On the second night of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s highly publicized interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the SpaceX founder said he’s not aware of the existence of aliens—but if he was, he would’ve already tweeted about it.
“A lot of people ask me where are the aliens, and I think if anyone would know about aliens on Earth, it would probably be me,” said Musk, whose spacecraft manufacturer in 2020 became the first privately owned company to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.
“I’m very familiar with space stuff, and I’ve seen no evidence of aliens,” he continued. “So, I would immediately tweet it out in a split second and it would probably be the top tweet of all time… Eight billion likes, you know—next level jackpot if you find aliens.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Engagement on Twitter has apparently been an area of concern for Musk in the wake of an exodus of advertisers from the site and its decline in revenue. In February, Musk reportedly fired an engineer after being unsatisfied with the number of people who were seeing his tweets.
After a tangent that touched on Area 51 and whether the existence of aliens would end up boosting the Defense Department’s budget, Musk said he would like to think that aliens exist and that they are “peaceful.”
“But I’m just saying, we haven’t seen anything yet,” he said.
Regarding humans, Musk agreed with Carlson saying that we take our existence for granted, adding that it would be a mistake to “assume that civilization is robust.” In that vein, Musk explained his concern about declining birth rates in places like Japan, which in 2022 had the lowest number of births ever recorded.
When asked to explain the reasons for that trend, Musk opted not to directly mention the rising costs associated with raising a child, but rather the proliferation of birth control and abortions.
