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.”
The lord of the rings works behind a nondescript door in a Beverly Hills office building, not far from the UCLA campus where he once sold hair clips and trinkets from a folding table. Jason Arasheben was $28,000 in debt back then, running low on options. Now, eight of the last 11 NBA champions have worn his jewelry on their fingers.
Super Bowl winners have his rings, too — the Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Philadelphia Eagles and the Seattle Seahawks, whose players opened their ornate jewelry boxes at a private team party Thursday night to find the prize every NFL player covets.
The Seahawks ring, large as a child’s fist, is encrusted with 20 carats of white diamonds and blue sapphires. It’s a miniature Lumen Field, featuring the hawk-head logo and two Lombardi Trophies. The top lifts off and converts into a pendant. Inside is a cowhide segment of a game-used football. Twelve flags on the sides nod to the “12th Man” fan base; one is a secret button — push it and the arches pop out to reveal the words “World Champions.”
A look at the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl ring celebrating their 2025 season championship.
(Courtesy of Jason of Beverly Hills)
Even the box performs. Three tiny spotlights shine on the ring as it rotates on a mechanical platform. Each weighs about a third of a pound.
“It’s a memento to a certain period of time,” said Arasheben, whose company is Jason of Beverly Hills. He concedes the rings are closer to trophies than wearable jewelry. He competes for ring contracts with Tiffany & Co. and Jostens, both much larger operations. “It celebrates this time that these players and these fans will remember forever.”
His rings appraise for $50,000 to $250,000, though the market can push them higher. In 2024, Kobe Bryant’s 2000 Lakers ring sold at auction for $927,000, the highest price ever paid for an NBA title ring, topping Bill Russell’s 1957 ring at $705,000.
Beverly Hills jewler Jason Arasheben is
(Ric Tapia / For The Times)
NFL franchises typically order two or three times what NBA, NHL or MLB teams request — as many as 3,000 rings in four quality tiers. Lower-level employees might get cubic zirconia instead of diamonds. A limited number of fan versions are available at smaller scale and lower price. Arasheben always builds two extra into his contract so each of his sons can have one.
A career in luxury jewelry was never the plan. He grew up in Granada Hills and Calabasas; his Iranian father and Norwegian mother envisioned a doctor, lawyer or engineer. At UCLA, he found himself more interested in bars than books.
“I was $28,000 in debt because I enjoyed going out far too much, like every other college student,” he said.
One day he tagged along with a friend to the wholesale district downtown and had a flash of inspiration. She was buying plastic hair clips and silver trinkets by the dozen. He figured he could sell them to girls on campus.
(Courtesy of Jason of Beverly Hills)
He pitched the idea of a folding table to the university, which agreed when he offered to split the profits. He bought $400 worth of tchotchkes. One table became two, then six locations across Southern California campuses.
Then came the motherlode. He built acrylic display cases holding 30 to 40 pieces and drove from Agoura Hills to San Diego, stopping at every nail salon he could find, splitting the profits with owners who let him put a case on the counter. By his senior year, he had agreements with roughly 350 salons and was clearing $25,000 to $30,000 a month.
After college, as a regular on the L.A. nightclub scene, Arasheben built relationships with professional athletes and celebrities. He would go home and sketch chain designs for players he’d met, knowing nothing about the jewelry industry.
“Finally, an NBA player said, ‘Why don’t you come to my hotel room tomorrow before we play the Lakers and bring all the jewelry you have? I’m going to buy something from you,’ ” said Arasheben, describing an encounter with the late Anthony Mason.
Problem was, he had no jewelry. He spent the night cutting pictures from magazines and downloading images to create a makeshift catalog, then promised Mason a custom $40,000 necklace. Mason put down $20,000.
Arasheben went downtown, knocked on doors and found somebody to make it for $37,000. A new business was born, growing by word of mouth. Eventually he had four employees and a small office downtown, outsourcing most of his work.
Through his friendship with Jim Buss, son of owner Jerry Buss, Arasheben landed the contract to make the Lakers’ 2009 championship ring. It was a mad scramble. He and his employees slept in sleeping bags on the factory floor the final two weeks of production.
“We delivered the very last player ring 20 minutes before the ceremony began,” he said. “The ring ceremony was on national television, and can you imagine if they had to announce the rings weren’t ready? My career would have been over before it started.”
He made the Lakers ring in 2010, too, and five years later — through relationships with several Golden State players — produced four championship rings for the Warriors.
Tom Brady saw LeBron James’ ring during the 2020 offseason and convinced the Buccaneers to go with Arasheben.
A lot of Arasheben’s rings have James Bond elements such as secret compartments or special elements. The top comes off the miniature SoFi Stadium on the Rams ring, for instance, and the field below is made of a melted-down patch of the actual artificial turf. The World Series ring of the Texas Rangers features a tiny circle of leather from a game-used baseball.
He first incorporated a special feature in the 2018 Warriors ring, when a star player objected to a blue face and wanted white, only weeks from delivery. Arasheben devised a mechanism allowing the face to switch colors.
Jason Arasheben poses with some of the sports championship rings he has crafted over the years.
(Ric Tapia / For The Times)
“We started getting a lot of championship ring contracts after that,” he said. “Because we took it to a new level and showed some ingenuity. We wanted to be innovative.”
Push a button on the Eagles’ ring and wings pop out on the sides. Arasheben came up with that idea while shopping for a Buzz Lightyear toy for his nephew.
Buzz, too, has wings that pop out.
“I thought, ‘I can do that for the Eagles, but with amazing gold and diamonds,’ ” he said.
He will put a proposal together to make the medals for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Then there’s the one that got away.
“We lost out on the L.A. Dodgers,” Arasheben said. “… But you know, that’s part of the business. You take your lumps.
“But I’ll still pitch. Every year, I pitch.”
Fox Corp. has agreed to acquire the streaming platform Roku Inc. in a deal valued at $22 billion, the companies announced Monday.
The deal will combine the Murdoch family’s media assets, which include its news, sports and broadcast channels, with the San José-based streaming platform that reaches 100 million consumers globally.
The acquisition would give Fox access to consumer households at a time when the traditional pay-TV universe continues its slow decline as viewers move away from cable and satellite services to video streaming. Fox already owns the free ad-supported streaming service Tubi, which recently became profitable.
“This is a defining moment for Fox and a natural extension of the deliberate and focused strategy we have been executing for nearly a decade,” Fox Corp. Executive Chair Lachlan Murdoch said in a statement.
By owning Roku, Fox gets access to data from the 100 million households connected to the service, which can be used to better target audiences with advertising. The combination would also make Fox less dependent on traditional pay TV platforms for the distribution of its channels.
“While Fox remains in a strong position to monetize its existing portfolio within the evolving pay TV ecosystem, we see this deal as a way to ensure the company’s future as streaming overtakes traditional distribution in the years ahead,” analyst firm MoffettNathanson wrote.
According to Nielsen data, 21% of all internet-connected TV viewing comes through Roku. The Roku Channel, which carries 500 ad-supported streaming networks, accounts for 3% of all TV viewing.
An image of a Roku branded TV.
(Roku)
Research firm EMarketer projects ad revenue of $3.57 billion for Roku this year, up 19% from last year.
Lloyd Greif, chief executive of the Los Angeles investment bank Greif & Co., said that Roku would have been challenged to compete against far better capitalized competitors in the streaming business and that a sale was “inevitable.”
For Fox, the proposed deal makes it a larger player in the digital advertising business. EMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes said the Roku business will “more than double” the company’s revenue in that area.
“It remains to be seen how well the combination of a digitally innovating streaming company will mesh with a media conglomerate rooted in legacy assets,” Benes said. “But the strategy makes sense and it jibes with the continual consolidation that’s occurring in streaming.”
Fox sold its TV and movie production assets to Walt Disney Co. in 2018. Rather than invest heavily in scripted entertainment to compete with emerging streaming companies, Fox decided to concentrate on sports and news.
The Roku deal will put Fox deeper into the distribution network. Over its history, the company has held stakes in satellite TV provider DirecTV and Sky TV.
Fox’s streaming aspirations have been modest up to this point. The company launched its stand-alone direct-to-consumer subscription service Fox One, offering Fox News and other channels outside a pay TV package.
The company acquired the ad-supported streaming service Tubi for $440 million in 2020. The business is now approaching $1.5 billion in annual revenue.
The companies said they are committed to keeping Roku as a “partner-friendly” platform that carries program services that compete with Fox. Brian Wieser, a consultant at Madison and Wall, said that might require some convincing.
“Other content owners may still need Roku’s distribution, but they may be less comfortable with the idea that one of their competitors controls an increasingly important part of the streaming interface,” Wieser wrote in his note on the proposed deal.
Roku shareholders will receive a combination of cash and Fox Corp. stock valued at $160 a share.
The companies say they expect a cost savings of $400 million in the combined entity.
Roku was founded in 2002 by Anthony Wood, a British digital entrepreneur. The company launched a streaming device, the Roku player, in 2008. Within six years, the company sold more than 10 million devices, as the popularity of streaming video rapidly grew.
Fox Corp. shares closed down 11% on news of the deal Monday, ending the day at $54.76. Roku shares closed at $140.90 apiece.
Times staff writer Wendy Lee contributed to this report.
Just two years ago, Monarch Tractor was worth half a billion dollars and ready to shake up the wine industry. In April, it shut its headquarters, laid off its employees and sold its technology to a competitor.
The wine-country startup wanted to revolutionize the cultivation of grapes and other fruit with $100,000 robotractors, but the technology didn’t work well enough. At a time when Waymo’s impressive success and the advent of AI have rekindled excitement about everything driverless, Monarch’s failure to disrupt has become another cautionary tale about massive bets on the latest tech.
The driver optional, battery-powered tractors — built skinny enough to fit in the narrow lanes between the rows of grapevines near its headquarters in Livermore — were going to make it easier and cheaper to handle pests, irrigation and harvesting. They were supposed to use cameras and sensors to collect data, learn what works best and then share that learning online with thousands of other high-tech tractors.
On the back of hopes it could save farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Monarch tractor made Time magazine’s list of the year’s best inventions in 2023. That same year, Monarch was on a Forbes list of startups most likely to reach a $1-billion valuation. It made it halfway there the following year.
“Every farmer around the world is under tremendous pressure because of a lack of labor,” Monarch Chief Executive Praveen Penmetsa told Forbes in 2023, projecting hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. “We are the only all-electric, smart, driver-optional tractor in the world that farmers can buy today.”
But just as the technology seemed poised to move from moonshot to mainstream, customer complaints started coming in.
Patrick O’Connor, who runs Moonvine Wines, an organic vineyard near the Sierra Foothills wine region, was one of the first users and said the tractors too often went rogue, veering off straight paths and damaging his vines.
“It totally failed,” O’Connor said in an Instagram video. “While I was excited to eliminate diesel, run off my solar panels and embrace new technology, it just did not perform. It was actually quite dangerous.”
The potentially world-changing technology wasn’t working as designed. Meanwhile, Monarch hit a wall when its manufacturer — the same company that makes most iPhones — had to stop making the tractors.
“Building and scaling a new tractor platform in agriculture came with unforeseen challenges,” the company said in a statement in April.
Monarch and its founders did not respond to requests for comments.
The company was launched in 2018 with a promising pedigree.
Its founding team included Tesla veteran Mark Schwager and Napa Valley wine scion Carlo Mondavi, the grandson of Napa legend Robert Mondavi.
Penmetsa, the chief executive, had worked for years in the automotive and EV industries, largely in and around Los Angeles.
The company set out with the ambitious goal of bringing battery power, data collection and driverless technology to tractors. If it could pull it off, it could change farming around the world.
The Californian wine industry has been struggling with rising competition and dwindling demand, which could have nudged more farmers to try to save money using Monarch’s technology. It also could have made farmers more cautious about using unproven and expensive new technology.
Monarch may have aimed too high, industry insiders said.
While Monarch was trying to solve two problems at once — making its tractor both electric and autonomous — it didn’t spend enough time thinking about farmers’ needs, said Walter Duflock, vice president of innovation for the Western Growers Assn. Duflock owns San Bernardo Rancho, a fifth-generation family ranch in south Monterey County.
“The electric tractor has struggled to find a use case on the farm,” Duflock said in an interview. “They never got to the point where their electric vehicle was solving a fundamental problem.”
On Duflock’s ranch and many other California farms, there’s little to no charging infrastructure, he said. Even if infrastructure was developed, the time it takes to charge an electric tractor is too long for most farmers who can’t have downtime during busy seasons.
“The notion of sitting there waiting for a charging tractor to finish getting charged just doesn’t fit,” Duflock said.
Duflock heard that the Monarch tractor “would bump into stuff, it would not stop fast enough,” he said. “It just did not work.”
Monarch’s collapse was gradual. In July 2024, the company laid off 15% of its workforce, followed by another round of layoffs in November that year that affected around 35 employees, or 10% of its workforce. A year later, the company warned employees it could lay off 100 workers or even “shut down” in a company-wide memo obtained by TechCrunch.
In November 2025, Monarch Tractor was sued by the Idaho-based dealership Burks Tractor, which accused Monarch of misrepresenting its autonomous technology.
Burks Tractor paid Monarch more than $770,000 for 10 tractors.
“Upon receiving the tractors, Burks Tractor discovered that the tractors did not perform as represented and were unable to operate autonomously,” the complaint said.
A Burks Tractor manager declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation.
Monarch’s vehicles were supposed to be manufactured at a facility in Ohio owned by Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics company known for assembling iPhones. Foxconn sold the factory in August 2025, shutting down Monarch’s plans there.
In April, Monarch sold the technology it had spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing to construction giant Caterpillar, for an undisclosed amount.
“It means the technology will continue to move forward,” with another company, Monarch said in a LinkedIn post at the time. “Thank you to our employees, investors and customers for being a part of this journey.”
Caterpillar did not respond to requests for comment.
Other companies are plowing forward where Monarch has failed.
For example, farm equipment company John Deere has had more success marketing and selling autonomous farm equipment. It has taken a different approach, gradually incorporating autonomous technology into its existing products. The company’s 8R tractor can operate autonomously while being controlled by a smartphone and has been deployed at large-scale commodity farms growing corn, soy and wheat.
Organic vineyard owner O’Connor still uses his Monarch tractor, but only as a battery and to cut wood with an attachment he has added.
-
Lifestyle26 minutes ago‘Widow’s Bay’ is an island in the scream : Pop Culture Happy Hour
-
Technology38 minutes agoInside the fight over Claude Mythos 5
-
World41 minutes agoRussia linked to arson attacks on properties connected to UK PM Keir Starmer, police say
-
Politics46 minutes agoTrump admin puts alleged ‘birth tourism’ scheme on notice as expert delivers warning to hospitals
-
Health53 minutes agoTV news anchorman reveals he has Alzheimer’s during final night helming broadcast
-
Sports56 minutes ago2026 World Cup Golden Boot Odds: Mbappé Favored, Havertz Surges
-
Technology1 hour agoSmart street sensors could be watching your city next
-
Business1 hour ago
Meet the Beverly Hills jeweler who crafted the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl ring
