RIO JE JANEIRO—What may not have been obvious in November is now impossible to overlook: Elon Musk’s disruptive and often destructive takeover of Twitter might as well have served as a beta test of the tech oligarch’s DOGE initiative.
“I think we’ve seen Musk copy that playbook in the federal government,” New York Times reporter Kate Conger said in a panel Monday at the Web Summit Rio conference here.
Conger, who wrote the book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter with her NYT colleague Ryan Mac, joined Mac in an onstage conversation led by Andrew Fishman, president and co-founder of the nonprofit newsroom The Intercept Brasil.
This panel was a sequel to the talk Conger and Mac did at Web Summit’s flagship conference in Lisbon a week after the US election, when Musk’s support of Trump’s return to the presidency was clear but not just how much he’d spent ($288 million in donations alone, the Washington Post reported). Nor was it clear then what role he would play in the Trump 2.0 White House.
One hundred days since Trump’s second inauguration, DOGE (short for Department of Government Efficiency, despite it not being a cabinet department authorized by Congress) has not come close to finding the $2 trillion in savings Musk once promised.
House Democrats push to have Musk removed from DOGE by May 30. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
The DOGE.gov site now lists $160 billion cut from federal spending, of which a BBC analysis found only $61.5 billion itemized.
But DOGE, now officially stapled atop the US Digital Service office by a Trump executive order, has become an ongoing exhibit of the same chaotic management style Musk brought to Twitter while turning it into X in the two reporters’ characterization.
“When we see the way that Musk cuts costs, it’s not necessarily about getting to a certain number,” Conger said.
“He’s changing the goals, and he’s kind of doing it ad hoc,” Mac added.
Frequent outbreaks of ineffectiveness and sloppiness in DOGE’s work, as well as multiple legal challenges to it, have yet to discourage many of Musk’s fans in Silicon Valley C-suites from wanting to follow in his footsteps.
“He’s kind of set the standard in Silicon Valley these days,” Mac said. “A lot of CEOs aspire to be like him, for better or worse, and treat the workers like him.”
Fishman also asked the two reporters about Musk’s treatment of X, which Conger called “his favorite toy, his favorite place to be.” They were not much more positive about that, especially regarding how X treats speech that counters Musk’s own.
(Mac was among the reporters whom Musk briefly banned from Twitter after he reported on the former @ElonJet account that shared publicly available data about flights of Musk’s private jet.)
“Free speech on X is speech that Elon enjoys,” Conger said. She suggested that Musk dismantling much of that platform’s content moderation machinery and restoring the accounts of such formerly banned users as disgraced conspiracy liar Alex Jones had discouraged people from dissent there.
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“People are afraid of being shouted down,” Conger said. “People have left the platform to those shriller voices.”
What Comes Next?
Trump and Musk at a UFC fight in Miami. (Credit: Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The panel was less conclusive about what might happen next, or what everybody else might want to do to change that. For example, the two reporters are no longer willing to imagine Musk and Trump reaching a breaking point, even as the president takes actions that could hurt Tesla.
“I think his view is, among electric car manufacturers, he’s best positioned to win still,” Mac said, adding that Musk is “not happy with the tariffs.”
The reporter reminded the audience how Musk had publicly quit a presidential advisory council in 2017 after Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords. “He has not said anything about Trump’s environmental policies,” Mac said of Musk’s more recent output. “It’s been a real change of heart in the last couple of years.”
Public criticism historically hasn’t deterred Musk, the reporters said, thanks in part to his protective layer of sycophantic functionaries. “A lot of people in Elon’s inner circle view their mission as protecting him and insulating him from criticism,” Conger said.
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But Mac and Conger suggested that heat shield may be eroding, to judge from Musk’s recent hints that he would leave DOGE as Tesla sales have begun to suffer.
The Brazil Strategy
As an example of other, more effective ways to put pressure on the world’s richest man, the two drew on X’s recent interactions with Brazil’s government, which has been investigating the platform’s possible responsibility for the January 2023 insurrection that attempted to restore former president Jair Bolsonaro to power.
Last August, Musk’s increasingly hostile refusals to suspend accounts in Brazil suspected of sharing misinformation that led to the ransacking of government buildings in Brasilia led a judge to order X shut down nationwide and freeze Starlink’s finances in the country. Weeks later, Musk backed down.
“What really led to Musk backing down was the fact that pressure was put on Starlink,” Conger said. “You see how his businesses can be used as levers to control his politics.”
She and Mac did not expect any such action to come out of the US government, barring maybe the courts. But Fishman did not ask them about one lever available to US customers: not giving their business to Musk’s companies.
Climate protestors spray paint a Tesla showroom in NYC. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
For example, so-called #TeslaTakedown protests and widespread distaste with Musk’s MAGA pivot have been followed by a serious drop in Tesla sales in the company’s most recent quarter, even as other EV automakers with vehicle designs newer than Tesla’s aging lineup reported booming sales.
And growing numbers of Americans who once used Twitter have flocked to alternative platforms such as Bluesky. Mac and Conger are among them (as am I) and now post far more often on Bluesky than they do on X. But audience members would not have learned that from this panel.
Disclosure: I’m moderating three panels at Web Summit Rio, with the organizers covering my airfare and lodging.
About Rob Pegoraro
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