The Chainsaw Czar: How Musk Tried to Hack the Government—and Hacked Himself Instead

Musk promised to slash bureaucracy. What he shredded was his own credibility.

Opinion by Friendo Media Editorial Staff

It began with a bang and a buzz of a chainsaw. When Elon Musk stormed the capital as Donald Trump’s self-styled efficiency czar, he arrived armed with Silicon Valley swagger, boundless hubris, and, quite literally, a power tool. At February’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump’s new advisor hoisted a shiny red chainsaw above his head – a gift from Argentina’s anarcho-capitalist president, Javier Milei – declaring it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” as the crowd roared. Musk grinned like a showman, the world’s richest man playing folk hero with a glint of steel in his hands. That surreal image of Musk brandishing Milei’s chainsaw on stage at CPAC, vowing to “cut the waste” out of Washington, now looks like the perfect symbol of his brief and blundering tenure in government. It was dramatic, disruptive, and destined to end in disaster.

Musk famously waved a red metal chainsaw on stage at CPAC 2025 – a gift from Argentina’s President – as a theatrical promise to “cut” Washington bureaucracy .

Musk’s appointment as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was touted by Trump as a masterstroke: a tech titan brought in to run the government like a start-up, to slash bloat and inject “Silicon Valley-style speed” into the plodding bureaucracy. For a moment, even skeptics were intrigued. Here was the man who built electric cars and rocket ships, now pledging to remake D.C. in his hyper-innovative image. He had bipartisan buy-in at the start, the notion of a savvy outsider trimming fat resonating with plenty of Americans fed up with red tape. Musk himself hyped the mission as patriotic duty – an “existential project” to save the country from its own government. And Trump, never shy about enlisting loyal billionaires, praised Musk to the hilt: “I can’t speak more highly about any individual,” the president cooed this spring, insisting Musk “loves the country” and “doesn’t need to do this”.

But just a few months into the job, Musk’s starry-eyed crusade had devolved into a dark farce. Washington, it turned out, was not so easily hacked. Musk’s ideological rigidity – his zero-sum conviction that government must be gutted to be saved – collided headlong with political reality. His DOGE revolution quickly morphed into a slash-and-burn rampage through the federal apparatus, marked by overreach, blunders, and authoritarian-esque power grabs. “It feels like a hostile takeover,” one stunned federal employee remarked as Musk’s young emissaries began physically commandeering offices. In the end, Musk’s D.C. experiment left behind plenty of wreckage – tattered agencies, terrified workers, a trail of lawsuits – but few lasting efficiencies. And the man once hailed as a genius disrupter exited the capital with his reputation in tatters, a cautionary tale of hubris for the billionaire class.

Silicon Valley Ideology Meets the Swamp

From day one, Musk approached governing with the zeal of a tech CEO bent on radical disruption. He and his DOGE team barreled into department after department “acting with Silicon Valley-style speed” – or what some might call recklessness – to “infiltrate and take control” of federal agencies . Nothing was sacred. USAID, the foreign aid agency, was fed “into the wood chipper” in Musk’s first weekend, effectively gutted despite its role feeding and healing millions worldwide. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a post-recession watchdog Musk loathed, was summarily “deleted” – Musk bid it a gleeful “RIP” on his social network X as DOGE operatives shut down its functions. Department by department, the pattern repeated: Musk’s hand-picked teams, often plucked from his companies or campaign, would descend on an agency, plug into its networks, and start swinging the axe.

No corner of the bureaucracy was spared the “efficiency” fever. The edict from Musk was to slash budgets, cull staff, and root out “waste, fraud and abuse.” In practice, that meant massive layoffs and program cuts driven less by careful audit than by Musk’s personal whims and grudges. By the spring, an estimated 260,000 federal workers – roughly 12% of the civil service – were gone from the payroll, a downsizing achieved via mass firings, forced buyouts and pressured early retirements. Entire programs vanished overnight. Hundreds of millions in research grants at NASA were canceled; environmental and labor regulations were tossed out en masse. One Thursday in March, 6,000 IRS employees were told they would be fired – Musk’s team taking a chainsaw to the tax agency with little concern for lost revenue enforcement. “Efficiency” was often a cover for ideological axe-grinding: cutting IRS auditors pleased Trump’s base, but even conservative budget experts warned that gutting tax collectors would increase deficits by letting cheats off the hook. Musk didn’t want to hear it. This was a crusade, and crusaders aren’t known for nuance.

Perhaps most telling was DOGE’s voracious appetite for data in its quest to remake government. Musk’s technocratic impulse was to consolidate and algorithmically analyze everything. Under his orders, DOGE agents gained “sweeping access to federal databases,” ignoring privacy laws and oversight. They hoovered up personal records from agencies like Social Security, the IRS, and Veterans Affairs – ostensibly to algorithmically flag “waste” or even to “identify and deport undocumented immigrants” by cross-referencing data. In one ominous project, Musk’s team sought to merge dozens of federal databases into one central repository, applying AI to sniff out fraud across the population. The Privacy Act of 1974 explicitly forbids agencies from sharing individuals’ data without consent, but DOGE plowed right through that legal guardrail. “The law is clear – they ignored it anyway,” one privacy advocate noted bluntly, warning that Musk’s data free-for-all showed a “disregard for laws and accountability” at the highest levels. To Musk, rules from the Watergate era were just archaic speed bumps. He saw no issue with accessing confidential info on millions of Americans if it served his mission – until courts or Congress said otherwise.

Indeed, Musk’s impatience with democratic norms revealed itself in acts that bordered on authoritarian. He held no formal office beyond a vague “special advisor” title, yet Musk and his aides wielded power as if they were an occupying force. In late January, aides “charged with running” the federal HR agency (OPM) abruptly locked career civil servants out of key computer systems containing personal data on millions of federal employees, effectively seizing control of that infrastructure. “We have no visibility into what they are doing… no oversight,” one OPM official told Reuters in alarm, citing “real cybersecurity and hacking implications”. At the Treasury Department, a 30-year career official resigned after clashing with Musk’s allies over access to sensitive payment systems, which control $6 trillion in annual payouts from Social Security checks to tax refunds. The message was clear: Musk’s people were taking over the levers of government, and any bureaucrat who resisted would be sidelined or shown the door. They even had literal bunk beds installed in agency offices so Musk’s cadre could work round-the-clock and keep outsiders away. “It feels like a hostile takeover,” one displaced employee said as Musk’s team occupied the OPM director’s suite and even moved aside top officials to take prime office space. Washington has seen plenty of arrogant appointees, but rarely an unelected advisor commandeering buildings and databases in a quest to remake government by fiat. Musk, the consummate disrupter, treated federal agencies like another company to be acquired and restructured at will.

Hubris, Meet Reality

Inside the halls of government, Musk’s swaggering style quickly smashed into institutional and legal walls. His “slash-and-burn” campaign undeniably disrupted the status quo – but it also sparked fierce resistance. By spring, Musk’s DOGE faced a blizzard of lawsuits seeking to rein in its overreach. A coalition of labor unions, retirees, and public interest groups filed emergency motions to block DOGE’s “unprecedented, unlawful seizure” of private data from the Social Security Administration. Nineteen state attorneys general jointly sued to halt DOGE’s intrusion into Treasury’s financial systems, citing grave privacy and security risks. Separately, two dozen states (plus D.C.) sued over Musk’s dismantling of AmeriCorps, the federal service program, accusing DOGE of illegally abolishing congressionally funded programs . Even inside the administration, Cabinet officials started pushing back. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (a Trump loyalist himself) blew up at Musk in a West Wing shouting match, accusing the billionaire of “overpromising and under-delivering” after DOGE’s grand savings projections evaporated. Musk, unused to being dressed down, shouted back – an episode that leaked to the press and only underscored the chaos.

The social security purge debacle became a case study in Musk’s technocratic arrogance. Musk had directed DOGE to remake the Social Security Administration (SSA) with an iron fist, ostensibly to root out fraud. The result? A spectacular backfire. DOGE’s heavy-handed “audit” of SSA ground the agency’s operations to a halt, snarling benefit processing for months – and uncovered almost no meaningful fraud in the end. The changes were so disruptive that even the Trump White House quietly reversed them to get SSA functioning again. “Outsiders unfamiliar with the nuances of SSA programs are calling the shots,” the SSA’s acting chief warned, saying DOGE’s meddling showed a dangerous ignorance of how these programs actually work. The SSA fiasco highlighted Musk’s miscalculation in assuming a software engineer’s logic could be applied wholesale to the social safety net. In the name of efficiency, his team nearly broke a system that 70 million Americans rely on – and had nothing to show for it but embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Musk’s promised cost savings turned out to be vastly inflated, another blow to his credibility. He had grandly claimed DOGE would trim $2 trillion off the federal ledger. But as analysts dug into DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” – the online showcase of its accomplishments – they found errors, double-counting, and outright falsehoods. The Washington Post found DOGE was taking credit for billions in “savings” from contracts that had already ended or been paid out normally . Caught in the act, DOGE quietly revised its posted savings down by $9.3 billion in one instance. As more flimsy claims were weeded out, Musk’s brag of $2T in cuts fell to $150 billion – a measly fraction of federal spending . “DOGE’s verified savings have been less than 1/10 of 1% of federal spending,” noted Jessica Riedl, a conservative budget hawk not exactly predisposed to big government . She cited “embarrassing accounting errors” and a litany of false or misleading statements by DOGE that had to be walked back. In short, Musk’s grand experiment achieved almost none of its lofty promises. It did, however, succeed in one area: demonstrating how not to run a government.

Even Musk’s political forays misfired. He poured an eye-popping $25 million into a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, making himself the face of the GOP effort to flip the court – only to see his candidate lose by 10 points. Democrats gleefully painted Musk as a “corrupt, unelected oligarch” intent on axing Social Security, a message that resonated with voters and handed liberals a victory. Musk also sparked international outcry with a single hand gesture: at Trump’s January inauguration rally, he awkwardly raised a flat-palmed salute that an overwhelming majority thought was indeed a Nazi salute. The image went viral, forcing even the Anti-Defamation League to weigh in and Musk to insist it was “pure propaganda” from the “legacy media” – classic Muskian deflection. Whether or not it was an innocent flub, the incident added to Musk’s growing aura of volatility and unfitness. In a matter of months, the man once hailed as a visionary had morphed, in the public eye, into something closer to a comic-book villain: ruthless, erratic, and dangerously out of his depth.

Backlash: Musk and His Empire in the Crosshairs

Musk might have expected some pushback in D.C., but he was clearly unprepared for the firestorm of public backlash that his government adventure provoked. As DOGE’s aggressive moves dominated headlines, Musk’s personal favorability plummeted to Earth. By late April, polls showed just one in three Americans approved of Musk’s job performance in the administration, while a solid 57% disapproved. Elon Musk had become more unpopular as a politician than he ever was as a businessman. A Pew survey found 54% of Americans viewing him unfavorably (up sharply from years past), with Democrats overwhelmingly negative and even many independents souring on him. He was now among the most polarizing figures in the country – beloved by Trump’s base perhaps, but increasingly toxic to the political center and left.

Crucially, Musk’s corporate crown jewels – Tesla and SpaceX – also took collateral damage. Tesla, in particular, became a lightning rod for anger against Musk’s foray into MAGA politics. Almost as soon as Musk entrenched himself with Trump, grassroots protests and boycotts popped up from California to Berlin. Outside Tesla showrooms, crowds gathered with signs denouncing Musk as a right-wing oligarch; activists organized “Tesla Takedown” days of action urging consumers to shun the brand. Vandals went further, targeting Tesla facilities with graffiti, sabotage and even arson. In March, unknown attackers firebombed Tesla charging stations and dealerships in at least five states, torching vehicles – part of a wave of politically charged vandalism that led to multiple arrests . Abroad, incidents were reported in Germany, France, even China, all seemingly in response to Musk’s political stance. By April 1, Reuters catalogued a string of such attacks and protests across several countries, underscoring how Musk’s actions had ignited global anger against the once-admired carmaker.

Tesla’s brand suffered unprecedented backlash amid Musk’s political antics – including vandalism and arson attacks at Tesla facilities, like this fire that destroyed several cars.

The financial toll on Musk’s companies was swift and severe. Tesla’s sales and stock price tumbled as the brand’s image flipped virtually overnight from cool tech to partisan lightning rod. By the first quarter of 2025, Tesla’s net income plunged 71% year-over-year, a shocking collapse for a company that had been riding high . Wedbush Securities – a firm usually bullish on Tesla – dubbed Musk’s Washington stint “this dark chapter” for the automaker, warning that the “brand damage caused by Musk in the White House/DOGE” won’t soon fade. Marketing experts were even more blunt. Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and tech commentator, blasted Musk’s DOGE escapade as “one of the greatest brand destructions of all time,” noting that Tesla’s reputation had flipped so fast that in a recent Axios-Harris poll it plummeted to 95th place among the 100 most visible U.S. companies – down from a lofty 8th place just four years ago. “Tesla was a great brand,” Galloway lamented on his podcast, but Musk “alienated the wrong people” by turning himself into a partisan figure. Indeed, Tesla’s traditional customer base (tech-savvy progressives, eco-conscious drivers) largely recoiled as Musk cozied up to Trumpism. The rivers reversed, and the tide turned entirely against him,” Galloway observed, describing how quickly public sentiment flipped.

SpaceX, while less visible to consumers, also faced uncomfortable questions. Musk’s dual role – cutting NASA’s budget with one hand through DOGE while vying for NASA contracts with the other – triggered calls for investigations. In Congress, lawmakers openly questioned whether Musk was exploiting his government position to benefit SpaceX. In early May, the top House Democrats on oversight committees wrote to NASA and the Pentagon raising alarm that Musk’s role “creates an inherent conflict of interest” since DOGE was influencing agencies that oversee SpaceX’s bids and contracts. They pointed out that Musk was simultaneously canceling NASA programs and DoD projects under the guise of efficiency, even as SpaceX continued to win lucrative government contracts. The mere appearance of such self-dealing, they warned, was “very troubling” and warranted scrutiny. Musk, for his part, brushed off conflict concerns, but the episode underscored how his blurring of public and private roles unnerved many in Washington. Even some Republicans quietly worried that Musk’s brazenness could taint their privatization agenda with charges of cronyism.

Meanwhile, Trump’s inner circle began to view Musk as more liability than asset. The president remained publicly loyal – Trump praised Musk effusively and lamented that “some of the public” treated him “very unfairly”. But behind closed doors, GOP strategists fretted that Musk had become a lightning rod unhelpful to Trump’s broader agenda. By May, Musk notably split with Trump on a major tax bill, criticizing an effort to slash taxes for wealthy investors which Musk argued would further balloon the deficit. This public break over policy gave the White House an off-ramp to distance itself. Within days, Musk announced – likely not uncoordinated with Trump – that his “scheduled time” as a government advisor was ending. The exit was framed as pre-planned, but everyone knew the real score: Musk was falling on his sword before he could do more damage to either his companies or Trump’s political standing. “I think I’ve done enough,” Musk said, with uncharacteristic humility, at a forum as he signaled retreat from political life. For perhaps the first time, the tech titan tasted defeat.

Exit Wounds and Lessons Learned

Elon Musk slunk out of Washington in late May with a mix of bravado and bruises. In a valedictory post on X, he thanked Trump for the “opportunity to reduce wasteful spending”, insisting DOGE’s work would continue “just fine without me”. “Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?” he quipped to reporters, comparing himself to a deity whose mere teachings would live on. It was classic Musk – grandiose even in defeat. But behind the bluster, the toll was evident. In just over four turbulent months, Musk had managed to imperil his business empire, alienate half the country, and entangle himself in legal and political peril. Tesla investors were openly cheering his resignation from DOGE – the end of “this nightmare,” as one analyst put it. Lawsuits and investigations remain in motion, threatening to haunt Musk long after his exit. A federal judge, in a parting shot, questioned the legality of Musk’s very appointment as a “temporary government employee,” suggesting the chaotic experiment might have been unlawful from the start. Musk leaves D.C. not as the triumphant efficiency savior he imagined, but as a deeply chastened figure – living proof that genius in one domain can dissolve into hubris in another.

For Musk personally, the repercussions are still unfolding. Tesla’s board, rattled by the stock’s decline and brand freefall, reportedly considered whether Musk’s antics had become a liability. (Tesla officially denied any move to oust him, but the mere rumor spoke volumes about frustration in the executive suite.) Musk’s net worth, once stratospheric, shed an estimated $122 billion since the year began – nearly as much as the dubious “$160 billion” in savings DOGE had claimed (and economists doubt). In other words, Musk’s personal fortune took a hit almost commensurate with the scale of his government’s supposed thrift. There is a poetic irony there that has not been lost on market watchers. Musk has since pledged to refocus “24/7” on his companies and inventions, attempting to rebuild trust with Tesla customers and shareholders. But repairing the reputational wreckage may prove even harder than making rockets fly. As one veteran marketing exec observed of Musk’s political detour: “He’s alienated the wrong customers, the wrong employees, maybe even the wrong investors – some things you can’t just unfire or unfund”. In plainer terms, some bells can’t be unrung.

Beyond Musk’s own saga, the rise and fall of the Department of Government Efficiency raises profound questions about the allure – and peril – of tech billionaires in governance. Musk was the ultimate test case: a visionary entrepreneur handed real power to remake government in his image. His failure was not for lack of intelligence or resources; it was a failure of character and mindset. Hubris, impatience with democratic norms, technocratic arrogance – all the classic billionaire flaws – combined to produce a governance disaster. Musk treated civil servants like expendable cogs, laws as optional, and democracy as an engineering problem. In doing so, he inadvertently proved why the system has guardrails in the first place. “No one elected Musk and he holds no official position – and yet look at the chaos he wrought,” wrote one aghast commentator as DOGE’s overreach became clear. Indeed, Musk’s tenure may be remembered as a vivid illustration that running a democracy is not like running a start-up – people are citizens, not “users,” and you can’t just “move fast and break things” when those “things” are institutions safeguarding millions of lives.

The Musk debacle also serves as a warning to fellow tech titans harboring political ambitions. In recent years, figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others have flirted with the idea that their business acumen could fix government. Musk’s flameout pours cold water on that conceit. If anything, his story suggests that putting billionaires in charge of public policy can rapidly erode public trust – and even their own brands. After watching Musk’s trajectory, one can imagine Silicon Valley moguls thinking twice before diving into the swamp. As political scientist Norm Ornstein wryly noted, “Musk did us a service by showing what happens when you put a fox in charge of the henhouse – the henhouse burns down and the fox singes his tail.” The future of tech billionaires in governance may now come with an asterisk: proceed at your own (and everyone else’s) risk.

In the end, Elon Musk’s government adventure has the makings of a darkly comic fable for our age. A man who reached for Mars couldn’t even manage Washington. The billionaire who thought he could do it all – run multiple companies, dominate social media, and reinvent American government on the side – learned the hard way that even the richest among us cannot steamroll democracy without consequences. Musk leaves the capital chastened and derided, his DOGE department likely to be quietly dismantled by whoever is left to clean up. His allies insist he’ll be back in some form – Musk always bounces back, they say – but even he has admitted to a newfound “disillusionment” with politics . As he retreats to Silicon Valley to lick his wounds, Washington insiders are left to assess the wreckage and the lessons. One lesson looms largest: governing a republic requires a very different skill set than building a business empire. And even the smartest guys in the room can stumble, spectacularly, when blinded by their own hype. Musk thought he would be the hero who saved American government – instead, he became a cautionary tale of hubris, one that will be studied with a shake of the head for years to come.

Sources: Recent reporting from The Washington Post, Reuters, Axios, BBC, Pew Research, Ipsos/ABC News, The Guardian, and other outlets was used in compiling this report .