According to social media posts in March 2025, Elon Musk — the billionaire tech entrepreneur and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump — said that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy."
Snopes readers wrote in and searched our website for information about the alleged comment. Examples of the claim appeared on X (archived), Instagram (archived), LinkedIn (archived) and Facebook (archived). Reputable news media outlets, including CNN, and self-described "progressive news site" Daily Kos also reported that Musk expressed the sentiment.
In short, the quote's attribution to Musk was correct. The billionaire said the words during a Feb. 28, 2025, episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.
During his appearance, Musk also spoke of "suicidal empathy." He credited the concept to Gad Saad, a Canadian marketing professor who has frequently posted (archived) about suicidal empathy (archived) on his social media accounts and has said (archived) he is writing a book (archived) on the topic.
The relevant section of Musk and host Joe Rogan's discussion of empathy can be heard from around the 1:16:00 mark in the video embedded below.
Musk said the quote in question within the context of a longer exchange on the subject, which is transcribed below (we've bolded the quote for emphasis).
Musk: There's a guy who posts on X who's great, Gad Saad?
Rogan: Yeah, he's a friend of mine. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times.
Musk: Yeah, he's awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.
Rogan: Also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.
Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.
Musk: Yes, like, it's weaponized empathy is the issue.
Musk has posted numerous (archived) comments on X (archived) — the social media platform he owns — about Saad's concept of suicidal empathy, including one remark (archived) on Feb. 28 — the same day Rogan released the podcast episode quoted above.
Previously, Snopes looked into whether the tech mogul authentically reposted a meme on X that called those who benefit from U.S. federal programs the "Parasite Class."