DOGE ended up being a collection of young nerds Musk imported from his other companies, led by a couple of trusted aides, and the first thing they did was dig into data the government collects on companies and individuals. (Why that access was so vital has never been fully explained. But some suspect it was to be used for Grok, Musk’s artificial intelligence project.) DOGE started slashing programs that Musk personally deemed to be wasteful, like medical research. Contracts were cancelled willy-nilly; businesses were shuttered. Foreign aid was of particular interest to Musk, who is originally from South Africa, so he immediately targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and programs that were keeping people alive around the world. They were abruptly halted. A study published in the Lancet projects that the cuts could result in 14 million deaths by 2030, of which four million will be children. DOGE has quite a legacy.
Now, with DOGE officially disbanded, there are a few remnants dispersed across the government, such as the National Design Studio, which has been assigned to make the government websites more attractive. A few people have been reassigned to jobs at the same agencies they had been tasked with cutting. But it’s over.
Musk had no idea what he was doing. Like so many wealthy men — including Donald Trump and most of his Cabinet — he was convinced that because he had been successful at running a company and making money, he was a genius who could do anything. And like so many who erroneously believe that government should be run like a business, Musk failed to understand that it is a completely different animal, requiring political skills, coalition building and finding consensus. His strategy of tearing everything up and fixing it later simply doesn’t work in government (and frankly, it’s unlikely it works very well in business either).
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