THE REAL DOGE. It’s not an exaggeration to say that much of the media’s coverage of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency effort has veered between contempt, ridicule, and sheer hatred. Coverage and commentary have villainized Musk, the maker of climate-friendly electric cars and pioneering space projects, as an evil tech bro bent on destroying the U.S. government. The same coverage and commentary have characterized Musk’s team of assistants as young, reckless, immature gamers bent on … destroying the U.S. government. You want a sample? Look up “DOGE” and “Big Balls.”
A significant part of DOGE narrative-making is driven by Democrats, who early on sensed a serious threat to cherished spending priorities and the heavily Democratic and deeply entrenched 2.4 million-employee federal workforce. The angry rhetoric of Democratic leaders was then megaphoned in many press outlets.
It’s also true that Musk harmed his own effort with his periodic bouts of irrational exuberance. When he bounded around the stage at a conservative gathering holding a big chainsaw above his head or when he talked about feeding a federal agency to a woodchipper, Musk distracted the public from the seriousness of the DOGE mission.
And it is a serious mission. It is impossible to look at the trajectory of federal spending and deficits and not be deeply concerned. There is no single and acceptable way to bring the deficits down; if it is done, it will have to be done in a number of ways. One of those ways is to cut wasteful and fraudulent spending by making the workings of the government more efficient. The purpose of DOGE, as laid out in President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order establishing the agency, is “to implement the president’s DOGE agenda, by modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
All of that is a prelude to what happened Thursday night — a moment that could mark a turning point in the public debate over DOGE. Fox News anchor Bret Baier gathered Musk and seven key DOGE officials to give an update on the work that has been done so far. Although Musk has spoken publicly before, it was the first opportunity people have had to see and hear the people behind Musk who are doing the hands-on work of DOGE.
The short version is that it is a group of impressive, serious people who are doing serious work to improve the functioning of the government. A few examples:
Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of Airbnb, described the ancient, paper-based system the government uses to handle the records of federal employees. “There is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government,” Gebbia explained. “Now picture this: This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper. It is a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn’t changed in the last 70 years.” DOGE is working to modernize the system to make it far easier for 21st-century federal workers to negotiate. “We really believe that the government can have an Apple store-like experience,” Gebbia said, “beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.”
On a similar theme, another DOGE worker, Aram Moghaddassi, described being astonished by the Social Security system’s computers. “The first thing that got me really excited about DOGE was learning basically the state of government computers,” Moghaddassi said. “By some estimates, government IT costs about $100 billion. Its funding systems are over 50 years old in the case of something like Social Security or the IRS. So really critical systems are old. They cost a lot of money to maintain, and the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. So I thought, I’m a software engineer that maybe could make a difference here.”
Another example came from Brad Smith, who is examining the Department of Health and Human Services, which is basically a network of separate duchies that don’t communicate with one another. “There are 700 different IT systems today at the National Institutes of Health,” Smith said. “Software systems that can’t speak to each other. They have 27 different CIOs.” Baier interrupted to ask, “Twenty-seven different chief information officers?” Smith answered, “Correct.”
The theme of vastly outdated technology, redundant staffing, and decades of delayed modernization ran through Gebbia’s, Maghaddassi’s, Smith’s, and other DOGE workers’ comments. For that matter, it ran through then-Vice President Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government” effort in the 1990s. When it comes to updating how the government works, it’s an old, old story: Government never keeps up with advancements in every other area of life. It’s always behind the times, sometimes decades behind the times. Bringing it into the present day is a never-ending task.
Much of the problem involves technology. And that, of course, is Musk’s thing. “When I say our job is tech support, I really mean it,” Musk said. “We have to fix the computers. … What we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing research from happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud — and we are fixing it.”
DOGE has taken a lot of criticism for trying to fix things too quickly. Some of that criticism is valid — the DOGE team has to remember that beyond their own mistakes, there is a powerful political and communications apparat working to terrify the public about what Musk & Co. are doing. Moving too quickly can scare people. But at the same time, there are all those decades of unsuccessful efforts to update government systems, plus the contrast with much faster progress in the tech world. “I think in the context of the government, we are moving like lightning,” Musk said. “In the context of what I’m used to moving, it’s slower than I’d like.”
Whatever progress DOGE can make will contribute to the larger goal of using taxpayer dollars more responsibly and cutting the deficit. Musk explained that DOGE’s goal is to reduce the current federal budget deficit from an insanely high $2 trillion to a still-stratospheric $1 trillion. Another way of saying that is he wants to cut yearly federal spending by $1 trillion — that is, to cut the total federal budget from its current $7 trillion to $6 trillion. “We want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud and reduce the spending by 15%,” Musk said, “which really seems quite achievable. The government is not efficient and there is a lot of waste and fraud. We feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.”
In the end, what was striking about the group interview was how straightforward and thoughtful the DOGE leaders were. The contrast between their statements and demeanor on the one hand and the media characterizations of them on the other was remarkable. After the interview aired, Fox News’s Guy Benson posted, “More than any of the specifics discussed, what blew me away was the absolute CANYON separating how DOGE is being portrayed by critics (manic Elon Musk and a band of teens slashing willy nilly) and the calm, measured answers from these profoundly talented, experienced people.”