The Death of Public Service
How Elon Musk’s loyal fixer is turning government into a tech startup—with no rules, no oversight, and no brakes.
Elon Musk has never hidden his disdain for government bureaucracy.
From NASA to the SEC, he’s clashed with regulators for years, portraying himself as a visionary being held back by slow, inefficient institutions. But now, he’s taken his war on inefficiency to the next level—by installing his operatives inside the federal government to enforce his vision.
Enter Steve Davis, Musk’s most loyal fixer.
The man who once figured out how to build rocket parts at a fraction of the cost is now inside Washington, doing what Musk does best: cutting, slashing, and ignoring rules along the way.
Now effectively running DOGE, Davis has become Musk’s Trojan horse inside the federal system. His mission? Eliminate waste, gut diversity programs, and make government run “like a business.”
The problem, of course, is that the government isn’t a business.
It exists to serve public interests, not shareholders. Efficiency in private enterprise means maximizing profits. Efficiency in government means… well, that depends on who you ask. If you ask Musk, it means eliminating $2 trillion from the budget. If you ask federal employees, it probably means trying to do their jobs without some billionaire’s henchman breathing down their necks.
The Myth of the All-Knowing Engineer
Davis is, in many ways, the perfect Musk employee. He’s not just loyal—he’s blindly loyal. He’s an engineer who will take on any task, whether or not he has the expertise. This is the Silicon Valley way: believe you can solve any problem if you just “optimize” it enough.
But what happens when that mindset is applied to something as complex as the U.S. government?
Davis has no background in public policy, social programs, or government administration. His experience is in cutting costs. He’s a mechanical engineer playing the role of a policy czar.
Yet, history tells us that treating governance like an engineering problem doesn’t work.
Just ask the technocrats who thought they could “optimize” Iraq after the 2003 invasion or the austerity economists who slashed budgets in Europe, thinking that cutting spending would somehow create prosperity.
Government is messy, political, and filled with trade-offs. It doesn’t bend to the will of an efficiency-obsessed billionaire.
The Muskification of the State
Musk’s influence over government isn’t new—he’s been securing government contracts for decades. But this is different. It’s one thing to win federal subsidies for Tesla or SpaceX; it’s another to insert your own executives into the system to reshape it from within.
Davis’s presence in the government signifies a shift: Musk isn’t merely lobbying policymakers anymore—he’s evolving into the policymaker. His team is striking deals with lawmakers, dismantling diversity programs, and insisting on access to federal databases. And when officials push back? Well, Musk has a direct line to the president.
What makes this even more concerning is Musk’s personal ideology.
He’s not only focused on cutting waste—he’s advocating for a profoundly libertarian, techno-authoritarian vision. He doesn’t merely desire a leaner government; he seeks a government that conforms to his demands. The greater his influence, the closer we move toward a future where billionaires, not elected officials, become the actual decision-makers.
The Absurdity of It All
The contradictions in Musk’s government takeover are glaring.
A man who constantly complains about “big government” is now deeply embedded in it. A billionaire who preaches about fairness is demanding access to sensitive Social Security data without any real oversight. And a self-proclaimed free speech warrior has surrounded himself with yes-men who carry out his agenda without question.
And then there’s the real irony: Musk is obsessed with eliminating waste, yet his own companies have relied on government subsidies, tax breaks, and federal contracts for years. If government spending is so inefficient, why does he keep cashing its checks?
Who Runs America?
Musk’s bureaucratic coup raises a fundamental question: Who actually runs the government? Is it elected officials, career civil servants, or tech billionaires with their own “efficiency” task forces?
This isn’t just about Musk—it’s about the growing influence of private power over public institutions.
The more we let billionaires dictate policy, the less democratic the system becomes. If a president is willing to hand over parts of the government to a tech mogul, what comes next? Will Jeff Bezos get his own Department of Logistics? Will Peter Thiel run national security?
At some point, the government stops being a government and starts looking like a collection of billionaire pet projects.
And maybe that’s the endgame.
That’s the point.