Elon Musk Talks Brain Chips, Infrastructure Bill, Dropping Acid

Dana Hull and Sarah McBride, Bloomberg News

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., waves while departing court during the SolarCity trial in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Musk was cool but combative as he testified in a Delaware courtroom that Tesla's more than $2 billion acquisition of SolarCity in 2016 wasn't a bailout of the struggling solar provider. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, said that President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill, which includes federal funding for electric vehicle charging stations, should be canned because it would add to the country’s deficit.

“It might be better if the bill doesn’t pass,” said Musk, who spoke from Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas at a Wall Street Journal conference Monday evening.

Musk said the government should “be a referee but not a player on the field” and should “get out of the way and not impede progress.”

Though Tesla would benefit from some provisions in the bill, Musk said that he’s in favor of dropping all federal subsidies, but stressed that subsidies should also be dropped for the oil and gas industry.

Read more: Build Back Better Could Reposition U.S. as Global EV Powerhouse

Musk, who also founded The Boring Company, instead called for development of double-decker highways and tunnels to fight traffic.

Children, Cybertruck

He also said Tesla had a “good relationship” with China, noting that the country’s leaders came of age during a time when the now world’s second-largest economy “was pushed around,” making them slow to appreciate the extent of China’s power today. “That’s an important mindset change,” he said.

In the wide ranging interview, which also touched upon Musk’s views on executive titles and his vision for Neuralink, his company that develops brain-machine interfaces to connect humans with computers, Musk called low population growth “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

When asked if that risk was why he had so many children -- he has six sons, including a toddler -- Musk smiled. “Trying to set a good example,” he said.

And he called the role of chief executive officer a “made-up title,” even though he works seven days a week and splits most of his time between Tesla and SpaceX, depending on which company needs his attention.

Musk said Tesla’s forthcoming Cybertruck, which should reach volume production in 2023, could be the company’s “best product ever” but warned it has a lot of new technology and is very hard to make.

Musk, who famously smoked pot during a video interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, also briefly riffed on drugs when the interviewer asked about his thoughts on aging and psychedelics.

“I don’t think dropping acid makes you age less,” he said. “I think drugs probably make you age more.”