs of other countries.”

He criticised the past governments saying: “I think a lot of the times, the United States has been kind of pushy in international affairs, which may resonate with a number of members of the audience. And I think we should, in general, leave other countries to their own business … basically, America should mind its own business rather than push for regime change all over the place. So, probably [it is] a good thing for other countries too.”

Sacking people, saving economy

Talking about improving US government efficiencies, Musk said government spending could be reduced by $1 trillion or more by dramatically reducing the size of the federal workforce.

“We really have here rule of the bureaucracy, as opposed to rule of the people-democracy. So in order, we want to restore rule of the people,” he said.

“Maybe the economy could grow at 4 or 5% potentially, in terms of real useful goods and services output, and government spending can be reduced by about 3 or 4 per cent of the economy, about maybe a trillion dollars or more, and the net effect of that would be no inflation from 2025 to 2026 so that would be quite remarkable,” Musk said.

xAI’s Grok 3 and Tesla’s humanoids

Moving on to the topics of artificial and deep intelligence, Musk announced that his AI company xAI’s newly updated chatbot, Grok 3, would be ready in about two weeks. Grok is an AI chatbot integrated into X (formerly Twitter) as part of its premium features and a ChatGPT challenger.

“It (Grok3) is scary smart and finds non-obvious solutions ... Hopefully this is the last time that any AI is better than Grok,” Musk said.

Explaining the potentials of humanoid robots, he said their impact would be a game changer for the service industry and financial institutions.

He also described a humoid-dominant future that could be just a few years away.

“Once you have humanoid robots and deep intelligence, you can basically have quasi-infinite products and services available,” said Musk.

“With Tesla building the most advanced humanoid robot, and those human humanoid robots directed by deep intelligence, you can produce any product and provide any service. There is really no limit to the economy at that point, you can make anything. I’m not sure at that point if money will even be meaningful. You have no meaningful limit on the number of robots and the robots can basically do anything then. You’ll have a sort of universal high-income situation. It’s going to be a very different world,” he prophesied.

Tesla’s $20,000 Optimus humanoid robots are able to perform unsafe, repetitive, boring tasks otherwise undertaken by humans, such as housework and even social care.

‘OpenAI is now Closed AI’

Meanwhile, Musk also took a dig at Sam Altman’s management of OpenAI drawing parallels to a non-profit aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest becoming a “lumber company that chops down the trees.”

“OpenAI is meant to be open source, non-profit, and now it is closed. They changed the name to ‘closed’ for maximum profit AI,” added Musk who had co-founded OpenAI and just led a $97.4 billion takeover bid for the ChatGPT’s parent company which in turn was rejected by Altman.