[By Gideon Litchfield, translated by Chen Jiarui of Guancha.cn]
Last month, a dejected Musk admitted that the Office of Government Efficiency "didn't meet my expectations." The office claims it has saved $170 billion for the U.S. government so far, primarily through layoffs, repealing regulations, canceling contracts, and cutting grants. However, they have not provided evidence or may have exaggerated these savings significantly.
It is estimated that the Office of Government Efficiency's hasty cuts to government spending will cost taxpayers an additional $135 billion this year. In fact, since Donald Trump took office, federal actual expenditures have continued to increase.
Musk has now reduced his involvement in government affairs and focused on his own companies, particularly the struggling Tesla. Various controversies triggered during his tenure are still unresolved.
Is he truly convinced that he can cut $1 trillion from the federal budget, or is he just using his internal position to secure contracts, gain intelligence on competitors, and keep troublesome regulatory agencies away from his company? Is he hoping to use artificial intelligence to revolutionize government processes, or is he simply trying to eliminate "wokeness"? Is the real purpose of the Office of Government Efficiency to consolidate data from dozens of agencies and establish a super-surveillance state?
All of the above could be true. However, the complete failure of the Office of Government Efficiency to reduce costs makes Musk look like a tool being used by others, with Russell Vought — the White House Office of Management and Budget director and one of the most powerful aides in the Trump administration — standing behind him.
Russell Vought, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget
To understand what Musk was doing at the Office of Government Efficiency, one only needs to read his biography.
Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, 688 pages, $35, published September 2023; Atoparrogance: The Fracturing of Elon Musk, by Faiz Siddiqui, St. Martin's Press, 336 pages, $30, published April 2025; Character Limit: How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter, by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Penguin Press, 480 pages, $32, published September 2024.
Although Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography of Elon Musk was often criticized as overly flattering, he remains the only biographer who has seriously engaged with Musk.
Isaacson, former chairman of CNN and editor of Time magazine, wrote in the book that Musk had developed a "vision for life" in his twenties, centered around three things he believed were crucial for humanity: the internet, due to its disruptive potential; sustainable energy, because of climate change issues; and space travel, because he believes humans must colonize other planets to ensure their survival.
Reid Hoffman, who worked with Musk at PayPal and co-founded LinkedIn with him, told Isaacson, "Elon starts with a vision and then finds ways to financially support its realization."
Another PayPal colleague, Max Levchin, added, "One of Elon's greatest skills is turning his vision into divine will."
Tesla is Musk's way of addressing climate change; SpaceX is his path to Mars. Driven by a sense of sacred mission, Musk views bureaucratic overreach and regulatory concerns about safety or environmental impacts as obstacles to human survival.
In his new book, Atoparrogance: The Fracturing of Elon Musk, Washington Post reporter Faiz Siddiqui elaborates on this. Unlike biographer Isaacson, Siddiqui did not personally interact with Musk, but he described how Tesla's CEO repeatedly clashed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its sister agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated fatal accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot feature, starting in 2016.
Atoparrogance: The Fracturing of Elon Musk
The book mentions that Tesla's argument is that "when comparing collision data, autonomous driving is safer than regular driving on highways."
In an event in 2022, Musk stated, "If you believe increasing autonomy can reduce casualties, then you have a moral obligation to deploy it." Following this logic, regulators trying to slow down the promotion of assisted driving are actually harming people.
Musk's disdain for bureaucrats and rules, his "cut first, fix later" cost-cutting strategy, his general disregard for planning, and his belief that he is always right are fully documented in Character Limit: How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter, co-authored by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac.
Musk slashed Twitter (now X) employees by four-fifths. Although the platform initially experienced some hiccups, it did not collapse. Why can't the same approach be applied to the federal government?
Therefore, when Musk and equally impulsive and confident Trump proposed the idea of establishing the Office of Government Efficiency last summer, it was hard to believe they had a well-thought-out plan; but there was one person—Vought (Vought) who saw how an institution led by attention-seeking "clowns" could secretly help achieve his goals.
Vought, who describes himself as a Christian nationalist, was one of the planners of the "2025 Plan," an extreme-right reform plan that posed significant harm. Therefore, Trump had already denied this plan during his campaign, but later appointed Vought as the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget to effectively implement this plan.
2025 Plan
Two years ago, Vought stated in a speech, "We want bureaucrats to feel traumatized. When they wake up in the morning, they won't want to go to work anymore." His main goal was to weaken what he considered the "deep state" controlled by the "radical left" and transfer more power to the president.
Last month, a report by Bloomberg journalist Max Chafkin disclosed details of the relationship between Musk and Vought. The report stated that after the election, Musk maintained regular contact with Vought and was viewed by Vought's allies as a public image representative, while Vought himself considered him a "force multiplier."
We cannot determine whether the methods Musk adopted at the Office of Government Efficiency—such as firing probationary federal employees (the group with the least labor protection) and taking over federal data systems—are his own ideas or inspired by Vought. Perhaps the White House Office of Management and Budget director merely realized that no one else could match Musk's decisiveness and encouraged him to bring his lightning-fast corporate thinking to government affairs.
Musk may genuinely believe that by drastically cutting staff and equipping a loyal team of young employees with AI tools and data access, he can streamline government agencies and eliminate waste and fraud. In reality, significantly reducing government spending is feasible, but it mainly requires ending subsidies to industries such as defense, finance, and healthcare, which necessitates major policy changes rather than simplifying government operations alone.
Musk may also believe that his conflicts of interest are irrelevant: after all, if his business activities are all for the benefit of humanity, wouldn't more government contracts be good for humanity?
In this process, Musk has indeed achieved Vought's goal of traumatizing bureaucrats. The integration of all government data is still ongoing. Even though Musk has stepped back, the White House can now use this data to target political opponents, undocumented immigrants, and recalcitrant civil servants.
Looking back, the real purpose of the Office of Government Efficiency has always been to strengthen control over federal bureaucracies, which is exactly Vought's publicly declared goal, with cost reduction being a secondary objective.
Musk has stolen the spotlight by playing to the crowd, making everyone think this is all about "improving government efficiency," after all, who doesn't want that? This shifts attention away from the true purpose and redirects criticism toward Trump.
Musk's time at the Office of Government Efficiency has been shorter than he, Vought, or Trump expected. Quarreling with the president over tariffs, offending cabinet members, and failing to win a state judicial election despite spending $25 million are all reasons why he might become a burden.
His substantial financial resources ensure that he maintains some value at the White House, and his companies will continue to benefit from large contracts. However, based on recent months' developments, it seems he has been played.
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