Elon Musk's chainsaw for bureaucracy

For the first time in history, the leader of the most powerful nation is forming a direct alliance with the richest man on the planet – one who is shaping the very future of technology – to run the government.

Elon Musk’s role in Trump 2.0 is far more complex than one might imagine. He is not just another campaign donor seeking personal gain or trying to cash in on his 'rightful dues' after spending $250 million on Donald Trump’s re-election for the White House.

Musk heads the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the US government, with some analysts rightly calling him the "co-president" of the United States.

“Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive. Remember, we have a country to save – and ultimately, to make it greater than ever before," wrote President Trump in a recent post on X.

Licence to fire 

Elon Musk's 'backdoor' entry into the American government has sent shockwaves through the administrative machinery, casting him as a modern-day James Bond with a 'license to fire' US federal employees. One of the first initiatives undertaken by the DOGE is a mission to downsize bureaucracy through the mass firing of federal workers. The Department of Government Efficiency is entrusted with what seems to be the US president's core priority: cutting government expenditure and eliminating so-called wasteful spending.

"We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that," claimed Donald Trump in an interview.

Last month, US federal employees received an unusual email requesting them to provide proof of work for the previous week. Musk's X post states that those who fail to comply must resign.

According to news reports, DOGE is using a software called AutoRIF to mass-fire workers, which was originally developed by the US Department of Defense two decades ago. Elon Musk wants Artificial Intelligence to run US government departments, and DOGE envisions a nearby future where technology handles daily tasks.

For many Americans, the reduction of staff in essential services has become a major concern. The new Trump administration has cut nearly 800 jobs from the National Weather Service (NWS), including employees who had excellent probationary reviews.

As the NWS plays a crucial role in preventing natural disasters, there are serious apprehensions that understaffing could lead to failures in the early detection of wildfires. It may also make it harder for emergency responders to get important information while fighting wildfires, like the massive one in California that burned through Los Angeles this year.

One of the first interventions of DOGE was eliminating the research division at the US Department of Education entrusted with tracking information about schools and students across the country.

Argentinian predecessor

Unlike what is commonly thought, the chainsaw approach to government implemented by the Trump-Musk duo is not a standalone trend in the world.  Strangely enough, the capitalist powerhouse, the United States, has a predecessor in Latin America that was once a bastion of left-wing politics and Communist movements.

It all began aggressively in Argentina when its new president, Javier Milei – an avid fan and close friend of Elon Musk – came to power while the country’s economy was in acute recession.

Among other austerity measures, Argentina has introduced a separate Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation in 2024 to implement deeper public-sector job cuts and reduce government spending.

“We reduced the number of ministries from eighteen to eight. We eliminated nearly 100 secretariats and under-secretariats. We closed more than 200 areas that were duplicated for obsolete functions. We froze the salaries of high-ranking officials from January until now. We fired 34,000 government employees and are testing the qualifications of others,” Javier Milei declared in his official address to the nation while announcing that Argentina was out of recession.

The departments targeted for cuts include sports, culture, environment and sustainable development, women and diversity, and even public works.

Javier Milei paraded the chainsaw up and down during his successful presidential campaign, indicating the deep cuts he planned to make to Argentina’s state funding.

During his recent visit to the US, Milei presented Elon Musk with a massive chainsaw, symbolizing his goal to shrink the size of the US government. While meeting with conservative political supporters, Musk raised the special Latin American gift and referred to it as the ‘chainsaw for bureaucracy’.

It’s a fact that juxtaposing the deep cuts to the bureaucracies of the United States and Argentina doesn’t make much sense, given the significant differences in their administrative and governance systems.

The US bureaucracy, though traditionally lean and minimal, has long been pro-business and plays a key role in supporting the world’s largest capitalist economy. In contrast, Argentina, which has historically maintained a larger bureaucracy, is downsizing not only to reduce public spending but also to streamline governance processes, eliminate red tape, and make it easier to do business.

One of the first things Milei did after assuming power was meet with the CEOs of the world’s largest tech companies in Silicon Valley. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is a frequent visitor of the Argentinian President.

What unites Donald Trump and Javier Milei is their shared admiration for technocrats tasked with running the government.

However, what’s often overlooked is that technocrats-turned-billionaires now collect and store vast amounts of user data, including personal information. Their AI-driven algorithms don’t just predict behaviour – they shape it, influencing what people think, consume, and believe. In the process, they risk turning society into a passive, unquestioning crowd – what some might call 'masses into asses.'

A brave new world?

The chainsaw for bureaucracy is now cutting its way into Asia, interestingly enough, in a country where Americans faced a wartime nightmare half a century ago. Early this month, Vietnam laid off twenty percent of all government employees and civil servants, which comes to about 100,000 people. This downsizing move also includes the abolition of five government ministries, along with the merger of some others.

Elon Musk says that his mission is to restore democracy from the excesses of a large, unelected bureaucracy that holds more power than any elected representative.

"If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? This is not something the people want," explained Musk during his meeting with the US President in the Oval Office.

It's a striking irony that someone who vehemently criticises unelected bureaucracy is, as many analysts say, the most powerful bureaucrat in American history – without ever being elected.

(Social anthropologist and novelist Thomas Sajan and US-trained neurologist Titto Idicula, based in Norway, write on politics, culture, economy and medicine)