DANIEL:

This is part two of a two part interview with Vittoria Elliott, a reporter at WIRED. Vittoria covers power and platforms, and she’s been tracking Elon Musk’s DOGE.

If you haven’t already, listen to Part 1: Inside Elon Musk's takeover of the US government.

VITTORIA:

People in Trump's orbit are a little uncomfortable with how much power Musk has started to wield. The fact that he's sort of running this almost parallel executive branch, right via DOGE.”

Audio excerpt — News Reporter:

“The New York Times reports, the meeting of the minds this week wasn't so cordial. With Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reportedly getting into it with Musk over staffing cuts at their departments.”

VITTORIA:

Trump himself has not expressed these feelings. You know, he's done a lot to show that he and Musk are onside. He literally seems to have bought a Tesla this week.

Audio excerpt — Donald Trump:

“What’s your best of these cars? What do you think?”

Audio excerpt — Elon Musk:

“Well, the car that I drove is the Model S.”

Audio excerpt — Donald Trump:

“Which is that one?”

Audio excerpt — Elon Musk:

“That red one in the middle.”

Audio excerpt — Donald Trump:

“I like that. Yeah. Yeah.”

VITTORIA:

And he has said very publicly that whatever Musk is doing has his blessing.

Audio excerpt — Donald Trump:

“Well, I'm just telling people this man is a great patriot and you should cherish him. You should cherish him. You know, I have a little statement. We have to take care of our high IQ people because we don't have too many of them. You got to take care of them.”

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DANIEL:

Donald Trump’s full throated support of Elon Musk continues, despite more and more people questioning why an un-elected billionaire has this much power over the future of the American Government.

While Musk claims to be bringing his business experience to cutting waste, his deeper motives are becoming clear.

As Vittoria Elliott has found, Musk’s actions come straight out of an ideological playbook that wants to weaken the government and unshackle business from oversight.

In part 2, we find out more about what Musk wants and what he and his loyalists will get, when the job is done.

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DANIEL:

Vittoria, as DOGE has been making cuts, what has congress been doing about it?

VITTORIA:

Yeah. So there have been hearings, people have submitted testimonies.

Audio excerpt — Unidentified man:

“Look at the empty seats here. Where is Elon Musk? I'm sure he's a genius and is a very credible person because of the wealth he’s accumulated. But that does not put him above the law or the responsibility to come before this committee in this Congress. If he's so great, if these plans and all the fraud and abuse that he found are so imminent, why isn't he here explaining it? You know why. Because he's out to privatise social security…”

VITTORIA:

But the reality is congressional investigations can take months. They can take years. And so much of the DOGE ethos is really bringing that Silicon Valley move fast and break things. You know, Congress could do an investigation, but the reality is that by the time they're investigating this, people will have moved on to new jobs, work will have ceased. Things will have changed.

The biggest thing that we're seeing is that people have taken to the courts, and the courts have issued injunctions against some of DOGE's work.

Audio excerpt — New Reporter:

“A federal judge, citing a risk of irreparable harm, has temporarily restricted Elon Musk's Government Efficiency team from accessing a critical Treasury Department payment system.”

VITTORIA:

But even then, whether or not we're going to see sort of permanent rulings around some of this stuff is off in the future.

DANIEL:

And how have the federal workers been reacting to DOGE’s agenda? I mean, what's the atmosphere like within these agencies amid all this turmoil?

VITTORIA:

I think a lot of them are really sad. I've talked to people who have spent 20, 30 years in government who have dedicated their lives to this work, who have, you know, forwent jobs that would have paid them more money. There's all these rules when you work in government, right? Like, activities you can participate in, you can't necessarily like to be politically active in the same way that a regular citizen can be. They have forwent sort of all of these different things because they believed in their work and they believed in their commitment to serving the country. And I think a lot of them feel really bewildered as to how they have become the bad guy in this moment.

DANIEL:

Vittoria, you said we are never really going to see the savings that have been promised by Musk and DOGE. So what is this really about? Can you tell me about the ideological reason for all of this activity?

VITTORIA:

I definitely don't think it's about saving money. I think that there are experts who are more well versed in the federal budget than I am, that can sort of show you the ways in which getting rid of these programs is actually, over time, maybe less cost effective, because you're probably going to have to outsource it to the private sector because that service may still need to exist. Things like that. First and foremost, anyone who is deeply concerned about waste, fraud and abuse, there's a system that exists for that.

We already have government auditors. There are actually people who are specialised in this work, who know how to go into a technical system and evaluate, who know how to go line by line on a budget to make sure things are being spent correctly, who know how to go out to the field and do interviews and figure out if a program is wasteful. We actually have a whole system for that. And if DOGE was really concerned about saving money, they might seek the advice of those people, or they might be particularly interested in reviewing the auditing system and making that more streamlined and faster. But they haven’t.

Ideologically, I think we are dealing with people like Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, who's the crypto czar, that really do fundamentally, on an ideological level, believe that the best thing for them and their businesses and people that they consider to be in their orbit is to destroy the administrative state.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break, how DOGE aligns with Project 2025.

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DANIEL:

We heard a lot in the lead up to the election about a thing called Project 2025, this plan by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. There's a lot of fear about that plan, a lot of criticism. Trump denied he would be following it. But what's happening now sounds remarkably like what Project 2025 is actually asking for. So is that what's really going on here? Is getting the federal government stacking it with loyalists?

VITTORIA:

I think that's a big part of it. Yeah. Project 2025 lays out a lot of different things, rolling back regulation, dissolving certain agencies or certain functions of agencies. I think we see a lot of parallels with Project 2025. But again, Project 2025 is not the only place where this comes from. You know, JD Vance who, you know himself, worked with Peter Thiel before he was a senator. There's an ideological bent in Silicon Valley in those spaces that really says that the regulatory and administrative functions of the government should be extraordinarily curtailed, and that more and more power should be concentrated under the executive branch.

Audio excerpt — Peter Thiel:

“There are certainly certain parallels in the US in the 2020s to Germany in the 1920s, where you know Liberalism is exhausted. One suspects that democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted…”

VITTORIA:

And that is really what's happening here. By gutting these agencies, you are fundamentally undermining the power of Congress, because these agencies are established and funded by Congress. Meaning that if Congress lets this happen, if they're able to cut these agencies, take them over, access their data, possibly break many privacy laws in doing that, depending on how it's being handled. Really what they're doing is they are demonstrating that the executive branch is the one that holds all the power.

They're really looking at challenging the power of Congress and then challenging the power of the courts and trying to concentrate the full power of the American government under the executive branch.

DANIEL:

So Vittoria as a tech writer and someone very familiar with Silicon Valley. It sounds like they're trying to run the US government like a tech company. What are the risks of that happening, and what's the fallout from running a country like America like a tech company?

VITTORIA:

Well, I mean, the country is not a company. Not everything is a market gap. When your education system fails, that isn't a market gap. If you run America like a company, you're going to leave behind so many people. And also, the stakes of getting it wrong are so much higher. For instance, if you run a tech company, say, an app like Uber, and your app goes down for the night. It will be extraordinarily annoying for me, probably. But certainly there are taxis and there's public transportation. There are other ways for me to get home. But if the government suddenly, say, shuts down payments out of the Treasury, if the Department of Health and Human Services decides that we're no longer inspecting particular medical products or food, that impacts everyone. A failure in any of these systems has such greater consequences than anything that could have happened with any particular app. And again, some of the most impactful things are not built to be for profit. You know, I think when I was working in international development, one of the initiatives that we really talked a lot about as something that was really important was Gavi. It's an initiative to develop vaccines for diseases where the people that are most affected by them are not essentially going to be great markets for pharmaceutical companies. So then vaccines for those diseases don't get developed because they're mostly for poor markets. So you need to have some kind of other way of funding the development of that kind of medical care. And even if the initial impetus is because you're addressing the needs of people in poor markets, the reality is we live in a global world. Addressing health needs somewhere else is key to making sure everyone stays safe. And there is no clear ROI on that until you avert a pandemic, you know?

DANIEL:

Yeah. Where does this project lead? What happens if DOGE succeeds with what they're doing? Where do we end up?

VITTORIA:

Well, I'm going to have a very long four years, but I think we will see a terrifying amount of power concentrated in the executive branch. I think we will see a greater divide between the rich and poor, as people who are poor and rely on government services maybe don't have access to them anymore. And I think we will see possibly exactly how well the American Government was functioning beforehand, in the absence of the services that many people take for granted.

DANIEL:

And finally, Vittoria, I just want to check in with you, actually. I mean, you've been a reporter, a very experienced reporter across a number of areas for a while now. What's it been like reporting on what's been happening at this time? What kind of impact has that been having on you?

VITTORIA:

I’m very tired.

I think it sort of feels like I feel a little like a top spinning that like if I stop moving, I'll kind of collapse. So it's better to keep moving and keep reporting. Keep doing stuff. The thing that I feel most urgent about is the fact that, you know, there's so much we still don't know. And, you know, we're a small team. Other people are doing stuff now, so that's appreciated. But I think it's mostly that the reality is we only have so much time. They're moving really fast and we need to move fast too.

DANIEL:

Vittoria, thank you so much for your time.

VITTORIA:

Thank you.

DANIEL:

You can find Vittoria Elliott’s reporting at WIRED.COM.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today,

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the government is open to requests to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.

In a virtual meeting attended by European and Commonwealth leaders on Saturday night, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called for countries to sign up to a "coalition of the willing" to protect Ukraine and push Russia for a ceasefire.

Albanese said it is in "Australia's national interest" to stand with Ukraine.

And,

Trade Minister Don Farrell will meet with White House trade representative Jamieson Greer today, following a meeting he had with US trade secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday.

The discussions are part of the minister’s appeal to the United States that Australia should gain exemptions from President Trump’s tariffs.

Farrell says his job is to find an offer the Americans “can’t refuse”.

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

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