The News
Elon Musk said Wednesday he plans to spend less time on the Department of Government Efficiency’s work to focus more on running his companies — although he’ll keep his office space in the White House.
After becoming a fixture of Trump’s White House during its first 100 days, the face of DOGE is now planning to manage it less, saying it has its own “rhythm.”
“DOGE is a way of life, like Buddhism,” Musk said, as reported by Semafor’s Shelby Talcott.
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Reed’s view
The ironic thing about Elon Musk’s leaving Washington is that now he can get back to really working for the American people. Musk’s empire of companies are so crucial in the technology race with China that they overshadow anything he could have accomplished at DOGE.
The stakes are very high. If the US can’t outpace Chinese innovation, the likelihood of a bloody war over Taiwan increases, and China will hold all the cards if it controls Taiwan.
To win this race, the US must advance its own technology faster, and with leaner companies less reliant on cheap labor and imports. That basically describes Tesla and Musk’s other companies, from SpaceX to Neuralink to xAI.
We’ve read countless headlines lately about how Chinese automaker BYD is eating Tesla’s lunch. But if you step back and look at the big picture, Tesla is the more impressive company.
Tesla built the market that BYD is trying to undercut and did so in the US, where labor prices and red tape make it far more expensive and difficult. It benefited from some subsidies, but nothing close to what BYD has enjoyed, thanks to roughly $3.7 billion from China, which has allowed it to employ 110,000 r&d engineers, nearly the size of Tesla’s total headcount.
The US needs Musk, not in government but in the private sector, where he can continue to build companies that drive American jobs, economic growth, and force the Chinese government to fork over billions in subsidies just to play catchup.
But the US also needs more Elon Musks. And to do that, it needs to attract talent from other countries and spend more on free, open scientific research (like the tiny Air Force research grant that led to the creation of the batteries now used in Tesla and BYD cars).
Love him or hate him, Musk will remain a key figure in the future of the country.
Notable
- Musk may be the world’s greatest entrepreneur, but he finally met his match in the US government. In a farewell press briefing, he said he was only able to cut $160 billion (far less than his $1 trillion mark) from a sprawling budget while tariffs and other policies roiled the global economy.
- The legality of the cuts made by Musk’s DOGE have been put to the test in court. This week a group of labor unions, local governments, and nonprofits sued the government and Musk over whether the White House had the authority to make such sweeping cuts.