Elon Musk and DOGE: What You Need to Know About the Department of Government Efficiency - Decrypt

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will helm a new U.S. government initiative aimed at lowering the federal budget deficit.

Called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the initiative—which has an acronym identical to the ticker of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin—will “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” according to President-elect Donald Trump.

However, some details about the project remain unclear. Here's everything we know so far about DOGE.

What is DOGE?

DOGE is an upcoming U.S. government initiative that Elon Musk first tweeted about last August.

While the project initially appeared to be a gag—created as a gag, and unsurprisingly pumping the price of Dogecoin whenever mentioned by Musk—Trump threw his support behind DOGE’s push to curtail government spending, suggesting the once fictitious department will actually become a real-life U.S. government-affiliated entity.

“Together, [Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy] will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies—essential to the 'Save America' movement," Trump said Tuesday in a statement.

The project will be active until “no later than July 4, 2026," Trump said; that’s the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Notably, DOGE is not an official U.S. government department in the traditional sense, as only Congress—not the president—can approve the creation of new federal government departments, according to the U.S. Congress’ website.

Rather, Musk's meme-linked brainchild will exist “outside” of the government system, Trump said. That means DOGE will likely not receive government funds. It also means that the project's ability to directly control U.S. government agency budgets will be minimal, although DOGE’s directives could be implemented by Trump's supporters in Congress.

Who will run DOGE? 

Billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the charge at the Department of Government Efficiency. Neither executive will receive compensation from their work, according to a Twitter post that Musk published.

Musk, of course, is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and the owner of Twitter (aka X). Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur and one-time Republican presidential hopeful, who exited the race during the primaries and threw his support behind Trump.

The initiative will also tentatively be staffed by a number of “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting," according to the department's official post. It is not yet known how many workers will be hired to staff the project, but the gigs will be unpaid, Elon Musk tweeted.

Billionaire Marc Andreessen of venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz has been recruited to act as DOGE’s “key networker for talent recruitment,” the Washington Post reported, citing an anonymous source.

The initiative's billionaire co-leaders have also allied with several Silicon Valley bigwigs to address “technical challenges to collecting data about federal employees and program”—a major problem that the initiative aims to resolve, according to the same report. Those advisors include Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, the paper reported on Monday, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.

Neither Ramaswamy nor Musk replied to Decrypt's request for comment.

What will DOGE actually do? 

DOGE’s mandate is to streamline the U.S. government by issuing reports that provide advice and guidance on trimming government regulations and spending, according to Trump.

“Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that. We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook," Musk said in October at a rally for Trump at New York City's Madison Square Garden.

Last week, Musk and Ramaswamy reportedly traveled to Washington D.C. and Mar-a-Lago, where they interviewed “seasoned Washington operators, legal specialists and top tech leaders,” to iron out their plans for the agency, according to the Washington Post, which cited five people familiar with the matter

However, the quasi-department's billionaire leaders have given differing statements over the extent to which the U.S. federal government's spending should be slashed.

Musk has suggested reducing federal expenditures by $2 million—a third of the U.S. federal government's total budget. Meanwhile, Ramaswamy has said he'd like to cut as much as 75% of the U.S. federal workforce, though the budget impact of such a cut is unclear.

Despite those differences, the DOGE leaders appear to be aligned on axing scores of federal government employees and several U.S. agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to cut costs, according to recent public comments from Ramaswamy and Musk.

“The magnitude of the [government funds] waste is beyond what the public could possibly imagine,” Musk tweeted, referencing U.S. federal government spending, which topped $6 trillion in 2023.

The Washington Post reported that Musk and Ramaswamy also plan to launch a podcast called the “DOGEcast," offering weekly updates on their efforts.

Why is it called DOGE?

The faux department's initialism, DOGE, appears to be a cheeky reference to the ticker for Dogecoin (DOGE), a high-market-cap meme coin beloved by Elon Musk. That link was reinforced by an official t-shirt sold by Trump featuring the president-elect, Musk, and a Shiba Inu dog.

The meme, which is famous for its Shiba Inu mascot, was invented in 2013 by a pair of software engineers. Musk has said that he owns a “bunch” of Dogecoin, and he has tweeted and spoken about the coin routinely over the past years. He even called himself the “Dogefather” in 2021 and mentioned the coin while hosting Saturday Night Live.

Dogecoin's value climbed amid Musk’s support for Trump on the campaign trail, and then skyrocketed after Trump’s win and amid the official announcement of DOGE leadership. The coin hit a three-year-high price recently and has helped spur other notable meme coins to surge in value, as well.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor's note: This story was originally published on November 17, 2024 and last updated with new details on November 25.

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