It was 2004. SpaceX needed a mechanical part to steer the upper stage of its Falcon 1 rocket. One of the company’s engineers looked for a supplier and came back with a quote for $120,000. His boss, Elon Musk, dismissed it: “That part is no more complicated to make than a garage door opener. Your budget is $5,000. Go make it work.” As writer and journalist Ashlee Vance recounts in his biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2016), the engineer ultimately managed to design the part for $3,900. “OK,” Musk commented. This episode encapsulates the entrepreneur’s philosophy as he tries to take on the federal state.
The libertarian is not into gradual budget trimming, typically used by most governments to cut spending. He rather embraces the kind of cost-cutting that has enabled SpaceX to crush competition. His intended strategy follows the concept of “zero-based budgeting,” where all expenditures are eliminated and only what appears essential is retained and rebuilt. This is what he did with Twitter, now X, slashing 75% of the workforce when he arrived. It’s also what Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is doing.
Lambert here: In other words, government should be run like a business.
According to an investigation by the Washington Post, the intervention of teams from DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, into the structure responsible for managing federal real estate revealed the businessman’s broader ambitions. According to one observer quoted by the daily: “The end goal is replacing the human workforce with machines. Everything that can be machine-automated will be. And the technocrats will replace the bureaucrats.”
But already, cracks are appearing: the freeze on federal spending on American territory is rejected by 62% of Americans. Voters are willing to cut the federal government… as long as it doesn’t affect them, national parks remain open and there are no accidents. In theory, Musk’s mission ends on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In reality, he has only a few weeks of freedom to pursue his political crusade. But with or without Musk, the AI revolution is making its way into government.
Add new comment