WEBVTT - Emergency Episode: Nothing Stands Between Elon and Treasury's Payments System 0:00:03.880 --> 0:00:06.760 Well, Elon muskis now the richest person on the planet. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.000 More than half the satellites in space are owned and 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:11.920 controlled by one man. 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.200 Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate. 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:15.760 He says. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.360 He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:19.800 be different. He'll vote Republican. 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.600 There is a reason the US government is so reliant 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.160 on him. Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:26.400 done nothing of him. 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:30.160 Anything he does, he's fascinating people. 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.800 Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:41.000 I'm Max Chafkin, and we are recording this at five 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.080 pm Eastern Time on a Saturday here on the East 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.240 Coast because we got breaking news. The New York Times 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:51.360 reported that Musk and Doge have successfully gotten inside the 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.320 Treasury Department's payment system. These are the computers that control 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.160 the disbursement of much of the federal government's money. This 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.920 is something a top Treasury official was reportedly trying to 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.480 stop just before he exited the administration. 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:08.319 And to talk through this and. 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.000 The rest of the Musk bake breaking news, I'm joined 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:15.720 by Sarah Fryar, Bloomberg's Big Tech boss. Hey, Sarah Hi, 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:21.280 And we've got Dana Hall, Elon Musk reporter, Hey, Dana, Hey, Hey, 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:27.840 And Kurt Wagner Bloomberg social media reporter and also the 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.560 guy who wrote the book on Twitter. Oh that's terrible, Kurt. 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:31.040 I'm sorry. 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.160 That's a great shout out. I'll take it. Hey, Max, 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:34.160 Happy Saturday. 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:34.959 How's it going? 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:39.640 So guys, just to let's just start by like setting 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.880 the table. Dana, you want to try to take us 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:44.080 through what happened here. 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:46.960 I mean, it's a really fast moving story. But basically, 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:51.200 it sounds like the Treasury Secretary has given Elon Musk 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.200 and his Doge counterparts like access to the Treasury payment system. 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.120 And Senator Ron Wyden wrote a letter about this that 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.520 was published late last night, and it sounds like it's 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.520 just an unprecedented amount of access that Musk and his 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.200 comrades have to the way that the federal government actually 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.239 pays its bills and disperses payments. 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.520 And Sarah, this is coming in amid a kind of 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.560 week of chaos, right, it's. 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:21.520 Very hard to pay attention to what's happening given everything 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:24.320 else that surrounds it. We've got the tariffs, we've got 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:29.720 the plane crash. There's so many critical things that are 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:34.440 taking up the headlines right now, but this is coming 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.080 in the midst of a lot of uncertainty, a lot 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.880 of silence on the behalf of these agencies as their 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:46.360 workers get these emails telling them, you know you can, 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:50.760 you can take a government buy out and lose your job. 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.840 As data is coming down from websites like the CDC 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:59.960 and the Census, as a lot of agencies and others 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:02.600 who do business with the government are being told to 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:08.160 cut all their DEI spending and resources in order to 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:09.359 receive money from the government. 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.840 And it goes beyond that because like federal workers, I mean, 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:15.640 if you're talking to federal workers right now, there a 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.040 lot of them are just like confused. You have these 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.720 kind of weird offers and the suggestion that maybe they'll 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.560 they'll be resigned or laid off. There's like tons of 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.440 fear in the federal workforce. You also have these kind 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:33.800 of reports of random musk associates, some of whom work 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.160 for the federal government, some of whom don't work for 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:40.720 the federal government, like just like barging in. 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:42.720 To various parts of the bureocracy. If you're on Reddit, 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:43.200 right now. 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:48.400 The Reddit forum where government workers are, It's like Thunderdome. 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.960 It's just like one post after another of people who 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:57.400 are confused, scared, outrage, or just kind of befuddled. Kurt, 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:01.120 I mean, you wrote a book about eline kind of 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.880 chaotic takeover of Twitter. 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.360 Now, x I feel like we've seen this movie before. 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.880 I mean, these moves really echo kind of what he 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.440 did after taking over Twitter. 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:17.400 Yeah, it's honestly like a little bit spooky the similarities 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.000 between these two, right. I mean, you could see just 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:23.920 in the headlines alone, Right, you see Elon sleeping at 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.159 the office to try and get things done, working on 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.039 the weekends, right, trying to power through everything. You see 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:34.560 him eliminating people from essentially their access to be able 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:36.960 to do their jobs without any warning. Right suddenly they 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:39.480 just show up and they're no longer able to get 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.680 into the systems that they use for their jobs. You saw, 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:44.839 we all saw that email that came this past week, 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:46.240 the fork in the Road, right. 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.159 The same subject line, He used the. 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.320 Same subject line exactly, and at Twitter it was very 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.359 much a hey, you either opt into you know, my 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.159 version of Twitter, my hardcore version of what this is 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:00.000 going to be, or there's the door and you can 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:04.320 let yourself out. And so we're seeing this playbook, you know, 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.960 be used again. And I think what's shocking to me 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.640 is that it didn't go smoothly at all at Twitter. Right. 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.000 It's not as if like Elon got to the end 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.080 of his Twitter takeover two months in and was like, Wow, 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:18.960 that went great, right. He even himself was like, yeah, 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.400 that was pretty bumpy, Like things are tough. I scared 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.360 off a bunch of advertisers. You know, maybe maybe didn't 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:26.600 handle everything the best way that it could have been handled. 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.839 And yet here we are employing that same playbook at 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:35.440 a national government scale. And you know this, you know, Max, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:37.920 we all know this, Like if Twitter goes down for 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.120 twenty minutes, we'll be fine. Like not ideal, but we 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:43.440 will all be okay. I mean if the US government, 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.520 I'll be fine. If the US government, you know, payment 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.240 system goes down or some type of defense system goes 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:54.560 down because someone is rushing to do these things. Obviously 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.520 the impact could be you know, so much more significant 0:05:58.520 --> 0:05:59.120 and harmful. 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.279 I know you have to jump in a minute, but 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:02.920 before you do, I just want to ask you one 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.040 other question, which was this this sort of move to 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.560 control the actual payouts. 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:10.440 Is there a parallel with Twitter? 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:14.720 Did he actually try did he like randomly cancel contracts? 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.520 I actually can't remember whether whether it's how closely it tracks. 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.960 Yeah, I mean he he basically stopped paying most of 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.919 Twitter's bills, and he's still in legal fights with a 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:31.599 bunch of vendors over unpaid bills. And he also, max, 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:35.280 you will remember, didn't pay severance, right, So, even though 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.360 he's telling a lot of these employees of the US government, hey, 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:40.720 you can take this buyout and you'll you know, get 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:44.479 paid through. However, many months he told Twitter employees that too, 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.520 and he's you know, being ensued by thousands of former 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.680 Twitter employees right now for what they are arguing was 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.440 insufficient severance. So, you know, a lot of similarities to 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:57.000 this idea that he's just going to simply not pay 0:06:57.040 --> 0:06:59.559 the things that he doesn't want to pay and force 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:03.360 people to come and collect that money. Unclear if that's 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.640 exactly the approach that that he'll take here, but I 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.840 wouldn't be shocked, right he tends to to welcome a 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:12.520 legal fight because he has the resources and the time 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:14.800 to drag these things out forever. Whereas a lot of 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.920 the people who he you know, ultimately stiffs with this stuff, 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.720 they don't and and they may you know, not find 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:22.880 it worth it to fight him in court. So I 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.440 imagine this will be the beginning of, you know, if 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.600 I had to predict a lot of legal issues with 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.119 what's going on here over the these first ten days. 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.000 Kurt, thanks for thanks for being here. We'll let you 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.920 enjoy the rest of your weekend. Dana and Sarah and 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.960 I will try to break this down. Sarah, I was 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:46.040 texting with a source, a former OMB employee who who 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:50.240 knows budget stuff pretty well, and sort of asking, how 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:54.160 how does this rate from like just normal political wrangling 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:56.640 to something much more serious? 0:07:57.680 --> 0:07:59.040 Where where do you think? 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.200 How significant do you think this is? 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.280 I mean, this strikes at the at the very founding 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.320 ethos of the United States of America, that we have 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.559 this separation of powers and that the Congress controls the purse. 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:13.280 Right. 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:16.320 This is this is Musk is as an arm of 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:21.840 the executive branch, who's not even really he's he's an sge. 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:23.800 We can talk about that a little bit more later, 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:28.600 but he's not really even a government employee taking control 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.200 of all of the money that the US government pays 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:37.079 out for for salaries, for contracts, for contracts by the way, 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:41.960 which which Musks companies receive payments from the US government. 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.280 So not only is there huge conflicts of interest, but 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:50.000 it gets at some of the structural assumptions or at 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:52.680 least you know, rules that we have over how the 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:59.240 US government works, and the functioning of these systems is 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:04.840 critical to global confidence in the dollar, global confidence in 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:08.680 the US's ability to pay its bills. It's one thing 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:11.880 for Twitter to stiff a landlord. It's another thing for 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.439 the United States of America to not be good for 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:19.320 its money. Right, that is, that is a more serious issue. 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.080 And to be clear, we haven't seen any evidence yet 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.680 that Musk has not paid out anything that the US 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.040 is supposed to pay out. But this is this is 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:35.240 power that he's not supposed to have, at least structurally, 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.360 even if Trump has allowed him to have it. And 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.520 so yeah, I'm very alarmed by that. 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:48.439 We should say this, this payment system, it's enormous. The 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:53.040 New York Times said five trillion dollars in twenty twenty three. 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:57.400 It's Social Security checks, it's Medicare, it's it's payments for everything. 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.600 So it's not just the risk of default, but like 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:01.400 the risk. 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:04.960 That somebody doesn't get their social security, that schools. 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:06.960 Don't get funded, and so on. 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:09.959 The person I was speaking to is saying, essentially, the 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.960 question is what does he do now? So like, does 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:18.600 he just use this data to write some tweets, which 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:23.480 would create some concerns potentially because there's private information here, 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:25.400 you could imagine him getting stuff wrong. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:26.800 We've already seen him get stuff wrong. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:30.000 And then there's a sort of sliding scale to bad 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:34.200 where the next step would be unilaterally defunding stuff, which 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:35.960 I mean Musk has said that's what he wants to 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.240 do at times. Trump has said that's what he wants 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.240 to do. And then and then the furthest along on 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:45.400 the scale would be can he actually make payments? You know? 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:46.600 Could he could? 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.839 He could he use this system to pay himself or 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.440 or or somebody else? And and I don't think we 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.760 know the answer to that question, Dana. Part of what 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.760 makes this so concerning is, Yeah, this is not just 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.920 a normal White House official. This is not somebody who's 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:08.320 been vetted, who's subject to financial disclosures, who's put all 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.600 their assets in a trust. It's also somebody who's very 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:13.920 very erratic. I mean, like the fact that this is 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:19.080 Elon and not some other Trump figure is part of 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:22.400 why I would say people are concerned. 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:24.520 Yeah, I mean I think to take a step back, 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:26.600 you know, we need to sort of recalibrate the way 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:29.400 that we've been thinking about Elon Muskandoge. I think originally 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:31.200 a lot of the reporting was like, Oh, it's this 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.400 like advisory council that he's doing with Vivek Ramaswami. And 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.200 then it was like, oh, actually Vivek's out, it's just Elon, 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:39.200 And then people were still acting like it was just 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.240 this sort of like advisory board. But no, now it's 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.600 actually within the government. He's sleeping at the old Executive 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.160 Office building. And what's happening now and this is what 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:51.360 you know, we at Elon Incan elsewhere within Bloomberg would 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.400 love our listeners support with is like he's got teams 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.480 of people fanning out to every agency, you know, sort 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:02.760 of setting up shop and with Treasury. I think why 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:05.480 it is so alarming is that because a career official 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:08.240 basically you know, tried to stop them from getting their 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:11.200 getting their hands on this data, and it was forced 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.520 to resign or was forced out earlier this week, and 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:18.679 so the Washington Post broke David liverering. Yeah, and so 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:20.680 you know, he was forced out, and then we basically 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.600 announced his retirement on Friday. And then so the sequence 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.200 events was the Washington Post broke the story, and then 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.160 you know, everyone was writing about librink resigning. Senator Ron 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.960 Wyden from Oregon wrote a letter to BESSNT yesterday being 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.720 like why, like why did you give them access to this? 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:40.160 And then we have the New York Times story that's 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.400 out today, and so it's just we have to like 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.000 take a step back and constantly remind ourselves. I think 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:50.320 how unprecedented it is that the world's richest person, a 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:55.240 government contractor who runs six companies and maybe an SGE, 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.480 although I haven't seen like firm proof of that, is 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:03.880 basically waltzing in to every government agency with his associates, 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.000 demanding access to data that typically has not been given 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:11.280 to someone like him and that has always been closely 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:13.079 guarded within the agencies itself. 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.520 Let me just like put that on another another layer 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:21.440 of alarm here, right, Like, in some sense, the people 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:26.000 who are frequenting this podcast are not alarmed that this 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.280 is what Elon is doing. It's exactly what he did 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:32.680 at Twitter. We joked on our internal slack when he 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.080 was given this Doge power like that he would send 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.880 a fork on the road email. He actually did that. 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:46.240 And the difference here is that Elon paid forty four 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:49.560 billion for Twitter. It's his company. I mean, he you know, 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.400 some billions borrowed from banks, but it was his to 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:56.200 choose to do what he wanted to do with it. 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.280 And as much as as people felt like they have 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.520 some ownership for Twitter because we all we've all used 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:06.360 it and had it as part of our Internet ecosystem 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.360 over the last few years, it's a private company that 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:14.319 Musk owns. This is the US government. We own the 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.720 US government. Taxpayers owned the US government. So when Musk 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.400 takes down data sets as he's been doing, when he 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.160 removes you know, and I say Musk, but you know, Doge, 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:30.760 the Trump administration extensions of Musk's ideas. When he does that, 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:35.640 that's a different story. That's, you know, something that all 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.360 taxpayers and citizens have to reckon with and could be 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:42.280 directly affected by. So I don't want to lose sight 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.280 of the fact that, like, although this is similar to 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:49.040 what he did at Twitter. It's much more extreme and 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.120 much less authority on his part to even be a 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.760 person doing this sort of thing with the US government. 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:59.120 You know, it's interesting because everything you're saying is true, 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:02.800 but at the same time time, this is kind of 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:06.480 what Trump and Musk promised. I mean, you know, there 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.200 was a lot of there's been a lot of discussion 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.280 about like, well, it was Project twenty twenty five. Trump 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:14.880 sort of ran away from Project twenty twenty five and 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:15.760 and said it had. 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:16.520 Nothing to do with him. 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.640 But anyone who's paying close attention knew that there would 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:24.120 be this effort to sort of take parts of the 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.280 sort of non partisan civil service and put them under 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.960 the executive branch. And I think what has changed, like 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.320 what is different from what maybe some people anticipated, is 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.560 that we thought it would be like a bunch of 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.080 heritage guys doing this, and that Elon Musk would be 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.160 like making a lot of noise, or I would say 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.080 on this podcast, we actually we were pretty bullish on 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.920 Elon Musk and Trump's staying together. But there's the sort 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:49.760 of conventional wisdom was like Elon's going to be off 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:53.040 in this Blue Ribbon Commission and these kind of like 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:57.800 extremely conservative elements, or the Trump administration would be trying 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:00.920 to do things like this, trying to control more closely payments, 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.440 even maybe even trying to defund the government. And what's 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.480 different here is it's Elon Musk, and I think that 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:13.120 creates just so much unpredictability and tons of risk. You know, 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:18.200 Kurt was saying that how ineffective Musk was at Twitter 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.320 in the early days, and again, like you're saying, Sarah, 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.960 like the price of ineffective could be very serious. But 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:26.360 of course it does come with kind of this super 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:32.960 charged ego energy and just like not caring, like willing 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.520 to cross lines. I think that maybe other sort of 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:41.200 more experienced in government types, people who might have to 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:45.200 face a confirmation hearing, wouldn't be willing to cross those lines. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:47.920 Yeah, Elizabeth Warren just put on a statement it's alarming 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.880 that Elon Musk has access to government payment systems used 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.040 to deliver Social Security and Medicare benefits. He also drove 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:58.080 out the senior career official at Treasury responsible for preventing 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:00.320 a potential default on the US debt. 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.920 I'd also love to know to what extent Trump has 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.639 given permission for a Musk to do this, right, he 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:10.920 may have said, like do what you need to do, 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.400 or like you have my blessing to do what you've 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:17.240 done at your companies to get them to the point 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:22.679 they're at. I don't know if those in Trump's circle. 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:26.960 I can't imagine that they that they knew the specifics 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.520 of what what it would take to get Musk's vision 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.120 executed in the way he wants to execute it. I'd 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.880 love to know more details on who knows what, who's 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:38.680 approving what, who's actually in charge. 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.439 Yeah, So just as we start to wrap up, I 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:43.200 want to just sort of try to spin this forward 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.000 with you two, Dana, what are you going to be 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:49.960 looking at in terms of like in terms of trying 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.200 to understand like just how unpressed just how much power 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:53.920 does Musk have? 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:57.320 How involved is Trump? Like, well, like what are what 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:58.040 are what are you. 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:02.000 Looking at in the coming days and what should listeners 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:02.879 be paying attention to. 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:05.359 I mean, I think we just need to be wrecking 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:08.240 with the with the fact that Musk and Doze are 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.080 going agency by agency by agency, Right, It's like O 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:16.639 M B O, PM, Treasury, the GSA, Education USA. I 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:18.880 d like we need to like really sort of get 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.080 a better grip on like who from DOGE is now 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.280 landing at each of these agencies, what data are they 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:27.840 getting access to and what is what are they actually doing? 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:30.400 And how are federal workers resisting? 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.400 Yeah, and I'll just jump in with one final thought 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:34.680 and then Sarah, I want to I'm going to go 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.159 to you. But for me, I think the thing to 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.600 keep in mind here is that unlike Twitter, you know, 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.959 Sarah kind of laid out what what why, this is 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.720 potentially a lot more dangerous than if Elon Musk kind 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:47.800 of messes with Twitter. 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:49.800 It ruins my joke machine. 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.919 But but he could ruin the most powerful you know, 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:54.680 the government of the most powerful country of the world 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:55.080 or something. 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:57.160 I want to remind people though. 0:18:57.160 --> 0:18:59.320 That you know, there's a there are going to be 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.400 politics here and a lot of this stuff is deeply, 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.679 deeply unpopular. Cutting off each paint, each time he cuts 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:09.679 something off, and if he makes a mistake, it's going 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.439 to be it's going to create a sense of crisis, 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.119 and that sense of crisis, it may take a while 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.159 for voters to pay attention, but there will be a 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.280 political cost. And saray your point, I think that will 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:23.600 start to raise questions about kind of where is Trump 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.480 Sarah final thoughts for you, kind of what are you 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:28.440 going to be looking at over the next couple of days. 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.080 I mean, of course, the legal reaction, the congressional reaction, like, 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.359 how does the government once they realize what has happened, 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.879 what has occurred, how does the government react? Do they 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:40.240 try to stop this? Can they stop this? And if 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:45.200 they tried, like, does Musk back down? The other thing? 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:47.320 I just want to I just want to be clear 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:52.040 about with Twitter, what Musk was saying he was doing 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.680 things for and what he was doing things for, we're 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:58.159 two different things. He said Twitter was all about free speech. 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:00.280 That was his was. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.800 His rallying cry. He made all these changes in the 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.879 name of free speech. Of course, we have seen that 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:10.120 that free speech has not really been supported on Twitter. 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:13.760 It's it's just been it's been a version of it. 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:18.240 It's been uneven. It's been uneven. Here he's talking about efficiency. 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.440 What I want to know, what really is Musk's endgame? 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:27.439 What is his goal here? When we reflected on the 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:30.040 Twitter acquisition and the chaos and what that led to, 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.240 you know, people were saying, oh, he's losing advertisers, Oh, 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:38.040 he's losing he's losing respect. Oh, you know, he's he's 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:42.760 ruining his reputation. But it got him close to Trump 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.639 and it helped him get so close to the US presidency. 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.919 So ultimately we on this podcast decided that was a 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:53.119 good acquisition with the US government. He's saying, this is 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:57.280 about efficiency, He's saying, this is about using taxpayer money 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:00.960 more wisely, getting rid of the bureaucra See what is 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:06.400 he actually doing and what is the goal long term? 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:10.520 What is the bigger picture? So I think that's that's 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.159 really what I'm going to be what I'm gonna be 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:16.000 looking for trying to direct reporters to find out about. 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:16.600 Absolutely. 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.000 Yeah, it all comes down his companies right there, that 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:20.919 there's all these ways that he can profit from this. 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:23.840 And we're going to be paying attention both to what's 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:27.359 happening in the White House and in the Executive Office building, 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.040 as well as what's happening in the rest of Musk's empire. 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:34.439 Dana Sarah, thanks for joining me. Thanks for making this 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:36.760 special podcast on a Saturday night. 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:38.640 We'll see cibios both soon. 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:40.439 Thank you, Thank you guys. 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:47.119 This episode was produced by Mangus Hendrickson. Rayhan Armonci was 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:50.520 our senior editor. The Elonink theme is written and performed. 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:52.320