Just when you thought Elon Musk’s involvement in politics was over after he helped to secure the election of his new BFF, Donald Trump, it was announced that he is going to be a key figure in the running of the US for the foreseeable future.
The Tesla boss has been appointed to head up the newly created Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman who briefly competed with Trump for the Republican ticket until the Iowa caucus, in which he finished fourth. He’s also a billionaire – just – albeit a relative pauper when compared to Musk, the world’s richest man.
We’re told that the Doge – coincidentally, also the name of both a meme and a cryptocurrency Musk is fond of promoting – won’t officially be a government agency. Presumably, then, there won’t be any need for things like confirmation hearings before the Senate, at which the opposition has a habit of asking awkward questions. Rather, it will offer “advice and guidance” to the president and work alongside the Office of Management and Budget to drive reforms and create an “entrepreneurial” approach to government.
But even for two men, this is still clearly a big job. It looks like a 24/7 full-time mega-job. America’s government bureaucracy is a huge, many-headed hydra. The sort of reforms being talked about will not easily be accomplished. There has been speculation that the Trump administration is poised to engage in a process of slash and burn. This new “department” would seem set to play a big role in that. But cutting is no simple matter either – just ask anyone who’s tried it.
All of this begs the question: what about Tesla? The electric car company’s shareholders decided to cough up a $46bn pay package in August to better anchor Musk as CEO. We’ve heard occasional rumblings in the past about Musk’s outside interests, such as when he bought Twitter, now X, and was both running it and putting out a gazillion tweets. But not this time. I get that lots of people have side hustles. Lots of ordinary people need them in the current economy. But when you’re earning $46bn, you’re surely not short of cash – let alone when you factor in Musk’s existing fortune.
You could argue that Musk’s role at Doge is more in line with a CEO sitting as a non-executive director on a couple of other corporate boards, a long-established practice. The argument goes that it’s good for business leaders to get out and about and to see how corporations do things in fields unrelated to theirs. It probably does a boss a lot of good to get out from under the obsessive drive it can take to run a large organisation and to see how some of their peers get it done. It’s a handy way to pick up ideas. We all know that it is often smart to walk away and do something else when you’re struggling with a task. When you get back to it, suddenly it seems easy.
But this is not that either; this a huge undertaking and it’s not just on top of Tesla, which, despite its post-election share price surge, has some challenges, not least more traditional car makers producing vehicles that are at least as appealing as Tesla’s ageing suite of products. There’s also SpaceX, which has been doing “wow” things recently. Can it continue doing them when its chief engineer and general is deep into cutting the fat from the Department of Health and Human Services?
We’ve all heard about Musk’s infamously long working days. He’s very different from Trump, who spent an awful lot of time in Mar-a-Lago chilling out last time he was president. Musk can evidently keep multiple plates spinning. But to manage this, on top of all the other things he does, he’s going to need the ability Superman displayed in the silliest scene from the 1987 movie, when he flew around the Earth backwards to go back in time and save Lois Lane.
Perhaps there is a very good reason that Tesla and SpaceX shareholders aren’t in revolt. Perhaps it is because they see Musk’s new role as being ultimately to their advantage. It all depends on who you think he is going to be working for at the Doge: the American people, tired of their dysfunctional government? Or Elon Musk and his companies and his investors? As Fox News used to put it: I’m just reporting. You decide.