As promised, Donald Trump gave Elon Musk a position in (or at least alongside) his second administration, in a brand new extragovernmental organization named after a meme-turned-cryptocurrency: the Department of Government Effectiveness, aka DOGE. The Trump campaign has already started sell t-shirts to commemorate the occasion, featuring Trump, Musk and dogecoin’s Shiba Inu mascot, with the Martian landscape in the background, as in addition to his formal role, Musk is set to become the unofficial space czar of Trump. (Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate whom Trump appointed to lead the effort alongside Musk, does not appear on the T-shirt.)

Musk’s role is a blatant conflict of interest; SpaceX has been an aerospace entrepreneur for years and could well benefit from the creation of DOGE, which could shift government functions to private companies in the name of cost reduction. But it also poses a question with real stakes for Americans. How could Musk – the billionaire, the innovator, the right-wing activist and the relentless troll – actually lead this new effort? His leadership of his companies, particularly SpaceX, suggests that he will throw himself into this work with zeal, presenting government efficiency as an existential endeavor, much like the quest to make life multiplanetary.

SpaceX is America’s most successful rocket company, and it has succeeded by not behaving like a government organization. It took off under Musk, who adopted the Silicon Valley philosophy of “move fast and break things” and displayed a willingness to blow up rockets until he found the right recipe. The approach suggests that, in a SpaceX-inspired government, Musk would not just cut red tape, but wipe it out with a flame thrower. In yesterday’s announcement, the president-elect seemed just as eager to break things, saying that “the Great Elon Musk” would lead DOGE to “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure agencies federal”.

Even before his official appointment, Musk had identified one federal agency he would like to revamp: the Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for approving rocket launch licenses. Last month on Humanity will never reach Mars. » SpaceX is in the midst of a fierce development campaign for its most powerful rocket, Starship, and has requested launch licenses from a faster pace than the FAA is prepared to grant them. Now the FAA, already short of staffcould be at the mercy of senior adviser Elon Musk, who has been given carte blanche to blow up regulations by a president who has expressed a desire to see American astronauts land on Mars during his term. Musk would also have something to gain from overhauling national space policy. NASA has hired traditional aerospace contractors, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to build the rocket that will carry astronauts into lunar orbit. But this rocket costs so much to launch that even NASA’s own inspector general has recommended that the agency consider alternative options for future space missions. Lawmakers are reportedly reluctant to roll back the program, which has supported jobs in every state. But with Musk in his ear, Trump could certainly try.

Regardless of which agencies he targets, Musk will almost certainly jump into DOGE work, as he did in SpaceX’s early years. Despite appearances, he has time: while there is no doubt that his singular talents have driven the company to incredible feats, other executives now oversee SpaceX’s day-to-day operations. without his contribution. The same is true at Tesla. This combination of dedication and availability could make him an effective facilitator of the Ministry of Government Effectiveness’ mandate.

But Musk and Trump share a governing style that involves issuing surprise executive orders that leave their staffs scrambling. In 2014, when Musk publicly unveiled a new version of SpaceX’s cargo capsule reconfigured for future human passengers, he said the vehicle would be able to land anywhere engineers wanted when it returned to Earth. This was news to SpaceX engineers, who had designed the spacecraft to parachute into the ocean. The engineers set aside their existing designs – conventional, yes, but out-of-the-box – and focused on Musk’s new vision. Eventually it became clear that the design was not feasible for the deadline set by NASA, and the engineering team managed to convince executives that the effort was not worth pursuing. (Years later, SpaceX successfully took its rocket boosters out of the sky and brought them to a soft landing.) Former SpaceX employees told me that Musk’s occasional fixation on certain business operations had sometimes slowed down their work. Some of his decisions seem downright bad, like discouraging workers from wearing yellow safety vests because he doesn’t like bright colors, as Reuters puts it. reported last year. This is a particularly puzzling decision, given that SpaceX has a very high rate of workplace accidents; The Reuters investigation found at least 600 unreported injuries to SpaceX over the past decade, such as electrocutions and amputations.

Musk also maintains a work environment with its own form of bureaucracy, organized to appease the boss’s whims. In 2022, SpaceX fired a small group of employees after sending a letter to senior executives describing Musk’s public actions as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment to us.” The letter was signed by hundreds of employees, but management viewed the effort as a diversion from SpaceX’s founding mission to reach Mars. Former SpaceX employees told me that they often phrased their comments in glowing terms about this mission, so as not to displease Musk. Instead of openly expressing security concerns, for example, they advise against certain decisions because of the mission. Such careful management, one might say, is not very effective.

According to CNN, Musk spent almost every day since the election at Mar-a-Lago, joining the president-elect for patio meals and rounds of golf. Of the two DOGE presidents, he is clearly Trump’s favorite; the hype about Mars and memory are just getting started. But the very fact that Musk and Ramaswamy were appointed jointly – two leaders where one probably could – undermines the very principle of the Department of Government Effectiveness. Even in his mission to rid the federal government of unnecessary spending, Musk still has to kneel to someone else’s version of bureaucracy.