In 2025, Elon Musk entered the US government as the de facto head of the 'Department of Government Efficiency', or Doge. He described governments as 'big dumb machines' and told Senator Ted Cruz that the only way to eliminate waste and fraud was to examine the computers directly. Musk's approach blended private equity restructuring with startup management, infused with gaming culture and rightwing ideology.
Musk assembled a team of teenage coders and managers from his companies to rewrite regulations and budget lines from within. The goal was to digitise paper records into a single interoperable system. However, the reality was a strengthening of state surveillance. Musk became convinced that the real 'bugs' were people, particularly non-white illegal immigrants, whom he saw as pawns in a liberal scheme. He viewed empathy as a software vulnerability to be hardened against.
Doge's name came from the Shiba Inu meme and the memecoin it inspired. Musk called himself the 'Dogefather' and used a cartoon dog as the logo. He revelled in the absurdity, stating in February 2025: 'Doge started out as a meme. Now it's real. Isn't that crazy?' The Doge website featured a leaderboard for tracking cuts in real time.
Musk compared Doge to the Kobayashi Maru scenario from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, where Captain Kirk wins an unwinnable simulation by reprogramming it. Musk said Doge aimed to 'reprogram the matrix' to make success possible. He had already disrupted the automotive and aerospace industries with Tesla and SpaceX, and believed he could do the same in government.
Musk's office included a gaming rig with an oversized curved screen, and a Photoshopped portrait of Pepe the Frog as a Roman gladiator, representing his alias Kekius Maximus used in video games like Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4. These 'dungeon crawler' games involved navigating labyrinths and fighting monsters, reflecting Musk's view of government as a glitchy dataset to be scrubbed and optimised.
