Elon Musk talks about DOGE and government waste in an interview with “The Economist” editor Zanny Minton Beddoes. <\/p>\n
ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES, ‘THE ECONOMIST’ EDITOR: It’s a similar tone, I think, about domestic politics, where you’ve played a big role domestically, politically here. You spent a lot of money on Donald Trump’s re-election. After the election, you got very actively involved. Through DOGE, you tried to cut a lot of spending, reshape the government. How do you feel? It wasn’t hugely successful in the sense that, you know, there wasn’t nearly as much spending cut as you tried. How do you look back on that? Do you regret getting so involved in politics? Do you think it was a good thing to do? ELON MUSK: I think I got a little too involved in politics, got carried away, frankly. You know, the goal with the sort of Doge stuff was to try to do something about the deficit, which is massive, where the interest payments exceed the amount of money spent on the Department of War. Like, basically, if you add up all the money spent on what is now the Department of War and intelligence in the U.S., that is smaller than the interest payments on the debt. So we need to sort of take a close look at spending and make sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not wasted or spent on fraudulent activities. And I got a lot of flack for this, obviously. But people don’t understand just how simple it was for the Doge team to approve payments. Literally, we just asked to have the contact information of the recipient or some evidence that, say, the money was going to its intended purpose. But over and over, we were told, we need to wire money for some sort of important cause in Africa. And we’re like, okay, but the wiring instructions are to Deloitte and Touche in Washington, D.C., not to Africa. So we would like to send the money to Africa. Can you please connect us with the recipients so we can send them the money directly? And then we’d get silence. BEDDOES: We don’t need to relitigate DOGE. I have no doubt that there’s a lot of waste in the U.S. government. I think probably… MUSK: Much worse than anyone could possibly imagine. BEDDOES: But the way, I think there is, it is a fair criticism, but the way you shut down a whole bunch of programs probably, in fact, certainly caused unnecessary suffering. MUSK: No. BEDDOES: No? MUSK: No. BEDDOES: You don’t buy that at all? MUSK: It caused a lot of complaining. BEDDOES: So you don’t buy the idea that anybody, and to put it really crudely and simply, any kid in Africa died because of the suddenness with which… MUSK: Zero. BEDDOES: I just don’t think that’s right. I just don’t think… I mean, I’ve had people reporting in Africa who… MUSK: How many NGOs are there that could step in? Because bear in mind, it happened quickly, and there are literally tens of thousands of NGOs. BEDDOES: Not everyone functions as fast as you do. If funding is cut off for antiretrovirals overnight and it just stops, then people will die when they don’t have access to them. MUSK: No, only if they cannot get funding for that. But the Gates Foundation has $ 50 billion. What about them? What about any one of a number of organizations? What about McKenzie Bezos? McKenzie, whatever her last name is, used to be Bezos, gave $ 50 billion. What about that?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n