Musk and Trump’s relationship was cemented on July 13, 2024, when a would-be murderer got here inside inches of killing the previous president in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk was impressed by the picture of Trump, blood streaming down his face, elevating his fist within the air and shouting “Combat, struggle, struggle” for the cameras. The picture shortly turned a meme—Musk’s love language. He endorsed Trump that day and pivoted his just lately launched tremendous PAC to get the previous president reelected.
The next month, throughout a stay dialogue on X, Musk floated the thought of working for Trump on a “authorities effectivity fee.” Trump’s response was enthusiastic. “You are the best cutter,” he stated admiringly.
Two years earlier, after Musk bought Twitter in a chaotic blitz of last-minute paperwork and hundred-million-dollar cash transfers, he had reduce roughly 80 % of the corporate’s employees, closed no less than a dozen worldwide places of work, and rolled again Twitter’s content material moderation insurance policies within the identify of free speech. He demanded change at such velocity that one in every of his lieutenants, Steve Davis, took to sleeping at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters along with his associate and their new child child.
In Washington, Musk estimated that his group might reduce “almost $2 trillion” from the federal finances. After you put aside politically sacrosanct navy spending, nondiscretionary spending reminiscent of Medicare and Social Safety advantages, and curiosity funds on the nationwide debt, that quantity, $2 trillion, was just a little greater than what you had left over. In different phrases, Musk was functionally proposing to chop every part else, from overseas assist to housing subsidies, from the upkeep of nationwide parks to the gathering of fundamental climate information, from investigations into predatory lenders to the operation of air site visitors management programs.
After Trump received, he introduced that Musk, together with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, would colead DOGE. The announcement kicked off a stealthy recruiting course of, led by Davis, the identical government who’d slept at Twitter HQ. Musk pictured a group of super-high-IQ people becoming a member of him in Washington for an 80-hour-a-week, 18-month hackathon on the US authorities.
The DOGE mind belief camped out on the eighth flooring of the SpaceX workplace in Washington, DC, commandeering a number of convention rooms and conducting conferences and interviews with DOGE hopefuls, in line with an individual with information of the occasions. One query for candidates: Who did you vote for in 2024?
Amongst Davis’ early recruits was Zsombor (Anthony) Jancso, a San Francisco–primarily based engineer and former Palantir worker in his mid-twenties. After Palantir, Jancso had labored on a mission referred to as Speed up X, which purported to supply “a contemporary OS for presidency” with options “delivered in days.” His cofounder, an MIT-educated engineer named Jordan Wick, joined DOGE too.
Just a few weeks after the 2024 election, an internet deal with related to Jancso reached out to a gaggle of people that had participated in an AI problem placed on by the US Area Drive. The particular person stated they have been searching for “hardcore engineers” and instructed candidates to ship their GitHub or LinkedIn to @DOGE on X and reply privately with their X deal with. (To do all this, they’d must pay for X premium.) Not lengthy after that, the identical deal with posted in a gaggle for Palantir alums: “This can be a historic alternative to construct an environment friendly authorities, and to chop the federal finances by 1/3.”
