Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“We’re going to be signing a very important deal today, it's DOGE and I’m going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it.”

DANIEL:

Acolytes of Elon Musk, working in the Department of Government Efficiency are currently gutting the US government. with Elon Musk claiming he’ll find savings of up to $2 trillion.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“A deficit. So we've got a $2 trillion deficit. And if we don't do something about this deficit the country's going bankrupt.”

[Theme Music Starts]

DANIEL:

Department by department, DOGE staff, mostly young men from the tech world, are sacking federal workers and gaining access to some of the government’s most sensitive information.

Vittoria Elliott is a reporter for WIRED, covering platforms and power.

She’s been tracking the Silicon Valley figures reshaping the US government, and finding out what it means for the future of her country.

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

It’s Monday, March 17. And this is part one of a two part interview.

[Theme Music Ends]

DANIEL:

Vittoria, you've been following the workings of the Department of Government Efficiency - Elon Musk’s DOGE, as it's been getting the US government. Can you paint a picture for me of what's been happening?

VITTORIA:

Yeah, I mean, first things first is that what we think of as DOGE used to be the US digital service. And when Trump was inaugurated, he transformed that into a new thing, the US DOGE service.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“We want to get it done.”

Audio Excerpt - Unknown:

“This is an order creating and implementing the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Ok, that's a big one.”

VITTORIA:

And then within that, they created a temporary organisation which gives them the ability to hire special government employees. So those are people brought in on limited term contracts, generally for around 130 days. And they are not subject to the same transparency requirements as regular government employees. And sort of the expectation is that they're lived there for a limited duration that can be paid or unpaid. And then, you know, they'll leave.

And what it means is that you sort of have this whole group, mostly made up of what appear to be special government employees, going from agency to agency, starting with the Office of Personnel Management, the OPM, which is sort of the HR service of the government, and the General Services Administration, which handles things like its properties and its IT, and moving from there out into these other agencies, accessing their data, as these organisations are also being asked to reduce their manpower by the Trump administration.

DANIEL:

Right. So who are these DOGE staffers that are being brought in? Who are they exactly? I mean, where are they from and how were they recruited?

VITTORIA:

So, initially with the sort of DOGE strikeforce that we first saw, we were really looking at people who were connected to Silicon Valley, oftentimes through Musk. So, for instance, Thomas Shedd, who's at GSA, he worked for Tesla. The engineers that we found at the Federal Aviation Administration, they came from SpaceX.

And then you have some of these younger guys who were 25 and under, Some of them came from other, you know, tech companies.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“These young engineers are reportedly hand picked by Elon Musk, and the oldest is just 25 years old. And some of them are reportedly still in college.”

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Seems like a reset high school graduate is determining whether career civil servants have sufficiently justified their jobs.

Audio Excerpt - Speaker:

“Elon Musk has hand picked, the youngest is 19 years old.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“They are very smart, they are like you, they are very smart kids.”

VITTORIA:

Others of them came from interning with SpaceX, another from Palantir, which is run by Peter Theil, who is a close Musk ally. He runs Palantir. Which is a big data company that has billions of dollars in government contracts, particularly with the military.

And then, outside of Musk and his companies and the companies of his allies, we're also seeing, now as as things have progressed, more and more lawyers, and those are people who are sort of more traditionally Trump aligned people like people from the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank, you know, people who are backed by those entities. So DOGE is technical staff. And then on top of that, what we're now seeing is sort of an expansion of its legal heft.

DANIEL:

Talk to me about the access that the staffers have been receiving to do this task of cutting government waste, as the administration would put it.

VITTORIA:

Yeah. So what we do know is that they are getting into very sensitive systems. And so, for instance, at The Treasury, we knew that one of the DOGE members, Marko Elez, had access to really sensitive payment systems and Treasury for those who are not in the US, you know, that controls like, you know, getting your tax refund, social security. We're looking at about $6 trillion worth of payments processed through that system every year.

And ultimately, like having someone in that system means they could have theoretically turned that off.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“We also have some breaking news this morning. We talked earlier in the show about USAID, its uncertain fate. We've just confirmed an email went out early this morning to staff saying do not come in. Headquarters will be closed this morning. You are to work remotely where Elon Musk is saying in his spaces last night. Said that Donald Trump agreed with him to shut down the entire agency.”

VITTORIA:

One of the big things that, you know, we can already see is with USAID, you know, that is an agency that is created by and funded by congress. That's already been determined. People have voted on it. That's what our budget is for. And the idea that DOGE could go in, basically shut off payments for that and shudder, the agency that has manifold effects and that changes people's lives. There are people in other parts of the world, will not receive medicine, will not receive food. Because the US is not sending money that it had promised to send.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break - job cuts won’t save a trillion dollars, so what else is in the firing line?

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DANIEL:

Let’s talk about the wave of government layoffs and cuts that have been undertaken as part of this DOGE project. What have we seen so far in terms of cuts to employees and government layoffs?

VITTORIA:

Well, we've seen a lot of RIFs, Reduction in Forces. All the agencies were required to send in RIF plans for how they're going to cut staff. So even the RIF hasn't happened yet, there are major plans to cut staffing in the government.

And then, of course we saw that buyout offer, which, you know, told people, you know, if you agree to take a buyout, you'll get paid through September, etc. Which is, I think, particularly difficult because that's something that Musk also did when he took over Twitter. And as it turned out, you know, a lot of former Twitter employees had to fight tooth and nail for that agreement to be honoured after they left.

And then on top of that, you know, we're seeing thousands and thousands of federal workers leave because this is demoralising, because even if, they are maybe not being targeted right now with reductions, they don't want to work in this environment or they feel, you know, morally uncomfortable working in this environment. So I think we're seeing a massive reduction in the federal workforce at a rate that we probably haven't seen, at least not that I can remember in my lifetime.

DANIEL:

So how much will trimming the headcount save? Because DOGE is promising to cut one, potentially $2 trillion from the federal budget. And where else will DOGE find the savings that they are promising?

VITTORIA:

Well, here's the thing, $2 trillion is more than the entire discretionary budget in 2023. And by that I mean the budget ballparks around $7 trillion. And most of that is locked in. It is entitlement spending, so Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, is interest on debt and some of its Military spending. Everything else, whether that's USAID or the Department of Energy or the National Institutes of Health. Every other government service is in that 1.7 trillion out of discretionary Funds.

So initially, Musk said they were going to try and cut 2 trillion. It's now down to 1 trillion.

But even then, you're not going to get into that without doing things like cutting social security, cutting retired people's benefits. And there's a reason that Musk has now recently sort of started floating language around how maybe those sorts of benefits need to be curtailed.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that's, that's like the big one to eliminate. You know, that's the sort of half trillion, maybe six, 700 billion a year.”

VITTORIA:

I think that a lot about is, you know, Musk will go on Twitter and be like, oh, we were spending $5 million on, you know, insert name of project that sounds really stupid or wasteful, right? $5 million. But $5 million compared to $7 trillion is nothing. Foreign aid, for instance, constitutes less than 1% of the US budget. Less than 1%. It's like going to the airport with an overstuffed bag and when they tell you, I'm so sorry your bag is overweight you say, I'll just take out my underwear. It will make no difference. You will still pay that overcharge fee and you will not have underwear.

Giving people the raw numbers in that way is misleading because of course, any normal American who takes $65,000 a year is going to think wasting $5 million on some country that they've never been to feels stupid. But you know, for someone like Musk, who is a centi-billionaire who has hundreds of billions of dollars, even for him $5 million is nothing. He could say. He could fund that whole program. So I think it's really misleading. And I think that's all sort of part of the game.

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DANIEL:

This is part 1 of our interview with WIRED reporter Vittoria Elliott. In part 2 we find out the real endgame for DOGE and for Elon Musk.

VITTORIA:

Musk has spent several years talking about how, quote unquote, unelected bureaucrats are the problem.

But for someone like Musk and many other people in Silicon Valley, many other rich people.

Those unelected bureaucrats are also the people that enforce rules. They tax them. They investigate them. When their companies do something wrong.

Musk and people like him benefit from these agencies being gutted, specifically because they no longer have the power to keep businesses like his in check.

DANIEL:

Part 2 is in your feed right now, look for “What happens to America if DOGE succeeds”

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

[Theme Music Ends]