Elon Musk: America will '1,000%' go bankrupt due to debt — here’s what he claims can save the country Jing Pan April 26, 2026 10 min read TSLA Andrew Harnik / Moneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has just issued a dire warning for Americans. In a Feb. 5 appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast, Musk said America is barreling toward bankruptcy as its national debt continues to climb.
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"Nothing else will solve the national debt." According to the Treasury Department, U.S. national debt now stands at $38.96 trillion — and it continues to grow as federal spending outpaces revenue (2). So far in fiscal year 2026, the government has already spent about $1.17 trillion more than it has collected (3). Without a productivity breakthrough from artificial intelligence and robotics, Musk painted a bleak picture of what lies ahead, saying the country is "actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy." 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.
The U.S. spent about $11.3 billion during the first week of war with Iran alone, according to the Pentagon (4). With the conflict dragging on for nearly two months now, public policy expert Linda Bilmes estimates 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." Costs could climb even higher under Donald Trump's proposed 2027 defense budget. The administration has submitted a $1.5 trillion request — 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.
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