The Department of Government Efficiency has in just a few short weeks interjected itself into multiple federal agencies, risking major damage to their core functions. Its leader, billionaire Elon Musk, is using his platform as owner of X to call for a “second American revolution” and attack judicial authority to his millions of followers. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump appears to be handing over control of a large portion of the federal government to the billionaire, signing an executive order Wednesday calling on federal agencies to work with his unelected task force in culling staff rosters.
Musk sits at a nexus of power that few — if any — Americans have ever held.
Musk sits at a nexus of power that few — if any — Americans have ever held. His businesses have cultivated deep, grasping ties within the federal government — especially the national security state — over the years, resulting in contracts worth at least a staggering $18 billion. Without SpaceX’s rockets, NASA will scramble to get into orbit; without the satellites the company is helping to launch, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be less able to track extreme weather. His Starlink satellite internet service has been a crucial tool in Ukraine’s war against Russia and stands to be the recipient of even more Defense Department contracts in the future. But without the guarantee of federal revenue, Musk’s fortune would likely be more vulnerable to the investors whose confidence in him helps maintain his massive net worth (on paper at least).
That hand-in-glove relationship with Washington is important to understand why the billionaire is so dead set on tearing down the federal bureaucracy. Musk isn’t alone among the Silicon Valley billionaire class in being tied to the government and tilting right. As I write in my new book “Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left,” he stands alongside the likes of Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen in having both benefited from federal funding and gone further to the right in a reactionary response to cultural liberalism and the attention of the regulatory state. Despite decades of federal subsidies for the tech industry, it has been nowhere near a two-way street in the eyes of the private-sector benefactors. Now that they’ve glutted themselves on taxpayer funding, they would argue, it would be anti-American to expect them to give any of that back or be subject to any meaningful oversight.
Musk is trying to reset the way the government works to prioritize his own interests. Though his fortune depends on federal cash, his businesses have been subject to a plethora of investigations from federal agencies ranging from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Department of Justice. The future of those inquiries, including complaints from his own workers to the National Labor Relations Board, seem grim given his place at Trump’s right hand.
But Musk’s approach to his own workforce and federal laws is emblematic of how he is taking on his role at DOGE — and how he can be expected to react if pushed back on. Such overreach is bound to generate a reaction, but he’s not likely going to roll over without a fight. Musk is currently empowered within the government and outside of it; a precarious position for the rest of us from someone who takes any threat or criticism as a declaration of war.








