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Speaker 1: Well, Elon muskis now the richest person on the planet.

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Speaker 2: More than half the satellites in space are owned and

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Speaker 2: controlled by one man.

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Speaker 1: Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.

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Speaker 2: He says.

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Speaker 3: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will

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Speaker 3: be different. He'll vote Republican.

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Speaker 2: There is a reason the US government is so reliant

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Speaker 2: on him. Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's

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Speaker 2: done nothing of him.

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Speaker 4: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.

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Speaker 5: Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.

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Speaker 5: I'm Max Chafkin, and we are recording this at five

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Speaker 5: pm Eastern Time on a Saturday here on the East

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Speaker 5: Coast because we got breaking news. The New York Times

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Speaker 5: reported that Musk and Doge have successfully gotten inside the

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Speaker 5: Treasury Department's payment system. These are the computers that control

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Speaker 5: the disbursement of much of the federal government's money. This

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Speaker 5: is something a top Treasury official was reportedly trying to

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Speaker 5: stop just before he exited the administration.

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Speaker 1: And to talk through this and.

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Speaker 5: The rest of the Musk bake breaking news, I'm joined

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Speaker 5: by Sarah Fryar, Bloomberg's Big Tech boss. Hey, Sarah Hi,

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Speaker 5: And we've got Dana Hall, Elon Musk reporter, Hey, Dana, Hey, Hey,

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Speaker 5: And Kurt Wagner Bloomberg social media reporter and also the

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Speaker 5: guy who wrote the book on Twitter. Oh that's terrible, Kurt.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry.

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Speaker 4: That's a great shout out. I'll take it. Hey, Max,

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Speaker 4: Happy Saturday.

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Speaker 1: How's it going?

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Speaker 5: So guys, just to let's just start by like setting

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Speaker 5: the table. Dana, you want to try to take us

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Speaker 5: through what happened here.

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Speaker 3: I mean, it's a really fast moving story. But basically,

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Speaker 3: it sounds like the Treasury Secretary has given Elon Musk

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Speaker 3: and his Doge counterparts like access to the Treasury payment system.

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Speaker 3: And Senator Ron Wyden wrote a letter about this that

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Speaker 3: was published late last night, and it sounds like it's

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Speaker 3: just an unprecedented amount of access that Musk and his

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Speaker 3: comrades have to the way that the federal government actually

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Speaker 3: pays its bills and disperses payments.

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Speaker 5: And Sarah, this is coming in amid a kind of

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Speaker 5: week of chaos, right, it's.

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Speaker 6: Very hard to pay attention to what's happening given everything

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Speaker 6: else that surrounds it. We've got the tariffs, we've got

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Speaker 6: the plane crash. There's so many critical things that are

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Speaker 6: taking up the headlines right now, but this is coming

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Speaker 6: in the midst of a lot of uncertainty, a lot

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Speaker 6: of silence on the behalf of these agencies as their

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Speaker 6: workers get these emails telling them, you know you can,

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Speaker 6: you can take a government buy out and lose your job.

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Speaker 6: As data is coming down from websites like the CDC

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Speaker 6: and the Census, as a lot of agencies and others

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Speaker 6: who do business with the government are being told to

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Speaker 6: cut all their DEI spending and resources in order to

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Speaker 6: receive money from the government.

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Speaker 5: And it goes beyond that because like federal workers, I mean,

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Speaker 5: if you're talking to federal workers right now, there a

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Speaker 5: lot of them are just like confused. You have these

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Speaker 5: kind of weird offers and the suggestion that maybe they'll

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Speaker 5: they'll be resigned or laid off. There's like tons of

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Speaker 5: fear in the federal workforce. You also have these kind

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Speaker 5: of reports of random musk associates, some of whom work

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Speaker 5: for the federal government, some of whom don't work for

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Speaker 5: the federal government, like just like barging in.

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Speaker 2: To various parts of the bureocracy. If you're on Reddit,

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Speaker 2: right now.

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Speaker 5: The Reddit forum where government workers are, It's like Thunderdome.

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Speaker 5: It's just like one post after another of people who

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Speaker 5: are confused, scared, outrage, or just kind of befuddled. Kurt,

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Speaker 5: I mean, you wrote a book about eline kind of

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Speaker 5: chaotic takeover of Twitter.

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Speaker 1: Now, x I feel like we've seen this movie before.

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Speaker 5: I mean, these moves really echo kind of what he

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Speaker 5: did after taking over Twitter.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's honestly like a little bit spooky the similarities

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Speaker 4: between these two, right. I mean, you could see just

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Speaker 4: in the headlines alone, Right, you see Elon sleeping at

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Speaker 4: the office to try and get things done, working on

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Speaker 4: the weekends, right, trying to power through everything. You see

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Speaker 4: him eliminating people from essentially their access to be able

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Speaker 4: to do their jobs without any warning. Right suddenly they

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Speaker 4: just show up and they're no longer able to get

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Speaker 4: into the systems that they use for their jobs. You saw,

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Speaker 4: we all saw that email that came this past week,

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Speaker 4: the fork in the Road, right.

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Speaker 1: The same subject line, He used the.

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Speaker 4: Same subject line exactly, and at Twitter it was very

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Speaker 4: much a hey, you either opt into you know, my

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Speaker 4: version of Twitter, my hardcore version of what this is

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Speaker 4: going to be, or there's the door and you can

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Speaker 4: let yourself out. And so we're seeing this playbook, you know,

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Speaker 4: be used again. And I think what's shocking to me

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Speaker 4: is that it didn't go smoothly at all at Twitter. Right.

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Speaker 4: It's not as if like Elon got to the end

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Speaker 4: of his Twitter takeover two months in and was like, Wow,

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Speaker 4: that went great, right. He even himself was like, yeah,

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Speaker 4: that was pretty bumpy, Like things are tough. I scared

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Speaker 4: off a bunch of advertisers. You know, maybe maybe didn't

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Speaker 4: handle everything the best way that it could have been handled.

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Speaker 4: And yet here we are employing that same playbook at

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Speaker 4: a national government scale. And you know this, you know, Max,

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Speaker 4: we all know this, Like if Twitter goes down for

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Speaker 4: twenty minutes, we'll be fine. Like not ideal, but we

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Speaker 4: will all be okay. I mean if the US government,

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Speaker 4: I'll be fine. If the US government, you know, payment

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Speaker 4: system goes down or some type of defense system goes

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Speaker 4: down because someone is rushing to do these things. Obviously

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Speaker 4: the impact could be you know, so much more significant

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Speaker 4: and harmful.

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Speaker 5: I know you have to jump in a minute, but

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Speaker 5: before you do, I just want to ask you one

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Speaker 5: other question, which was this this sort of move to

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Speaker 5: control the actual payouts.

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Speaker 1: Is there a parallel with Twitter?

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Speaker 5: Did he actually try did he like randomly cancel contracts?

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Speaker 5: I actually can't remember whether whether it's how closely it tracks.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean he he basically stopped paying most of

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Speaker 4: Twitter's bills, and he's still in legal fights with a

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Speaker 4: bunch of vendors over unpaid bills. And he also, max,

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Speaker 4: you will remember, didn't pay severance, right, So, even though

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Speaker 4: he's telling a lot of these employees of the US government, hey,

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Speaker 4: you can take this buyout and you'll you know, get

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Speaker 4: paid through. However, many months he told Twitter employees that too,

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Speaker 4: and he's you know, being ensued by thousands of former

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Speaker 4: Twitter employees right now for what they are arguing was

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Speaker 4: insufficient severance. So, you know, a lot of similarities to

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Speaker 4: this idea that he's just going to simply not pay

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Speaker 4: the things that he doesn't want to pay and force

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Speaker 4: people to come and collect that money. Unclear if that's

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Speaker 4: exactly the approach that that he'll take here, but I

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Speaker 4: wouldn't be shocked, right he tends to to welcome a

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Speaker 4: legal fight because he has the resources and the time

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Speaker 4: to drag these things out forever. Whereas a lot of

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Speaker 4: the people who he you know, ultimately stiffs with this stuff,

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Speaker 4: they don't and and they may you know, not find

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Speaker 4: it worth it to fight him in court. So I

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Speaker 4: imagine this will be the beginning of, you know, if

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Speaker 4: I had to predict a lot of legal issues with

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Speaker 4: what's going on here over the these first ten days.

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Speaker 5: Kurt, thanks for thanks for being here. We'll let you

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Speaker 5: enjoy the rest of your weekend. Dana and Sarah and

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Speaker 5: I will try to break this down. Sarah, I was

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Speaker 5: texting with a source, a former OMB employee who who

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Speaker 5: knows budget stuff pretty well, and sort of asking, how

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Speaker 5: how does this rate from like just normal political wrangling

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Speaker 5: to something much more serious?

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Speaker 1: Where where do you think?

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Speaker 2: How significant do you think this is?

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Speaker 6: I mean, this strikes at the at the very founding

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Speaker 6: ethos of the United States of America, that we have

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Speaker 6: this separation of powers and that the Congress controls the purse.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 6: This is this is Musk is as an arm of

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Speaker 6: the executive branch, who's not even really he's he's an sge.

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Speaker 6: We can talk about that a little bit more later,

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Speaker 6: but he's not really even a government employee taking control

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Speaker 6: of all of the money that the US government pays

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Speaker 6: out for for salaries, for contracts, for contracts by the way,

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Speaker 6: which which Musks companies receive payments from the US government.

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Speaker 6: So not only is there huge conflicts of interest, but

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Speaker 6: it gets at some of the structural assumptions or at

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Speaker 6: least you know, rules that we have over how the

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Speaker 6: US government works, and the functioning of these systems is

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Speaker 6: critical to global confidence in the dollar, global confidence in

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Speaker 6: the US's ability to pay its bills. It's one thing

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Speaker 6: for Twitter to stiff a landlord. It's another thing for

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Speaker 6: the United States of America to not be good for

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Speaker 6: its money. Right, that is, that is a more serious issue.

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Speaker 6: And to be clear, we haven't seen any evidence yet

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Speaker 6: that Musk has not paid out anything that the US

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Speaker 6: is supposed to pay out. But this is this is

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Speaker 6: power that he's not supposed to have, at least structurally,

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Speaker 6: even if Trump has allowed him to have it. And

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Speaker 6: so yeah, I'm very alarmed by that.

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Speaker 5: We should say this, this payment system, it's enormous. The

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Speaker 5: New York Times said five trillion dollars in twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 5: It's Social Security checks, it's Medicare, it's it's payments for everything.

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Speaker 2: So it's not just the risk of default, but like

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Speaker 2: the risk.

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Speaker 5: That somebody doesn't get their social security, that schools.

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Speaker 1: Don't get funded, and so on.

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Speaker 5: The person I was speaking to is saying, essentially, the

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Speaker 5: question is what does he do now? So like, does

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Speaker 5: he just use this data to write some tweets, which

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Speaker 5: would create some concerns potentially because there's private information here,

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Speaker 5: you could imagine him getting stuff wrong.

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Speaker 1: We've already seen him get stuff wrong.

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Speaker 5: And then there's a sort of sliding scale to bad

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Speaker 5: where the next step would be unilaterally defunding stuff, which

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Speaker 5: I mean Musk has said that's what he wants to

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Speaker 5: do at times. Trump has said that's what he wants

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Speaker 5: to do. And then and then the furthest along on

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Speaker 5: the scale would be can he actually make payments? You know?

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Speaker 1: Could he could?

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Speaker 5: He could he use this system to pay himself or

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Speaker 5: or or somebody else? And and I don't think we

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Speaker 5: know the answer to that question, Dana. Part of what

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Speaker 5: makes this so concerning is, Yeah, this is not just

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Speaker 5: a normal White House official. This is not somebody who's

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Speaker 5: been vetted, who's subject to financial disclosures, who's put all

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Speaker 5: their assets in a trust. It's also somebody who's very

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Speaker 5: very erratic. I mean, like the fact that this is

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Speaker 5: Elon and not some other Trump figure is part of

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Speaker 5: why I would say people are concerned.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think to take a step back,

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Speaker 3: you know, we need to sort of recalibrate the way

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Speaker 3: that we've been thinking about Elon Muskandoge. I think originally

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Speaker 3: a lot of the reporting was like, Oh, it's this

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Speaker 3: like advisory council that he's doing with Vivek Ramaswami. And

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Speaker 3: then it was like, oh, actually Vivek's out, it's just Elon,

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Speaker 3: And then people were still acting like it was just

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Speaker 3: this sort of like advisory board. But no, now it's

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Speaker 3: actually within the government. He's sleeping at the old Executive

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Speaker 3: Office building. And what's happening now and this is what

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Speaker 3: you know, we at Elon Incan elsewhere within Bloomberg would

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Speaker 3: love our listeners support with is like he's got teams

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Speaker 3: of people fanning out to every agency, you know, sort

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Speaker 3: of setting up shop and with Treasury. I think why

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Speaker 3: it is so alarming is that because a career official

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Speaker 3: basically you know, tried to stop them from getting their

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Speaker 3: getting their hands on this data, and it was forced

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Speaker 3: to resign or was forced out earlier this week, and

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Speaker 3: so the Washington Post broke David liverering. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 3: you know, he was forced out, and then we basically

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Speaker 3: announced his retirement on Friday. And then so the sequence

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Speaker 3: events was the Washington Post broke the story, and then

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Speaker 3: you know, everyone was writing about librink resigning. Senator Ron

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Speaker 3: Wyden from Oregon wrote a letter to BESSNT yesterday being

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Speaker 3: like why, like why did you give them access to this?

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Speaker 3: And then we have the New York Times story that's

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Speaker 3: out today, and so it's just we have to like

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Speaker 3: take a step back and constantly remind ourselves. I think

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Speaker 3: how unprecedented it is that the world's richest person, a

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Speaker 3: government contractor who runs six companies and maybe an SGE,

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Speaker 3: although I haven't seen like firm proof of that, is

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Speaker 3: basically waltzing in to every government agency with his associates,

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Speaker 3: demanding access to data that typically has not been given

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Speaker 3: to someone like him and that has always been closely

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Speaker 3: guarded within the agencies itself.

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Speaker 6: Let me just like put that on another another layer

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Speaker 6: of alarm here, right, Like, in some sense, the people

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Speaker 6: who are frequenting this podcast are not alarmed that this

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Speaker 6: is what Elon is doing. It's exactly what he did

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Speaker 6: at Twitter. We joked on our internal slack when he

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Speaker 6: was given this Doge power like that he would send

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Speaker 6: a fork on the road email. He actually did that.

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Speaker 6: And the difference here is that Elon paid forty four

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Speaker 6: billion for Twitter. It's his company. I mean, he you know,

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Speaker 6: some billions borrowed from banks, but it was his to

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Speaker 6: choose to do what he wanted to do with it.

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Speaker 6: And as much as as people felt like they have

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Speaker 6: some ownership for Twitter because we all we've all used

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Speaker 6: it and had it as part of our Internet ecosystem

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Speaker 6: over the last few years, it's a private company that

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Speaker 6: Musk owns. This is the US government. We own the

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Speaker 6: US government. Taxpayers owned the US government. So when Musk

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Speaker 6: takes down data sets as he's been doing, when he

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Speaker 6: removes you know, and I say Musk, but you know, Doge,

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Speaker 6: the Trump administration extensions of Musk's ideas. When he does that,

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Speaker 6: that's a different story. That's, you know, something that all

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Speaker 6: taxpayers and citizens have to reckon with and could be

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Speaker 6: directly affected by. So I don't want to lose sight

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Speaker 6: of the fact that, like, although this is similar to

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Speaker 6: what he did at Twitter. It's much more extreme and

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Speaker 6: much less authority on his part to even be a

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Speaker 6: person doing this sort of thing with the US government.

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Speaker 5: You know, it's interesting because everything you're saying is true,

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Speaker 5: but at the same time time, this is kind of

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Speaker 5: what Trump and Musk promised. I mean, you know, there

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Speaker 5: was a lot of there's been a lot of discussion

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Speaker 5: about like, well, it was Project twenty twenty five. Trump

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Speaker 5: sort of ran away from Project twenty twenty five and

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Speaker 5: and said it had.

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Speaker 1: Nothing to do with him.

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Speaker 5: But anyone who's paying close attention knew that there would

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Speaker 5: be this effort to sort of take parts of the

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Speaker 5: sort of non partisan civil service and put them under

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Speaker 5: the executive branch. And I think what has changed, like

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Speaker 5: what is different from what maybe some people anticipated, is

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Speaker 5: that we thought it would be like a bunch of

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Speaker 5: heritage guys doing this, and that Elon Musk would be

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Speaker 5: like making a lot of noise, or I would say

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Speaker 5: on this podcast, we actually we were pretty bullish on

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Speaker 5: Elon Musk and Trump's staying together. But there's the sort

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Speaker 5: of conventional wisdom was like Elon's going to be off

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Speaker 5: in this Blue Ribbon Commission and these kind of like

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Speaker 5: extremely conservative elements, or the Trump administration would be trying

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Speaker 5: to do things like this, trying to control more closely payments,

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Speaker 5: even maybe even trying to defund the government. And what's

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Speaker 5: different here is it's Elon Musk, and I think that

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Speaker 5: creates just so much unpredictability and tons of risk. You know,

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Speaker 5: Kurt was saying that how ineffective Musk was at Twitter

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Speaker 5: in the early days, and again, like you're saying, Sarah,

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Speaker 5: like the price of ineffective could be very serious. But

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Speaker 5: of course it does come with kind of this super

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Speaker 5: charged ego energy and just like not caring, like willing

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Speaker 5: to cross lines. I think that maybe other sort of

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Speaker 5: more experienced in government types, people who might have to

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Speaker 5: face a confirmation hearing, wouldn't be willing to cross those lines.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Elizabeth Warren just put on a statement it's alarming

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Speaker 3: that Elon Musk has access to government payment systems used

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Speaker 3: to deliver Social Security and Medicare benefits. He also drove

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Speaker 3: out the senior career official at Treasury responsible for preventing

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Speaker 3: a potential default on the US debt.

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Speaker 6: I'd also love to know to what extent Trump has

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Speaker 6: given permission for a Musk to do this, right, he

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Speaker 6: may have said, like do what you need to do,

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Speaker 6: or like you have my blessing to do what you've

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Speaker 6: done at your companies to get them to the point

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Speaker 6: they're at. I don't know if those in Trump's circle.

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Speaker 6: I can't imagine that they that they knew the specifics

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Speaker 6: of what what it would take to get Musk's vision

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Speaker 6: executed in the way he wants to execute it. I'd

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Speaker 6: love to know more details on who knows what, who's

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Speaker 6: approving what, who's actually in charge.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, So just as we start to wrap up, I

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Speaker 5: want to just sort of try to spin this forward

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Speaker 5: with you two, Dana, what are you going to be

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Speaker 5: looking at in terms of like in terms of trying

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Speaker 5: to understand like just how unpressed just how much power

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Speaker 5: does Musk have?

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Speaker 1: How involved is Trump? Like, well, like what are what

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Speaker 1: are what are you.

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Speaker 5: Looking at in the coming days and what should listeners

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Speaker 5: be paying attention to.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I think we just need to be wrecking

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Speaker 3: with the with the fact that Musk and Doze are

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Speaker 3: going agency by agency by agency, Right, It's like O

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Speaker 3: M B O, PM, Treasury, the GSA, Education USA. I

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Speaker 3: d like we need to like really sort of get

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Speaker 3: a better grip on like who from DOGE is now

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Speaker 3: landing at each of these agencies, what data are they

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Speaker 3: getting access to and what is what are they actually doing?

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Speaker 3: And how are federal workers resisting?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'll just jump in with one final thought

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Speaker 5: and then Sarah, I want to I'm going to go

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Speaker 5: to you. But for me, I think the thing to

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Speaker 5: keep in mind here is that unlike Twitter, you know,

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Speaker 5: Sarah kind of laid out what what why, this is

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Speaker 5: potentially a lot more dangerous than if Elon Musk kind

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Speaker 5: of messes with Twitter.

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Speaker 1: It ruins my joke machine.

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Speaker 5: But but he could ruin the most powerful you know,

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Speaker 5: the government of the most powerful country of the world

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Speaker 5: or something.

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Speaker 1: I want to remind people though.

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Speaker 5: That you know, there's a there are going to be

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Speaker 5: politics here and a lot of this stuff is deeply,

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Speaker 5: deeply unpopular. Cutting off each paint, each time he cuts

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Speaker 5: something off, and if he makes a mistake, it's going

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Speaker 5: to be it's going to create a sense of crisis,

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Speaker 5: and that sense of crisis, it may take a while

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Speaker 5: for voters to pay attention, but there will be a

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Speaker 5: political cost. And saray your point, I think that will

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Speaker 5: start to raise questions about kind of where is Trump

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Speaker 5: Sarah final thoughts for you, kind of what are you

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Speaker 5: going to be looking at over the next couple of days.

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Speaker 6: I mean, of course, the legal reaction, the congressional reaction, like,

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Speaker 6: how does the government once they realize what has happened,

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Speaker 6: what has occurred, how does the government react? Do they

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Speaker 6: try to stop this? Can they stop this? And if

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Speaker 6: they tried, like, does Musk back down? The other thing?

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Speaker 6: I just want to I just want to be clear

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Speaker 6: about with Twitter, what Musk was saying he was doing

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Speaker 6: things for and what he was doing things for, we're

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Speaker 6: two different things. He said Twitter was all about free speech.

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Speaker 2: That was his was.

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Speaker 6: His rallying cry. He made all these changes in the

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Speaker 6: name of free speech. Of course, we have seen that

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Speaker 6: that free speech has not really been supported on Twitter.

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Speaker 6: It's it's just been it's been a version of it.

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Speaker 6: It's been uneven. It's been uneven. Here he's talking about efficiency.

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Speaker 6: What I want to know, what really is Musk's endgame?

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Speaker 6: What is his goal here? When we reflected on the

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Speaker 6: Twitter acquisition and the chaos and what that led to,

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Speaker 6: you know, people were saying, oh, he's losing advertisers, Oh,

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Speaker 6: he's losing he's losing respect. Oh, you know, he's he's

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Speaker 6: ruining his reputation. But it got him close to Trump

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Speaker 6: and it helped him get so close to the US presidency.

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Speaker 6: So ultimately we on this podcast decided that was a

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Speaker 6: good acquisition with the US government. He's saying, this is

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Speaker 6: about efficiency, He's saying, this is about using taxpayer money

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Speaker 6: more wisely, getting rid of the bureaucra See what is

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Speaker 6: he actually doing and what is the goal long term?

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Speaker 6: What is the bigger picture? So I think that's that's

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Speaker 6: really what I'm going to be what I'm gonna be

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Speaker 6: looking for trying to direct reporters to find out about.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it all comes down his companies right there, that

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Speaker 5: there's all these ways that he can profit from this.

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Speaker 5: And we're going to be paying attention both to what's

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Speaker 5: happening in the White House and in the Executive Office building,

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Speaker 5: as well as what's happening in the rest of Musk's empire.

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Speaker 5: Dana Sarah, thanks for joining me. Thanks for making this

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Speaker 5: special podcast on a Saturday night.

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Speaker 1: We'll see cibios both soon.

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Speaker 6: Thank you, Thank you guys.

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Speaker 5: This episode was produced by Mangus Hendrickson. Rayhan Armonci was

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Speaker 5: our senior editor. The Elonink theme is written and performed.

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Speaker 1: By Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagierra.

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Speaker 5: Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman

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Speaker 5: is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to

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Speaker 5: Joel Weber and Brad's Stone. I'm Max Chafkin. If you

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Speaker 5: have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help

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Speaker 5: other listeners find us and we will see you on Tuesday.