I remember one of my childhood heroes Neil deGrasse Tyson once claiming Elon Musk to be the most important person alive in our times. He said, “Elon Musk is trying to invent a future by thinking about society, culture, and how we interact to take civilization into the next century… he is the kind of person who will transform not only society but also civilization as we know it.”, and at that point, I couldn’t agree more. I belong to a generation that grew up idolizing Elon Musk, his visionary ideas about space travel, his state-of-the-art Tesla car venture, his entrepreneurial stories, and just his flamboyant personality made everyone think him to be the real-life Tony Stark. Well, how the mighty have fallen.
For the past few years, Musk’s actions and words have seemed to have gone to territories that are sometimes borderline and sometimes unabashedly problematic. Notorious for his time as the owner of X, the billionaire became the biggest supporter and promoter of Donald Trump in the recent US presidential elections. While some of the other influential billionaires were skeptical about their outright support for Trump, Musk went all in. And his gamble finally ‘paid off’. He will now co-lead Trump’s newly formed Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE). When you thought subtlety had completely gone out of the window in this presidential election, Musk is here to prove that it still has to fall deeper into the ocean of in-your-face.
What is DOGE?
Well, I don’t think anybody is unfamiliar with the beloved Doge meme, which later became the cryptocurrency vehemently endorsed by Musk. However, this is a different breed. On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced the formation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will be spearheaded by Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The task of this made-up department will be to “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. Musk promises to cut down the current 6.7 trillion total spending now by at least 2 trillion dollars.
However, this department which is not a Government agency (as it stands), just an advisory body to the White House and the ideas of the people at the helm have come under severe scrutiny. First of all, Vivek Ramaswamy wants to abolish the Department of Education as he believes public schools are getting too ‘woke’ and it would be the best course of action to simply dismantle them. Musk wants to bring down the 438 Federal agencies to 99. However, people are pointing out the irony of how this organization of only 2 people will reform the whole government structure, with Musk running 2 companies full-time.
From being a joke on the internet to being dubbed as the “Manhattan Project” of our time, ‘Doge’ indeed has come a long way.
Musk: The real winner?
Well, Musk hasn’t just been rewarded with power for his loyalty, he has had a significant financial gain in the process. His worth went up by 55 billion dollars in just a week, the election week, thanks to Tesla’s stocks skyrocketing during this time. One of his other prominent ventures Space X has ties and deals with NASA and the Defence Department, so don’t be surprised if SpaceX becomes the partner of choice for a lot of space exploration and defense contracts.
Will the Trump-Musk Bromance Survive?
No matter how many times Trump claims Musk to be “The Great Elon Musk” or “The greatest capitalist of America”, some fundamental differences remain between them. For example, in keeping with his climate change denialism, Trump has ridiculed electric vehicles for years, saying they suffer from range-related issues, are too expensive, and are made in China. And China, as it seems to have cordial ties with Musk. After the USA, China is Tesla’s second-largest market and the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai is Tesla’s largest production centre in the world. While Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink has often provided the Ukrainian army with certain advantages over the Russians, Trump has been perceived to have good relations with Vladimir Putin. Moreover, Musk has been notorious for his firings in his company, laying off nearly 80 percent of the Twitter employees after his take-over. Trump on the other hand has gained support from prominent union leaders in standing with pro-employee ideas for American workers.
If this relationship is to be survived, Musk has to walk on a tightrope, balancing his entrepreneurial endeavours with political diplomacy.
Sometimes I still wonder if this is the same Elon Musk who we thought was going to take humanity to Mars, to catalyze our civilization to a utopia only seen in science fiction. However, it seems like Musk has now become more of a man of fiction rather than science. We thought him to be the Dawg, turns out he only was a Doge.
