SPECIAL REPORT: What to Expect from DOGE

And why even rabid supporters are likely to say "you went too far."

Yep. We’re in the mix, now. DOGE is DOGEing, reports of wild expenditures for ridiculous studies, ridiculous grants, and truly, truly ridiculous flavors of K-Cups are hitting the press. Major, major budgets are being “paused” while we assess their legitimacy, efficiency, and purpose. And of course, to all critics, the sky is falling.

Last year, I read the Walter Isaacson biography on Elon Musk. It was one of the best biographies I’ve ever read, and I’m still astonished at the level of access and personal trust shown to Isaacson in researching the book. The book was not a PR piece for Elon - in many places, he came off looking every bit the bastard and Isaacson, while giving context to the events and decisions in Musk’s life did absolutely nothing to try and polish his image for the sake of making him look un-bastardly. It also, however, shed a lot of light on Musk’s very real and undeniable genius. Beyond his radical focus and commitment to the undertakings that preoccupy his mind, Elon Musk approaches his work with a “plan for improving almost everything.” He calls it his algorithm, and it might be a good time for the country to get acquainted with it.

The algorithm is the method by which Elon Musk examines issues, processes, ideas, etc. and then improves them to make them more efficient and effective. There is absolutely no reason to assume he will take anything but this same approach when looking at the US Government. As such, it’s profoundly instructive to understand what will unfold as a result, and how it might affect all of our lives. Let’s have a look, in Elon’s own words.

1. Question every requirement.

Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as the “legal department” or the “safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me.

Then make the requirements less dumb.

What this signals is high-fidelity accountability. Elon will be looking to identify very specifically who wrote a regulation or rule, who specifically gave a directive, who issued an order to do this or spend that. It means there will be a lot of targeted inquiry and very personal finger-pointing, to include direct and unflinching questions about why a policy exists or what gave the person in charge the idea that it should exist in the first place. Loads of people are seriously put off by this kind of confrontational inquiry. A lot of people feel immediately defensive about being questioned directly. In the modern vernacular, they feel “attacked.” You will notice, however, that Musk doesn’t exclude himself from the questioning. You might also notice that he isn’t looking for perfection in his refinements - just “less dumb.” Making marginal improvements is better than making no improvements, and it certainly beats watching the same dumb policies and requirements gather speed and mass as they plow through the lives of everyday Americans. Remember this as people attempt to cast the process as some belligerent assault on the sanctity of expert opinions. In Musk’s mind, all opinions should be questioned.

2. Delete any part or process you can.

You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10 percent of them, then you didn’t delete enough.

Buckle up - Elon plans on going too far. It’s by design. When we see things like the pause and suspension of USAID, or the idea that it should be merged into the State Department proper, we rightly feel a certain puckering that critical aid to critical partners might be negatively affected. We worry about things like disaster relief, humanitarian relief, help for refugees - and we aren’t wrong. Those things very likely will be affected, at least temporarily. The same is true for every single process or agency that DOGE looks at. The approach is very likely to be “delete this part or that process and see how the machine operates without it. If it works, you’ve found a better way. If it doesn’t work, put the part or process back in a smarter way and try again.” People, it’s been about two weeks. Two weeks, give or take a few days, since Trump assumed office, and people are screaming and crying about the chaos of all this. It takes some time. It’s iterative, meaning we need to do a thing, check the azimuth, and then refine the approach and do it again. It will take time, but if we have the pain tolerance for it, the result will be a better version of whatever we started with. On that note, we need to have the pain tolerance for it because I’ve got news for you - it hurts either way. One is a short term hurt while we get our collective shit together. The other is a catastrophic slow-road to oblivion.

3. Simplify and optimize.

This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or process that should not exist.

What this means is that the Good Idea Fairy will not arrive prior to the upheaval of “delete and refine.” New processes will not be put into place until we’ve wrung out all the problems and opportunities of the existing ones, and no matter how good an idea might sound on its face, Musk will not likely recommend to the President any “solution” that appears out of thin air. To the reasoned mind, this may be the most brilliant element of the algorithm on its own. Way, way too often in our Administrative State, we see bureaucrats, legislators, lobbyists, and agency heads attempt to “fix” a perceived problem by bolting on some after-market solution designed to address whatever symptom is pissing people off at the time. What you end up with is a cumbersome, inelegant monstrosity that’s actually worse for almost everyone than if they had no solution at all. Musk and DOGE are likely to push for the approach of investigation, audit, deletion, iterative turns at new operational models, and when necessary, adding back in some of the things they took out refined by a greater and more practical understanding of how those elements affect the whole. Only then will we see new ideas cut from whole cloth added into the bureaucracy. Again, this process might be painful in the short term. It might be a little scary, even for Trump (and Musk) supporters. It will certainly be fodder for Trump (and Musk) critics and fearmongers, and you will undoubtedly see it splashed across all of the legacy media newsfeeds as The End of the World As We Know It. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.

4. Accelerate cycle time.

Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.

Great news all around on this one. Once they have a good understanding and comprehension of all the moving parts and how they work together, have gotten rid of the dead weight and sub-optimal bullshit, refined what’s left and added in any new innovations that might make things work better, we should see the US Government step on the gas. Processes will work better. The veterans who rely on the VA for medical care won’t have 2 year wait times. Government procurements won’t take 18 months, and when they do award a contract, it won’t be so full of fat and waste that the US taxpayer is mortgaged for life to pay for K-Cups. Attention will be spent where it matters. Resources will be allocated to what’s necessary and beneficial. In order to add burden to the US Taxpayer, petitioners will need to prove (or at least make a compelling case) that new expenditures are a net value rather than a net expense. Delivery of goods and services will be handled at the speed of business, or closer to it, rather than at the ring-growth pace of the red tape laden bureaucracy.

This is also where the mechanisms of government threaten the process. Going fast is not in any public servant’s interest - at least not in their self-interest. The slow-roll is one of the most time-honored means by which government officials squeeze and extort money from the private sector. Where Musk and company would love to simplify and improve, bureaucrats thrive and enrich themselves wildly on the ability to threaten private sector interests with looming regulations or dangerous legislation. There will be a serious locking of horns here, and when you see it, make absolutely no mistake what’s happening. No matter how they spin it: clean, fast, simple processes with clear and transparent steps benefit the American People and undercut corruption. If you see people fighting to keep things bogged down, or you see them advocating for layer upon layer of bureaucracy, you’re seeing the corrupt attempting to preserve their tried and tested means of self-enrichment at your expense.

Government inefficiency by accident is what most people assume when they think about bureaucratic dysfunction. The idea is that government is just too big, too slow, too outdated; bogged down by layers of red tape, outdated systems, and a lack of incentive to innovate. This is the kind of inefficiency that could, in theory, be fixed with better leadership, smarter policies, and some common-sense streamlining.

Government inefficiency by design, on the other hand, is far more insidious. This is the kind of inefficiency that isn't a bug of the system—it’s a feature. It exists because powerful interests want it to exist. Bureaucratic bloat and regulatory complexity aren’t just about bad management; they’re deliberate tools of control, extortion, and self-preservation. Agencies slow-walk approvals not because they have to, but because delaying action forces companies, industries, and even individuals to come to them, often with money, favors, or political concessions, to “get things moving.” Legislators introduce vague, confusing, or overly broad regulations not because they’re incompetent, but because those regulations create loopholes that they, their donors, and their allies can exploit. And worst of all, this kind of inefficiency builds on itself—each new layer of bureaucracy creating the excuse for another, each new regulation justifying more enforcement mechanisms, more funding, and more government overreach - all of it coming at an ever-greater cost to you and me.

Expect Musk to attack both in his recommendations to President Trump.

5. Automate.

That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs shaken out.

This is another point at which you’ll see some big changes. Without a doubt, AI will play a role here. Musk is deeply skeptical of AI and the people at its forefront, and with great reasons. Elon Musk was an original backer of ChatGPT and OpenAI, specifically as a fully transparent, publicly accessible alternative to the for-profit, industry-owned, behind-the-curtain sorts of AI being pushed by Google and others. To Musk’s mind, AI is far too powerful and potentially dangerous to leave in the hands of corporate profiteers with an interest in controlling and manipulating information. It is definitely far too powerful and dangerous to hand over to governments without complete transparency. When OpenAI walked away from Musk’s founding ideals in favor of the for-profit model, it was a blow to his trust.

That said, Musk still sees the immeasurable value of AI in the broad sense of human advancement. He is likely to advocate for it in some unconventional places. We have already seen thins amidst talks of tearing apart the failed and bloated Department of Education. Musk has asked Americans to imagine each and every student having an AI tutor. Intriguing, and definitely ambitious. I would expect him to advocate for similarly broad applications of AI, perhaps in some places considered sacrosanct in government. That said, I would also expect him to recognize when automating is a sub-optimal solution and shy away in favor of human brains and hands. In any event, Musk will likely lean into AI as a means of improving efficiency, but will harbor a strong distrust of ever allowing AI to execute oversight.

DOGE is just one very visible line of effort in President Trump’s attempt to root out what he calls the Deep State and what I commonly refer to as the Administrative State. The bottom line is that unless and until we can get a fair accounting of our national books, find out what’s happening to our tax dollars once we hand them to the government, and rein in their runaway spending, we are simply feeding drugs to an addict and empowering the very people and processes that seek to make themselves a permanent ruling class at your expense. Elon Musk’s efforts with DOGE are a rare opportunity to see into the process with the help of a well-documented operating philosophy executed by a proven leader who’s used the process to make himself the world’s richest man. Just remember, this time, the resistance will be unprecedented. The press attempts to malign and smear will be constant and ferocious. The facts presented by critics and opponents, entrenched bureaucrats and the would-be permanent political class will be skewed or absent altogether, if not invented just to further false narratives. The opposition will absolutely hammer the “Trump is burning it all down” narrative, counting on the natural pain and discomfort of any sort of change to reinforce their narrative. Don’t allow yourself to forget, though, that this is about optimization, not destruction.

The pain of the process will be real, even for staunch supporters, but it will be temporary. Most importantly for you to remember, especially as you feel some of that pain, it is necessary. In the same way one has to go through the pain of surgery and recovery and rehabilitation to remove a tumor or repair a badly broken bone, our country is facing the excision of some pretty rotten tissue. America has great bones, and we are a strong nation. We are still a superpower, the driving economy of the entire world, the reason for international trade security, and a litany of other very real strengths. We are an excellent candidate for this particular surgery, and I know that we will heal stronger than we are today.

The coming months will be ugly—because they have to be. You will be told this is chaos. That it’s reckless. That it’s vengeful. You will be bombarded with narratives designed to make you fear the process more than the disease. But ask yourself: Who benefits from keeping the system broken? Who profits from inefficiency? Who thrives in the shadows of bureaucracy? Those screaming the loudest today are the ones with the most to lose when accountability becomes real.

This is not destruction. This is optimization. This is not chaos. This is the pain of progress. And for the first time in decades, we have leaders willing to pay the price of fixing what’s broken. The old guard wants you to believe that reform is radical, that cleaning up corruption is dangerous, that breaking free from bureaucratic chains will leave us weaker. But deep down, you know the truth: The real danger is in doing nothing. The real risk is leaving this cancer to spread. The real insanity is pretending the rot isn’t there.

We’re not tearing America down—we’re saving it. And if that hurts the right people, maybe it’s because they were the problem all along.