Elon Musk's term as a special government employee expired on May 31, marking the end of the first phase of a federal bureaucratic shakeup. During his 130-day stint as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the tech billionaire brought the Silicon Valley credo of ‘move fast and break things' to the US capital. Measured by tax dollars saved, it may seem like Musk had little success, but that will be reading it wrong. Savings was never the objective. Musk was the battering ram that cracked open Washington for the privateers from the Valley. That job is complete.
One of the first to congratulate Musk and thank him for his “effort and sacrifice” was Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025, which includes a detailed handbook on dismantling the federal government brick by brick and reassembling it to suit a new conservative agenda. Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought heads the Office of Management and Budget, the actual arm of the government that wields the DOGE's sword. Vought is now tipped to pick up the reins from Musk.
The Meme King Who Irked A Few
Trump may have kept his billionaire buddy on for longer, but the burn rate of his political equity was too fast to sustain. The chainsaw and kitchen sink approach was unmanageably disruptive and fraught with risk. DOGE's arbitrariness was matched only by Musk's showmanship, disdain for institutions, and scorn for people. It was not unexpected of someone who contrived his department's name to shorten it to align with his cringe social media persona of ‘Dogefather'. He once famously tweeted: ‘Who controls the memes, controls the universe'. Towards the end of his term, he had disagreements - which surprisingly came later than anticipated - with even President Trump. Cabinet members were said to have already had multiple showdowns with him. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) chief Kash Patel ignored him from the word go, reportedly telling staff to bin DOGE's instructions. A day after Musk left, Trump himself recalled his associate and SpaceX frequent flyer Jared Isaacman, who was tipped to head NASA.
In his farewell press conference in the Oval Office, President Trump read out a list of DOGE achievements, which were nowhere near what was targeted. For instance, instead of $2 trillion in promised savings, it managed to achieve only $175 billion. And even that is disputed.
The President clearly is still fond of his friend who had opened his wallet and cleared his calendar for the 2024 election campaign. But he does seem to be better aware of his diminishing political utility.
Musk's alleged weaponising of the X platform in European elections, particularly in Germany, did not yield any benefits. His $20 million war chest in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race could not get a conservative favourite elected as judge. In fact, Democrats turned Musk's presence and wealth into their advantage.
Regardless, DOGE's work and the war on bureaucracy will continue.
Agenda Stays Alive
Musk said he had seen up close the banal evil and largely uncaring nature of bureaucracy, which revels in wastage to preserve its power. In memefying the administrative state in words borrowed from philosopher Hannah Arendt, who saw the “banality of evil” at Nazi Adolf Eichmann's trial, he equated the US administrative state to the Holocaust organisers. Trump is unfazed, though, and the evisceration of the federal bureaucracy and the deep state remains a long-term project of the Trump team and the President's backers.
Last week, the President's two sons and Vice President JD Vance were the star attractions at a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. “This is not a conference of people, this is a movement. This conference, this movement of people, is where the future of cryptocurrency in this great country gets decided. So let's start by making one thing abundantly clear - that future is going to be decided by the people, by you, not by unelected bureaucrats,” Vance told the gathering.
The Perfect Setting
The crypto conference is the perfect setting in a way. It speaks to the unlimited freedom from government and regulation that the techbro libertarians of Silicon Valley seek. The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto had founded Bitcoin after he lost faith in governments and central banks following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-09. His motives included beating governments and appealing to libertarians.
That circles back to Silicon Valley and a group of like-minded billionaires headed by PayPal and Palantir co-founder, Peter Thiel, friend to Musk and mentor to Vance. In the wake of the GFC in 2009, Thiel wrote a much-cited article for the Cato Institute, in which he declared that he no longer believed democracy and freedom were compatible. “In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms,” Thiel wrote.
He identified three technological frontiers to escape politics and create new spaces - cyberspace, outer space and seastedding - for freedom. Does colonising Mars ring a bell?
Post-Trump Concerns
Thiel argued that it is a fallacy to believe that technology will guarantee a future more free as it is in a “deadly race with politics”. It is this race that we see playing out with the President of the United States by their side. Trump is still relatively old-fashioned and perhaps thinking no more ahead than the next deal. But it is who comes after Trump that matters. Silicon Valley has been planting its pieces carefully. Among the many tech champions Thiel and friends backed, the bet on Vance appears to have paid off. The Veep stands a very good chance of succeeding Trump, and if and when he does, the Valley would have its true agent in the world's most powerful office.
As Thiel wrote: “Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.”
(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of 'The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation'.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
