Elon Musk was defined by big and flashy actions, promises of massive cuts and dubious legitimacy in the early days of the government efficiency sector. As a limited government employee, he seems to be sensational. Other signature policies for other signature policies, such as the “5 Things” emails sent at the start of Doge’s operations, fell completely on the roadside, in addition to cutting the expected “savings” that their pseudo-agents will generate.
Musk and his large team of kids sent an email with the subject line in February, “What did you do last week?” For each government employee, they were asked to list five achievements made last week last week or face termination because they didn’t respond. According to the Washington Post, this has never been achieved, and has never been a real threat. The Office of Personnel Management told the agency almost immediately that the initiative was voluntary and that the violations would not lead to resignation. The agency also never did anything to the emails it received.
With the trend of ruthless policies, people are starting to ignore these emails altogether. According to the post, some agencies still need responses to emails that have obviously been ongoing for several months, but others have stopped authorization responses and have not checked whether employees respond. And, most notably, there seems to be no consequence for a mixture of responses (or non-responsives).
Doge has become a microcosm of how most Musk-led operate. Not only does the agency take weeks to reveal who is suspected of being at the helm, but the lack of real leadership can lead to chaos at all essentially every step of the way. The department operates under the Silicon Valley standard of “moving quickly and destroying things” and has certainly completed the latter, resulting in many legal challenges. Meanwhile, Musk’s huge guarantee of $2 trillion in federal spending cuts has revised it to $1 trillion to now be $150 billion, and all cuts failed to create any actual dent in the deficit. Classic Musk’s “over-commitment and delivery” move.
Musk’s withdrawal may be in his interest, at least related to his ties to the federal government. According to the Washington Post, those close to him said he was tired of being attacked for his role in Doge. Plus, he obviously wants to distance himself from the Trump tariff regime and has been attacking some of the people behind the policy. Therefore, the timing of his departure seemed to be correct.
Assuming Musk is actually doing the work of the ditch (after all, this administration is not big on federal law), he will leave his new chaos to an old mess. Tesla stares at the potential crisis, in large part because Musk’s actions hurt the brand.
The company’s stock has shown some negative marks and entered the earnings call Tuesday, with Bloomberg reporting that even the Bulls began to issue alerts. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives called on Musk to leave the threshold and return to Tesla, who he believes faces a “code red” moment when Tesla’s sales are sluggish and production of cheap models hits the hurdle. Currently, Tesla’s biggest promise is a robotic network and humanoid robot network, which are suspicious at best. Tuesday will show how much appetite the stomach investors have for Musk’s bad media and their willingness to keep huge hopes for the future in the CEO’s standard practices to keep Shell’s game going.
