Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you we have a new star. A
Speaker 2: star is born Elan mars Jusan Kennemy.
Speaker 1: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 3: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3: I feel for the guy.
Speaker 2: I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 2: But those two percent that are nasty, they are out
Speaker 2: pay in full post.
Speaker 1: We were meant for great things in the United States
Speaker 1: of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 2: I'm very disappointed in Elan. I've helped Elan a lot.
Speaker 1: Hey, David Papatoapple's here, hosts of E Laning, and this
Speaker 1: week we're going to roll out another installment of our
Speaker 1: Summer Jealousy series. This time we have co host Max
Speaker 1: Chafkin interviewing wire reporter and friend of pod McKenna Kelly
Speaker 1: about her eight reporting on all things Doge, past, present
Speaker 1: and future. So, by the way, I'll just note that
Speaker 1: this conversation was recorded before Edward Korstein, the Doge guy
Speaker 1: known as Big Balls, was attacked in a carjacking in Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: and before President Donald Trump responded to that incident by
Speaker 1: threatening and then actually ordering the federal government to take
Speaker 1: over the DC police. Okay, enough for me, enjoy the interview.
Speaker 4: We're joined now by McKenna Kelly, who is a friend
Speaker 4: of the show but also a senior writer at Wired.
Speaker 4: She covers tech in politics, and listeners will know her
Speaker 4: because for the past six months or so, McKenna has
Speaker 4: been covering DOGE very closely, and we've talked her.
Speaker 2: Before we talked to her, I think.
Speaker 4: It was what in the beginning of the year about
Speaker 4: this kind of crazy effort by Elon Musk to bring
Speaker 4: these technologists into the government. But a lot's changed since then,
Speaker 4: and we wanted to bring McKenna back on the podcast
Speaker 4: to talk about what happened, what the legacy of DOGE
Speaker 4: has been, and what comes next.
Speaker 2: McKenna, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to be back, all right.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons I wanted to do this is because,
Speaker 4: you know, the Trump administration, like, there's this thing where
Speaker 4: it's a reality show. Every day there's a new thing,
Speaker 4: and and I think for a lot of people, DOGE
Speaker 4: has sort of receded into the background, but this stuff
Speaker 4: has been hugely consequential.
Speaker 2: And I want to kind of take stock of it.
Speaker 4: So just to start of all that's happened, big balls
Speaker 4: of it, all the Elon Musk, all all the craziness.
Speaker 4: Like what do you see as like the top line
Speaker 4: consequence of like all of the headlines around DOGE over
Speaker 4: the last six months or so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I mean looking at what the last few
Speaker 3: months have brought from DOGE and Elon, and I think
Speaker 3: even now with Elon out at the picture and leaving government,
Speaker 3: I still feel like Doge has a lasting impression. And
Speaker 3: I feel as if that big picture impression that we
Speaker 3: can see across all agencies, across so many parts of
Speaker 3: government is that it's being more run like a private
Speaker 3: business than you know, what the government used to be
Speaker 3: prior to this, and that comes with a lot of
Speaker 3: different consequences and ramifications when it comes to hiring, staffing, contracting,
Speaker 3: just a variety of things that the government does every
Speaker 3: day being done in a fundamentally different way.
Speaker 4: How do you evaluate the claims that Musk and others
Speaker 4: in the Trump administration have made. So I was told
Speaker 4: that DOGE was going to be incredibly transparent, and there
Speaker 4: is a website doze dot govnor where it will tell you,
Speaker 4: we'll give you like a number, like I think the
Speaker 4: amount of savings right now is one hundred and ninety
Speaker 4: nine billion. According to this website, there is a leader
Speaker 4: board that I guess purports to show progress of which
Speaker 4: agencies have saved the most. Has there been significant savings
Speaker 4: as far as your reporting is shown, I think.
Speaker 3: It's fair to say that we can put a number
Speaker 3: on it. However, many billion, if it's one hundred and
Speaker 3: nine billion, whatever it is. First of all, you know,
Speaker 3: over the last six months has been hard to even
Speaker 3: figure out if these numbers are legitimate. There's been so
Speaker 3: many discrepancies, you know, trying to even just like the
Speaker 3: numbers being completely wrong, the numbers that they pull and
Speaker 3: put on that website right, and so it's hard to
Speaker 3: take anything on there as fact. But I think the
Speaker 3: biggest story about these savings, though, is that when you
Speaker 3: look at what the government spends, so much of the
Speaker 3: spending goes to defense, it goes to Medicare, it goes
Speaker 3: to Social Security, and those are the things that the
Speaker 3: administration didn't want to cut. So what does that leave you.
Speaker 3: It leaves you with programs that the health and Human
Speaker 3: Services agencies they leave you with cutting things like the
Speaker 3: PEP far and treating AIDS across you know, across the globe.
Speaker 3: And so what we see more so is this refusal
Speaker 3: to make these cuts, you know, in different places, which
Speaker 3: leaves you such a tiny kind of meager bucket in
Speaker 3: the grand scheme of things, of cuts that can be made.
Speaker 3: But those cuts have rastic, you know, just dramatic consequences
Speaker 3: for people. There's you know, there's been experts who have
Speaker 3: tried to do the math on how many people have
Speaker 3: died as a result of these cuts, and it's somewhere
Speaker 3: like two hundred thousands, like the number that I've seen
Speaker 3: most recently, including adults and children, just from things like
Speaker 3: AIDS or malaria or programs that the government, the US
Speaker 3: government use to support. And so you look at the savings,
Speaker 3: I think if you look at like the Trump Administration's
Speaker 3: recent like big beautiful bill and all of the you know,
Speaker 3: the trillions that have been added to the deficit, axios
Speaker 3: recently had a number like dojis savings compared to you know,
Speaker 3: the rest of it the administration has done has been
Speaker 3: something like six percent, just extremely meager savings in the
Speaker 3: grand scheme of things, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean the thing that's been crazy to me is
Speaker 4: and I guess we should have predicted this. But if
Speaker 4: you send a bunch of like first Principles thinkers to
Speaker 4: do like a close reading of government spending, you may
Speaker 4: find waste, but you also may sort of get tour
Speaker 4: of all the things the government does, some of which
Speaker 4: are really impressive. And I mean, like we've seen that
Speaker 4: so vividly with pepfar, which I think many people sort
Speaker 4: of if they were aware of it, they had sort
Speaker 4: of forgotten about it. And you look and there are
Speaker 4: estimates you alluded to this, but like we found one
Speaker 4: at the Lancet estimating that because of the cuts to
Speaker 4: the USAID programs, they're looking at potentially fourteen million people
Speaker 4: dying between now and twenty thirty who would have otherwise lived.
Speaker 4: I mean, like a real body count to some of
Speaker 4: these cuts. There's also the sort of brain drain quality
Speaker 4: of this, right, And of course there are two ways
Speaker 4: of seeing this. You know, on one hand, maybe they're
Speaker 4: just like cutting the dead weight. I mean, this comes
Speaker 4: this comes up a lot anytime. There are layoffs in
Speaker 4: the private sector as well, but like we're talking about
Speaker 4: what like tens of thousands of people whose careers were ended.
Speaker 4: I think found one estimates from the Citizens for Responsibility
Speaker 4: and Ethics. It's a progressive nonprofit saying, you know, fifty
Speaker 4: thousand people.
Speaker 2: What do you think the scale of those losses has been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, first off, like this has completely changed
Speaker 3: what government work was for so many people they leave
Speaker 3: the private sector and join government because it's a more
Speaker 3: stable job. Sure, you're not going to get paid as
Speaker 3: much as you would at a Google or Facebook or
Speaker 3: something like that, but there are benefits and you're not
Speaker 3: you know, you haven't been afraid of being laid off constantly,
Speaker 3: So dough is completely shook that up. Everyone at these
Speaker 3: agencies are still terrified, even though Elon is out. All
Speaker 3: of my sources at a bunch of agencies where DOGE
Speaker 3: still is are terrified that they're going to get laid off.
Speaker 3: All the work that has gone to them now with
Speaker 3: people who have either retired early or been forcibly removed
Speaker 3: from government, that work still needs to get done. And
Speaker 3: even you know, the folks who are still there are
Speaker 3: completely exhausted and trying to find exit ramps themselves. And so,
Speaker 3: like you mentioned, like people would go to the public
Speaker 3: sector to have a bit of a piece of mind
Speaker 3: about their career, and now it's just as in their minds,
Speaker 3: just as tumultuous as the private sector.
Speaker 4: All right, let's talk about you alluded to it a
Speaker 4: couple times, but like this shift of what Doge is now.
Speaker 4: You wrote a great piece for Wired about you know,
Speaker 4: quote unquote Doge two point zero. What do you see
Speaker 4: as Doge two point zero?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like I mentioned, there's a lot of those
Speaker 3: folks who were brought on at the beginning Edward big
Speaker 3: Balls chorusing Luke Farredder. Yeah, and so a lot of
Speaker 3: those kids are still in government, right, They're at a
Speaker 3: variety of different agencies. Farreader is still at the Department
Speaker 3: of Labor. He still has, you know, a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of power. But I think Doge one point oh can
Speaker 3: be defined as this chaotic reckoning. All these people were
Speaker 3: getting fired, right, It was about cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts
Speaker 3: to contracts, cuts to all of that stuff. And we're
Speaker 3: moving into something that feels more like a rebuilding, right,
Speaker 3: So taking the scraps and the chaos that was left
Speaker 3: by Doorge point one point oh, and maybe to Doge
Speaker 3: two point zero, I think there's still cuts. I think
Speaker 3: the Washington Post reported recently about this like DOGE deregulation
Speaker 3: tool that they built. It's like an AI tool that's
Speaker 3: supposed to go through two hundred thousand regulations in the
Speaker 3: US government and find the ones to cut, which does
Speaker 3: it sound like a very good way of going about
Speaker 3: all of that. So there's still cuts, but there's major
Speaker 3: IT projects that are still still undergoing. In April, I
Speaker 3: reported about this tool that was being built at the
Speaker 3: IRS that was essentially just just like Mega API to
Speaker 3: unify all of the data at IRS to make it
Speaker 3: more easily accessible and readable. That is still ongoing. It
Speaker 3: was supposed to be done in thirty days, is what
Speaker 3: Sam Corcos, the guy who was running that, the DOGE
Speaker 3: guy who was running that IRIS, was trying to say.
Speaker 3: It's definitely been a lot more than thirty days. That
Speaker 3: is a very hard project. And there's you know, similar
Speaker 3: projects going on at other agencies as well, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: I think the OAG two point zero can be defined
Speaker 3: more as this kind of rebuilding moment.
Speaker 2: I think also, and tell me if this is wrong.
Speaker 4: I mean, it seems like part of what's going on
Speaker 4: is like these guys the Farador Cours team, the sharp
Speaker 4: young things that Elon Musk brought in, the Doge bros
Speaker 4: are basically being integrated within agencies, Like Doge is embedding
Speaker 4: itself within different agencies and it's no longer really called
Speaker 4: Doge anymore. Like the Trump administration has rebranded, and I
Speaker 4: want to talk about that rebranding and like what you
Speaker 4: think is driving it, because there seemed like a couple
Speaker 4: of different possibilities and maybe they're all driving. One is
Speaker 4: obviously the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and
Speaker 4: Elon Musk essentially first being eased out of Trump's orbit
Speaker 4: and then having like a full blown fight with Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: where I think the Trump administration now like doesn't want
Speaker 4: to have a lot of association with Elon Musk. I
Speaker 4: think the second thing, which is maybe more important, is
Speaker 4: that this stuff turned out to be really really unpopular.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially with the Cabinet secretary secretaries where this was happening.
Speaker 3: You see these Doge people being integrated into these agencies,
Speaker 3: and most of the time they're being integrated in groups
Speaker 3: that are more directly reporting to the cabinet secretaries and
Speaker 3: their teams rather than you know, an Amy Gleeson or
Speaker 3: Steve Davis or Elon Musk. So these cabinet secretaries want
Speaker 3: to have more oversight of what's happening at their agencies.
Speaker 3: We heard so much about Scott Bessant being like totally
Speaker 3: upset with Elon, openly feuding with him at the White House.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean maybe he gave him the black eye.
Speaker 4: We don't know, and I'm just kidding or have kidding, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was a.
Speaker 3: Meme exactly, but you see that, And so they want
Speaker 3: to have more oversight of this because even over I
Speaker 3: feel like over the last couple of months we did
Speaker 3: this story. You kind of talked about it about DOGE
Speaker 3: two point zero and what it is, and I remember
Speaker 3: we went to the White House and even some of
Speaker 3: you know, senior administration officials there still had no idea
Speaker 3: of what DOGE was doing. Like some of what we're
Speaker 3: telling them is like news to them, and so they
Speaker 3: need I think part of this new version of DOGE
Speaker 3: is giving it a bit more accountability and oversight from
Speaker 3: the politicals in charge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this story that you're talking about, this is Doughtube.
Speaker 4: Listeners should definitely read it because it gives kind of
Speaker 4: like the most comprehensive account of like what is happening
Speaker 4: right now published in early July. One thing, and mckennay,
Speaker 4: you alluded to this earlier, but part of this dough
Speaker 4: tube we know is adopting some of these sort of
Speaker 4: corporate processes that seem at once very familiar to anyone
Speaker 4: who's worked in a large company and also just like
Speaker 4: comically inefficient. It's like the next step of the you know,
Speaker 4: Elon Musk loved to show the like memes of the
Speaker 4: Office Space Consultants, the Bobs, acting like he was one
Speaker 4: of the Office Space consultants, which always felt weird because you're, like,
Speaker 4: the Bobs are the villains of that movie, and now
Speaker 4: we're getting sort of weird corporate processes that don't seem
Speaker 4: inherently who knows, maybe they are more efficient, but they
Speaker 4: don't seem obviously more efficient to me. It seems like
Speaker 4: many of your sources don't necessarily view them as inherently
Speaker 4: more efficient than what was going on before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the things that stands out to me
Speaker 3: that maybe isn't like the sexiest thing, but there was
Speaker 3: the Executive Order earlier this year where they wanted to
Speaker 3: bring procurement and contracting into GSA, and so GSA, the
Speaker 3: General Services Administration, would be doing all of the contracting
Speaker 3: work for every agency, which maybe sounds great, right to
Speaker 3: somebody in the private industry, like we should have one
Speaker 3: team doing all of this work. But it's really different.
Speaker 3: When GSA does a lot of like tech, they do
Speaker 3: a lot of like work specialized for them that they've
Speaker 3: been doing for a very long time, instead having them
Speaker 3: to do, you know, trying to get these people who
Speaker 3: haven't worked at these agencies to figure out the best
Speaker 3: you know, the best tech, the best resources, the best consultants,
Speaker 3: all of these things. For agencies like AHHS, h CDC,
Speaker 3: these more specialized groups, the Department of Energy and Nuclear,
Speaker 3: you're asking folks who have no background in this to
Speaker 3: make decisions on some of the most important programs in
Speaker 3: our country. And so talk about inefficiency a lot of
Speaker 3: these folks. And there's far less stuff right in these
Speaker 3: procurement offices as well, so they're going to have to
Speaker 3: really go through some process of like learning all of
Speaker 3: this stuff in order to make this administration goal work.
Speaker 4: Let's bring it back to Elon before we wrap. One
Speaker 4: of the more intriguing things to come out of your
Speaker 4: reporting recently was sort of information about Elon's continued to
Speaker 4: influence within DOGE, like the fact, first of all, the
Speaker 4: fact that a bunch of these Elon left he and
Speaker 4: Trump are beefing. He's like talking about Epstein on Twitter
Speaker 4: all the time, threatening to fund primary challenges, and yet
Speaker 4: a bunch of the people he's still hired are in
Speaker 4: positions of power. And you even reported in your story
Speaker 4: that he was having sort of more direct influence via
Speaker 4: deputies and so on, who are talking still kind of
Speaker 4: in communication with members of the Trump administration or people
Speaker 4: in senior positions. Is that still going on and do
Speaker 4: you see that as a kind of lasting impact.
Speaker 3: I don't have any news on whether that is still
Speaker 3: ongoing this kinds of communication, but I do believe that
Speaker 3: Elon's influence is still there, especially if you look at
Speaker 3: someone like Luke Ferreder who is still in government. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine someone like Luke or Big Balls or whoever,
Speaker 3: or have plans to stay in the government forever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Their allegiance is more to this kind of like Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley mindset, these kinds of companies, and so they don't
Speaker 3: want to do anything that would you know, put them
Speaker 3: out of favor with Elon, and I think that is
Speaker 3: maybe where more of that lasting influence will be as
Speaker 3: long as those folks continue to work in government.
Speaker 4: Do you think we're going to look back and say
Speaker 4: that Elon Musk profited from this experience? I ask because
Speaker 4: there have been reports at various points right about Musk
Speaker 4: getting access to data, like not even necessarily not like
Speaker 4: sensitive data to like violate people's privacy, but data that
Speaker 4: would give him insight perhaps into markets that could be
Speaker 4: useful from a business perspective. There's also been suggestions that, like,
Speaker 4: for instance, X Money, that this effort by X to
Speaker 4: like launch a payments platform, like one of the motivations
Speaker 4: for gutting the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was
Speaker 4: to launch X money, Like you could go on and on. Right,
Speaker 4: They're different parts of the regulatory apparatus that touched Elon Musk,
Speaker 4: And there has been this sort of suggestion that we're
Speaker 4: not just witnessing sort of destruction of government for the
Speaker 4: sake of efficiency. We're seeing something that looks more like looting.
Speaker 4: And I'm kind of curious how your sources see it
Speaker 4: and how you think about this conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't know if there's really been much
Speaker 3: reporting about whether Elon himself has like walked out of
Speaker 3: government with this like USB drive, you know, with all
Speaker 3: of this data on it. So I think the work
Speaker 3: that Doge did that could benefit Elon in the long
Speaker 3: run that we can you know that I think we
Speaker 3: can make a fair prediction would be, like you mentioned
Speaker 3: the CFPB for example, does Elon have information that can
Speaker 3: maybe help in with competitors, Who knows. But what did
Speaker 3: happen is that he his team like basically Holy defanged
Speaker 3: that agency. If there is something that Elon wants to
Speaker 3: do with expay or whatever it is, the regulator there
Speaker 3: who would go after him has far less resources than
Speaker 3: it did before. And so I don't know if we
Speaker 3: can say that he will come out of this with
Speaker 3: like bags of gold bullion from all of this. But
Speaker 3: I think he's created more of a shield for himself
Speaker 3: and his businesses by the cuts that he made on
Speaker 3: these agencies.
Speaker 4: What about his reputation you know for whatever you know,
Speaker 4: help gutting the CFPV provided there is a sense that
Speaker 4: like Trump at least say, I have a sense that
Speaker 4: Trump has essentially let Elon take the fall for Doge
Speaker 4: and like he's going to get blamed for this, and
Speaker 4: like this is going to be this thing that if
Speaker 4: you look at the public polling, is super unpopular, right,
Speaker 4: Like the idea of making government more efficient is very popular.
Speaker 4: The idea of Elon Musk's specific brand of making the
Speaker 4: government efficient is extremely unpopular. And I think maybe that's
Speaker 4: that's the legacy, is just that Elon has like permanently
Speaker 4: damaged his reputation or or has added another thing that
Speaker 4: is going to be hard for him to overcome in
Speaker 4: terms of his and in terms of like his companies
Speaker 4: and so on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's still to be seen though, Right,
Speaker 3: there are still like these MAGA influencers who were obsessed
Speaker 3: with Elon. There are still these MAGA influencers who, after
Speaker 3: all this Epstein stuff with Trump, are willing to carry
Speaker 3: water for him as well. Right, And So I don't
Speaker 3: know if I've seen anything that has dramatically, you know,
Speaker 3: changed the way that you know, the people who really support,
Speaker 3: you know, the real true believers feel about him. I
Speaker 3: guess it's still kind of like to be seen, all.
Speaker 2: Right, McKenna, prediction time.
Speaker 4: We will hold you to this prediction and invite you
Speaker 4: back to to discuss it. But how where do you
Speaker 4: see DOGE a year from now, twenty twenty six will
Speaker 4: be heading into the midterm elections. Is it going strong?
Speaker 4: Is Big Ball still there? Two questions. One is a
Speaker 4: sort of government question, which is do you think this
Speaker 4: project will be ongoing in some form and to will
Speaker 4: it be will it have political salience, will be a
Speaker 4: political issue that will help decide the midterms potentially even
Speaker 4: the next presidency.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, Dog is technically around till July twenty sixth, the
Speaker 3: next year.
Speaker 2: Okay, mark your calendar listeners, that's.
Speaker 3: When it's officially over. Kind of what I'm seeing now,
Speaker 3: and if the trend continues for the next year, we're
Speaker 3: going to continue to see these kinds of dog folks
Speaker 3: from tech cycling in and out of government, you know,
Speaker 3: doing some projects and then leaving. But I see like
Speaker 3: there's still a bunch of people who are really excited
Speaker 3: about this mission. I imagine they'll want to be a
Speaker 3: part and then do their one hundred or something days
Speaker 3: and then leave. But I don't think DOGE will ever
Speaker 3: be what it was in January and February, right. I
Speaker 3: think more so of what the legacy of DOGE is
Speaker 3: is this kind of cultural shakeup, right, this changing of
Speaker 3: what can happen in government and how it operates. And
Speaker 3: you know, in a year from now, we'll probably see
Speaker 3: a lot more of the consequences of these cuts, maybe
Speaker 3: things that you know happen sooner, you know, closer to
Speaker 3: the election that maybe. But yeah, I feel as if
Speaker 3: the Democrats will still try and go after Elon the
Speaker 3: Republicans for a lot of what happened this year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's going to be a huge political
Speaker 4: issue actually as we're talking through it, just because anything
Speaker 4: you're mad about with the government, we've just created this
Speaker 4: situation or the Republicans really in doing this, like create
Speaker 4: a situation where you create all this this like huge
Speaker 4: vector for attack, which I think is why like deficits,
Speaker 4: it's very hard to cut deficits spending in general, and
Speaker 4: even if you're like super subtle about it and like
Speaker 4: very politically nuanced, you still create that vector of attack.
Speaker 4: But Elon Musk did it in such a gonzo way
Speaker 4: that it's going to make it almost possible for this
Speaker 4: not to be a huge issue. I feel like we
Speaker 4: need to stock up on those DOGE baseball Caps now
Speaker 4: because they're gonna be hard to find in a year
Speaker 4: from now.
Speaker 2: We can sell him on eBay.
Speaker 3: Baby, mm you know, I think I think you're right.
Speaker 3: Oh man, where do we get those do chats?
Speaker 4: Anyways, we've gotta find Elon's eBay alt and uh probably
Speaker 4: got McKenna Kelly.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, Yeah, no problem, great being here.
Speaker 1: This episode is produced by Stacy Wong and edited by
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