The true impact Elon Musk could have if he’s appointed to serve by Trump

Donald Trump has announced that, if elected, he will ask tech billionaire Elon Musk to lead a “government efficiency commission” that will conduct “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reforms.” 

The idea for such a commission was apparently suggested by Musk himself — and even before Election Day, he is eager to get started. 

“Can’t wait,” he posted on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he happens to own.

Musk believes there’s “a lot of needless waste and regulation in government that needs to go.” 

The Trump-Musk alliance defies everything we know about human psychology.

Both are outsized, volatile personalities, both require cosmic levels of personal attention, but the two go about their business in radically different ways. 

Trump is essentially a showman.

The size of his crowds is the measure of his self-worth.

Musk, who claims to have Asperger’s, communicates mostly online. 

Each is a superstar in his own domain.

How long can it be before a fight breaks out and they start shoving each other out of the limelight? 

A crucial update 

On the other hand, the two men are rule-breakers, deeply loathed by the rule-makers of the progressive establishment.

Maybe they can find common ground in that oppositional space. 

Does this matter much in the grand scheme of things? 

Trump has joked that he would like to see Musk become his “Secretary of Cost-Cutting.”

If slashing budgets is the putative commission’s sole objective, none of its recommendations will be remembered five seconds after they are delivered.

That’s just the way Washington works. 

But if it attempts a fundamental reconfiguration of the federal government — an aligning of industrial-age hierarchies with the realities of digital life — the commission’s work could be transformative. 

Only 23% of Americans trust the federal government. 

Let that number sink in. 

If reconfiguration can reduce the distance between the public and power, if the concerns of ordinary people can be thrust on the ruling elites, the first critical steps will have been taken toward the restoration of trust. 

Changes in the government’s structure are inevitable.

This isn’t a crazy communist demand — it’s happened many times before in our history. 

The details, in the present case, can be debated, but any plan must abide by an overarching categorical imperative: Everything must be simplified and everything must be digitized. 

Despite the baggage attached to being the wealthiest human in the solar system, Musk is a good fit for the task.

If Walter Isaacson’s biography is to be believed, he’s an incredibly quick study, able to make complex technical and management decisions with remarkable swiftness. 

Musk identified three-fourths of Twitter’s staff as useless drones and fired them within six months of having purchased the platform.

No harmful side-effects ensued. 

As the Twitter episode should make clear, Musk is also a relentless risk-taker.

That’s a useful quality to possess if you’re going to be treading on the tentacles of the Washington octopus. 

Although by no means glib, and at times almost inarticulate, Musk has a literal way of communicating that can be oddly persuasive.

His example of government overregulation is the hilarious Parable of the Sharks, which relates how launches by his rocket company, SpaceX, were delayed until it could be proved that no sharks would die in consequence. 

Yes, the incident is absurd and funny — but it is also far more effective than a whole volume of abstract arguments against a mindless bureaucracy. 

People who won’t like it 

Finally, Musk is a creature of the digital universe, whose companies happen to be proof of the principle of creation by disruption.

The digital mind looks on our institutions from a very different angle — that’s true not only of substance, the way things are, but of process, the way things are done. 

“We’re going to livestream everything we do,” Musk has said.

“We’re going to be super transparent.” 

In what can only be described as a huge understatement, he added: “There may be some people who don’t like it, but we need to do it.” 

The commission, we can be sure, will be an Internet thing rather than a musty fact-finding exercise. 

At this early date, Musk probably hasn’t given much thought to how or where his commission will hunt the fearsome Leviathan.

Like the rest of us, he’s waiting on events. 

That gives me the freedom to speculate on the various paths to reconfiguration, should Trump win the presidency. 

Rationalize.

Every government need is met though massive redundancy.

In part, this is because function — the mission — tends to be imprecise, but mostly it’s because bureaucracies grow organically, like weeds. 

When I worked for the Intelligence Community, there were at least half a dozen jobs identical to mine scattered across the IC — and that doesn’t count contractors.

Analysts wrote thousands of papers for each other’s delectation. 

A cynical colleague called the CIA “middle-class welfare.”

I found that a bit harsh — but there were times when the place felt like a jobs program for political science majors. 

According to Isaacson, two of Musk’s guiding axioms are “Question requirements” and “Delete, delete, delete.”

They will serve him well. 

If government personnel is strictly tagged to function, entire agencies, like the Departments of Labor and Education, will be decimated.

This is the proverbial low-hanging fruit, ready to be plucked. 

Digitize. Federal agencies must be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Digital tools will be applied not only to internal processes but also to open an interactive space for the public. 

Agencies that deliver services, like Social Security, should be as fast and responsive as Amazon.

Agencies that are drafting legislation or regulations should have a digital feedback loop in the style of Reddit, with favored content rising to the top. 

No doubt, there will be howls of pain.

Experts will complain that such reforms will be too disruptive of everyday work.

That’s precisely their point. 

As every other organization in America has done, the federal government will adapt to digital proximity with its customers.

One example: The volume of classified information will (and should) be reduced by a factor of 100. 

Relocate.

The concept of a tightly centralized “capital city,” inherited from the courts of kings, is becoming obsolete.

Remote digital communications allow most tasks to be conducted anywhere. 

Selected federal agencies and personnel should be invited to leave Washington and live among the people they serve. 

The Interior Department, I’d imagine, would be happy to move to Billings, Mont., there to enjoy the sparkling local winters there.

The Department of Labor will relocate to a high-unemployment city like Kokomo, Ind.

The Department of Education will escape to New York and officially become a branch of the teachers union. 

None of these changes should be permanent.

After each census, new moves, pegged to the new data, will be proposed and voted on. 

Disaggregate.

The government is designed like those Russian dolls that fit one inside the other.

This facilitates a sort of shell game, in which responsibility for error or corruption is concealed beneath layers of bureaucracy. 

To the greatest extent possible, the big Cabinet departments should be pulled apart. 

Some are easy targets: Homeland Security, a 9/11-era monstrosity, failed its mission from the start and will function more smoothly in its separate parts. 

The motive isn’t a nihilistic joy in dismemberment.

It’s accountability.

A single unit, and a single person, will be held accountable for everything, good and bad, that comes to us from the government. 

Deregulate.

There should never be another rocket launch halted by the fear of hitting a shark. 

Again, the point is accountability.

It isn’t enough to drain the swamp of existing regulations — the regulators themselves will be regulated.

The power to legislate will be returned to our elected representatives in Congress. 

Desperately needed 

Will Musk have the good sense to listen to my suggestions?

And if he does so, is there a version of reality in which where they can be put into practice? 

I have no idea.

But I know that “drastic reforms” are desperately needed.

Reconfiguring modern government — erecting the next iteration of democracy — is the supreme political challenge of our time, far more important than the issues over which we so passionately quarrel at present. 

And I’m encouraged that Americans at last have been given an opportunity to talk about it.