In Washington these days, Elon Musk seems to be everywhere.In the 15 days Donald Trump has been back in the White House, Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have been moving to change every corner of the federal government. The billionaire entrepreneur and his team have gained access to a sensitive government payment system in the Treasury Department.They're pushing to drastically reduce the number of federal employees. How did the world's richest man come to have such a big role in the federal government?And why does he want it? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.orgEmail us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Why is Elon Musk involved in government affairs?
It's been hard to turn on the news lately or scroll through your news feed and not come across something like this.
Elon Musk and the Doge team.
Two top security officials at the agency attempted to block personnel from the Elon Musk run department. Reportedly granting Elon Musk's Doge team access to the federal government's payment system, which handles. Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, owner of Tesla, SpaceX.
X. And now head of the Department of Government Efficiency, commonly referred to as DOJ, where he is making changes at a number of government departments.
Before our very eyes, an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.
That is Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer speaking on the Senate floor on Monday. He, like many federal employees and others with stakes in the workings of the federal government, have been decrying the work of Doge.
The immense danger is that we have no clarity, no explanation, no details for what Doge is truly after. The potential for corruption is too great.
Doge was created by executive order on day one of Donald Trump's second term. The goal slash government spending to make it more, well, efficient. And Musk has President Trump's support.
He's a very talented guy from the standpoint of management and costs.
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Chapter 2: What changes is Elon Musk implementing in the federal government?
So how does he square his politics with this role? Because at one point he was a moderate Democrat and now he is Donald Trump's arguably strongest ally.
Yeah, the moderate Democrat piece started to really shift. I mean, it happened over the course of many years, but there were a couple of key moments. The COVID-19 pandemic was one of them. He was very against the lockdowns. He thought that basically the Democrats' reaction to the pandemic was quite overblown and was detrimental to businesses.
He felt like the Biden administration had shortchanged him in giving him the credit that he felt he deserved for electric vehicles. And, you know, he's been going through a process that I think we can say a process of radicalization on the Internet becoming more widespread. right wing, more anti kind of woke. And this was a core reason that he got involved with Twitter.
He said that the company was overrun with something that he deemed the woke mind virus. And I think it's fair to say that when he looked at the country prior to Trump getting reelected, he felt like the country was kind of teetering on the brink of getting overrun with the woke mind virus once again, and he needed to step in and save it.
Hmm. To the question of his status, the White House says Musk is a, quote, special government employee. Trump himself Monday in the Oval Office was praising Musk's abilities, but said, look, we have to approve what he does. The bottom line is no one elected him. He has not been confirmed by the Senate. Should he have this much power?
I mean, even before he took on this role, he arguably had more power than anyone who wasn't in control of a nuclear arsenal. This is a man who has massive wealth, and he also has a lot of political power. He has contracts with governments all over the globe through Starlink, and these countries, including the United States, are quite dependent on his work.
So now he's in an interesting position where before the election, while he had so much power, there were also a number of investigations that were ongoing. The U.S. government was actively looking into decisions that he had made while running his companies. And, you know, there was the possibility of fines or regulations.
Now he is in the position of, in some ways, regulating the regulators and his power looks pretty unchecked.
That moves me to ask, what does Musk stand to gain personally from his work with Doge?
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Chapter 3: What are the political reactions to Elon Musk's new role?
Well, I mean, you know, there were a lot of investigations into Tesla and its self-driving technology prior to Trump getting reelected. I'm curious to see where those lead. Like, I think that there are big questions about how, you know, his companies will change and benefit from his new position that we all need to be aware of.
So where does this go? How does this end for him and for the citizens of the United States?
I will be curious to see. Right now, it looks like we are watching Elon's team kind of infiltrate one agency after another. I think that we have yet to see what will come of all of this. At the same time, I want to make sure that we are all paying attention to what the larger goal is. Because just like when Elon took over Twitter and he had kind of...
all of the goals that he talked about publicly he wanted to rid the platform of bots and spam he wanted to eliminate child sexual exploitation material these were all things that most people could agree on at the same time a couple years or a few years after the acquisition took place we're in a position of saying well those goals do not look like they were achieved and in many cases.
And the overall goal, the kind of unsaid, unspoken initiative to turn Twitter into X, into a political operation that would elevate right-wing politicians in the United States and around the globe, that goal has been very successful. And so I think we need to ask the question of what is Elon Musk's larger goal with the federal government of the United States?
Zoe Schiffer, she is the Director of Business and Industry at Wired. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This episode was produced by Mia Venkat. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yinnigan.
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