Business
Inside Elon Musk’s Plan for DOGE to Slash Government Costs
An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting.
As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.
After Inauguration Day, the group of Silicon Valley-inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they seek to cut costs like Mr. Musk did at X, his social media platform.
This story is based on interviews with roughly a dozen people who have insight into DOGE’s operations. They spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
On the eve of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the structure of DOGE is still amorphous and closely held. People involved in the operation say that secrecy and avoiding leaks is paramount, and much of its communication is conducted on Signal, the encrypted messaging app.
Mr. Trump has said the effort would drive “drastic change,” and that the entity would provide outside advice on how to cut wasteful spending. DOGE itself will have no power to cut spending — that authority rests with Congress. Instead, it is expected to provide recommendations for programs and other areas to cut.
But parts of the operation are becoming clear: Many of the executives involved are expecting to do six-month voluntary stints inside the federal government before returning to their high-paying jobs. Mr. Musk has said they will not be paid — a nonstarter for some originally interested tech executives — and have been asked by him to work 80-hour weeks. Some, including possibly Mr. Musk, will be so-called special government employees, a specific category of temporary workers who can only work for the federal government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period.
The representatives will largely be stationed inside federal agencies. After some consideration by top officials, DOGE itself is now unlikely to incorporate as an organized outside entity or nonprofit. Instead, it is likely to exist as more of a brand for an interlinked group of aspirational leaders who are on joint group chats and share a loyalty to Mr. Musk or Mr. Ramaswamy.
“The cynics among us will say, ‘Oh, it’s naïve billionaires stepping into the fray.’ But the other side will say this is a service to the nation that we saw more typically around the founding of the nation,” said Trevor Traina, an entrepreneur who worked in the first Trump administration with associates who have considered joining DOGE.
“The friends I know have huge lives,” Mr. Traina said, “and they’re agreeing to work for free for six months, and leave their families and roll up their sleeves in an attempt to really turn things around. You can view it either way.”
DOGE leaders have told others that the minority of people not detailed to agencies would be housed within the Executive Office of the President at the U.S. Digital Service, which was created in 2014 by former President Barack Obama to “change our government’s approach to technology.”
DOGE is also expected to have an office in the Office of Management and Budget, and officials have also considered forming a think tank outside the government in the future.
Mr. Musk’s friends have been intimately involved in choosing people who are set to be deployed to various agencies. Those who have conducted interviews for DOGE include the Silicon Valley investors Marc Andreessen, Shaun Maguire, Baris Akis and others who have a personal connection to Mr. Musk. Some who have received the Thiel Fellowship, a prestigious grant funded by Mr. Thiel given to those who promise to skip or drop out of college to become entrepreneurs, are involved with programming and operations for DOGE. Brokering an introduction to Mr. Musk or Mr. Ramaswamy, or their inner circles, has been a key way for leaders to be picked for deployment.
That is how the co-founder of Loom, Vinay Hiremath, said he became involved in DOGE in a rare public statement from someone who worked with the entity. In a post this month on his personal blog, Mr. Hiremath described the work that DOGE employees have been doing before he decided against moving to Washington to join the entity.
“After 8 calls with people who all talked fast and sounded very smart, I was added to a number of Signal groups and immediately put to work,” he wrote. “The next 4 weeks of my life consisted of 100s of calls recruiting the smartest people I’ve ever talked to, working on various projects I’m definitely not able to talk about, and learning how completely dysfunctional the government was. It was a blast.”
These recruits are assigned to specific agencies where they are thought to have expertise. Some other DOGE enrollees have come to the attention of Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy through X. In recent weeks, DOGE’s account on X has posted requests to recruit a “very small number” of full-time salaried positions for engineers and back-office functions like human resources.
The DOGE team, including those paid engineers, is largely working out of a glass building in SpaceX’s downtown office located a few blocks from the White House. Some people close to Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Musk hope that these DOGE engineers can use artificial intelligence to find cost-cutting opportunities.
The broader effort is being run by two people with starkly different backgrounds: One is Brad Smith, a health care entrepreneur and former top health official in Mr. Trump’s first White House who is close with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. Mr. Smith has effectively been running DOGE during the transition period, with a particular focus on recruiting, especially for the workers who will be embedded at the agencies.
Mr. Smith has been working closely with Steve Davis, a collaborator of Mr. Musk’s for two decades who is widely seen as working as Mr. Musk’s proxy on all things. Mr. Davis has joined Mr. Musk as he calls experts with questions about the federal budget, for instance.
Other people involved include Matt Luby, Mr. Ramaswamy’s chief of staff and childhood friend; Joanna Wischer, a Trump campaign official; and Rachel Riley, a McKinsey partner who works closely with Mr. Smith.
Mr. Musk’s personal counsel — Chris Gober — and Mr. Ramaswamy’s personal lawyer — Steve Roberts — have been exploring various legal issues regarding the structure of DOGE. James Burnham, a former Justice Department official, is also helping DOGE with legal matters. Bill McGinley, Mr. Trump’s initial pick for White House counsel who was instead named as legal counsel for DOGE, has played a more minimal role.
“DOGE will be a cornerstone of the new administration, helping President Trump deliver his vision of a new golden era,” said James Fishback, the founder of Azoria, an investment firm, and confidant of Mr. Ramaswamy who will be providing outside advice for DOGE.
Despite all this firepower, many budget experts have been deeply skeptical about the effort and its cost-cutting ambitions. Mr. Musk initially said the effort could result in “at least $2 trillion” in cuts from the $6.75 trillion federal budget. But budget experts say that goal would be difficult to achieve without slashing popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, which Mr. Trump has promised not to cut.
Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy have also recast what success might mean. Mr. Ramaswamy emphasized DOGE-led deregulation on X last month, saying that removing regulations could stimulate the economy and that “the success of DOGE can’t be measured through deficit reduction alone.”
And in an interview last week with Mark Penn, the chairman and chief executive of Stagwell, a marketing company, Mr. Musk downplayed the total potential savings.
“We’ll try for $2 trillion — I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” Mr. Musk said. “You kind of have to have some overage. I think if we try for two trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting one.”
Everyone will know more, he told me, when Quantica signs a contract with a tech company to use the facility. That announcement could come by the end of the year.
Besides, Mr. Peterson said, much of the apprehension over the data center comes from people who are afraid of A.I. more broadly, as if “Big Brother is going to take over,” he said.
Those people, he added, “have no role in this conversation.”
What Mr. Peterson could tell me now, he said, was that the project would have minimal impact on the land and the people who live nearby. And residents wouldn’t have to pay a thing for it. He offered no guarantees, but said the project would bring its own power — at least some of it from solar and natural gas.
Despite what opponents have been saying, and despite the information gleaned from data centers around the world, Mr. Peterson said the Broadview site would need “not that terribly much” water.
It will bring jobs, he said. Thousands of temporary workers could descend on Broadview for the construction. The number of permanent jobs would be 30, 40, 100 — he doesn’t know for sure. But he described them as good-paying jobs that would not require specialized training or a college education. Jobs like janitors, maintenance workers or security guards.
He likened it to “being a miner, but not having to grab a drill.” Generations of families could stay in Broadview because people would not have to move to make a living, as many are doing now. They could say, “Oh my gosh, I could push a broom and come home to my home in Lavina that I love — and my kids can do that?”
For anyone who doesn’t like the idea of living next to a data center, he added, “there’s probably a county up the road that doesn’t have one.”
He said the eventual deal would include a “community benefits package,” which could help Broadview pay for things like its problematic wastewater lagoon. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality issued the town a violation in March for longstanding issues at the site, demanding compliance. Remediation could cost millions.
After a 6½-year hiatus from theaters, “Star Wars” returns to the big screen this weekend with “The Mandalorian and Grogu.”
This time around, however, the franchise faces a much different universe than it did in 2019 when the last film came out. For one, theatrical attendance has fallen dramatically since “Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker” grossed more than $1 billion worldwide in the pre-pandemic days.
Then, there’s Walt Disney Co.-owned Lucasfilm’s own trajectory. In the last few years, new “Star Wars” stories have come only via streaming series on Disney+. And since the service debuted in 2019, the San Francisco-based studio pumped out 13 shows, including “The Mandalorian,” which inspired the film, though others received mixed reviews.
Lucasfilm is also under new leadership, as veterans Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan are now co-presidents after George Lucas’ handpicked successor, Kathleen Kennedy, stepped down this year.
It all adds up to a crucial question: Can the nearly 50-year-old franchise still delight its longtime fans, while bringing in new viewers to help it endure?
“There’s a lot riding on this,” said Jeff Bock, box-office analyst at entertainment data and research firm Exhibitor Relations. “It’s close to a make-or-break strategic test … just to see if the modern ‘Star Wars’ is still viable theatrically.”
“The Mandalorian and Grogu” is expected to gross around $80 million in the U.S. and Canada for the four-day Memorial Day weekend, according to studio estimates.
That would rank among some of the top openings this year, including Amazon MGM Studios’ “Project Hail Mary” ($80.5 million) and Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “The Devil Wears Prada 2” ($76.7 million). Another big sci-fi installment, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Entertainment’s “Dune: Part Two,” opened to $82.5 million in 2024.
But for a “Star Wars” movie, that’s considered low.
2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” for example, opened to $177 million, with 2015’s “The Force Awakens” and 2017’s “The Last Jedi” each debuting to more than $200 million. The $84-million opening for 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story” was considered a disappointment at the box office.
To be sure, theatrical expectations have changed dramatically since the pandemic, which altered moviegoers’ habits and trained many to wait and watch films at home.
“The Mandalorian and Grogu” also stems from a streaming series and does not continue the story line of the traditional “Star Wars” saga films that follow the Skywalker family. (The movie’s reported production budget of $166 million also makes it cheaper than its predecessors.)
And for Disney, box-office revenue will not be the only indicator of this film’s success.
Director Jon Favreau, left, and Pedro Pascal on the set of Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.”
(Nicola Goode / Lucasfilm Ltd. / Disney via Associated Press)
The company expects the movie will boost other parts of its business, including streaming, its gaming collaboration with Fortnite and the all-important theme parks, where the film’s main characters appear at the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge-themed land, and the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride has been overlaid with a “Mandalorian and Grogu” storyline.
Then of course, there’s merchandise. (Famously, fans rushed to buy items of Grogu — known colloquially as Baby Yoda — after “The Mandalorian” show debuted in 2019, though products didn’t arrive for months. Once available, 13 million Grogu toys were sold in the two years after they were released, Disney has said.)
“It’s not using cinema in the way ‘Star Wars’ used cinema before,” said Carmelo Esterrich, a professor at the school of communication and culture at Columbia College Chicago, who has written about how “Star Wars” is a reflection of American culture. “It’s using the franchise of television and the power machine of Grogu to bring it to the big screen.”
Grogu’s appeal highlights an important goal for the franchise: expanding beyond its original fan base to new audiences. Although “The Mandalorian and Grogu” builds on storylines from the streaming show, the film was designed to be accessible to viewers who had never watched it.
“I hope that our excitement and joy and love of ‘Star Wars’ translates to a new generation of fans seeing it, experiencing it the way we did for a long time,” director Jon Favreau told an audience in April at the CinemaCon trade conference during a presentation about Disney’s film lineup.
Early ticket sale tracking indicated strong interest from older men, who have historically been the core audience for “Star Wars” films. But after an extensive marketing campaign, Disney’s studio estimates now show audiences are younger, with more families and women represented.
To date, “The Mandalorian” is still the most popular Disney+ series. The show, which has run for three seasons, has won 15 Emmys, including for sound mixing and special effects. The critical and fan response, as well as the opportunity to explore new characters’ backstories, led Lucasfilm to choose this show to spin off into a movie, according to sources close to the studio.
Since the launch of the platform in November 2019, “The Mandalorian” and other “Star Wars” titles such as “The Acolyte” and the second season of “Andor” have seen relatively high audience demand, according to an analysis by Parrot Analytics, a firm that tracks streaming data. Despite several big hits, the average demand for live-action television series set in the galaxy far, far away have shown a slight downward trend over time.
In contrast, demand for live-action series from Disney-owned Marvel Studios has held stable since the premiere of its first streaming show, “WandaVision.” Though Marvel’s television offerings outnumber those of “Star Wars,” overall audience interest in the superhero shows is less than the biggest “Star Wars” hits and more comparable to some of Lucasfilm’s lesser-hyped titles, including “Skeleton Crew,” according to Parrot Analytics.
In the end, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” needs to keep audience interest in “Star Wars” on the big screen. Next year, Lucasfilm will release “Star Wars: Starfighter,” a film starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy of “Deadpool & Wolverine” that has generated great interest, particularly given Gosling’s turn in “Project Hail Mary.”
“This is a safe reentry point,” Bock of Exhibitor Relations said of “The Mandalorian” movie. “If Grogu can bring in the families and if ‘The Mandalorian’ continues to bring in the audiences of the old movies, maybe they can bridge these generations like classic ‘Star Wars’ once did.”
Oil prices fell sharply on Monday after American officials said the United States and Iran had agreed in principle to a peace deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trading route for oil and natural gas that normally carries up to one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. But final approval of a deal could take a while.
President Trump vowed on Monday that either a deal would be “great and meaningful” or “there will be no deal.” Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said on Monday that “no one can claim that the signing of an agreement is imminent,” according to Iran’s state broadcaster. Iran’s top negotiators, led by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Parliament, arrived in Qatar on Monday for further talks, Iranian state media said.
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