The thing about the takeover of the main American government institutions by the richest man in the world and his force of strike by the former trainees is that this happens so quickly.
It has been three weeks since Elon Musk agents have taken over the Government’s and HR services. Since then, the movements of his so-called Ministry of Government Effectiveness have had the cartography of a horror film, DOGE removing agencies one by one on the basis of the slasher logic, fueling an unusual thirst for reduction costs and data.
Each day brings new incursions. Three weeks ago, the United States believed in humanitarian aid. This helped people who had been scammed by large companies. It funded the infrastructure necessary to make America a lighthouse of scientific innovation. Now, the United States agency for international development is emptied, the consumer financial protection office is on ice and subsidies from the National Institutes of Health are handcuffed. So much for all this.
These are raws of the spreadsheet, executed in one click. The loss of real jobs and lives of peoples – yes, despite what the refined conspiracy theorists will tell you, USAID has saved lives – all intangible compared to the pursuit of a stricter assessment.
Three weeks ago, a 19 -year -old child called online “big bullets” did not have access to government staff files and more. A 25 -year -old man with a closet full of racist tweets had not obtained the keys to cash systems which pay 5.45 billions of dollars each year. Elon Musk had not transformed the oval office into a Ruber play for his 4 -year -old son.
Speed is a strategy, of course, flooded the area so that neither the media nor the courts can keep the pace. Prosecution and judicial orders evolve on a different time scale from this dam and burning approach. (At this rate, DOGE will have exploited each last government server long before the Supreme Court even has a chance to weigh.) But it is also reflexive. The first business order in business control is to reduce costs as quickly as possible. If you can’t get people, give them buyouts. If they do not take buyouts, find a way to dismiss them anyway. Continue to cut until you hit the bones.
This is how you get a executive decree Declaring that “each agency does not hire more than an employee for four employees who leave”, an arbitrary ratio without regard for the real needs of the endowment. This is how you get hundreds of buildings of the federal government on the auction block, whatever their full occupation. It is both extreme and not considered, a race to empty the only good in the city.
And then… what? This is the question to which Elon Musk and Doge did not answer, because there is no answer. Should the American government become an engine for profit? To return the value of shareholders? Does Medicaid need to demonstrate an adjustment of the product market in time for the next financing round?
This is the consulting logic. It is an engineering sprint whose inevitable finish line is the progress of the social contract. Democracy does not die in darkness after all; He died in Jira tickets deposited by the alumni of Palantir.
