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Let me tell you we have a new star. A star is born Elan mars Jusan Kennemy.
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy.
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does. But those two percent that are nasty, they are out pay in full post.
We were meant for great things in the United States of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
I'm very disappointed in Elan. I've helped Elan a lot.
Hey, David Papatoapple's here, hosts of E Laning, and this week we're going to roll out another installment of our Summer Jealousy series. This time we have co host Max Chafkin interviewing wire reporter and friend of pod McKenna Kelly about her eight reporting on all things Doge, past, present
and future. So, by the way, I'll just note that this conversation was recorded before Edward Korstein, the Doge guy known as Big Balls, was attacked in a carjacking in Washington, DC, and before President Donald Trump responded to that incident by threatening and then actually ordering the federal government to take over the DC police. Okay, enough for me, enjoy the interview.
We're joined now by McKenna Kelly, who is a friend of the show but also a senior writer at Wired. She covers tech in politics, and listeners will know her because for the past six months or so, McKenna has been covering DOGE very closely, and we've talked her.
Before we talked to her, I think.
It was what in the beginning of the year about this kind of crazy effort by Elon Musk to bring these technologists into the government. But a lot's changed since then, and we wanted to bring McKenna back on the podcast to talk about what happened, what the legacy of DOGE has been, and what comes next.
McKenna, thanks for joining us.
Yeah, it's great to be back, all right.
One of the reasons I wanted to do this is because, you know, the Trump administration, like, there's this thing where it's a reality show. Every day there's a new thing, and and I think for a lot of people, DOGE has sort of receded into the background, but this stuff has been hugely consequential.
And I want to kind of take stock of it.
So just to start of all that's happened, big balls of it, all the Elon Musk, all all the craziness. Like what do you see as like the top line consequence of like all of the headlines around DOGE over the last six months or so.
Yeah, So, I mean looking at what the last few months have brought from DOGE and Elon, and I think even now with Elon out at the picture and leaving government,
I still feel like Doge has a lasting impression. And I feel as if that big picture impression that we can see across all agencies, across so many parts of government is that it's being more run like a private business than you know, what the government used to be prior to this, and that comes with a lot of different consequences and ramifications when it comes to hiring, staffing, contracting, just a variety of things that the government does every
day being done in a fundamentally different way.
How do you evaluate the claims that Musk and others in the Trump administration have made. So I was told that DOGE was going to be incredibly transparent, and there is a website doze dot govnor where it will tell you, we'll give you like a number, like I think the amount of savings right now is one hundred and ninety nine billion. According to this website, there is a leader board that I guess purports to show progress of which
agencies have saved the most. Has there been significant savings as far as your reporting is shown, I think.
It's fair to say that we can put a number on it. However, many billion, if it's one hundred and nine billion, whatever it is. First of all, you know, over the last six months has been hard to even figure out if these numbers are legitimate. There's been so many discrepancies, you know, trying to even just like the numbers being completely wrong, the numbers that they pull and put on that website right, and so it's hard to
take anything on there as fact. But I think the biggest story about these savings, though, is that when you look at what the government spends, so much of the spending goes to defense, it goes to Medicare, it goes to Social Security, and those are the things that the administration didn't want to cut. So what does that leave you.
It leaves you with programs that the health and Human Services agencies they leave you with cutting things like the PEP far and treating AIDS across you know, across the globe. And so what we see more so is this refusal to make these cuts, you know, in different places, which leaves you such a tiny kind of meager bucket in the grand scheme of things, of cuts that can be made. But those cuts have rastic, you know, just dramatic consequences
for people. There's you know, there's been experts who have tried to do the math on how many people have died as a result of these cuts, and it's somewhere like two hundred thousands, like the number that I've seen most recently, including adults and children, just from things like AIDS or malaria or programs that the government, the US
government use to support. And so you look at the savings, I think if you look at like the Trump Administration's recent like big beautiful bill and all of the you know, the trillions that have been added to the deficit, axios recently had a number like dojis savings compared to you know, the rest of it the administration has done has been something like six percent, just extremely meager savings in the grand scheme of things, yeah.
I mean the thing that's been crazy to me is and I guess we should have predicted this. But if you send a bunch of like first Principles thinkers to do like a close reading of government spending, you may find waste, but you also may sort of get tour of all the things the government does, some of which are really impressive. And I mean, like we've seen that so vividly with pepfar, which I think many people sort of if they were aware of it, they had sort
of forgotten about it. And you look and there are estimates you alluded to this, but like we found one at the Lancet estimating that because of the cuts to the USAID programs, they're looking at potentially fourteen million people dying between now and twenty thirty who would have otherwise lived. I mean, like a real body count to some of these cuts. There's also the sort of brain drain quality of this, right, And of course there are two ways of seeing this. You know, on one hand, maybe they're
just like cutting the dead weight. I mean, this comes this comes up a lot anytime. There are layoffs in the private sector as well, but like we're talking about what like tens of thousands of people whose careers were ended. I think found one estimates from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. It's a progressive nonprofit saying, you know, fifty thousand people.
What do you think the scale of those losses has been.
Yeah, I mean, first off, like this has completely changed what government work was for so many people they leave the private sector and join government because it's a more stable job. Sure, you're not going to get paid as much as you would at a Google or Facebook or something like that, but there are benefits and you're not you know, you haven't been afraid of being laid off constantly, So dough is completely shook that up. Everyone at these
agencies are still terrified, even though Elon is out. All of my sources at a bunch of agencies where DOGE still is are terrified that they're going to get laid off. All the work that has gone to them now with people who have either retired early or been forcibly removed from government, that work still needs to get done. And even you know, the folks who are still there are
completely exhausted and trying to find exit ramps themselves. And so, like you mentioned, like people would go to the public sector to have a bit of a piece of mind about their career, and now it's just as in their minds, just as tumultuous as the private sector.
All right, let's talk about you alluded to it a couple times, but like this shift of what Doge is now. You wrote a great piece for Wired about you know, quote unquote Doge two point zero. What do you see as Doge two point zero?
Yeah, So, like I mentioned, there's a lot of those folks who were brought on at the beginning Edward big Balls chorusing Luke Farredder. Yeah, and so a lot of those kids are still in government, right, They're at a variety of different agencies. Farreader is still at the Department of Labor. He still has, you know, a tremendous amount of power. But I think Doge one point oh can be defined as this chaotic reckoning. All these people were getting fired, right, It was about cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts
to contracts, cuts to all of that stuff. And we're moving into something that feels more like a rebuilding, right, So taking the scraps and the chaos that was left by Doorge point one point oh, and maybe to Doge two point zero, I think there's still cuts. I think the Washington Post reported recently about this like DOGE deregulation
tool that they built. It's like an AI tool that's supposed to go through two hundred thousand regulations in the US government and find the ones to cut, which does it sound like a very good way of going about all of that. So there's still cuts, but there's major IT projects that are still still undergoing. In April, I reported about this tool that was being built at the IRS that was essentially just just like Mega API to unify all of the data at IRS to make it
more easily accessible and readable. That is still ongoing. It was supposed to be done in thirty days, is what Sam Corcos, the guy who was running that, the DOGE guy who was running that IRIS, was trying to say. It's definitely been a lot more than thirty days. That is a very hard project. And there's you know, similar projects going on at other agencies as well, and so yeah, I think the OAG two point zero can be defined more as this kind of rebuilding moment.
I think also, and tell me if this is wrong.
I mean, it seems like part of what's going on is like these guys the Farador Cours team, the sharp young things that Elon Musk brought in, the Doge bros are basically being integrated within agencies, Like Doge is embedding itself within different agencies and it's no longer really called Doge anymore. Like the Trump administration has rebranded, and I want to talk about that rebranding and like what you think is driving it, because there seemed like a couple
of different possibilities and maybe they're all driving. One is obviously the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and Elon Musk essentially first being eased out of Trump's orbit and then having like a full blown fight with Donald Trump, where I think the Trump administration now like doesn't want to have a lot of association with Elon Musk. I think the second thing, which is maybe more important, is that this stuff turned out to be really really unpopular.
Yeah, especially with the Cabinet secretary secretaries where this was happening. You see these Doge people being integrated into these agencies, and most of the time they're being integrated in groups that are more directly reporting to the cabinet secretaries and their teams rather than you know, an Amy Gleeson or Steve Davis or Elon Musk. So these cabinet secretaries want to have more oversight of what's happening at their agencies.
We heard so much about Scott Bessant being like totally upset with Elon, openly feuding with him at the White House.
Yeah, I mean maybe he gave him the black eye. We don't know, and I'm just kidding or have kidding, right, Yeah, that was a.
Meme exactly, but you see that, And so they want to have more oversight of this because even over I feel like over the last couple of months we did this story. You kind of talked about it about DOGE two point zero and what it is, and I remember we went to the White House and even some of you know, senior administration officials there still had no idea
of what DOGE was doing. Like some of what we're telling them is like news to them, and so they need I think part of this new version of DOGE is giving it a bit more accountability and oversight from the politicals in charge.
Yeah, this story that you're talking about, this is Doughtube. Listeners should definitely read it because it gives kind of like the most comprehensive account of like what is happening right now published in early July. One thing, and mckennay, you alluded to this earlier, but part of this dough tube we know is adopting some of these sort of corporate processes that seem at once very familiar to anyone who's worked in a large company and also just like
comically inefficient. It's like the next step of the you know, Elon Musk loved to show the like memes of the Office Space Consultants, the Bobs, acting like he was one of the Office Space consultants, which always felt weird because you're, like, the Bobs are the villains of that movie, and now we're getting sort of weird corporate processes that don't seem inherently who knows, maybe they are more efficient, but they
don't seem obviously more efficient to me. It seems like many of your sources don't necessarily view them as inherently more efficient than what was going on before.
Yeah, one of the things that stands out to me that maybe isn't like the sexiest thing, but there was the Executive Order earlier this year where they wanted to bring procurement and contracting into GSA, and so GSA, the General Services Administration, would be doing all of the contracting work for every agency, which maybe sounds great, right to somebody in the private industry, like we should have one team doing all of this work. But it's really different.
When GSA does a lot of like tech, they do a lot of like work specialized for them that they've been doing for a very long time, instead having them to do, you know, trying to get these people who haven't worked at these agencies to figure out the best you know, the best tech, the best resources, the best consultants,
all of these things. For agencies like AHHS, h CDC, these more specialized groups, the Department of Energy and Nuclear, you're asking folks who have no background in this to make decisions on some of the most important programs in our country. And so talk about inefficiency a lot of
these folks. And there's far less stuff right in these procurement offices as well, so they're going to have to really go through some process of like learning all of this stuff in order to make this administration goal work.
Let's bring it back to Elon before we wrap. One of the more intriguing things to come out of your reporting recently was sort of information about Elon's continued to influence within DOGE, like the fact, first of all, the fact that a bunch of these Elon left he and Trump are beefing. He's like talking about Epstein on Twitter all the time, threatening to fund primary challenges, and yet a bunch of the people he's still hired are in
positions of power. And you even reported in your story that he was having sort of more direct influence via deputies and so on, who are talking still kind of in communication with members of the Trump administration or people in senior positions. Is that still going on and do you see that as a kind of lasting impact.
I don't have any news on whether that is still ongoing this kinds of communication, but I do believe that Elon's influence is still there, especially if you look at someone like Luke Ferreder who is still in government. I can't imagine someone like Luke or Big Balls or whoever, or have plans to stay in the government forever.
Right.
Their allegiance is more to this kind of like Silicon Valley mindset, these kinds of companies, and so they don't want to do anything that would you know, put them out of favor with Elon, and I think that is maybe where more of that lasting influence will be as long as those folks continue to work in government.
Do you think we're going to look back and say that Elon Musk profited from this experience? I ask because there have been reports at various points right about Musk getting access to data, like not even necessarily not like sensitive data to like violate people's privacy, but data that would give him insight perhaps into markets that could be
useful from a business perspective. There's also been suggestions that, like, for instance, X Money, that this effort by X to like launch a payments platform, like one of the motivations for gutting the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was
to launch X money, Like you could go on and on. Right, They're different parts of the regulatory apparatus that touched Elon Musk, And there has been this sort of suggestion that we're not just witnessing sort of destruction of government for the sake of efficiency. We're seeing something that looks more like looting. And I'm kind of curious how your sources see it and how you think about this conversation.
Yeah, so I don't know if there's really been much reporting about whether Elon himself has like walked out of government with this like USB drive, you know, with all of this data on it. So I think the work that Doge did that could benefit Elon in the long run that we can you know that I think we can make a fair prediction would be, like you mentioned the CFPB for example, does Elon have information that can
maybe help in with competitors, Who knows. But what did happen is that he his team like basically Holy defanged that agency. If there is something that Elon wants to do with expay or whatever it is, the regulator there who would go after him has far less resources than it did before. And so I don't know if we can say that he will come out of this with
like bags of gold bullion from all of this. But I think he's created more of a shield for himself and his businesses by the cuts that he made on these agencies.
What about his reputation you know for whatever you know, help gutting the CFPV provided there is a sense that like Trump at least say, I have a sense that Trump has essentially let Elon take the fall for Doge and like he's going to get blamed for this, and like this is going to be this thing that if you look at the public polling, is super unpopular, right, Like the idea of making government more efficient is very popular. The idea of Elon Musk's specific brand of making the
government efficient is extremely unpopular. And I think maybe that's that's the legacy, is just that Elon has like permanently damaged his reputation or or has added another thing that is going to be hard for him to overcome in terms of his and in terms of like his companies and so on.
Yeah, I think that's still to be seen though, Right, there are still like these MAGA influencers who were obsessed with Elon. There are still these MAGA influencers who, after all this Epstein stuff with Trump, are willing to carry water for him as well. Right, And So I don't know if I've seen anything that has dramatically, you know, changed the way that you know, the people who really support, you know, the real true believers feel about him. I guess it's still kind of like to be seen, all.
Right, McKenna, prediction time.
We will hold you to this prediction and invite you back to to discuss it. But how where do you see DOGE a year from now, twenty twenty six will be heading into the midterm elections. Is it going strong? Is Big Ball still there? Two questions. One is a sort of government question, which is do you think this project will be ongoing in some form and to will it be will it have political salience, will be a political issue that will help decide the midterms potentially even the next presidency.
Hmmm, Dog is technically around till July twenty sixth, the next year.
Okay, mark your calendar listeners, that's.
When it's officially over. Kind of what I'm seeing now, and if the trend continues for the next year, we're going to continue to see these kinds of dog folks from tech cycling in and out of government, you know, doing some projects and then leaving. But I see like there's still a bunch of people who are really excited about this mission. I imagine they'll want to be a part and then do their one hundred or something days and then leave. But I don't think DOGE will ever
be what it was in January and February, right. I think more so of what the legacy of DOGE is is this kind of cultural shakeup, right, this changing of what can happen in government and how it operates. And you know, in a year from now, we'll probably see a lot more of the consequences of these cuts, maybe things that you know happen sooner, you know, closer to
the election that maybe. But yeah, I feel as if the Democrats will still try and go after Elon the Republicans for a lot of what happened this year.
Yeah, I think it's going to be a huge political issue actually as we're talking through it, just because anything you're mad about with the government, we've just created this situation or the Republicans really in doing this, like create a situation where you create all this this like huge vector for attack, which I think is why like deficits, it's very hard to cut deficits spending in general, and even if you're like super subtle about it and like
very politically nuanced, you still create that vector of attack. But Elon Musk did it in such a gonzo way that it's going to make it almost possible for this not to be a huge issue. I feel like we need to stock up on those DOGE baseball Caps now because they're gonna be hard to find in a year from now.
We can sell him on eBay.
Baby, mm you know, I think I think you're right. Oh man, where do we get those do chats?
Anyways, we've gotta find Elon's eBay alt and uh probably got McKenna Kelly.
Thanks for joining.
Us, Yeah, no problem, great being here.
This episode is produced by Stacy Wong and edited by Anna Masarrakas Blake Maple's Handles engineering, with help from Joyce Tang Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The Elon Inc. Theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. A big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Popdopolis. If you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help
other listeners find us. See you next week.