As promised, Donald Trump has given Elon Musk a job in (or at least adjacent to) his second administration, in a brand new extragovernmental organization named after a meme-turned-cryptocurrency: the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE. The Trump campaign has already started selling T-shirts commemorating the occasion, featuring Trump’s Shiba Inu mascot, Musk and dogecoin, with the Martian landscape in the background – because Musk, in addition to his formal role, is ready to become Trump’s unofficial space. tsar. (Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate whom Trump appointed to lead with Musk, is not on the T-shirt.)

Musk’s role is a blatant conflict of interest; SpaceX has been an aerospace contractor for years and could benefit nicely from the creation of DOGE, which could shift government functions to private companies in the name of cost savings. But it also raises the question of what real interests are at stake for the Americans. How could Musk – the centibillionaire, innovator, right-wing activist and ruthless troll – actually direct this new effort? His leadership of his companies, especially SpaceX, suggests that he will throw himself into this job with zeal, viewing government efficiency as an existential endeavor, much like the quest to make life multiplanetary.

SpaceX is the most successful rocket company in America and became successful by not acting like a government organization. It soared under Musk, who adopted Silicon Valley’s “Move fast and break things” philosophy and demonstrated a willingness to blow up rockets until he got the recipe just right. This approach suggests that in a SpaceX-inspired government, Musk would not just cut through red tape, but destroy it with a flamethrower. In yesterday’s announcement, the president-elect sounded just as eager to smash things, saying that “the Great Elon Musk” would get DOGE to “dismantle the government bureaucracy, cut redundant regulations, cut wasteful spending and and federal agencies to restructure.”

Even before his official appointment, Musk had identified one federal agency he would like to reshape: the Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for approving rocket launch permits. On SpaceX is in the midst of a ferocious development campaign for its most powerful rocket, Starship, and has applied for launch licenses faster than the FAA is willing to grant them. Now the already understaffed FAA could be at the mercy of senior adviser Elon Musk, who will be given carte blanche to blast regulations from a president who has expressed a desire to see American astronauts land on Mars while he is in office. Musk would also have something to gain by overhauling the nation’s space policy. NASA has hired traditional aerospace contractors, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to build the rocket that will carry astronauts to lunar orbit. But that rocket is so expensive to launch that even NASA’s own inspector general has recommended that the agency consider alternative options for future space missions. Lawmakers would not want to cancel the program, which has supported jobs in every state. But with Musk in his ear, Trump could certainly try.

Regardless of which agencies he targets, Musk will almost certainly throw himself into the DOGE track, as he did in the early years of SpaceX. Despite appearances, he has time: While there is no doubt that his special talents have propelled the company to incredible feats, other executives now oversee day-to-day operations at SpaceX without his input. The same goes for Tesla. That combination of dedication and availability could make him an effective facilitator of the mandate of the Government Efficiency Department.

But Musk and Trump share a governing style that involves making surprise decrees that confuse their staffs. When Musk publicly unveiled a new version of SpaceX’s cargo capsule in 2014, reconfigured for future human passengers, he said the vehicle could land anywhere engineers wanted upon return to Earth. This was news to SpaceX engineers, who designed the spacecraft to parachute to the ocean. Engineers set aside their existing designs—conventional, sure, but ready to go—and focused on Musk’s new vision. Ultimately, it became clear that the design was not workable within NASA’s deadline, and the engineering team managed to convince leadership that it was not worth pursuing. (Years later, SpaceX managed to pilot its rocket boosters out of the sky and into a soft landing.) Former SpaceX employees have told me that Musk’s occasional fixation on certain company activities has occasionally slowed down their work. Some of his decisions appear to be simply bad, such as discouraging employees from wearing yellow safety vests because he doesn’t like bright colors, as Reuters reported last year. It’s a particularly baffling move considering that SpaceX has a very high rate of workplace injuries; The Reuters investigation revealed at least 600 previously unreported injuries at SpaceX over the past decade, such as electrocutions and amputations.

Musk also maintains a work environment with its own form of bureaucracy, organized around satisfying the boss’s whims. In 2022, SpaceX fired a small group of employees after sending a letter to senior executives describing Musk’s public actions as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us.” The letter was signed by hundreds of employees, but management viewed the effort as a distraction from SpaceX’s founding mission to reach Mars. Former SpaceX employees have told me that they often couched feedback in the glossy terms of that mission, so as not to displease Musk. For example, instead of outright raising safety concerns, they would advise against certain decisions because of the mission. You could say that such an overly cautious approach is not very efficient.

According to CNN, Musk has spent almost every day since the election at Mar-a-Lago, joining the president-elect for patio meals and a round of golf. Of the two DOGE seats, he is clearly Trump’s favorite; the Mars hype and memory are just beginning. But the very fact that Musk and Ramaswamy have been appointed jointly – two leaders where one could probably do so – undermines the premise of the Department of Government Efficiency. Even in his mission to rid the federal government of every bit of wasteful spending, Musk still has to kneel before someone else’s version of the bureaucracy.