February 25, 2025 • 48 mins
Personnel Management (OPM) sent out an email seemingly to all federal employees instructing them to send back a list of five things they accomplished the previous week. Over on X, Musk posted that failure to do so would be tantamount to resigning.
Confusion reigned as departments scrambled to advise employees on whether to follow the order from Donald Trump’s wealthiest assistant. This week, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Max Chafkin chats with Bloomberg social media reporter Kurt Wagner about this email and more.
Then we hear a segment of the live show last week at On Air Fest, where host David Papadopoulos was joined by Chafkin, Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull and Wired’s Makena Kelly, who has been covering politics and Musk’s new government career for some time now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
we have a new star.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
A star is born Elon pumped up on mars Uson Kennedy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
pit in four post.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 7 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 8 (00:49):
Welcome to Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, February twenty fifth. I'm Max Chafkin, and today
we have.
Speaker 9 (00:58):
Another special episode.
Speaker 8 (00:59):
We are bringing you a conversation we had live on
stage at the on Air Fest in Brooklyn on Thursday,
and it was all about Doge, featuring me your normal host,
David Papadopolis, Bloomberg's Elon Musk reporter Dana Hall, and a
special guest, McKenna Kelly of Wired Magazine, who, along with
a bunch of other reporters at Wired has really been
(01:21):
all over the Doge story. We were so excited to
talk to her about Elon's journey through the federal government,
but before we get there, it was another chaotic, fascinating,
wild weekend of Musk news, especially Musk news around Trump.
On Saturday night, federal workers, including judges, nurses, office works,
(01:42):
everyone received an email from the Office of Personnel Management
the OPM, asking them to list five bullet points of
their accomplishments of the past week. And then on X
Elon said if you didn't do that, then you would
be fired. And there was confusion in the days hours
of followed. You had government officials saying they didn't have
(02:02):
to respond, Musk saying they would definitely be fired. And
so we're going to break that all down and to
do that. Joining me is Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg social media
reporter and of course the QB one of this podcast.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Hey, Kurt, QB one, I appreciate that, IMAX.
Speaker 9 (02:18):
Hey Kurt, all right, so Kurt, you read this email.
Speaker 8 (02:21):
Let's start just tell us what happened, and I want
to hear what you think is kind of going on,
what Elon must be trying to do here.
Speaker 6 (02:31):
So, yeah, as you mentioned on Saturday, federal employees received
this email with the subject line what did you do
last week? And the directive was to essentially reply to
the email with a bullet pointed list of five things
that they accomplished in their job. And I think it's
sort of twofold here, right. The first is perhaps the obvious,
(02:51):
like Elon is simply challenging people to justify their existence
in the federal government, justify their job, justify their role.
And it's some thing that we can talk about, but
that we've seen him do at Twitter over the years
and some of his other businesses. The other thing that's
sort of more interesting here, and again a bit of
a repeat from Elon, is he believes that there are
(03:13):
people who work at the federal government who actually do
not exist.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Right.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
His sort of theory is, if you don't reply to
the email, maybe that's because you're not a real person,
and therefore you know, we shouldn't be paying you. And again,
this is something when he took over Twitter, before he
paid out a big lump sum of restricted stock units.
Right after he took over, he actually had executives at
the company combing through to make sure, like are we
(03:40):
paying real people. He's sort of paranoid at this idea
that companies have like ghost employees on the books or
something like that, and so this would be a way
to like find those people and eliminate them.
Speaker 8 (03:51):
Apparently, the experience of being an employee receiving an email
on a mysterious email on Saturday afternoon from a random
email address not not signed by person saying you need
to like come up with five bullet points and send
this by Monday or you might be fired Like that?
Speaker 9 (04:11):
Would I would? I would not.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
This would be the.
Speaker 8 (04:13):
Only thing I would think about for the next like
seventy two hours if I were in their shoes, Like
this seems like just pretty much an effort to like
drive workers crazy, Like beyond verifying that they're real, is
the idea just to like make them feel bad or something.
Speaker 6 (04:27):
Well, I think there's an element of that, right, And
you have to remember why this is happening in sort
of the broader context that's going on right now, which
is that elon Is is aggressively slashing the budget. He's
looking for people to take buyouts, he's looking for people
to resign and leave, right, and so the more kind
of pressure you can apply to the workforce, be it
(04:48):
implicit or in this case very explicit, right like do
this or you are fired. I think the more he
thinks he's going to weed out sort of the people
who don't really want to be there, those long time
you know, kind of lifetime bureaucrats, if you will, who
maybe are just arresting investing, as we would say in
the tech industry. And so I do think part of
this is the strategy just keep his thumb on people,
(05:09):
make sure that they feel that there's constantly somebody looking
over their shoulder, and you know, eventually people will weed
themselves out. That makes his job of cutting the budget
even easier.
Speaker 8 (05:20):
And just like with the fork in the road email,
this was the email he sent about a month ago
from the same email address. And Kurt, there's the other
sort of point of comparison, which is that when you're
talking about a private company, of course, like firing employees,
laying people off is a pretty effective way of cutting costs.
Not clear at least when we're talking about the federal budget.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
Yeah, I think to your point, in a private company,
usually salary benefits, you know, for one K match those
types of like, employee costs are a much are pretty
significant percentage of the overall budget, right, But I think
and I don't know the specifics, unfortunately, but I think
when you look at the scale of the federal budge,
you're not going to have the same percentage of that
(06:03):
sort of be wrapped up in employee and HR related costs, right.
And so again, I think this is as as much
symbolism as anything, right Max, I mean, like, his whole
thing here is that the government has bloated, that he's challenged,
that these workers don't do anything, that they've sort of
just been kicking back and cash and paychecks, you know,
on the American taxpayer's dime for years. And so I
(06:25):
think part of this is cutting you know, budget, but
I think a bigger part of this might just be
the symbolism of what it means to significantly reduce headcount at.
Speaker 9 (06:34):
The federal post as HR strategy, right.
Speaker 8 (06:38):
I mean, like, and I think that's part of why
we're seeing so much confusion. That's why he's saying, Oh,
you have to do this, Well, maybe you don't have
to do this, maybe you do have to do this. Like,
the point is not to get any kind of response.
And clearly Musk has said already that they're not going
to really read these responses. It's just the act of saying, look, you,
federal workers, you're not doing anything.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I think that's right.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
I think that there's a huge part of this that
is reformative theater as much as it is effective government cutting.
Speaker 9 (07:03):
Yeah, and it's a rhetorical question.
Speaker 8 (07:06):
The goal here is not to legitimately find out, you know, hey,
what are the two million federal workers doing, is to
show them that he thinks that they're doing nothing. And
I think more importantly, to show Donald Trump Republican voters,
you know, Congress, that he is he is really doing
something here. He's he's going to war with the quote
unquote administrative state.
Speaker 10 (07:26):
Right.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
And I think these supporters of this strategy, their argument
has been, well, hey, this takes what five minutes, Right, Like,
if you're actually doing your job all week, you should
somewhat easily be able to send over, hey, here's a
list of five things. But to your point, Max, Like,
that is not the intention of this, right Like, part
of it is to say, justify your job. But again,
part of this is a sort of psychological warfare, right,
(07:47):
make people uncomfortable, make people, remind people that he's sitting
there watching every move that you make, and sort of,
you know, challenge them in a way that I don't
think a lot of people are used to being challenged.
Speaker 8 (08:00):
So, Kurt, we're talking about like what Elon Musk may
be trying to do in terms of his in terms
of politically, in terms of the messaging, but like do
you understand the plan practically? Like what are they going
to do with these responses? And like is this really
a money saving measure?
Speaker 6 (08:18):
So I think it's a good question, right, because if
you have two million people sending in five bullet points,
like just manually to review that stuff in any meaningful
well way seems almost impossible. And actually, again to go
back to the Twitter days, I mentioned the whole challenge
to engineers, Hey, print out your code to prove that
you've been doing something over the last thirty days. You know,
a couple hours after that, they were telling people, hey,
(08:40):
shred this code.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
We're not actually going to do these reviews. Right.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
It was again sort of like a scare tactic that
in that regard nothing came of it. So part of
me wonders if this will ultimately you know, fall into
that same bucket. If anyone will actually manually review this stuff,
they'll just simply see, okay, who responded and who didn't
and kind of draw a line there there was a report,
and forgive me because I can't remember who who reported this.
That perhaps AI right, right, they would use GROC to like,
(09:06):
you know, quickly analyze this stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
I suppose that is a possibility.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
But again, if we're looking at what he's done, historically,
these types of challenges have mostly been performative, right, And
so I part of me thinks that, especially with the
scale we're dealing with here, with two million government employees,
they just want people to reply to the email, prove
that they are a real human being that exists within
this government, and take all the people who didn't reply
(09:31):
and deal with them separately.
Speaker 8 (09:33):
Let's talk about the political fallout and the legal fallout, right,
So one thing that happened is.
Speaker 9 (09:38):
You had, you had some lawsuits. You had you had
employee unions.
Speaker 8 (09:42):
Who are already I've already tried to oppose Musk's authority
to do this and OPM's authority to do this, adding
this email into their you know, into the litigation.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Yeah, And advising federal workers to ignore this too, right,
saying basically, don't take the bait, don't don't respond to
this thing. There's a lot of confusion as to what
people should or shouldn't do. And again, let's look back
at a little history lesson we have from Twitter.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Max s.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
You'll remember in November of twenty twenty two, shortly after
Elon took over, he sent that fork in the Road
email that we're all now familiar with because of the
government example. But he sent this email fork in the
Road to employees and said basically, click this button to
commit to being hardcore and staying with the company. If
you don't click the button, I will take that as
your resignation, and you know there's the door. Well, he
(10:29):
is being sued, he being Elon is being sued by
hundreds of employees who did not click the button, right
and where they're terminated. And their argument, which has actually
been pretty successful in court thus far, is that not
replying to an email does not equate to a resignation.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Right.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
So even if Elon says, hey, if you don't reply,
you resign, lawyers and judges are not agreeing with that analysis.
They're basically saying, you know, that's the equivalent of being
laid off. And being laid off and voluntarily resigning are
two very different things in the world of corporate America,
because one of them yields a lot bigger and more
valuable severance than the other. It just got an update,
(11:11):
believe it or not, this morning, heard from a former
employee who's part of this sort of mass lawsuit that's
going on. It's slowly but surely working in the employees' favor.
Twenty for twenty twenty employees who have gone through arbitration
have all won full severance from Twitter for their layoffs,
and so they're setting a precedent right now that the
(11:32):
strategy that Elon used to cut costs at Twitter did
not really work, or at least it delayed the payments, right,
but he's still going to have to, it seems like,
pay all these employees what they're owed, and so again
sets sort of a bit of a precedent for what
we might see here with the government as well.
Speaker 8 (11:49):
There's another factor here too, which is that one of
the cool things about taking over Twitter and sending out
these aggressive tweets is that you are the decider, right
like Elon Muskuld just like more or less. You know,
of course, there was litigation he could just get away with,
like firing people willy nilly. Now he has all these
other constituents. And I think that's one of the most
(12:10):
interesting things about this episode.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
We had.
Speaker 8 (12:13):
First of all, we had zero PM, perhaps because of
the issue you just brought up, put out a memo
essentially saying, actually, this is voluntary. We also had a
bunch of cabinet officials, including cash Tell, the new director
of the FBI, saying publicly or semi publicly, that staff
should hold off right. And this to me feels like
(12:33):
a real first of all, a difference between what's happening
at Doze and what happened at Twitter, but also perhaps
you know, the beginnings of a real rift between Musk
and other members of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
I mean, I think you hit the nail on the
head with the most obvious difference here, which is that
with Twitter and with all of his businesses, Musk is
the boss, right, He is the official decider of things
and has that control and power, and people might disagree
with how he wields that power, but those are private
businesses for the most part that he can do with
(13:06):
what he wants. He is, now, to your point, sort
of operating in a federal government position, and not only that,
but a position that people are very confused about in
terms of the legality of all of these things that
he's doing. Right, a lot of what he's doing is
being challenged in courts, are being challenged by other politicians,
So the landscape is not equivalent. Even though he's sort
(13:28):
of taking the same playbook that he's used as a
CEO of a private company and applied it to a
federal government situation, those are two very different arenas for
him to be doing this, and so I think that
is adding to a lot of the confusion and will
add eventually to the inevitable legal situation that arises from this.
Speaker 8 (13:45):
All right, So we'll be following this closely, Kurt, and
we want to come back to you very soon to
check in on all the other developments that are happening
in the world of X. We've seen controversies around community notes,
there's some weirdness around rock and I think we'll have
to get to that all at another time, but for now,
thank you for coming in.
Speaker 9 (14:05):
We'll talk soon, but I still want you by the
end of.
Speaker 8 (14:07):
The day, Kurt to put together that list, So please
get to work or ask Rock to do it for you.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
Yeah, easy, easy. You can expect my resignation very shortly.
Speaker 11 (14:17):
Max.
Speaker 9 (14:17):
Thank you all right, Kurt Wagner, thanks for coming.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 9 (14:25):
So Doge, we've been talking about Doge.
Speaker 8 (14:27):
It has been operating as much as you can say
it's operating anyway. For the past month, We've had a
lot of things happen and we wanted with this next segment,
which is from the live taping we did last week
at the on Air Festival in Brooklyn, to kind of
take a step back, give people sort of a recap.
Speaker 9 (14:46):
On what's happened and a primer.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
And again we brought in McKenna Kelly, who is a
reporter from Wired has been doing a ton of reporting
talking to federal workers it seems every day, to kind
of help us do that. A couple of notes on
this taping we were recording just as it was revealed
that Elon Musk would be speaking at Seapack and that
(15:09):
he had fathered another child, So you'll hear those come up.
Although there have been a couple of beats to the
story that we will not hit. We will not hit
Musk's kind of surreal appearance at Seapack. He looked, I
don't know how to say this. He was more detached
from reality than usual, wielding a chainsaw.
Speaker 9 (15:29):
We also did not get at.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
The paternity dispute that has since unfolded. I have no
doubt we will get on to both of those topics
on a later episode, but the conversation as a whole
was really great and we thought you'd want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Welcome Dylan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. I'm
your host, David Papatoppols, and we are live on AirFest
in Brooklyn. I'm joined on stage by two stalwarts of
the podcast. We have our number one muscologist at Bloomberg,
Dana Hull. Daniel Welcome, he did. And we have Business
(16:03):
Week writer Max Chafkin, Maxilo.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And we have a special guest with this as well,
from Wired, McKenna. Kelly.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Good to be here.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
McKenna, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Don't forget the crowd, David.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
There's a lot of people in your crowd, right, and
we also have an enormous crowd here. Now it's standards
thank you for having good Are you guys ready ready? Okay,
So we are indeed gonna spend plenty of time talking
doze here under a relentlessly pressing and driving Elon Musk.
Doze has suddenly become perhaps the biggest story in the US,
(16:37):
and you will come away I swear from this session
as a doge expert. But we're gonna break the ice
a little with some non doze news, actual non doze news,
if there could be such a thing. So I'm gonna
go around here. I'm gonna ask each of you to
tell me the biggest non doge in the world of
Elon Musk, of course, the biggest non doge story you're
(16:58):
tracking this week, Dana Hall.
Speaker 9 (16:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
So, so Elon has spent a lot of time in
the last twenty four hours tweeting about the astronauts that
are on the space station, and also that he thinks
the space station program in general should be ended two
or three years earlier than originally intended.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
These astronauts in the space station are soon.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Where So these two NASA astronauts have been on the
space station since June. They went up there on.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
A Boeing craft, and they want to come home.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
No, they actually are very happy doing research. They are
going to come home on a SpaceX vehicle.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
And Elon is.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Like they've been stranded up there because of politics, which
is not true, like NASA has said very clearly, like
they're not stranded. They're doing research. The whole point of
the ISS is like international cooperation. But Elon is fixated
on this idea that the astronauts are somehow stuck there.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Wasn't Boeing's supposed to take them home.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Boeing was supposed to take them home, and NASA made
the decision that it was safer not to send them
home on a fire. They didn't fire them, they just
made the decision let's keep them up here. We'll send
them home on a SpaceX craft. But now Musk is like, oh,
the reason why they're there is because of politics, which
is not true. Like if it was because of politics,
they could have come home earlier.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But they're atsuts happening though as soon as this week,
and he's taking bringing them back to Earth. He's not
taking them directly to Mars.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Correct, So SpaceX is going to bring the astronauts home
problem in March. That's the latest. But Separately, Musk is
also saying that the whole International Space Station program should
be ended earlier, and ultimately he just wants to focus
on Mars.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Okay, that's what you got there now, Max Chafkin.
Speaker 8 (18:31):
So I wanted to pick a story that had nothing
to do with which truly and it's clearly baby number thirteen.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
But wait a minute, he's that's political too because of
his whole like nadalism.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
It's a conservative influencer.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
You came here to talk about baby number thirteen. That's
what you're bringing.
Speaker 9 (18:48):
I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Baby number thirteen. Elon Musk is danna say, girl?
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Do we know it's a boy?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Okay? Cool?
Speaker 9 (18:55):
All right? So anyway, basically, keep a long story short.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
He has been having all these babies, and we learned,
we learned of a new baby. And I say thirteen
as if it's a definitive number, and I guess I
feel compelled to add and Dana would do it if
I didn't that that's thirteen that we know of, right,
because he has said we.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Know the floor, we don't know what the sea is exactly.
Speaker 9 (19:14):
Yeah, so but mckennath hinted at it.
Speaker 8 (19:16):
But yeah, he's got this idea, and this is an
idea that now I'm drifting into politics, but that has
is taking off in kind of conservative intellectual circles that
everyone needs to have more babies. It's called natalism, and
Elon has kind of put a spin on that that
involves repopulating the planet personally.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I guess tell us who the mom is.
Speaker 8 (19:36):
Yeah, well it's it's Ashley Sainclair, who is a columnist
or a media personality or whatever. For the Babylon Bee,
which was the This is going deep into like Elon lore,
but the Babylon Bee is like an Onion knockoff if
you don't know it, it's kind of like an anti
woke onion or something. And one theory for like why
(19:57):
Elon Musk bought Twitter for forty four billion dollars, laid
off all the employees, became a conservative media personality, put
three hundred million dollars in Donald Trump started taking apart
all the stuff that we're doing today is that he
was mad that Twitter banned the Babylon b So it
all kind of comes together.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, baby number thirteen McKenna.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
Yeah, I'm not moving away from the politics unfortunately, but
it does not don't relate it as much breaking news.
Musk is going to speak at Seapack tonight. Wow, And
it's wild to think about. Just like a year ago,
before the first assassination attempt on Trump, Musk was still
flip flopping right. He was this free speech warrior, bought Twitter,
(20:36):
so he's leaning in this kind of like right word direction,
this anti censorship brigade that he had. But now he
is just a full out. He's in a Republican white house,
he is running all of this stuff, and he has
made the full switch. And tonight he is one of
the figureheads speaking at spe Seapack.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well, he truly is all in. I didn't know that.
So you are you breaking this as we speak?
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Breaking it as we speak?
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So who's sending the headlines on that? We got to
get that out there.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Okay, Seapack if you don't know, it's the Conservative Political
Action Committee And they're like very like Project twenty twenty
five adjacent, Heritage Foundation adjacent, like there's they do Seapack
and hungry Like.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean this is where all the conservatives go
to talk policy, meet each other, mix every year. It's
like the conference for the whole party.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Okay, so we've got astronauts coming back from the moon.
Max thinks he's got a baby over there. He's tracking,
and we got must showing up at seapack. Okay, we're
going to move on to doge, and we're going to
go back as we think about dose. We're going to
go back to the very beginning when the whole doze
thing began. August of last year. Elon Musk is quote
(21:42):
unquote interviewing Donald Trump, and as he's interviewing him, he
raises the idea about, Hey, what about this doge thing?
I got this idea? What say you, mister President? And
let's listen to that audio clip.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I think it'd be great to just have a government
efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and
and just ensures that the taxpayer money that the taxpayers
are harder money, is spent in a good way.
Speaker 11 (22:08):
And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I'd love it if when.
Speaker 10 (22:12):
You you're the greatest cutter, I mean, I look at
what you do, you want to they go I won't
mention the name of the company, but they go on strike,
and you say that's.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Okay, You're all gone.
Speaker 10 (22:24):
You're all gone, So every one of you is gone,
and you are the greatest. You would be very good,
Oh you would love it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
For a second, here in the audience, I want to
hear from you. Clap if you feel like you have
a good understanding of what doze is. Clap mak Okay, now,
clap if you feel like you really kind of don't
have a very good understanding at all. Okay, so that's
more who don't than do? Kenna? You are all doze
(22:51):
all the time right now? Wired, Tell these folks what
they need to know about dose? What is dog? Give
me a letter by letter the D the O.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Tell you what is the most granular level? True? It
stands for the Department of Government Efficiency. It is in
fact based on the shiba Inu DOJ meme coin whatever,
a meme that Elon has used profusely over several several years.
And first of all, it is a so called agency.
(23:23):
It is not an actual agent. Well, it's real in
some people's hearts and minds, but it is not an
actual Well.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
What makes an actual agency an actual agency? What do
you need?
Speaker 5 (23:33):
An Act of Congress? An Act of Congress? And so instead,
I mean, I think he did this incredibly creatively, being
able to subsume what was previously the United States Digital Service,
which already was doing. It was created by Obama in
the twenty tens to fix healthcare dot gov. If we remember,
healthcare dot gov when it first rolled out, was completely unstable.
(23:56):
It was like one of the biggest talking points Republicans
had against healthcare dot gov. So said, let's get a
bunch of technologists from the private sector, Let's bring them
in put them on two to three year tours. Right,
this is like a tour in government because they could
be making so much more money elsewhere in the private
sector and brought them into government to make government more efficient.
Like this is what it was doing like ten plus yearsage.
(24:17):
It was Doge before Doge, and so Doge has now
subsumed USDs as of this week. I heard they have
their all you know standing staff meeting on Tuesdays. And
from what I heard about that meeting is that now
Dough has created a bit of a firewall between like
legacy USDs and then like the new Doge folks.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
How many legacy people are still around?
Speaker 5 (24:37):
There was originally two hundred and so one fifty of
them now after Friday's layoffs, and now we have how
many Doge people, which is not very clear. And they
had the Doge folks that created essentially a firewall between
Legacy USDs and Doge. They were not interacting. They had
one meeting with a Doge representative in the whole month
(24:57):
that it's been around. And so this Tuesday and the
meeting that I'm talking about, these Doge folks, they had
a meeting with these people and told them that it's
all Doge going forward, Like the teams are merging. If
you're still here, you have not been terminated. Yeah, these
teams are together, We're going to do.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
You're going to be subsumed.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
Yeah. Yeah, And so it's official. Everything has become Dune.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
Did they all have to change their screen names to obscene?
Speaker 9 (25:19):
Did they all require to be big balls or whatever?
Speaker 11 (25:22):
You know?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I wish they could because now I'm thinking, wait, you
can't just throw big balls in there like that without
explaining Hold on one second, Max.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
Many of the Doge employees are people that Musk and
his associates found basically like on the Internet. They're like
edge lord types, like like Elon Musk and I guess
the most famous one is this gentleman the big balls.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
So presumably not his god given no surprised.
Speaker 8 (25:48):
I mean, it is weirdly like a kind of bizarro
version of that moment that you're describing back in the
Obama years, where a bunch of tech guys were like, yeah,
government doesn't work, we are the ones to fix it,
and they descend it on Washington, and I mean, I
don't know, you actually probably have a better understanding of
(26:08):
how well it worked. I don't think the Healthcare dot
gov thing, although they did seem to keep it online,
but it wasn't like some kind of shine.
Speaker 9 (26:16):
I'm not sure that worked all that great.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
I don't know if we all remember that as like
the greatest moment of Silicon Valley's performance in history. And
it's kind of happening again, but with this new weird
elon Musk's beIN on it well, where everyone's like super
mad at the establishment and tweel Max.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
But if it's happening again, but it's I mean, I
don't know that anybody realized that that service was even
a thing back, you know, ten years ago. I don't
think anybody in Western're in Washington, probably nobody noticed. Everybody
has noticed OGE. It's certainly much more, much more high
profile and making a lot more waves than its predecessor did. Okay,
that's how the group was created. What is like the
(26:55):
one thing they should know about it in terms of
how DOSEE is going about its business on Elon Musk's
guidance day in and day out.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
Well, now that they moved it outside of the opposite
management and budget, this is all very boring bureaucratic stuff.
Funny enough the fact that they hate bureaucracy, but they
moved it underneath the executive opposite of the president, which
means that they are reporting directly to the White House,
which means like a lot of the records that they
have are no longer for you.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
So by not being foiable, they're not the kind of
thing that the press can say, hey, we would like
to put in a request for greater information.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Well, there's no transparency at all. Like the transparency is
there is a website where it's.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Like a live feed from X or doge website, a.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Doge website where they're purporting to cut costs, but there's
no transparency about like who DOGE is. So like an
enormous amount of reporting firepower has been spent. Like who
from Doge is showing up at your agency? Like, you know,
have you seen their badges? Like are they like some
of them are not even wearing badges, Like they're being
very like circumspect about who they actually are, which flies
(27:53):
in the face of this whole idea that this is
a transparent effort.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
Yeah, the way that it's been put to me, when
like these Doge folks show up, they are boys in
jeans wearing backpacks full of laptops.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Like this is how it's like they're literally that young.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
Yeah, like nineteen to twenty five is the ages of
a lot of these folks.
Speaker 8 (28:11):
That they've hired, big balls.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Yeah, he is one of the youngest, that's right.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
And then some of them are like venture capitalists who
have like experience with private equity or like relative some
of them are McKinsey consultants, Like there are like adult
spit like in some cases.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Helped cut Twitter, right, Like see Davis who is one
of the big cots cutters when the Twitter takeover happened.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, so now, Dana, you like to remind me frequently
and you've drilled it into my head. How as we
heard on that clip at the beginning. This idea of
creating Doge to go out and gut the government and
bring down spending is not a Donald Trump idea. It
is an Elon Musk idea that he put in Trump's
head and then he effectively appointed himself. Why is that
(28:52):
for you such a crucial thing as we try to
understand and conceptualize of what they're up to.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
Well, two things.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
I think that one thing to just know is just
even the fact that we're all saying the name Doge
is like Musk has already won because he's invented something
that's not a department. He calls it a department, and
now we're all using doge. It's entered the lexicon. So
it's given is to give. It's been given this like gravitas.
But for him, well, i mean, now the you know, no,
(29:20):
but I mean, I'm just saying, it's like it's very
clever how he got this, got this off the ground.
But for for Musk, it's all about regulation. So Musk
has said over and over again that like, you know,
he feels like the giant being held down, like American
promise is being held down by all these like strings
of regulation. And bureaucracy and we just need to like
cut the strings in America will be great again. And
(29:42):
all of his companies are highly regulated, like you cannot
launch a rocket without the FAA approval, the fish and
wildlife has to sign off on, like how it's you know,
messing up the wetlands. Tesla's autonomous or semi autonomous cars,
like NITSA is investigating them. I mean every like he's
got six companies, you know, the FDA in neural so
he's very interested in what these agencies are doing. And
(30:03):
if he can cut regulations, that is just going to
help his businesses.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, no, very much the case. I mean, I guess
for sure he had just about all of his companies
I would think, in one form or another are subject
to government regulation in some cases, the case of Tesla
and SpaceX quite a bit. I mean, I guess for me,
the one thing that stands out to me a little
bit is whether ultimately Musk's Doze group is the right
group to be doing this and this is the right
(30:27):
way to go about it or not. Obviously that is
a question that's very very very much still out there.
But the fact that it comes now and that there
appears to be a certain amount of political will to
tolerate it. That it comes in the wake of the
greatest inflation surge in this country in a half century.
I do not think is a coincidence. I think that's
the way historians will look at it. I mean Musk
(30:47):
in that interview back in August that when he states
he does not talk about I want you to stop
regulating my companies. He says, you know, runaway government spending
is driving inflation, and that's attacks on the American people.
And it's true, parties of both sides, Republicans and Democrats,
have driven the US fiscal accounts to the point where
(31:09):
we are running absolutely unprecedented budget deficits, and that seemed
to be to a certain extent untenable. Again, the big
issue is whether we all feel like the American people
feel like it's the Doze Committee that should be going
about bringing that under control. I mean, Max, I guess
the question I'd have for you is whether you love
Elon Musk or hate him. It is it's so seemingly
(31:33):
improbable when we were doing this podcast as innocent young
people a year or so ago, if somebody said to us, hey,
in February of twenty twenty five. You're going to be
talking about this and how Musk is running the show
and he's the biggest story in the world. He's in
the White House, he's doing all these things. We would
have said it's absurd. It does speak to his force
of nature. Demon mode kind of aspect of demon mode
(31:54):
is what he himself calls it.
Speaker 8 (31:55):
Right, Yeah, I don't think I would have said it
was absurd. I feel like part.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Of you coming why don't you tell us?
Speaker 8 (32:02):
I mean, I just I think people who followed Elon Musk,
although it is, I think there are aspects of this
that are surprising. It's it's surprising that he is somebody
who was ideologically McKenna brought this up earlier, you know,
ideologically fairly centrist slash kind of like trying to be slippery.
(32:23):
Is just like so full bore into maga Like that
is surprising, But it's not surprising that he is trying
to work it politically, like his entire career has been this.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
He's just doing this.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
But at such a different gale.
Speaker 8 (32:37):
The way he has made money throughout his career basically
is by some combination of politics and technology, like.
Speaker 9 (32:45):
Working the levers of power. He did this with SpaceX.
Speaker 8 (32:48):
SpaceX was as much as Musk likes to talk about
it as this thing that he created or whatever, like
the federal government essentially paid him to create it, We
taxpayers paid him to create it, and Tesla is kind
of it's a similar story. I mean, obviously Tesla has
done some amazing things. I'd say clearly it's Musk's greatest
achievement of his career, maybe one of the great companies
(33:10):
built over the last twenty years. But it's also one
that was very much built on the back of federal
policy and.
Speaker 9 (33:17):
Federal tax dollars.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
So, like, you know, he's doing that again.
Speaker 8 (33:21):
He's just he's just found this like really kind of
amazing opportunity in terms of the moment that you described,
the political moment, and maybe in Donald Trump, somebody who
is perhaps uniquely open to these ideas, who's going to
see the value of Elon Musk and he's going to
be ideologically flexible enough to like divert his whole presidency.
(33:42):
He's like diverted the whole Trump agenda into Elon Musk Land.
Like that is that's kind of wild when you think
about it.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
No, that's fair enough. But I just want to say
that I know you two think I don't listen to
you guys. I listen to you guys, and so I
know you always indeed describe Musk in that he's got
that chameleon quality as right as an operator. What you know,
he was tight with Obama, he was tight with maybe
Big Bush to a certain extent. Right, he was Mine
was like, he's like, I'm super pumped to work five, right,
(34:11):
and then with Trump won, he was there. But like
I guess my question is, is this simply the chameleon
changing his colors again, it's and going with the vibe
in Washington, or it feels to me like he's become
the vibe, he's setting the vibe. Is this a break?
Speaker 3 (34:28):
I think I think that Max and I have talked
for years now about how like he really shifted during
the pandemic, and you saw like he started being flirting
with COVID denihalism, He moved to Texas, he became increasingly
anti immigrant, the whole thing with his trans daughter, and
this is just sort of the culmination of that. But
the other thing at play here that I'm going to
keep hammering on is he does not want NASA to
(34:49):
go to the Moon. He just wants to go to Mars.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Those two that are on the moon get him to Mars, right,
Like why are they thing to come back?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And if you watch the inauguration speech, Trump said We're
going to plant the stars and pypes on Mars by
the end of my first term.
Speaker 5 (35:01):
And Musk was like, yes, how awesome.
Speaker 9 (35:04):
This is all about Mars.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
This is all about Mars. And it's a quid pro quo,
Like I gave you three hundred million dollars to get elected.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
What I want return?
Speaker 8 (35:13):
I want Doge and I want so much money, right,
Like people are so focused on these like what could
Musk get out of the CFTC maruld be?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
How much is it going to cost to get to Mars?
Speaker 8 (35:23):
I mean I haven't checked with my local Mars dealer lately,
but like it's it's billions, if not tens of billions
of dollars in contracts to SpaceX.
Speaker 9 (35:31):
That's what it would be worth.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
All right. Listen, speaking of big numbers, we got another
clip that we're going to play on Doge cost cutting
and what they're trying to do this is Elon and
Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity earlier this week.
Let's listen.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
How much do you believe Elon and you've identified and
waste for aud of vi as corruption now, and how
much do you anticipate you sure, well, I think no,
because it's so massive.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
This is huge money. So which about.
Speaker 12 (36:11):
As hard as they are, they're not going to find
some contract that was crooked, you know, crooked as hell.
I mean, there's going to be so much, isn't faut?
Speaker 5 (36:20):
But what is that?
Speaker 12 (36:21):
I think he's going to find a trillion dollars, but
I think it's a very small percentage compared to what
it is.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Okay, So the president says he's going to find a
trillion dollars, presumably this is annually. I don't know, mckennath,
what as far as your reporting shows and as far
as with the Doze team is saying, how much have
they cut so far from the US federal budget?
Speaker 5 (36:46):
If you look at the website, it says fifty five billion.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Dollars five billion with the.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
B yes, okay, and that is not accurate.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
And we know that's not accurate.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
How because we can look at the itemized feed and
see that numbers. There was a figure they don't add.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
What do so what in the itemized side, what does
it add up to?
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, was like sixteen right,
sixteen billion.
Speaker 8 (37:13):
But yeah, but even that's a little dice, Yeah, exactly,
because like one of the there's an eight billion dollar
contract in there, right, that's actually.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion contract for the DHS. That's actually
worth eight million, right, Yeah, it's eight million. Eight billion,
which is eight billion is like how much the CDC
has to spend every year.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Right, I mean, just so everyone's clear, the US federal
annual budget is just shy of seven trillion dollars a year, right.
When they throw around that trillion dollar number, it actually started.
You guys were there at Madison Square Garden. You guys
were there, and I think he threw out a two
trillion dollar number.
Speaker 9 (37:47):
At least he said at least fairly.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
I think he said like fair.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Easy, fairly easy, which is basically cutting.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Like a third.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, and that's obviously which you.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Can't do unless you go after entitlement spending. So that's
the other thing I want people to really think about.
Like we were talking about Medicare, Social Security, the IRS,
student loan program, like like, ultimately, McKenna, do you think
that the goal is just to privatize wholesale pieces of this?
Speaker 5 (38:12):
Yeah, I mean, like I think that's a fair assumption
to make.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And every single privatize what like what would we be
privately well, all kinds of.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
So we've been seeing the first thing that these doage
kids do when they get in is they attack contracts.
Either they send one person in or a group of
people in and they get to the acquisition service like
whatever system each agency uses, and then they look at
that and then they just start cutting things across the board.
They're like control effing for like diversity, even if it's
like biodivers And.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Do they have the power to unilaterally they have the
power to unilaterally just pause it, stop it, block it.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
Do they have the authority to do that? I think
that's a legal question. But they are doing it right now.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
How much pushback are we seeing increasing pushback from Congress
and from the courts to say, hey.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Congress is totally supine. I mean, let's be honest, Like
you are starting to see some Democratic members of Congress
like get out the bullhorn and be upset about it.
But in general, like Trump and Musk have support for
this from Republicans, and the Democratic opposition has not been
that strong. I mean, so the courts are like trying.
I mean, the courts are like the check out and
balance that's left. But Doge is moving faster than the
(39:23):
courts can move.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
I also want to point out too, like to think
about how serious this all is, but also at the
same time how unseerious it is, like the name Doge
right as the name of this agency. And then the
Democratic response. The first Democratic response was Chuck Schumer and
Hawking Jeffreys having this presser where they announced a new
bill that they jokingly called Stop the Steal. And then
(39:45):
at that at that press conference, Schumor had like a
little laugh you went he he he, and everyone else
in the press court and that presser said he he
he too. So like it's it's very clear, like how
unseerious people are acting about this.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Well, I guess when you're opening Salvos name it dose
it's true. Okay. I want to move us on to
the Musk Trump relationship, which appears by all accounts to
still be going strong. We also have audio from that
from that Trump Musk interview with Hannity earlier this week.
Let's listen. Elon called me.
Speaker 12 (40:17):
He said, you know they're trying to drive us apart.
I said absolutely. Now they said we have breaking as
Donald Trump has seated control of the presidency to Elon Musk.
President Musk will be attending a cabinet reading eight. And
I say, it's just so obvious. It's so bad at it.
I used to think they were good at it. They're
actually bad at it.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Okay, So there is actually another line in there, the
very very beginning of the interview, almost right out of
the gate Max, where Musk turns to Hannity and he says,
is basically his opening statement is well, I love the president.
I just want to be clear about that. And I
(41:01):
I was sort of it was pretty shocking for me.
The fealty, Like it's not the kind of posture and
body language you usually get from Elon Musk.
Speaker 9 (41:08):
Uh No, uh, it's it's kind of that.
Speaker 8 (41:10):
That has been another surprise here, I guess is the
is the relationship. I mean that clip to me is
that's what they wanted out of the interview. They wanted
to signal that Trump is in charge and Musk is
okay with that, and and I think what's honestly like
a little bit surprising if you followed Musk is that
that he is has been willing more or less to
in certain situations. You know, play second fiddle, b do
(41:33):
the thing that you have to do if you want
to keep Trump happy, which is defer to him.
Speaker 11 (41:38):
So there, you know.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
He's sure that said tech support.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
I mean, throughout his life, Musk has always been the
alpha male. But like in Trump, he's almost got this
like dad figure, right, because Trump broke the mold for
what a politician could be, and then Elon followed that
and broke the mold of what corporate ceo could be.
And they play off each other. I mean, Elon also
tweeted some thing like I love him more as much
as a straight man can love another man, and like.
Speaker 8 (42:04):
I should go with thirteen children. So he you know,
he's got a lot of people to love.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Okay, So one year from now we're on this stage again,
will the Trump Musk alliance remain intact? Just yes or no?
I don't want you guys usually give me these caveats
and bolsh yes or.
Speaker 9 (42:20):
No, yes, yeah, yeah, Okay, there we are.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
The audience, do you agree with this? Yes? Is audience
hates your aunt there there's no chance in how Okay,
we're now gonna play the game. Enough about this doze stuff.
And we're here at on AirFest surrounded by podcast enthusiasts,
so we're gonna end with this game. Elon also is
a big podcast fan and he appears on them all
(42:45):
the time. So we pulled some clips, okay from Elon
podcasts in twenty twenty four, and we're gonna play the
clip now. The clip is pretty brief, it's pretty tight,
and it's short, and it's in what you guys have
to do. I'm gonna go turn. You're gonna tell me
what the hell he's talking about, what it's about, and you,
(43:05):
Leach will give me a guess, and then we'll go.
We have three of them, super confident here. Okay, all right,
Number one, hit it.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Like I said, it's it's not like it's not gonna
happen like overnight, but it's twenty years from now.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
But all right, Dana, I have no idea. I think
he's talking about Mars. Maybe building a civilization on Mars.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Is gonna be a Mars max humanoid robots, humanoid robots McKenna.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
Xually everything app becoming Actually.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Okay, who's with Dana mars in twenty years? Yeah, it's here.
Let's let's hear noose. Okay, the humanoid robot? What were you? X?
The everything out?
Speaker 5 (43:46):
It's finally the everything appen, the everything.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
App in twenty years.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
Okay, the good ones were taken first.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Okay, let's hear it twenty years from now.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I think there's gonna be more more humanoid robots than
they are here.
Speaker 10 (43:59):
What I got.
Speaker 8 (44:00):
Honestly, I'm shocked because I feel like in his head,
twenty years is way?
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Do you get the other two right? As well? We
know the fix is in? Okay, number two?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Like He'll be like a good test if if you
took a plane from Ellie to New York and you
try to drop a bowling ball and hit somebody, your
chances of success are basically zero.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
By the way, I happen to know that's the case.
I've tried that. It's really hard.
Speaker 8 (44:25):
So success is hitting a person, I guess.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Okay, so what is he talking about? It's really really
hard to hit someone in the head with the bowling
ball if you drop it from a plane.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Is he talking about Starship eventually being city City?
Speaker 13 (44:39):
I think, so you go Starship Starship FAA regulations around
dropping things from airplanes or parts falling or whatever, or
his rocket breaking, I.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Think I think you have an opportunity.
Speaker 5 (44:52):
Was it when the rocket recently fell apart? And that
was like the likelihood of one of the pieces over
that island hitting someone who.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Likes to in his answer, nobody, crickets.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
Max, you're the same.
Speaker 11 (45:08):
They're all the same answer.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
The truth of the matter is you're all wrong. Hit
it now.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
The reality is Earth can actually kindle a human population
probably ten times longer than the current population.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
You know, because you know you've got too many humans
when you drop the bowling ball from the plane and
you hit right, but until then, just keep going.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Should have gotten that long.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
You did an entire story of you know.
Speaker 8 (45:35):
Because he has talked about and that was f a A.
But yeah, this is about we should all have more children.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I guess you did a big piece on this. I'm
disappointed that. Okay, number three.
Speaker 11 (45:46):
I speak with some authority and analogy in this area.
This is.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
This is impossible. This is our producer Magnus is trolling you, guys,
this is impossible. If any of you get this, I
will take from Mike Bloomberg a check for ten thousand
dollars and I'll handle to you. Okay, again, the quote
is I speak with some authority and knowledge, and there's
no chance you're gonna get this. Kenny, it's it's pretty obscure.
So think the think obscure.
Speaker 5 (46:14):
The video game Diabolo Force just a good guess parenting.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
So that's a These are funny guesses? Is anybody Dana's answer, Well,
you have a guess? I think it's sections sections. Why
do you think that? I think? Okay, cesarean section? So
who likes no? Maxis got this audience stuff. Mechanic's should
(46:47):
in the front, our random in the front with the
with the black hat. Anybody like that Cesarian section? Okay,
let's play the clip.
Speaker 11 (46:58):
There's absolutely no need to do anything to farming change,
no effect on the environment. It's it's totally fine. Stop
attacking the farmers.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Cows about how does he know? What does he know
about farm?
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Well, Kimball, you know, it's like a big foodie.
Speaker 9 (47:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (47:17):
He wears the cowboy. There's some authority there from Kimball.
But wait, what's the full quote?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Don't have to worry about the cows because why he's.
Speaker 9 (47:24):
Talking about climate change?
Speaker 5 (47:26):
This was the member.
Speaker 8 (47:27):
Yeah, he's saying, you know, don't like climate change, don't
worry about don't.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Worry about the.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Possible We're getting the signal that we have to wrap.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
We're getting We're getting the gong on the Gong Show. Okay,
so we shall end it there. A big thanks to Dana,
Max McKenna, and thank you all for joining us for
this special episode of el in at on Air Fest.
Keep tuning in. We'll see you next week Humanoid Robots.
Speaker 8 (48:11):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Masarakis is
our editor, and Rayhan Harmanci is our senior editor. Blake
Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell factchecks. Our supervising producer
is Magnus Henrickson. The Eloning theme is written and performed
by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Saguiera. Brendan Francis Newdham is
our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of
(48:31):
Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to Joel Weber and Bradstone.
I'm Max Schaffkin. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us, and
we will see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
we have a new star.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
A star is born Elon pumped up on mars Uson Kennedy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
pit in four post.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 7 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 8 (00:49):
Welcome to Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, February twenty fifth. I'm Max Chafkin, and today
we have.
Speaker 9 (00:58):
Another special episode.
Speaker 8 (00:59):
We are bringing you a conversation we had live on
stage at the on Air Fest in Brooklyn on Thursday,
and it was all about Doge, featuring me your normal host,
David Papadopolis, Bloomberg's Elon Musk reporter Dana Hall, and a
special guest, McKenna Kelly of Wired Magazine, who, along with
a bunch of other reporters at Wired has really been
(01:21):
all over the Doge story. We were so excited to
talk to her about Elon's journey through the federal government,
but before we get there, it was another chaotic, fascinating,
wild weekend of Musk news, especially Musk news around Trump.
On Saturday night, federal workers, including judges, nurses, office works,
(01:42):
everyone received an email from the Office of Personnel Management
the OPM, asking them to list five bullet points of
their accomplishments of the past week. And then on X
Elon said if you didn't do that, then you would
be fired. And there was confusion in the days hours
of followed. You had government officials saying they didn't have
(02:02):
to respond, Musk saying they would definitely be fired. And
so we're going to break that all down and to
do that. Joining me is Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg social media
reporter and of course the QB one of this podcast.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Hey, Kurt, QB one, I appreciate that, IMAX.
Speaker 9 (02:18):
Hey Kurt, all right, so Kurt, you read this email.
Speaker 8 (02:21):
Let's start just tell us what happened, and I want
to hear what you think is kind of going on,
what Elon must be trying to do here.
Speaker 6 (02:31):
So, yeah, as you mentioned on Saturday, federal employees received
this email with the subject line what did you do
last week? And the directive was to essentially reply to
the email with a bullet pointed list of five things
that they accomplished in their job. And I think it's
sort of twofold here, right. The first is perhaps the obvious,
(02:51):
like Elon is simply challenging people to justify their existence
in the federal government, justify their job, justify their role.
And it's some thing that we can talk about, but
that we've seen him do at Twitter over the years
and some of his other businesses. The other thing that's
sort of more interesting here, and again a bit of
a repeat from Elon, is he believes that there are
(03:13):
people who work at the federal government who actually do
not exist.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Right.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
His sort of theory is, if you don't reply to
the email, maybe that's because you're not a real person,
and therefore you know, we shouldn't be paying you. And again,
this is something when he took over Twitter, before he
paid out a big lump sum of restricted stock units.
Right after he took over, he actually had executives at
the company combing through to make sure, like are we
(03:40):
paying real people. He's sort of paranoid at this idea
that companies have like ghost employees on the books or
something like that, and so this would be a way
to like find those people and eliminate them.
Speaker 8 (03:51):
Apparently, the experience of being an employee receiving an email
on a mysterious email on Saturday afternoon from a random
email address not not signed by person saying you need
to like come up with five bullet points and send
this by Monday or you might be fired Like that?
Speaker 9 (04:11):
Would I would? I would not.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
This would be the.
Speaker 8 (04:13):
Only thing I would think about for the next like
seventy two hours if I were in their shoes, Like
this seems like just pretty much an effort to like
drive workers crazy, Like beyond verifying that they're real, is
the idea just to like make them feel bad or something.
Speaker 6 (04:27):
Well, I think there's an element of that, right, And
you have to remember why this is happening in sort
of the broader context that's going on right now, which
is that elon Is is aggressively slashing the budget. He's
looking for people to take buyouts, he's looking for people
to resign and leave, right, and so the more kind
of pressure you can apply to the workforce, be it
(04:48):
implicit or in this case very explicit, right like do
this or you are fired. I think the more he
thinks he's going to weed out sort of the people
who don't really want to be there, those long time
you know, kind of lifetime bureaucrats, if you will, who
maybe are just arresting investing, as we would say in
the tech industry. And so I do think part of
this is the strategy just keep his thumb on people,
(05:09):
make sure that they feel that there's constantly somebody looking
over their shoulder, and you know, eventually people will weed
themselves out. That makes his job of cutting the budget
even easier.
Speaker 8 (05:20):
And just like with the fork in the road email,
this was the email he sent about a month ago
from the same email address. And Kurt, there's the other
sort of point of comparison, which is that when you're
talking about a private company, of course, like firing employees,
laying people off is a pretty effective way of cutting costs.
Not clear at least when we're talking about the federal budget.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
Yeah, I think to your point, in a private company,
usually salary benefits, you know, for one K match those
types of like, employee costs are a much are pretty
significant percentage of the overall budget, right, But I think
and I don't know the specifics, unfortunately, but I think
when you look at the scale of the federal budge,
you're not going to have the same percentage of that
(06:03):
sort of be wrapped up in employee and HR related costs, right.
And so again, I think this is as as much
symbolism as anything, right Max, I mean, like, his whole
thing here is that the government has bloated, that he's challenged,
that these workers don't do anything, that they've sort of
just been kicking back and cash and paychecks, you know,
on the American taxpayer's dime for years. And so I
(06:25):
think part of this is cutting you know, budget, but
I think a bigger part of this might just be
the symbolism of what it means to significantly reduce headcount at.
Speaker 9 (06:34):
The federal post as HR strategy, right.
Speaker 8 (06:38):
I mean, like, and I think that's part of why
we're seeing so much confusion. That's why he's saying, Oh,
you have to do this, Well, maybe you don't have
to do this, maybe you do have to do this. Like,
the point is not to get any kind of response.
And clearly Musk has said already that they're not going
to really read these responses. It's just the act of saying, look, you,
federal workers, you're not doing anything.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I think that's right.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
I think that there's a huge part of this that
is reformative theater as much as it is effective government cutting.
Speaker 9 (07:03):
Yeah, and it's a rhetorical question.
Speaker 8 (07:06):
The goal here is not to legitimately find out, you know, hey,
what are the two million federal workers doing, is to
show them that he thinks that they're doing nothing. And
I think more importantly, to show Donald Trump Republican voters,
you know, Congress, that he is he is really doing
something here. He's he's going to war with the quote
unquote administrative state.
Speaker 10 (07:26):
Right.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
And I think these supporters of this strategy, their argument
has been, well, hey, this takes what five minutes, Right, Like,
if you're actually doing your job all week, you should
somewhat easily be able to send over, hey, here's a
list of five things. But to your point, Max, Like,
that is not the intention of this, right Like, part
of it is to say, justify your job. But again,
part of this is a sort of psychological warfare, right,
(07:47):
make people uncomfortable, make people, remind people that he's sitting
there watching every move that you make, and sort of,
you know, challenge them in a way that I don't
think a lot of people are used to being challenged.
Speaker 8 (08:00):
So, Kurt, we're talking about like what Elon Musk may
be trying to do in terms of his in terms
of politically, in terms of the messaging, but like do
you understand the plan practically? Like what are they going
to do with these responses? And like is this really
a money saving measure?
Speaker 6 (08:18):
So I think it's a good question, right, because if
you have two million people sending in five bullet points,
like just manually to review that stuff in any meaningful
well way seems almost impossible. And actually, again to go
back to the Twitter days, I mentioned the whole challenge
to engineers, Hey, print out your code to prove that
you've been doing something over the last thirty days. You know,
a couple hours after that, they were telling people, hey,
(08:40):
shred this code.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
We're not actually going to do these reviews. Right.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
It was again sort of like a scare tactic that
in that regard nothing came of it. So part of
me wonders if this will ultimately you know, fall into
that same bucket. If anyone will actually manually review this stuff,
they'll just simply see, okay, who responded and who didn't
and kind of draw a line there there was a report,
and forgive me because I can't remember who who reported this.
That perhaps AI right, right, they would use GROC to like,
(09:06):
you know, quickly analyze this stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
I suppose that is a possibility.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
But again, if we're looking at what he's done, historically,
these types of challenges have mostly been performative, right, And
so I part of me thinks that, especially with the
scale we're dealing with here, with two million government employees,
they just want people to reply to the email, prove
that they are a real human being that exists within
this government, and take all the people who didn't reply
(09:31):
and deal with them separately.
Speaker 8 (09:33):
Let's talk about the political fallout and the legal fallout, right,
So one thing that happened is.
Speaker 9 (09:38):
You had, you had some lawsuits. You had you had
employee unions.
Speaker 8 (09:42):
Who are already I've already tried to oppose Musk's authority
to do this and OPM's authority to do this, adding
this email into their you know, into the litigation.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Yeah, And advising federal workers to ignore this too, right,
saying basically, don't take the bait, don't don't respond to
this thing. There's a lot of confusion as to what
people should or shouldn't do. And again, let's look back
at a little history lesson we have from Twitter.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Max s.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
You'll remember in November of twenty twenty two, shortly after
Elon took over, he sent that fork in the Road
email that we're all now familiar with because of the
government example. But he sent this email fork in the
Road to employees and said basically, click this button to
commit to being hardcore and staying with the company. If
you don't click the button, I will take that as
your resignation, and you know there's the door. Well, he
(10:29):
is being sued, he being Elon is being sued by
hundreds of employees who did not click the button, right
and where they're terminated. And their argument, which has actually
been pretty successful in court thus far, is that not
replying to an email does not equate to a resignation.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Right.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
So even if Elon says, hey, if you don't reply,
you resign, lawyers and judges are not agreeing with that analysis.
They're basically saying, you know, that's the equivalent of being
laid off. And being laid off and voluntarily resigning are
two very different things in the world of corporate America,
because one of them yields a lot bigger and more
valuable severance than the other. It just got an update,
(11:11):
believe it or not, this morning, heard from a former
employee who's part of this sort of mass lawsuit that's
going on. It's slowly but surely working in the employees' favor.
Twenty for twenty twenty employees who have gone through arbitration
have all won full severance from Twitter for their layoffs,
and so they're setting a precedent right now that the
(11:32):
strategy that Elon used to cut costs at Twitter did
not really work, or at least it delayed the payments, right,
but he's still going to have to, it seems like,
pay all these employees what they're owed, and so again
sets sort of a bit of a precedent for what
we might see here with the government as well.
Speaker 8 (11:49):
There's another factor here too, which is that one of
the cool things about taking over Twitter and sending out
these aggressive tweets is that you are the decider, right
like Elon Muskuld just like more or less. You know,
of course, there was litigation he could just get away with,
like firing people willy nilly. Now he has all these
other constituents. And I think that's one of the most
(12:10):
interesting things about this episode.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
We had.
Speaker 8 (12:13):
First of all, we had zero PM, perhaps because of
the issue you just brought up, put out a memo
essentially saying, actually, this is voluntary. We also had a
bunch of cabinet officials, including cash Tell, the new director
of the FBI, saying publicly or semi publicly, that staff
should hold off right. And this to me feels like
(12:33):
a real first of all, a difference between what's happening
at Doze and what happened at Twitter, but also perhaps
you know, the beginnings of a real rift between Musk
and other members of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
I mean, I think you hit the nail on the
head with the most obvious difference here, which is that
with Twitter and with all of his businesses, Musk is
the boss, right, He is the official decider of things
and has that control and power, and people might disagree
with how he wields that power, but those are private
businesses for the most part that he can do with
(13:06):
what he wants. He is, now, to your point, sort
of operating in a federal government position, and not only that,
but a position that people are very confused about in
terms of the legality of all of these things that
he's doing. Right, a lot of what he's doing is
being challenged in courts, are being challenged by other politicians,
So the landscape is not equivalent. Even though he's sort
(13:28):
of taking the same playbook that he's used as a
CEO of a private company and applied it to a
federal government situation, those are two very different arenas for
him to be doing this, and so I think that
is adding to a lot of the confusion and will
add eventually to the inevitable legal situation that arises from this.
Speaker 8 (13:45):
All right, So we'll be following this closely, Kurt, and
we want to come back to you very soon to
check in on all the other developments that are happening
in the world of X. We've seen controversies around community notes,
there's some weirdness around rock and I think we'll have
to get to that all at another time, but for now,
thank you for coming in.
Speaker 9 (14:05):
We'll talk soon, but I still want you by the
end of.
Speaker 8 (14:07):
The day, Kurt to put together that list, So please
get to work or ask Rock to do it for you.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
Yeah, easy, easy. You can expect my resignation very shortly.
Speaker 11 (14:17):
Max.
Speaker 9 (14:17):
Thank you all right, Kurt Wagner, thanks for coming.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 9 (14:25):
So Doge, we've been talking about Doge.
Speaker 8 (14:27):
It has been operating as much as you can say
it's operating anyway. For the past month, We've had a
lot of things happen and we wanted with this next segment,
which is from the live taping we did last week
at the on Air Festival in Brooklyn, to kind of
take a step back, give people sort of a recap.
Speaker 9 (14:46):
On what's happened and a primer.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
And again we brought in McKenna Kelly, who is a
reporter from Wired has been doing a ton of reporting
talking to federal workers it seems every day, to kind
of help us do that. A couple of notes on
this taping we were recording just as it was revealed
that Elon Musk would be speaking at Seapack and that
(15:09):
he had fathered another child, So you'll hear those come up.
Although there have been a couple of beats to the
story that we will not hit. We will not hit
Musk's kind of surreal appearance at Seapack. He looked, I
don't know how to say this. He was more detached
from reality than usual, wielding a chainsaw.
Speaker 9 (15:29):
We also did not get at.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
The paternity dispute that has since unfolded. I have no
doubt we will get on to both of those topics
on a later episode, but the conversation as a whole
was really great and we thought you'd want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Welcome Dylan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. I'm
your host, David Papatoppols, and we are live on AirFest
in Brooklyn. I'm joined on stage by two stalwarts of
the podcast. We have our number one muscologist at Bloomberg,
Dana Hull. Daniel Welcome, he did. And we have Business
(16:03):
Week writer Max Chafkin, Maxilo.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And we have a special guest with this as well,
from Wired, McKenna. Kelly.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Good to be here.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
McKenna, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Don't forget the crowd, David.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
There's a lot of people in your crowd, right, and
we also have an enormous crowd here. Now it's standards
thank you for having good Are you guys ready ready? Okay,
So we are indeed gonna spend plenty of time talking
doze here under a relentlessly pressing and driving Elon Musk.
Doze has suddenly become perhaps the biggest story in the US,
(16:37):
and you will come away I swear from this session
as a doge expert. But we're gonna break the ice
a little with some non doze news, actual non doze news,
if there could be such a thing. So I'm gonna
go around here. I'm gonna ask each of you to
tell me the biggest non doge in the world of
Elon Musk, of course, the biggest non doge story you're
(16:58):
tracking this week, Dana Hall.
Speaker 9 (16:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
So, so Elon has spent a lot of time in
the last twenty four hours tweeting about the astronauts that
are on the space station, and also that he thinks
the space station program in general should be ended two
or three years earlier than originally intended.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
These astronauts in the space station are soon.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Where So these two NASA astronauts have been on the
space station since June. They went up there on.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
A Boeing craft, and they want to come home.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
No, they actually are very happy doing research. They are
going to come home on a SpaceX vehicle.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
And Elon is.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Like they've been stranded up there because of politics, which
is not true, like NASA has said very clearly, like
they're not stranded. They're doing research. The whole point of
the ISS is like international cooperation. But Elon is fixated
on this idea that the astronauts are somehow stuck there.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Wasn't Boeing's supposed to take them home.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Boeing was supposed to take them home, and NASA made
the decision that it was safer not to send them
home on a fire. They didn't fire them, they just
made the decision let's keep them up here. We'll send
them home on a SpaceX craft. But now Musk is like, oh,
the reason why they're there is because of politics, which
is not true. Like if it was because of politics,
they could have come home earlier.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But they're atsuts happening though as soon as this week,
and he's taking bringing them back to Earth. He's not
taking them directly to Mars.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Correct, So SpaceX is going to bring the astronauts home
problem in March. That's the latest. But Separately, Musk is
also saying that the whole International Space Station program should
be ended earlier, and ultimately he just wants to focus
on Mars.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Okay, that's what you got there now, Max Chafkin.
Speaker 8 (18:31):
So I wanted to pick a story that had nothing
to do with which truly and it's clearly baby number thirteen.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
But wait a minute, he's that's political too because of
his whole like nadalism.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
It's a conservative influencer.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
You came here to talk about baby number thirteen. That's
what you're bringing.
Speaker 9 (18:48):
I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Baby number thirteen. Elon Musk is danna say, girl?
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Do we know it's a boy?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Okay? Cool?
Speaker 9 (18:55):
All right? So anyway, basically, keep a long story short.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
He has been having all these babies, and we learned,
we learned of a new baby. And I say thirteen
as if it's a definitive number, and I guess I
feel compelled to add and Dana would do it if
I didn't that that's thirteen that we know of, right,
because he has said we.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Know the floor, we don't know what the sea is exactly.
Speaker 9 (19:14):
Yeah, so but mckennath hinted at it.
Speaker 8 (19:16):
But yeah, he's got this idea, and this is an
idea that now I'm drifting into politics, but that has
is taking off in kind of conservative intellectual circles that
everyone needs to have more babies. It's called natalism, and
Elon has kind of put a spin on that that
involves repopulating the planet personally.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I guess tell us who the mom is.
Speaker 8 (19:36):
Yeah, well it's it's Ashley Sainclair, who is a columnist
or a media personality or whatever. For the Babylon Bee,
which was the This is going deep into like Elon lore,
but the Babylon Bee is like an Onion knockoff if
you don't know it, it's kind of like an anti
woke onion or something. And one theory for like why
(19:57):
Elon Musk bought Twitter for forty four billion dollars, laid
off all the employees, became a conservative media personality, put
three hundred million dollars in Donald Trump started taking apart
all the stuff that we're doing today is that he
was mad that Twitter banned the Babylon b So it
all kind of comes together.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, baby number thirteen McKenna.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
Yeah, I'm not moving away from the politics unfortunately, but
it does not don't relate it as much breaking news.
Musk is going to speak at Seapack tonight. Wow, And
it's wild to think about. Just like a year ago,
before the first assassination attempt on Trump, Musk was still
flip flopping right. He was this free speech warrior, bought Twitter,
(20:36):
so he's leaning in this kind of like right word direction,
this anti censorship brigade that he had. But now he
is just a full out. He's in a Republican white house,
he is running all of this stuff, and he has
made the full switch. And tonight he is one of
the figureheads speaking at spe Seapack.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well, he truly is all in. I didn't know that.
So you are you breaking this as we speak?
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Breaking it as we speak?
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So who's sending the headlines on that? We got to
get that out there.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Okay, Seapack if you don't know, it's the Conservative Political
Action Committee And they're like very like Project twenty twenty
five adjacent, Heritage Foundation adjacent, like there's they do Seapack
and hungry Like.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean this is where all the conservatives go
to talk policy, meet each other, mix every year. It's
like the conference for the whole party.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Okay, so we've got astronauts coming back from the moon.
Max thinks he's got a baby over there. He's tracking,
and we got must showing up at seapack. Okay, we're
going to move on to doge, and we're going to
go back as we think about dose. We're going to
go back to the very beginning when the whole doze
thing began. August of last year. Elon Musk is quote
(21:42):
unquote interviewing Donald Trump, and as he's interviewing him, he
raises the idea about, Hey, what about this doge thing?
I got this idea? What say you, mister President? And
let's listen to that audio clip.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I think it'd be great to just have a government
efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and
and just ensures that the taxpayer money that the taxpayers
are harder money, is spent in a good way.
Speaker 11 (22:08):
And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I'd love it if when.
Speaker 10 (22:12):
You you're the greatest cutter, I mean, I look at
what you do, you want to they go I won't
mention the name of the company, but they go on strike,
and you say that's.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Okay, You're all gone.
Speaker 10 (22:24):
You're all gone, So every one of you is gone,
and you are the greatest. You would be very good,
Oh you would love it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
For a second, here in the audience, I want to
hear from you. Clap if you feel like you have
a good understanding of what doze is. Clap mak Okay, now,
clap if you feel like you really kind of don't
have a very good understanding at all. Okay, so that's
more who don't than do? Kenna? You are all doze
(22:51):
all the time right now? Wired, Tell these folks what
they need to know about dose? What is dog? Give
me a letter by letter the D the O.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Tell you what is the most granular level? True? It
stands for the Department of Government Efficiency. It is in
fact based on the shiba Inu DOJ meme coin whatever,
a meme that Elon has used profusely over several several years.
And first of all, it is a so called agency.
(23:23):
It is not an actual agent. Well, it's real in
some people's hearts and minds, but it is not an
actual Well.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
What makes an actual agency an actual agency? What do
you need?
Speaker 5 (23:33):
An Act of Congress? An Act of Congress? And so instead,
I mean, I think he did this incredibly creatively, being
able to subsume what was previously the United States Digital Service,
which already was doing. It was created by Obama in
the twenty tens to fix healthcare dot gov. If we remember,
healthcare dot gov when it first rolled out, was completely unstable.
(23:56):
It was like one of the biggest talking points Republicans
had against healthcare dot gov. So said, let's get a
bunch of technologists from the private sector, Let's bring them
in put them on two to three year tours. Right,
this is like a tour in government because they could
be making so much more money elsewhere in the private
sector and brought them into government to make government more efficient.
Like this is what it was doing like ten plus yearsage.
(24:17):
It was Doge before Doge, and so Doge has now
subsumed USDs as of this week. I heard they have
their all you know standing staff meeting on Tuesdays. And
from what I heard about that meeting is that now
Dough has created a bit of a firewall between like
legacy USDs and then like the new Doge folks.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
How many legacy people are still around?
Speaker 5 (24:37):
There was originally two hundred and so one fifty of
them now after Friday's layoffs, and now we have how
many Doge people, which is not very clear. And they
had the Doge folks that created essentially a firewall between
Legacy USDs and Doge. They were not interacting. They had
one meeting with a Doge representative in the whole month
(24:57):
that it's been around. And so this Tuesday and the
meeting that I'm talking about, these Doge folks, they had
a meeting with these people and told them that it's
all Doge going forward, Like the teams are merging. If
you're still here, you have not been terminated. Yeah, these
teams are together, We're going to do.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
You're going to be subsumed.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
Yeah. Yeah, And so it's official. Everything has become Dune.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
Did they all have to change their screen names to obscene?
Speaker 9 (25:19):
Did they all require to be big balls or whatever?
Speaker 11 (25:22):
You know?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I wish they could because now I'm thinking, wait, you
can't just throw big balls in there like that without
explaining Hold on one second, Max.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
Many of the Doge employees are people that Musk and
his associates found basically like on the Internet. They're like
edge lord types, like like Elon Musk and I guess
the most famous one is this gentleman the big balls.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
So presumably not his god given no surprised.
Speaker 8 (25:48):
I mean, it is weirdly like a kind of bizarro
version of that moment that you're describing back in the
Obama years, where a bunch of tech guys were like, yeah,
government doesn't work, we are the ones to fix it,
and they descend it on Washington, and I mean, I
don't know, you actually probably have a better understanding of
(26:08):
how well it worked. I don't think the Healthcare dot
gov thing, although they did seem to keep it online,
but it wasn't like some kind of shine.
Speaker 9 (26:16):
I'm not sure that worked all that great.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
I don't know if we all remember that as like
the greatest moment of Silicon Valley's performance in history. And
it's kind of happening again, but with this new weird
elon Musk's beIN on it well, where everyone's like super
mad at the establishment and tweel Max.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
But if it's happening again, but it's I mean, I
don't know that anybody realized that that service was even
a thing back, you know, ten years ago. I don't
think anybody in Western're in Washington, probably nobody noticed. Everybody
has noticed OGE. It's certainly much more, much more high
profile and making a lot more waves than its predecessor did. Okay,
that's how the group was created. What is like the
(26:55):
one thing they should know about it in terms of
how DOSEE is going about its business on Elon Musk's
guidance day in and day out.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
Well, now that they moved it outside of the opposite
management and budget, this is all very boring bureaucratic stuff.
Funny enough the fact that they hate bureaucracy, but they
moved it underneath the executive opposite of the president, which
means that they are reporting directly to the White House,
which means like a lot of the records that they
have are no longer for you.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
So by not being foiable, they're not the kind of
thing that the press can say, hey, we would like
to put in a request for greater information.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Well, there's no transparency at all. Like the transparency is
there is a website where it's.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Like a live feed from X or doge website, a.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Doge website where they're purporting to cut costs, but there's
no transparency about like who DOGE is. So like an
enormous amount of reporting firepower has been spent. Like who
from Doge is showing up at your agency? Like, you know,
have you seen their badges? Like are they like some
of them are not even wearing badges, Like they're being
very like circumspect about who they actually are, which flies
(27:53):
in the face of this whole idea that this is
a transparent effort.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
Yeah, the way that it's been put to me, when
like these Doge folks show up, they are boys in
jeans wearing backpacks full of laptops.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Like this is how it's like they're literally that young.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
Yeah, like nineteen to twenty five is the ages of
a lot of these folks.
Speaker 8 (28:11):
That they've hired, big balls.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Yeah, he is one of the youngest, that's right.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
And then some of them are like venture capitalists who
have like experience with private equity or like relative some
of them are McKinsey consultants, Like there are like adult
spit like in some cases.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Helped cut Twitter, right, Like see Davis who is one
of the big cots cutters when the Twitter takeover happened.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, so now, Dana, you like to remind me frequently
and you've drilled it into my head. How as we
heard on that clip at the beginning. This idea of
creating Doge to go out and gut the government and
bring down spending is not a Donald Trump idea. It
is an Elon Musk idea that he put in Trump's
head and then he effectively appointed himself. Why is that
(28:52):
for you such a crucial thing as we try to
understand and conceptualize of what they're up to.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
Well, two things.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
I think that one thing to just know is just
even the fact that we're all saying the name Doge
is like Musk has already won because he's invented something
that's not a department. He calls it a department, and
now we're all using doge. It's entered the lexicon. So
it's given is to give. It's been given this like gravitas.
But for him, well, i mean, now the you know, no,
(29:20):
but I mean, I'm just saying, it's like it's very
clever how he got this, got this off the ground.
But for for Musk, it's all about regulation. So Musk
has said over and over again that like, you know,
he feels like the giant being held down, like American
promise is being held down by all these like strings
of regulation. And bureaucracy and we just need to like
cut the strings in America will be great again. And
(29:42):
all of his companies are highly regulated, like you cannot
launch a rocket without the FAA approval, the fish and
wildlife has to sign off on, like how it's you know,
messing up the wetlands. Tesla's autonomous or semi autonomous cars,
like NITSA is investigating them. I mean every like he's
got six companies, you know, the FDA in neural so
he's very interested in what these agencies are doing. And
(30:03):
if he can cut regulations, that is just going to
help his businesses.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, no, very much the case. I mean, I guess
for sure he had just about all of his companies
I would think, in one form or another are subject
to government regulation in some cases, the case of Tesla
and SpaceX quite a bit. I mean, I guess for me,
the one thing that stands out to me a little
bit is whether ultimately Musk's Doze group is the right
group to be doing this and this is the right
(30:27):
way to go about it or not. Obviously that is
a question that's very very very much still out there.
But the fact that it comes now and that there
appears to be a certain amount of political will to
tolerate it. That it comes in the wake of the
greatest inflation surge in this country in a half century.
I do not think is a coincidence. I think that's
the way historians will look at it. I mean Musk
(30:47):
in that interview back in August that when he states
he does not talk about I want you to stop
regulating my companies. He says, you know, runaway government spending
is driving inflation, and that's attacks on the American people.
And it's true, parties of both sides, Republicans and Democrats,
have driven the US fiscal accounts to the point where
(31:09):
we are running absolutely unprecedented budget deficits, and that seemed
to be to a certain extent untenable. Again, the big
issue is whether we all feel like the American people
feel like it's the Doze Committee that should be going
about bringing that under control. I mean, Max, I guess
the question I'd have for you is whether you love
Elon Musk or hate him. It is it's so seemingly
(31:33):
improbable when we were doing this podcast as innocent young
people a year or so ago, if somebody said to us, hey,
in February of twenty twenty five. You're going to be
talking about this and how Musk is running the show
and he's the biggest story in the world. He's in
the White House, he's doing all these things. We would
have said it's absurd. It does speak to his force
of nature. Demon mode kind of aspect of demon mode
(31:54):
is what he himself calls it.
Speaker 8 (31:55):
Right, Yeah, I don't think I would have said it
was absurd. I feel like part.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Of you coming why don't you tell us?
Speaker 8 (32:02):
I mean, I just I think people who followed Elon Musk,
although it is, I think there are aspects of this
that are surprising. It's it's surprising that he is somebody
who was ideologically McKenna brought this up earlier, you know,
ideologically fairly centrist slash kind of like trying to be slippery.
(32:23):
Is just like so full bore into maga Like that
is surprising, But it's not surprising that he is trying
to work it politically, like his entire career has been this.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
He's just doing this.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
But at such a different gale.
Speaker 8 (32:37):
The way he has made money throughout his career basically
is by some combination of politics and technology, like.
Speaker 9 (32:45):
Working the levers of power. He did this with SpaceX.
Speaker 8 (32:48):
SpaceX was as much as Musk likes to talk about
it as this thing that he created or whatever, like
the federal government essentially paid him to create it, We
taxpayers paid him to create it, and Tesla is kind
of it's a similar story. I mean, obviously Tesla has
done some amazing things. I'd say clearly it's Musk's greatest
achievement of his career, maybe one of the great companies
(33:10):
built over the last twenty years. But it's also one
that was very much built on the back of federal
policy and.
Speaker 9 (33:17):
Federal tax dollars.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
So, like, you know, he's doing that again.
Speaker 8 (33:21):
He's just he's just found this like really kind of
amazing opportunity in terms of the moment that you described,
the political moment, and maybe in Donald Trump, somebody who
is perhaps uniquely open to these ideas, who's going to
see the value of Elon Musk and he's going to
be ideologically flexible enough to like divert his whole presidency.
(33:42):
He's like diverted the whole Trump agenda into Elon Musk Land.
Like that is that's kind of wild when you think
about it.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
No, that's fair enough. But I just want to say
that I know you two think I don't listen to
you guys. I listen to you guys, and so I
know you always indeed describe Musk in that he's got
that chameleon quality as right as an operator. What you know,
he was tight with Obama, he was tight with maybe
Big Bush to a certain extent. Right, he was Mine
was like, he's like, I'm super pumped to work five, right,
(34:11):
and then with Trump won, he was there. But like
I guess my question is, is this simply the chameleon
changing his colors again, it's and going with the vibe
in Washington, or it feels to me like he's become
the vibe, he's setting the vibe. Is this a break?
Speaker 3 (34:28):
I think I think that Max and I have talked
for years now about how like he really shifted during
the pandemic, and you saw like he started being flirting
with COVID denihalism, He moved to Texas, he became increasingly
anti immigrant, the whole thing with his trans daughter, and
this is just sort of the culmination of that. But
the other thing at play here that I'm going to
keep hammering on is he does not want NASA to
(34:49):
go to the Moon. He just wants to go to Mars.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Those two that are on the moon get him to Mars, right,
Like why are they thing to come back?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And if you watch the inauguration speech, Trump said We're
going to plant the stars and pypes on Mars by
the end of my first term.
Speaker 5 (35:01):
And Musk was like, yes, how awesome.
Speaker 9 (35:04):
This is all about Mars.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
This is all about Mars. And it's a quid pro quo,
Like I gave you three hundred million dollars to get elected.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
What I want return?
Speaker 8 (35:13):
I want Doge and I want so much money, right,
Like people are so focused on these like what could
Musk get out of the CFTC maruld be?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
How much is it going to cost to get to Mars?
Speaker 8 (35:23):
I mean I haven't checked with my local Mars dealer lately,
but like it's it's billions, if not tens of billions
of dollars in contracts to SpaceX.
Speaker 9 (35:31):
That's what it would be worth.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
All right. Listen, speaking of big numbers, we got another
clip that we're going to play on Doge cost cutting
and what they're trying to do this is Elon and
Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity earlier this week.
Let's listen.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
How much do you believe Elon and you've identified and
waste for aud of vi as corruption now, and how
much do you anticipate you sure, well, I think no,
because it's so massive.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
This is huge money. So which about.
Speaker 12 (36:11):
As hard as they are, they're not going to find
some contract that was crooked, you know, crooked as hell.
I mean, there's going to be so much, isn't faut?
Speaker 5 (36:20):
But what is that?
Speaker 12 (36:21):
I think he's going to find a trillion dollars, but
I think it's a very small percentage compared to what
it is.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Okay, So the president says he's going to find a
trillion dollars, presumably this is annually. I don't know, mckennath,
what as far as your reporting shows and as far
as with the Doze team is saying, how much have
they cut so far from the US federal budget?
Speaker 5 (36:46):
If you look at the website, it says fifty five billion.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Dollars five billion with the.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
B yes, okay, and that is not accurate.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
And we know that's not accurate.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
How because we can look at the itemized feed and
see that numbers. There was a figure they don't add.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
What do so what in the itemized side, what does
it add up to?
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, was like sixteen right,
sixteen billion.
Speaker 8 (37:13):
But yeah, but even that's a little dice, Yeah, exactly,
because like one of the there's an eight billion dollar
contract in there, right, that's actually.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion contract for the DHS. That's actually
worth eight million, right, Yeah, it's eight million. Eight billion,
which is eight billion is like how much the CDC
has to spend every year.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Right, I mean, just so everyone's clear, the US federal
annual budget is just shy of seven trillion dollars a year, right.
When they throw around that trillion dollar number, it actually started.
You guys were there at Madison Square Garden. You guys
were there, and I think he threw out a two
trillion dollar number.
Speaker 9 (37:47):
At least he said at least fairly.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
I think he said like fair.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Easy, fairly easy, which is basically cutting.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Like a third.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, and that's obviously which you.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Can't do unless you go after entitlement spending. So that's
the other thing I want people to really think about.
Like we were talking about Medicare, Social Security, the IRS,
student loan program, like like, ultimately, McKenna, do you think
that the goal is just to privatize wholesale pieces of this?
Speaker 5 (38:12):
Yeah, I mean, like I think that's a fair assumption
to make.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And every single privatize what like what would we be
privately well, all kinds of.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
So we've been seeing the first thing that these doage
kids do when they get in is they attack contracts.
Either they send one person in or a group of
people in and they get to the acquisition service like
whatever system each agency uses, and then they look at
that and then they just start cutting things across the board.
They're like control effing for like diversity, even if it's
like biodivers And.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Do they have the power to unilaterally they have the
power to unilaterally just pause it, stop it, block it.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
Do they have the authority to do that? I think
that's a legal question. But they are doing it right now.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
How much pushback are we seeing increasing pushback from Congress
and from the courts to say, hey.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Congress is totally supine. I mean, let's be honest, Like
you are starting to see some Democratic members of Congress
like get out the bullhorn and be upset about it.
But in general, like Trump and Musk have support for
this from Republicans, and the Democratic opposition has not been
that strong. I mean, so the courts are like trying.
I mean, the courts are like the check out and
balance that's left. But Doge is moving faster than the
(39:23):
courts can move.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
I also want to point out too, like to think
about how serious this all is, but also at the
same time how unseerious it is, like the name Doge
right as the name of this agency. And then the
Democratic response. The first Democratic response was Chuck Schumer and
Hawking Jeffreys having this presser where they announced a new
bill that they jokingly called Stop the Steal. And then
(39:45):
at that at that press conference, Schumor had like a
little laugh you went he he he, and everyone else
in the press court and that presser said he he
he too. So like it's it's very clear, like how
unseerious people are acting about this.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Well, I guess when you're opening Salvos name it dose
it's true. Okay. I want to move us on to
the Musk Trump relationship, which appears by all accounts to
still be going strong. We also have audio from that
from that Trump Musk interview with Hannity earlier this week.
Let's listen. Elon called me.
Speaker 12 (40:17):
He said, you know they're trying to drive us apart.
I said absolutely. Now they said we have breaking as
Donald Trump has seated control of the presidency to Elon Musk.
President Musk will be attending a cabinet reading eight. And
I say, it's just so obvious. It's so bad at it.
I used to think they were good at it. They're
actually bad at it.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Okay, So there is actually another line in there, the
very very beginning of the interview, almost right out of
the gate Max, where Musk turns to Hannity and he says,
is basically his opening statement is well, I love the president.
I just want to be clear about that. And I
(41:01):
I was sort of it was pretty shocking for me.
The fealty, Like it's not the kind of posture and
body language you usually get from Elon Musk.
Speaker 9 (41:08):
Uh No, uh, it's it's kind of that.
Speaker 8 (41:10):
That has been another surprise here, I guess is the
is the relationship. I mean that clip to me is
that's what they wanted out of the interview. They wanted
to signal that Trump is in charge and Musk is
okay with that, and and I think what's honestly like
a little bit surprising if you followed Musk is that
that he is has been willing more or less to
in certain situations. You know, play second fiddle, b do
(41:33):
the thing that you have to do if you want
to keep Trump happy, which is defer to him.
Speaker 11 (41:38):
So there, you know.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
He's sure that said tech support.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
I mean, throughout his life, Musk has always been the
alpha male. But like in Trump, he's almost got this
like dad figure, right, because Trump broke the mold for
what a politician could be, and then Elon followed that
and broke the mold of what corporate ceo could be.
And they play off each other. I mean, Elon also
tweeted some thing like I love him more as much
as a straight man can love another man, and like.
Speaker 8 (42:04):
I should go with thirteen children. So he you know,
he's got a lot of people to love.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Okay, So one year from now we're on this stage again,
will the Trump Musk alliance remain intact? Just yes or no?
I don't want you guys usually give me these caveats
and bolsh yes or.
Speaker 9 (42:20):
No, yes, yeah, yeah, Okay, there we are.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
The audience, do you agree with this? Yes? Is audience
hates your aunt there there's no chance in how Okay,
we're now gonna play the game. Enough about this doze stuff.
And we're here at on AirFest surrounded by podcast enthusiasts,
so we're gonna end with this game. Elon also is
a big podcast fan and he appears on them all
(42:45):
the time. So we pulled some clips, okay from Elon
podcasts in twenty twenty four, and we're gonna play the
clip now. The clip is pretty brief, it's pretty tight,
and it's short, and it's in what you guys have
to do. I'm gonna go turn. You're gonna tell me
what the hell he's talking about, what it's about, and you,
(43:05):
Leach will give me a guess, and then we'll go.
We have three of them, super confident here. Okay, all right,
Number one, hit it.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Like I said, it's it's not like it's not gonna
happen like overnight, but it's twenty years from now.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
But all right, Dana, I have no idea. I think
he's talking about Mars. Maybe building a civilization on Mars.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Is gonna be a Mars max humanoid robots, humanoid robots McKenna.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
Xually everything app becoming Actually.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Okay, who's with Dana mars in twenty years? Yeah, it's here.
Let's let's hear noose. Okay, the humanoid robot? What were you? X?
The everything out?
Speaker 5 (43:46):
It's finally the everything appen, the everything.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
App in twenty years.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
Okay, the good ones were taken first.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Okay, let's hear it twenty years from now.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I think there's gonna be more more humanoid robots than
they are here.
Speaker 10 (43:59):
What I got.
Speaker 8 (44:00):
Honestly, I'm shocked because I feel like in his head,
twenty years is way?
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Do you get the other two right? As well? We
know the fix is in? Okay, number two?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Like He'll be like a good test if if you
took a plane from Ellie to New York and you
try to drop a bowling ball and hit somebody, your
chances of success are basically zero.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
By the way, I happen to know that's the case.
I've tried that. It's really hard.
Speaker 8 (44:25):
So success is hitting a person, I guess.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Okay, so what is he talking about? It's really really
hard to hit someone in the head with the bowling
ball if you drop it from a plane.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Is he talking about Starship eventually being city City?
Speaker 13 (44:39):
I think, so you go Starship Starship FAA regulations around
dropping things from airplanes or parts falling or whatever, or
his rocket breaking, I.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Think I think you have an opportunity.
Speaker 5 (44:52):
Was it when the rocket recently fell apart? And that
was like the likelihood of one of the pieces over
that island hitting someone who.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Likes to in his answer, nobody, crickets.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
Max, you're the same.
Speaker 11 (45:08):
They're all the same answer.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
The truth of the matter is you're all wrong. Hit
it now.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
The reality is Earth can actually kindle a human population
probably ten times longer than the current population.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
You know, because you know you've got too many humans
when you drop the bowling ball from the plane and
you hit right, but until then, just keep going.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Should have gotten that long.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
You did an entire story of you know.
Speaker 8 (45:35):
Because he has talked about and that was f a A.
But yeah, this is about we should all have more children.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I guess you did a big piece on this. I'm
disappointed that. Okay, number three.
Speaker 11 (45:46):
I speak with some authority and analogy in this area.
This is.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
This is impossible. This is our producer Magnus is trolling you, guys,
this is impossible. If any of you get this, I
will take from Mike Bloomberg a check for ten thousand
dollars and I'll handle to you. Okay, again, the quote
is I speak with some authority and knowledge, and there's
no chance you're gonna get this. Kenny, it's it's pretty obscure.
So think the think obscure.
Speaker 5 (46:14):
The video game Diabolo Force just a good guess parenting.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
So that's a These are funny guesses? Is anybody Dana's answer, Well,
you have a guess? I think it's sections sections. Why
do you think that? I think? Okay, cesarean section? So
who likes no? Maxis got this audience stuff. Mechanic's should
(46:47):
in the front, our random in the front with the
with the black hat. Anybody like that Cesarian section? Okay,
let's play the clip.
Speaker 11 (46:58):
There's absolutely no need to do anything to farming change,
no effect on the environment. It's it's totally fine. Stop
attacking the farmers.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Cows about how does he know? What does he know
about farm?
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Well, Kimball, you know, it's like a big foodie.
Speaker 9 (47:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (47:17):
He wears the cowboy. There's some authority there from Kimball.
But wait, what's the full quote?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Don't have to worry about the cows because why he's.
Speaker 9 (47:24):
Talking about climate change?
Speaker 5 (47:26):
This was the member.
Speaker 8 (47:27):
Yeah, he's saying, you know, don't like climate change, don't
worry about don't.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Worry about the.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Possible We're getting the signal that we have to wrap.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
We're getting We're getting the gong on the Gong Show. Okay,
so we shall end it there. A big thanks to Dana,
Max McKenna, and thank you all for joining us for
this special episode of el in at on Air Fest.
Keep tuning in. We'll see you next week Humanoid Robots.
Speaker 8 (48:11):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Masarakis is
our editor, and Rayhan Harmanci is our senior editor. Blake
Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell factchecks. Our supervising producer
is Magnus Henrickson. The Eloning theme is written and performed
by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Saguiera. Brendan Francis Newdham is
our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of
(48:31):
Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to Joel Weber and Bradstone.
I'm Max Schaffkin. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us, and
we will see you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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