Elon Musk is looking back on DOGE, the government cost-cutting project he led, and basically saying it didn't work. According to Axios, he told biographer Walter Isaacson on the new podcast "The Builders" that there was "no way we were gonna solve the deficit from within the government." His reasoning is that nobody in power really wants to cut spending, not the White House, Congress, or the courts, with a few exceptions like Sen. Rand Paul. He added that cutting waste makes a lot of enemies, and said "President Trump likes to be liked."

So what's the fix? "The only way we're going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots," Musk said, adding that the U.S. won't "save our way there." He also admitted he "kinda got carried away" and stayed away from his companies too long. He said he should have kept a lower profile and left after a month or two instead of the four months he formally spent in the White House. On the infamous CPAC chainsaw moment, he only called it "a weird weekend."

Isaacson has a more cautious take. He called Musk an "amazing engineer" but said he's "too prone to darkness and conspiracies" about politics and people. The podcast also features Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Fei-Fei Li, and the founders of Anthropic, and it premieres Tuesday. Worth noting: the U.S. just posted a nearly $2 trillion deficit, so the debt debate is only getting louder.