Elon Musk says he needs $1T to control Tesla's robot army

Elon Musk needs Tesla investors to vote for his $1 trillion payday so that he can control a robot army. Yes, really, that’s what he said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is no stranger to unrealistic proclamations, but today’s is a doozie.

In the midst of an upcoming shareholder vote to give Musk a $1 trillion payday despite his recent poor performance as a CEO (with earnings down 40% during what should have been a record quarter), Tesla has been undergoing a media blitz trying to get shareholders to vote in favor of a plan to dilute their value and voting rights and saddle the company with the same CEO for the next decade.

For his part, Musk has stated repeatedly that he wants this award not for money, but for more control over the company, because he “doesn’t feel comfortable” building AI unless he has more control over it (in keeping with this mentality, Musk started his own private AI company, xAI, to compete with Tesla, which is likely illegal).

Nevermind that there are better options available which would increase his voting control without diluting all other shareholders, and nevermind that the reason he has less control of Tesla than he used to is because he sold TSLA shares to overpay billions of dollars for a social media platform he’s hopelessly addicted to, and then turned into a white supremacist haven.

But this has at least been Musk’s story: he wants more control over AI development, and he needs more shares to do that. He thinks that his current ownership percentage of ~13% isn’t enough, and that ~25% is more comfortable.

He hasn’t, however, mentioned the reason he wants that control. Today he did, and it’s because he wants to control a “robot army.”

Musk literally says he wants to control a robot army. Yes really.

On Tesla’s Q3 conference call, Musk went on a tangent with his real thoughts on Optimus, Tesla’s (oft-remote-controlled) humanoid robot, in response to a shareholder question about the challenges of bringing Optimus to market. Here’s the way he ended that answer:

My fundamental concern with regard to how much money and control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? Um, that’s my biggest concern, that is really the only thing Im trying to address with this… what’s called compensation but it’s not like I’m gonna go spend the money, it’s just if we build this robot army do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army? Not control but a strong influence.

-Elon Musk, Tesla Q3 shareholder conference call, October 22, 2025

It’s apparent that he was trying to step back his comments mid-thought there, changing out the word “control” for “strong influence,” and the phrase “I go ahead and build” to “we build.” (I would suggest that perhaps the initial wordings used are more indicative of his true feelings on the matter than the ones he later changed to as his PR brain kicked in through the ketamine fog.)

This is significantly different than past statements on this issue. Musk has often publicly stated his concern with AI, calling it a “risk” and “threat” to humanity, and said that he wants to be involved in its development to ensure safety.

However, this statement had no mention of that. The discussion wasn’t about the safety of AI, but rather about wanting to control a robot army. And much of the statement was in the first person: he, alone, wants to “control” that robot army that he “builds.”

Notably, also, it is very important that any controller of any army be able to be ousted. This is fundamental to the entire concept of modern governance and democracy, and when it doesn’t happen like that, countries tend to have problems. And, generally, the threshold for whether to remove someone from control of an army is not that you allow them to have 25% of the vote – usually, they get the same vote as everyone else (about 0.0000006%, in an American election these days).

Let us put aside for the moment that, so far, Tesla’s Optimus robots have not yet shown the capabilities that would strike fear in the hearts of a fighting force.

At one of Tesla’s big unveil events, it’s clear that the robots were teleoperated. Since then, we’ve seen robots fail to deliver popcorn. However, a recent video did show Optimus doing some pretty impressive kung-fu moves… but a later video of the robot doing the same routine at the opening of the new Tron movie suggests that much of the choreography was scripted.

Regardless of that, and assuming the robots do improve rapidly enough to be a real threat to humanity, it is questionable that Musk’s fantasy involves him controlling a robot army that he in the past has said would number in the billions.

Musk’s questionable advocacy suggests he probably shouldn’t own a robot army

The prospect of Elon Musk controlling a robot army might be of some concern considering Musk’s recent political advocacy, which has centered largely on advocating for racists wherever possible. This has included performing back-to-back unambiguous Nazi salutes in front of a large crowd, agreeing with a defense of Hitler’s actions in the Holocaust, and many other white supremacist statements.

His advocacy hasn’t been limited just to the United States, he’s also meddled in other countries’ politics, including support for German neo-Nazis and rhetorical and monetary support in the UK for a violent racist fraudster who has been imprisoned multiple times.

All of this has driven protests against the company, embarrassed owners and destroyed Tesla’s brand reputation, leading to falling sales in most territories. The behavior has limited Tesla’s business opportunities overseas, in the UK, Australia, Germany, Denmark, and so on.

Musk also stated that he wants “more voting control, but not so much that I can’t be fired if I go insane,” claiming that that number is around 25% (but as the situation around this trillion-dollar award indicates, and the rest of Musk’s public behavior as listed above, that time has already passed).

Musk rants against analyses of his absurd pay day, calls those who disagree “terrorists”

By the end of the call, Musk doubled-down on his “robot army”, stating further:

I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here, and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis, who have no f**king clue. I mean those guys are corporate terrorists. Lemme explain the core problem here, so many of the passive funds vote along the lines of what ISS and Glass Lewis recommend. Now, they have made many terrible recommendations in the past that if those recommendations had been followed would have been extremely destructive to the future of the company. Now, If you’ve got passive funds that essentially defer responsibility for the vote to Glass Lewis and ISS, then you can have extremely disastrous consequences for a publicly traded company if too much of the publicly traded company is controlled by index funds. It’s de facto controlled by Glass Lewis and ISS. This is a fundamental problem for corporate governance, because they’re not voting along the lines that are actually good for shareholders. That’s the big issue, I mean, that’s what it comes down to. ISS Glass Lewis corporate terrorism.

-Elon Musk, Tesla Q3 shareholder conference call, October 22, 2025

While Musk does not specify any of these supposed “terrible recommendations,” likely one of the ones he’s referring to was when ISS/Glass Lewis recommended a “no” vote on Musk’s illegal $55 billion pay package, which would pay a CEO who has overseen a significant drop in Tesla earnings more than double the total amount of money that Tesla has made in profits over its entire lifetime.

And while Musk claims that having a disinterested entity interested in shareholder value is bad for shareholders, Musk apparently does not mind if he is that entity, and if his interests are opposed to shareholder interests, as in the case of the situation surrounding the current shareholder vote.

In contrast to Musk’s statement, the actual analyses of ISS and Glass Lewis are highly analytical, lay out their case dispassionately, argue in favor of maintaining shareholder rights, and even take some positions in agreement with Tesla’s board where they think those would be beneficial for shareholders, showing their lack of “partisanship,” so to speak, on the matter.

ISS and Glass Lewis’ arguments are certainly more detailed, more accurate to reality, less reeking of political language, and delivered with more lucidity than whatever the heck that robot army rant from Musk was all about.

We’ve stated before that Elon Musk’s $1 trillion stock award gets more ridiculous the more you look into it, but we didn’t quite expect something as ridiculous as today’s proclamation.

But hey, if this dude from that weird rant above seems like the kind of “leader” you want to control a robot army, by all means, give up your voting rights for him.

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